It's that time of year when all the fresh-faced trainee teachers begin to arrive in school. They've enrolled on a PGCE (Post-Graduate Certificate of Education) course having completed a degree and realised that the thousands of pounds they've spent on university tuition fees has given them a qualification that offers little in the way of employment prospects. Unless you want to be a teacher of course.
Before anyone says it, I do realise that employers will look beyond the subject of a qualification if the grade is good and use it as an indication to whether someone is willing to put the time and effort into learning a subject/job, but this assumes that you've got an interview in the first place, and let's be honest if an employer offering a well-paid position was to compare similar degrees in say business studies or maths with that of sociology or anthropology, who do you think would get the interview/job? That's not to say that these subjects don't have some worth in society, but perhaps not in the numbers that universities churn out.
Anyway, I digress. Our new and enthusiastic teachers turn up having had their heads filled by university lecturers course tutors with information that is generally totally outdated and impossible to use in practice; stuff like, "if the class is noisy then just put your hand in the air and they will immediately wonder what you are doing and be quiet" - not only will the blood drain out of your arm but once the class has realised that it's just a ploy to get them quiet they will probably just talk even louder, having told you exactly what they think of you.
I had a trainee teacher in with my worst class yesterday, along with someone who's thinking about becoming a teaching assistant. Now when I say that they are my worst class, that doesn't mean academically, it means behaviorally. And that's not to say that they do anything really bad, they just talk/sleep/do anything other than what they are supposed to do. I'm not too proud to admit that I really don't like teaching them as a group, and that's partly because the formulae (the correct plural of formula, by the way) used to calculate their target grades means that most should be getting B grade, which isn't going to happen, even if it does get a bit parky in hell. Most of them are nice individuals, but a combination of a really dull set of topics (you try making statistics interesting!), a very sociable bunch of kids and one or two total drop-kicks who like disrupting those with a chance of employment in the future has led to a number of unpleasant hours spent in each others' company each week.
When people are in your classroom you do try to put on a bit of a show, but it's impossible with this class. You spend most of your time asking people to turn around and stop chatting/sleeping or asking someone a question where they reply "Don't know, I didn't get it" as a default before having actually read the question until in the end I went ballistic. It's not something you do in front of guests, but I'd had enough. I didn't bother to talk to my guests after the lesson, funnily enough I wasn't in the mood. I don't imagine the PGCE student's university tutor ever mentioned that classes can be that bad, so at least the trainee now knows what to expect I suppose. I'm sure, had the university tutor been there they could have suggested different strategies.
Which reminds me of an incident a few years ago when I was mentoring a trainee teacher at another school. His tutor was coming in and had chosen what looked on paper to be a nice class to observe - set 1. They were however, the worst set 1 you could ever imagine, full of arrogant and less intelligent than they thought they were kids, who looked at staff as if they just scraped them off their shoe. Plus a few autistic/Asperger's children for good measure, whom the horrible kids made fun of. All-in-all, a grotty class. The lesson was very well planned with interactive stuff involving the computer, games and all the other artificial stuff that people plan when they are being observed. It looked great on paper until the computer crashed, Johnny went mental and the class erupted. As an observer you are supposed to do just that: observe. And since it was his crucial one, I couldn't jump in and help. By the end though, some learning had been achieved and the best was made from a bad situation.
And so came feedback time, where I allowed the tutor to go first. She was a frail old thing of around 70 (no exaggeration) and praised the planning whilst sympathising with the technology issues (as if she'd know!). And then came her bombshell: "They were quite lively" she said, "and I felt you could have dealt with that a little better. Next time, may I suggest that you sit the class down and discuss their behaviour with them and get them to come up with their own solutions as to how it could improve." I won't go into my response, suffice to say that subsequent meetings with that tutor were a little frosty.
This is what our universities are teaching young teachers - they are clueless and like Ofsted inspectors, so far removed from real life. Trainee teachers need to know what really goes on in the classroom, not some hypothetical clap-trap that worked in the 1950s when the teacher could always resort the cane if necessary.
The best advice to give to a trainee teacher nowadays: "Get out before you're in too deep".
Teaching's Pod: thoughts on education from an educator
Tuesday 27 September 2011
Wednesday 14 September 2011
Teacher Bashing Season Is Open!
As the schools go back in September, so the non-teaching critics pipe up, usually at the behest of government ministers and their thirst for political points. This year is no different and it's maths teachers who are the focus of the seemingly bad press. I wasn't aware of this until I opened The Sunday Times to page 7 last weekend and saw the following headline: "Number of clueless maths pupils soars". It was accompanied by a picture of "celebrity mathematician" Carol Vorderman and two maths exam questions:
The first thing I'd like to point out is that the two questions illustrated by the picture of our Carol are aimed at two totally different students. The O Level question is aimed at a high achieving student, maybe A or A* grade, possibly B at a stretch. The GCSE question is G grade, and no more. And let's face it, a G grade isn't worth the paper it's printed on in many cases (not all, I realise that for some, a G grade is an achievement, although ultimately useless). The newspaper's education correspondent, Jack Grimston, ought to have been pulled up on this by the editor.
I would also like to question the relevance in everyday life of bisecting the angle of a triangle so that it divides the opposite side in the ratio of the of the sides containing that angle. When is anyone ever likely to do this? They might be have to write the number 50,000 in words if they write a cheque though. Some of the billions of pounds spent on mathematics in the past 30 years has gone on making the curriculum more relevant and therefore accessible to the majority, meaning that less pupils are left in the cold by an irrelevant and archaic curriculum that Vorderman and Grimston clearly pine for.
A "specially devised test" on algebra, ratio, decimals and fractions was taken by 14 year old in 1979 and 2008/9 and the proportion of pupils getting level zero approximately doubled. Now this is probably a fair point but to lay the blame purely at the feet of maths teachers is unfair. Part of the reason for this increase in "cluelessness" is down to the fact that parents who struggled with maths at school pass their phobia onto their children. This means that numbers will increase and could go towards explaining the rise.
There's also the fact that governments over the past 30 years have taken away any powers teachers once had, and it is now nigh on impossible to get a student to work if they don't want to. I'm not calling for a return to corporal punishment, but it would be nice to feel as though I had some power in my classroom.
Vorderman does make a reasonable point towards the end of the article though when she says that those who struggle initially are thrown on the "scrapheap" to be taught predominantly by non-specialists. This doesn't happen in every school, but happens in most, and can be placed squarely at the feet of government once more, as they aim to cut budgets by making tiny little savings in some areas that have a huge effect on education in schools rather than saving a whopping £200 million per year plus by abolishing Ofsted and other pointless quangos that are remarkably still in existence. It's not fair on those students who are "taught" by non-maths teachers but schools often don't have a choice. The statements seem to suggest that those teachers don't really try, which in almost every case won't be true.
Apart from Vorderman a Professor Dame Julia Higgins, chair of the government's education committee is quoted as saying that we need to get more specialist maths teachers in schools, and she's absolutely correct. The problem is that teaching is becoming a genuinely unpleasant profession to be in, and most people who are competent at maths could earn more or the same in a different profession which almost certainly has a far more pleasant environment. It is for these reasons that poor maths teachers do get employed, because there aren't enough good ones to go around.
Maths teaching is not in any way desirable nowadays; many students don't want to learn the subject but are (rightly) forced to do so, however staff have zero comeback on a student who refuses to make any effort. The pressure on teachers to achieve unrealistic targets of C+ grades also makes many teaching positions untenable. Why do people who advise not actually try the job for a year or two before criticising those who do? Wasn't George Bernard Shaw who said "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach". Perhaps he should have added "Those who can't teach, advise".
I would agree that gaining a C grade is now a lot easier (political targets need to be met people), but it's still just as tough to get the top grades of A and A* and don't let anyone tell you different - the article claimed that an A grade now is equivalent to what a C grade was at O Level. That's harsh, and in my opinion wrong. C grades are now probably equivalent to about an E grade at O level, but you can't blame teachers for that. Government set targets, and grade boundaries are lowered in order to meet those targets. It's a badly kept secret in education.
The only way these sorts of comments from Vorderman and Higgins could be of any use is if it forces central government to put more money into education, but I reckon there'd be a snow day in Hell first.
- O-Level Maths 1979: "Prove that the internal bisector of any angle of a triangle divides the opposite side in the ratio of the sides containing the angle".
- GCSE Maths 2010: "Write the number 50,000 in words".
The first thing I'd like to point out is that the two questions illustrated by the picture of our Carol are aimed at two totally different students. The O Level question is aimed at a high achieving student, maybe A or A* grade, possibly B at a stretch. The GCSE question is G grade, and no more. And let's face it, a G grade isn't worth the paper it's printed on in many cases (not all, I realise that for some, a G grade is an achievement, although ultimately useless). The newspaper's education correspondent, Jack Grimston, ought to have been pulled up on this by the editor.
I would also like to question the relevance in everyday life of bisecting the angle of a triangle so that it divides the opposite side in the ratio of the of the sides containing that angle. When is anyone ever likely to do this? They might be have to write the number 50,000 in words if they write a cheque though. Some of the billions of pounds spent on mathematics in the past 30 years has gone on making the curriculum more relevant and therefore accessible to the majority, meaning that less pupils are left in the cold by an irrelevant and archaic curriculum that Vorderman and Grimston clearly pine for.
A "specially devised test" on algebra, ratio, decimals and fractions was taken by 14 year old in 1979 and 2008/9 and the proportion of pupils getting level zero approximately doubled. Now this is probably a fair point but to lay the blame purely at the feet of maths teachers is unfair. Part of the reason for this increase in "cluelessness" is down to the fact that parents who struggled with maths at school pass their phobia onto their children. This means that numbers will increase and could go towards explaining the rise.
There's also the fact that governments over the past 30 years have taken away any powers teachers once had, and it is now nigh on impossible to get a student to work if they don't want to. I'm not calling for a return to corporal punishment, but it would be nice to feel as though I had some power in my classroom.
Vorderman does make a reasonable point towards the end of the article though when she says that those who struggle initially are thrown on the "scrapheap" to be taught predominantly by non-specialists. This doesn't happen in every school, but happens in most, and can be placed squarely at the feet of government once more, as they aim to cut budgets by making tiny little savings in some areas that have a huge effect on education in schools rather than saving a whopping £200 million per year plus by abolishing Ofsted and other pointless quangos that are remarkably still in existence. It's not fair on those students who are "taught" by non-maths teachers but schools often don't have a choice. The statements seem to suggest that those teachers don't really try, which in almost every case won't be true.
Apart from Vorderman a Professor Dame Julia Higgins, chair of the government's education committee is quoted as saying that we need to get more specialist maths teachers in schools, and she's absolutely correct. The problem is that teaching is becoming a genuinely unpleasant profession to be in, and most people who are competent at maths could earn more or the same in a different profession which almost certainly has a far more pleasant environment. It is for these reasons that poor maths teachers do get employed, because there aren't enough good ones to go around.
Maths teaching is not in any way desirable nowadays; many students don't want to learn the subject but are (rightly) forced to do so, however staff have zero comeback on a student who refuses to make any effort. The pressure on teachers to achieve unrealistic targets of C+ grades also makes many teaching positions untenable. Why do people who advise not actually try the job for a year or two before criticising those who do? Wasn't George Bernard Shaw who said "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach". Perhaps he should have added "Those who can't teach, advise".
I would agree that gaining a C grade is now a lot easier (political targets need to be met people), but it's still just as tough to get the top grades of A and A* and don't let anyone tell you different - the article claimed that an A grade now is equivalent to what a C grade was at O Level. That's harsh, and in my opinion wrong. C grades are now probably equivalent to about an E grade at O level, but you can't blame teachers for that. Government set targets, and grade boundaries are lowered in order to meet those targets. It's a badly kept secret in education.
The only way these sorts of comments from Vorderman and Higgins could be of any use is if it forces central government to put more money into education, but I reckon there'd be a snow day in Hell first.
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Seating Plans
Seating plans - the answer to all discipline issues within the classroom.
Or so many senior management say. But do they really work?
The answer in my view is... occasionally. They are not the be all and end all to classroom management - it all depends on the students within that class. We have gone down the lines of "all classes must have a seating plan" in our school, and I am not all that keen. I'm more a believer of "give them enough rope and they will hang themselves". It's what's known in the trade as a "professional judgement call" and depends on the confidence of each individual teacher to control that class.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally anti the idea, but by imposing a mandatory policy could be seen as showing a total lack of confidence in the ability of staff by a senior management team. It certainly makes life easier at the start of a new year, or when you take over a class to have a seating plan, but this can be got around purely by handing books out and calling out names. There is no guarantee that the seating plan is workable - maybe your class all get on which means that in whatever place you put them the students will chat. Very few, if any teachers have the room or lack of numbers to sit each student on their own. And when you get to secondary school, sitting a class boy then girl can be worse than sitting each gender together.
The whole issue is a minefield and often, in my experience got around by allowing the students to sit where they like and moving them if they don't do enough work.
I went into a the class next to mine today where a new (but experienced) teacher was really struggling with a bottom set. They had been put in a seating plan, a requested, and because the teacher was learning the names, this was unlikely to change in the near future. I was already looking after one student who likes playing to the crowd, and went in to find one student crawling around under a desk and another shouting "See You Next Tuesday - do you know what I mean?" repeatedly. The teacher was trying valiantly, if in vain, to get around and help the class, but ultimately few were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing. I apologised to my colleague and then ranted at the students for 5 minutes, explaining that they were no longer at primary school and should behave their age, and that in a few years time they would be entering a competitive job market and guess who writes them a reference? The nice, but grinning boy sat near me (I think he thought I couldn't see him) was grinning, so I pointed out that although we can't write anything bad on a reference, the telling thing is the lack of words. I then left the classroom with the students in silence. It's easy to do when they aren't your class, I hasten to add.
Now I'm not saying that this happens in every classroom where there's a seating plan, but they aren't the answer to all classroom problems.
Give teachers some credit, and let them decide.
Or so many senior management say. But do they really work?
The answer in my view is... occasionally. They are not the be all and end all to classroom management - it all depends on the students within that class. We have gone down the lines of "all classes must have a seating plan" in our school, and I am not all that keen. I'm more a believer of "give them enough rope and they will hang themselves". It's what's known in the trade as a "professional judgement call" and depends on the confidence of each individual teacher to control that class.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally anti the idea, but by imposing a mandatory policy could be seen as showing a total lack of confidence in the ability of staff by a senior management team. It certainly makes life easier at the start of a new year, or when you take over a class to have a seating plan, but this can be got around purely by handing books out and calling out names. There is no guarantee that the seating plan is workable - maybe your class all get on which means that in whatever place you put them the students will chat. Very few, if any teachers have the room or lack of numbers to sit each student on their own. And when you get to secondary school, sitting a class boy then girl can be worse than sitting each gender together.
The whole issue is a minefield and often, in my experience got around by allowing the students to sit where they like and moving them if they don't do enough work.
I went into a the class next to mine today where a new (but experienced) teacher was really struggling with a bottom set. They had been put in a seating plan, a requested, and because the teacher was learning the names, this was unlikely to change in the near future. I was already looking after one student who likes playing to the crowd, and went in to find one student crawling around under a desk and another shouting "See You Next Tuesday - do you know what I mean?" repeatedly. The teacher was trying valiantly, if in vain, to get around and help the class, but ultimately few were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing. I apologised to my colleague and then ranted at the students for 5 minutes, explaining that they were no longer at primary school and should behave their age, and that in a few years time they would be entering a competitive job market and guess who writes them a reference? The nice, but grinning boy sat near me (I think he thought I couldn't see him) was grinning, so I pointed out that although we can't write anything bad on a reference, the telling thing is the lack of words. I then left the classroom with the students in silence. It's easy to do when they aren't your class, I hasten to add.
Now I'm not saying that this happens in every classroom where there's a seating plan, but they aren't the answer to all classroom problems.
Give teachers some credit, and let them decide.
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