Lessons from an Okay Teacher

  Back in the Olden Days   - pre internet, mobile phones that were the size of small dogs, no OFSTED (!), no league tables – there were teaching degrees for budding primary school teachers that were four years long. Four years!   Can you imagine that now?   There wasn’t a crisis of recruitment at that time so I guess the profession could take its time and get us properly prepared for the rigours of school. Anyway, there’s a photo of my graduating year from that time and it shows about 80 of us standing looking very pleased with ourselves.   Nine of us are male. Why do I mention this?   Well, the gender imbalance in the teaching profession is, yet again, in the news with some people who are ‘experts’ in the field saying that there needs to be more men in teaching and that it would give male students a role model to look up to so that the pernicious influence of the online misogyny sites will be less impactful. Sounds reasonable, right?   The...

    I have, and this is confession time, been a fan of the England Football Team since I was a small child* which has meant that I have seen them win absolutely nothing for 50 years.   Recently, been a bit close of course.   But for most of that period the team were rubbish with the odd game where something brilliant happened. Anyway, we were rubbish.   And after each early tournament exit the media would immediately set out at determining exactly who was to blame for this embarrassment to the nation.   It usually took a few weeks after trying to blame individual players and manager; the clubs; the FA; the coaches and even the wives of the players before everyone settled on exactly to blame for the debacle – schools. It was the fault of schools.   It always is.   Everyone decided that it was the fault of schools for not teaching the proper skills required to win football tournaments. And the focus on football is far far from being the only...

  Being Presumptuous We’re teachers. We studied to be teachers and we learned pedagogy at a place of learning where we were taught how to teach children/young adults* What we didn’t study was how to be a parent.   Of course, there are very few university courses that deal with how to be a parent although   perhaps there should   be.   That’s a debate for another day. Our job as teachers is to accept the students that enter our classrooms (real or virtual) and then we teach them.   We can teach them many different things like how ionic bonding works; how to draw an apple; what 6 times 9 is; the devastating effects of war; how to not sit in a circle, pick your nose and show it to the 5 year old next to you; what a teddy bear’s picnic looks like; how water gets recycled and the whole myriad of other stuff that children should learn about in a school. This is what we do.   And, by and large, we’re very good at it.   We learn to take into a...

  AI has been in the news a lot recently.   And as I sit here looking at some IGCSE coursework that has obviously been done by chatgpt, I find myself pondering just how much education will be affected by what seems to be an unstoppable tide of new technological advances. I think the truth is that we just don’t know.   I did a postgraduate course in Learning Technologies only three and a half years ago and the things we looked at on the course are already out of date because of just how quickly AI has invaded the technological sphere. And in this regard I’m extremely wary of self-appointed Educational Experts in AI given that in order to be an expert in anything surely you have to have studied it for many years, no?   And how long, really, has it been used fully by the teaching profession anyway?   Of course there will be People Who Guess The Future of AI but the technology is so new that there hasn’t been enough time to become expert in it, isn’t that self...

  I’ve worked in both primary and secondary sections of schools, coached in both and tutored both age groups.  I don’t see any problem with working in either but I do know that some of my ex-colleagues have issues with ‘those other lot’ who work within a different age group to them.  Let me share some of the comments that I have heard or been directed at me over the years. The most common one aimed at me as a primary school teacher is “All you lot do is play.”   When I first met my wife it was something that she joked about as it is a common refrain amongst most secondary school teachers who are, let’s face it, rather ignorant of what happens in the primary sector.   I have double checked, triple checked and quadruple checked over the years, and she was joking. She was definitely joking.   She has assured me of this.   Definitely. No doubt at all. Absolutely no doubt.   Unfortunately quite a number of senior school associates have sp...

  The staffroom occupies a special place within any school building, or at least it should do. It should, at its very least be a place of refuge away from the classroom and one of refreshment.   It should contain a fridge, a toaster,   a sink, a decent kettle or water heater, cutlery, a tea towel that no one knows where it came from, some crappy lounge chairs and/or sofas, some plastic chairs, a microwave and a pin board for notices from whichever teaching union are active inside the school. If any school does not have the latter then leave as soon as you can.   It just isn’t a good place to work in. The other objects can be purchased or borrowed or stolen from other locations but the union board is something that just cannot be exchanged for money or favours.   It is a fundamental part of the health of the school because the staffroom is for the staff and not an extension of management meeting areas. And it should be for all of the staff, not just the...