Positive Teacher?

When I first set up my ‘Teacher Twitter’ handle (?) about two years ago, I opted for the name ‘@PositivTeacha‘, the idea being that-in reaction to the startling amount of negativity which seems to be endemic in teaching-I’d post a daily Tweet that would serve as a reminder to me and my followers (all 6 of them)  as to why we do the job we do.

Here’s a selection of my  first tweets:

 

Watched yr8 talent show last week. Now, when I hear Jessie J on the radio, instead of ripping my ear drums out with bare hands, I smile.

Only 2 girls turned up for 1st day of KS4 writing club today. That’s 2 new people who’ll laugh at my jokes out of politeness. Still counts.

Helped a year 12 student to come up with an idea for her Media Studies coursework. The idea was a bit shit; now it’s a bit good.

Student got a D in an essay last week. Told her how to improve. Made her rewrite. She complained. Rewrite: A grade.

Playground duty today: played keepie uppies using some litter with the ‘naughty’ Year 9 boys. Had fun. Smiling, the loser put litter in bin. 

Now, whilst there’s a sunny outlook that underlines all these tweets, it’s fair to say that the 675 I’ve posted since these initial 5, haven’t necessarily been so overtly positive. Why? It’s not because I’ve become miserable (I always swore to myself that I’d never be the teacher that counts down to the holidays and I’ve remained true to that). And my tweets aren’t doom-laden. However, they are:

• Sarcastic
• Wittily Sardonic (thanks @nataliehscott)
• Cynical
• Stupid
• Nonsensical
• Critical

Why has this happened? I think it’s simply because I’ve become more aware of the complexities of learning and how children should or shouldn’t be taught. And a lot of education is full of a lot of shit.

Anyway, the other morning I was trying to ingratiate myself with the Twitterati by intruding on somebody else’s conversation and Tom Bennett, in response to a sycophantic, but sincere,  comment in which I praised an article of his replied, ‘Wow. You really ARE positive.’ And then I remembered: @PositivTeacha. I’d genuinely forgotten that that was the Twitter handle (?) I’d signed up with all those years previously.

I’m rambling. And I want to be positive. So here’s three quite specific things that have made me feel good, so far, this year.

David

David is a Year 10 student who, in National Curriculum levels, is probably still, after 3 and a bit years of solid education, intervention and support, is working at a 3a/4c. He struggles with writing, and reading, and speaking. And yet, in spite of this he remains, the most enthusiastic, the most resilient, and the funniest student I’ve ever met.  His sheer enthusiasm for any subject is nothing short of inspiring. On school trips, he’s not interested in knowing whether there’s a Nandos nearby, or if we can stop off to get sweets. Concerning himself with trivial matters such as these would only potentially get in the way of him finding out, from the tour guide,  how Shakespeare plays were performed in the 16th century, or of him hearing the line he’s heard so many times in class, being delivered by a real-life actor in a real-life theatre on a real-life stage. Learning matters for David.

Because of David’s lower ability, a hormone deficiency that renders him less physically mature than the other boys who tower above him, and some quite severe speech difficulties,  he does not have many friends his own age. That’s not to say he’s not loved by students in the school; he is. In a rather touching (although occasionally condescending) way, students clamour to be high-fived by him as he walks past them in the corridor. However, probably because of all the support stuctures he’s had in place over the years,  David simply seems to be more comfortable in the company of adults. He’s often seen chatting with the caretakers, and all the dinner staff, in a school of over 2000 students, know him by name. Everyone knows him by name.

This term, and for the first time in his life, David read a book, from front to back, for pleasure. Knowing his predilection for all things Super-Hero, it was not an accident that, upon him visiting me for one of our regular chats on ‘What would you do if you could travel through time’, David found me flicking through a brand new copy of Marvel’s graphic novel, ‘Civil War.’

“What’s that?” he asked. Hook, line and sinker. It took him two months to read it, and my brand new copy of one of my favourite graphic novels now looks like it was chewed up and spat out, as well as read, but David read. What’s more, he wants to read more. And that was me that did that.

A New Approach to Persuasive Writing.

Teaching persuasive writing to Year 11 used to go like this for me.

1. Teach AFOREST (Anecdote, Fact, Opinion, Rhetorical Questions, Emotive Language, Statistics, Tricolon).
2. Show students old exam question
3. Get students to come up with 6 reasons for or against argument laid out in question
4. Get students to write essay-remind them to whack in some AFOREST every now and again.

Awful. Just awful. But now, and I’ll go into this in more detail in a later post,  I’ve completely changed the way I get students to write persuasively.

My inspiration has been Sam Leith’s ‘You Talkin to Me?’ and Mark Forsyth’s ‘Elements of Eloquence.’  The books, which deal with the art of rhetoric as their subject, have revolutionised the way I teach persuasive writing.

The results have been better structured, more mature, more interesting pieces of work from my Year 11s. And that was me that did that.

Arnold

Arnold is the (made up) name of a student I teach. He’s a pleasant student who tries hard and smiles a lot because he’s polite and because he enjoys my lessons. About four weeks ago, Arnold stopped smiling. I picked up on it straight away and at the end of the lesson,  I asked him if he was OK. Arnold told me he couldn’t talk about it because he’d cry if he did and he didn’t want me to see him cry. Sensing his embarrassment, I told him that there are people he can speak to if he wants, and he nodded. I asked him if he wanted me to mention anything to his Head of Year and he said, “no.” Assuming Arnold’s sadness was nothing more than a schoolboy bust-up or an ‘off-day’, I made the decision not to tell his Head of Year unless his sadness persisted.

And sure enough, next lesson, Arnold was fine. In fact, Arnold was back to his usual self for a week or so. But then he was sad again. This time I told Arnold that I had to make a decision, as an adult and someone who was responsible for his well-being. I told him I was worried about him and that I would be speaking to his Head of Year.

His Head of Year had never had to speak to Arnold about any pastoral issues in five years. She was surprised to hear my concerns: “But he’s always smiling isn’t he?” Turns out, no. Arnold isn’t always smiling at all. Recently there have been problems at home and many of his friends are experiencing problems in their home lives too. Arnold is always there to support his friends; they love that he’s always smiling. Problem is, with all the stress at home, and all the problems his friends are having, nobody really has the time to smile at Arnold. And this upsets him. A lot.

Arnold has been to a councillor now and it turns out he might have a few serious issues he’s going to need to work out himself too.A doctor is involved. The other day,  I received an email from Arnold that said, ‘Thanks for your help. I wouldn’t have said anything to anyone so I appreciate what you did Sir. I hope it’s not going to be awkward in English now.’ That last bit is heartbreaking. Of course it isn’t awkward in English now. I laugh and joke with Arnold just like I always have and he’s smiling a lot more than he has been recently. And that was me that did that.

Disclaimer: ‘And that was me that did that.’ Yes, I know it’s not all about me. Yes, I know I’m not the only one that impacts these pupils’ lives. But I DO, do a lot and I SHOULD be proud of that fact. After all, it’s so I could do a lot that made me become a teacher in the first place.

 

Is it okay to ‘mate’?

I’m sure my colleagues wince when I do it. ‘Mate’, that is.

To kids on the corridor: “Can you tuck your shirt in mate?”

To kids in my class: “Couldn’t hand the books out could you mate? Thanks.”

To kids I manage pastorally: “Mate, how have you been today?”

Even as I type the above examples, I’m uncomfortably aware of the disapproving shakes of the head that they will inspire.  However, before you all make mental notes that read, ‘DO NOT EMPLOY THE MATEY BLOKE’, allow me, if you will, the opportunity to explain myself.

Although I have a creeping suspicion that I am now, due to the wonders of social mobility,’middle-class’, I like the idea that people might perceive me as working class. Although living 15 or so miles from central London, I came of age in a time and place where mockney ‘geezer’ culture was at an all time high. At eighteen years old I was calling – to my  present embarrassment- girls, ‘birds’ and twenty pound notes, ‘scores.’ Polo shirts were always worn buttoned to the top and the only choice of trainer was a Reebok classic. I learned everything-lock, stock, and barrel- from Guy Ritchie.

For the most part, as time went on, I grew up. Misogynist nouns were shed and the etymology of rhyming slang became more interesting than using it. Five years went by and then, when I became a teacher, I made a conscious decision to re-introduce into my vernacular, some of the mockney colloquialisms I had once decided to outgrow.

So, now I reprimand students by snarling, “Don’t mug me off”. If I’m feeling particularly excited by a class discussion on the banquet scene in ‘Macbeth’ I’ll  refer to Banquo as ‘brown bread’ (dead). And, if I’m in a really good mood, I’ll use  ‘mate’ as a term of endearment to refer to a student. Why would I lower myself so? You want the honest answer? I do it because I think it makes male students like me and I do it because I think it will make male students more likely to do what I ask. And I think it works. In just a short time, I quickly became known as a teacher that is ‘good with  the naughty ones’; in a relatively short space of time I have found myself being promoted into positions of authority where I am given  responsibility in assisting in the reformation of students that display challenging behaviour. Like it or not, I strongly believe that my concious decision to ‘roughen up’ my speech has assisted with this.

But H-dropping, TH-fronting and T-glotalling has its problems. Loads of ’em. Here’s three that spring most immediately to mind:

1. It makes students-and colleagues- think I’m stupid. One colleague once responded to my saying an FHM article was well written by saying, “You probably think it’s high art, knowing you.” She didn’t know me. More forgivably, a student (not an adult with a degree) asked me, “Why do you speak so stupidly when you write so wonderfully?”
2. Students feel that me calling them, ‘mate’ means that they can call me the same. This has proved particularly awkward, especially as the students who call me ‘mate’, tend to be those students most desperate to please me.  Telling them that it’s okay for me to call them mate, but not vice versa is a) awkward and b) makes me sound like a hypocritical prick.
3. As whole-school literacy coordinator, it’s my job to ensure that students have high levels of written and spoken literacy. I constantly question myself: am I undermining all the other work I do in school to improve students’ spoken language.

 

So what do I do to counter these problems?

1. I’m frank with students. I’ll tell them that I am mature enough to know how and when to adapt my speech and that they, probably aren’t.  If they’re offended I’ll tell them about students (no names mentioned) who call me ‘mate’ in the corridor. Generally, I find they cringe as much as I do in the re-telling of this and they’re content, from that point on, to speak to me as is appropriate: ‘Sir’ rather than ‘mate.’
2. I’m franker with students. I’ll tell them that I call them ‘mate’ because I want to appeal to them. I want them to like me and I want them to do what I want. I tell them I consciously put these colloquialisms into my classroom talk for these reasons. I believe that if they can see me making concious decisions about how to speak, they will think carefully about their own speech.
3. I’ll tell students the problems (listed above) that speaking as I do can cause me as a professional. This interests them and again, it gets them thinking consciously about language.
4. I speak in ‘high style’ far more often than ‘low.’ For every, ‘mate’ there’s the full name of a child. For every ‘brown bread’ there’s a ‘deceased.’ For every sentence that sounds like I’m gabbin’ with me mates in the boozer, there are ten more that sound like I’m writing a dissertation. I model exemplary speech.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

 

Sharing: It’s Overrated.

It’s not good to share. At least, it’s not good to share when all ‘sharing’ really means is pinching a PowerPoint from a colleague at break-time and droning through it with year 9 later on that day. Because, no matter how ‘exciting’ the PowerPoint-humorous Shakespeare memes or not- if you haven’t put just a bit of heart and soul into it, droning is exactly how you’ll sound, whether you’re aware of it or not. Kids aren’t stupid. In my opinion, this type of sharing breeds laziness.

 

So what led me, two weeks ago, to use a PowerPoint I’d got from someone else? And how did this experience lead to one of the most rewarding lessons of my year so far?

 

It was year 7, last lesson on a Thursday. I’d had a busy week: a stressful meeting with a difficult parent; a school trip, and a faculty ‘health check’ in which I was being observed one day, and observing on two others. Time was at a premium and unfortunately, through what I’m somewhat ashamed to admit was a quite rational though process, I decided that it was my Year 7s that would get the worst of me. So I didn’t plan their lesson on alliteration. Instead, someone else had planned a lesson on alliteration, ‘shared’ it with me ten minutes before I was due to teach and I delivered it.

 

So the plenary question was thrilling: What is Alliteration? The kids that hadn’t a clue were a bit stumped as to what to do at this point, but, on the whole, the majority of the darlings were keen to impress.

 

“It’s where every word in a sentence has the same letter at the start!”

 

This perturbed me: “Well, actually, that’s not strictly true…” The class was genuinely amazed when I explained that, actually, with alliterative sentences, words didn’t have to be next to each other. And what’s more, not every word in the sentence has to have the same letter.

 

“So we’ve had it wrong all these years?”

 

“Erm…yes.”

 

Back to the PowerPoint. Another question on another slide asked students to explain why writers use alliteration. Of course,  everyone in the class, even those who five minutes previously hadn’t known what alliteration was, told me it was used because it was ‘catchy’ for the reader. As I shook my head disappointingly, I noticed that the next slide on the PowerPoint confirmed the students’ limited assessment of alliteration’s usage.  And this is where the lesson became a lesson.

 

Put yourself in the scuffed shoes of those students in my classroom: For the first fifteen minutes of this lesson there’s not been any indicators that the man charged with educating you is human at all; he’s just been frowning as he reads the words on the PowerPoint. He’s been stumbling over the words on the screen; it’s almost as if he has no idea of what information is going to be on the next slide, or if there’s even going to be another slide. And yet, in spite of what must surely be troubling him, the monotony of his delivery suggests he feels nothing. And then, all of a sudden, something happens. A few of you have just eagerly told him that alliteration makes things catchy and his frown becomes a raised eyebrow. And then, under that raised eyebrow something becomes clearly visible. A spark! No, a glint! A wicked glint.  Then it happens. This man utters the immortal words that send shivers through your pre-pubescent spine:

 

“As a teacher, I’m not really supposed to say this, but…”

 

You hear a pin pen drop. It’s yours. You hear 29 other pens drop and maybe a few jaws too. Is he human after all? What’s he going to say? What could it possibly be?

 

“As a teacher, I’m not really supposed to say this, but…but…you’re all WRONG!”

 

The class erupts into laughter at the Basil Falwty-esque delivery of what is surely a wicked thing to tell us. We’re wrong? But the PowerPoint says..How can this be? Why? How? How are we wrong?

 

Okay, so the class wasn’t, strictly speaking, wrong in telling me that alliteration makes things catchy. It does. But there’s more to it than that. Before I fully committed myself to telling this bunch of eleven year olds about alliteration used for emphasis, I took a quick glance behind me at the next PowerPoint slide:

 

COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING USING ALLITERATION:

THREE THISTY THUNDERSTORMS

FOUR FEARSOME FIRES

FIVE FOOLISH FOXES

SIX…

SEVEN…

EIGHT…

NINE…

 

Sod that. I turned the PowerPoint off and told them. I told them all about how alliteration is used to emphasise certain words or ideas. Free from the shackles of the crap PowerPoint, I reached for a GCSE text to give them a clearer idea of what I was bangin’ on about. After giving them a plot overview (without spoilers) of To Kill a Mockingbird, I wrote up my favourite piece of alliteration from any book ever:

 

…a black dog suffered on a summer’s day…

 

I told the students all about the fictional town of Maycomb and they were fascinated. They could all tell me that the words Harper Lee wanted to put emphasis on were ‘suffered’ and ‘summer’s’. Jake (end of KS2 Level 4c) told me that you don’t expect summer to be associated with negative feelings such as suffering so maybe the writer was trying to pique the reader’s interest. Somebody else explained that maybe things aren’t as they seem in the town and this might be significant later on in the book.  Marcus (end of KS2 Level 5c) was able to tell me that the words ‘dog’ and ‘day’ were also alliterative. On telling him I’d never noticed that before, Carlene replied by putting her hand up and asking me, “Isn’t there a phrase, ‘dog-days’, that means the hottest days of Summer?” Blimey. And it went on and on from there. I ended the lesson by getting them to use ‘grown-up’ alliteration that puts emphasis on certain words for a reason. And they did. Since then, one or two of them has told me they’ve asked for To Kill a Mockingbird for Christmas. I did that. Off my own back, and without a PowerPoint that lacked challenge and interesting material. I thought and I delivered and they impressed. But more than any of that, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it at this stage, what pleases me most is this: In every lesson I’ve had with those kids since, they can’t wait to be told they’re wrong.