Mrs. O'Neill's Blog

Ape: to copy or mimic, often with absurd or amusing results.

2009-04-11T17:26:00.005Z

I am marking research papers this weekend. Or at least I am trying to, in between peaceful moments reflecting (see above) and frantic moments planning an enormous Sunday lunch.

Here’s what is worrying me – plagiarism. I have got at least one paper which is full of 'cut and paste' – and I have my suspicions about one or two others. What I am beginning to realize is that some of my students do not actually think they are doing anything wrong.

The information is so readily available, the phrasing so apt, and the point made so succinctly, that they just can’t resist it. More worrying are the students who have not ‘cut and paste’ but have simply changed the text a little. I probably won’t be able to find their stuff on the web, and therefore they will go unchallenged.

How can I teach my students to be more rigorous in their use of sources? How can I explain to them what plagiarism actually is, and why it might be wrong?

We really do live in ‘the information age’. There is so much on the internet that we can use without asking anyone. In the last hour for example, I downloaded some recipes whilst planning my Easter lunch and bookmarked a dozen pages for my own use as a teacher.

I also want to help students evaluate the sources that they use. I am collecting a few sites that explain how to do this. The first one I want to recommend is The Internet Detective. If you have found a website which explains plagiarism in a student friendly fashion, or guides students through the complexities of evaluating a source, please let me know.

I am also interested in how early we need to teach students how to cite sources.

A Laughing Matter

2009-02-12T05:00:00.002Z

A Laughing Matter

My British Literature classes have been studying the eighteenth century drama ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ and talking about the way comedy works. Its author, Oliver Goldsmith obligingly wrote an essay on comedy, setting out what he was trying to do. His thoughts can be summed up pretty simply by saying that comedy should make people laugh. Well, yes.

My students find the play mildly amusing. Humor doesn’t always translate and there is nothing more deadly to a joke than having to explain it several times. Having said that, we did get talking about why people sometimes don’t find something funny. It seems that finding something funny relies on two very different things. First of all you need to connect in some way with the situation presented. Goldsmith says it should be about human weaknesses that we can all make a judgment on ‘because all have sat for the picture.’ On the other hand, we all agreed, that for something to be funny, we need to view it as an intellectual exercise and not an emotional one. Once we relate emotionally to the object of mirth we are usually done for. Comedy just can’t be sustained. As soon as we feel we are being laughed at, it isn’t really amusing any more.

I tested these two ideas by showing my classes an episode of Dad’s Army, a British 1970’s sitcom which is set in World War 2. Dad’s Army relies on a lot of comic devices including slapstick, word play and farce. It also relies very heavily on satirizing the way we use stereotypes. The episode I chose was ‘My British Buddy’ where Captain Mainwaring’s platoon are required to welcome some American soldiers to Walmington-on-Sea. The Americans are dreadfully stereotyped, gum chewing and oblivious to any cultural signals given them. The real joke is that these stereotypes are being shown up for what they are: our own prejudices. My class struggled dutifully not to identify with the American soldiers, and as a result managed to laugh at some of the jokes. I consoled them by complaining about the stereotypical Scotsman, ‘Frazer’ who is taciturn, pessimistic, mean with money and difficult to understand. Nothing familiar there surely?

A couple of my students said they found themselves thinking about people close to them who would be similar to those being parodied, and then found themselves less inclined to laugh. It seemed like ‘being funny’ was more about how we felt about the subject than about the ability of the comedian. Sort of explains why writing humor is so difficult, doesn’t it?

Have you ever been the only one not laughing? Why was that? Are there some things we should never joke about?

Tough tests

2009-01-03T02:11:00.009Z

Imagine you sign up for a job where your boss gives you feedback every week on how well you are doing. At first you feel you are doing well. Your boss is making allowances for it being a new job. You are feeling hopeful. You find the job quite interesting and it has several really good perks. Then things start to get a little sticky. Your boss isn’t actually publicizing your appraisal, but all employee appraisals are given out at the same time, so of course it is natural that you and your fellow employees will trade appraisals. Sometimes another person will approach you to ask you what the boss said to you about your participation in some project or other. Sometimes you will simply tell someone else what the boss said.

Before long, you realize that there are more people invested in that appraisal than just you. Your family, for example, want to know how things are going. They ask you every day. Some family members get really upset if things don’t go that well. Soon you begin to realize that you are being ranked against all the other employees in your section, and that you are definitely not one of the top achievers. Those who get that special status –usually the same people every week- are given a lot of praise and encouragement.

So what do you do now? Career counselors would, without hesitation, advise a career change. Not everyone can handle a job like that, although granted there are some who will thrive in that environment. Those who ‘perform’ better will love the affirmation they get from being placed top of the list.

You follow the advice of family and friends. They remind you that life is like this. It turns out that almost all of them have held the same job at one time or another. Some of them liked it, some of them hated it. They offer different kinds of advice ranging from ‘Try harder.’ to ‘The hell with them!’ You are hopeful by nature. You want to do well at your job. You try harder. But things don’t improve. No matter what you do you can’t get onto that special list of top people. You really feel like you want to get out.

There’s only one problem.

You are six years old and you have got 12 more years of this to go. The job you are trying to hold down is simply being a student and the boss is your teacher.

Okay, so I am being emotive, but that’s what we are doing with a high number of our children in school. We are obsessing so much about testing that we are failing to see how unhappy and unproductive our constant testing makes many students.

I am not advocating no testing or grading. I am not saying that we should pretend that some students are not academically more able than others. All I am suggesting is that we dethrone ‘testing’ as the central experience of school. Our schools should be places which focus on learning not testing.

We have to have tests –but let’s make them less focused on ranking students and more on how to learn better. Let’s give students targets for themselves, not bars that only a few can jump. Let’s stop putting our children through something we would refuse as adults.

Missing the point Mr Gladwell

2008-12-14T22:06:00.007Z

My son sent me a link to this article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. After wondering if this was his idea (my son, not Malcolm Gladwell) of a Christmas present, I ploughed through the article. I found it fairly depressing. Perhaps it was the length of time he spent talking about American football which soured me, I don’t know, but I did start to wonder if Mr. Gladwell really appreciated what teaching was like. His central point seemed to be that we could improve educational achievement by recruiting the right people. Haven’t heard that one before. He accepted this might be difficult -we can’t really tell what a ‘star’ or ‘top’ teacher looks like. We can only identify those elements which make a good teacher. Then we weed out the ‘bad teachers’.
The sectors Gladwell suggests we might look to for pointers are –wait for it – the NFL and the financial advice sector. He describes the recruitment approach of Ed Deutschlander, the co-president of North Star Resource Group, in Minneapolis. He recommends you recruit by first selecting people who fit your criteria for success. You put them through a rigorous regime, losing those who don’t succeed along the way. After four years he claims he can expect to ‘to hang on to at least thirty to forty per cent’ of the original top performers.

Note to any aspiring financial gurus. Read Dickens’ Hard Times. You might find the character of Bounderby interesting.

Gladwell shifts back to teaching. According to the article ‘Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material…’ The smart solution then seems to be going for better teachers rather than making class sizes smaller. ‘And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers.’
Got it? You select teachers from anyone who has ‘a college degree and a pulse’ (there goes several of my favorite teachers). It doesn’t matter what their qualifications are. You ‘try out’ those teachers in schools, rigorously evaluating them on a regular basis. You might hope to get one good teacher out of every four teachers tried out.
Gladwell admits that salaries would have to change because once we find those hot shot teachers ‘who can teach a year and a half’s material in one year, we’re going to have to pay them a lot—both because we want them to stay and because the only way to get people to try out for what will suddenly be a high-risk profession is to offer those who survive the winnowing a healthy reward.’
Those who survive the winnowing. Good phrase isn’t it. I wonder if Gladwell is aware of the numbers of teachers who leave teaching in the first four years, without being ‘winnowed’ but because they find the conditions too difficult. Does he really imagine the teaching profession is easy already and that there are hundreds of people lining up to get into it?
Aside from the practical problems his suggestions would create (Is he suggesting no teacher training at all? Who writes and grades the tests that chart student progress? How long before you can ‘prove’ that the teacher is the problem?) there are a number of issues in his approach that I want to take issue with.
Firstly, why does he say so little about the systems of education that most teachers find themselves in? Many of them positively interrupt good teaching. Take the obsession with testing. How often does a test mask or distort the learning that is going on? Three students get B minus in a test. One of them has a B minus because they have done the material before, found it boring but can regurgitate it with enough accuracy to get a reasonable pass. The second student has worked really hard and despite finding the material difficult has made a great stab at understanding it. The last student has a good memory and a nice turn of phrase and can flannel their way out of any test with very little effort. Each of those test results come from completely different learning experiences –but the students are graded the same. A good teacher might decide that the first student need not do the test, the second should continue on the learning journey and the third should be given a different test altogether. But where’s the room in a grade-oriented classroom for that? Students must be given their grade – regardless of how useless that label may be for their learning.
Secondly, schools are not financial institutions –but they are constantly hampered by financial issues. Otherwise we would stop coming up with good reasons for lowering class sizes, get more staff in and just do it. Teachers’ pay is another issue. A good teacher does many hours work outside of a classroom. The perception of teachers is that they have short working hours, with long holidays. This doesn’t take into account the extra time and energy you must put into teaching after hours and during vacation time. It doesn’t take into account the inflexibility of the school year. I don’t know anyone who went into teaching for the money, although I do think it says a lot about our society that we pay teachers so little.
Thirdly, I don’t believe that good teachers are just born, any more than good quarterbacks are just found. Teaching, itself can be taught. Teachers should certainly be taught whilst on the job. But teaching teachers needs to be given more than lip service. You can hardly expect teachers to do all of their job training during their free time, although many of us do.
Finally, and most importantly, I reject the vision of Education that is at the heart of Gladwell’s proposition. I do not believe Education is just about ranking students, so why should I believe it should be about ranking teachers? I accept that teachers can improve, and no doubt there are teachers who should not be in the profession – just as there are people in every profession who should move on. I think a complete overhaul of our education system is probably called for –but it shouldn’t involve the ‘old fashioned ‘ approach of setting the bar and them seeing who doesn’t manage to hop over it. We should be looking to educationalists like Dylan Wiliam to help us change our schools, not the football coaches. We are talking about the education of our children here, not the Superbowl.

Assessment for Learning in the USA

2008-11-16T21:27:00.002Z

Well, I did it. I found Assessment for Learning in America.

At 7.30 am on Wednesday of last week, I found myself in Plymouth, Minnesota, parked outside an oddly shaped building with an enormous sign saying ‘Intermediate District 287’. I was there to attend a two-day workshop.

Before I knew it I was sitting in a conference room eating a chocolate chip bagel and listening to the course administrator explaining earnestly that that we really cannot smoke. Not even, she explains apologetically, outside the building. It’s against the law and the local cops make a habit of regularly swinging by on the look out for offenders. It’s an education building, you see. I get all annoyed until I remember I don’t smoke.

And then the course began properly. Our speaker, Carol Commodore instructed us to find out why the people around us are here. Some of them aren’t exactly sure. Fortunately I am not tempted to ponder the existential questions that are being raised. I know why I am here. I am here because I need to be here. I started out with so many good intentions to use Assessment is for learning (AifL) techniques in my American classroom. But the obsession with GPA (Grade Point Average) that seems to dominate everything had very nearly defeated my good attempts. How do you fit this into an American setting?

Then, an instance of providence. After much googling, I found that ETS, that’s the Educational Testing Service, were sponsoring a workshop on Assessment for Learning. Now, is this I wondered, the same ETS that allegedly made such a mess of the English National Curriculum Assessments? It was. The irony of it all appealed. And besides, desperate times called for desperate measures. So, I spoke to the person responsible for staff development at my school, and before you can say Minnetonka, Minneapolis - I am sent to the ‘Assessment Training Institute’ for one and a half days.

Anyway to get back to the bagels, or the course actually. Before long we were striding forward through the material. Carol’s presentation was music to my ears, honey to my… oh well you get the idea.

I am being reminded just why I find AiFL such a great way to teach. Carol is explaining that, of course, it is not just about assessment but about how we teach in the first place.

Day One flies by really quickly. Yes, that’s right. It was a professional development workshop and it ended too soon. Day Two I have to leave early for parent teacher conferences and drag myself away.

Lots of stuff to think about. I start small, taking notes of words they use differently. ‘Attainment’ is ‘achievement’ over here. ‘Targets’ are ‘goals’. ‘Objectives’ are ‘targets’.

Carol shows us ways to put our learning targets together so that we can show real progress to students, even when using the grade book. She talks about descriptive feedback –we all discuss how to overcome the ‘I see only my grade’ problem. She talks about schools being places of hope, where the point is learning, not grades.

Interestingly, Carol taught us just as she recommended we teach. She made clear her goals at every stage. She stopped regularly to have us discuss and summarize what we were learning. She asked us for feedback on what she had just taught us.

So I am not, by any means, the only teacher in the USA who wants to use Assessment for learning, not grading.

Carol is an independent consultant with the ETS Assessment for Learning Institute. She has her own website here.

If you read this Carol, thank you for reminding me why I love teaching.

2008-11-05T02:28:00.000Z

This week a student surprised me. He wrote that he actually enjoyed writing on the topic I had given him and ‘would not mind writing some more.’ Granted his comments were slightly out of place in his formal essay on whether or not we should be studying Greek mythology, but it cheered me up for two specific reasons.

First, he was a key member of a group of students in a particular class who seem to opt out whenever they find English boring or challenging, in any aspect.

Secondly, he had actually turned in his work, rather than done his usual act about not having access to my webpage assignments, or a computer with a printer, or a book, or a pencil or a piece of paper.

It warmed my heart a little. Perhaps it was his version of the ten dollar note that was stapled to the exam paper of a desperate student. I don’t know. My gut feeling is that even a step in the direction of trying to share my enthusiasm for writing, regardless of the motive, is a good thing. Who knows: the thought may be father to the deed… and all that.

If someone had asked me to nominate the task and subject that most enthuses students in their writing, the chances are that I would not have highlighted the essay question which motivated my student. It was: The Greek myths are outdated and irrelevant for study in a modern high school. Discuss.

What sort of things did you like to write about at school? Please comment.

Quizlet

2008-10-14T01:34:00.003Z

I am generally happier with teaching vocabulary in context, but sometimes I find it necessary to give students a list of words that they will be encountering in our next book or poem. That is especially the case when we are looking at older texts where familiar words are used differently. It is also helpful when giving students the correct critical terminology for language features.

I'm not sure how I came across quizlet.com. However I find it enormously helpful as a teacher. It's a site which allows you to make up vocabulary sets and share them with other users.

The story of its origins is also rather inspiring. Its founder, Andrew Sutherland, from Albany, California was fifteen years old when he decided that the easiest way to learn his French vocabulary was to make it digital. He began developing the website after school and at weekends. Andrew graduated from high school this summer and headed off to college (MIT) with the best wishes of his 200,000 users. Read about it here on his blog.

As a teacher, I think the two features which I like best are: the ability to create a group where all my vocabulary sets are accessible; and the games testing option to help you memorize. I also like the fact that Quizlet will make up tests for you, which can be customized to include questions that genuinely test a student’s understanding of the word, not just their ability to match words from a word bank.

It’s simple for my students to sign up at home, and all they need to view my vocabulary sets is a password I give them. Some of my pupils have told me they are beginning to make up their own sets for other subjects too.

If I had any suggestions for improvement, it would be a request for a feature that allowed you to hear the pronunciation of a word when you moused over it. That way the website would be playing to all the learning styles at once, visual, kinesthetic and auditory. On the other hand that would mean I would no longer have the fun of hearing my students pronounce new words as I do, unconsciously following my Scots accent. They can always go to dictionary.com to hear it in American.

Have a look at quizlet and see what you think.

Unteachable Moments

2008-10-05T05:14:00.003Z

Do you recognize this student profile? Terry is a bright student who can do fairly well without trying. As you get to know them in class they impress you with their quick answers and pleasant nature. They submit most work on time and a superficial read of their work suggests that they are a competent writer navigating the questions with ease. Take their first big assignment, a critical essay on a poem. No obvious spelling or grammar mistakes to pounce on. No comma splices or misplaced modifiers. Plenty of nicely placed quotes. A varied vocabulary. MLA rules applied.

Dig deeper and you quite quickly hit the bottom. Their arguments are weak and you find yourself disappointed by the consistent failure to follow through on any promising lines of enquiry. They repeat themselves throughout their paper.

So… you speak to this student who comes to you angry that they have not achieved full marks. They look at you blankly when you try to point out the weaknesses in their work. They don’t understand. They did everything they usually do with other teachers. They haven’t made any errors have they?

You try to explain about the lack of depth. Eventually they admit what you have known all along. They haven’t thought about the question much at all. They didn’t know that you 'wanted them to come up with their own ideas'. But now they are mad at you. This is your fault. You are not very clear. You didn’t explain what was required. You hadn’t told them all of the things they were supposed to put in this paper. They reference the paper of another student who made ‘tons more mistakes’ in his grammar, but got the same grade. You don’t like them, they hint strongly. All their previous English teachers gave them higher marks. You try to explain that it is not to do with ‘liking them’. For what it’s worth you do like them but you want them to do better. They are slightly mollified. They promise to try harder on their next paper.

They hand the new paper in with a smile. They expect it to be an A they say confidently. Later you read over their paper and your heart sinks. It is no different than the paper they previously submitted.

When you return the paper, you include a detailed explanation of what they did well and how they could improve. They view it with a cold disdain. As they leave your classroom you hear their comment to another student. ‘She hates me.’

In the five minutes before your next class you ponder this remark. You know you don’t hate this student. Nothing would make you happier than to see them improve.

So what do you do next?

Fundraising for the school

2008-09-27T01:52:00.004Z

Today we launched our candy sale. Over the next two weeks our high school students need to sell $150 worth of chocolate bars (each). There are all sorts of prizes to give them incentives, including getting a half day off school if you sell $100 worth before next Friday, breakfast from McDonalds for the homeroom that sells the most, and a regular raffle of $10 and $20 bills for the highest sellers each second day. If the school hits its average of $150 dollars per student we will all get an entire day off in November. Finally, whichever grade sells the most will have their nominated candidate made 'Homecoming Queen'. We have been balloted all week and there are four girls nominated for queen. Most years we have a senior (S6) queen -but there is always the chance that another year group will sell enough to have their queen 'enthroned'.

As a homeroom teacher (registration teacher)who incidentally can win $100 if my homeroom sells the most candy, I am expected to give my students plenty of encouragement. My freshman homeroom (S3) are geared up to start selling the chocolate bars this weekend. I wonder how they will get on?I have promised I will wear my 'See you Jimmy' hat all day if they sell more than the other homeroom.

I have to admit to a little culture shock over all this. I am struck by the way this event plays to the American love of 'being the best' or winning something. It's also fascinating to see how much these young people value salesmanship. Students seemed eager to take their sales pitch out on the streets, ball games and bowling alleys. I appreciate the need to fundraise for our school but I find the actual idea of having students out there selling stuff oddly uncomfortable.

On the other hand is it any different from the school fetes, sponsored walks and book fairs we have in the UK? The students seem to enjoy it and the school is well... chocolatey.

She's back. And this time she's serious.

2008-07-24T14:16:00.015Z

Back to school for a second year of the American education system.

US schools like to use the grade point system to give their students an idea of how they are doing. Being concerned about their grade gives some focus to pupils. They can't just coast along hoping to do well in final exams. The athletes for example, need to have done their homework in other subjects if they are to attend training. To me that can potentially teach a good lesson on the importance of having an all round education. But the downside of all this is the focus on summative assessment. So much of what they do is graded, so students become obsessed with their grade. They are always asking what it is, and worrying over it. Sounds good? Well you'd think so. Just to make any impact on kids is great! (even if they become neurotic in the process…) But all the grading seems to be based on an idea about how learning works which just isn't right.

The grade system assumes learning is cumulative and ordered. A chart of a students progress over a year should look like a gradual gradient which settles into a nice plateau (hopefully on a A?). In reality we don't learn like that. Learning is messy. Sometimes the grade reflects that -a big drop one week whilst certain techniques are being mastered, or a high grade when a teacher tests students about what they already know. It affects my teaching too because I feel pressure to provide more 'quizzes' and tests, or resort to the horrible multiple choice tests. Grappling with that issue has been the biggest challenge of my teaching in the USA.

2008-06-04T01:34:00.003Z

Three more days to go...

I haven't blogged for ages... The term is now winding down and I am almost at the end of my first academic year here in St Paul. One thing I need to do is work out what I am doing with my blog. I need to reconnect with my old blog friends and hopefully find some new blog friends -people who are also teaching 'over here' and willing to share their expertise.

In the meantime here are some of my highlights from this year.

Most surreal moment - Getting to see a real American High School Homecoming complete with Queens, Kings and decorated thrones.
Most enlightening moment -My first American football game. I now understand why it is such a popular social event. The crowd seem to be there to catch up with one another and are only occasionally distracted by what is happening on the field.
Favorite moment in class. The students impress me with their wonderful attempt at my accent. My catchphrase which they beg me to say - 'That's brilliant!' (Thaats Brullyunt)
Most challenging moment – getting my electronic grade book to make sense.
New experience – temperatures are cold enough for a snowman built on Christmas eve to survive -in a slightly stooped form- until March.
Unexpectedly gratifying moment - Students graduation ceremony when they all throw their caps in the air. Corny but somehow quite good fun.
Most confusion caused to other member of staff. I am asked my weight by school secretary and give it in stones.
Annoying Americans by telling them how much gas (petrol) costs in the UK when they are scandalized at the $4 a gallon they are paying this summer.

Can't believe how fast the first year of teaching here has gone.

Backspell

2008-04-06T14:47:00.004Z

We are back to school after Spring Break and I am enjoying warmer weather. Yesterday it was around 60 F (about 16 degrees celsius). It's been hovering around freezing, for the last few weeks, so this felt like summer, albeit a Scottish one.

Many of my students are starting to ask me if we can 'go outside' for lessons. I suppose they have cabin fever after all these months. I have fond memories of sitting outside on warm days, even in secondary school. Unfortunately it's not very practical and tends to lead to a breakdown in discipline as other classes see you heading out and feel aggrieved.

Having said that, like most teachers, I love making school fun for students. It seems to me that we should build on their natural high spirits without letting up on discipline. Is that unrealistic?

Here in America a 'quiz' is actually a test and students groan when you announce one. You are testing memory in many cases, not understanding.

With this in mind I am trying to put together some genuinely enjoyable word games for end of class or Friday afternoons. Spelling bees can get a bit intense. That's why I use 'Backspell' which is easy to play and quite often has unexpected experts. Two players, five rounds. You begin with a short word -spell it backwards and the person who shouts out the correct answer gets a point. As soon as a student reaches three points you have a winner. They can then challenge someone else.

Any other tried and tested games?

Why no seatbelts on school bus?

2008-02-28T22:53:00.004Z

Last week was a sad one in Minnesota. On Tuesday a school bus was knocked over by a van which went through a red light. Sadly four students were killed in the crash with a further 14 injured. The children belonged to Lakeview School in Cottonwood which is about 140 miles west of Minneapolis.

The big yellow buses which carry kids to school in the US are everywhere in commuting times. The fact that they are so noticeable is a help to drivers. School Bus Laws exist which make it illegal in certain circumstances to pass a bus that's stopping to drop off or pick up passengers. Bus companies pride themselves on employing drivers who know their road safety. It's important after all. It has been estimated that 54 % of students attending K-12 (kindergarten to final year high school) ride on a school bus each day.

But the question that I can't help asking is: Why are these school buses not fitted with seat-belts? The news reports quote the authorities as saying that seat belts would not have made a significant difference to the injuries. The children are protected by a system called 'compartmentalization' which is considered roughly as safe as seat-belting. I find this difficult to believe. Is all the research about seat-belts faulty? What about those campaigns to get us to wear seat-belts? Is the data wrong?

A quick internet search brings me to the National Coalition for School Bus Safety . Here you can look at an account of some of the testing that has been done on the need for seat belts. The coalition also claims that the compartmentalization system does not provide adequate protection. In fact according to them current bus designs do not even merit the protection which compartmentalization engineers claim for it, as they do not follow all their the original recommendations.

Do seat-belts make us safer on buses? I can't imagine there are many people willing to say that seat-belts in other vehicles don't generally give us greater protection. So why not school buses?

One other issue I would like to know more about - the stability of the big yellow bus. The bus in this accident was knocked over onto another vehicle. Is this not a little surprising? I don't remember seeing a bus knocked over by a car or truck before. I'd be interested if anyone knew any statistics on that. Is the US School bus more likely to be knocked over?

As a teacher and a parent I'd be the first person to say we are over-protective of our kids. But in this one instance I cannot understand why a school bus wouldn't have the same safety features as a normal automobile.

St Valentine's Day Massacre

2008-02-14T02:40:00.003Z

Tomorrow is (of course) St Valentine's Day and I am not sure I can stand the tension. Tonight as I left school several (male) students were carefully filling their beloveds' lockers with pink balloons, flowers and heart shaped candy. It was all being done very carefully and with a sort of thoroughness that suggested a great deal of prior planning. I will find out tomorrow if it is appreciated.

This week concludes with a big dance for the high school students 'The Sno Daze' and we have already been celebrating it with a series of out of uniform days. Monday was 'Celebrity couples' and my next classroom neighbor teachers dressed as Sponge Bob and Patrick. On Tuesday I took part in 'Twins day' by dressing like all the other teachers in white t-shirts and jeans. Rather bulky because I had my thermals on underneath, school spirit or no school spirit I promised my mum I'd wear my vest... It's 23 C below outside.

Today was 'Retro day' and we had the 40's, 50's, 80's and 90's. Lots of girls wearing wide skirts and bobby socks, being jostled by Bananarama and Depeche Mode. I thought it might prove difficult to teach Shaft, James Dean and Marty McFly but they settled down quite nicely to Kafka and Huckleberry Finn. Next week is going to seem quite tame.

Teachers: their use and misuse

2008-02-02T18:54:00.000Z

It's come to that time in the year when students are starting to feel they know me well enough to tell me what they think of me. They also begin to tell stories of their previous teachers. I always take the 'old mad teacher' stories with a pinch of salt. That's low sodium, organic, naturally sourced salt; I am in America.

My predecessor's worst habit was 'bringing coke into the classroom'.

Me: What? Crack? Snow? C-dust? Nieve? Bernie? Er... I really do read those articles about drugs in school that you find in staffrooms. The kids stare at me as if I had produced the aforementioned articles.

No, it turns out the reprobate was regularly to be found sipping from a can of coke. Talk about debauched. For all we know she might have laced it with something else, I suppose.

I read John Connell's article recently on the testing times that America is going through. The following day I came across this BusinessWeek article –
'I can get your kid into an Ivy' - from October 2007. It's about the work of Michele Hernandez who calls herself "America's Premiere College Consultant."

Hernandez coaches students in how to make an application which will achieve acceptance at the country's top (Ivy League) universities.

Her advice -which can cost up to $40 000 ranges from the sort of stuff you would have thought anyone sensible could offer about prioritizing your time, to the kinds of courses you should be taking to impress application officers. Nothing wrong with helping students prioritise. We've all had conversations with - let's call her Ashley - bright enough to get top grades but missing crucial homework and classes because of her hours at the supermarket.

But choosing subjects simply because of the impression they make irks me. The BusinessWeek article quotes her talking about a student she helped, "I helped in ways that would look good and let him be true to himself." Great soundbyte, but you can't help feeling that being true to oneself shouldn't involve being packaged and marketed by an image consultant.

Arguably Hernandez is just stepping in with a piece of wisdom, at a crucial time in a young person's life. The young person in question isn't what we might call disadvantaged, unless like me, you consider having the kind of parents who are willing to fork out $40,000 to someone like Hernandez a negative.

I can't help but feel the whole experience will teach those students a very powerful and corrupt life-lesson: if you have money you can circumvent any system or manipulate any test. Life isn't like that. There are plenty of 'tests' which you cannot buy your way out of...

Just one that comes to mind – illness. If you want to read about how real people face tests, you might want to visit guineapigmum's blog. Here the qualities under display are honesty, good humour, courage and knowing your own limitations.

The BusinessWeek article also feeds into my own concerns about what it means to be a good teacher. Am I going to educate young people or show them how to pass manufactured tests? Although the two things might not be mutually exclusive the balance is hard to find. Especially in America.

Let's all help one another...

2008-01-12T05:36:00.000Z

I've been inspired by this post from Shaun's blog to think a bit more about student motivation. Here in the USA, I see students dealing with the same issues as I saw students deal with in Scotland. To work or not to work, to study or not to study? Shaun muses on the different ways teachers help students to study or to get motivated.

I was especially interested in his comment about a teacher (good old Harry Keery!) who uses a bit of healthy competition to get students on board. This week I used a similar technique by having my two hons American lit classes swap essays and peer evaluate. They both wrote their essays on the same question and book, in preparation for their semester finals which come up next week.

I tried where possible to match up students in the two classes who would benefit from seeing one another's work. In some cases this meant swapping the work of two fairly ambitious and skilled writers , so that they could be spurred on by one another. But I also found myself carefully matching students who were balanced in ability but not effort to get one of them to see what they could achieve with more work. I hoped the student who made more of an effort could also see that they were achieving more.

The thing that impressed me was the zeal with which they attacked the task. In both classes students initially admitted that they were reluctant to criticize. Then after receiving and reading papers they quickly got into the swing of picking faults with them. I explained that they had to offer specific criticism, and that they had to include clear praise where it was due.
They were allowed to write their names on the evaluation or not. Many of them did.

I checked the critiques before I gave them back.

Some of the comments included things like: 'You had a good point here but I was disappointed that you didn't say more about it.' Don't think you have correct spelling for this word - I don't know how to spell it either, but feel sure it isn't this.' 'You use 'fantasy' and 'fantasize' too much -do you know another word for this? -I would like to know too as I used it too much in my paper.' There were few overly harsh comments. Thankfully I had instructed them not to write on the essays but to write their comments on a separate sheet of paper, just in case.

Most students said that they found the first part of the exercise, which was reading and criticizing another student's work, useful. The second part of the exercise will be receiving back their own essays and peer evaluation. I hope that when they read each other's comments they will find them of use too. I also hope that it will initiate a healthy competition.

Back to the subject of motivation. Can teachers actually motivate or are they just a catalyst for students motivating each other? Do students need to rely on their own motivation?

I lost my voice...

2008-01-01T04:51:00.000Z

Last hour of 2007...

So many new experiences this last while... that my brain is in a kind of overload. Just as I compose a post about something I change my mind. I don't want to commit myself to an opinion on something based on my own limited experiences, and yet I do want to continue blogging as a way of reflecting on my own teaching.

The first semester technically finishes midway through January, but I can't help feeling that I have actually completed my first term in an American school.

I spent the first week of my holidays catching up on all the family stuff that had gone to the wall over this hectic time. This week I have been starting to think again about school and what I can do differently in my second semester. At least this time round I will know a little more about what is expected of me.

Challenges I want to take up:

Introducing formative assessment in a system that revolves around regular and (getting off the fence here) somewhat ineffective assessment. Students are obsessed with their GPA's (Grade Point Averages) and constantly ask 'how am I doing...'
I have been trying to use comment only marking first just to get their attention, but they do find it scary... I must find new ways to get the little darlings thinking more about learning than grading.

Find out more about AiFl in the States. Is there anyone else using these methods and having success with them?

Cut down on my prep and marking so that I have time to blog and read too...

Find out where to get decent bread. I genuinely try not to be one of those expats who searches supermarkets for British food, but I have to eat bread that isn't sweet again...

And snow it begins...

2007-12-04T21:26:00.000Z

At last the snow has started and we are starting to find out why there are 'snow plow' signs on all of the streets. I haven't actually had to drive in the snow yet, but I am going to have to sooner or later. Many of our students who became drivers this year, are talking about their first attempts to drive in the snow and admitting that they find it a bit challenging.

Advice abounds. Drive normally. Drive much more carefully. Pump your brakes. Don't pump your brakes. Take you foot off the gas if you skid. Put your foot gently on the gas so that you can drive out of the skid.

The most difficult thing to deal with so far? Where to park the car when a snow emergency is called and snow plows (yes that's the spelling) must have access. The rules are simple. The first night, from 9 p.m. until about 6 a.m: No Parking on Night Plow Routes until the street is plowed to the 'curb'. You can however park on the non night plow route of residential streets (one side of the street that is helpfully not marked at all). The following day, from 8 a.m. until about 5 p.m: No Parking on Day Plow Routes until the street is plowed to the curb. Except you can park on the side marked Night Plow on residential streets which run north-south. You can't park during the day on streets which run east to west. Clear?

As someone wearily remarked... 'You have to be born in Minnesota to understand it.' I wasn't remotely surprised to learn via the local news channel that on Day One of the Snow Emergency the city towed over 700 cars. So it's not just me scratching my head over the rules.

Still... the snow really does make if feel as if Christmas is coming.

What is Thanksgiving?

2007-11-21T00:50:00.000Z

I’ve been looking forward to my first US Thanksgiving for quite some time - admittedly because I get two-and-a-half days off school… However this week my speech class have been regaling me with their definitions of this truly American holiday. In amongst the clichés you can discern a genuine fondness for the rituals and routines…and a touchingly gruff and bashful belief that it is a time to ‘be grateful for what you’ve got’. How does it compare with Christmas? ‘Much better’ was the general consensus.

Inspired by my foreigner-type enquiries, another non American student asked permission to put some questions which had obviously been bothering him. What were cranberries? Were sweet potatoes regular potatoes with sugar? Did everyone sit at the same table? Could you eat anything other than turkey? The rush to educate him was very gratifying.

The mood turned a little sour when he asked, ‘What is stuffing?’ because it became very clear that the Americans have exceptionally strong views on the actual sourcing, ingredients, weight and cooking methods of the aforementioned substance. I had to physically separate two normally somnabulent football players who were personally aggrieved at the disparate approaches favoured by their families.

In an attempt to change the subject I asked about the vegetarian experience of Thanksgiving. Big mistake. I had to reassure them that I was simply asking, and not actually a vegetarian myself, just a foreigner.

We pondered the issue in silence for a moment. A vegetarian Thanksgiving hadn’t been considered. A few timid girls admitted knowing some vegetarians but they weren’t sure what they did at Thanksgiving. ‘What did they get for dessert?’ asked my fellow foreigner. Then it was ‘pumpkin pie’ versus ‘pecan pie’ until the welcome relief of the bell.
‘We will continue this tomorrow,’ I said to disperse the rabid pumpkinites, privately planning to have tomorrow sewn up in a very different direction.

Really High School

2007-11-03T22:03:00.000Z

This morning’s speech class was supposed to focus on the speeches of Franklin D Roosevelt. We did manage to cover one of the speeches. Personally I found it really interesting to see the longevity of political rhetoric. I’m pretty sure my enthusiasm for the subject was a mystery to my class. Possibly this was because they were the most excited and distracted they have ever been. Rather strange at eight o’clock in the morning. Six of the class (just over 25 percent) were sitting in their American football gear –as is normal here, on a game day. The rest of the class (including me on school directive!) were dressed in the school colours of red and white… Husband kept calling me ‘Sweeney Todd’.

Tonight’s game is a bit of a milestone – if we win it, the school moves forward to the state championships. This will be the first time we have progressed this far in ten years –a long time in the life of a school.

What with Halloween just over, and the school still swilling in candy and pumpkins, today’s pre-game excitement seethed and boiled like a saucepan of raspberry jam…

I lurched through my classes (‘How Homer creates tension in the Odyssey’, ‘Understanding the characterization of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman’ and ‘Appreciating the language techniques in The Great Gatsby’) to a good-natured but frankly uninterested student body. During final hour - the school day finished with another assembly or ‘pep rally’ to give the football team a big send off.

Emotionally exhausted I returned to the blessed silence of my classroom to finish ‘doing my grades’ for the quarter. Next week we have parents’ conferences. Why does that sound more ominous than parents’ night? Never mind –we have a full day off, following the conferences. Before you start getting jealous –this will be my second day off school since it started back in August.

The late news –just posted on a local tv station website is that our football team have been well and truly trounced. Oh well, the dream is over (until next year).

Me and the natives

2007-10-19T02:34:00.000Z

I’ve been teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey to classes this last while and – enjoying it too, somewhat to my surprise… Last week I had set students the task of writing a soliloquy for Achilles. They delivered their speeches this week, and to be honest I was flabbergasted by how confident they were. Considering that it is a mixed ability class, and that the Iliad isn’t an easy text, it was an eye opener for me. Only one pupil asked me if he could give his speech before a smaller audience, and even then he was willing to come in after class three days running to practice it before a small audience until it was ‘good enough’ to be graded. The point is, they took ‘the talk bit’ seriously.

I couldn’t help feeling that I have underestimated the role of talk up until now. These students have been giving speeches and talking before their classmates for years, and frankly, it shows. Added to that, many of them admitted not really understanding the Iliad until they had to imagine what Achilles was thinking, and then perform it.

Buoyed up with my success, I gave a somewhat disaffected student the words of the song ‘She moved through the fair’ and asked him if he would read it, not as a school text, but as if he had just found it on the ground. He read it in the stressed rhythm of a subdued rap poem. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck by the time he was finished, and the class loved it.

I was brought back down from my American dream in the teacher’s lounge when I enthused about the speeches, and commented on the difference between American and Scottish kids in this respect. ‘The thing is,’ one colleague explained brightly, ‘You will notice a difference, because now you are teaching native English speakers…’

2007-10-11T22:16:00.000Z

I am slightly overcome with the American experience, and just getting through each day by nodding wisely when I am particularly confused. As a result the student impersonation of me includes an unintelligible accent (or brogue as they insist on calling it) and lots of head nodding...
It's a great experience seeing another education system from the inside. It's the small things you notice first. I regularly forget that 'foolscap' is called 'looseleaf' and that you don't 'take the register' you 'take attendance'.

I'm still looking out for ways I can use new technologies and actually add something by doing that. Our school does have a site for teachers to post lesson plans and homework to, which is great, but I am not aware yet of how much teachers here use the internet for, apart from that.

The students are doing that thing they do, of pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist for them in the context that I describe. They look vaguely embarrassed if I mention facebook or myspace in the sort of way we did when teachers asked us if we liked ‘The Stranglers or whatever they are called’.

Meanwhile back in Stranraer one of my previous pupils is writing away, blogging about all of these issues and wondering if teachers are planning to use them.

So inspired by Jemma I am looking out for a good project for a wiki.

Homecoming Week

2007-10-02T23:30:00.000Z

This has been a great week at school with lots of excitement about the homecoming game. Today we had a big homecoming assembly at 11.30, and then the entire school was given a half day. The homecoming assembly was a surreal experience for me.

It’s difficult to describe. We assembled in the gym which was decorated last night by a large number of pupils wielding acres of paper, dozens of cans of silver spray paint and carte blanche to design thrones for the princesses. Each year group, 9th Grade (freshmen) 10th grade (sophomores) 11th grade (juniors) and 12th grade (seniors) had their own throne to design and build. After singing ‘The Star-spangled banner’, and various other songs accompanied with dancing cheerleaders, several girls were crowned as ‘princesses’ and escorted to their thrones by their ‘princes’. Finally our ‘queen’ was crowned, the crown going to the princess whose homeroom (sort of like their registration class) had sold the most candy bars for our big fundraising effort.
After that we were introduced to our football team (there seemed to be about 100 of them). Finally the school broke up. I had to pinch myself several times to make sure I wasn’t just imagining it all. So frustrating having no-one else to nudge!

Tonight is the football game. We are playing at a local stadium against another high school. As far as I can tell most of our pupils will go along, and they will be joined by past pupils (alumni) and parents.

The thing that struck me the most about all of this: the pupils loved every minute of it. Think I might have underestimated their love of seasonal rituals.

Asking for feedback

2007-09-21T21:33:00.000Z

I bit the bullet this week and asked my students to let me know how they were finding my teaching. I explained that I didn’t mean personal remarks just whether they felt I was helping them to learn, and what I might do better. I asked them to respond in particular to my 'comment only' marking on their last assignment. They duly took out a sheet of loose leaf -after we had discovered that ‘foolscap’ is not a term used in this part of the US.

I was worried they might be either too hard on me, or less helpfully, too nice. There were a few responses of the worryingly ambiguous type - 'I can't think of anything you could do to be a better teacher'. But they were also quite direct too –which was refreshing. The following is fairly typical of the responses I got.

‘Thank you for saying that you liked my introduction. I didn't think this one was any good. Why did you?'

'I agree that I need to work on my paragraphing. To be honest I don’t understand how paragraphs work. I never did them at my last school either.’

‘I rushed this homework because I wanted to go out to a movie with friends. That won’t happen again.’

‘I liked what you did with not giving us our grades right away. I would like if you wrote more comments.’

‘What is juxtaposition?’ (Er… my favourite word?)

‘You didn’t explain that we needed to have more than one example’ (I hadn’t either!)

and my personal favourite:

‘I like your accent. I wish I had one.’

I’ve found out what ‘Homecoming’ is. It’s the first home game of our school football team –and it takes place next week. We have been fundraising, voting for princesses and decorating our classroom doors all week. More about this soon.

Access at last!

2007-09-14T03:18:00.000Z

Finally we negotiate the peculiarities of internet access for foreigners in the USA. I must admit I was surprised to find that getting properly connected was so complicated.

Life is still a bit messy. We are living out of suitcases and borrowings at the moment.

But school has been going for a couple of weeks and I am just starting to take a deep breath. Making sense of homerooms and grading systems, semesters and sophomores has been pretty challenging. I’m in the early stages of translation (things go through the Scottish filter: sophomores -that’s fourth years, attendance that’s registration.)

Grades are very important. Pupils, sorry students, constantly ask for their grade.

I’m determined not to lose some of the AifL skills I’ve learnt over the last while. I have actually managed to get a couple of classes to read my ‘comment only’ marking. They have been told they will get their grades later in the week when I am happy they know what to do to improve. They can hardly wait…

In the staffroom (sorry teacher's lounge)I try to refrain from asking too many silly questions. What is homecoming for example? I will be finding out tomorrow. Apparently I will be selling candy bars until then. Is this a metaphor for something else?

Where am I?

2007-08-30T03:33:00.001Z

I'm not sure how to explain this -and since I've only got around five minutes access I will have to be brief. But here's the thing. I've changed my job.

I'm still teaching, but I've made quite a big move. This summer when we came to St Paul for a holiday I applied for a job which I saw on the Internet. I'm teaching in a K-12 school in inner city St Paul.

The last few weeks have been... homeric.

I'm not sure quite what to do with the blog. Keep on blogging as a teacher in the USA
or start a new blog?

Anyway my time is up...

Hopefully will get connected soon.

Bridge Disaster on the Mississippi River

2007-08-02T04:10:00.000Z

We were sitting eating takeaway pizza tonight and talking about the noisy sirens out in the street. Must be some sort of fire we speculated. Not a surprise given how dry and hot it was. I tried unsuccessfully to contact my brother in law Tony about our plans to take a boat trip on the Mississippi. The cell phone service was unavailable.

We decided, despite the heat, to go out for a walk along nearby Summit Avenue - a beautiful tree lined street that was home to F Scott Fitzgerald for a little while. The street seemed unusually quiet. Normally there are loads of people walking dogs, roller skating or just walking in the warm evening air.

A car drew up alongside us and a man leaned out. ‘Hey!’ he shouted, ‘Have you heard the news? Bridge on 35 has just fallen into the river. The whole thing! Right into the river!’

He drove on leaving us looking at one another. What was that about? We walked home and turned on the TV. And there it was –news that a bridge had come down during rush hour on one of the bridges that links Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Several people thought dead, many injured.

The 'phone rang and it was Tony. 'We're fine! You okay too?'

It was sobering and we felt sad for other families, who were probably coming in for evening meals and wondering why someone was late.

Life is fragile.

The O'Neills are in Minnesota

2007-07-13T22:44:00.000Z

My blog has been rather quiet over the last couple of weeks and for good reason... School didn't stop until the 6th July and on that date I moved house. Or at least I moved out of my old house, put everything in storage and then went on holiday.

We arrived in Saint Paul on Tuesday. We're here for five whole weeks.

I am hopefully going to blog about my holiday on my seawall blog which you can find on Summer Blogs. I am blogging there with a couple of fifth year pupils from my school - so far their blogs are a lot more interesting than mine, so please have a look.

I hope to continue blogging here about education issues. The picture above was taken enroute to Saint Paul when we stopped off in Iceland. It's me and my two boys at The Blue Lagoon. Icelandair provide a free tour to the lagoon whilst you are between flights. Nice but a bit surreal.

2007-06-28T20:58:00.000Z

Arguably, when you are my height (just over 5ft) a 'weemee' picture is slightly redundant. But I couldn't resist visiting the weemee website when I saw it over at Tecnoteach.

I feel a lot more comfortable with this sort of self representation than the kind of thing that seems to come naturally to the younger generation.
(Sorry. Starting to sound like I've had a difficult day with my zimmer and hearing aid.)

I don't really like getting my photograph taken. I put my picture on my blog because I found that I liked seeing what other bloggers looked like, and thought it was only fair to put my mug shot up as well. Also I don't like the idea of anonymity on the internet. Be real. Virtually.

Perhaps the whole thing is getting the balance - giving an account of ourselves that's honest without being overly self-revelatory.

The other site which Tecnoteacher references is Voki. I did try to make up a picture on that which looked vaguely like me, but failed miserably. I think they need something in between the beautiful people and the edgy ones.

Leadership in school - for pupils too.

2007-06-16T16:27:00.000Z

Don Ledingham started an interesting thread on the value of Sixth Year, and it’s got me pondering. I’ve been thinking about our school year (see my previous post)and also about our senior pupils. When I started S5 at school I remember feeling more responsible. Staff talked to us in a different way. There were opportunities to show leadership, especially as prefects. We were expected to help supervise younger pupils, either by patrolling the playground, or if it was raining actually being left in charge of classes.

Along with the responsibility we got privileges. We wore a different uniform. We had a common room. We were the first year group to be considered for events which involved representing the school. And something that had never happened before: we were consulted. Then – and here’s a novel idea as far as present day ‘consultations’ seem to go- the thing we requested actually happened.

I’ve heard teachers complain that nowadays senior pupils aren’t interested in taking up a more responsible role within the school. They cite instances in schools where pupils have refused to become prefects, or ridiculed those willing to get involved.

Just noticed Gairloch High School’s blog. At Gairloch they have been interviewing for prefects’ posts. They appear to give clear responsibilities to their S5 and S6. Perhaps that's why pupils feel comfortable applying.

Do you have prefects in your school? Or something else that works better?

Perhaps the real way forward is to give ‘prefecture'(?) a makeover. What could we call it, and what would it entail?

Learn how to have fun in English

2007-06-09T09:14:00.000Z

Do you remember the Hartley’s jam advert where you got to see the strawberries or raspberries being sealed into the jar and boiled up? Perhaps you remember the funny suction noise of the lid being slammed down? I was reminded of this advert on Friday last period when my second years arrived at my oven - sorry classroom.

We have a school policy of making pupils remove jackets and sweatshirts when they arrive in class. On Friday I didn’t need to enforce it. The kids were sweltered. In a different school, in a different time, I could have taken them outside and let them roll around the grass, make daisy chains and draw pictures of Marc Bolan (Okay, so now you’re getting my secondary school memories…)

Thank goodness I had planned to give them some word games. I’d put together a sheet of rebuses and ‘origins of words and phrases’. I believe that puzzling over words gives pupils the opportunity to learn about a whole range of things from problem solving to grammar.

My second years loved them, so we moved onto a few lateral-thinking puzzles. I had also made up some anagrams of their names which was really hilarious. If you want an anagram maker that’s fairly safe look at Blackdog's Anagram Creator.

My strategy is to present them with the anagrams and if no lights go on, talk quietly to one of the pupils whose name I have anagrammed and ask him/her if a particular anagram looks at all familiar. The thing is that they really do get a feeling about those letters. They can’t quite think where they have seen them before but something is nagging away at them about it. They almost always get it within about 2 minutes. They then become the 'expert' on deciphering.

All very satisfying. I must admit I was pleased when most of them wanted to take the worksheets home.

Answers to the puzzle above: - Too (two) funny for (four) words.

Do you think the Scottish school year works?

2007-06-02T09:37:00.000Z

I started my new timetable at the beginning of this week. I was especially keen to meet my new seniors. Two of my classes are mixed S5 and S6 pupils. Since study leave was over for the new S5, they arrived at the start of the week. Our new S6 had study leave until Thursday so half of my class didn’t come back until then. A number of them also informed me that they would be missing a couple of days between now and the end of next week, since exams aren’t actually over…

Our department has strategies in place to deal with this. We work on the units that involve the most independent work, personal writing pieces and so on. That way students will not be impacted too badly by the changing class population. We are also trying to cover the same ground as a department, over the six weeks.

Staff have mixed feelings about this. It doesn’t feel right to be starting a new class in this staggered way. You try to set the regulars off on their work and then re-do your presentation to the newbies. You make up worksheets that read like the intro to 24. Jack has been busy...

The pupils themselves usually respond with good nature. Of course they’re tired after exams and they’ve never been in a class with people from outside their year group. They sit in year group clusters. However I’m confident we will begin to gel in a week or two. And four weeks on we’ll be that strange animal - a class.

Then we will go off for six weeks. We will come back with our exam results and the class shuffling will start again.

Old timers sigh and say this is just how it is. They point to the benefits of having classes (generally) worked out before end of term. It makes the start of the new session easier. You can also set summer reading projects. You get creative.

I don’t think it works. I think the aforementioned benefits could be gained by having classes on new timetable for the last week of school.

And I think we could change to that quite easily by doing one thing: have the exams closer to the end of our school year.

Why wouldn’t this work?

Favourite books

2007-05-24T19:27:00.000Z

Neil has tagged me with this book meme.

So here are my responses to the three questions:

1. How many books do you own?

Too many. I have regular book purges because I get nervous that the house will start sinking like Glasgow University Library. Apparently this is an urban myth. See here.

2. What was the last book you read?
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

3.Five Books that mean a lot to me:

In no specific order…

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

This book taught me a painful lesson: don’t get too interested in a book. If you have read it you will know why. Let’s just say I spent a long time searching for part 2.

Emma by Jane Austen

I have been arguing for roughly twenty five years with my brother in law, Tony, about this book. Jane Austen apparently said before writing it that she was ‘going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.’ Tony reckons that she was proved right. I don’t.

Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

I’m ashamed to say I started to read this in order to ridicule it… Now it’s become one of my favourite books. Therese lived a completely ‘unremarkable’ and sheltered life dying at the age of 24. Her ideas about love and suffering infuriated and then captivated me. I don’t recommend it –if you are meant to read it, you will.

The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde (a short story)

I’m not sure why but I always get quite choked when I read this story. I first came across a version of it in ‘The Golden Story Book’ which I got when I was ten. Years later I discovered that it had been written by Wilde. It's a lovely story and very soothing to the nerves of a child who had been traumatised by 'The Singing Ringing Tree'. This was a 1960's TV programme of a fairytale that the BBC bought from 'Eastern Europe'. It was dubbed and presented to children. The story touched on some primal nerve...

Sick Heart River by John Buchan

I love this novel and most of Buchan’s 'shockers'. Sick Heart River is a little different. It's about a dying man, written when Buchan himself was dying. Buchan seems to me to represent the best and the worst of us Scots; filled with a love for humanity yet peculiarly xenophobic in our relationship with certain nations. Buchan's work reminds us of our history, good and bad. I'd love to see a quiz called 'Which Buchan character are you?' If you know of one do tell.

I'm not going to tag anyone -but if you are reading this and fancy writing your answer consider yourself tagged!

Out of the comfort zone, into the learning zone?

2007-05-18T18:00:00.000Z

I’m just back from the second part of my Feuerstein training and I'm starting to reflect a bit on my experience. This time round we were introduced to three other ‘instruments’ for teaching thinking skills to pupils.

My overall experience of the course was very positive. I enjoyed learning about something new, and thinking about how I was actually doing that. I also realised just how faulty some of my own thought processes were. I wouldn’t have called myself a woolly thinker, but I rely heavily on what I would have called ‘common sense’. I call it ‘common sense’ –but don’t push me to define it because I probably would get into one of those ‘you know what I mean… it’s sort of like…’ conversations which Miki Gorodischer (our Israeli Feuerstein trainer) said was our attempt at making the other person do the thinking work.

If I was to sum up my experience on the course in one word I would say that it was challenging. And this challenge was presented on several different levels. The first was in the sheer effort of encountering and interpreting a lot of new terminology regarding the cognitive processes. The next challenge was sustaining attention in a classroom for what seemed like lengthy periods of time. I like to think I’ve got more stamina than my TV watching pupils – but my brain started complaining long before the end of most of the sessions.
The final challenge was in the teaching style of our trainer. Miki is wonderful and brought a cultural diversity to the course which added an extra layer of interest and drama to the sessions. For me, however, some of the aspects of her teaching style were just a little too challenging! I found myself spending more and more time thinking about how she was presenting the material and not the material itself. But hang on, isn’t this one of the main goals of the Feuerstein training? The course aims to be ‘content free’ and transferable. In other words, the methodology, not the subject is intended to be the main focus of the training.

Miki’s style of mediating seemed at times confrontational but it did make us think, and question and try to step up to the mark. I certainly mean to use some of her techniques in my classroom to provoke some deeper debate.

Please comment – especially if you have been on the course!

Pioneering Spirit and the online classroom

2007-05-07T10:10:00.000Z

Several times in my teaching day I wish my pupils could work online.

Here are a few of the things I wish I could do:

Individual consolidation or revision work. We’re reading a poem and a pupil looks bewildered when you mention ‘metaphors’. It’s a piece of cake to everyone else. I direct the pupil to an interactive resource on metaphors. Better than a worksheet. They can wait until the whole class time is over or go directly to the resource returning when they are ready –they won't miss anything since the lesson is available online.

Modelling. I could highlight best practice in pupil work as and when it appeared. At the moment if I spot a good response in a pupil's work I can read it out to the class. Great for the auditory learners. Unless it's very brief and I have time for pupil to type it onto my laptop for the whiteboard -or write it on the board, I need to copy it out later.

Research. Why do we need to be the ones finding the material? Pupils could find material on the internet themselves. Talk about ownership. We would have to teach them how to evaluate that material. How useful would that be? Very useful for your entire life I imagine…

Wikis. I have discovered that wikis can’t be edited at the same time by several pupils. At first that struck me as a weakness. Now I’m not so sure. Pupils are being forced to wait on one another before they can ‘do their bit’. There’s a healthy bit of peer pressure and a sense of how we work as a team mixing here.

Absentees. Having a class website or wiki would allow pupils who are absent through illness or family holidays to keep up with the work of the class. Never again could a pupil announce that they couldn’t do the homework because they were off when I gave it out. Of course their excuses would sound vaguely familiar. Here are some real live examples from a recent attempt to use a class website.

‘My internet broke’ (sic)

‘ My brother was playing online poker and wouldn’t let me go on’

‘It’s not working on my computer’

Reality check. Thanks to Jonesieboy for posting about this article in the NY Times: Seeing no progress some schools drop laptops. David Warlick has also blogged here on what this article tells us. Any schools going out on a limb to use technology will have to deal well with the areas highlighted by this school’s experience. They will need a pioneering instinct. But it will be worth it. After all, in the world we prepare pupils for, they aren’t thinking of going back to pen and ink are they?

House for sale in the south west of Scotland

2007-05-05T11:18:00.000Z

We've finally decided to sell our house and look for something a bit more suited to our small family. This roughly coincided with finishing all the tasks we had set ourselves in the house. In the last few weeks we've done all those things that we've been 'meaning to do' since we arrived. Typical innit?

Yesterday the estate agents arrived with a board to stick in the window, and by tea-time we were sitting in the kitchen feeling self-consciously on show. There are several other houses up for sale in the village, and this means there's a 'real buzz about the place' as they say.

If you know anyone who wants to escape from the city to Scotland's southernmost village then you might want to tell them about our house. If you are in the process of selling your house please comment. A little bit of encouragement would be appreciated!

The company selling our house is Galloway and Ayrshire Properties (GAP) and you can see our house here (including a virtual tour) if you are interested!

Thinking about ...Feuerstein Training

2007-04-28T11:25:00.000Z

Don’t you love it when you learn something that you genuinely believe will be significant to your teaching and your pupils’ learning?

This week I attended the first block of a Feuerstein training course in Glasgow. I’ve been trying to find out more about metacognition (thinking about thinking) for quite some time. I hoped Feuerstein’s programme of teaching thinking skills might be of use to me as a classroom teacher. Like most teachers I would love to know more exactly what blocks and aids learning. I am especially interested in that moment ‘when the penny drops’ or a learner actually understands something that was hidden before.

I admit I’m a bit sceptical about some of the 'thinking skills' projects. I’ve never really taken to stuff like Brain Gym. Unlike a lot of people, I found Edward de Bono’s presentation at SETT 2006, a bit disappointing. So I went along to the Feuerstein training with an open, but not uncritical mind. Some people might find the language initially off-putting. What was 'Instrumental Enrichment’(IE)? Was there actually a place called ‘The Instrumental Centre for the Enhancement of Learning Potential’?

It soon became clear to me that the terminology is used deliberately and with care. The course itself recommends that we use the correct terms with children when teaching them about the thinking processes. Why? I think it’s because language itself provides much of the route to improved thinking. When we know how to express what we are doing in an accurate and precise way we are much more able to translate that action into another setting.

So far, so good. I am now pretty excited about the next block of the course which takes place in two weeks time. Our trainer on this block of the course was Billy O’Neill. Billy is an excellent teacher and the Director of Scotland’s only Feuerstein Authorised Training Centre. Billy taught in Scottish schools for over twenty years, so his enthusiastic endorsement of Feuerstein's methods is backed up with teaching experience and nous. Interestingly his training centre's website contains a diagram showing the links between Instrumental Enrichment (IE) and AiFL, A Curriculum for Excellence and PLPs (Personal Learning Plans)

Feuerstein’s courses are based on his sustained research and work over the last 50 years in Israel. I wonder how many of the ‘thinking skills’ programmes we are investigating in Scotland owe their theories to this research and practice?

I understand that teachers in Scottish Borders have taken up IE training recently. The Future Learning and Teaching Programme (FLaT) produced a very positive Evaluation on this initiative. I’d love to hear from any Borders teachers who have used IE, and indeed any other teachers with experience of the programme.

Phase Two of GLOW

2007-04-17T21:19:00.000Z

Phase Two of GLOW

I’m delighted to say that, thanks to Tess Watson I got the chance to have a look at GLOW from inside the trial, yesterday and tonight. Of course my webcam refused to work. Probably thought the sight of me, at that time of night, first day back was not advisable.

It’s easy to see how this sort of thing would work with pupils. They already are more comfortable in front of a screen. It struck me that it would also solve the problems that come from standing at the front of the class trying to keep their attention by the sheer power of personality. Actually that’s one part of my teaching that I don’t enjoy very much –what they call being the ‘sage on the stage’. In my case it’s more the midget with the widget (I’m five foot high and use my whiteboard control liberally). How much more civilised to be interacting online.

An important thing which struck me about the video conference was how relaxed people were when things didn’t quite work out. It seems to me that GLOW will move forward roughly at the same rate as the teachers who get involved with it. A lot of them will have to overcome the feeling of apprehension that new technology can create. And the best place to do that will be in a laid-back environment where mistakes are allowed.

I think most teachers would be pleasantly surprised at the atmosphere that I experienced in GLOW. It was nice sitting at the back of the class, just listening too.

Technology isn't always an improvement

2007-04-06T10:22:00.000Z

I’m not a technophobe. But I do find myself from time to time in sympathy with the ‘Technology is not progress’ brigade. Some of it probably stems from the frustration that comes from the glitches or bugs that seem to plague computers.

Some of it is… something else. Example -You want to print up a little note to go on the door of your classroom, informing pupils that you have moved class. You misjudge the font size and print it off, only to find that ‘Mrs O’Neill’ has been split between two lines and become ‘Mrs One Ill’. You change the font and print it off again, feeling guilty about the amount of ink you have now used. Second time around the destination of your new class is now inexplicably $$£. Third time lucky? No. The printer, exhausted by those large letters, blinks stupidly at you that it is out of toner.

You ask yourself why you didn’t just lift up a felt –tip pen and write the message on a piece of scrap paper. The felt tip pen might have run out, but could have been replaced in a matter of seconds. You are unlikely to misspell your name- the tablets are working today – and you are fairly competent at block capitals.

Tell me that your heart doesn’t sink when someone says ‘ We’ve just been computerised’ or ‘I’m sure I saved it’ or ‘ It will just take a moment on the computer’.

Slow, quick, quick, slow: wikis

2007-03-24T19:42:00.000Z

Wikiwiki’ is Hawaiian for ‘quick’. ‘Quick’ is not a word I associate with computers.

Nevertheless, recently I started a wiki with my S2 class. They are supposed to be doing a unit on functional writing. A standard sort of task might be to write an information leaflet on a local attraction. Instead we are using the wiki to write about Internet Safety. So far, we are moving quite slowly. I have had moments when I have wondered whether this might not be a mistake. Poor sentence construction and bad spelling look even worse online.

Yesterday I had my Eureka moment. I was thinking, rather dolefully, about the amount of editing we do, for what seems like a little return. The pupils whilst enthusiastic in class, go off task quite quickly.

The wiki lets me know when someone is editing a page, and what they changed. Better still, the pupils themselves can see the editing that is going on.

A new editor- I'm adding them one at a time - had put up her page and I showed it to the class on the whiteboard. I then showed them the history of her editing. The page displays the old words highlighted in red, the new in green. The class looked at it carefully and ploughed their way through her edits. Finally I put up her edited page, which looked great.

A wave of spontaneous applause swept across the class.

Hard work doesn't always get rewarded like that.

Wiki whoo!

Am I boring you?

2007-03-10T13:29:00.000Z

Vicki Davis blogged recently about a story that she had seen on another teacher's blog, concerning a Canadian pupil getting into trouble for writing an essay about being bored. According to a local newspaper the pupil was not allowed to deliver his essay in front of the class, because the school deemed it to be disrespectful to a teacher. Here's the original story as reported in a local paper.

I was interested in the story for a variety of reasons, not least, because like most teachers I think a lot about how to teach in an engaging way and get disheartened if I think I'm being boring.

Also, right now, in school, I have my S3 (14 year olds) writing a persuasive essay on the future of education and have asked them to look at what they think helps pupils get involved at school. A lot of them are looking at the link between boredom and bad behaviour :) Interesting reading.

I should also confess that I wrote an essay when I was in S3 complaining about boredom which ended up with me in the deputy headteacher’s office. And, no she wasn't delighted with my wit and perspicacity.

I like the comments that this blogging teacher made - ‘Teaching students how to deal with boredom is teaching them a life skill. They think they are bored now-just wait until they hit life outside of school.’ At the same time, as a teacher I am hoping not to provide too many pointers in this area...

In the Canadian story above however, the real issue for me as a teacher, is not about providing pupils with ways to combat boredom, it's about teaching pupils how to critique their world effectively and responsibly. This story after all was not about someone expressing an opinion alone, but about giving the speech in front of a class.

So, the school exercised its judgement and deemed the speech disrespectful to the teacher. They saw the speech, and made a judgement on it. Good for them. Who taught the pupil to write and frame a speech, and gave him the confidence to express his opinion in the first place? Presumably the school. Would they really be doing him a favour failing to teach him about when it is appropriate to use those skills?

Being bored is a complex issue. 'Boring' is code for a lot of things. I know that Pupil X says ‘This is boring!’ because she is finding something difficult to understand. Pupil Y says it because he is trying to get a reaction from me, or as a way of avoiding work. Pupil Z really does find my subject (and me) boring and -sometimes -I will be able to do something about it.

The touchstone I use is ‘Do I find this boring?’ because if I do I will certainly find it difficult to create enthusiasm. If I have to teach something uninspiring, I try to find ways to make it more interesting to myself first.

Why did I write my ‘this is boring’ essay in third year. I was bored. But not for long…

Jock Bauer

2007-03-04T10:52:00.000Z

Last night when we were eating dinner our power failed. The computer in the kitchen shut down, the CD player went quiet and the fridge shuddered, then stopped making that low, bubbling sound. Power cuts aren’t that unusual in this neck of the woods, so we lit some candles and finished the rest of our meal.

The weekend had started rather inauspiciously with a car crash. On the way home from school, a landrover sailed out of a side road, hit my car on the passenger side and sent me swerving off into a railed fence. I was fine. Not injured, but shaken. My car was not so good.

Then the ‘stuff’ started. If you’ve been through it recently you’ll know what I mean. ‘Phone calls, breakdown trucks, insurance details, complicated re-scheduling and so on…

So last night’s power cut was a pause in a frantic 24 hours. Not quite Jack Bauer, but a Wigtownshire version of it.

It was funny, but it seemed like the first real moment of silence in a long time. And even when we had some electricity restored, we still kept the candles lit and tiptoed about. Later we watched the lunar eclipse and managed one photograph, before our digital camera announced it was out of power.

But that was okay, because so were we.

Handwriting and Keyboarding

2007-02-22T19:02:00.000Z

Every week I download the latest podcast from Women of Web 2 (WOW2). They have a weekly chat, Tuesdays at 9pm EST. That's the middle of the night our time so I haven’t heard one live yet. I missed the first one, called ‘Keyboarding’. It didn't sound very appealing. I couldn’t imagine how they could chat about that for a whole hour.

However, I’ve come to trust those podcasts to set me thinking about things, so I duly downloaded and listened to ‘Keyboarding’.

I am the sort of teacher who writes ‘Your target is handwriting! Present your work with more care.’ For years I’ve heard people say that typing will supersede handwriting. I’ve not been convinced. I’ve got loads of stories of disasters that all hinged on a piece of bad handwriting: doctor’s prescriptions, military coups, and NASA operations…

The chat on the podcast was discussing how important it was for schools to teach children correct keyboarding skills. They discussed the amount of sustained time children need to become proficient. They assumed that this would be necessary for all children. They weren’t advocating doing away with teaching handwriting, just seeing typing (or keyboarding) as the NEXT natural step.

I had a sort of brain freeze over the idea. Concentrate more on typing? Learn how to use the QWERTY keyboard properly? Yes, fine for people who will need that in the future. And that would be? Oops. Everyone.

What about handwriting? How often in the adult world of work do we actually rely on our handwriting? I can think of several occasions when it is nicer and perceived as ‘more caring’ to handwrite: birthday cards, a personal note at the end of a typed letter, a comment. But for anything of length, especially if we require to edit it, I think typing wins hands down.

If pupils typed efficiently, they could do all their work online. And think of the paper we would save.

Good grief. Next I will be (gulp) reading books online.

2007-02-15T19:07:00.000Z

Can education really be fun?

I’ve been reading, and pondering Ewan’s post about bringing games and fun into secondary education. Can we really bring play into the main part of our teaching? Play, by definition, seems to be what we do when work is done.

It’s true that if we can add an element of fun to our teaching, things go more smoothly. On the very simplest level, announcing that we will play a game when this activity is over, frequently galvanises even the most lethargic pupil into action.

But games aren’t just about competition. What exactly are they? What is play?

Play is pretending. It’s about trying something out, free from the anxiety that what you do will have a permanent effect. Children play naturally. They play at schools, at work, at being grown ups.

Play and failure really are closely related. Play gives you the permission to fail without there being disastrous consequences.

This is why, when we want to give ‘authentic’ experiences to children, we need to take care that this constitutes a risk which adds excitement, and is carefully structured to maximise success. We choose tasks which we know they can achieve, but won’t necessarily achieve immediately.

There is a tension between school and the real world. And there is a tension between play and real. But tension provides a wonderfully elastic basis for some really brilliant bungee jumps!

How can we use this in education?

Persuasion

2007-02-08T20:32:00.000Z

'Knowing the price of everything, the value of nothing'

That’s my grandmother talking about young people. And it’s one of the reasons I am a teacher. I want to teach the value or importance of things not just the ‘prices’ or facts about them.

Wanting to be a better teacher led me to blogging. I see young people using new technologies with enthusiasm and I want to use them in my teaching. Of course I’ve realised that this stuff might come naturally to them, but not to me. Apparently they are, according to Marc Prensky digital natives. And I am a digital immigrant.

I’ve got an immigrant’s technological ‘accent’.

‘There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email… needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL).'

Well, I’m a tiny bit more fluent than that, thanks to my recent forays into technology.

I’m learning too. The way we teach will have to change. Some of the skills we were taught just don’t fit any more. Remember all that stuff we were taught about how to study –‘find a quiet place’ etc? Well the natives don’t need that. Nor do they like waiting to receive information. They expect to be able to get the information immediately.

But they need us to help them develop critical thinking skills, so that they can process the stream of information that pours through their lives. And they do need our affirmation and encouragement as they face the bewildering world of today.

I am scheduled to teach Jane Austen’s novels Persuasion and Emma, to a group of seventeen year old boys. My colleagues are slightly amused by my predicament. When the class was planned, it was mixed, larger and well, distant.
The lads are bright. But how on earth do you convey the world of Emma, whose sister ‘though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily reach’?

I’ve had an idea: I’ve given each pupil in the class the task of presenting, via any media they like, one background aspect to the novels of Austen. I have promised to film and publish online their efforts. Watch this space.

How to motivate learners

2007-02-02T09:24:00.000Z

Sometimes when I am getting obsessive about something, like the missing apostrophe or whether or not I should just accept the US spelling of colour, I think about Stevie.

Stevie is a freelance safety instructor. And he can’t afford to be irrelevant to his classes. Right now, he is in Iceland giving training to workers on a large construction site. He has been contracted to train operators on the safe use of their MEWPs. MEWPs are Mobile Elevated Work Platforms, not, as you were imagining, Pokemon characters.

Safety training has its challenges. A large number of the trainees don’t speak English -or Glaswegian- which is Stevie’s chosen tongue.

It’s crucial however that they meet the learning objective.

Stevie uses a combination of Powerpoint, video and pictures via a laptop to teach. He builds on prior knowledge, and is not averse to photographing any potential problems on site to help get his message across.

The learners need the qualification to be licensed to work, but first they must pass a theory test and a practical exam. Instructors can license them within one day, so that trainees can have proof immediately that they have been trained. Hence the primary motivation for learning.

Safety instructors have to be accountable in a way that focuses the teaching mind wonderfully. Their instructions might mean the difference between life and death. The practical class involves kinaesthetic learning. How will I know if you have understood the learning objective? You will show me. The big picture is 'You will be safe at work'. Activating this level of motivation should be easy, but isn't always.

Conditions can be unkind. As Stevie says, when we last talked ‘The temperature today was minus 28 degrees. And the last thing you want to do is go outside to 20 metres and work on a platform.’ I decide not to share my story of the leaky radiator.

Stevie’s a member of IPAF. Their website is, well, quite serious as you might expect. But it has a interesting page called ‘The Rogues Gallery’ showing some of the mistakes that no doubt contribute to the truly awful safety record of the construction industry.

I’m sorry to say some of the acrobatics will look horribly familiar to anyone whose school recently had its windows cleaned.

If you know anyone with MEWPs, Stevie's your man. I am his big sister.

sjmtraining@ntlworld.com

School - Passing this way one time only

2007-01-24T21:12:00.000Z

Every now and again I am struck by the enormity of what we are doing as teachers.

Recently I read a story in class, where a man goes to prison for stealing. His son is unwittingly responsible for drawing his father to the attention of the police. This leads to a conviction and imprisonment. My class had a lively debate on the subject of how much the boy was to blame.

In the course of our discussion, I had to quickly discourage pupils from talking about actual situations. At a certain point I became aware that I had, in my class; children whose parents were involved in the judicial system at several levels: policing, legal or social work; children who had relatives who had been in prison; children who had seen neighbours cope with family members being in prison; children who had never thought about the impact of prison on a family. The views of these different groups were on show, and being articulated in a lively, and surprisingly compassionate debate.

At what other time would people of these varied viewpoints be put together in such a setting? When again in their lives will these pupils be in quite the same situation? When else will they spend regular time getting the opportunity to discuss these issues within the safety of this unique environment? When will they ever have so much in common again?

It’s an enormous responsibility. It’s true that we are not the only source of direction for these pupils. It’s true, that the families they come from will impact them on a deeper level. But it is a responsibility nevertheless.

We’ve got the world in our classrooms. Are we up to it?

Headteacher Wanted

2007-01-17T21:27:00.000Z

Our school needs a new headteacher. The post was advertised in December, but staff were informed today that the post was being re-advertised due to a lack of applications. Our local newspaper obligingly informed the community that there had been ‘only one’ application.

According to several different sources, it is getting more difficult to recruit headteachers. Browsing around the internet, I found several articles -dating back over the last few years -talking about the crisis in recruitment.

This year-old article from the Scotsman, informs us that half the existing heads are set to retire over the next five years. Our director of education, Fraser Sanderson, is quoted as saying "People are looking at the job and saying, 'I can live happily without that'. It's the workload, pressure, accountability."

I can well imagine being a head teacher is stressful. Do other fields have the same sort of problem enticing people into leadership? If it’s peculiar to education, is it global? And why?

This article from the Guardian looks at some of the questions we might raise.
Should headteachers necessarily be older teachers? Might they be younger? Do they
even have to be teachers?

I’d love to know, what sort of lateral thinking is going on about this situation. Is the model that is being used wrong? What qualities do you look for in a headteacher?

You may have to give up the day job

2007-01-13T11:06:00.000Z

Excuses pupils give for not doing homework are fairly predictable. It helps being a parent as well as a teacher, because you get to witness at first hand some of the peculiar manoeuvres students will embark on to avoid doing things.

‘Of course you can wash my car, but haven’t you got homework?’

Recently I have become aware of another kind of excuse coming from senior pupils.
‘Sorry miss, but I was working all weekend.’

My instincts tell me that this sort of excuse, when genuine, should be handled with a little more care than my normal ‘not good enough’ face.

It’s difficult not to be impressed with pupils who are willing to work at anything. This is especially the case when you’ve just had a ‘demented ringmaster’ lesson with 3B. You know, that lesson where you seem to be running round strategically placing fireworks. (I was struck by psychologist Alan McLean's thoughts at an INSET day on schools ‘being places where young people come to watch old people work.’ You can read an overview of his take on motivation here.)

I started getting a bit concerned about the jobs issue, round about the middle of last term. My thoughts crystallised when a number of pupils came back to school exhausted after the holidays. All night parties? Probably. But for many of them the reason they are exhausted is much simpler; they’ve been working. On farms, in hotels and supermarkets, in local restaurants and shops, they’ve been taking on hours that would tax most adults.

Holiday jobs are fine. Term-time a few hours a week can work. But when your senior school candidates are looking decidedly lack-lustre and missing classes so that they ‘can sleep’, things are not good.

I hope this settles down as we head towards our prelims.

This is the sort of area which might be worth discussing in the light of the present movement towards curricular reform - A Curriculum for Excellence. How do we balance the positive value of these experiences which help our young people become ‘confident individuals’ with the continued enthusiasm and wisdom they will need to become successful (lifelong) learners?

It has to be more than just frowning on their jobs as ‘interfering ‘ with school. That interaction with the wider world can change priorities and sow the seeds of ambition and hope in young people. It might involve discussions on work-life balance and thinking long-term about decisions. As teachers and parents we need to examine their motivation to work and ask ourselves why school might have failed, so far, to activate it.

Is this happening where you are?

What is blogging?

2007-01-03T20:37:00.000Z

A few posts ago when I was complaining about not understanding technical people’s explanations, I fantasised about ‘dictating our blog’. I saw myself released from the horrid technology by some computer which did exactly as it was told.

Recently a pupil drew my attention to an article describing a new(er) voice recognition tool from Nuance Communication called Dragon Naturally Speaking. The software according to the makers will ‘make blogging easier and faster’. Bloggers are being invited to try out the voice versus typing test.

Being contrary, I read it and realised that I didn’t want to ‘dictate’ my blog after all. Yes, I would like to not worry about the html and so on, but I actually like writing my blog.

I think the blogging writing process is something special.

I thought writing a blog would be like keeping a diary. It isn’t, because this diary talks back. Which is wonderful. I also thought that it might be like writing little articles, but it isn’t because so often the thing you are writing about is still percolating away in your mind and not set in stone.

It’s true I am having to work very hard at understanding the technology. But it is starting to look a little bit less hazy. The gulf between me and the techies is getting smaller. I can actually hear them talking to each other. I am beginning to pick out words which mean things…

Gosh. All because of a blog.

What do you think blogging actually is?

Five things you don't know about me

2006-12-30T13:50:00.000Z

I prefer reading blogs that have a point to them, or a mutual interest. But from time to time I do wonder a bit about the person behind the blog. So, I've been rather intrigued to see people asking other bloggers to write down 'five things you don't know about me'. Tess Watson has asked me to take part. So here goes:

1. I was named after my grandmother Elizabeth Grant Neeson (nee Davidson) who was born on the same Highland Estate as the Elizabeth Grant who wrote ‘Memoirs of a Highland Lady’.

2. When I was 18 I saw the great Ginger Rogers, in a musical review called ‘Anything Goes’ in Detroit, Michigan.

3. I met my future husband when I was sixteen -at a prayer meeting. We disliked each other instantly. We met three years later, by which time he had improved enormously.

4. In 1998 we adopted our youngest son (Jerry) from the Philippines.

5. I persuaded my oldest son Sean David (known as Sid) to start his own blog recently.

I'm not sure if they have been tagged already but I'm going to tag:

Neil
David Gilmour
Mrs Blethers
guineapigmum
Andrew Brown

Trials of a NVT (Not Very Technical) Teacher

2006-12-26T11:10:00.000Z

Oldest son is home from uni. He’s busy on his laptop writing an email whilst having conversations with several people via some form of instant messaging (the names change just as I get the hang of them. Meebo? Peepo? Don’t know).

Out of the corner of his eye he is watching me trying unsuccessfully to upload files to my new mp3 player. I can’t work out how to change the settings. He leans over in mid typing rattle, presses a button, and suddenly it’s working. I stare at him aghast.

‘What did you do there?’

He shakes his head.

‘You just try out things.’

He sees it as a game.

He doesn’t read manuals. He can only show me what he does by doing it. He approaches technology with a spirit of 'now-what-happens-if-you-click-that-and-then-that-mmm-interesting’.

Me? I approach it like a soufflé in the oven, which must not feel the slightest cool air current or it will be RUINED.

Why? I think it’s because that’s how I was taught. By uptight people to uptight people. You might BREAK something. You might make a MISTAKE. You might DELETE something. Younger people don’t have this technology anxiety.

On the other hand this might explain why my mp3 player ‘support’ website was totally useless to me. It was cluttered up with troubleshooting information. I haven’t learnt how to get into trouble yet. But I'm getting there...

Jings! Crivvens! Help ma blog!

2006-12-17T13:20:00.000Z

Sorry about the title, but we're getting really excited about Christmas here in the O'Neill house, and reading our new 'The Broons' annual is a big part of that. If you are bewildered by this, you might want to click here

We're happy to report that here in Wigtownshire a lot of those words that your granny used are still alive and well. When we moved here we re-discovered some of them. Children are amazing copycats. Our son, aged seven at that point, had just perfected his London accent -we'd spent a couple of years down south. A week in a local primary school and he was coming 'hame' from school asking for 'twa' biscuits. We bought him 'The Broons' to improve his vocabulary.

Anyway it's great to hear these words and ponder on the versatility of language in our culture, which allows us to dip into both English and our shared Scots wordbank. It also gets me thinking about our presence online. Will we be able to sustain our identity in global conversations? Do we want to?

Does a Scots blog have a Scottish accent? I'm not talking about dropping in those 'wee' Scotticisms. I'm thinking more about viewpoint, philosophy, and yes, language.

What does it mean to be Scottish? The BBC reported last May on a survey carried out by the Scottish Centre for Social Research at Edinburgh University.

Read it here.

It does seem to suggest that language, and specifically accent, holds the key to identity in most people's eyes. It gives me one concern: what about those people who come to Scotland, enrich our lives, but don't pick up our accent? Will they never be part of us?

Maybe we should be handing out more copies of 'The Broons' and 'Oor Wullie'.

Ideas to chew on

2006-12-15T16:55:00.000Z

If you could make three changes in your (old) school, what would they be?

Here's three ideas I thought up this morning:

1. Begin the school day an hour earlier. Make the final hour voluntary classes that pupils have to sign up for giving a reason why they wanted to take part. These could be vocational or study based.

2. Develop links with other schools that pay more than lip service to the idea. Each school should have a genuine exchange programme that would allow pupils and staff to spend time in the other school.

3. Have schools nominate a key 'value' or virtue or strength, which they will focus on. Put it on their blazers ( or sweatshirts...) Reward schools that do this with imagination and commitment.

What do you think of these ideas? Got any of your own?

The Secret Knowledge

2006-12-08T18:41:00.000Z

I have to post this because it's coming up again and again, especially when talking to other people about the Internet. A long time ago when I first discovered email (1995 -yes, child there were computers in those days) I also discovered 'the secret'. What is the secret? Well, it goes like this:

I am an IT person. I get it. You don't.

I am not especially good at IT. In fact, to be honest, the odd way that you have to write in code (HTML) in order to, say, put a link on your web page fills me with horror. I look forward to saying in the future: 'Yes, in those days, you won't believe it, but we had to write a special instruction around the words we wanted to link with!'

In the future we will simply speak aloud to our computers when we are dictating our blog. 'Italic...cease italic' or 'Put in the link' and 'Choose image, something with clouds and a little flower, pink, no purple.'

In the meantime, why don't computer literate people stop showing off and start talking plain English? I think that's one of the reasons a lot of teachers are put off blogging. They sense that it involves secrets that they will not find easily accessible. And to be honest, they get enough 'trying to guess the right answer' at school.

Do you feel kept out of the secret knowledge? Let's talk about it!

What's next?

2006-12-02T16:31:00.000Z

The Seattle Times reported last month on a grant given to the Bellevue School district (Washington) to allow them to put their entire curriculum online.Read the article

According to the Times , 'The grant ... will develop the district Web site to help teachers build and share lesson plans and ideas and help parents stay on top of what their children are being taught'.

The current Bellevue School District Curriculum Web already gives detailed information about what is being taught at each level. But the long term plan, according to the executive director of the school district, is to have everything a child is doing at school available to parents. This would mean for example, 'a parent who has a child who comes home baffled about a lesson plan can log on to the site and look to see what the student was supposed to learn that day.' There would even be 'the possibility for the child to watch the lesson again'.

Teachers from other districts (countries?) would also be invited to the 'wikipedia' like site, to log on and offer their insights and practice.

Do you like the sound of this level of openness?

Please comment.

Can you contact the school please?

2006-12-02T11:10:00.000Z

A few years ago a request to contact the school meant either your child was sick or an INCIDENT had occurred which the school could not keep to themselves.

Either way it was bad news.

This week I was accused, as a teacher, of not wanting to return the phone calls of a parent. The reality was that I thought I was having a dialogue with the parent via the pupil. The pupil was passing on a message from her mother 'that she wasn't available this week.'

I should have seen that one coming, but had a daft idea that this pupil would respond better if involved in the process.

One of things which I have re-learnt from this, is that the conduit we use for communication, normally the pupils, isn't always the right one.

Scenes of child at kitchen table with strong light being shone in his face.

‘But who exactly said that?'
‘I don’t know –maybe it was George.’
‘MISTER George the headteacher? Or George your wee pal?’
‘I can’t remember, but we have to have it in for tomorrow.’

Well, I am exaggerating. Schools send home letters. Good parents remember to dismantle the school bag each evening in search of them. Don’t throw anything away, that scrunched up paper inside a banana skin might just be the news that Friday’s fun day has been cancelled, and your child should not now arrive dressed as a character from a book. (I speak from bitter experience.)

Maybe it’s just my children. Girls apparently are much better at relating news.

I’m interested in things that help communication. What works? Some schools have websites. Would it be a good idea if parents could email teachers?

What about Glow –this is the new intranet which is being piloted by teachers like Tess Watson. To quote the website ‘Glow is the new name for the Scottish Schools Digital Network, the national intranet which will link Scottish education safely and securely’. On the GLOW site there is a scenario of how it might be used by parents. Check it out if you are interested.

In the meantime, aforementioned parent and I did meet up and had a good talk about our mutual interest -doing our best for this child.

Is school a window on the world?

2006-11-27T00:24:00.000Z

On a previous post Tony suggested I do some sort of survey on what young people think education is. Ask pupils what they think they are doing at school and I am sure they would say things like ' to learn stuff' or if they are older, 'to get qualifications'. They have a pretty good idea why they are there.

Or have they?

If you are a teacher, or at school, or in education, do you think that schools (and colleges and universities) are giving pupils what they should be? What do you think they should be doing?

Have you learnt anything at school which you think was a waste of time?

Just to start the ball rolling... I had an interesting conversation with one of my classes recently on something that was never (to my memory) broached when I was at school: money. In the course of discussing a character in a novel, we ended up talking about debt, and someone asked what a mortgage was. I couldn't help noticing the interest that was stirred up by this question.

I know schools provide some Financial education. I've taught it in a Social and Vocational Skills (SVS) class. It comes under the heading of 'life skills'. I can imagine it being a small part of several subjects. I wonder whether it -and other skills like it - should be given greater prominence in our curriculum.

What do you think? Do we need more of this sort of education for real life? Or would that be too functional an approach to education? Are some sorts of knowledge more important than others?

Please comment.

What a difference a decent book makes: Buddy

2006-11-22T20:08:00.000Z

Just have to post about my current experiences in teaching English using the novel 'Buddy' by Nigel Hinton. We use 'Buddy' with s2 -and I think I can safely say that all of the teachers in our department enjoy teaching it.

The story is set in the UK -and although it was published a while ago it manages to remain up-to-date and interesting for our pupils.

'Buddy' has a great central character, and looks at themes like racism, family breakdown and teenage anxiety in a sympathetic, but thought-provoking way.

'Buddy' also provides a way into the whole issue of parenting and fatherhood -which, to my mind anyway, doesn't really get enough coverage in a secondary school!

Buddy's dad, Terry, is a 'teddy boy' who uses the music of Buddy Holly and his era to communicate. His character develops alongside that of Buddy. The kids love it! It's the sort of book you have to count back in at the end of each lesson, as they are always sneaking it home to read it...

Nigel Hinton has a website (www.nigelhinton.net) with some useful background to his work on it.

Finally, there is a brilliant TV series which goes along with the book. I hope that the BBC run it again. Email Nigel Hinton via his site for details of how to get a DVD of the series should you require it. Our school copy has been used so often it's starting to sag a little.

Do you have a red pen?

2006-11-20T19:55:00.000Z

Hannah (2nd Year B.Ed student) commenting on my last post about apostrophes, said that she had recently been taught about the (presumably negative) effect of using red pen all over a pupil's work. She was looking at it in the context of teaching grammar.

One of the good things about AifL is the emphasis on being more directive in our comments. Put simply: you did this well -and to improve that, try a little of this . Target marking or 'comment only' marking helps get away from that disheartening 'not good enough' or 'try harder' type of response that doesn't really help a pupil improve.

If anything, I find I am using more red pen than ever -because I am entering into a kind of dialogue with my students about their work. Granted, I have had to explain that the red pen is A GOOD THING. I hope they are getting it! I try to encourage them to write back to me about my comments. Using red pen helps me find my comments, and maintain some sort of consistency.

There is something about this whole issue of 'not upsetting a pupil's confidence by pointing out their mistakes' that bothers me. I think we are passing on to them our own fear of making a mistake- when the reality is that learning moves forward through mistakes. I would rather a piece of writing full of mistakes and possibilities than one with no mistakes and no soul.

I like showing my pupils the writing notes of some poets e.g Wilfred Owen. His first draft is full of re-writes and scoring out.

I hope my red pen is 'The red pen of Creativity' rather than 'The red pen of Wrong'. But I also think we need to teach our pupils that it's okay to make mistakes.

This blog is in part my own attempt at putting my money where my mouth is - I started it knowing I would make mistakes at times -and fearing that the technology would be beyond me. It is! But I am learning...

I think the apostrophe is beginning to mutate

2006-11-17T17:19:00.000Z

Don't want to sound too pedantic, but what's happening to the apostrophe these days? I find myself giving constant speeches to kids about it. I also find myself talking more and more about it, as if it were some sort of animal facing extinction.

I admit I find its presence in my surname a bit spooky at times. I have almost given up using it online because it almost always gets rejected. It causes all sorts of strange stuff to happen.

Should it be removed? Is there a point in punctuation?

This week I had an odd apostrophe moment:

I was marking the jotters of one class. I couldn't help notice the dearth of apostrophes. They just didn't feature in this class consciousness. Where were they? Had they crept silently out of their jotters?

It scared me a little. Then I found them. They were lurking in groups in the next set of jotters I picked up -different year group, different homework. Gathered in group's around letter's and sentence's. Picking on 'it's' whenever they appeared.

It's worrying me. Is the apostrophe mutating? Is it... alive?

Why are they blocking blogs at school?

2006-11-13T20:06:00.000Z

There seems to be a lot of talk right now about internet sites that are being blocked by schools. The fact is, I can't access my blog from school. Right now that isn't a hardship. But if I wanted to begin using it with my classes I'd be in trouble.

I'm interested to know what people think about the current situation in school. I find it really irritating when that great site I saw at home, and want to draw to the attention of my colleagues or pupils is blocked by an unintelligent filter.

For example, today the site of an author whose books are being studied by my S2 was forbidden to me. I've been on the site at home and found it educational and entirely suitable. The essay on muslim women wearing veils, which my S5 are just completing would have been a lot easier to discuss through various blocked sites, and the art work I wanted to show another class who are writing 'poetry provoked by images' was classed as forbidden.

I'm not against censorship, and I appreciate there are difficulties in fine tuning this stuff. But come on, can't we do better than this? Is it really impossible to have a better system of content filtration?

The art of Creative Writing: new competition

2006-11-10T19:54:00.000Z

Ever since Miss Fisher (P4) got us to write a story 'about something scary' I've been fascinated by creative writing. Funnily enough my story involved a man giving a speech. Some people do find that scary. Miss Fisher had a problem with my description of the man 'throwing his arms and his words out towards the audience'. Later on I discovered that this odd manoeuvre was called a zeugma. I also discovered that I am probably more intrigued by the process of writing about something, than the actual outcome. In other words I should be an English teacher...

However, like a lot of people, I make up little stories all the time in my head.

Look at the photograph above. What does it you think of?

A withered leaf from a single rose that has been thrown away by someone perhaps...

For the less imaginative or more scientific perhaps you're thinking of Gardener's Question Time: what is that fungus called?

Anyway I came across this competition which might be fun:
Creative Writing Competition.
The competition is open to everyone, and simply requires that you write a short poem or piece of prose in not more than about 1,000 words inspired by a piece of art, taken from the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland . You can view many of the works online at their site.

Prizes? Well it's art for art's sake, the prize being free entry to all National Galleries exhibitions for two people for one year. The winner also gets published in the Scotsman newspaper.

I am happy to read over anyone's ideas, and make encouraging sounds.

Oh, go on. You know you want to...

Are your parents interested in your blog?

2006-11-08T10:52:00.000Z

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Recently Ewan McIntosh made some very interesting comments on how little many parents know of their children's online experiences. You can read his post here:http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2006/10/internet_and_so.htmlIt got me thinking about how young people would feel about letting their parents look at their blog or their page/website. I'm struck by pupils who think that the stuff they publish on the net is actually private. Let's face it, complete strangers are reading it, so it's not exactly like that diary you used to keep under your bed...I'm going to do a survey with my nieces and nephews -incredibly bright and fascinating, talented group, so not exactly typical. Would you mind your parents looking at your site?

2006-11-08T10:50:00.000Z

Friday, October 27, 2006

I've been trying to a few more education blogs and have found some which seem really exciting. I really like it when there is a link to another site which tells you more.For weeks now Jerry has been talking about putting mints into a bottle of coke and causing it to fizz up. I wasn't sure if this was more of his high jinks in the park with his pals -last month they got a free biology lesson by dissecting a dead frog they found...Then I came across Tess Watson's site and discovered what science teachers are getting up to nowadays. Have a look at her mentos and coke podcast!http://tesswatson.blogspot.com/

2006-11-08T10:48:00.000Z

Thursday, October 26, 2006

This is the view we have from our upper floor front window. It's the sky which is most magnificent. But if you look carefully you can see Drummore primary school in the very bottom of the shot, and Luce Bay to the left. Lovely isn't it?One of the nicest things for us - we moved to Drummore three years ago- has been seeing Jerry, our youngest son, go to a rural primary school. Unlike city schools, where kids jostle with one another in tiny concrete squares, Jerry and his pals have loads of playground space.Another nice thing has been the location. Here in the Rhins we can regularly see views which make you feel as if you are on holiday. Of course you aren't on holiday... much.

2006-11-08T10:46:00.000Z

Friday, October 20, 2006

We've returned to Drummore after a visit to the Big Smoke (aka -our son Sid, who lives in Glasgow).I'm glad to be back, even although the house looks like there's been some sort of 'dirty bomb' exploded in it.Starting to think about how exactly I can use blogging in my classrooms. How will pupils respond? In order to test this out I have invited SD to join my blog, whatever that means.Now I shall post something with a vague reference to English teaching and see if he comments on it.How about this: Is it time to bring back the interrobang!? That's a cool new punctuation symbol invented a few decades ago, and sadly not able to sustain its initial popularity. It looks like a cross between the question mark and the exclamation mark. Unfortunately my keyboard doesn't support its existence.It's intended to be used when both an exclamation mark and a question mark might be used.For example: How strange was that (interrobang)Is it time for a revival. Comments please subscriber(s).

2006-11-08T10:45:00.000Z

I've been reading other peoples' blogs for a few weeks now. I find it fascinating how many teachers are posting. Had a wee look at Bebo with Sid today.Why do people blog? Why do they have their own websites and pages?I think it must be something to do with our need to communicate.Does make me wonder if modern life has suppressed our ability to talk about life -and all this blogging and posting is a response to that.How obsessive do you have to be to run a blog? The first time I heard about it I thought it sounded sort of narcissistic and well... sad. But I've found blogs make good reading.The styles are different. Some bloggers sound thoughtful and considered. Some are 'knee jerk' reactors. Some are strident, some are apologetic.My question for today is: Do the comments other people write actually change the opinions of the bloggers? In other words is a blog an un- dramatic monologue or a genuine attempt at dialogue?What do you think?

Mrs O'Neill dips her toe into blog water

2006-11-08T10:40:00.000Z

I've been interested in the possibility of blogging for some time. I like using email. And I like the idea of keeping a diary.
I'm also enthusiastic about the possibilities of using blogging at school.
This blog will have the following areas of focus:
Teaching English
AifL
Of course that will give me plenty of scope to talk about everything!