Under Pressure

It took me a while to get started (much like my aging body in the mornings these days) but now I'm up and running, I seem to be on a roll so he's my second serving.

As David Bowie and Queen once sang, 'pressure pushes down on you, splits a family in two'. This time around, in education, in the UK, I feel that I am actually managing to let most of the pressure waft over me but I am watching what it is doing to my colleagues. Why can I let it waft over me? I work for an agency, I'm a temp, so I don't have that permament contract to worry about. 
I've been kicked up the arse by the system once, so maybe I'm a bit more savvy this time round. Maybe I'm more able to dodge the kicks now BUT there are definitely some things which still make my blood boil and sometimes they are fellow educators.

I regularly read The Secret Teacher blog which I found via the Guardian's 'Teacher Network'. This is honest, sensible writing from someone who is obviously still working hard at the chalk face (or is it the interactive-multi-media face?) which I enjoy reading and can always empathise with. There's no 'I sacrifice my life for the sake of my students' or any suggestion that this anonymous teacher is anything but a thoroughly dedicated professional. I have to comment, of course, on the need for anonymity. Teachers all live under a permament shadow of the fear of blame. If any of us actually dared to stand up and tell the truth, we know that we'd soon be heading for the door. 

So what's making my blood boil? I decided to look at another blog recommended by The Guardian and found a man who uses the twitter name @headguruteacher. Really? Who gives themselves the title of 'guru'? Even just for a twitter handle. The dictionary has a couple of definitions of guru. Firstly, a preceptor giving personal religious instruction. Since there is nothing about religion, I'm assuming that's not who he thinks he is so that leaves the alternative: an intellectual or spiritual guide or leader. His blog often gives advice on how teachers should manage classroom behaviour, their time or cope with their work load. All good but it's his tone that irks me. Anyone who has the audacity to title themselves guru is far too arrogant for his own good. He tells me that because I don't see the value of homework (and there is as much research which agrees with me as there is which argues for it) that I do not take education seriously and therefore am not a good teacher. How very dare he? Ask any of my students, past or present: I take their education very seriously and they (if not Ofsted) tell me I'm a good teacher. And that, as they say, will do for me.

So, not only do we have to deal with the pressure of our own senior leadership, HMI, the league tables and the media we have an additional layer of pressure pressing down on us from our own fellow professionals. It's no wonder good, experienced teachers are looking for an alternative.

That idea of being a good teacher sparks another thought but I will save for my next blog.


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/guru?s=t


http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/series/the-secret-teacher?INTCMP=edi_231654

First Time Out

When I suggested I might start writing a blog it was a throwaway comment (with my usual brand of sarcasm) about how little free time you are left with if you work in education. I’m not sure I even really intended to start blogging but it seems there is some interest in my words so perhaps I will give it a try.

Back to my original comment on FB, reprinted here, ‘I keep meaning to start writing a blog. My experiences of education leave me plenty to say. Maybe I will start just as soon as I have a spare minute’. Why was I suddenly feeling like commenting on my experiences in education? Well, I had just completed my first day in a new post, my third school this year. Not because I keep getting the sack but after leaving a long term post, I decided to take a bit of a back seat for a while and just do some temping. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been teaching for the last 13 years: five years in my first school, then after another five years in another job I took early (very early) retirement. Disillusioned with the ever changing bureaucracy which governs teaching here; I decided to have an adventure and went off to Bahrain to teach there for three years. Maybe some of that will be fodder for another blog, another day. But back to why I’m here now.

My first day in a new school was a day without students, a staff ‘training’ day. Why did I put ‘training’ in inverted commas? Because surely at the end of a day of training you should know something you didn’t know when you began. I’m not suggesting I know everything, far from it, but in education there is a phrase we use a lot, “why do we keep re-inventing the wheel?” And this was yet another day when we re-invented that wheel.

This is the third school I have worked in which is in ‘special measures’, that means HM’s Inspectors have deemed too many areas of the school as not up to scratch. An ‘expert’ or ‘guru’ is drafted in to change things and it’s always the same things: leadership; behaviour and teaching and learning. The problem, as I see it, is that someone not trained in education, a politician, this time Michael Gove, decides that we need to change things. Fine, if things aren’t going well they need changing, I get that, but what I don’t get is that we never get time to actually see anything through and they keep changing the same things. Take for example, ‘Literacy Across the Curriculum’, here’s an initiative which has been heralded as the answer to everyone’s problems on at least 3 different occasions. It makes sense to anyone with half a brain that students need to be literate in every subject, not just in English. If the students are writing an essay in History, then they must be able to write it using the correct spellings, grammar and punctuation. But, we’ve no sooner started that and training the students in the ways of it, then the powers that be come up with the next ‘new’ idea. So, we have to leave behind the first one and all concentrate on the next one. Imagine taking a toddler who is learning to walk and telling them they can’t walk any more, that now they need to learn to cycle, then just as they’re getting the hang of that, taking the tricycle away and telling them they have to learn how to use roller skates. Would they be able to do anything of those things well? You get my drift, right?

This is a long rant for my first time out, isn’t it? Sorry, once I get going, I get going. I’ll leave you with a couple of things to ponder until next time.

1   1.My colleagues arrive for work an hour before school starts, teach all day, and work for another 2 or 3 hours before going home to do some more work. They also work at least one day over the weekend and I mean all day. I know you’re thinking what about all those holidays? But can these people be expected to be able to do the most important part of their job, teaching, properly? I defy anyone to be at the top of their game and manage 30 teenagers effectively if they are already exhausted.

2   2.  When is someone going to listen to the suggestion that the students actually have to take responsibility for their behaviour and their own learning? Time we stopped pussy footing around the students and their rights and the parents who know their kids’ rights inside out and told them all to suck it up or ship out.

Until next time; if I ever get my marking finished.