Prejudice

Before I walked into a classroom, I’d already planned my response for when inanimate objects were called “gay” – a sardonic “I don’t think a ruler has a sexuality, Jordan”.

In reality, being armed with this response was like taking a pea shooter to a battle. I was really taken aback by the sheer volume and ferocity of the insults here.

There are three main prejudiced insults at my school.

Gay

So this one’s predictable. Things that have no sexuality are gay if they annoy them, but it is also a favourite insult to anyone remotely effeminate or plain unpopular.

What really surprised me was the hatred when I dug a little deeper with students.

Early on, I had three boys in detention with me and we had a conversation about using the word gay. “Don’t you understand, Miss? They don’t have normal sex”

There is a real obsession with anal sex and how disgusting and unnatural is is.

My standard response now is “straight people can have anal sex, too, you know”. Don’t know if that’s really appropriate for me to be telling them but I can’t just sit and nod.

Disabled

When I was at school, things were “spastic”. We didn’t really know the origin of the word. We used it because our friends did and it was a funny word to say. After someone properly explained the origins of the word and properly guilted us, we stopped using it.

I expected something similar. But the word the children use in place of spastic is plain old “disabled”. No sugar coating. They know exactly what disabled means; they have disabled schoolmates. They are still unabashed in calling my board marker disabled when it stops working or telling Hassan he’s disabled when he mixes up his times tables.

Gypsy

This one really shocked me when I first heard it.

If you smell, you’re a dirty gypsy.

If you steal things, you’re a thieving gypsy.

Nothing is just “jacked”. It is “jacked by a gypsy”.

We have a sizeable proportion of both Roma and Irish travellers in school. I’m pretty surprised no fights have broken out in front of me over this to be honest. I’m sure they have outside my classroom.

I don’t know how much of this is mindless repetition and how much is conscious hatred. Either way, my response is now the same. If I hear these words, I go all out with a “learning conversation”, apology letters and SLT detention. I hope my earnest conversations with the kids have opened their eyes somewhat, but I’m not holding my breath. Hopefully the SLT detention makes them realise it’s no joke.

So the kids don’t say these words openly in class anymore. That’s a start. But how many mindsets have I really changed? Not enough, I suspect.

Dear mentors

It can be easy to gloss over the fact that first year Teach Firsters are mere PGCE students – particularly after Autumn term when our greenness has worn off a bit. The fact is, though, we’re still very inexperienced and need a lot of guidance and support.

Mentors are absolutely instrumental for this. They’re in school with us and see us every day. They have an hour a week of one-to-one professional development time. They may be the person most influential in shaping the type of teacher we qualify as.

As a participant, here’s my humbly proffered advice to mentors.

Be nice

It’s human nature to want to please. If you’re my line manager, or even just someone more senior in the department, my initial instinct will be to present my best side to you.

We’ve spent years being successful academically or in work. We’re usually not used to failing. We’re probably embarrassed by being bad at something.

But if you want the best out of me, I need to be able to be completely honest with you. So make that possible by being kind, by reassuring me, and by telling me that you’re there to support me rather than judge me.

That doesn’t mean lying to me. But it means not slaughtering me when I make mistakes, and giving me lots of praise when I improve.

Be around

When I asked Teach Firsters on twitter what they wanted from a mentor, the number one theme was being available to answer questions and to talk to. We have so many questions and burgeoning ideas, from the mundane to the philosophical. If you want me to feel supported, you need to be there to answer them.

I’ve experienced massive frustration with this over the past year. I adore my mentor: he’s a fantastic teacher. But he’s head of maths. That makes him one of the busiest people in the school. He has his own office; I never see him in the maths office. 50% of our mentor meetings are cancelled because he has been called to deal with a crisis of some sort. It sucks.

If you don’t think you can be around that much, you seriously need to think about handing your mentor role onto someone else. Ultimately, it’s not fair on the trainee and it’s not fair on the kids for them to be wandering around not knowing what they’re doing.

Tell me what I don’t know

We’ve had 6 weeks of Summer Institute. Recognise what that will and – more crucially – won’t have taught us.

I can talk your ear off about Prezi. I can quote any number of statistics about educational disadvantage. I can tell you the difference between leadership and management.

I have no idea how to explain ratio to set 5. Tell me that.

Even better: tell me what I don’t know I don’t know

We all start off being unconsciously incompetent. We look at outstanding practice and we can see how far off from that we are, but it feels so alien from what we’re doing in the classroom. Even looking at the teacher standards feels so overwhelming in that first term. We don’t know how to get started.

Your job is to give me kind, fair and specific feedback on the very next step I need to take. Just arriving at the mentor meeting period 3 on Thursday and being there to answer questions isn’t enough. We don’t know the right questions to ask yet. You need to know your mentee: their strengths and weaknesses, their potential, how they’ve improved over time.

Knowing your mentee boils down to two things: frequent (informal, quick) observations and making sure they can talk openly to you. How do you get them to talk openly to you? See “be nice”.

Set me proper targets

The Teach First journal can be a valuable tool for reflection, or it can be a tedious millstone round one’s neck. If it’s going to be the former, the mentor has a really important role to play in making the targets relevant, specific and actionable.

If you arrive at a mentor meeting and tell me to write “work on classroom presence” as my target, you’re not fit to be a mentor.

All that happens when you do that is the participant turns up next week, having forgotten what the target even was, writes some rubbish in the evaluation section and moves on.

Targets need to be incredibly specific, realistic and truly focused on the one thing that will make me improve from this week to the next.

Here are some hastily thought through examples (they may not be that good – apologies)

• Unsatisfactory: improve quality and quantity of marking
• Requires improvement: catch up on marking year 8 books, including next steps feedback
• Good: set a piece of extended writing and mark it using two stars and a wish
• Outstanding: set year 8 a piece of homework on extended writing about the Tudors’ dress sense (as discussed). Set up a meeting with Mrs Lee for her to show me her marking, and for her to model how she might use 2S1W on the Tudors homework. Bring this marking to the next mentor meeting.

• Unsatisfactory: work on questioning
• Requires improvement: try to ask more open questions in lessons
• Good: plan 2 open questions for each lesson I teach this week
• Outstanding: use the questioning grid to plan quality open questions for my year 7 lessons this week. Show them to mentor on Wednesday morning for checking. Plan to “pose-pause-pounce-bounce” these questions at the hinge points of lessons. Reflect briefly on WWW and EBI after each of these lessons and bring these reflections to the mentor meeting.

• Unsatisfactory: tighten up behaviour management
• Requires improvement: be more firm in my classroom interactions
• Good: practice using the language of expectations and say thank you, not please, when giving instructions.
• Outstanding: role play giving firm instructions for a few minutes every day with Laura, using the phrases “I expect” and “thank you”. Do a 5 minute starter swap with Laura in any lesson this week where we observe each other for the tone of voice and phrasing of instructions used.

Have faith

The final point I want to make is that while we will be quite terrifyingly awful at the beginning, we improve remarkably quickly. The progress isn’t linear: it comes in fits and starts. Keep believing in them, keep helping them, keep setting them proper targets, and your mentees will be admirably good teachers by Summer term.

The @redorgreenpen Problem

Reblogged from Laura McInerney:

If you haven't been reading @redorgreenpen's penetrating "7 kids in 7 days" blog, then you've missed out. By describing in searching detail the behaviours of seven students, anonymous blogger redorgreenpen gives the most authentic descriptions of challenging students' lives I have read in some time. Possibly ever.

The story of Arianne on the sixth day made me particularly nervous. With a penchant for incredibly aggressive behaviour, …

Read more… 593 more words

Thoughtful comments from the wonderful Miss McInerney on my seven days posts.

The seventh day: Fawsia

My final 7 days blog isn’t on a particularly high profile kid. In fact, she’s pretty well hidden. I’m writing her story last for precisely that reason.

Fawsia goes to school day-in, day-out without attracting much attention.

Fawsia was a casual admission to our school half a year ago. She spoke no English. After a short induction programme, she was whisked into the mainstream classroom. After a few weeks of the silent period, she started to speak a little in class, but she will rarely volunteer answers and her English is still very broken.

There are two main reasons I want to talk about Fawsia. The first relates to my experience of trying to teach her maths. Fawsia was placed in the second from bottom set. I remember her coming into my class on that late November afternoon with her pristine timetable clutched to her chest. She looked terrified. This set contained some of the rowdiest characters in school, and a clueless and exhausted Teach Firster trying to control them. It wasn’t going well. I looked at her face and felt intensely guilty. I knew I wouldn’t be able to give her the maths education she deserved.

Patience is a virtue that this class lack distinctly. Though I can now get them to sit up, listen, and do some work, a tantrum or drama or fight is mere moments away. Misbehaviour is most of the pupils’ main preoccupation. CONSTANT VIGILANCE is the teachers’ survival tactic for the class. The idea that I could set students off on a task, go over to Fawsia and spend an extended time helping her understand is a pipe dream. I’ve tried. I get 3 words in and it’s “Donnel, sit down”. Back to square numbers when “Shanice, it helps if your book is open. Sorry Fawsia. So if you multiply.. Donnel, your choice is to sit down or to get 15 minutes after school. Where was I? JAYDON, hands to yourself”.

The rowdy kids in the class are actually doing really well now. My lessons are engineered to manage that mass of disruptive pupils. An extremely firm, fast paced approach works for them: they’re not bored, and they don’t try it on. But students like Fawsia get pushed to the sidelines. My pedagogical decisions are forced upon me by my concern for behavioural issues rather than anything else. Again, I feel guilty, but at the moment I see little alternative.

The second reason I want to talk about Fawsia is because of her background. Fawsia has come to the UK from Sudan. She has lived a tragic and conflict-ridden life. She is a victim of female genital mutilation. Her life in Sudan was one of great poverty. She watched her mother die. She was sent over to the UK to live with an aunt and uncle she had never met before.

I don’t want to get into judging and ranking the tragicness of childhoods, but I’d say Fawsia’s early life seems difficult to say the least.

Despite this, it would never cross Fawsia’s mind to misbehave. She tries her hardest every day. She does what she’s told. She would certainly never talk back to a teacher. She goes to lesson after lesson seeming unremarkable to one teacher after another.

The allocation of resources to students in schools is basically based on how loud you shout, how badly behaved you are, how many problems you cause. I’m sure Fawsia could do with some counselling: she’d probably actually turn up to the sessions unlike a lot of the kids who do get that privilege. But Fawsia stays in the background, hidden.

Every time someone tells you a student can’t help but misbehave because of their tragic circumstances, think of Fawsia.

Every time someone rewards badly behaved students with school trips or even just personal attention, think of Fawsia.

Every time someone advocates including all the Ariannes in your classroom, think of Fawsia, sitting in the corner, having another hour of her education wasted.

Every time you’re planning or teaching or reflecting, try to think of Fawsia. Amongst the cacophony of the inner city school, you may be one of the only people that remembers to.

7 kids in 7 days: Arianne

Arianne has 800 negative behaviour points logged this year. Given the average incident garners 2 points, that’s 400 incidents of poor behaviour since September.

But this is hardly a fair representation of the havoc she causes. Scroll through a standard students’ file, and they’ll have a handful of points for missed detentions and forgotten homeworks. There are no such points for Arianne. Does she not get set homework? Does she never get detentions? Course not. Teachers just realise they have to focus on frying the big fish or they’d be on the laptop all day talking about her.

In my first week, Arianne called me a “fucking tranny”. A few weeks later, she deliberately snapped every single ruler, protractor and pencil stored at the front of the classroom for later use in that lesson, because I’d made her angry by putting her name on the board for talking over me. Not long after that, she squared up to a boy in class and told him he was a dirty homo and liked it up the bum.

The response from every member of staff – from my colleagues in the maths office, SMT, and behaviour support officers – has been “just log it on SIMS”. Everyone knows Arianne’s treading the predictable path that leads to permanent exclusion. They just need enough evidence to make the case to governors and make sure it’s upheld.

Arianne is now in year 9, though. Arianne has been at risk of permanent exclusion since the first term in year 7. The scale and extent of disruption and hurt Arianne has caused is horrifying to contemplate.

I once looked into her record from primary school. The euphemisms started early on. She was “lively” in year 3. A “kinaesthetic learner”. She had “trouble making friends”. In year 4, Arianne was excluded for 3 days for assaulting a teacher. This was the first of half a dozen she’d acquire under the age of 11. In year 6, Arianne was asked to take the last few weeks of term off, because things had got too much. The primary school felt she could “do with a fresh start” in her new secondary school. This essentially amounted to brushing the problems under the carpet, minimising communication between relevant services, and starting to create the perfect storm for secondary.

Arianne has a SEN label of BESD. This is not provide an explanation of her behaviour – it’s just a description. The label has given her access to a series of short term interventions that seem to have had little impact. She’s had anger management classes a plenty. Still didn’t stop her flipping over my table hulk-style when the TA asked her to do some work.

The main effect of the BESD label has been providing an excuse. No longer is her poor behaviour a choice. It is an inevitable consequence of her special needs. No longer is there any need to dig deeper to find a solution: she’s on the SEN register. It’s just how it has to be.

I’m sure the system does not have to work this way. I read about a primary teacher who worked really hard to get kids off the SEN register by working with parents to provide focused support until they could work successfully in the mainstream context. But not here.

I believe that the vast, vast majority of the population is capable of exercising control over their behaviour. But if that basic standard really is not possible for Arianne, by god, she should have gone to specialist provision years ago. If we’re going to decide a child is incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions and behaving properly, someone else needs to step in and take that responsibility for them. That takes money, resources and time. There’s no denying that. But at the moment these uncontrollable children are operating in a responsibility vacuum, insulated by layers of obfuscation and excuses.

Whether you’re an apologist for Arianne or you think she’s a disgrace, everyone agrees that she is not containable in a mainstream school. This has been clear for years. The idea that we just have to wait it out until her behaviour record gets long enough to kick her out helps absolutely nobody. It is the inclusion agenda at its absolute worst.

7 kids in 7 days: Malachi

I do not teach Malachi, but I’ve known his name since September. He is a BNOC.

Malachi is the politest child I see in and around school. Every adult is Miss or Sir. Doors are held open for adults. He’ll offer to carry your books for you if you’re struggling. He makes appropriate small talk: “how’s your day been, Miss?” None of that nonsense for his peers. But he does the teenage equivalents – whatever they may be – so his peers are enamoured with him too. The girls swoon around him. Basically, he’s incredibly socially switched on.

I have never seen Malachi lose his cool with a teacher or even be remotely rude. But he is more than happy to flout the rules in many other ways. He is one of the most prolific sellers in school. The last time the vice principal confiscated his bag she found over £50 and dozens of chocolate bars, doughnuts and fizzy drinks. He often implicated in “rushing”: a group of kids charging at at another group of kids – one form against another, one year against another, one ethnicity against another…

To be honest, I get why Malachi does it. In this school, the structures and clarity aren’t there for effective sanctions. The inconsistency makes the gamble worth it. And his charming ways extend to eloquent apologies, which mean punishments are inevitably softened. Malachi sees his misbehaviour as victimless, having fun and making some money in a place which otherwise offers very little to him. He’s a bright boy and school isn’t stretching or inspiring him.

Malachi loves being at school because it’s basically a glorified youth club. But in 15 years time, this clever kid will be 30, with underwhelming qualifications. I fear he may then look back and consider school the best days of his life. Which is pretty tragic. School should be but the starting point.

It’s our job to maximise the long term future happiness and success of the future Malachis, Sarahs, Abdis and Pauls in our care. However much they are enjoying the here and now of school, you only have to look at our exam results and leaver destinations to conclude we’re failing at that.

I love Malachi, but increasingly I find him frustrating. More accurately, I find it frustrating to see him unintentionally undermining the school’s authority and systems. He is a perfect example of what’s holding the school back from being a truly orderly, productive, learning-filled environment.

Hmm. Orderly, productive, learning filled environment. What does that sounds like? Oh, yeah. A school.

I’d nearly forgotten.

7 days: Tyrone

In the horrible, dark days of December, there was only one class that I actively looked forward to. This was mainly because it was the one class that I could get through without a student being rude to me in some shape or form. Class 8a1 was that lovely class.

Chief amongst the gems was a shining diamond called Tyrone. Tyrone was, and is, a legend.

Tyrone is faultlessly polite, wonderfully enthusiastic and astoundingly good at mathematics. His answers to open questions are so elegantly expressed I want to write them down and frame them. If I’ve planned a shoddy uninteresting and unchallenging lesson, Tyrone’s impassive and unenthused face will say it all. Must try harder.

One early conversation with Tyrone broke my heart a little. I’d given him a UK Maths Challenge problem to try as an extension. His response was, “oh cool! I saw a question like this on the Hogwarts entrance test”. Hogwarts is the only remaining grammar school in the area. I have no doubt that Tyrone would have soared like an eagle there. Yeah, he may do that here too, but one can’t deny the probability of excelling is lower. I just pray he stays on the right path and doesn’t get sucked into the local gang culture or any other negative influences.

Now, the million pound question has to be why aren’t Laura and Darnel like Tyrone? They all went to the same mediocre primary school, live on the same estate and have uneducated parents.

Is it talent? I haven’t made my mind up about the whole Growth mindsets and Bounce thing. Attitude is undoubtedly important but natural ability surely comes into it too. Tyrone’s talent feels so natural that one can’t imagine it being any different, but feelings aren’t exactly reliable cognitive science.

Is it his parents’ attitude? Tyrone does have incredibly dedicated parents. They barely speak English but that doesn’t stop them from doing everything they can to help him succeed. They are unabashedly pushy. Tyrone does extra work in the holidays and weekends. He is in the chess club and reading group. When I phoned home to say how fantastically Tyrone had done in his end of term assessment – getting the highest mark in the year – his mum cried and just kept repeating “God bless you”. His parents support him to the ends of the earth.

Is it exposure, knowledge and practice? All that reading and extra work gives Tyrone a really solid knowledge base. He’s got a reading age of 14. He has a flawless mathematical grounding in terms of times tables, square numbers, powers of two and all that malarky. It really does make a massive difference. He makes connections lightning fast. His basic arithmetic doesn’t hold him back like it does for that vast majority of the students I teach.

Is it his hard work? Tyrone is always striving and is hungry for more work, more challenge and that feeling of success. He is not scared of work. He wants hard questions. He is not interested in the gossip about which 12-year-old is now going out which other 12-year-old. The focus is maths.

It’s probably a combination of all the above. But by god, that combination is potent. If only we could bottle it.