Maternal theme continued...

Kid 1: Your mum's so fat, when she turned over in bed her arse got burnt on the light bulb.

Kid 2: Sticks and stones may break my bones....
....and so does your mum when she sits on me.

Mum's the word

Today I achieved a milestone - I finally got called 'Mum' by a child.

Skank

Whenever anyone sneezes the cry goes out: "SWIIIIINE FLUUUU!!!" And that's the rest of the lesson ruined.

Slang-alang-alang

Lots of them like to appear well 'ard. 'Arder than they really are. They do it by talking slang. Often to me -

Me: J, can you be quiet now please? I'm talking.

J: Allaiii, fam! I ain't even talkin'!

Me: Yes you were, now be quiet.

J: [Kisses teeth].

The other day I became rather tired of their slang and decided to spend the day talking back to the classes in their own style. I figure it's a language teacher thing. I would deliver the following instruction in a deliberately posh voice -

"Oi hush now, cuz. I've heard you talking for the last five minutes, blud. Man trying to give some instructions now, you get me? Jam your hype and hush your mouth, fam."

Much hilarity ensued. It probably distracted the adorable little children from the little work they were already doing, but it was funny at least. It also turned out to be an unusual, and therefore non-threatening, way of telling someone off for truanting. I caught RM and CD from my form running around outside of lessons when they shouldn't have been. I grabbed them both and said:

"Listen, bluds. I've clocked you both bunking for this lesson. You are both in bear trouble now fams."

In the corridor

"Sir, who's the prime minister of England?"

"Who do you think? Take a guess."

"Barack Obama?"

"No. Guess again."

"Tony Blair?"

"Closer, but no. His name starts with G then B."

"George Bush?"
"No. His name is Brown."

"Patel?"

"No it actually is 'Brown'."

"Prime Minister Brown."

"Yes. Do you know his first name?"

"No."

"It's Gordon Brown. Heard of him?"

"Oh yeah! I think so..."

A nasty incident

Last week a boy in my class of Nutters took a penny out of his pocket and, in a quiet lull, rolled it across the floor of the room and said aloud: "Let's see if there's any Jews in the room."

The mutterers among the Nutters shut up. Those doing their work looked up and fell silent. I couldn't help but hear him. "That's not acceptable," I said, "Get up, go and stand outside, you cannot stay in my classroom and I need to speak to you." 

The boy stood up and walked out, face flushing red as he realised that he was in trouble. 

But then, as he walked out he pointed at the penny and said to me, "Don't worry, Sir, it's for you. The penny is for you."

His racism is horrible, but unfortunately it is something that he has picked up from his peers. He is an immature boy who does not have many boundaries. I get on well with him outside of lessons, although he can prove a handful at times. In this instance, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I'm not sure that he was aware of how insulting his behaviour was. He was probably just trying to be disruptive and funny. But that in itself is a damning indictment of the casual racism, and especially antisemitism, bandied about the school.

He's being made an example of now, but something else needs to be done, something more systemic, to address what is a creeping malaise among the children.

Mistaken Identity.

Me: So what motivates you to study?

CM: To get rich so that I can be rich.

JP: I don't study.

Me: What'll you do when you're rich?

CM: I'll buy a house. No I'll build a house like one of those massive ones.

Me: Right. And then what?

CM: I'll invest my money so that I can make even more money from it.

Me: In stocks and shares?

CM: No I'll invent something.

Me: So once you're rich you'll go back to your workshop and invent things?

CM: No I'll hire loads of people to invent things for me and then sell it for more money.

Me: So what'll happen when you've got billions, your family is set up for generations, you don't actually need any more money. What'll you do?

JP: Build a bigger house.

CM: I dunno...yeah build a bigger house.

Me: You could start a charity and give your money away like Bill Gates.

Blank looks.

Me: He's given away billions of money to charity. He says it's what motivates him now.

Blank looks.

Me: You do know who Bill Gates is, right?

Something stirs.

JP: Yeah...he's the richest man in the world?

Me: Something like that, yes. How did he make his money?

JP: Computers?

CM: UNNNEERGHH! No! He's the singer!

Me: ??

CM: Yeah...isn't he a singer or something?

Me: No, he's the inventor of Windows.

JP: Like I said - computers.

CM: I thought he was a singer on TV.

The penny drops.

Me: You're mistaking him with Gareth Gates.

     Gareth                             Bill

Invigilating

For the exam season: a few fun games to play while invigilating:

Battleships (with thanks to P-Dogg (20 Stone))

Use the individual desks in the exam hall as your grid. Draw out your battle ships. Fire shots at your partner's fleet by stationing yourself besides relevant student's desk. So Joe Bloggs sitting his English Paper at the top left of the hall will be square A1 and the student beside him will be A2 and the student behind him will be B1 etc.

Most likely to...

Go and stand behind the student who you and think is most likely to...

...succeed.

...fail.

...cheat.

...end up in prison. etc

Your co-invigilator will do likewise and much hilarity ensues.

Honesty

Time to let it all out. Drop your professional veneer of impartiality and let truth lead the way. Similar to the game above. Go and stand behind the student that...

...you hate.

...you find amusing.

...is your pet.

...you would like to fail.

etc.

Any other ideas?

Co-ordination

I'm spending two days observing Modern Language teaching at another school similar to mine.

Ahh... the wonders of having a department that works together, that consists of teachers that don't bicker and whine and gossip behind each others' backs, but which form a team.

Co-ordination is key to good teaching. It's all very well being individually brilliant in the classroom, but you work much better when others around you work with you.

Positives include:

a) the sharing of resources

b) the sharing of ideas

c) dealing collectively with discipline problems

d) more fun

e) a higher profile for languages in the school

f) students across the same year group being set the same tests and the same homeworks.

Summer Haiku

How did I survive

coming, leaving in the dark?

I love the sunlight.

Monsieur est plus rapide que les garçons de la classe.

I'm teaching Form a topic called 'La Santé' and under the tenuous link of healthy living I took my Form out of the French class and onto the school playground and we did some running. First I split them into two relay teams and they raced each other. Then when they had finished I raced some of the fast boys across the length of the playground and beat them all. It looked something like this:

I admit the amount of French learning was minimal at the time, the 'intensity' of the lesson somewhat low, but I think it's worth it. Firstly, it's good to show a relaxed side to the class that they don't always see in the classroom. Secondly, it's an experience that I can bring back into the classroom to illustrate many different aspects of grammar:

1) Past tense (Monsieur a gagné)

2) Imperatives ("Cours!"/"Allez!"/"Arretez!")

3) Comparatives (Monsieur est plus rapide que les garçons de la classe.)

Finally, Sports Day is coming up on Friday and this lesson was of immense value in sorting out what our Form relay team will look like.

Creasing the spine.

Excuses made today to avoid reading:

It's boring.

It makes my head hurt.

The words start spinning.

I look at the words then the page goes white and I can't see.

I want to listen to music.

He threw crisps at me.

Can I make a PowerPoint about my book instead?

Some students find reading difficult, it's true, but other perfectly literate students spend too much time playing computer games and watching TV. Their brains aren't trained to concentrate on a page of text. 

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I saw the cartoon below and thought it sums up well what I felt when I walked into school for the first time. To a certain extent I still do aspire to this!

Grow up!

Yesterday T put his hand up to ask me if he could go out of the room to fart. He asked the question during a quiet lull and yet no-one laughed.

Naturally, I thought it hilarious.

For a moment time stood still and I realised that I was more immature than a class of Year 7s.

Readers

I asked my Enterprise class to review a book that they had read.

Here is a particularly interesting entry from one student:

Title: Man U

Author: Man U

Date read: --

What you liked: It was Man U

What you disliked: Wen they losst

How did it make you feel?: Happyness

Negative points: Non

MH is of Somali origins and wrote about a Darren Shan novel:

"I liked this because it is British."

I asked him why he liked it in particular for its Britishness. He replied in a jokey voice:

"Because it's not stinky Somali but it's British and I like British things because I like it here". 

Syllogisms.

Today I read the entire School Policy document. Boy is that a lot of jargon! They never tell you that when you get into teaching. You think it's all going to be about opening fresh young minds to beautiful truths, and then you spend most of your days trying to figure out what Mastery Learning is, or Critical Pedagogy. 

I spent a good few moments trying to figure out why pupils are still talked about as 'low' or 'high' ability, when the school's philosophy clearly states that 'ability is not fixed...it is cumulative'. I then had to enter grades into the school data system. At Key Stage 3 (11-14 year olds) all their work is marked in terms of 'levels' (e.g. In French you'd get a Level 3 if you can express an opinion, a Level 5 if you can use a past tense and so on). The problem is, however, that once a student has been awarded a level, he or she cannot then be moved down. It's yet another illogical feature of the current education system. It's a twisted logic: 

Premise 1: Ability is not fixed, but cumulative.

Premise 2: Levels are based on ability.

Conclusion: Levels are cumulative.

Where's the small-print like we get in bank adverts saying something like "The value of your ability can go down as well as up"!?

It's the same sort of illogic that led to the current timetable (and hence why we often have 2 hour lessons):

Premise 1: Lesson time is valuable and should be maximised.

Premise 2: Pupils mess around at breaktime which leads to loss of lesson time.

Conclusion: Limit the amount of breaktime available to students and keep in them in class longer.

Or why our lunch hour begins at 1.45 pm by which time the whole school is on edge with hunger.

Premise 1: Lesson time is valuable and should be maximised.

Premise 2: Lessons after lunch tend to be less productive than normal.

Conclusion: Make lunch as late as possible so that all lessons (bar 50 minutes) happen before lunch.

Worse still is the results-driven, league-table pressure that is forcing schools (thankfully not mine, although it manipulates statistics in other ways), to consider sneaky ways to get their students those magic 5 A*-C grades that help the school move up the national rankings. I heard recently of a school that is considering scrapping History, Humanity and Geography GCSEs in favour of only 1 RE GCSE (since religious education is compulsory) and offering an ICT qualification that is equivalent to 2 GCSEs. Together with the other 3 compulsory GCSEs (English, Maths and Science), that gives the students their 5, saves the school money, is easier to teach (since ICT is nearly entirely coursework) and looks good in the stats charts. Unfortunately it means that no student from that school would be able to take a History A-Level or become a historian.

Anyway enough about schools. Have a taste of something different.

Learning Conversations

Every morning before registration I host something called 'learning conversations' for members of Form. My form are divided into groups of 4 or 5 and each group is designated to come on one day of the week to discuss their progress, difficulties and learning. Needless to say Form's attendance is patchy, but it's a chance to catch up with them more individually with the aim that none of them 'slip through the net'.


WS was particularly infuriating this week:


Me: Have you been doing any revision for your SAT exams?
WS: Yeah.
Me: What have you done?
WS: Revision.
Me: But I mean what subjects?
WS: I dunno.
Me: Maths? Science?
WS: Yeah.
Me: So what do you do when you revise?
WS: I dunno.
Me: Do you do revision at home or at school?
WS: I dunno.
Me: What revision techniques do you use? How do you make sure you remember everything?
WS: I revise.
Me: Yes, but what concrete things do you do?
WS: I do some revision.
Me: Do you read your books? Write notes? Do practise questions?
WS: I dunno.
Me: Are you sure you do anything?
WS: Yeah. I revise.
Me: Do you have a Maths textbook for example?
WS: No.
Me: Do you take your exercise books home?
WS: No.
Me: Do you draw mind-maps? Or do practice questions?
WS: No.
Me: So how can you revise if you don't have your textbooks or your exercise books?
WS: I dunno.
Me: So how are you preparing for your SATs?
WS: I revise.

All for one...

Much hilarity this week as One Vowel and P-Dogg (20 stone) are doing their Second School Placement at my venerable school. This is a week of shadowing and teaching which provides us trainees on the Teach First program with a taster of what life is like at another school. I'll do mine later in the term. I think.

They both teach at similar 'urban complex' schools in other parts of London, but in some aspects, the differences couldn't seem to be any greater. Our brand new, academy building is breathtakingly un-school-like and contrasts with P-Dogg (20 stone)'s split-site school where Years 7-9 are taught across the road from the rest of the students. Both have remarked on an apparent lack of clear discipline structure in the school. 

P-Dogg (20 stone): The kids don't notice you [the teacher] when they're running around. They just swear and fight anyway.

One Vowel seems more enamoured of the open-plan layout, waxing lyrical about a more relaxed atmosphere leading to more engagement from the students: In my lessons I'm stricter, but I don't think they learn as much. They just sit there..., he remarked as he observed my Year 7 Enterprise class write novels and paint masterpieces in what was a pretty normal lesson by my standards.

I've received some very valuable feedback though. Having your peers observe you teach and give feedback has two main outcomes for me. Firstly, I realise that we're all experiencing the same problems and successes. Secondly, it helps me combat a steady swell of apathy that threatens to overwhelm me when I encounter my umpteenth French class disrupted by bad behaviour from the same old individuals...I rouse myself: NO! I MUST follow up the bad behaviour! You've got to be cruel to be kind! To quote P-Dogg (20 stone):

Let's sit on them.

Slaves to the machines

MAYDAY!

The computers were broken this week. Several types of panic ensued. 

Firstly, those teachers that actually need the computers for their classes (ICT and Graphics teachers for example) weren't able to teach.

Secondly, those teachers that are lazy and just let their classes play games on the computers all had to actually come to terms with restless kids unaccustomed to doing any work.

Thirdly, and this is where I'd classify myself, teachers were unable to access their resources for lessons. The move towards schools saturated with hi-tec gadgetry is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, an Interactive Whiteboard is a wonderful resource tool for engaging students in whatever you're teaching them. It has the added benefit of saving the teacher the worry of turning his or her back on the class in order to write something up on the board since all can be projected at the flick of a switch. On the other hand, like this week, lessons end up relying on it, so when a technological glitch of any severity occurs, teachers have to innovate without a key resource!

No more showing clips of cool French things - like this (to teach 'il chante') or this (to teach 'il monte') - no more games of Splat the Board, Hangman or Bingo; no more legible fonts on colourful Powerpoint slides. 

Instead it was a week of textbooks, exercise books and match up cards....

....and it was No Bad Thing! I was happy over-all for how the classes behaved, albeit it worried that the computers breaking down would mean a loss of all my hard work and resources completed to date.

I needn't have worried. The computers are up and running and I can go back to showing my students YouTube clips all lesson.

Hyperchouette!

School's in, sun's out!

A beautiful summer term has begun, much to the delight of all at the school. 

Warm weather brings out the best in all of us. We all wake up with ease at first light, children skip gayly to school, teachers discard coats and scarves for linen suits and summer frocks, pupils partake of picnicked packed lunches and all is good with the world.

One slight, unexpected snag:

The heat means I have to teach with my windows open. Outside my classroom is the smokers' corner. The smokers happen to be truants. Ergo, my classroom fills with smoke during lessons.

Yesterday I was forced into action. A Year 9 French lesson decended into a pantomime of choking and asthma attacks as the smoker-truants began doing what they do outside my window. My students scented the cloud of chaos and weren't going to let it drift past their, um, noses without an...er...opportunistic puff...?

I decided it best to cut my losses and nip the problem in the bud. Out I strode from my classroom without much further ado to look for a senior member of staff who might be on duty and who would be able to clear the smokers' corner for me. Unfortunately no-one was about so I had to evict them myself. I rounded the corner of the building and walked down towards them. They were a small group of six teenagers, all White Working Class (as trendy demograp

hic analysis in the school terms them), all notorious truants in little semblance of school uniform, (faux?) gold necklaces, rings and earrings a-plenty. The scene went something like this:

Me: Gents, what are you doing here? You should be in class.

WWC1: Who the fuck are you?

WWC2: We're on a part-timetable so we're allowed to be here.

Me: You're not allowed to smoke and you're disturbing my lesson. You have to move.

WWC3 takes out an aerosol can of deodorant and starts spraying it onto the windows 

of my classroom. I can see all the Year 9s on the other side of the window watchin

g with avid glee.

WWC1: Oi come we go to his class then since he's disturbin' us. Let's boy 'im off - Sir, we're comin to your class. Come we go.

WWC2, 3, 4 start sniggering, but put their cigarettes out.

Me: If you don't move now I'll fetch a teacher that you do know and there will be consequences.

No reaction. I turn to go and fetch a teacher that they know. WWC5 spits at me, I think. I cannot be sure because I've turned my back, but I heard him spit, snigger and when I look round again they're smiling back at me. I carry on walking back to the school where I find an experienced and senior member of staff who goes out to deal with the matter. When I re-enter the class the Year 9s rush back to their seats and someone shouts out: "SIR GOT TOLD!!"

You win some, you lose some.

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Incidentally - to "get told" or to "get boy'd off" is equivalent to being 'disrespected' or insulted.