I had a new thought. The thought is about Performance Management. Here's the thought:
We (the college) clearly think that in terms of potential success gains, it is worth the financial outlay to employ four whole people specifically to coach the students for achievement.
These achievement coaches are distinct and different from the teaching staff, and are employed to work almost entirely on a one-to-one basis with students on target setting, development of skills, all that sort of stuff. If you like, they're responsible for developing an individual "Performance Management" plan with each student.
The fact that they're not the teaching staff is seen as advantageous in this, as the coaching/mentoring role they're fulfilling is a bit different to the relationship between teaching staff and their charges (which is more of a line management relationship - the teacher is the leader/manager directly "in charge" of the student's progress in a specific curriculum area).
Anyhow, is there any reason why there shouldn't / couldn't be someone employed to do for teaching staff what the Achievement Coaches do for students?
Just like the students, the teaching staff are a mixed bunch of folks, all of whom have individual needs, strengths and weaknesses.
Just like the students, the teaching staff would surely benefit from a non-judgemental, solution-based second opinion on their progress from someone able ot look at their work from an outside perspective.
And just as a third party (the Achievement Coach) doing this for the students instead of a teacher is seen as advantageous, wouldn't it follow that a third party doing this for teachers would be advantageous compared to their line managers having to take on this role?
So, yeah, my idea is - Would Performance Management be better if we, the teaching staff, had a Performance Coach, like the students have an Achievement Coach?
Actually, that's a question. The idea is - Performance Management would be better if we, the teaching staff, had a Performance Coach, like the students have an Achievement Coach.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Friday, 27 January 2012
I Think I'll Pass... ive
Wow. Haven't written anything in ten days.
Lots on my mind, see. Mosty absolute nonsense of my own invention, as it happens. The meeting you have with your line manager in your head every night for a week is so much worse than the one in his office at the end of that week, isn't it?
Anyhow, a link to an article about a particular form of unhelpful thinking which I know affects me and hampers the way I work sometimes, and, now that I've been thinking about it a lot, I rather suspect is behind a lot of issues in education, both in the line management of teaching staff and the classroom management of students.
Basically, I've been very conscious of Passive Agressive mithering on my own part, and it's led me to think it'll be a good idea to look out for it and try to deal with it better when I see it in others, too.
I may post more on this subject later, as I think there are definitely some students and almost definitely some staff members who I can work more efficiantly with if I apply some of the observations in the article.
Got to go now. Weekend ahoy!
Lots on my mind, see. Mosty absolute nonsense of my own invention, as it happens. The meeting you have with your line manager in your head every night for a week is so much worse than the one in his office at the end of that week, isn't it?
Anyhow, a link to an article about a particular form of unhelpful thinking which I know affects me and hampers the way I work sometimes, and, now that I've been thinking about it a lot, I rather suspect is behind a lot of issues in education, both in the line management of teaching staff and the classroom management of students.
Basically, I've been very conscious of Passive Agressive mithering on my own part, and it's led me to think it'll be a good idea to look out for it and try to deal with it better when I see it in others, too.
I may post more on this subject later, as I think there are definitely some students and almost definitely some staff members who I can work more efficiantly with if I apply some of the observations in the article.
Got to go now. Weekend ahoy!
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
8 out 10 Cat Owners...
...or rather, 16 out of 18 A-Level students...
Here's the task we did today:
I gave them four concepts we've been thinking about recently and asked them to rate them from "The topic I'd most confident talking about," to "The thing I'd be least confident in talking about."
Based on this self-assessment, I then divided them into four equal-sized groups. About half of them got to be in a group which reflected their number one choice, and the rest ended up in a group themed around their second or third choice. Significantly, it panned out that no-one was in a group themed around their least confident concept, and that I was able to bring together people who don't usually work with each other and break up potentially unhelpful partnerships. (It'll be interesting to see if this is true again tomorrow when I do this with the parallel group).
Each group received individual copies of a text and a prompt-sheet with some questions relating to their chosen concept. The groups then had to read and discuss the text they'd been given. I emphasised that each member of the group would need to make their own record of the discussion because they'd need it later.
(each group, by the way, was looking at the same text, but I didn't mention this to them)
I was able to take quite a leisurely stroll around the room and chip in occasionally, but their discussions seemed to be on-topic and self-motivated, after the initial stimulus of my guide questions on the instruction sheet.
After the discussions had run their course, I pointed out that each group now had knowledge that the other three-quarters of the class didn't. I explained that their challenge now was to share their specialist knowledge with their peers.
The class then moved into four new groups (the only influence I had on the make-up of the second set of groups was to insist they had to have a representative from each of the first four groups in, but apart form that, they were free to select who they worked with for this bit). Each member of the new group took it in turns to be the "teacher" on their table, and explain to their peers what they'd gained from the text. The others in the new group were free to listen, ask questions, seek clarifications, respond with their own reactions, etc, based on what each of their expert peers told them.
Near the end of this task, I was able to go from table to table and speak to individuals, "So... Tell me something you've learned in the last 12 minutes..." and get some instant in-their-own-words indications of who was learning what.
We followed this up with a written task, where I set a series of broad questions based on the initial four concepts to prompt them to write detailed notes for their folders on these concepts. They had loads to write. Some even asked for more time on the written task.
They've now got a homework to contribute to discussions on some related ideas on a forum on our VLE. This'll hopefully stimulate some cross-pollination of ideas between the two classes as well as being a way of further checking individuals' understanding of / confidence about the concepts which will shape the planning of the follow-up lesson.
Oh, yeah. The 16 out of 18 thing. At the end, I asked them all to write anonymously on a scrap of paper the most useful thing they'd gained from the lesson and a single comment, positive or negative, about the way the lesson worked. Several of them then asked if they could also give it a mark out of 5 (something I've asked for in the past). Only two students gave it a mark below 4 - both of those cited the fact that they just don't like group work, especially with folks they don't usually sit with, and both of them had also named something useful they'd learned.
Can't please all the people all the time (these two more exclusively intrapersonal learners will probably love the exam-style essay coming up next week, mind you), but such a positive reaction makes me feel very optimistic about tomorrow's parallel lesson (especially as that group are the ones who were so positive about the "Stewart Can't Ask/Answer Questions" lesson I wrote about last week.
Here's the task we did today:
I gave them four concepts we've been thinking about recently and asked them to rate them from "The topic I'd most confident talking about," to "The thing I'd be least confident in talking about."
Based on this self-assessment, I then divided them into four equal-sized groups. About half of them got to be in a group which reflected their number one choice, and the rest ended up in a group themed around their second or third choice. Significantly, it panned out that no-one was in a group themed around their least confident concept, and that I was able to bring together people who don't usually work with each other and break up potentially unhelpful partnerships. (It'll be interesting to see if this is true again tomorrow when I do this with the parallel group).
Each group received individual copies of a text and a prompt-sheet with some questions relating to their chosen concept. The groups then had to read and discuss the text they'd been given. I emphasised that each member of the group would need to make their own record of the discussion because they'd need it later.
(each group, by the way, was looking at the same text, but I didn't mention this to them)
I was able to take quite a leisurely stroll around the room and chip in occasionally, but their discussions seemed to be on-topic and self-motivated, after the initial stimulus of my guide questions on the instruction sheet.
After the discussions had run their course, I pointed out that each group now had knowledge that the other three-quarters of the class didn't. I explained that their challenge now was to share their specialist knowledge with their peers.
The class then moved into four new groups (the only influence I had on the make-up of the second set of groups was to insist they had to have a representative from each of the first four groups in, but apart form that, they were free to select who they worked with for this bit). Each member of the new group took it in turns to be the "teacher" on their table, and explain to their peers what they'd gained from the text. The others in the new group were free to listen, ask questions, seek clarifications, respond with their own reactions, etc, based on what each of their expert peers told them.
Near the end of this task, I was able to go from table to table and speak to individuals, "So... Tell me something you've learned in the last 12 minutes..." and get some instant in-their-own-words indications of who was learning what.
We followed this up with a written task, where I set a series of broad questions based on the initial four concepts to prompt them to write detailed notes for their folders on these concepts. They had loads to write. Some even asked for more time on the written task.
They've now got a homework to contribute to discussions on some related ideas on a forum on our VLE. This'll hopefully stimulate some cross-pollination of ideas between the two classes as well as being a way of further checking individuals' understanding of / confidence about the concepts which will shape the planning of the follow-up lesson.
Oh, yeah. The 16 out of 18 thing. At the end, I asked them all to write anonymously on a scrap of paper the most useful thing they'd gained from the lesson and a single comment, positive or negative, about the way the lesson worked. Several of them then asked if they could also give it a mark out of 5 (something I've asked for in the past). Only two students gave it a mark below 4 - both of those cited the fact that they just don't like group work, especially with folks they don't usually sit with, and both of them had also named something useful they'd learned.
Can't please all the people all the time (these two more exclusively intrapersonal learners will probably love the exam-style essay coming up next week, mind you), but such a positive reaction makes me feel very optimistic about tomorrow's parallel lesson (especially as that group are the ones who were so positive about the "Stewart Can't Ask/Answer Questions" lesson I wrote about last week.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Speak To Me...
I want them to talk more. I really want them to enjoy discussing academic stuff out loud. So I did this thing...
1) Students recieve chapter of dry, dull textbook (actually really cool, interesting textbook, but there's no accounting for tastes).
2) I instruct them to read in pairs and discuss what the chapter tells them about today's key terms (In this instance - The Standards Debate; Descriptivism; Prescriptivism)
2a) Today's Key Terms are, in this instance, never explicitly defined in the extract given, meaning they students actually have to understand and synthesise the info they have got to get anywhere (I slung in this curve-ball because they're A2 students who need some stretching).
3) At the end of the task, each student takes a piece of paper and writes, anonymously -
- one question they have about what they've just read;
- one opinion they've formed about the issues they've read about
- one thing they'd need to find out more about to understand the ideas even better.
4) After they come back from their dinner break, everyone sits around in a circle, with no desks (I'm currently really into getting rid of the desks unless they're really needed). On each chair is someone's anonymous piece of paper.
5) Going round the circle, each student reads out one of the three items on their piece of paper to the rest of the group and responds to it. Ie, they answer or critique the question; they agree or disagree with the opinion, and explain why; or they discuss what they know about the field someone wants to know more about.
6) When a student reads out from a paper, any other student may respond by agreeing, disagreeing or building on what has been said, or by taking the discussion off in a tangential but related direction.
7) If there is eerie, tumbleweed silence after someone has read out an item, the class can decide whether they need to spend a "Stewart Voucher" - a free pass which means I have to chip in and "give them the answers" in a didactic style.
There are only six "Stewart Vouchers," so the class cannot expect me to have the last word (or any word) on too much of the discussion.
Decisions to spend a Stewart Voucher must be unanimous amongst the group. Anyone who vetos the spending of a Stewart Voucher will be expected to move the discussion onwards themselves.
So, yeah, I tried that.
In one hour, the class had only spent three Stewart Vouchers, and the third of those was used because they had three minutes left in the lesson and figured they might as well use it up.
The rest of the time, slowly and tentatively, but respectfully and articulately, they debated the issues raised in Aitchison's book, and, by concensus, developed their own (accurate) working definitions of Descriptivism, Prescriptivism and Standards Debate, as well as saying some really interesting things in general.
Everyone spoke at least once - no-one's reading their own thought/question, so they can't feel so embarrassed.
Everyone was responded to at least once.
Everyone got their point of view heard. It wasn't in their voice - their classmates read from anonymous papers - but everyone had asked a question or expressed an opinion.
At the end, a student who I ususally spend all day grumbling at for text messaging instead of working said, "We should do that again, Stewart. That was good." and willingly engaged me in a conversation about how we could adapt the task to make it even more useful in future.
It's good when stuff works like that. I feel good that I took the chance on doing this lesson.
1) Students recieve chapter of dry, dull textbook (actually really cool, interesting textbook, but there's no accounting for tastes).
2) I instruct them to read in pairs and discuss what the chapter tells them about today's key terms (In this instance - The Standards Debate; Descriptivism; Prescriptivism)
2a) Today's Key Terms are, in this instance, never explicitly defined in the extract given, meaning they students actually have to understand and synthesise the info they have got to get anywhere (I slung in this curve-ball because they're A2 students who need some stretching).
3) At the end of the task, each student takes a piece of paper and writes, anonymously -
- one question they have about what they've just read;
- one opinion they've formed about the issues they've read about
- one thing they'd need to find out more about to understand the ideas even better.
4) After they come back from their dinner break, everyone sits around in a circle, with no desks (I'm currently really into getting rid of the desks unless they're really needed). On each chair is someone's anonymous piece of paper.
5) Going round the circle, each student reads out one of the three items on their piece of paper to the rest of the group and responds to it. Ie, they answer or critique the question; they agree or disagree with the opinion, and explain why; or they discuss what they know about the field someone wants to know more about.
6) When a student reads out from a paper, any other student may respond by agreeing, disagreeing or building on what has been said, or by taking the discussion off in a tangential but related direction.
7) If there is eerie, tumbleweed silence after someone has read out an item, the class can decide whether they need to spend a "Stewart Voucher" - a free pass which means I have to chip in and "give them the answers" in a didactic style.
There are only six "Stewart Vouchers," so the class cannot expect me to have the last word (or any word) on too much of the discussion.
Decisions to spend a Stewart Voucher must be unanimous amongst the group. Anyone who vetos the spending of a Stewart Voucher will be expected to move the discussion onwards themselves.
So, yeah, I tried that.
In one hour, the class had only spent three Stewart Vouchers, and the third of those was used because they had three minutes left in the lesson and figured they might as well use it up.
The rest of the time, slowly and tentatively, but respectfully and articulately, they debated the issues raised in Aitchison's book, and, by concensus, developed their own (accurate) working definitions of Descriptivism, Prescriptivism and Standards Debate, as well as saying some really interesting things in general.
Everyone spoke at least once - no-one's reading their own thought/question, so they can't feel so embarrassed.
Everyone was responded to at least once.
Everyone got their point of view heard. It wasn't in their voice - their classmates read from anonymous papers - but everyone had asked a question or expressed an opinion.
At the end, a student who I ususally spend all day grumbling at for text messaging instead of working said, "We should do that again, Stewart. That was good." and willingly engaged me in a conversation about how we could adapt the task to make it even more useful in future.
It's good when stuff works like that. I feel good that I took the chance on doing this lesson.
Monday, 9 January 2012
Deadlines & Priorities
Struck me the other day that when someone tells me something is really important and needs doing as a matter of priority, then says it needs doing "by Friday," or "by the end of the week," what they're in fact communicating to me is "No-one will chase you up to see if you've done this until after the weekend at the earliest," and by extention, "It's nowhere near as important as we're making it out to be. Have a nice weekend."
If at all possible, in future I shall look to avoid setting deadlines for Fridays, lest students develop the same ideas about work for my subject.
If at all possible, in future I shall look to avoid setting deadlines for Fridays, lest students develop the same ideas about work for my subject.
Friday, 6 January 2012
A Question of Questions...
Some students seem to hate or fear answering questions.
Sometimes I don't blame them.
Some of them clealry like asking questions, even though it's clear school has beaten it out of them a bit.
One of my favourite sounds in a classroom is, "Stewart... Can I ask a question? It's probably a bit off-topic..."
See, "...it's probably a bit off-topic..." is music to my ears, 'cause it often means "...it's about something I actually want to know about..." or, more succinctly, "...I'm interested..."
I think next week I'm going to be making a more concerted effort to show / do / say things which will make them ask questions (no, not like that...) instead of showing them stuff and expecting them to answer questions.
Sometimes I don't blame them.
Some of them clealry like asking questions, even though it's clear school has beaten it out of them a bit.
One of my favourite sounds in a classroom is, "Stewart... Can I ask a question? It's probably a bit off-topic..."
See, "...it's probably a bit off-topic..." is music to my ears, 'cause it often means "...it's about something I actually want to know about..." or, more succinctly, "...I'm interested..."
I think next week I'm going to be making a more concerted effort to show / do / say things which will make them ask questions (no, not like that...) instead of showing them stuff and expecting them to answer questions.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
In the Money...
(I know I've only just posted the last thing a minute ago, and it went on forever, but when it comes to the triad of time to write this blog, motivation to write this blog and ideas I want to post here, I've got to strike while the iron is hot)
A different stimulus I've used in the past as a skills / confidence-developing "starter" in the same vein as the map thing is the Billion Pound O Gram from David McCandless's lovely site, Information Is Beautiful:
I've found lots of stuff on or through Information Is Beautiful which have provided different ways of looking at ideas and have been useful for me and for students in a variety of situations.
McCandless's page of Google NGram Experiments has provided food for thought for A2 English Language students looking at diachronic change (or investigating things for their coursework), and it was through Information Is Beautiful that I found a link to this brilliant little investigation on parenting blog, The Achilles Effect, which was a methodology just begging to be adopted / adapted into someone's coursework data investigation.
A different stimulus I've used in the past as a skills / confidence-developing "starter" in the same vein as the map thing is the Billion Pound O Gram from David McCandless's lovely site, Information Is Beautiful:
I've found lots of stuff on or through Information Is Beautiful which have provided different ways of looking at ideas and have been useful for me and for students in a variety of situations.
McCandless's page of Google NGram Experiments has provided food for thought for A2 English Language students looking at diachronic change (or investigating things for their coursework), and it was through Information Is Beautiful that I found a link to this brilliant little investigation on parenting blog, The Achilles Effect, which was a methodology just begging to be adopted / adapted into someone's coursework data investigation.
Mapping it Out...
A thing I tried this week:
With my two GCSE resit classes, I ran a lesson where I specifically stated at the start of the hour that we wouldn't be reading any English and we wouldn't be writing anything longer than a couple of bullet points.
I also stressed, however, that we'd be using skills that we could then use next week when faced with some tricky English to analyse and write about.
I then showed them an upside-down map of the world, a bit like this one:
With my two GCSE resit classes, I ran a lesson where I specifically stated at the start of the hour that we wouldn't be reading any English and we wouldn't be writing anything longer than a couple of bullet points.
I also stressed, however, that we'd be using skills that we could then use next week when faced with some tricky English to analyse and write about.
I then showed them an upside-down map of the world, a bit like this one:
(the one I used didn't have the title "Upside Down World Map" on it, though - more on that point in a bit)
I asked them to spend a couple of minutes looking at / thinking about the image without speaking (challenging for some) and to write down in very brief note form any thoughts that occurred to them - be those thoughts single words, statements, questions or whatever.
I then asked each member of the group in turn to say something about it to the rest of us. Rather pleasingly, many of the comments fell nicely into the following catagories:
1) Opinions - Things like -
- "Makes me want to save up money so I can go to all the countries when I'm older,"
- "Makes me realise just how small we [in Britain] really are,"
- "That's seriously blagging my head!"
- Even (surprise) "It's boring / stupid"
- All drawing attention to the fact that when we analyse something, one of the first things we consider is the effect it has on us. How does it make us feel? What's the effect on the audience? (Nb, after a perfectly civil discussion, it was conceeded that it was not the map that was "boring," but being in college that morning)
2) Questions about the stimulus -
- "Russia's not really right next to Alaska, though, is it?"
- "Where is England anyway?"
- "What's that huge bit there?"
- or (for some) the breakthrough "Is it upside down?"
(I know... sometimes I need a reminder about things I take for granted not necessarily being common knowledge for the students)
- I thought this was great - the number of questions they were asking, all of which then provoked responses from the other members of the class, all of which lead to someone understanding the thing in front of them a bit more. Couldn't help comparing this to the times I stand in front of them and ask them the questions I think they ought to be asking.
3) Questions about the task -
- "Isn't this Geography? Why are we doing it in English?"
- "What's the point in showing us this?"
- As scary as they may feel to hear, I think these questions are great (especially as I had decent answers prepared in this particular case) and I think it's something academically "weaker" kids will do a lot more willingly than supposedly "more capable" students in my experience. Questioning the purpose of the exercise shows that they want to find a value in what they're doing.
The student who asks "What's the point...?" may sound disaffected or aggressive, but surely they're actually looking to the teacher, the person who claims they know what they're doing, for reassurance that their time and effort isn't being wasted.
Of course, if we can't give them a straight answer, if we can't explain to them why they need to be able to write 1,000 words about Wilfred Owen's poetry, or why they ought to role-play a scenario of a real-life context or give a Powerpoint presentation on their ambitions in front of their peers and a teacher with a mark-scheme, then we might be learning something ourselves.
4) Statements about the stimulus -
- "It looks wierd that way up,"
- "Canada looks massive when you see it like that,"
- (in response to "It's upside down") "I suppose there is no upside-down when you're actually on the Earth, though, is there? It's just what you're used to seeing on maps."
- (my favourite moment out of both classes), "Look at how many of the countries in the South are the poor countries you never hear about!"
- All with minimal prompting from me. All without any fear of sounding stupid. All showing such insight. I was impressed with them.
Now, in that session, the majority of those students demonstrated the ability to do the following things:
a) Respond articulately to a previously unseen stimulus;
b) Pick out details from a large, complicated stimulus and discuss them to increase their understanding of the stimulus as a whole;
c) Use question-asking (as opposed to just question-answering) to increase their understanding of a stimulus and take their analysis in original directions which interest them;
d) Support one-another with constructive responses to others' questions;
e) Consider the effect of a stimulus on more than one audience / Consider more than one reading of the same "text";
f) Show no fear of being "wrong" or looking "stupid" - Several responses were prefaced with "This is going to sound stupid, right..." but that's so much better than feeling stupid and not saying anything (and the ideas themselves weren't stupid at all)
When I pointed that out to them, some of them seemed quite pleased about the whole thing.
Now, if I can just work out how to get that same thing happening when they're presented with "some old poem" or a transcript of "that weird, boring guy talking,"* we'll be well away...
*Is it just teenagers who reject things which confuse or intimidate them by claiming they're somehow both weird and boring at the same time?
It Begins...
New day. New blog.
An attempt to collect and muse upon a whole bunch of stuff about teaching, learning, education, putting skills and ideas into the minds of ourselves and others.
I'm Stewart. I'm a teacher who's trying to work out how to stop just teaching and get the guys staring up at me to start learning.
I'll be using this blog to develop my own ideas on educational praxis and as a place where I can hopefully learn from other people, too.
An attempt to collect and muse upon a whole bunch of stuff about teaching, learning, education, putting skills and ideas into the minds of ourselves and others.
I'm Stewart. I'm a teacher who's trying to work out how to stop just teaching and get the guys staring up at me to start learning.
I'll be using this blog to develop my own ideas on educational praxis and as a place where I can hopefully learn from other people, too.
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