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.