All posts by Mrs Halliburton

What is already known?

There are a plethora of existing resources around sharing good practise in schools – everyone knows why it is important, but often it is challenging to facilitate without making workload more extreme. This is particularly taxing in the time of online learning, which leads to the question: how can we successfully share good practise in a safe space about online learning?

In Lieberman and Mace’s ‘Making Practise Public’, the importance of a “growing your own” variety of teaching being celebrated is stated as key to success in sharing good practise. This raises questions with set observation criteria lists and also indicates why so many teachers are finding online learning challenging – just as pupils are all different so too are their educators. It is vital that any sharing good practise space I create has reflective topics or questions so that all educators are celebrated – those who are comfortable with technology and those who are not. Additionally, this article speaks or the existing strength of social media networks in connecting people. This will prove to be key moving forward in my investigation.

Although not strictly academic reading, another useful source to me has been Teacher Toolkit’s Article “26 Ideas for Sharing Classroom Best Practise.” In this, multiple techniques are discussed such as talking in front of peers and starting a reflective blog(!). While many of these are valuable ideas, they are not quite as practical as the ones I am looking for to solve the feeling of uncertainty and insecurity I am feeling in my colleagues at the moment. It has inspired me, however, to write a list of my own ideas.

My professional “itches”

Bitmoji ImageHaving read through a number of colleagues’ blog posts regarding professional “itches” – the inequalities and niggling areas in their school or classroom that just won’t go away, I have reflected and come up with a few of my own:

 

  1. The ICT gap

This is really only one I can comment on having worked in a number of centres under 3 different LA areas. The gap between the ICT facilities available in different schools and authorities is astonishing. I have worked in a centre where there are no ICT rooms available with more than 18 computers (no use for an English class of 30) and also a school where every pupil has their own digital device provided for them. This is a problem far too big for any one local authority alone to solve, and I know how hard my colleagues work and have worked sourcing ICT for those who do not have access to any at home, especially during lockdown. Despite this, when it comes to pupils working on portfolio pieces, more than a couple of pupils in each class benefitting from access to ICT for longer pieces of writing or individual study, the itch that I can’t solve will always resurface.

  1. Learning English through immersion

One particular challenge that is presented through working in my current centre is that we have a high number of pupils who have English as an additional language. While many of these pupils are fluent, often with Scottish accents to boot, the problem arises when a new family moves to the area and their child is in the late secondary school. With new arrivals, even those with no English, joining full timetables for immersion, things go one of two ways. Either the pupil flourishes and is keen to learn, or they have additional barriers that are very difficult to break down. Perhaps they didn’t want to move – perhaps they have come at too old an age and are too self conscious to make mistakes with language? Either way, despite excellent though sporadic ESOL input, I never feel I can do a good enough job in making these individuals comfortable in my classroom – the English room.

  1. Active Learning challenges

This is only a current itch and I completely understand why I can’t do my usual at the moment – but it’s annoying anyway!

I miss some types of active learning so much. Although I am able to do a wide variety of activities without pupils moving or leaving seats I am missing some of the classics – moving around the room for a quiz, speed dating, knockouts, question panels, roaming experts, different group tasks that aren’t in rows… you name it. As much as I am enjoying the challenge of making learning as active and engaging as possible at the moment – I can’t wait to get back!

laptop wave

5 Main reflections on Being Human – Effective Relationships by Kat Howard (Stop Talking about Wellbeing)

I enjoyed reading this chapter, with many elements of the conclusions drawn by the Howard resonating with my own experience of relationships.

Main takeaways from reading about collegiate relationships.

  1. Howard offers some insight into the rising epidemic of teacher employment self-alienation. As someone who has experienced this, it was encouraging to see in writing that someone else is appreciative of how real the impact of this can be. Howard states, on collegiate relationships: “We wait to see if others feel the same in the hope they may speak”. Quite often this is indeed the case – as professionals who are used to coaching young people through reactionary behaviours, I feel it is all too easy to trust our own gut instinct and speak up, as we are hyper-aware of the nuances of how relationships work. Howard comments on how detrimental this can be to teacher confidence, stating: “Our sense of self can only exist outside our own perception if we share it with others, and so if there isn’t an outlet to do so, we start to question the parts of ourselves that truly exist.”. As a teacher who has been through a period of self-alienation, I can confirm that this is a sensitive observation. With nobody to bounce ideas off, to talk to about managing behaviour, about difficult parents’ evenings or creative ways to approach lessons, it is all too easy to lose your confidence and in many ways yourself as a teacher. People who witness you on the other side of this all too often comment that you must remove yourself from the situation – the so-called branders of “toxic” work environments. While this may be the case – how do you leave the pupils who have become the sole reason you go to work every day? How do you sell yourself to your new employer when you are a shell of the educator you once were? Self-alienation is, I believe, one of the true reasons teachers are leaving the profession, and we must do things to address it.

 

  1. Howard is very aware of how challenging the work can be when relationships that turn toxic or are broken are overturned. She comments: “When you manage to do the grubby work of repairing relationships from what appeared to be a point of no return… that deserves credit”. It is a feeling comparable to nothing else when you find people in a department that you mesh well with – you inspire each other, you motivate each other and turning up to work each day gives you that teaching feeling that you thought you would never feel again after your first good lesson observation. You are valued and secure. But when relationships are more challenging, as they often are, or worse – if relationships fall apart, turning up to work can become nearly impossible. The pressure of coping with teaching hundreds of young people a day, reporting on their progress, managing your department projects, adding any leadership roles you have within the school but also treading on eggshells around a colleague or group of colleagues you wish to avoid conflict with is just too much for many individuals to bear. With all of the work pressure involved, and the business of each day at school, it takes real time and effort over an extended period of time to repair such relationships. Those colleagues who are willing to repair working partnerships like this, to put the time, energy and effort in to patching up a rocky relationship, can often become your closest allies. Those resilient individuals who find the time to do a job well, work through a tough relationship and make it a strong working partnership after a period of time, they definitely do deserve credit for the strength of character that takes on both sides. It was refreshing to see Howard recognise this.

 

  1. Another interesting theory that Howard discussed was the effect in a school of multiple working groups or leadership groups all differing in their approaches and goals. She coined this: “The Matrix effect” a combination of different professionally led groups but each harbouring an individual with their own personal-professional agenda. I have worked in a number of centres, each with a slightly different approach to working groups. One made it mandatory and allocated teachers automatically, therefore each group was filled with teachers who really had no interest in being there. One just had three – one for each RfA area. My current centre has groups based on teacher interest – if we are interested in leading something then we can form a group to support us. I feel that the transparency of this – they are teacher leader groups, and they are based on personal interest in some ways avoids this “Matrix effect” being negative. They are all given equal weight, equal time in INSET and equal support from SMT.

 

  1. I was heartened by Howard’s suggestion of the types of teacher we should surround ourselves with. She suggested four main categories: “The one who inspires us”, “The one we simultaneously learn from”, “The one who provides us with honesty” and “The one who provides positivity”. I can see how many of the teachers I associate with fit into these categories – with most of them pulling from all four but strongly falling in one over the others. For example, the teacher I have simultaneously learned from the most in my career taught in such a similar way to me so often that we could always rely on the other for resources or ideas. She grounded me when my ideas were too crazy and helped me make them more practical, whereas I helped push her creative boundaries. We were complimentary and we worked very well professionally. This leads me to the two problems I have with these categories – firstly, where is the space for the chaotic teacher who you can always rely on to have had a worse day than you? The Union-rep teacher who you go to if you need a little bit of a shove to stand up for yourself? The teacher that is so good with ICT and so patient with your mistakes that you know they were an angel in a past life. The social director teacher who always has some payday drinks planned up their sleeve if you need to offload. I would argue that these roles are just as important to have in one’s collegiate circle as the aforementioned first few. My second issue is only with myself: where do I fit in? Although this sounds self-indulgent, I mean this from a purely vulnerable perspective. Have I lost my professional persona? Perhaps I should share this musing with some colleagues and they can tell me which category I fit into – although maybe it’s best not to know!

 

  1. Howard’s final point about teacher wellbeing urges us to orchestrate an activity or a club of sorts so that kindred spirits can come together and decompress. She suggests a breakfast club as an example. I have attended some regular staff get-togethers like this over the past few years and they are excellent. I am in no doubt that this is the place to go to meet your teacher group, to form relationships and to decompress, but here is the big question that I have been left with after this reading. How can I make a staff social club work when we can’t spend time with people this year even for lunches due to social distancing rules, staggered breaks, room limits and department bubbles? I feel it is important that I try, because I would argue that we need it more than ever.