What's wrong with education policy debate

I am not prone to ranting. People who know me will tell you I'm neither confrontational nor particularly hard-line. I like to compromise, and find common ground. So this blog may seem out of the blue, and will eventually turn extremely controversial. You read on at your own risk.

I have several problems with current educational policy, but before you start accusing me of party politics, I would say that the political interference in education by Left or Right is equally bad, and that we ought to aspire to educational aims which are based on future-proof principles, and not constantly vacillating back and forth at the whim of the latest cabinet minister who wants to "make his mark" and stake his claim as the next Prime Minister. Seriously, is that a good basis upon which to decide the future of hundreds and thousands of children?

Current education policy does, however, seem to me to take the biscuit. It often seems formulated on the basis of very little evidence, which is in turn often flawed (remember the farcical uncovering of the "poor historical knowledge of modern youth" which was based on surveys for Premier Inn and the Sea Cadets?). Nevertheless, if a conclusion can be turned into a mantra and repeated frequently enough, and exaggerated further by the press who are looking to arrest their declining relevance in society (i.e. sales), it becomes the truth, does it not? This, in my opinion, is no way to conduct a debate about the nation's education.

To illustrate my point, let's turn the tables a little... What if we as teachers behaved in the same way as the education debate is being conducted?

What if we... told our students just to make one point in an essay, repeat the same point ad nauseam, and put it in capitals to make it more convincing and OBVIOUSLY true?

Copyright: Jim mentalindigestion.net

No, we tell them to evidence everything: Point, evidence, evaluate. We tell them to look for potential counter-arguments so they can see both sides, and then to evaluate for themselves what they think the answer might be. Memorisation of facts is not nearly as powerful as the ability to analyse those facts, take them apart, and find out the truth. Unfortunately, in the current climate, the truth, and the evidence which might prove it, and the nuances of the debates, are all simply collateral damage in the quest to gain political capital. What grab the headlines are not the measured nuanced debates of professionals, but the daily kickings from the Secretary of State and Michael Wilshaw which appeal to the confirmation bias of the 40 plus generation who read these things and nod sagely about how much better it was in their day (Was it really, by the way?).

What if we... started telling the whole class off when the naughty child at the back starts making too much noise? And then went out into the playground and started telling every who will listen that everyone was just as bad as that naughty child? Which of us has not been told that this is the first thing you never do in teaching? And yet the journalistic tendencies of making sweeping generalisations from those at the top is remarkable. I'd contend it's not appropriate for education, though. And one of the ways in which citizens would know that is if they had been trained in media criticism, such as is the case in Media Studies, and taught not to accept things at face value. Oh, but it's one of the subjects Michael Gove wants rid of. I wonder why? The journalist is someone who knows a lot of things superficially, and then claims the mantle of the expert. But the very nature of journalism is that it flies from one subject to the next so quickly that 1) it does not develop true expertise, and 2) it looks at things from the skewed perspective of what will sell/scare/interest/amaze the reader rather than reveal what is necessarily true. And these are just the good journalists. As we all know, there are plenty more in the industry who are hacks who will be far less thorough in researching a story, and simply find a couple of provocatively different views from which to formulate a story, and then let rhetoric do the rest. Did you notice I did that myself at the start of the last sentence? Clever and subtle, isn't it? This is how Gove and Wilshaw are winning the battle of the media day by day, and unless teachers fight fire with fire, and can convince the news media that there is a genuinely interesting story to be had in the misuse of statistics and in the manipulation of data for political and commercial ends within education, then we may well be doomed to lose the debate.

Clearly education must be failing: It says so in the papers. Despite the fact that OFSTED's latest data  on inspections puts around 70% of schools as Good or Outstanding (not all under the new framework, to be fair). We have a major problem in education: Again it says so in the papers. Every day. Last week we were (collectively, all of us, remember?) responsible for failing pupil premium students, the higher achieving students. Oh, and we were responsible for the rise of the EDL. The problem has been identified, and repeated again and again, so it must be the problem to focus upon. Privatisation of education has been identified as a key solution, as well as making everything harder. That will automatically tell us how to do our jobs better.

Let's look at this situation in a little more detail. A perceived problem has been identified, repeated forcefully and often: People who disagree have been demonised (anyone else an "enemy of promise"?), and we have been told that these enemies threaten our very future. This sounds almost exactly like the way newspapers create a moral panic, and for exactly the same reason, to inspire the feeling of trust in a protector who is looking out for us. You can see where any sense of nuanced debate is being lost here. As for the solutions, clearly privatised schools would not fail: Private companies never fail. And harder exams will obviously inevitably lead to better outcomes, despite the fact that teachers are not being told how to get their students to achieve these higher levels of attainment.
Indeed, if you think about it, how can we possibly get future students to be cleverer when half the profession are a product of the declining educational standards of the last twenty years?

What if we... scared the hell out of our students about their future, and then told them to do everything we say and that will get them home safe and sound? Like sheep.

So here's the controversial bit. Having worked incredibly hard for years to raise my own game as well as that of my students, the last year has coincidentally seen me think seriously about quitting this great profession several times. The egotist in me asks why on earth I should let politicians force me out of a profession I love and am, as an outstanding teacher apparently, quite good at. But then I started thinking of the other people who've probably had similar thoughts.

What if we, as a profession, quit en masse?

Not going on strike. That makes us easy targets to demonise. Governments are great at getting the public to turn against anyone who inconveniences them. But actually quit. Said "We are not prepared to participate in an education system which we believe damages the future of your children, and decreases the life chances of a significant number of them. Find someone else to teach what you want taught."

So far, I've had a variety of gut negative reactions to that suggestion, including my wife's. Gove isn't forcing me to quit a profession I love, goes the line. Except you love the ideal of the profession, not, very often, its actual current substance. We teach despite the fact that we don't like the direction. But then I would argue we are more or less complicit, or at the very least placing ourselves at the mercy of the whims of each Secretary of State. We have long talked about the depoliticisation of education, and even Mr Gove himself has alluded to this as a noble aim of his. But do any of us seriously believe he has that intention?

So I go back to my point. Quit. What would happen?

First, if Heads and teachers quit together, we could not be blamed for holding the nation to ransom. The Secretary of State can simply replace us. In a year, when new teachers have been trained. Oh, and since most PGCE courses have been replaced by in-school training, who is going to do that training? And who's going to do the appointing? I seem to remember the Khmer Rouge getting rid of all Cambodian teachers because they were bourgeois professionals who undermined the Marxist revolution. The effect was catastrophic. Parents are not going to like the fact that their children have nowhere to go. But we aren't withholding our labour: We quit. Perhaps parents after the initial anger directed towards those who have inconvenienced them, would want to know why teachers would actually be prepared to leave their jobs because of the Secretary of State's policies? Maybe then we'd have slightly more informed debate on the subject, and the public would demand our reinstatement?

Maybe I'm an idealist.

But I'd rather be an idealist than a collaborator who fears there is no other option. There always is. And the vast majority of answers I've had about this, while intelligently rationalised, have always been reactions of personal fear.

10 Ways to use a Youtube channel in education

Youtube: The ultimate distraction (apart from Twitter, but that's for grown-ups, right?).

A marmite resource which teachers either love or hate. Personally, I love it. Marmite me up all day long, if you will. It provides a never-ending source of educational videos, inspiration, challenge, provocation and kittens launching themselves at erratic torch-beams wielded by sadistic owners waiting for their cat to splat into a wall and bag them £500 from "You've Been Framed". What's not to like?

Apart from the cats bit, that's why I started our own Finham Park Media Youtube channel. It's been building up gradually over the last few months, the longer I've been on my journey to explore how iPads and BYOD technologies can be used to enhance my own teaching and learning practice (previously blogged about here and here, so forgive me if I don't go over old ground). I've found it an invaluable companion to this journey, so I thought I would share the countless opportunities Youtube offers educationalists in this blog*. In the form of a list. So you can count them. Ahem...

1. The simplest way to use Youtube is as a place of stimulus and discussion for class topics. A video URL can easily be set as research, to provoke debate, to extend thinking for more able students or to help explain something more simply for those having trouble getting to grips with a new concept. Once the students watch the video you've shared, the comments section below allows for the debate to occur. If you "Favourite" the video, it will appear in your channel, and you can then direct students to your channel, and supervise and moderate what they're saying, especially if you have set this as a homework task.

2. I love using Youtube as a place for flipped learning videos too: I create a very simple video, say a tutorial on a concept I'm teaching, an app or piece of software I need students to be able to use, or instructions for hardware such as cameras, particularly useful for subjects like ICT, Media, Photography, DT, Music etc (example here). A Youtube channel allows you to curate all of your videos in one easily-accessed place for your students.

1. 

   Video tutorial

   I then set it as homework for students to watch and take notes on, so that they come to the lesson knowing how to do what I've been describing, or as a minimum, having questions they want clarifying. The ability to review the videos as often as they like allows the students not to feel they have to move at the same middle-ground pace as the rest of the class, and personalises the learning a little more. Allowing questions right from the start of the lesson also allows me to differentiate from the start, allowing those who know what they're doing to get right on, while I can spend time helping those who had questions. I should say at this point that I am aware there has been much criticism of the Khan Academy approach to flipped learning, about the boring videos and inaccuracies, 
   
   but these criticisms mostly miss the point, which is the principle that if you create a video of information you've already taught in class, it can not only be accessed any time to refresh the students' memories, but it can also be done slightly differently to differentiate, be that to stretch the most able, or to assist the less. The great thing about having these videos on your own channel is that you can arrange them into playlists on the same subjects, and have the playlist order follow the same logical order that students should tackle them in, gradually getting harder. the students are improving their skills with every video, but tackling each new topic at their own pace, once they fell they have mastered the preceding step.

3. I tend to use flipped video lessons in conjunction with Ted-Ed, a brilliant resource in itself which I've described elsewhere. It allows you to take any TED or Youtube video and create quizzes based on the videos which students can undertake as the test of how well they have done their homework, and be used as the basis for differentiation from the start of the class. The test immediately shows who has not done the homework, who has done it but needs more input, and who should be moved on straight away. The quizzes can be done different ways, in class, using different software, or even paper if you're into that sort of thing, but the TED-Ed quiz facility has a few nice features (such as hints about where in the video the answer lies if students struggle, and a self-marking facility) which add to the variety of your teaching.

4.  The same principle applies to teachers. I use my Youtube channel to help other teachers with app tutorials to help them work out how to make best use of certain apps to improve their teaching and learning. Again, all of these are arranged into playlists, by topic, to make them hopefully easier to find. I learnt a lot from other teachers who have put tutorials on Youtube (@eyebeams was one particular early inspiration), and a Youtube channel for me just felt like an easy way to share things I was showing teachers in my own school. 

5. However, new media technologies take us way beyond simply finding things other clever people have done, and this is where your own Youtube channel comes into its own. For a start, if your students create their own video work (on phones, iPads, at home, on PCs etc), it is the place to store it for later referral, for assessment (remember, you can comment on their work from there). The process of uploading is incredibly easy once you have the video file, or even more automatic from certain apps which are already linked to Youtube.

6. This also acts as a public showcase for your students' work, which is a huge incentive for them. You need their permission to share this work publicly (you can upload things to Youtube but keep them private, or stipulate that only people in your classes can see them), but if they and the people they filmed are happy with it, you can then open the channel up to more public eyes and exposure. This knowledge that anyone could come across their work can really sharpen their focus and inspire students to produce over and above their usual class efforts.

7. Not only that, but if your students are serious about their work, the channel acts as a networking opportunity for your students, to allow others to see what they have done, and allow them to talk about and discuss their work with industry professionals. It might even get them noticed by someone really important, but even if they're don't get signed for their first multi-million dollar film deal, the channel opens up the way for discussions with people who can help them to improve their practice. In one recent example, a friend of mine who works on video effects saw the work of a student and started a conversation with them about how they could get better, and different techniques they could use. hey presto, the student's next piece was even better. Feedback from an expert certainly carries more weight than mine does (apparently!).

8. The discussion and comments sections for videos also allow an opportunity for extended peer feedback: By sharing the links with other schools, you allow your students to put their work before a broader audience of their peers, and a broader range of criticism. This acts the same way as the way other colleagues share their class blogs between schools, and with the same positive effect in my experience.

9. Additionally, I think having your own channels allows you to share your students' work with other teaching professionals, providing an opportunity for moderation. Anyone who finds themselves in my position of working in a small department without a budget to send you to those costly moderation meetings will appreciate the ability to share your links with other professionals and get their opinion on the marks you're giving, or how the work could be improved, especially if you're feeling a bit too close to the work to be objective.

10. Finally, there is a great deal to be said for how far a Youtube channel gets you noticed as a school. Ours has attracted attention from all over the place, and when people from around the country discuss the work of Finham Park students, many of them have seen it on our Youtube channels, so our school's reputation is enhanced.

One final word on Youtube. Many schools block it, despite the fact that it is the most extensive resources of video material the world has ever seen. For me, that's all horribly wrong. The fact that students could access inappropriate material via Youtube is not a reason to ban it. After all, no school banned the Internet, despite the rumour that at one stage it consisted of 90% pornography (This may be apocryphal and impossible to prove, but you have to admit it's persuasive and emotive: Everything we need from a "Gove-fact"!) Essentially, it should not be for technicians or bureaucrats to decide what your students can and can't access. It should be for the teacher. If the teacher doesn't feel confident that students will stay on task and use learning-related sites they have stipulated, then they shouldn't take a risk in using it. On the other hand, if you feel you trust your students, or that you have the ability to manage behaviour (it is the behaviour which you are criticising after all, not the technology), then use it. As far as I am concerned, what students can access should be a matter of teaching and learning, not decided by technicians. They are there to serve the teaching and learning community after all, and that's a powerful argument to take to leadership teams to get them to unblock these sites.

*If you are about to skip the rest of this blog o the basis that Youtube is blocked in your school, I suggest starting at the LAST paragraph

BYOD In Schools - Part 4: Student Engagement

This year has seen our school begin the process of implementing a Bring Your Own Device Strategy (BYOD) across the whole school, notionally led by me, which is somewhat worrying. Fortunately my erstwhile co-leader @Gripweed1 has made up for my many deficiencies in the process, and we enter the final half-term of the year, 6 months after starting, having successfully negotiated the first stage of the process. I've blogged about the different parts of Stage One before, but a quick recap may save you trawling through all that:

We started by mapping out the route we would take, looking into other schools which had gone down similar or alternative roads, and identifying areas of planning and infrastructure issues we had to address first before moving forward. We then began involving students with @Gripweed1 leading a highly successful Safer Internet Day, where students were consulted about the rights and responsibilities of them being able to use their own devices in school as a learning tool. Their input was critical in allowing us to develop a BYOD policy, and the intention is to have students review this annually as part of our PHSE programme, to ensure it remains up-to-date and fit for purpose. While our focus shifted on to a small group of "dangerous teachers" who were conducting class trials with the students, we realised that the students were going to be the key to the success or failure of the whole process, and it is this student engagement I want to address today.

So far, we have engaged different sections of the student community at different levels. All were involved in the development of the Acceptable Use Policy, and several classes across different year groups have been involved in exploring the technologies through trials. Now we're looking at the issue of digital leaders, and the contributions they might make to moving the process forward. There is a great deal of talk across the Twittersphere about digital leadership: Some of it is little more than a nod towards it, as I've seen in several schools where student leaders are more or less teachers' assistants. However, there are many other schools where it is clear that students are genuinely leading not just other students, but also the teaching and learning process through mobile technology, and here they seem to be driving the idea forward almost more effectively than if the process were top-down. Mark Anderson (@ICTEvangelist)'s work at Clevedon in the South-West is a case in point, and we have learnt a great deal from his generously shared expertise.

Our initial discussions for the roles of digital leaders looked at a variety of potential roles Digital Leaders could undertake. These ranged from having

• FROG champions who would train students and teachers in the use of our FROG VLE
• Technical support leaders who would almost be apprentice technicians 
• E-Safety Specialists whose job would be to advise and monitor e-safety across the school
• Device Specialists whose job would be to look at the way certain device workflows could be translated to other devices without causing problems 
• We even then started thinking about having specialists in different types of software as these need considerable training too, for example Adobe specialists, Microsoft Specialists, Android Specialists etc

You can see that the lists eventually became far too cumbersome to be workable! We were ourselves in danger of losing sight of "the main thing" and turning our digital leaders into glorified Techies, so we changed our focus back to Teaching and Learning, and this proved far more fruitful. All aspects of the role can now be clearly related back to leading, enhancing or supporting teaching and learning, and we have also looked at how digital leaders can be used to smooth the transition of students coming up from primary schools so that they are confident and ready to meet the challenges of secondary. Equally, we would like Digital Leaders to be able to use their experiences to gain accredited qualifications which would help them further a career in this sector if they so wished, and we are currently exploring the sorts of qualifications on offer.


This is what we came up with in the end...

Digital Leadership at Finham Park

Job description

Digital leaders will...

Be able to support teaching and learning through SMART Learning
Be able to support the use of mobile devices by teachers and students
Be able to support and develop the use of VLE
Be able to assist specific departments with the acquisition of teaching and learning resources (apps, websites, software)

Be able to develop outreach programmes
Be able to liaise with primary schools to promote digital transition
Be able to manage the digital leaders' social media presence
Be able to work with collaborative networks in order promote and share best practice

Be able to support the development of e-safety training across the school
Lead assemblies to whole school on e-safety
Lead lessons to students in e-safety
Lead whole staff training on e-safety
Be able to promote the use of digital technology at whole-school events (e.g. Genius bars at Year 7 parental events)

Be able to offer basic technical support to teachers and departments
Checking computer power, peripherals, sound, mice and keyboards
Helping teachers to use iPads with AppleTV
Clearing a printer jam
Checking toner and paper
Projectors and connections
Problem diagnosis?
Management of school computer screens, uploads and podcasts
Preparation of machine images through FOG
Device usage (ipads and other devices, especially help for staff)

Person Specification

Digital Leaders should...

Be dedicated to this single area of student leadership (there are many other areas of student leadership around the school, but we feel this role is so big it will be time-consuming)
Be a positive role model to other students
Have an interest in developing digital technology skills further
Be responsible users of technology
Be keen to learn to work with other people involved in the creation of a digital environment
Show tenacity and commitment
Be able to demonstrate prior digital skills
Have a clear understanding of safe and responsible social media use
Be willing to foster leadership skills

Our second draft of a job description has yet to be approved, so I put it out here for discussion: Have we missed anything? Can you help us to tweak it further? If I've learnt anything from blogging and tweeting, it's that no idea I've ever had couldn't be improved by somebody out there, so we very much welcome any input here via the comments section below.

The class trials will report back at the end of the year, and hopefully we will have enough evidence that mobile technology can have a tangible impact on teaching and learning to move the project forward across the whole school. At this point, the role of the digital leaders will become crucial in the process, and it is more than likely that they will be leading teachers as much as students. This gets us to a stage I think many schools and SLTs are nervous about, namely where the students' expertise begins to overtake that of the staff. I can empathise with this to an extent, although I have to say that mobile technology is one key area where, if teachers don't learn to step outside of their "sage on the stage" role, we won't move forward very fast. As an old t'ai chi teacher of mine once told his students, "if I don't train you with the aspiration of becoming better than me, who then will I learn from?"

Only if we can get over this psychological obstacle in how we see our role will we truly begin to create a collaborative learning environment, where teachers and students move each other forward.

http://ui.asu.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/cartoon1.jpg

Unfettered Leadership - A Thunk

Quick mini-post today. Forgive the fact that it wasn't just tweeted, but I thought that the quality of responses would be better from comments rather than tweets.

There has been much inspirational talk over the past week by the #Vision2040 group about the future of our schools, the direction of the curriculum etc. I started a bit of blue-sky day-dreaming about how I would run a school if there were no shackles, and then realised how hard it was to come up with concrete answers. Lots of platitudes and generalities and the like (I'm good at them!), but nothing very specific. So in the spirit of thunkage so popular on Twitter, what I want to know is this:

If Michael Gove was to de-politicise education entirely, including his present accountability systems, and you had free rein to do as you liked in your schools, what EXACTLY would you do or change?

Answers in the comments section please. I REALLY want to know what you would do...

BYOD Implementation In Schools - Part 3: Staff training

I've been teaching for many years now, and I've seen many an initiative come and go. My present school is one of the few I've ever taught in where initiatives are very much superseded by foci. This may sound like no difference at all, but for me the difference has been in the time taken to research, test, trial and embed practice over the long term. Three years our school spent on an AFL "initiative": I'd argue that after three years, that's not an initiative any more: That's a focus. And a pretty serious one at that. And it has brought the vast majority of our staff on in leaps and bounds.

One of the reasons a focus works better than an initiative is that a focus necessitates full staff commitment, and therefore training. Staff training has been one of the key strands to our BYOD trials at Finham Park, and we are now into our second term. We began by converting one of our school's dozen or so TALK Groups (Teaching and Learning Communities, groups which all staff are part of, including learning supervisors and student teachers) into a group solely devoted to looking at the use of mobile technology to enhance teaching and learning. We co-opted a number of staff covering all faculties, and importantly, covered different levels of technological skill. We didn't want the trial group to be a geek-fest, because any good ideas we came up with could immediately be rejected by other staff on roll-out as just being for the technologically competent or gifted. We had to make sure that this was transparently seen as a focus which could benefit all teachers no matter what level of technological competence they were at.

During our first meeting we shared our strategy for the BYOD programme (published here if anyone's desperately interested), and shared our rationale behind it. We also made our expectations clear to the staff involved in the trial:

• To develop their interest and skills in SMART learning in their classroom
• To experiment with different web-based apps to enhance learning experience, variety, assessment and effectiveness
• To bring back tips, techniques, ideas, apps, problems and obstacles to each TALK group meeting for discussion
• To develop skills further based on each TALK group session
• To help roll out their experiences and expertise to other teachers, with the help of Digital Leaders when we are confident the major infrastructure obstacles have been tackled

In return, we asked staff what they felt their biggest training needs might be (on the understanding that as the trial progressed, some of these might well change, at which point we would change our provision in line with those new needs). The key areas we identified between us were:

• Learning to use devices to enhance AFL in class
• Managing behaviour in the digital classroom
• Establishing expectations with students within this new learning environment
• How to get the students' devices onto the wifi network

I have already written about a variety of ways to use online apps for AFL elsewhere, so forgive me for not repeating myself here. Go and read it if you want: It's got tutorials, witticisms and cartoons and everything. But finish this first. Patience, young Jedi... The more thorny problem, which vexes teachers and SLT alike, is the potential for classroom disruption and disengagement offered by mobile devices. We've been straight down the line about this all the way through the process, and said that if students disengage using a mobile phone, you have a behaviour problem, not a technology problem. I'm sure everyone wanted to ban pencils when they were first introduced too: As anyone who has seen the outstanding French film Nikita will know, you have serious potential for GBH with a pencil, and that trick The Joker did with a pencil, a table and a gangster in The Dark Knight doesn't bear thinking about either. But we don't ban them. So we talked to staff about how to handle students who misuse devices. In large part, it's about the establishment of clear expectations with students from the start: Students must understand that the mobile device is a learning tool, which can be brought out when the teacher deems it appropriate, and not otherwise. With these expectations firmly in place, students understand that doing anything other than learning with the devices is not acceptable. The other key thing is that disengagement is much easier to spot if students are using mobiles. If students are spending an inordinate amount of time staring down at their crotches during lessons, you can bet they're either texting, or doing something even less savoury. Either way, deal with it quickly and firmly.

Finally, we needed to liaise with our Tech Support to work out a way to logistically get every student in the trial put on the wifi. In our case, we weren't prepared to simply open the access to everyone, so the technicians agreed to put each individual device on for us. This liaison with our technicians has been extended by inviting one of them to join our TaLK Group each session, so they have a far better overview about what we're trying to achieve, and can give us good advice on the optimal way to achieve these goals. So far, it has been a fruitful relationship which has allowed us as teachers to appreciate the concerns of the Tech Support department, while also allowing them to see what we are trying to achieve as teachers. I will let you know as things develop, but so far I have to say that this mutual collaboration has proven very useful.

The format of our meetings has followed the format we established for the TaLK Groups when we were trialling AFL techniques: We spend the first ten minutes or so sharing individual experiences, we assist with solutions where problems have arisen, and we generally pat each other on the back encouragingly for how far we've come since last time (think Alcoholics Anonymous meets Star Trek convention). We then go on to look at specific areas where we want to improve our practice: It could be the use of specific AFL techniques, or getting students to organise their work on mobile devices, or investigating a new app: Whatever. We get everyone to pick a partner who is interested in exploring the same area for mutual support, and another partner to go to for advice, and we arrange informal mutual observations, research sharing or discussions to explore whatever it was we wanted to focus on. The meetings are every half-term or so, to give teachers time not only to explore, but also to embed ideas into their practice. And this same cycle of plan-do-review happens during each session, and we help each other move forward with our practice. Simples.

Between the group, our main areas of focus so far have included assessment for learning, obviously, but also how we can use mobile technology to improve student organisation and student independence too, with personalised learning strategies being developed through mobile technology.

By next meeting, we will start assessing the impact of the group’s discussions on our practice so far. I'm looking forward to hearing about the individual ideas, the progress, but also seeing what areas we need to iron out before we can go any further with this scheme: Technical issues, infrastructure, teaching and learning problems, all of these are bound to focus our attentions, because unless we can get rid of as many obstacles as possible in our initial group work, we will leave ourselves open to staff who don't want to engage with these ideas simply rejecting them because "the systems aren't in place". And we can't afford that.

We will also be looking during our next session more closely at the SAMR model (with thanks to @ICTevangelist from whom we blatantly nicked this one!). The SAMR framework will allow us to assess how effective mobile technology is in enhancing learning. It is easy to get carried away with the novelty of a new focus in the classroom, especially one as shiny and pretty as mobile technology, but unless we can be sure that these technologies are being used in a way which moves learning and teaching forward, then there isn't really much point in making such a song and dance about them. We're hoping that this model will serve as a benchmark, allowing us to reflect on how far along the path we are actually moving, and how far we are genuinely transforming learning. More on this as we go forward. Now I need to work on our Digital Leaders strategy...

Apposite cartoon...

And choon and video to really cheer you up. Seriously, watch it...

Obeying our seasonal rhythms

Last week I blogged about teacher's health after a particularly nasty shock about my own.
This week I decided to do something about it.
Last week I said I didn't have the answers to the problems I raised.
This week I tried looking for some. Over the next few weeks I'll do a few mini-blogs on each of the areas I raised during my last post, which will become more and more specific hopefully, and more and more useful.

Here's what I came up with. Please, if you're serious about maintaining your own health, may I first urge you to do two things in response to this post:
1) Have a go at some of these things, and give me some feedback on how you feel as a result: Does it work for you?
2) Please post some ideas at the bottom which you've tried, so the rest of us can try them. We're using this notion of collaborative working through Twitter et al to improve our teaching, so why should it not work to help us find solutions to over-working?

So here we go...

The first point I talked about last week was our seeming inability to obey our seasonal rhythms. I went away and tried to find something which was always very sensible advice when I used to train many years ago, and finally found it. They still ring true for me.

If you read my last blog (here), you'll notice that in TCM we talk about the 5 element system, which has correspondences in every area, including our own bodies (emotions, mental state, organs etc) and the outside world. Each element therefore has a season associated with it, and the nature of the element reflects the sorts of things we should be doing in each season to live in harmony with nature and not struggle against it so much.

Let's start with the element of Fire. Fire is the element associated with Summer (more detail here):

Ways to tend your inner Fire

• Have fun on a regular basis, even if you have to work at it at first. Make it a priority - schedule your fun, if that's what it takes. Don't compromise. Consider fun as important to your well-being as work or anything else you do.
  
• Give of yourself to others. Take the time to listen. Take the risk of dipping into your own heart and finding what you have to give to others unconditionally - then just do it.
  
• Live your passion, whether it be the church choir, rollerblading, preserving the environment, or writing poetry. If you don't know what your special passion is, be willing to admit that you don't. Meanwhile, stay amused and don't stop looking. When you find that great interest, dive into it wholeheartedly and enjoy!
  
• Get physical. Get into your body and out of your head. Love, exercise, dance, run, play. Get your circulation going.

Earth is the element associated with Late Summer, and this is what its associations are:

Suggestions for living in harmony with the late summer season

• Enjoy the abundance of fruits and fresh vegetables
  Be aware of their special qualities, each succulence different from the next. Carrots are crisp, cucumbers cool, tomatoes luscious, peaches sweet. Look at the seeds, and reflect on the fact that within each harvest lie the seeds of the next.
• Be thoughtful of how you can nourish others.
  In this season when nature gives her bounty, we also rejoice in giving, with attention to the special needs of others. You need not wait until you can give a "great gift." A word, a courtesy, a thoughtfulness - given today - is a great gift.
• Be conscious of the harvest of your life.
  Think about yourself, your relationships, and your work. What parts of your life are bearing fruit? Where is the harvest rich? Where do you find it stunted?
• Consider what you need to do to make ready for the letting go of autumn.
  Holding your harvest in mind, ask what is overgrown or unneeded. What distracts you from your dearest concerns? What might you wish to simplify in yourself or in your life?

Metal is associated with the Autumn season:

Suggestions for living in harmony with the autumn season:

• Go through your closet, desk, garage, medicine cabinet - any cluttered storage area-and discard what you no longer need. Then donate, sell, or otherwise circulate what might be of value to others.
  
• Do a mental inventory: Examine attitudes (prejudices, envies, hatreds, jealousies, resentments) stored within your psyche. When possible, contact those with whom you harbor old "stuff." Attempt to resolve the hurtful old issues, and then let them go.
  
• For issues you cannot resolve directly with others, or for old issues with yourself, write them on paper, being as specific as possible. Then burn the paper, symbolically releasing the content.
  
• Take time each day to breathe slowly and deeply. As you inhale the clean autumn air, feel yourself energized and purified. Feel the old negativity, impurity, and pain leave your body and psyche. Then contemplate briefly who you are without these identifications.

Finally, Water is the element associated with Winter:

Suggestions for living in harmony with the winter season

• Get more rest.
  This is nature’s season for rest, repair, and regeneration—a phase important for our next cycle of growth. The Nei Ching,oldest-known document of Chinese medicine, advises: “[In Winter], people should retire early at night and rise late in the morning, and they should wait for the rising of the sun.”
• Schedule more time for your inner life.
  Use the energy of the season to discover more about yourself through reflection, reading literature that “restores the spirit,” being more aware of your senses, paying attention to your dreams. The winter season is an especially good time to begin the practice of meditation.
• Choose more “warming” foods.
  As the weather cools and the body needs to generate more warmth, include more cooked foods and complex carbohydrates in your meals. Try dishes made with whole grains, squashes, beans, peas, and root vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, and garlic.
• “Gather around the hearth” with people who mean the most to you.
  Winter evenings are an especially good time to rejuvenate and deepen relationships with those closest to you. Keep gatherings simple and relaxed.

Copyright 1997 by Neil Gumenick

And finally, let's talk about the present. Spring has finally sprung, and it is associated with the Wood element. You can read its key associations in much more detail here. However, here are a few things TCM philosophy recommends you can do to make the most of Spring's energy...

Suggestions for living in harmony with the spring season

• Begin your day early, with a brisk walk.
  Feel the sunshine pull you up and out, like the plants and animals. Watch buds rush into leaf, often doubling their size in a day. Look for birds' nests - you'll find them everywhere, even on top of air conditioners. Feel the life within you, like that outdoors, thrust up out of darkness into new possibilities. Make a garden. Eat greens.
• Begin new things - at home, in your work, and in yourself.
  In this season when nature reinvents itself, we too can see people and situations with new eyes. Let new tissue grow over old hurts, and take fresh hope. Be creative. Make things, do things. Begin!
• Consider how you wish to make ready for your summer harvest.
  Spring does not last forever. Use its bountiful energy wisely, so that the crops you sow - again, in yourself, in your work, and in your life - are those you wish to harvest. The energy of spring brings vision.

So there you are. Not rocket science. Just a way of making sure we're not fighting our environment too much. My experience (when I choose to listen to it!) has always shown me how much easier my life is when I don't struggle to overcome what is going on around me, and go with the flow. It is a wise teacher, and in Spring, it is reminding me that I'm as much a part of nature as everything else.

Good luck. Hope you haven't all turned into tree-hugging screaming hippies by the end of these blogs! And let me know how you get on...

Teacher's health

Teachers' Health: What Are We Doing Wrong?

This blog goes back to one of my pet bug-bears, teachers' health. Unfortunately, it needs a bit of context. Bear with me, the points I'm making are worth it. In my opinion at any rate. Which hardly constitutes the most ringing endorsement, but it's the only one you're getting...

The other day I met up with a friend of mine who used to study taoist arts with me for many years. We taught t'ai chi together for well over a decade, studied therapeutic massage, diagnostics, acupressure, Chinese Medicine, and eventually she went on to become a professional acupuncturist and a lead teacher of acupuncture at one of the country's best acupuncture colleges. She regularly used to treat me in a preventative capacity, as is the idea in Chinese medicine: You treat people to keep them well, not once they're ill (stable door-horse bolted scenario). In fact the Chinese used to have a system whereby doctors could not charge for their services when you were ill (you couldn't earn money to pay, after all), so the whole medical system was predicated on the importance of prevention rather than cure (as is the case within our own system, which also happens to be so profitable for the major pharmaceutical companies incidentally. I'm just saying. And digressing apparently).

It has been a while since my last treatment, but this one provided me with a hell of a shock. According to my acupuncturist, my health has seriously deteriorated in the last eleven months, due to factors which can be solely attributed to teaching, despite the fact my western doctors tell me I'm doing everything perfectly. I eat well according to Western orthodoxy, I get above average amounts of exercise, and I generally look after myself. Nothing wrong, excellent health. Only I know different. I can feel that all is not well. And now I have someone telling me the same thing, someone telling me she can measure how far my constitution has been depleted. I am working at a pace which, in her own words, is constantly pushing the limits of what I am capable of withstanding, and is digging into my reserves of energy every day, not just occasionally. But they're reserves I say, that's what they're there for. And when I have no reserves left, apparently, that's it. Life essence spent. Grave time.

Not a nice thought. Especially for my family.

Now I'll be the first to acknowledge that doing an ASLDP course at the same time as a secondment to leadership, a whole-school project and running a faculty on a full timetable is a struggle, but to be honest I didn't think I was pushing it that much. My body on the other hand knows differently. And therein lies the problem: My brain seems to think it knows better, and rationalises all sorts of things which are bad for my health, to the extent of saying that this is what constitutes "normal" within the teaching profession. So here are a few of the things we're doing on a day to day basis in the teaching profession which are harmful to our health, and not to put too fine a point on it, are killing us slowly by using up our reserves of energy...

Obeying our seasonal rhythms
We've just come through a long hard winter (and I'm not even sure it's finished yet, dammit!). During that winter, every animal in the natural kingdom spent more time sleeping, expended less energy, and generally took it easy in a hibernatey type of way. Plants do the same in general: They die back, they collect their essences back into their roots, conserve their energy, distil it even, and then get ready to burst forth beautifully when the sun returns and the days lengthen. What do we do? We have our longest term, followed by an alcoholic holiday, and then straight back to work for more of the same. We leave the house when it's dark, and get home when it's dark, and then carry on working, despite the clear messages from the rest of the natural world: Rest up. And then we take our holidays when there is most energy around to be doing things, and most daylight. The beginning and end of school years are utterly at odds with the natural world, from which we are becoming ever more separate. If we had any sense, we would start in February, work our way up to our best learning in the summer, and as Autumn came and went we would harvest that knowledge (with exams, I guess), and then rest over Winter when the cycle is done.

Speaking of which... We get decent holidays in this job. So everyone keeps reminding us. But how much of your Easter holiday did you take, I wonder. Me? I spent four days on a students trip and a week in school running coursework and exam prep sessions. I doubt I'm unusual in this respect either. Whether it's because we need the time to catch up on work we've not managed to get done during the hectic term, or simply because of the guilt we feel every time someone berates us for the length of our holidays, I like many of my colleagues just seem to keep working through them. How strange.

Obeying our daily rhyhms
We can all relate to the concept of a body clock, especially when suffering from jet-lag after a long plane journey, or a really late night and lack of sleep. Your body functions in such a way as to take advantage of the 24 hours in a day, with different organs peaking at different periods according to Chinese Medicine.

As an example of this, you can see your stomach and spleen (both linked to the Earth element in TCM, which is in charge of nourishment) come online in the morning, when you need your first meal of the day: A meal eaten at that time is more effective than at any other time of the day, but how many teachers do I know who "skip breakfast" just to get in early?
(I could have used the Large Intestine between 5-7 a.m. as an example of the best time for bowel movements, but you're probably eating as you read this, so let's move on...)

All of this is fairly self-explanatory, and indeed self-evident if we stopped for a minute to listen to our bodies. Instead, we tend to listen to our schedule, our timetables and our piles of marking, which results in many of us skipping lunch, or even working through them, also no-nos in TCM. You see, in TCM, every organ is linked to functions, emotions and other areas of the body. Since we're on the Stomach and Spleen organs, I'll tell you that these are linked to the Earth element, with their functions being tied to the imagery of earth: As the source of sustenance, as the "mother" nurturer. Oddly, the emotion linked to this in Chinese medicine is called "pensiveness" or "over-thinking". It is often equated to worry and anxiety. And because the organ-emotion relationship works both ways, people who are doing a lot of thinking or worrying while they eat are actually impairing their stomach and spleen functions. Hence, when we worry, we often say we "feel sick", or that our stomachs are "tied in knots". In fact, for all the goodness you're getting from your food, you may as well not be eating most of it.

Meal times are a natural pause in the day, a time to down tools and switch onto another frequency. A time to come together and socialise and share. I don't know about you, but I have yet to work in a school environment which is conducive to that. In fact, I've heard arguments for ever shorter lunch and break-times based around the fact that "the kids will get out of control". And so we as teachers have to take another hit to our health, sometimes on a daily basis. I know that doesn't take much to distract me from eating at lunch.

Similarly, how many of us go home at night and start back on the work straight away? How many of us literally get up from the dinner table and start thinking straight away, or marking? What digestion time does that afford us? And did we even have time to savour the meal we've just eaten to give us sustenance? Did we even cook it? Or did we trust Messrs Sainsbury and co to do it for us and all we have to do is bung it in the microwave, because it's "convenient" and gives us yet more time for that all-consuming work? Because we know how much the supermarkets prioritise our health over their cheaper, more profitable ingredients...

Working with our bodies
Much of what working with our own bodies is about concerns obeying their natural rhythm, but there is more to it than that. As bi-peds, we have been walking on two legs for a long time now, and our spines, bones and musculature have aligned themselves to work optimally that way. Go ask a chiropractor how much harm we are doing ourselves sitting down for such long periods each day, leaning over the books. And it's not just your back: This constant slumping, and allowing the shoulders to hunch inwards constricts the lungs, and squashes the heart. As someone who is used to breathing very deeply, the last few months of unconscious stooping have resulted in a tangible shortness of breath. How do I know? Because we used to do one exercise based on holding one's breath years ago, which I used to be able to do for over a minute. Last week I had trouble getting to thirty seconds. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Our constant availability to students means we take few breaks, and when we do get time on our own, we tend to plonk ourselves down and power through as much work in one sitting as we can while there are no distractions. So far, since this shock diagnosis, I have taken a break very consciously every ten minutes while writing this blog. I can't say I've done anything less than an hour of sitting at a time over the last year.

Not only that, but the "work hard" attitude means we innately know we are missing out on life on some level, so we adopt a "play hard" attitude. I know teachers who glug a bottle of wine and half a kilo of chocolate on the sofa on a Friday night, because they've "earned it". Don't get me wrong, I don't object to alcohol and chocolate. But the lack of moderation is a ticking time-bomb if it becomes a regular part of your lifestyle and is, I would contend, a direct result of our working habits, and that's the root cause of the problem.

By the way, in case you're interested, in TCM the Liver is linked to the Wood element: It's function is the even distribution of energy throughout the body, and the smooth expression of emotions: If you have sudden mood swings, or energy blockages (highs and lows), then they can often be attributed to damage to the Wood element.

Working with our emotions
Which brings me nicely to emotions... In Chinese Medicine, there is no separation between the mental, physical, spiritual and emotional. All are linked, and therefore you can work out your own diagnosis from looking at the types of emotions you display regularly more than others. Or don't display. Because in Chinese Medicine, everything is about balance, and the lack of expression of emotions is as noteworthy as their over-expression. Controlling our emotions as "professionals" may also, believe it or not, be damaging to our health.

My teacher always used to explain it to me like a pressure cooker: You can keep the lid on as long as you like, but if you don't vent steam sometimes, you're heading for an almighty explosion! Repressing our emotions is unhealthy, but at the same time we have to be careful about being cavalier with wilfully expressing everything and damaging our students' sense of self-confidence for life! I'm not advocating that. But on the other hand, did you know that based on population averages, there is a disproportionate number of  primary school teachers who die of heart attacks? I got this from a couple of doctor friends of mine who have both noticed this pattern during their careers. My acupuncture friend explains it thus: The heart is linked to the Fire element, which is in turn linked to the emotion of joy. The constant (and sometimes false) expression of joy in some these teachers, she reckoned, places a huge burden on the heart's function, until... Same thing happens to comedians I am told. The healthy solution is to be true to your emotions, and not repress them. Easier said than done in our job.

Working with our spirits
Nourishment of the spirit is one area which on the surface of it, we would seem to be getting right. After all, the spirit is nourished by giving, and we do that every single day: It's why we call it a vocation and not a job. We are dedicated to giving to others. But the spirit needs to be nourished as well. And I've noticed that if I'm going to give a great deal every day of my life, then I work best when I surround myself with people who also nourish me, who are positive and don't act as a drain on my energy. That support mechanism is important, but even more important is to give myself time for nourishing myself. "Take a moment", as my wife says. Taste and savour the food and wine, smell the flowers, feel the sunshine on my skin. Open my lungs and breathe fresh, ion-y air. Laugh at the tiniest of silly things my daughter does, and join in, because the marking can wait. Be. And ignore the nagging compulsion to Do.

We have developed in our profession, and it may be in the modern world as a whole, a high-tempo lifestyle which is always switched on and has become the norm to us, so much so that we don't even realise the changes which have happened to our working patterns over the last few decades. I didn't anyway. Now I'll be honest and say I thought that I was doing all of the right things to look after my own health, as I've always taken it as my responsibility, and refused to abdicate responsibility for my health to someone else (I've yet to find anyone with as much of a vested interest in maintaining my health as I have for starters!). But the prognosis this week tells me I haven't been doing it well enough clearly, and I wasn't aware of it. I am losing my own sensitivity to my health, apparently through over-working. That's a shocking fact. I realise that I am complicit in this society's increasing distance from natural rhythms by virtue of not doing anything to oppose it.

So what is the solution, and what is the point of me writing this? Well, like many of you bloggers out there, I'm writing it to crystallise my own ideas, and to work out what I do about the problems I'm identifying. I realise this blog has offered no solutions, and I'll be honest and say that I don't have them as yet. But I am looking for them, and I will be testing them, and if they work, trust me, I'll be on the blog immediately with findings! Above all, however, it is NOT a call for sympathy: It is an externalisation of a thought process I need to work through for myself, and for those I love. I would partly be grateful to know that it's not just me who feels this, and I would be even more grateful for any answers. But above all, it's for me, so I hope you'll forgive me indulging myself this time out.

Hopefully you'll notice that the publication of this blog, my last for a while I think, is timed as a deliberate reminder to us to be good to ourselves as we start the new term, and as we re-calibrate our professional courses in accordance with our personal values and priorities. And as a reminder to myself, should I continue to work towards a leadership path, to think about how I set up a working environment which nurtures the bodies, minds and souls of every single person in that establishment, over and above the exam factory requirements. This I do solemnly swear...