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Posts tagged school
The School Filter Bubble
94 days ago
It is good to question what we see, as all too often we adhere to the life script that everyone else is happily playing out – for me Eli Pariser’s book The Filter Bubble helped me to once again question what we take as the truth, in his case the internet that is presented to us.
But what if there is a school filter bubble?
I am going to look at this as a parent and as a teacher.
My son is my favourite subject and there isn’t really any known limit to the amount I want to know about his day and what he is up to. He has been in full time school for just over a year and I still would love to follow him around for a day. But the message from school and what we find out as parents is only such a tiny fraction of what is happening at school.
We digest the presented message of school, of our children’s learning and the finer intricacies of what is taking place. The PR machine of school is crafting a message about the business of learning. And what a tough task that is because (a) learning is one of the most complex processes in the universe because of the number of factors that effect it and (b) the message is aimed at a (more than) captive audience – as parents we always want to know more.
It may come across that I am bashing school-home communications a bit – well the key thing for me – being a professional in the education sector – is that I know only a sliver of what is happening in my son’s learning life at school. Really only a fraction, the fraction that is communicated, shared at parents evening or in the odd newsletter or word at the classroom door. I don’t think that is enough.
Why should I just accept the school filter bubble?
How is it possible with all of the technology tools that build knowledge sharing, participation, crowd-sourcing, communities and overcome physical and social barriers to make connections, tools that side-step language and time differences and allow us instantaneous communication – that we still don’t have the true capacity to experience what is happening at school instantly, more easily, more quickly and more intuitively.
Well we should and one day we can make it happen.
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Pic Cost savings in The Netherlands: Now you see it, now you don’t by opensourceway
Why I turned my back on teaching
353 months ago
It has now been 6 months since I left the classroom as a Year 5/6 teacher and turned away from my role as Deputy Headteacher which I had only started a year before.
I have never really spent time writing about my decision on this blog and so thought it was about time, after all many of you helped in a small way to me actually getting the Deputy post in the first place and have been there to provide encouragement and support.
The last 6 months have flown by and I have enjoyed every minute!
I decided to leave teaching because of a variety of things, but the elephant in the room which was nagging me for months, was my desire to work with teachers and student beyond one school. Thankfully I rubbed my eyes and embraced the elephant, so to speak!
I chose to apply for a Deputy Head post not out of any deep desire to run my own school or be a headteacher, it was simply that I needed to change my circumstance and needed to feel I was contributing more to the running of a school.
I don’t regret my decision, but I think the specific challenges of the position and school went a long way to dampen my enthusiasm and zeal for school leadership. Sadly it led to some of the lowest times I have ever had in my teaching career.
It all seemed to come down to compromise. Due to my time being unnecessarily stretched compared to other Deputies I knew, I was making compromises with the quality of my teaching, the quality of my admin and the quality of my preparation. I had never really had to deal with such forced compromise in the past, on reflection that unsettled me deeply and is certainly something I never want to see again.
In my first week as a Deputy I wrote that, “No other 5 day stretch has ever examined and pressurised my professional facets as those just gone.” Well those 5 days continued on and the remainder of the year proved even more challenging than that tumultuous first week.
So what has changed?
The most notable things are a better quality of time with my family, variety through project work and being able to work with more schools and teachers.
I never really got to a stage that I was comfortably balancing work and life during my year as a deputy and so the quality of time with my family was hugely affected. There was always something nagging in my mind that hadn’t quite been completed or needed doing. I was never 100% focused on the here and now, and time was lost with the family.
This contributed to an unhealthy cumulative pressure I hadn’t experienced, both physically and emotionally – needless to say I am now glad to see the back of it.
The variety of work we have at NoTosh has been such a brilliant foil to the trudging monotony of the last few years. No week is the same – we will be wading in the deepest of intense research one week and design thinking with teachers the next. We are are also working with lots of schools and supporting teachers so I am never far from the classroom.
I have also enjoyed the ebb and flow of project work which allows you to see things to a natural completion in the relatively short term. At school the long term completion of a poject would feel most satisfying at the end of terms or the end of a year.
This “shipping” as Seth Godin would put it generates motivation and your energy levels rise as you move on to the next project. I am enjoying this way of working and although I have really felt I have had to adjust over the last few months, success and completeness is always in sight, something markedly lacking from my experience as a deputy headteacher.
One thing I realised, from those closest to me, was that things are not set in stone ad infinitum, even a job as all consuming as a deputy headteacher, and when things don’t work out you have to plan and actively choose to get yourself out of it. Linchpin by Seth Godin proved to be an important read for me in those difficult times and which underlined the importance of action.
All of that said I know that perhaps given a different set of circumstances I would have had a completely different experience as a new deputy and I have not discounted that maybe one day I will give it another go. But not right now 
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I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Neil Hopkin, his kindness and generosity helped me steady the ship and find the elephant again in the darkened room. And also thanks to my good friend Ewan McIntosh for giving me hope and believing in me, even when I didn’t!
Thank you for your support over the last year and half, things took a wrong turn for a while back there but I am now doing a job I love (again), the future is bright.
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Pic the winds of skagit. by heanster
Seeing School Differently
11 year ago
by tombarrett
in Leadership
Since moving up to senior management the story of school has changed for me. A school is the centre of so much activity, central to the daily lives of so many people, each with their own part to play in it. Each person sees school in a different way, everyone has their daily narrative.
My story as a student teacher was exciting. We had the opportunity to work in lots of different places, the role we played meant we were new people in classrooms and so the children would often respond warmly to us. We had the freedom to explore what it meant to put together a lesson and find exciting ways to do that. There was an amazing sense of companionship with other students as we got through our placements, each one held it’s own narrative. These school stories were very linear with an end point we often focused on. Each story was about improving and getting better – each experience shaping what I am now.
As a full-time teacher the story of school changed. Suddenly there was a greater sense of responsibility as I had my own class. All to myself. The story shifts to learning about each child and the huge part we play as their teacher. The daily narrative focused purely on my own class, of the children that may have been unwell – “Are they feeling any better?”, of those that are having a tough time at home. Our classes consume our attention and devotion. We are committed to the learning journey we are on together.
At Easter I moved to another school and so my school story had to start from scratch. The familiar plot lines and characters had changed and I needed to establish fresh ones. My role had changed too and I no longer could focus on just my own class, but needed insight and awareness of the myriad of tales from right across school. I have spent a long time establishing relationships and finding the part I can play in this new story.
The most significant new contribution to my school story is the awareness of the difficulties many of the most at risk children face in their daily lives. I am now embroiled in their narrative too, learning about the help they need and often actively providing it. This parallel, often unknown, story that occurs in every school is a new chapter for me. It has rewritten my school story with a new challenging layer of meaning.
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Photo: Petals, Toil and Business at Dadar’s Phulgalli [PHOTO 2] by lecercle
What Is The Purpose of Your School’s Curriculum?
51 year ago
by tombarrett
in Curriculum
I have enjoyed reading Bill Boyd’s blog recently, indeed my last post about curriculum films began from his own about Charles Leadbeater.
Another piece I came across was his post about the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, titled “Having the Courage in Our Convictions“. He includes a really useful graphic detailing the 4 capacities, or as Bill states the 4 purposes, which underpin the Curriculum for Excellence.
To enable all young people to become:
- Successful learners
- Confident individuals
- Effective contributors
- Responsible citizens
Much of the detail around these curriculum foundations is applicable to our own school development. We are at the stage of exploring what should underpin the curriculum design, this is very relevant to us. Here is the diagram.
Following Bill’s original post he refers to the commentary from Dave Cockburn who reflects that these 4 purposes
…will help us see the curriculum in a new light, as long as we remember that we are striving not to create a system which produces a plumber at one end and a surgeon at the other, but produces intelligent, well-informed, inquisitive people who understand the ideas of leadership and teamwork, and the vital role of intellectual enquiry and endeavour.
I certainly agree with him, this is a valuable starting point. Once you throw in the local requirements for a curriculum and wider stake holder perspectives we will be some way to establishing the foundation we need.
