Why are we all so broke?

It's no secret that education is bankrupt financially. And we really need a solution. Teachers are leaving in droves, resources are stretched thinner than the morals of those who sell them on TESonline, and everywhere you look someone is whining about it. Well, I ask you, if we're constantly financially bankrupt, isn't it time to explore the obvious option to solve the situation. Principals and principees, isn't it about time that we started exploiting and monetizing (z intentional, and to be pronounced 'zee').

Kids, let's start going morally bankrupt and get ourselves out of this hole.

So here's my starters guide to leaching every available penny out of your ailing school. Put your ethics in your junk mail folder and get yourself ready for your invite to the ceremony for your peerage.

1: Don't sell off your school fields. Repurpose them instead:

Why sell them off when they can be used for far more long term investment opportunities? One school I work with as a consultant is reaping (quite literally) the benefits of their new 6-acre graveyard facility. Kids don't play sport anymore, everyone knows that.

Or if you're a little bit queasy about all those dead bodies, what about kennels, or building a factory. Possibly, a factory producing school uniform that you could make mandatory for your students. It's kickback city!

2:  14 weeks off a year? More like 14 weeks of opportunity!

Think of all those days when your school is empty of the money-sucking bastards that you have to educate. If the Natural History Museum can host sleepovers then surely your school can host unlicensed raves! You've got dingy classrooms full of graffiti, bathrooms that look like something out of Trainspotting and a massive school hall; it's just like that time I saw someone die in a drum and bass club in East Berlin. And during the day you can host post-apolocalyptic themed paintball games. With the colours of your classroom walls, it's not like anyone's going to notice, and at least they'll get their first lick of paint in twenty years.

3: Who needs teachers, when they can just google it instead.

I mean, why not just download the BTEC spec and give the kids it. They can just sit on the school's aging computer network and google all the answers. They'll be fine.

Or, maybe you could sell your teachers to other schools. Franchised teaching; it's the new way. The teachers can livestream their lessons to other schools for a pretty penny in the school's coffers. And while they're at it, maybe they can get involved with the next idea:


4: Corporate sponsorship. Simple and effective, just like Dirtaway, the busy people's kitchen cleaner.

Big Ideas, Big Logos, Big Money. Everyone wants to access the youth market now, and why waste money trying to reach them, through MySpace or Hi5 when you can put the item straight in their grubby hands using someone they trust as the vector. Got a new pair of designer trainers you want to sell, well who better to sell it straight to the kids than the teachers they adore and respect? Everyone knows that students idolise teachers and wish to look exactly like them? What else could explain the current socks and sandals epidemic? Vinyl? Hipsters? Surely the product of teachers during the 90s. Truefact: Every hipster secretly aspires to be Robin Williams in Dead Poets' Society. Why not exploit that. And Parents evenings? What a gift! Parents shopping evenings more like!

5: Sell to kids, or sell the kids!

No, I'm not suggesting anything as barbaric as actually selling the children (you'd never get away with it), but perhaps those children could get a few extra vaccines each year. And by a few, I mean a lot. And by vaccines, I mean any unlicensed drug whose manufacturer is morally questionable enough to test it on children. And that questionable morality means big monies for you.

These are just five of the many ideas you could deploy to truly monetize your site and staff, but with the right employment of a vastly overpaid set of non-teaching staff I'm sure that you can bluesky up your own out-of-the-box-in-the-box radical cost-saving, cash-building methods. Why not just shorten the school day for instance, or cut all of the arts subjects. No, perhaps those two are far too radical to be accepted. No-one will truly accept stripping the curriculum down to it's barest of bare bones and then firing all but a skeleton crew of teachers and plugging the gaps with long-term cover, overstretched LSAs and unprepared NQTs.

no-one.

- Calamity.

Three Years On

Hello.

Well. That was dramatic.

It's been a while since I've written a blog post on here. I had actually nearly forgotten about this place. This funny little place where an odd history of my teaching lives. I can sum it up, somewhat: I started teaching, I left teaching, I came back to teaching to open a new school, I stopped writing blog posts because I was sort of, well, happy. Other things happened in my life around this central point, but they are, in a way, unimportant right now. Suffice to say though that, elsewhere, I am very happy.

My Principal reminded me of this little folly of a location. He reminded me because he sent a couple of my articles to another head to explain what we do at the school. And then he said something a little sad: 'We are not as exciting as we used to be'. Why was that sad? Because he was right.

We are not as exciting as we used to be.

(I go back on my earlier statement. It is not a little sad. It is very sad. I worry. A Lot. I returned from work one day and told my long-suffering partner that I was going to resign because we were losing what the school is meant to be. It is that sad for me.) 

We are aware of this. And so, to use that terrible word that seems the panacea proposal of any SLT meeting, it's possibly time to Unpick the reasons why. So, in a method from any piece of teenage girls' fiction, to understand this, we need to go back a bit. We need to go back three years, when I wasn't just a unpopular teacher in a swanky new-build school.

Three years ago, I was an unpopular cover teacher in a school I hated, secretly writing my Master's dissertation during lessons. (One day I broke up three fights in the same lesson. (In hindsight I should've let the first one run to it's bloody conclusion; it would've prevented the other two and given me a better chance of finishing the paragraph I was working on.)). I had a job lined up for September: I was going to be Head of English at a brand new, tiny little school. The principal was someone I knew was fantastic, and I was good friends with two of the other teachers. I knew that it was going to be an excellent team. I was all geared up. It was going to be fantastic, amazing, stunning, fun, wonderful, brilliant.

And, well, It was.

We played at being a school. Every day we played. We taught the lessons we wanted to teach, the sports we loved, the games we adored. We broke out of lessons all the time to teach little things. We spent time in each others lessons learning their subjects too. It was beautiful. You can read about it here.

And so what has happened? Why is it not like that anymore? The short answer is that I don't really know. But I can grab some reasons like mayflies out of the air. I have been thinking about this a lot, the way that time has become the greatest enemy because it moves so fast that you don't have an opportunity to get any perspective and then, when you do, it is definitely not the perspective that you wanted. Here, then, like some sort of horrendous parody of Top of the Pops, are my thoughts on how we lost a bit of the spark. It is to be restated, despite being only in the sentence before, that these are MY thoughts. I am not the sole perspective on this, nor shall I ever be, and a number of these comments and musings may well cause arguments. This, however, are some of the reasons our spark has dwindled.

1: Novelties wear off: New things are fun, right? But the enemy of fun is often that the fun thing stops being new. I know, there are those people who've ridden the same rollercoaster a hundred times and still think that it's the most fun thing that's ever happened, but I bet if you painted that bastard Blue they'd be over the moon with kiddie joy. Every new policy I've ever seen in a school has been fantastic at first. From IRIS to PBL and every acronym in between, from Museum Schools to Silent Hallways, even the cane was probably met with glee the first time it came out.

Imagine this with an entire school. Pretty soon all the little things that were fun started being work. They started changing from the stuff we really wanted to do to the stuff we had to do because the students expected it. The students, too, started to become jaded by opportunity. We made little rods for their backs. (actually we did this. Paper Rod Chairs. Fantastic project.) We made bigger rods for our own, then started beating ourselves with them.


2: Smallness doesn't last forever: We started the school in a rented temporary building. We opened with 70 students and a handfull of staff. The whole school buzzed with the excitement of smallness. We would, and never will, be that small again. Our year 10s are now year 12s and they remember the halcyon days of smallness, when teachers really knew them. We have well over doubled in size now. We are in a bigger, purpose-built site that echoes in the wind. We have more kids and so we know them less. We have more staff, from lots of different systems, who don't necessarily buy into the ideals we opened with. We have lost staff - not many - but mainstays of the ideal. Proponents of fun. It is difficult to have fun when you don't even know their names.


3: OFSTED: OFSTED was barely ever mentioned in year one. It was a flicker in the corner of a room, a nothing found under a desk, a mention from another school. In the second year it started creeping in at the edges of conversations like a slow-growing moss, beginning to be in every room, just sat there, waiting, growing. By the start of the third year it had morphed into a man and he stood in the corner of a room with a clipboard and asked question and any time you said something he just said 'okay' and tapped his pen on the clipboard. We actually did pretty well in OFSTED. We were never going to be Outstanding, and so the Good we received was, well, Good. We did, however, pay a price for this.What OFSTED is, and what you think OFSTED is are two totally separate things. We were actually there. We were doing good things, but then we overlayed our own fears on top of ourselves. Perhaps we just shouldn't of cared. We got told things by other schools and I, personally, let myself believe them in places. I may have outwardly told people to go away, but I didn't fully exercise the spirit of their words.

4: Post-OFSTED: What OFSTED left was as bad as what OFSTED came with. They left suggestions, and areas where improvement could be made. Not so much ultimatums but fairly enforced things. They left us with targets. But what are targets to a school meant to change education? They should be nothing, they should be wrapped up in a carpet and dumped in the nearest canal. We should be iconoclastic. Unfortunately, realism strikes, and it is easy in this day of the stark unreal, to take the written real very seriously indeed. OFSTED left us with little scars all over the place. Proveables. Systems. Each and every one of these things is a distraction from the big core beliefs that built the school as an engaging and enjoyable place to be.

5: Exams Happen: Ah. Exams. Those bastards that creep up on you unawares in May because you haven't thought about them all year. Except that's not what happens. In our first year we had no exam groups. We had none of the May-centric madness that we are currently in the sweaty folds of. In the second year exams infected the school. We went from having barely referenced their existence to building huge tracking sheets and identifying key groups. Before that we taught. We taught lessons that we enjoyed, because it was fun for all of us; students and teacher alike. I taught lessons in the first year that I haven't taught since and i'm not sure why. That opening year 10 group still got fantastic results. We didn't fail them because the school was more fun, but somehow we got caught up after that. Our current year 11s, who started in the second year of the school, are far more exam focused than their predecessors. I wonder whether that was actually down to a systemic paradigm shift as opposed to a year-group zeitgeist.


6: Results Happen: It seems that, increasingly, results are no longer answers; they are questions. Immediately following results being posted there is normally some hush-hush heads of department meeting where people are meant to account for every grade. This, in a manner as obvious as being punched in the face, changes attitudes. As soon as results are scrutinized, questioned and, fundamentally, made to be accounted for, we clam up, close our office doors and hide ourselves from the spectre of modernity. We want to be seen to be doing something, and what that is is normally derived from 'successful' mainstream schools. That is not really right. We have had huge successes, and most of the areas where we have been successful are the areas where we have taught in an exploratory, emotion-driven way. We must have confidence in ourselves.


7: : Us: There really is no way around it. It is an inevitable conclusion of everything that comes before it. We did this. At the very least we let this happen, let the extraordinary slip a little from our grasp. We let things go, moment by moment, little by little, and allowed them to be overwritten. Schools are palimpsests, and it is far to easy for one system to overwrite another. We didn't stop the writing quickly enough. A lot of the reasons I've given have been external or semi-external, but I hope you can see that this is actually a process of introspection. The big questions here are 'what could we have done differently?' and 'How can we get some thing back?'.


So lets talk about some solutions. You can't solve everything. And Everything doesn't actually need to be solved. What We can do, though, is take ownership of things. We can be the advocates of our own systems. And, sort of sadly, but also quite happily, I guess it starts with working really fucking hard.

1: Systems Aren't Novelties. Attitudes Make Systems Last: Every new system that's ever failed in a school has failed because people thought it wasn't worthwhile anymore. So they stopped caring and stopped bothering. They suddenly didn't have time or didn't care and so it dropped down the list until that IRIS kit took up permanent residency next to the phonics boards and underneath the shelves full of Accelerated Reader books. The difference for us should be that we're not buying in a system. We're building one from the ground up and we need to keep doing it. It's easier to do this if everyone cares equally about it, but we have to stop ourselves being victims of our own novelty. We have to keep up the impetus and make sure that the impetus is our normality. The more we cared to start with, the more we must continue to care. If we don't, we're just another promised revolution that never happens.

2: Have Confidence in What We Are Doing: One exam series doesn't make a school. Neither does one OFSTED. Nor does one internal inspection, or one week, or one lesson. We have to be confident in ourselves. We also have to be honest insofar as we accept that things will change with time. Education changes, government changes, parents and children change. We have to be confident that we are still doing our best to provide an excellent alternative education, and that when students buy into it that there is something to buy into. Most of our kids turn up in year 10 totally disillusioned with education and it's our job to give them something that shows them that education is not just something they hate. We have to keep true to ourselves in defiance of those that spurn, and criticise, and begin statements with 'I'm just saying this but...'. They have a right to do that, and we have passed an OFSTED, so we can now move forward knowing that we have three years until that appears again, and in those three years we can make the school somewhere even more fantastic, not just pander to 'suggestions'. By the time our next OFSTED comes around the goalposts will have been moved, then taken down, turned into a non-competitive activity space and then sold to a developer.

3: Keep Promises: Keeping promises is hard. Really hard. We promised some huge things and some of them simply weren't feasible in the long term. We've definitely lost some of those promises, and most of them have come from allowing ourselves to be the victims of time. We let ourselves be panicked, and rushed, and not have enough time to do things. The time we had in the first year doesn't seem to exist any more and it really should. We should be able to have the lovely relaxed atmosphere that we had, but we seem to not have time for it any more. We don't run as many trips, or activities, and a lot of those were things we promised. We still haven't built a plane. It is the easiest thing in the world to not do anything. History has recounted that to us so many times you would think that we'd have learnt that by now. The problem is that knowing this doesn't necessarily make it any less true. I know, firmly in my tiny bionic heart, that we can be incredible as a school. We talk a great game. We just don't follow through. We need to chase ourselves up without being defensive about the reasons why we haven't done things. We just need to get on with it. All the time. Not just in post-exam gained time when it's easy; not just in September when it's fresh and new and lively; but all year.


4: Broadcast The Values We Hold Dear:  Namely, that we believe that our staff and students are capable of being incredible. That doesn't mean OSTED outstanding. They-who-must-not-be-named can stay the hell away from this. I mean that we trust students to be amazing. That we encourage, and believe that staff can be fantastic. But also that if we expect things of staff we expect it of students and vice versa. I'm not sure we do that. I'm not sure I do that. I'm not sure that I uphold standards that I believe in. Is this laziness? Probably Yes. Do I think that has a detrimental effect on student. Probably Yes Again. Could I be better? Yes. And just thinking that other schools, or others teachers are worse doesn't make me any better. That's important because I think it's easy to paint a name on yourself and forget that you have to live up to that name. We don't do enough that we expect of students, especially when it comes to learning. We don't broadcast as much teacherlearning as we could. We don't broadcast enough enthusiasm. When we tell kids that exams aren't the most important thing in learning do we actually make that point explicit? No. Absolutely not. Perhaps that is, then, an honesty question. Are we honest with students. Do we fail to keep promises or do we make dishonest promises? I have certainly told students something that just isn't feasible and probably knew that at the time. Had I thought about things earlier, I probably would've promised something else.

Teaching, in the end (although there are many sentences that start that way and don't end the way mine is going to) is about an assumption of honesty. Students assume that, as a teacher, you are honest. Over time that relationship can change quite a bit. I talk to students about their last schools; schools that they have consciously left, and one of their regular criticisms is that the school was dishonest. It said things and didn't do them. I would hate for that criticism to be leveled at us but I can also see how it could. It can be leveled at me at times. An attitude of openness needs to prevail. About what we are going to do and how that reflects what the school is meant to be. We are meant to be unique so we need to stay unique.

I guess that not many of you have got to the end of this rambling mess of a post. I'm not sure how relevant it actually is to anything anymore. It has, however, been very cathartic to have gotten a lot of these ideas down on (virtual) paper. And it's been good to be back writing again. I adore teaching, and I actually adore talking about teaching; I am appalling company at dinner parties. We can be fantastic. We just need to keep a little faith and see that faith through.

What Makes a Great English Teacher

 This was originally a question I answered on Quora that really got me thinking. We are inviting applications at the moment, and it's my first time recruiting. I'm genuinely excited about it, but it's made me think long and hard about who I want to work with. So, after much deliberation, here is my own guide to what makes a good English teacher.

 

I am in an interesting position at the moment which makes me quite relevant to answer this question; I am about to hire an English teacher to join me as the Second in Department at the school that I teach at. What this means is that I can tell you what I will be looking for in a few weeks time when I come to interview to hire.

---

First, though, a caveat borne of experience: I once went for an interview at a very good, very traditional school. I was well qualified for the post and when I was rejected for the role I was told that I simply didn't fit the school. I had thought that all the other candidates where quite boring, quite dull people who were overly entrenched in the past. The thing is that the school were absolutely right to reject me. I would've been a terrible fit. I would've fought against the school and they against me. So the caveat is that an outstanding English teacher in one school may well be awful in another, and vice versa.

---

To continue, then: In a few weeks I will sit across from some candidates and talk to them and what I will be looking for are people who:

Know their stuff: I want staff with great subject knowledge. I want our students to see that their teachers live their subjects.

Care about their subject: I want my students to receive up-to-date and exciting information. I want them to be able to get into deep discussions with teachers that truly care about what they're saying.

Are Interesting: Students deserve staff who lead interesting lives outside the classroom and can share elements of those lives. I want sportspeople, model-makers, musicians, chefs, readers, writers, readers, journalists, historians, film-buffs, artists, critics, nerds, geeks, gamers, because all this enriches the experience of teaching the most wonderful subject there is. Even if it doesn't seem important right now, it will be important at some point.

And then, I am likely to watch them teach a lesson and what I want to see is a lesson where the teacher:

Is Passionate: I want to see how much they care about what they're teaching. Students should be hung on every word because the teacher clearly wants to share their love and interest.

Has very high standards: Students deserve to be pushed and so I expect teachers to speak properly, press students' vocabularies, teach difficult texts and topics and correct students when they use unacceptable language or give simplistic answers.

Has a sense of humour and sense of perspective: You can also read this as 'Doesn't take themselves too seriously.' Schools should be lighthearted, fun places, and expect teachers to reflect this. They should also be able to recognise when a student has done something wrong by accident (as opposed to with malice), and how to deal with this is a way that is appropriate.

So that is my checklist for what I think makes a great teacher, but one last thing. I always want to work in an environment where teachers and students are pushing themselves forward. I think the best trait a teacher can have is to always be learning and questioning. I want to work with people that are unafraid of failure, and embrace criticism and move forward constantly. And if you've got to the end of this, and you live in London and are a teacher and are thinking 'This sounds like me!' then why not apply: Space Studio West London

You work until when?

Hello everyone.

This is hard for me to say.

I am a teacher.

And I work until Five.

Shock, Gasp, Horror.

Oh. Wait. You ONLY work until five?

Yes. I only work until five. in fact, I stay at school until five, and then, give or take, I go home. What makes this particular situation slightly more unusual is that I teach until five. Every day, except for Fridays (where we pack up at 3:40) I get into school about and have a working day all the way through until five, at which point, almost simultaneously, the entire staff of the school legs it. And when I get home, what do I do? The same things that the rest of my school's staff do:

Spend time with their family.
Go to the gym.
Watch a bit of sport.
Play with the dog.
Watch the collected works of Wes Anderson.

You get the picture, and the picture doesn't include any work whatsoever. My school specifically has a 'don't take work home' policy. HA! I hear you cry from the future, but what if you HAVE to get that marking done. Well, if it isn't done in PPA time then the marking isn't efficient enough. And what about planning then? If it isn't done in PPA time then it's overplanning, not planning at all.

I know that this is beginning to come across as a sort of vague utopian satire, that in a second I will wake up from my little long-houred school but, actually, there is no volta here, no reveal. This is a piece of writing in defence of a few small things, and promoting a few small things. I live in an idyll, as far as education is concerned. A state-funded, non-selective idyll; A studio school.

By Tuesday, every week, I have taught every student in the school. All 80-odd of them will have passed into my judgement and out again. Now, yes, we are in our first year of opening, and so we are at half capacity, but the entire size of the secondary school will never exceed 300 for years 10-13. I know every child in our school's name, and they know mine. And I talk to them, every day. I spend time with students.

In our timetable, SLT have been really careful to place enough time for staff to do all their work on site. Right now, I am in the 2-hour PPA period that I have first thing in the morning 4 days a week. I get a lot of stuff done in these periods, not least all my marking, planning, and then have a wander around the school, watching other teachers teach. Often, I just sit in the back of other teacher's classrooms and do my marking, or I just watch their lessons and learn something. I am not a mathematician, but I am getting better, purely by the amount of maths lessons I now watch. Because, once again, I have time.

There is, of course, a flipside that some are already guessing. If you keep the kids until 5, when do they do their homework? Here. They do it here. They have timetabled independent study periods where they have to do their work. They get it done on site, in periods supervised by teachers, which means that students can ask their teachers for help. Then, at the end of the day, the students get to go home, and not do homework, and not panic about not understanding their homework. Parents don't have to panic about not being able to help their students. Then, inadvertently, arguably, and even more adverbially, the best result is that students' books are kept at school, in big boxes. All of them. It is next to impossible for a child to lose their book, or 'leave an essay at home' because the book should never have been there in the first place. We have so much control here, and that enables us to do amazing things like taking kids on trips, and getting in outside speakers every single week.

What we are learning is that above everything else,  If teachers have time, have space, fell valued, feel supported and are therefore happy, then amazing things happen. Most importantly, the experience for the students is unique and incredible.

We Need to Talk about Thursday

We need to talk about Thursday. Why do we need to talk about Thursday? Because I'm pretty sure that it was the best teaching day of my life.

I haven't been writing much recently. Well, not here anyway. I have actually been working on a novel. It has nothing to do with teaching and everything to do with it at the same time, but that is an aside that hasn't quite linked up yet, so we will leave it, comparatively, untouched.

The writing has dried up somewhat because I am a little bit too happy. It is easier to complain in a wild, emotional abandon than to exalt with any sort of integrity. I have learned that it is difficult to write good news, which explains the Daily Mail, I guess.

So, Thursday, I'm sorry. Thursday was the best day of my teaching life, and part of that was because it wasn't atypical of my current working life. I cycled in and arrived about 8, and I cycled home when I finished teaching just after 5. But, then what else?

I started the working day with breakfast, bought from home, sat around in the canteen with the other teaching staff while the students sorted themselves and their gossips out for the day. Then I had English timetabled with year 10.

I teach both halves of year Ten, or, looking at it another way, all of year Ten. We have about 48 students in year ten, and a shade under thirty kids in year twelve and that's our entire school. We're a studio school and we only opened in September. Next year we'll have years 10-13, giving up a shade under 200 students for the entire school. For now, we are minute, and not in that disappointing steak kind of way.

This diminutive structure has a vast number of advantages, but that's not the direct reason why Thursday was incredible. I taught a lesson. I taught the same lesson twice in fact. It was a lesson I'd been thinking of for a while. The first half of it was relatively mundane; the students wrote letters to each other, as if we were fifteen years in the future and they were getting in touch with their former classmates. They've been doing this quite a bit. They get a letter, anonymously, from someone else, read it and send a reply. The next week they get the replies and send another. it's working as an ongoing project. They enjoy it. Each of them, in 45 minutes, writes and observant letter. It's a nice thing. After that, the students studied two different manifestos and then wrote their own revolutionary manifestos. Some of them needed a bit of quiet space so used some of the other rooms in the school. I put some Billy Bragg on as well, just to set the mood.

After four hours of English teaching I hopped on the school bus with 12 Year 10s and drove about fifteen minutes down the road to go Ice Skating for the third time in two weeks. (third time, a third of year ten, sort of fits, right?). It became ice clear as soon as blades touched clear ice that many of these students were new to the slippery stuff. I love seeing students out of their comfort zones, and out of the school environment, so it's good that our school has developed an informal motto: Every week, someone goes somewhere. We're actually far exceeding this: Last week something like 8 trips went out and we had 3 outside speakers. We work hard to provide unique experiences, and in return our students are good as platinum.

I got back to school at 3:40, just in time for the last lesson of the day, which in my case was the current Core Project: Flight. Every group is pursuing the project from their own unique angle. Their only outcome is they must build a model and produce a display board explaining a concept of flight. One group decided they wanted to work with clay, so we got them some clay and I spent a good half hour modelling with them. I built an eagle's head of my own and they started on their own project. I had to leave them, though, to teach a masterclass. We offer these every Core Project session. They're optional little mini classes on these that the teacher is interested in or wants to research. This one was on advances in aircraft technology from WW2 to the current day. It's an area I really like talking about.

And that's it, actually. I don't know whether you've noticed the running theme. I love letter writing, I love manifestos, especially modernist ones, love Ice Skating, love craft and modelling, love planes and most of all I love teaching about things I love. There is no force in teaching more powerful than passion. I am not an exceptional teacher; I am a teacher who took a chance on a school that didn't exist when I applied to it, and I have used that chance, as have the rest of the staff I work with, to foster an environment where we enjoy every single day. We regularly say to each other that 'this doesn't feel like work'  because it doesn't. We don't have hideous numbers of emails; we talk to each other. We don't have reams of pointless paperwork; we get on with stuff, and to all the naysayers about accountability and OFSTED? Our vice principal is an inspector.

So we need to talk about Thursday, because Thursday felt like a school should; exciting, stretching, passionate and fun. It's just a little sad that it also feels like no other school I have ever been in.

Teaching and Watching

So it's the summer, right? And you're already bored, right? And it's inevitably going to rain, because it's England, and that's what it does, right? So, get yourself on Amazon and order up a load of DVDs, and being a teacher, or that should possibly be being a Teacher (it comes capitalised with your NUT membership) you inevitably can't leave your job behind, so why not take a hint from the Calamity Teacher Brand (tm pending) guide to what to watch when you miss school a little too much, but don't want to get off the sofa/out of bed. I have included OFSTED-sanctioned summaries of every film so that you're absolutely sure of what you've learned from the experience before you even begin.

1: Dead Poets' Society
A man breaks every rule in the staff handbook then encourages students to go against their parents' wishes until one of them commits suicide. Hilarity ensues. 

2: History Boys
Overweight paedophile teaches young student the value of their holistic education while indoctrinating an NQT into his own way of thinking. Lovable paedo gets caught fondling a student and is saved from a disgraceful dismissal by his untimely death. Hilarity ensues. Also on the AQA reading list so it's like doing homework.

3: The Breakfast Club
Five bad boys with the power to rock you students demonstrate their diversity through the medium of forced ubiquitous punishment. They are badly supervised and this causes negative behaviour to propagate. In the end no-one learns anything. There is also a musical montage.

4: Coach Carter
Inspirational educator is accidentally hired as a sports coach instead of a Principal. School sport is presented as being unfathomably important and this is why Ashanti ends up pregnant.

5: Harry Potter
A consistently failing and dangerous independent school is followed in a unprecedented 7-year study where the school consistently resists academisation by a clearly more organised and benevolent power. A student council raises its own private army in fierce defiance of Voldemort the DfE. IN THE LAST FILM THE SCHOOL IS TURNED INTO AN ACADEMY AND EVERYTHING IS OKAY THERE IS NO NEED TO WATCH THE LAST FILM. NO NEED AT ALL. GO BACK TO SLEEP. EVERYTHING IS OKAY.

6: Teachers
Precursor to Educating Essex makes a household name out of Andrew Lincoln. longitudinal study shows why Labour was always wrong about education. Always.

7: Donnie Darko
 Parallel universe parable demonstrates why teachers should always STICK TO THE CURRICULUM; a number of teachers go off-curriculum to teach dangerous texts and non state-sanctioned theories. This torrid arrogance leads to deaths and destruction. There's another paedophile in this one, too.

8: Perks of Being a Wallflower
Boy deals with worrying relapses in mental state by studying extra-curricular core subjects. Quality teaching

9: Summer Heights High
A drama teacher, a independent school exchange student and a youth delinquent are the centre of this reality-tv expose of the failures of an Australian school system that doesn't have the EBACC.

10: The Inbetweeners
Series follows four sixth formers who are consistently supported by an excellent head of sixth form and a supportive, enriching, school experience and all go on to excellent post-18 opportunities in the worlds of work and university. Hilarity is abundant in this riotous coming-of-age drama. There is also a paedophile because, well, of course there is. 

Enjoy your summer kiddies, because I'm watching films.

There will be a story there.

I have always assumed that the birth of a school followed a secular immaculate conception. That schools just sprang up, or had always been there. I find it hard, still, to work out where one finds the space to place a fully formed school in a town, or village, or extra-urban part of Hounslow.

When I left teaching last year, I wasn't sure of when I would return, but I told myself that I would only come back to do something that I could really get behind. I had one ill-fated interview at a very prestigious school, but it didn't feel right, and they didn't like me, so the choice on that one was very much taken out of my hands. But then something came up.

When I left my last school, another teacher (among many) left at the same time. This teacher was also taking a break from classroom teaching (although he did little of that in his role as a director) but he wasn't off to study, he was off to plan. Plan and build. He was off to put a school where there had previously been no school. But, more than that, he was off to answer a question that we all think from time to time; 'What would I do if I was in charge?'. And his, most wonderful of answers?

'We're going to change education.'

I offer my insincere apologies here for the mixed pronouns, but it was necessary to facilitate some inconsequential gravitas. 'We're going to change education.' it's a wonderful phrase. It's brave, it's possibly stupid, but it's all that is right. As you can probably imagine, that sort of statement sought me out from my high-brow literary malaise. I was convinced. I wanted to be part of this, or, at least, I wanted to find out what 'this' was. Turns out 'This' was the 'that' that I wanted the 'this' to be.

In short order, I had an interview, I got the job, I started becoming something. I started co-writing a story. Others were involved. Others are involved. We are becoming something and that thing feels gorgeous. A lot of what we're doing in September isn't totally defined. A lot of it isn't set in stone, or fleshed out or down on paper, but that is so wonderfully exciting. There is no set way of doing things yet, so the teachers get to define how things are done We are not encumbered by history. When we looked at the options for what to teach, we decided on what we wanted to teach. As in, what interested us. When I chose set texts for GCSE, I made a conscious decision to choose what excited me, not what was easy. I chose texts specifically for their wider ramifications; the opportunities to teach off-field. Off-spec. Off-kilter.

Going away from the teach-to-the-test rubric is the point of the school. The point is to teach. to actually teach. Not to check boxes in ever-decreasing circles, but to take steps in ever-increasing bounds. We want to engender a culture of wanting to learn. Not being tricked into it. We seem to have an obsession with 'tricking' children into learning, and that we have to 'complete' sections of education. The education is something that can be 'finished'. Screw that. Lets change the ethic. We're trying to change the ethic.

There is a lot of top down dictum in education. A lot of people making their own decisions and a lot of people below them just 'doing their best' is spite of this. Is it your best? Is it the version of you that you want to be? Be your own hero. We are. We are trying to change education one student at a time, one school at a time. Part of it, though, is who we are surrounding ourselves with; Passionate people who believe in themselves and their causes. People who question the status quo and value their own learning as much as their students. This might sound horribly arrogant, but I am starting to realise that teachers easily become very negative. It is very easy in staffrooms for teachers to enter spirals of negativity that effect our working lives. Instead of being proud of what we do, we surround ourselves with people who bring us down. The school that I have been temping at as a cover supervisor is quite close to the new school, and I have been innundated with negative energy about what we are trying to do in September. We are seen as a threat and a risk and a group of people playing at education. It has worn me down at times and given me undue doubts, but then the moment I have conversations with the other September teachers I am instantly filled with excitement. It's been fiercely dichotomous. I have found myself feeling displaced from both. But then I started to ponder, then wonder, then with enlightened wonderment filled myself with hope. Then I realised it wasn't hope. It was the feeling I should have.

I Love This Job.

I have missed it, and being a cover teacher has just entrenched this by showing me a pale imitation of what teaching is. I want to be around other people who aren't curbed by some underhand need to whine. Now I whine a lot, I know, but I will never tell anyone that I don't love my job. And, I reckon most of you do, too. You are reading blogs about teaching. You are on Twitter. You care. And most of you seen to want to change teaching so that it is more teaching, and less bullshit. So get the people around you who believe in what you believe in and start changing what you want to change at the ground level, and make sure people know what you're doing and how you're doing it. Don't suffer dictum in silence. Build narratives between teachers and other teachers, between teachers and students, between students and students. Make your own environment. Talk to each other. Come out of your classrooms and share practice. Don't be afraid of being observed by your peers, or of collaborating with other subjects or other schools. Don't be afraid to take ownership of yourself.

Be a heroine. Be a hero. Be the teacher you want to be. Don't be afraid to be positive about things you believe in because, you know what? You believe in them. Be the most positive person you can be about what you want to be positive about. This process of preparing to open a new school has taught me to be proud of my ideas and proud to be positive. It's a strange thing, but I feel like much of the education system, both as a profession and a public service, rewards a lack of ingenuity. I want to stop that. I am with other people who want to stop that, and we're stepping up to the plate. Fancy going up to your own?

Planning backwards

I read this blog post this week, and I thought about one of the major points, that is, planning backwards from A-level. In September, I am going to be Lead Teacher of English at a new school where I am the only English teacher (Department nights out are going to be wild (or, alternatively, just me, in the pub, on my own, crying, into a half drunk pint of absinthe.))


Anyway. I like this idea of planning back from A-level, but I also thought about planning forward from A-level. As in, I want to plan the student that I want to leave my department, so I sat down and started to think about that student. I asked myself a very simple question: How will I describe the eighteen year old student graduating my school? Specifically, a student with an A-level in English. I jotted down a few traits before a reasonably important realisation:

The Student:

• Well Read 
• Respectfully Outspoken
• Creative
• Pragmatic
• Confident
• Respectfully Cynical
• Able to Find Perspective
• Positive.

I thought, not a bad list. The student would be able to stand up for what they believe in, and root their beliefs in an appreciation of others. They would be calm and confidant, speak well, but not try and overly control others. A great, and it was here that I found a word that has fallen a little out of fashion recently, citizen. A Great Citizen. An Ideal. My Ideal,yes, and therefore fallible and imperfect, but an ideal adult, to an extent.

This is not, then, planning back from the qualification, this is planning back from the person. This is end-result holistic planning. Notice how many of those goals are achievable in English. Go on, have a look, I'll wait.

Back? Good, let's begin.

Planning has become an exercise in filling time. Or times maybe (S operative.). It is an exercise in picking out nice neat little Lego blocks and lining them up to make a perfect shape. But that isn't really planning at all. What that is is filing. Filing children away. Planning in order to place children from the future through the present and into the past. That is not, though, how things really work.

The child that turns up in September is just a version of a later adult. That later adult exists in a plural form and is irrevocably linked to the child. It will be affected by a million unforeseeable circumstances, but if it is guided by an expectation of it being exceptional then the negative versions of itself will slide away. When was the last time you thought about the potential adult that your lesson was effecting? When was the last time you really thought about long term planning in the real long term? A lot of schools are happy to paint words like 'Success' and 'Resilience' about their doors, or write it under the crests on their blazers, but how much does that influence the actual teaching? And what does that mean? I would think that for most schools success means something that arrives in an envelope in a few weeks time, not a moment of clarity in thirty years.

Planning is not about lessons, not about blocks of time. Think of it more as painting a model. When you paint a model you have to lay down the basecoat, and it has to be right. If it doesn't quite stick or is the wrong shade then later the model will be a mess. As you go on the areas of work become smaller and smaller until you are dotting the eyes with a brush with a single hair. The thing is, that all the way through you are painting the same model, and working with the same ideal, it is just that you do the basic things first and work towards an end result that is incredibly complex. Planning is this. Plan for the best adult, and the student will become that.

Maybe. 

It's all in the name

I am an 'Outstanding' teacher, in an 'Outstanding' school, and I am being bullied, day after day, by a group of year seven students.

When I ask them to do something, they ignore me.
When I ask them again, they ask me why?
When explain, they tell me that they don't have to.
When I tell them they do, they tell me they don't.
When I threaten them with detention, they tell me they won't turn up.
When I tell them to move seats, or leave the classroom, they laugh in my face.
When I send for on-call, they are suddenly silent, obedient. The on-call teachers, for the most part, look at me as if I'm mad. They look as if I have no idea what I'm doing. I ask for detentions; no-one turns up. I ask for sanctions; nothing happens.

Perhaps I make too much of a job title, but I know this truth to be self-evident: I am a cover supervisor, and for a great swathe of students this very fact obliterates my face and replaces it with a target. Teaching, at its very core, is a balance between behaviour management and the ability to convey information. There are many other factors, but at its core, these are two essential traits. I am not here to talk about conveying information, ideas and skills, for that has become nigh on impossible for me. I am here to talk about when behaviour management becomes impossible. because a single thing is broken: Not hearts, nor minds, (although mine are beginning to unravel) but the facade of repercussions.

You are more than welcome to disagree, but in my opinion behaviour management is based on a lie, and that lie is the the teacher somehow wields a power over the students that is unbreakable. Students fear things. Some fear detentions, or their parents, or being shouted at, but when it all boils down and dries out to the white grainy stuff that really screws up non-stick pans, students wield an overpowering amount of, well, power. Any class is only a smidgen of self-awareness away from breaking the spirit of a teacher. There is a moment when the class becomes the mob. They realise that the teacher is, essentially, powerless; that they cannot stop everyone at once. That, if their transgressions are spread wide enough and loud enough, there is no way that they can be controlled. In short, you can't kick a whole class out.

The cover teacher, then, is an easy victim. They rarely know names, rarely know systems and protocol, and regularly have to deliver boring textbook work. The cover teacher has difficulty building any positive relationships because their job is profoundly to tell students what to do. For students, the pervasive culture is that the cover teacher is a target, and they turn as entire classes towards this. Detentions are hard to set without a classroom, or names, or any knowledge of protocol and escalation. Other staff are too busy with their own work to adopt classes from others and so minor transgressions go ignored and this escalates. The next time a class is covered they ratchet up their behaviour and have no way back. There is no reset button for children gone feral.

So I'm another cover teacher being treated like shit by student after student, day after day, and I just put up with it and do whatever I can to make my life a little easier, all the time knowing that the students' time is being wasted, partly by themselves, and partly by a system which fails to support. But I think what is behind this is a tacit acceptance that a cover lesson is allowed to be wasted. This, surely, is indicative of a pervasive culture; that learning, and work, are only valued and accepted by students when they are told that they are in an environment that they are conditioned to appreciate. How sad is that? That we have engendered a culture in students that they only look to learning in little blocks. I (probably irrationally) blame learning objectives. This is learning, we tattoo on their little faces. This is it. I am the lord of teaching and listen up, we shout at the top of our teaching voices, because I am about to show you measurable learning. Look at my almighty powerpoint, for looking into it's depths will reveal to you the secrets of your future. Now go and write a fucking poem in groups.

And then, all the while this happens, it is children that suffer. Their wonderment is worn down and worn away until their belief is such that value is only placed on these things that they are told are important. And then beyond this they become fixated with the same culture of accountability that we do. They only listen to the people that tell them to listen to them the most. They only do what they think is directly related to their grades. They are being receded into something basic, and ignorant, and unthinking. We feed them only the food that we think they need, and this dry boredom means that any change is feared and becomes the catalyst for real nastiness. The mob only likes the driest of chicken, and if it is not fed it, it will gladly roast piggy, glasses or no.

Perhaps I am over thinking this whole affair. Perhaps I just keep seeing a class that is genuinely nasty. All I know is this; In my former job I pressed the dreaded on call button twice over two years. I the last six months as a cover teacher I have pressed it almost every day.

I am an 'outstanding' teacher in an 'outstanding' school, and I cannot control a group of year sevens and I don't know what to do about that anymore.

Inspire me, I dare you.

It has become the opium of the masses for those who gaze with longing eyes on the pay packet of the Senior Leader. It's perfect little form must fit, must be the right size for the pre-formatted box, or as I am seeing increasingly, it must fit between the windows of the corridor, to be read once by a proud director and then forgotten to the slowly abrasing elbows and shoulder of a thousand rushing, barging, ignoring students. It is that haven of soundbite; the inspirational quotation. It is the Quote of the Week. The appropriated gobbet that holds within its words some pervasive message of peace, of hope, of hard work paid off, but it really just sits still, bathing in the blissful ignorance of one long dead. I told you I was ill, he said.

But alas, If the opium of the masses is the (in)famous quotation, then I am on harder stuff. I am the smoker with the hand-rolled cigar, the craft bear drinker, and I wear a tweed cap. Ironically, of course. I love a quotation, but I can't stand the humdrumery (definitely a real word) of so many of them. They are chosen and presented without thought, without care and without any student consideration. I apologise if this next statement pulls tears into the eyes of some aspiring Ministers for Education, but painting quotations on walls and putting them on boards during form time to sit with little to no acknowledgement doesn't make students cleverer. It doesn't make them more conscientious or aspiring because for the most part the quotations that swill around the hi-tops of students on their diurnal passage look as if they have been saved up from Christmas crackers.

I like quotations that come from unlikely places. I love those that are challenging to preconceptions. I adore those that are unique. Anyone can find a quotation that talks about how hard you have to work to be a great success, or how every child is a unique little butterfly. So how about showing your students a different angle? Perhaps the gravitas of:

  Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. – Arthur C Clark

Or maybe, to counteract "It'll be okay" syndrome:

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. – Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

 Why not use these moments of un-curriculumed freedom to have a look at events from a alternative perspectives:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. – Robert Oppenheimer, Inventor of the Atomic Bomb

But these are perhaps too conventional still. How about any of these:

Who was the first man to look at a house full of objects and to immediately assess them only in terms of what he could trade them in for in the market likely to have been? Surely he can only have been a thief. – David Graeber

You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been. – Ursula Le Guin

If you want to watch telly, go watch Scooby Doo. That programme was so cool; every time there was a church with a ghoul, or a ghost in a school, they looked beneath the mask. And what was inside? The janitor, or the dude who ran the water slide. Because throughout history, every mystery, ever solved, has turned out to be not magic. - Tim Minchin

When I went to the Yellow Cab Company I passed the Cancer Building and I remembered that there were worse things than looking for a job you didn't want. – Charles Buckowski

If they give you lined paper, write the other way. – Juan Jimenez (also the preface to Fahrenheit 451)

I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form. – Will Self

Being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you, and if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch. Like a safecracker, or a pickpocket. – Futurama

 

My advice is stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong. Remember, when the emperor looks naked, the emperor is naked. The truth and the lie are not "sort of" the same thing. And there's no aspect, no facet, no moment in life that can't be improved with pizza. Thank you. – Daria Morgendorffer

 

I had to look in the dictionary
To find out the meaning of unrequited
While she was giving herself for free
At a party to which I was never invited

- Billy Bragg

1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even get out of the game. – Ginsberg’s Theorum

I have never found anywhere, in the domain of art, that you don't have to walk to. (There is quite an array of jets, buses and hacks which you can ride to Success; but that is a different destination.) It is a pretty wild country. There are, of course, roads. Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart. – Ursula Le Guin

Most of the wind happens where there are trees. - Paul Muldoon

Look at all those things. Lovely ain't they. But my greatest advice? Find some of your own, from people you respect, and then you can talk about their words to your students. All of the aforementioned will be used from September, along with trucks and trucks of others; an ever changing cloud of words that turn black and rain and snow and then open up to the sun but never fail to have an impact because they are part of a dynamic conversation.I think that the current teaching ethic is one that rewards stasis. Despite its outspoken chagrin of coasting, it rewards systems that stay the same. But ideas that put things in place. Hmmm. Putting things in place. That is a vile little goblin in itself. Stop putting things in place, because that just means that they are to be left. If you paint something on a wall it will be ignored because that is its inevitable function. Talk, change, EXIST AS A CONVERSATION.

Just, in all this quoting and quothing, remember:

A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

Oh, shit. I think that's just formed a paradox. 

 

Out of order

I've been hearing this phrase a lot recently:

That's well out of order

and it's been grating on me. I hear it a lot from students, and very occasionally from staff about students who say it a lot in some kind of reflective ironic joke. The staff will grow out of it, but I'm not sure that the students will, because they seem to be indulged again and again, not just in my school but nationally. Perhaps internationally, in the Anglo-centric forum at least.

What grates me, as if I am the most sweatily warm of own-brand cheddars, is that students appear to be confusing truth with unfairness. Or, perhaps not truth, but honesty. An example, I hear you cry from the orchestra pit, well: I was wondering through a school recently, when two teachers walked along the bottom of a stairwell of whose stairs I was, well, walking down, behind two unbeknowing students, chewing. One teacher said to the other

'I'm so frustrated with him. I've put on revision classes after school every day and he always says that he is coming and never turns up.'

to which the other, their line manager, replied:

'You've done everything you can. If they want to fail, then let them fail.'

The students in front of me, bedawdelling their way down the stairs, piped up at this point.

'Did you hear that? That's peak that is.'
'Yeah, well out of order.'

I stopped, then, on the stairs, and waited for the students to go. It was lunchtime, and I had no need to enter a convoluted defence of an ethic that the students clearly didn't care for. I was, however, galled. Disbelieving.

Perhaps it is just me who sees the fundamental issue at the core of this little anecdote, perhaps it is not. I believe, firmly, that teachers have a duty to provide as much as is possible for their students, but I also believe that students need to learn that, for most of their lives, very few people will go out of their way to help them. Life is a tough old place, and people lose jobs and go bankrupt on 'That's out of order' attitudes.

I feel like this entitlement to a teacher's daily misery is propagated by the unrealistic standards set by government on achievement and that this in some way reflects upon teachers. To illustrate, there is that old idiom: You can't do the exam for them. Unfortunately, it would seem, teachers are being forced into a scenario where they feel like they have to and students are beginning to get wind of this, and it is creating a cancerous, damaging attitude of entitlement, as if many students know that their teachers will be judged on their progress and so assume that teachers simply will not let them fail. The adage of failure not being an option has been inverted from an expectation into a student-led tacit threat. You can't do that, you're not allowed to let me fail, is becoming a rousing chant of an increasing number of lacklustre students.

To finish: A friend of mine rang me recently. (Yes that's right, I have a friend)He is a sports coach at a very big and successful club. I asked him how his team were going to do this year and he said, quite nonchalantly, we'll do okay, but we just don't have the personnel. I was awestruck; what a refreshing attitude. Sometimes you don't get the students, and it's not your fault as a teacher that all their parents seemed to have only drunk Lead-Based Sunny Delight while pregnant. (unless it was, of course, and then you should be rightfully ashamed.)

If they really want to fail, who are we to stop them? All we can do is explain the consequences, teach as best we can, and afford the opportunities. It is their life to live.

You Can Be Anything You Want To Be

I would like you all, as a class, to imagine that you are all grown adults and, as we have told you that you all can, you have achieved all of your dreams. So, close your eyes now, and think. You are waking up on a wonderful day in perfect town, where you all live. You have got up and dressed and you are now on your way to work. Now, remember, each of you will be different in your goals, but you are all on your way to work. Some of you will walk. Some of you might ride a fancy road bike. Others will have an expensive car. Maybe you'll drive it, maybe you won't, but your on your way to work. You've left your lovely house, perhaps it's in the suburbs, maybe it contains a wife, or a husband, or two cats and a dog. Maybe it's up a private track behind a set of ornate gates or maybe it is high up at the penthouse of a skyscraper. Sorry. I sidetrack. So, you are on your way to work. You have a smile on your face and it is a wonderful day for you to be alive and so you think; what better way to get to work than with a nice fresh coffee, or tea, or maybe a hot breakfast and so you check your watch but you know that work won't mind because, I imagine, most of you own your own companies, or work for yourselves, or maybe you don't work but, hey, you're going out for a coffee anyway. So you, living your perfect life, amongst other people living out the dreams we've told you that you can all work hard and have, walk up to the till to buy a coffee and my question to you is:

Who is serving you that coffee?

Which of the other students, other dreamers in this room doesn't get to live out their dreams because they have to serve you your latte? Who stands there, and smiles and secretly hates you and themselves and looks, jealously, upon your perfection and serves you your coffee? Whose dream is in the dust amongst the floor?

But you don't worry about this, because you got your dream. Someone didn't, but that wasn't you. You're doing fine. So you get to work, and you turn in your projects, and everyone loves you and you're doing just cracking. So you say to everyone that you're just popping out to grab some lunch, and so you pop into the supermarket to grab a few things and maybe one of those nice sandwiches as a treat. And you pick up your things, and put them in a basket, and you go up to the till and there is another person, sat there, passing things she can't afford in front of a scanner, because she didn't get her dream. But don't worry: your teacher said that you were going to get your dream, so you did. But. Wait. Her teacher told that to her as well. And she worked, didn't she? Or did she just think she was working? Did she just want her dream a bit, whereas you wanted yours a lot. You wanted yours more than anything else.

But there's, perhaps, another story behind this. Maybe that Coffee guy is living his dream, just not yet. Maybe he's at night school, or he's writing a book. Maybe that till girl is working so she can pay for uni. They are doing this because they value their education. They value their dreams. Their dreams change things. They fulfill their operators and they make the world different. Maybe Coffee guy is a volunteer lifeboat man, and checkout girl is a thesbian in the evenings, or she's researching something minute and underfunded but fulfilling.

So is your dream really your dream or is it just a bit of a concession? And, and here is a dangerous thought, does your dream actually matter? Does your lovely dream job contribute to anything? Does it make things better? does it make you better? What has happened in this wonderful dream day that has changed the world?

Your teachers are increasingly preparing students for lives where you either fail to live up to your own expectations, or live up to expectations that are, frankly, useless. You will graduate school to get jobs that allow you to do exactly the same things that you are doing at school; performing the minimum in tasks in order to spend the rest of your hours browsing the internet and documenting your humdrum lives for others to browse. You will participate in a great amorphous mass of perpetuating nothingness. You will be happy, sort of, but you will be doing jobs that have been created, essentially, so that people have jobs. Our economy is the preserve of the service industry. Most people don't really do anything except move things around so that other people can move them back.

Most of you will be perfectly content with this. You will stop doing arts, and sciences, and humanities and you will lose interest in pursuing anything. There is an interesting term: Pursuing. Pursuit of learning, of fulfillment through personal improvement is, surely, the point of life (in lieu of having any concrete theological solution (If God in any form suddenly appears and tells us the point of humanity was achieved in 1981, with the invention of the potato waffle, then I will gladly rescind this post*)). It doesn't need a label, it doesn't need anyone to qualify it with an EBACC or a sticker or a sew-on badge. Your dreams are consistently pigeon-holed into sensible twenty-first century friendly boxes: I want to be an accountant when I grow up. I really want to work in sales. No-one wants these things. Not really. These things barely exist. Every one of should want to change the world. Content is a dirty word. Content is a word sold to you by people who can profit from your quiet obedience. You should want to live without dead time. You should aspire not to be cogs. The problem, of course, is alluded to in the start of this little talk. Not everyone gets everything they want or, what they want is useless. So, what is there to do? To do, is to remind you that life isn't a desk. Life is in your heart. Life is in your head. Life is your own fulfillment, not your teacher's or your boss's. But please, for your own sakes, be ambitious. Care. Give a shit how your insignificant spark of life on this tiny planet in some backwater of the galaxy is spent. You probably only get this, and your dying every single second. To quote Fight Club, This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. Go out and be a revolutionary. Go and, to quote Whip It, be your own hero.

Here endeth the assembly.

Teaching With Epilepsy

One day, about three years ago, someone said something very strange to me. It was quite a simple statement and, oddly, I cannot quite remember it verbatim. I can tell you where it happened; on the steps leading onto the Mall at the bottom of Regent Street. I also can’t tell you who it was that said it. I know it was a man, and I know second hand that they were an off-duty paramedic. What they asked me, pretty much, was how long I’d been epileptic. This was strange for two reasons. Firstly, because I didn’t have a clue where I was, or what was going on and secondly, because the only thing I did know was that I’m not epileptic. Well. I wasn’t epileptic. Or at least I didn’t think that I was.

I was diagnosed with epilepsy soon after I developed it at age 23. I had a couple of seizures; it would appear, before the above mentioned one had me taken by pure chance to St Thomas’ hospital in central London. It was quite a worrying time, especially when my neurologist told me what it was that had caused those seizures; Reading. I am allergic to reading. Not Reading (the large Berkshire town (which wouldn’t, actually, be a terrible thing to be allergic to. (Although it does have a sizeable HMV and a really good Waterstones)) But reading. Books. I am allergic to books. I was told this mere months before starting my PGCE in Secondary English. Oh doesn’t life hand us the greatest of ironies?

A note, A little deviation: I do not suffer from a particularly bad variety of Epilepsy. I average about a seizure every few months. Effectively, I have the Epilepsy version of a badly sprained ankle. Many people don’t really have the first idea what entails epilepsy. They think that if you stare into a flashing light you have a little twitch on the floor. I stare into flashing lights all the time. I’ve even done the doctor’s test for photosensitive epilepsy (it’s horrible) and I am most definitely not floored by flashing lights. A decent book on a long railway journey however, and the entirety of the First Great Western railway network is all kinds of flashing delayed signs.

However infrequent, I have pretty bad seizures; the kind that cause you to be unconscious and twitch and bite the sides of your tongue off. The kind where, when you come to and try and phone someone, you can’t unlock the screen despite the code being your date of birth. (This, I’m afraid, actually happens. I am now banned from having phone pincodes). I read somewhere that having a seizure causes the same fatigue as running a marathon, but I am always pretty sceptical of this sort of arbitrary comparison.

I was diagnosed just before the beginning of my PGCE and my offer had well and truly been accepted. Theoretically, I guess, I could have just rung up the university and explained to them and gone back to the very average receptionist job that I was temping in until the course started and then just lived out a life of being wholeheartedly boring and regretful. I don’t really go in for that sort of avoidance of adversity so I just got on with it without thinking and then, suddenly, on my first placement, people starting making a fuss of me, asking if I was alright and if there was anything they could do and suchlike and I had difficulty in (and even as writing this I can’t quite find the verb.) achieving the humility required to actually admit that I was different in my needs. We tailor so much to our students because of so many things but we are often too proud to admit that we need help. Or maybe sometimes we are just a little surprised that people actually ask if we need help.

I used to talk to my students about my condition. I think that it is important to be an ambassador for epilepsy. There is this great fear of revealing anything to students about ourselves but I don’t see the point in avoiding a situation where students can be holistically educated. I didn’t walk into a classroom and say ‘Hi, I’m your new English Teacher and I’m an epileptic.’ But if a student follows me along the conversational road of why I get the train to school and not drive I don’t see a reason not to explain why the DVLA took my licence away.

It is a central responsibility as teachers to be carers. One of my students asked me once to adopt her and I’m not entirely sure she was kidding. But how can I care for others when I can’t guarantee that I can care for myself? That is the fear. That I should never really have been doing this profession and so, when the post-seizure sadness comes across me and I spend a few days staring into the middle distance because I can’t trust myself to read then I tell myself that what I can do is use my experience to teach my students something. I can teach them what epilepsy is. And what it means to live with it, even in my diluted form. And what is most important is that I can teach them what it taught me: That sometimes life is annoying enough to seem cruel and it’s not personal or, even if it is personal, if you think of it in that way it will ruin you. So all you can do is quote Vonnegut with ‘So It Goes’ and get on with what you wanted to do anyway. And I’ll wear purple trousers on national epilepsy day and I’ll give an assembly or two and I won’t be afraid. Because having an illness is just a thing that happens. And I won’t let it stop me doing anything.

As regular readers will know, I have taken a little sabbatical from teaching to go back to university and study for a masters under the false assumption that I look just about young enough not to be a creepy mature student. I have to read a lot but I know that it is what I want to do. I have to run the risks because if I just coup up and cry about it then I won’t get the chances again. I won’t lie, things are tough. I spend a lot of time worrying. Seizures aren’t nice. When I’m about to have one I lose control of my internal monologue and it just spews words out at random. I can’t speak so I can’t warn anyone what is about to happen. Then I black out. When I come to I’ve normally bitten off both sides of my tongue and I don’t really know what’s going on. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. I also don’t expect sympathy for it. I can’t change it, but I have had to change me a bit. I still get fed up with people telling me to be careful though. It gets annoying, but I know that they care.

I will go back to teaching, I am sure of it. And I hope that I am surrounded by staff as accepting and kind as those were at my last school. They gave a shit, regularly and compassionately. They gave me lifts, helped me with marking and made sure I was okay. When I did have seizures they covered me the next day and forced me to stay at home. They were probably a good chunk of the reason I never had a seizure in front of children. I never wanted students to suffer because of me.

It’s taken me quite a long time to write this article and I still don’t really know why it exists. It’s part motivational speech to myself, part plea for wider awareness and, I hope, a little bit of inspiration for others in similar situations. It’s amazing how helpful your friends and colleagues can be, and what you can get through if you really want to. Right now I am sat in a university library surrounded by books that I am allergic to, and I couldn’t be happier.

Ali

This post is about fictions, and as such, it is entirely real.

Ali is not a real student. There is a real student called Ali. There are many of them, but there is also one in particular. There are also many students who are fictional Alis. These Alis are to Ali what fiction is to fact; an overlay. Perhaps to understand the fictional factual Student Ali, I must first tell the tale of the factual fictional student Calamity Teacher. I will not call this student Ali, because that would be confusing, yet Calamity Teacher is far too unwieldy and unyielding. Therefore instead I will rename our factual, although fictional, Calamity Teacher key to Ali, Ally.

Ally was a good sportsman, and the past tense article there is important despite the very presentness of this article's past. Ally was a good sportsman, and this insured that Ally's presence in lessons seemed more past than present. Ally, though, unperturbed by the tolling bell of exam hell, was safe in the knowledge that he possessed safe knowledge to ensure safety in exams assessing knowledge. In short, he lacked the impetus to drive himself to achieve higher than was absolutely necessary as was mandated by the stern looks of teachers and the government directed scales of improvement. So Ally worked away tiredlessly instead of tirelessly, although with sport sure to prevent a middle-aged spare tire he tired not of dreaming of himself in a future present dreaming of a future present past glory sat among the medals of a schoolboy's present future. So he daydreamed like an innocent Lucia away with faeries concocted, not of real things, but of hopes for real things, leading him further and further way from the concreteness of bits of paper, stamped as were, and instead posted fanmail to himself that read with things like 'you're my inspiration' and 'I dream of being like you' so like a listless wanderer who carries on and on around the world first stepping through ports that look and sound familiar to home but just jar slightly in colour and then sets sail until they cannot see home and lose the concreteness of whether it existed at all and whether it actually happened whatsoever and so lands somewhere that is so different the traveler's eyes lose sense of what they are meant to see, instead preferring to see all that is different as the same and all that is the same as null and void and off through deserts the wondering walks, alone but carried through by ever-fading memories of origin, or purpose, or point, and endless walks the traveller, world-weary yet still walking, sets foot again on boat and finds himself in a new, strange land so different from the one he left he realises that there must be no explanation for it except that it is his home.

So Ally didn't care for school, and nor did school for Ally, but she persevered through testing times and managed through the changes of life, until becoming, average grades in hand, A teacher, not a sportsperson. Because, for all the missing        , and the shouting at teachers with assured, and quite correct superiority, Ally was but a child that didn't know their way and didn't find it until a few kind words from wordsmiths of a certain kind convinced him that he was the talent she always thought she was, it was just for it to work then for it work for it then was the clear and obvious solution. It was realization that mattered so much, not unreality.

So from Ally to Ali and back again to Ally, in a way. Ally falls to Ali as Ali falls to Ally, away from both and still together. Ali was a student, fictionalised in his factuality, that in him Ally saw a version of him so true that Ali could have be Ally, for all he was worth, with a rapacious intellect but not of the impetus to carry through more than just, 'that'll do'. He had that natural turn of phrase that sits and dwells and eats up days in lucid, lingering wonderment, and almost heaven-sent gift of words. And in that package of Ally that Ally saw in Ally he interposed the trueness of his own life. He placed his ever-present past onto the present future of an Ali he saw as Ally, and therefore assumed that this boy who had no time for her lessons, would one day become a caring, compassionate individual, the likes of which Ally saw, or hoped to see, ever day mirrored in the bathroom mirror,because Ali was not Ally, in any frame of mind or time but the obsession had grown and grown bigger and monumental. It became all-encompassing, woefully universal. All Ally could see was Ally, despite the assertions of those that could see only Ali. And, of course, because there is a moral to every tale, Ali did not become Ally. He merely became another Ali, one slightly further into the future of what was now the past but had been the present and this Ali, despite the efforts of another Ally, was no Ally.

Ally's past mistakes were still past mistakes and Ali's present ones did nothing to change this. When Ali did not show signs of becoming a better Ally, Ally blamed Ali for not being the Al that she felt he should have been and blamed herself, her past self, her future self and a trifecta of portraits of a different Ali to that which really existed in the past, present or future. But really it was a mistake to paint an honest face on an already dishonest portrait. It is always a mistake to overlay one's self onto the selves in one's charge because cannot be more than one, as in it can only ever be a singular, and every other singular only a singular and not a plural form and so, either one judges oneself as oneself or one judges another one as oneself; something that is always a fallacy of being. One cannot be more than one man or women, and when children are involved they are not a multitude of ones, or rather, they are each ones in their own right, stood as they are beneath one head and in one's charge. One must remain one, and , that is to say, share one's self by being one's self and knowing that every other self is just as unique and just, but not exactly as unique and just as the self, that is your self, or one self, that views it. Ally thought that Ali could atone for past mistakes, but Ally forgot. The past is past, and the future is a place where other people live.

How To Build Your New Academy.

With all this new legislation, there is going to be an awful lot of new academies and free schools knocking around in the near future, and the rate they'll be getting through head teachers, you never know when you'll get the call up to the Big Chair.

Now we all know that the two most important things for a head about opening a new academy are six figure salaries getting your photo on the front page of the local dishrag and getting to design your own logos. In this heady 21st century world of myBook and friendFace branding is everything. The iPod generation treat their schools like they treat their, well, iPods. Every school needs to have a focus, a specialty, an ouvre. You have to stand out if you want to be on the front page on the TES.

Now, we know that we can't all be out-of-the-box, blue-sky thinkers; that's what we have educational consultants for. So, if you have all the creative talent of that year nine boy whose name you've forgotten, then you can use the table below to create a totally awesome corporate identity bound to impress the Department of Education like nothing you've ever seen.

Just follow the table down, selecting an option from each row and you'll find yourself with your perfect brand within minutes!

Thank you for your time and good bye, I'm afraid I'd write more but I have to go to a very important meeting about the opening of the West Medway Learning Community Multicultural Free Academy.

How Many Letters are There in Head Teacher?

Yesterday I asked a non-teaching friend of mine a very pointed question. He didn't see the point because he didn't know the context until afterwards, but the question was this:

What is the lowest qualification you would need before you put it after your name on an email?

Interesting question, that. I thought, anyway. He thought a little, and we mulled, and I asked him a further question:

If you were the Head teacher of a school and your name was written on that school's sign, what is the lowest qualification you would need before you started listing them after your name?

He came to a reasonable consensus with himself that an MA was questionable but a PHD was a definite. At some point, I guess, that you are considering why I asked my embattled friend this set of traps entirely set to facilitate my own particular brand of oral diatribe. The seed of inspiration for these questions was my journey to University. I just happened to be stopped at a set of lights when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed fine old building and happened upon, by virtue of its sign, the knowledge that this was a centre, nay, institution, intended for the education of the minds of those knee-high and circle-running. And there, in a place that I must say I was surprised that I had never seen it before, for, be it maybe tree-leef covered, it was bright blue and yellow and littered here and there with letters.

So I, knowing that my time at rest was limited by the lights, hastily took in the name of the school and its specialties and honours and then, half-hidden, but in clearplain sight, at the very base of the sign was, in prouder letters you could rarely see, the name of she whose charge the school was in. In big bright letters her name went on and then it went on again and then again it went on passed the normal place a name would be and there were letters on their own. Or perhaps best described as Letters; All capitals. BA (Hons) PGCE. And then the lights changed and I was on my sun-dappled way and in between trying best not to die, I wondered what possessed anyone to declare, loud, right there, the qualifications inherent to their occupation. I would think the gravitas of being Headmistress was enough. Is it not enough? Not enough to be excellent? Instead everyone who walks passed has to see that you did go to university and lo did you pass the very exams and essays and hurdles and forays that are required for your name to be on the board.

What makes me sad about this, and it really does make me sad, is it devalues the point of being a head teacher/principal/overlord. Headteachers are meant to be headteachers because they are really fucking good at developing students. Ooooh, strange that, isn't it? the idea that a Head is there because of their students, and not because of the letters after their name. Letters, I add because it's relevant, that are the same as 90% of their own teaching staff. I think that I am somewhat evangelical about the motivation of teaching, but I think that our profession is losing a lot of selflessness on the way. I really hate the savage careerism that is being written into the education lexicon. This is why I don't like the rubric of schemes like TeachFirst, because they press teaching as a viable alternative to big city careers. It isn't It's not an alternative because it isn't the same. I have no problem with people who want to be bankers and accountants and middle managers (actually I do, but not in the way I don't like TeachFirst), but teaching is not the same, in the same way that teaching is not the same as being a paramedic or a volunteer firefighter. Teaching is about children, not you. It's not about the letters after your name or how big you can print the letters of your name on a great big sign on a great big trunk road. Do you even need your name there? No. What you need is the phone number of your school so that you are accessible, and if you really want to brag about qualifications, brag about the ones that you students get.

Cheers,

Mr. Calum Mittie Ba (Hons) PGCE BAGA (lvl 5)

How I Imagine Pay Negotiations Should Go

Headteacher: Hello, Please come in. Take a seat. Can I send my PA to go and get you a cup of tea?
Me: Oh, cheers, yes please.
PA: How do you take it?
Me: No sugar, but an almost obscene amount of milk.
Head: Excellent choice. Well done. How are you finding the school?
Me: Yeah I have fun. It's a great school. I enjoy working here.
Head: Well, Great. We love having you here too.
Me: Thanks.
Head: Good. To business. We'd like to offer you a ridiculous amount of money to continue working for us at this school.
Me: Well, I'm afraid that is not going to be enough. A ridiculous amount just doesn't cut it. I'm afraid I am going to need an obscene amount of cash instead.
Head: I like your chops. I think we'd be doing you down by paying you an obscene amount of cash. We're going to put a package together for you including an unbelievably stupid amount of money instead.
Me: It'll be tough to live on that, but I think I can get by.
Head: How about you get this chocolate cake as well. Right now.
Me: It is a pleasure doing business with you.

An Open Letter to Whoever Stole My Bike

To Whoever it is That Stole my Bike Tonight,

Yes, sure I am angry. Sure that tears were shed. But my overriding attitude towards you is pity. Pity, because you will never have the experiences that I had on that machine, because that was more than a machine to me. That bike was my life.

I remember the day, nine years ago, when I was given it by my parents for my eighteenth birthday. The sheer unbridled joy of the thing. The wonderment of the thing, the sheer speed of being smitten by it. I remember the summer rides, the commuting to my first real job, the hard times riding in the snow and the good times riding with friends, old and new in the summer sun, wheels whirring on hot tarmac summer lanes under sieve-skied leaf-strewn skies.

You won't get to have those memories. You won't get the excitement of new parts lovingly installed. The oily sparkle of components under late-night-garage-light. Even if you do exactly the same things that I did, with exactly the same people, you will never love that bike as much as I do.

So, what are you going to do with it? I guess you'll sell it. Maybe you already have. I hope you get a massive amount of money for it, because if you're out stealing bikes then I guess you must need it. Just so you know, I am a student, currently paying for a Masters degree out of my overdraft and my savings. Over the past two weeks I applied for jobs at four shops and three coffee shops. None of them got back to me. Next week, hopefully, I will have a job that will keep me going thanks, in part, to good friends. Now my finances are going to have to cover the taxis and extra trains I will need. But regardless of where my money goes. I will have good friends.

There is something that, however much money you collect. can't buy. It's my freedom. I am not allowed to drive. Being diagnosed with epilepsy four years ago took my license away from me. Did you know that? No. I guessed not. I guessed that you didn't think about who was on the other end of you little bolt-cutter adventure. That bike represents the last vestiges of freedom of transport I have. So when you stole my bike you made my life a mass more difficult. Not terminally, not painfully, perhaps. But it's going to be more than an annoyance.

So there will be other bikes. People have already offered to lend me them. My house insurance should help out, and I am surrounded by loving, caring people who I'm sure will offer me help without me asking at all. In the long term this may not affect me that much, really. But still. Still. You have stolen my bike and that is the point, isn't it. It is my bike. It is not yours. You have stolen my bike. It will never be yours.

Thank you.
You have successfully ruined more than my day.