Reality bites.

The other day my Year 8s, the same Nutters as from the last post, were writing letters to their French pen pals. It's amazing how well they engage as soon as they feel that the work they're doing is real. Some of them were even asking questions about the work!

I'm on the Teach First scheme. In the summer of 2008 we had six weeks training which involved practical exercises, theory, lectures and seminars, socialising, observing and the odd party. At one lecture, a talk was given by an experienced teacher who had taught in tough urban schools for many years. He spoke at some length about students from disadvantaged backgrounds: about their lack of motivation, about their low expectations for themselves and about their background often meaning that a good education was low on their respective priority lists. It was up to the teacher, he said, to reach out and grab the students' attention. To make their subject relevant, real, and convince the pupils that what they were studying was going to help them in "real life". It was the key message of his talk: Make It Real. At the time, with my teaching experience limited to 2 lessons at my placement schools where I had mainly been doing observations, I thought I'd understood what he meant and thought nothing more of it. Instead I focused my energies on copying the gentleman's loud and exuberant speaking style and his Caribbean twang, much to the amusement of One Vowel and The Greek.

After a term and a half, his message finally clicked for me in this lesson. The Nutters were using their French to write to a 'real life' person, living in a 'real' country, actually speaking, reading and writing in the language that they had been cooped up in school for a year and a half trying to learn! The questions were flying in from all parts of the room:
"Monsieur, how do I start a letter in French?"
"Sir, will they actually understand all this French?"
"Sir, how do I say 'if you are a fit bird, send me your MSN'?"
There's nothing quite like the euphoria experienced by a struggling teacher when suddenly, often unpredictably, it all comes together: you've somehow tricked the bloody kids into doing the bloody work. And enjoying it?! Well let's not get ahead of ourselves, I still had a scuffle or two to sort out, and a few of the pupils logged onto their computers and decided to play computer games, but they all did what they had to do!

Kids say the darndest things: I told B that in French his name was "Guillaume". He looked at me quizzicly, asked me to write it down on paper, scratched his head then shouted out to R:
"Hey R, check this out...I've got some next name in French - Goo-ill-aw-me!"