The long kiss goodnight

We're now in the final week of the term. All of the marking, moderating, correcting, commenting and reporting is, for the most part, done and now I'm sitting trying to catch my breath after what has been a hectic term, to put it lightly.

I've loved all of the different types of content I've been able to work with this term. Film study proved to be most exhilirating and the students responded to it really well. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that this generation is such a visually stimulated one. Give a group of Grade 8s some film stills to work with and they quite come to life. The depth of their interpretation is already rather impressive and I'm excited to see how this group will far with the more challenging stuff that will be required of them as the years pass. They do still tend to generalise, but that's to be expected.

Accounting has also gone well this term. Having now moved to the transitionary point in the year, it was the Grade 8s' turn to learn how to do basic book-keeping and they really have risen to the occasion quite splendidly. That being said, I continue to be amazed by how some students really struggle with stuff that I had thought was very straight forward. I suppose it's like teaching grammar. You can explain how to punctuate direct speech until you're blue in the face, but some students just cannot get it. I was getting very frustrated by this and then, today something happened that made me realise something...

I asked my colleague for the time and she pointed to the analogue clock which hung above my head. Now, I've never been able to read analogue time and no matter how many times someone tries to explain it to me, I don't get it. I realised at this moment that this is precisely how some students must feel about the work I'm trying to get them to understand.

My problem with analogue time has always been that it takes too long to read the time precisely. Sure, it's easy to give a rough estimate at a glance, but you have to go and count the exact number of notches if you want to know what the time is exactly. With a digital watch or clock, this information is instant. Having this technology at my disposal has, in my little world, negated the necessity for analogue time and so I've almost forced my brain not to learn how to do it.

I'm guessing that this might be the case for some of the students I'm teaching. They couldn't give two hoots whether or not they can punctuate properly, because MSWord does it for them, nor are they interested in how to balance an account in the General Ledger, because this information is, for all intents and purposes, useless to them.

What is the solution to this, then? As I sit here, I can still hear my own arguments against analogue time ringing in my head. Am I going to ignore those and go and learn it now, to correct the error of my ways? No. Probably not. How then do I try to convince my students that what I'm telling them has any value? And let me point out that I will not resort to telling them that they need to know it for the exams.

I think the answer has to do with value. We often need to distinguish between what is classified as 'effective' teaching and 'valuable' teaching. Effective teaching is when one is almost entirely centred on assessment, and one then tailors one's methods to ensure that students are adequately prepared for assessments. Examination coaching is an example of this particular approach. What tends to happen in this situation, however, is that students then do very well in whatever the assessment is, but they do not not possess any real knowledge or understanding of the work that has been covered. They are, essentially, like houses that have been built without using any cement or bonding agent whatsoever: they will look the part, and might even be beautifully decorated, but if you push on them even a little bit, they will collapse.

Valuable teaching, on the other hand, is not focused on assessment, but more on the development of the individual's ability to reason, to grapple with the subject matter and to formulate one's own, unique conclusions about it. This approach sounds like the best, but it can be very difficult to assess and when one has classes averaging at 25+ students, finding time to nurture each individual's voice can be extremely challenging. I'm in a very privileged position in that my largest class contains only 23 students, but I still find it nearly impossible to give each student the individual attention that he or she requires and deserves. This means that while the house is a lot more solid, it also takes a lot longer to build it, and it might also mean that the house is lacking in some areas. One wall might be taller than another, for example.

It would seem, then that the solution is to teach somewhere in the middle. As a teacher, one needs to figure out how to give students the space to express themselves as individuals, while still maintaining a reasonable marking and teaching load and, simultaneously, assessing them so that their parents can see some kind of tangible evidence that something is going on at this place to which they're sending their precious children.

My own--largely experimental--approach has been to cover the content and work through it fairly systematically, but also provide spaces for students to express their thoughts, to discuss, to wrestle with what's being taught. I've had students disagree with me during poetry analysis and I welcome it. The stuff that comes up is stunning. I try to ask a few fairly open and challenging questions rather than a pile of questions, many of which serve little REAL purpose in the first place. Perhaps I'm mistaken for following this route, but I'd like to think that I'm not. It is my hope that by doing this, I might be able to entice the reluctant students to have a go at "learning analogue time". Perhaps if they feel that they can have some kind of freedom within the structure, they will feel like there is some relevance hiding in the content after all. If not, then at least I've held a door open for them.

This is now turning into a bit of a waffle. I think I've made a fair point, though and I'm hoping that what I'm saying makes sense to someone more than just me. Ok, that's enough...

Here we go again.

I've not blogged in months and this can be attributed to a many factors, the biggest, and most important one being that I've not really known what to write about. While this has still not changed for the most part, I'm trying not to give in to lethargy and write something.

Much has changed in my little world of teaching since last I posted. I have made discoveries and blunders that have altered my outlook in some regards and cemented my opinions in others.

I suppose the most pressing thing to discuss would be Shakespeare. I'm busy teaching Romeo & Juliet to my 9s and Macbeth to my 10s and I'm loving it. Let me put that more clearly: teaching these two plays has given me an energy and zest for teaching beyond anything I've experienced so far. There's something about the richness of the text, the possibilities for performance and the engagement of my students that just makes it the most marvelous thing to do in the world at the moment. I'm still figuring out how best to teach it to get the students to understand the text and to become competent at answering questions on the setworks, but this will come in time. For now I'm more concerned with getting the students to fall in love with something that I feel so passionately about, because I really do believe that Shakespeare (if used correctly ;) ) can change someone's life.

I remember how I hated the stories and dreaded studying Shakespeare with a passion when I was in primary school. That all changed in grade 9 when we did a film study of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet which was--and still is--one of the most incredible films I'd seen. Watching that film took all of my preconceptions and threw them through the nearest window. The stale, boring and pointless plays that I'd heard people complain about for years suddenly became fresh, vivid and engaging and awakened an appetite for more. I must point out that I didn't immediately launch on a quest to read everything, but I had a new way of looking at things.

As usual, I have resorted largely to talking about things which I are not terribly invaluable to anyone in particular, but let me cut through all of the melodramatic pouring out of emotion and say this: when I discovered Shakespeare, I found myself. That is pretty significant, if not to whoever's reading this, then at least to me. I teach Shakespeare not because it's in the syllabus, but I teach it to show students that it is alive, powerful and potentially life changing. If I teach for 40 years and only convert one student, it will all have been worth it.

Right. Enough guff. 'Til next time.

Getting stuff down...

So, here goes

I have on several occasions attempted to write a blog, but it never comes to fruition because of a number of different reasons, none of which are particulary important right now. What is important, is that I've begun to write at last. Perhaps, actually, I should start with what normally hinders my progress, because looking at the barriers might provide insights (or not, but at least it means I've published something onto the net)

1. Titles

Every blog must have a title and a URL to go along with the title. Now, I've tried to come up with titles, but generally they are either taken, or when I do get one that works, it's really lame. The title I've chosen for my blog now is CLERPS, which is a concept that I got from my friend and mentor Nigel Bakker. It works thus:

C = Colour
L = Laughter
E = Exaggeration
R = Rhythm
P = Pattern
S = Symbol

All of these different concepts form what helps to make lessons interesting and conducive to learning. This makes an apt title for my blog because firstly, I'm a teacher and things concerning education are of interest to me and will most likely dominate what I write about; secondly, I am currently on a bit of a journey to include more of these things in my life and this will also filter into my writing, I imagine and thirdly, it wasn't already taken.

2. Faffing

I'm quite prone to this. I tend to fixate my attention on what is not entirely important. Fixate is a good word, but obsess is even better. I will spend hours tweaking the column sizes and font colours until they are perfect and after subjecting myself to this, I become bored or too tired to write and consequently lose my motivation to write at all. With this blog I've changed the background (to a picture taken by my very talented cousin) and that's it. I'm getting down to putting words down. Granted, this will probably never be read by anyone, but it's serving as a kind of catharsis for me. That being said, if you are reading this, then be warned... there will be a lot of venting and philosophising... which leads me to my third and final barrier:

3. What do I write about?

So, I've already told you what I plan to write about, but I've always found that to be problematic, because while I find it terribly interesting, I find it unlikely that others will. Recently, however, I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to write this for me and even if no one else reads it, then it doesn't matter. When I was studying to be a teacher, we had to keep a journal during our practice sessions and I found the process to be very rewarding. After TP, though, I stopped doing it. Now that I've taught for a term, I can't help but feel that having a journal would have been tremendously beneficial. I guess I'll turn this into a journal which will compell me to keep writing and also to keeping my thoughts brief (I waffle and faff, you see).

So that's enough for now. I've put some text on a page in cyberspace. This may or may not be the start of great new things.