Changing education

There are few things I love more than hearing laughter of children, my own or others! The babies who laugh at peek a boo all the way from the tips of their toes to the older ones who fall about laughing after humpty dumpty. The bit I love most though is that pause just before. That anticipation with your face covered before you reveal a boo. The sharp intakes of breathwaiting for you say humpty had a great.......... Fall!!! Magical, all of it!!!

Children grow and humpty falls even more, all the way until he is a memory. Other things steal those moments, school, revision, sports, devices, friends and we move on seeking new ways to connect. We move on from being the sole carer of our child to part of a collective team of teachers, sports leaders and family who all contribute to shaping our child. It's a team we didn't choose, similar to our workplace teams but here we have no manager or leader. I'm not sure it's an effective team, do we have regular team meetings about the best way forward? Do have a shared road map of where we are all heading? The end goal is the same for every child though, achieve your best grades at GCSEs, the start is when humpty fades away and the bit in the middle zig zags around. Have we, as guardians, appointed ourselves as team leader? Have we, as educators, appointed ourselves to a senior role? If so do we check in regularly on the rest of the team and how they are getting on?

Parents evenings are not enjoyable things. As a parent and a teacher I find them awful. As a parent I go with a list of questions and seek answers to them all but struggle to fit them in in my 3 minute slot. As a teacher I find myself repeating my comments through no fault of anyone other than you can't say a lot of personal things in 3 minutes and go through recent and future assessment data. Does every child need a parents evening though? I know there is a judgement made on parents who don't engage, I once heard a head of year say "nah don't worry about it her mum doesn't bother mate stick her in detention with the other one if you can't work out whose to blame" (!) but I can't help wonder if some parents, like me, find them awful and not of value so that's why they don't engage? I could easily be one of those parents. I find it easier to email 3 or 4 times across the school year my question list. I keep it in my phone and as one is resolved or healed by time or one pops into my head I can update my list. I therefore don't need to go to parents evening. If my child's work was on display or there was a performance by the students I would love to go! But to go just to gather assessment information is not reason enough. 

I am my children's appointed team leader. I do check in regularly and gather information for teachers, sports coaches and other parents. I know how well or not so well they are doing academically. I know how well or not so well they are doing in managing their friendship groups. I know when the next big fixture is and what coaching looks like until that deadline. If I have a question about any of these areas, I will ask. That's the beauty of email, I can instantly send my enquiry and at the teacher or caches convenience they can reply. Technology enables teachers to share videos of the way they explain red words in phonics and I can learn it at home to support my children. Technology enables drills and sessions to be captured by the football coach, so when it's bad weather we can drill passing or sprinting indoors too. Technology enables me to be in a group chat with other parents and if I have wind of an incident I can investigate even out of hours. Technology connects my team, my team management has moved on since my parents managed my team for me. Have parents evenings? Or do they follow the same linear pattern of my childhood?

As a child I would eagerly await parents evenings. For no other reason than there would be a takeaway for tea! My parents knew I was doing well academically, they knew I was fluent in Spanish, they saw M! me do some homework. They knew I was in trouble for answering back but they didn't know why or what was happening. Not because they didn't care but because there was no email, no phone call, no texts. There was an annual written report and 2 parents evening a year and at those 3 parental contact points there was nothing happening at that moment. Parents evenings are like a snapshot, a balance sheet of the child at that moment. Is it useful to see that snapshot? It's not possible to reflect on a whole terms activities in 1 parents evening. It's not realistic for SLT to expect teachers to do that either. With the age of technology, is there not a better way, a way to communicate regularly and effectively with parents? 

My end goal for my team is to help my children reach their potential in their exams. I am not passionate about extending the classroom at home, I add value in other ways to my team. We bake, we cook, we sing, we play, we read for pleasure. I don't sit battering the curriculum into their heads, sorry! I rely heavily on school to help them prepare and deliver content. The assessment at the end of this content delivery also falls to school, I will not be forcibly preparing my children, we will continue to play and sing, this time I am not sorry! Yet I'm not sure the exam is the best assessment for my child. If this was a workplace team I would organise a meeting to come up with alternative ideas. Yet how do I address this with my team? What are my options? If I stand screaming in school about exams being unfair, teachers will unconsciously or consciously form opinions of me and ultimately my child. If I remove them from the school system, what are my choices? None!!!! Wait, let's pause, hang on a minute.... I can legally educate them out of a traditional school setting and be their teacher, but I cannot assess them? I cannot say how they should be assessed, we must all sit the same linear exam? 

In a world of topsy turvy thinking there are some immovables. I'm not against a linear exam. I teach maths. I'm not against everyone sitting the same exam. I'm a parent. I want a fair and equal world for all. But, I can change and influence every aspect of my child's education if I so choose to home school but I must still enter them into the same exam. At some point someone decided that we measure the success of our children's education on their exam results. That seems OK, we spend all this time teaching them all sorts of topics, we need a record of how well they have understood what they have learnt. The problem I have is that our exam system doesn't assess understanding, it assesses recall. Like I said, I teach maths. I am scowled upon for my emphasis on teaching revision techniques, note taking skills, retrieval practice. Unless I teach the exam structure repeatedly, the next best thing that I can give to my students are revision skills that not only apply to maths but to other subjects also. 

Exam boards have a tough job, on one hand they have to embed real life problems that assess application of skills, and on the other an exam must cover and assess a 2 year curriculum in 240 marks. These real life problems cause the most problems, firstly they are the unknown, teachers cannot literally prepare to the exam because of these style of questions. Secondly they're not real life to all our learners and the context throws them from the beginning. Imagine teaching in a remote part of rural Northern England, imagine teaching in an inner London school, how can you relate to the learners in both of these settings  with the same questions? How can students in a historic grammar school relate to the context of your exam along with the students of a highly deprived inner city school? We can only relate to what we know. We naturally gravitate towards people who are like us or share familiar traits. Yet our exam system is a one size fits all approach but for some the size is too small and for others the size is too large. 

Technology has enabled my team and I to share so much. Technology enables my children to learn at home. Technology enables teachers to demonstrate and connect with ideas and people from all over the world in the classroom. How exciting to learn about geysers from someone who is on a scientific expedition to learn about them and they show you them in action? Education in action. Imagine learning about the rule of law by interviewing the main players in a courtroom via a video call. Education in action. Technology facilitates this. Yet come the end of the course, gcse or A Level how are students assessed? Using the technology that has enhanced and supported their education journey? Nope! On a paper booklet in an exam hall in a linear style the same as of my childhood. It's almost like we see the world moving on and think, we can't let go of this way of doing things because it works and it's easy to manage. In any other industry when the world moves on businesses either move on or fail. Education cannot fail. 

The whole process for exams is exhausting. From the all staff emails and meetings about exam arrangements and invigilation that begin in December to the breakfast clubs and teatime revision sessions that begin in April. We cover the content quickly to leave enough time to adequately revise. We build the tension. We don't mean to but children can see their education has moved on from content to revision and they feel that change. It goes one or too ways from this point. It's like a huge round of humpty dumpty. We're all waiting for the good bit where he has a great fall, we are all holding our breath. We wait until August to exhale. The joy when he does fall brings the same joy as a babys laughter a peek a boo. The sadness when humpty stays on the wall can be devastating, like a baby's cry. It's at this point we hope our team, the team that was put together by circumstance, is strong and can pick themselves up and rally around the student with care and love to help them work through and build again to another round of humpty dumpty. 

In our teams, as appointed leader or teacher, we are all held accountable. The Alan Sugar character is waiting in the boardroom. Our children and students will ultimately review the success and failures of the task at hand. They will ask us questions about why we made certain decisions and ultimately someone will have to be fired. I hope to affect change for my children and my students so that when the time comes I can defend my position in the boardroom with rigour. SJ

Techquity 2

I blogged recently about techquity. It has really got me thinking, even now. I am thinking about the technology that I choose, the technology that I use and how I can best level the playing field. Recent worldwide events have brought this to the fore. Identifying myself as having a disability I am all too aware of the difficulties of ensuring balanced views and voices are heard. I cannot imagine the difficulties others face just because of the way they look of where they are from. I also struggle to believe that there are teachers out there who show such views to learners. But just being against something isn't enough now, we need to make a stand and for me it starts with techquity.

In my sons reception class all the kids have reading books, they are all reading but they are not all reading the same book. They are reading the book that is appropriate to their early years reading age that has been informed by in class and teacher assessment. The teacher has used their expertise and to level the playing field they have chosen reading books for the children. When I teach ratio I plan 3 or 4 approaches to the topic and personalise the experience for every student. This is what teaching is about. Yet when it comes to employing technology in the classroom I don't personalise it, and I want to know more as to why and how to address this.

Technology has long been known to overcome barriers, connect wider networks and engage learners. They are not maths students of my classroom, they are maths students of the world. The joy that my learners find when they read someone else has written about how they work problems out or their experiences and they can connect is awesome. Technology enables that experience. If my learners can engage with other cultures and countries and connect on a level with them I am enabling connections and future changes to be possible. Through connecting with others I am developing my learners curiosity and empathy which will foster a more inclusive society of the future. Yet this isn't enough.

When I set homework, I set different tasks for learners based on their skills and abilities. But I set all their homework on the same LMS system, Google Classroom. I assume they have internet access, I assume they have a smart phone or a device at home or will access the library to complete it. Our libraries provide not just a space for learners to work but a safe place where they can stay warm, stay hydrated, socialise safely and learn beyond the classroom. Our libraries must adapt to changing needs but be protected to protect our most vulnerable learners. In setting my homework on Google Classroom I am making assumptions. I would never do this in class, I would never assume that prior knowledge was there, I would assess to see if it was present and if it wasn't I would scaffold to ensure the learners could access my content.

In using Google Classroom I am using a platform that is accessible on any device. Yet I am assuming that the learners have access to a device and that they have access to the internet. But what about techquity? Knowing what I know now I should be establishing each learners starting points with technology, what do they have access to? Do they have additional responsibilities, e.g. caring, that limits their time that can be devoted to their learning? What can I do to break down the barriers for them? How can I level the playing the field? Google Classroom is great, but is it right for everyone? Would a learner benefit from another LMS or another method of communication?

This will ultimately lead to a money conversation. I will need to ask someone somewhere along the line for some kit, some access, some money. How will those conversations go? I know that if I can evidence the need and impact these decisions will have on learners it would be difficult for others to say no. But how do I invest others? How do I spread techquity? Change starts with me, I am the voice that can amplify other voices, the quiet and the loud. To engage change I need to engage others with my vision for techquity. I will be eternally grateful to George Couros and Ken Shelton for bringing this to my attention, this is the beginning of my journey to techquity. SJ

Visualisation is nothing new, infact humans have been using this technique for thousands of years. Sports performers, business leaders, people attending job interviews have all used visualisation in some shape or form. Many of us perform it every single day. How can we harness this technique with young people as they progress through education? Could this be a secret weapon for educators across the world? Can it make the non engaged more curious?......

Visualisation: Noun: the formation of a mental image of something.

Forbes Magazine Article on Visualisation. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bhaligill/2017/06/22/new-to-visualization-here-are-5-steps-to-get-you-started/#7f62d63f6e3f

Visualisation in my opinion, is not a sole technique that can be used on its own as a method of being successful. It is a very powerful tool if used regularly and correctly. I believe two other aspects are also needed to be deployed to increase the chances of a successful outcome. The two additional elements are establishing your life purpose and goal setting.

Take this hypothetical example; a 16 year old student arrives at college to complete a sport course. The learner has passed GSCE English but not maths and has attended college to study sport as they have had previous enjoyment when playing team sports. This is a tale I have seen numerous times in my own experience, it highlights on some occasions that learners like this example are lacking direction. There isn't a clear idea on a future job, a goal or purpose for this young person. 

When interviewing potential new students imagine your interview documents asked the below three questions:

What is your life purpose?

What have you visualised future success looks like to you?

What goals have you set to support your vision and purpose?

Some of these questions a middle aged person might struggle to answer (i know i have previously). Sometimes we get so caught up on the teaching of knowledge, pressure of learners passing exams and content we forget to teach people about how to learn about themselves. This is going to be key moving forward, due to the ease of access to new information and learning of new skills. People in the future will be able to transition careers much easier than in the past, with skills such as communication, critical thinking, collaboration and creativity (4Cs) being at the forefront of employers essential criteria for hiring new employees. 

This leads to the problem that we are not teaching people to learn about themselves and we are potentially asking them to think about the future or future jobs we don't know exist yet either, so what do we do? The 4Cs mentioned above really are key in this case as they allow a transition across multiple industries and jobs. If new industries are born as a result of technological developments, people who deploy the 4Cs will have a better chance of progressing and growing into new jobs in the future. If these people also have the ability to think deeply about purpose, vision and goals the transition becomes even more likely to be a success. 

When you look deeply at the 4Cs, I think they stem from one C that isn't mentioned and that's confidence. To communicate effectively takes confidence, so does the ability to collaborate, be creative and to think critically. Confidence can be boosted through using visualisation, by setting goals and having purpose in the performing of certain tasks. 

Have you ever deployed visualisation techniques with learners? 

Have you ever begun a lesson with a 5 minute visualisation meditation? 

I think the answer for most of us would be no, this is not the norm. But what is? I would love to hear back on any activities you have performed that might include visualisation. 

Let's look at another example. In this scenario, I have a group of 10 IT students who have identified that they see their purposes as to make the internet more accessible for all, to teach young people how to code or to make the internet a safer place for all, amongst others. Each person's purpose and vision will be different but the key here is they have identified a purpose. Each is tasked to visualise their futures, one wants to be the best web designer in the country, one wants to own their own company. Knowing this information you instruct the learners to set goals related to the short, medium and long term through a personal development plan. We now have a group of learners who have identified a purpose, a vision and have goals. Once we have this it can be so powerful for the individual and the group as a whole. Behaviour management for example within this scenario now becomes a “is this action helping you in your purpose, vision or goals?” As teachers we can tap into this and more importantly fuel the fire for the learners.  Things will change of course potentially through the duration of the course they take, but the other arching themes remain the same. It's bigger picture thinking. 

Due to the demand placed on many teachers, sadly the pressure to get learners to pass has become more about the tick in the box than the journey. The tick gives us the finite score but the journey breds infinite learning opportunities now and in the future. I couldn't tell you about the grades I was awarded when I was presenting a presentation on coaching skills at college many years ago, but what I can tell you about is how I felt that first time presenting and the skills I developed as a result of performing it. The journey is everything!

The key is to look at the whole picture, the bigger picture. Everyone has had a dream about what they might want to become, but many are scared or simply do not know the methods to take responsibility for what they want. I could probably write numerous more pages about this but for now this is enough. This post has been up, down and all over the place but i hope you have found it useful. If you take nothing but the 3 questions mentioned earlier, this has been a success and time well spent.

Thanks for reading.

6Cs - Teachers need to model them before they embed them, surely? A LONG read!

We are in the throws of getting ready for next year. It is a strange time one eye on holiday (however that looks this year!) and one eye on future lessons. Anything can inspire a thought at this time and cause you to wander to your device to sketch out a quick lesson. We were recently tasked with giving teachers guidance on embedding the 6Cs in their lessons next year. We have done this training before, yet if embedding the 6Cs was a set of scales the needle has barely moved.

Why, when we are observing sessions are we not seeing the 6Cs embedded? Are they an abstract concept that staff struggle to apply to their subject? Do staff lack confidence in discussing the 6Cs? Is it just another thing that has been bolted on to a lesson? Are staff unconvinced of their significance?

Short of surveying 100s of staff only to get a less than 5% response rate I'm not sure I will find the answers to my questions. The 6cs have been determined as the core skills our students will need to succeed in the future world. They have been determined by countless surveys, statistical modelling and professors of social sciences. Look over the pond to educators in the USA and for 5 years + they have been developing these student skills. We need to embed them and catch up, fast!

There is a debate over what are the 6cs, as with everything there are lots of opinions. Originally beginning as 4, and those 4 haven't changed, they have now been expanded to 6. Ultimately though at this point in the game any focus on any of the core 4cs is a step towards preparing students for the future. The final 2cs switch in and switch out depending on who you read. We have read LOTS on the 6cs and we work from this list:

Communication

Collaboration

Creativity

Critical thinking

Choice

Curation

As a maths teacher I find it natural to embed most of them into every lesson. Creativity is hard to come by! But they naturally fit my lesson aims and my task design. All I do is amplify  them in my planning. Who wouldn't want to develop a student who was a good team player with creative ideas, who could communicate well? Surely educators chose this career because they want to help shape students to be ready for their future? 

If I was teaching Pythagoras I would model an answer at the board before we began the tasks. What about if I was teaching surds? Yes you guessed it, I would model how I would solve the problem. I would model the best example that I could, with the highest of high standards. As educators we consistently model the behaviour we want to see from our students. We have all said at some point, oh I can get away with wearing that un ironed top today and then found ourselves changing our minds as we leave the front door and racing back in to iron it because we want to model high standards! We have all said to a student "just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean you can slam your desk, I wouldn't do that would I?" We model everything we want to see from our learners from behaviour to how we would answer a question. So why aren't we modelling the 6cs?

Communication

We communicate all the time. It would be impossible not to communicate. But do we communicate effectively? Not always! I know I often walk away from a lesson thinking, I wasn't clear enough when I said that. Or I leave a meeting thinking, oh I should have said less in there I waffled and lost my point. Sharing how we communicate with learners and how we construct our arguments is a powerful thing. After I lose my point when talking in class, I will, later on in the lesson, pull the class together to apologise and explain what I was trying to say and how it all went wrong. I share with them my strategies for effective communication. 

When I am creating tasks I am communicating with learners. I am modelling how to communicate via text. I am showing them examples of how to create clear instructions, and ultimately how to communicate clearly. I am modelling communication. When I create comments on their work I am modelling effective communication (I hope?!) to embed communication into my lessons I need to build in opportunities for students to construct their arguments or communicate with peers. 

Peer influences have long been known to have a postive multiplier effect since Hatiie first brought out effect sizes in the classroom. Petty agrees peer influences are key. I think it would be a challenge to now (10 years+ down the line) to argue against the positive effect of peer work or group work. But we all know how wrong group work can go, the same with peer assessment. "Good work" in peer assessment is not helpful. We need to, as educators, set the expectations of peer assessment. Create a model for students to assign roles in group work. We need to create and support opportunities for students to communicate effectively. 

Collaboration

We collaborate all the time as teachers. We might work on classroom posters and displays together. We may work with others when designing the homework strategy for the year. We may even co plan units of work within the department. Yet all of this is behind the scenes. Our learners don't see this collaboration. How can we collaborate in the classroom?  Or tell our learners how we collaborate? 

I was singled out for praise for my collaboration with my in class support staff this year, as in previous years. I have been asked to attend an excellence event at work to share how I achieve such excellence. Unfortunately I disagree. I am not excellent at communicating with my in class support. I share my lesson plan, my resources and my slides with my in class support a week before the lesson. As I order my photocopying of my resources I ping an email with the links in to my in class support. They are all saved in a folder that is shared as well so if I make any changes they can see what's happening. Now my in class support may be a different staff member depending on rotas so I also copy in the team manager of the support team to disseminate. This isn't excellent. This is the bare minimum of human decency. You cannot ask anyone to help you at an event without sharing with them what the outline of the event will be. You can't hold a meeting expecting everyone to bring their best ideas without sharing an agenda of what is to be discussed. So why would you not share the lesson plan with your in class support?

The fact that I am recognised for excellence in this tells me that I am in the minority and this isn't common practice. If it were it would be a great example of collaboration to model to learners. Likewise if you have a student teacher taking an element of the lesson, great collaboration opportunity. And if the student teacher is taking the whole lesson, you can evidence collaboration by engaging in the lesson, rather than taking a break as so often I see. 

What about the 'new normal' and blended teaching? As I have blogged previously I believe that in order to capture the feedback of the lesson in the best way, we will need co teachers to join us. We can show our learners collaboration in sharing other teachers recordings too. Imagine you are following the same scheme of work and week by week each teacher takes it in turns to record their lesson easing the pressure on the others that week. They then share that recording and the student ends up with a variety of different teachers recording to reflect on and go back too. The student will see different styles of communication as well as collaboration in action. 

Creativity

It can be easy to prepare lesson slides, tasks or run with a lesson you have used year after year. It doesn't make it personal to that class nor if you have resitters does it engage them. Yet I see teachers going down the same road year after year. If I'm honest I have done this too! Simplifying fractions is always on the spec and I have a lesson that covers all bases and I could just go with it as is. But every year there are new statistics at the time of the lesson so I will change my examples to the number of people of BAME backgrounds out of The Times 100 richest people. I am creatively thinking of examples. 

I read a lot of blogs, I mean a Lot of blogs. I have over 100 subscriptions to blogs, my inbox barely reaches zero. I like it like that though because the more you trawl what's out there the more golden nuggets that you find. I will see a new Hyperdoc template and think, wow that's good. I will creatively adapt it and use it in my lesson. I may read about a new delivery or questioning style. This may inspire me to create a new approach to scaffolding in my lesson. I am being creative in my approaches to teaching, I am coming up with my own new ideas based on what I see others doing. I am modelling creativity. I know this because year on year student survey feedback is that my lessons are the most creative the students see on their courses. I don't see myself as creative just that I am willing to have a go so no lesson feels stale. 

Critical Thinking

I often sit in a CPD session listening and, on reflection decide whether or not it was for me. I critically evaluate the techniques or concepts the presenter was asking me to consider and I rationalise my own thoughts and think "OK but is it for me?" I critically think in meetings about plans for next year and I think, we may need to consider these factors too. I am creatively thinking of solutions and I then communicate them with the rest of the meeting. Critical thinking is part of everyday. We don't watch hair adverts and think, yes that is the best product for my hair! We critically think about the pros and cons of the products and whether it is for us. 

We will have critically thought about all the ways of delivering our lesson and ultimately decided on what we feel is the best way. I take this a little further and I share with my learners the routes we could have gone down. I explain the pros and cons and consult them on whether they are happy to trust my judgement of if they want to explore another way. I realise this may not be appropriate for everyone but it is the way I embed critical thinking. If I had a debate subject where arguments could be judges I would have a more natural way to embed it too. We model critical thinking in every lesson, but do we tell our learners how the evidence and our thought process delivered us at our route? 

Choice

Building on critical thinking naturally leads to choice. We had a choice in how to deliver our content and we made our choice. Yet we can still give the learners a choice too. When I teach ratio I teach 3 or 4 methods to solve exam problems. I give them a choice. They critically think about each method and choose the one that is right for them. Every learner learns differently and I ask them to respect this and let me explain all 4 choices before they choose. We choose what clothes we wear. We choose what we have for lunch. We choose our tasks. 

We create options for tasks. We rarely adopt a one size fits all approach to tasks and we offer students a choice. I see good and less good examples of this in lessons all the time. The good explain the choice and what is expected and if there are varying levels of difficulty or not. The less good simply use the same tasks but phrased differently or on different coloured paper. Students had a choice to come to our lesson or not, yes there would be consequences if they chose the latter but they had a choice. We should reward that choice by continuing to offer them high quality choices throughout our lessons. 

Curation

This is the skill that I am most passionate about developing for students. As a mum I see my son bombarded with videos and content on Netflix, YouTube Kids and hundreds of channels on Sky. How does he know what to watch? How does he know what is good? How do I help him curate the content? I see it as our responsibility as educators to help students curate the overwhelming amount of content that is available to them. Never mind it being a crucial skill needed for the future workforce. 

We curate our resources before we begin the lesson. We choose what we think is a good example. We wade through Twitter and pick out shiny things that attract us or inspire us. We can successfully navigate the complicated world but do we take time to share our skills and expertise with our learners? We can, and do, curate but do we model it for our learners? 

I was guiding my learners through revision recently and googled circle theorems. I then went through the results page verbally explaining my decisions for highlighting certain websites. UK based ones or gcse level ones rather than A Level and so on. My learners were scribbling down everything that I said. They enjoyed learning how I curate. I now know I need to model more of this for my future classes as well as getting them to curate as well. 

I use Google Classroom as my hub for my classes. I keep it lean. I only post content that fits under one of my topics: algebra, number, shape, stats, revision and class admin. Sure I see new student websites daily that I could forward on to them but I would end up bombarding them and ultimately they would switch off. I was helping a teacher tidy up her Google Classroom last week and I asked her what she wanted to keep to copy for next year. Her response was, well all of it. How can all of it be relevant? She hasn't met next year's students, she doesn't know how they like to learn. How will next years students navigate this collection of ideas and resources? It needed curating. We do curation behind the scenes in class but we can model it more in class too, can't we? 

I realise the aim of embedding the 6cs is to get learners to practise and develop the skills for themselves. But how can we do that and get their buy in if we are not modelling the skills first? We get that right and the rest should follow. SJ

Planning for next year... this is it!

This is it, it's finally happened! We have been asked to start thinking about next year! We are out of our reactive COVID-19 mode and into proactive COVID-19 mode, we have moved on. I cannot tell you how excited I am. I am obviously sad that this year's learners courses ended the way that they did and I wish things could have been different. This is now the new normal though. 

I love a list. I love a plan. I always see, if it's not written down it won't happen in your lesson. I have made a list, a list of all the bits that are good about being in a physical classroom and the less good bits. 

Less good bits:

Struggling to walk round tables when you have 30 in a class and only 15 are meant to fit in the room. 

Waiting for the projector to warm up/changing/cleaning the fliter

Losing the projector remote and having to climb on the desk

Grey muck on the whiteboard from not being cleaned properly

Negotiating towers of paperwork or work in progress

Waiting for the class before to finish and only having 5 minutes to get set up for your class

Good bits:

Seeing students

Seeing student reactions

Responding to students

Going outside for a private 1 to 1 with students

Live feedback/marking 

Display boards

Singing and dancing together

I want to plan a way to build in as many good bits of physically being in the classroom as possible. Seeing students and responding to them, sure I can see them on a Google Meet but I need to make sure I take time to see them. How do they look? Are they happy? Are they engaged? I love a progress check. You can't go more than a few minutes in my lesson without falling over one. I want to capture this and give myself time to respond. Tools like Slido or Pear Deck are going to be more valuable to me now. I will treasure that feedback even more. I need to consciously build in time for me to react to that in my lessons. 

Private 1 to 1s. My 19+ learners and my 16-19 learners come to class with all sorts of baggage. My job is to help them unpick it or pack it up. If we can fix it we can, we will stop, go outside and fix it. If we can't we will box it up and move on so we can focus on the lesson. I need a way for students to open up to me or a place I can take them if I spot something is troubling them. I'm going to make a pastoral Google Meet and a lesson Google Meet. If I see the need for a private chat I will ask the student to pop out and join the pastoral Meet. I will offer the pastoral Meet as a drop in too for learners. I can't wait for Google to introduce breakout rooms in Google Meet but my plan is worth a try for now. 

I think Pear Deck and Slido can help me with live marking and feedback but I want to do more. I want to recreate that connection between me and my learners. I will try to record them a little voice note or video after the lesson as an overall feedback. I will use my reports from Pear Deck and Slido as well as student work to help. I will need to make notes during the lesson on everyone to help too. 

I think I will make a virtual noticeboard in Google Slides using the template from Slides mania. I will pin my famous female mathematicians, my examples of student work and my other bits and bobs. I will post it to Google Classroom and set myself a reminder to refresh it every term.

I will still sing and dance, if I'm honest the learners don't normally join in with me anyway so I will continue to do this on my own! 

I cannot recreate my physical classroom nor the experiences we share in it but I can create opportunities for us to create new experiences. I have discovered before how much effort goes into planning online lessons and going through these lists I am reminded as to why. We need to plan opportunities, then we need to plan where those opportunities will lead us to. We need to plan how we will converge onto the same end point from these discussions and we need to plan in time to check in on our learners. 

It may seem early to start planning for next year as we still have half a term to go. But looking at the list of extra things we need to plan for I think we need to start now. SJ

Collaborative Planning

I love planning, almost as much as delivering sessions. Be them staff CPD or teaching. I enjoy planning. I don't enjoy finding the time to sit and plan but once I have cleared my mahoosive to do list I enjoy the process of planning. I plan to the nth degree. I plan for every possible twist and turn a session can take, well I try to! Now we are in an age where we collaborate on planning...do others plan the same as me? No! Do others deliver the same as me? No! I've had to do a lot of letting go, and I still have more to do but I have learnt along the way.

In 2016 I was asked to plan the whole student course for my subject. I dutifully sketched out a plan on Google Sheets. For no other reason than I only had a Chromebook at home. I came into work and my manager said, "oh share that with me." So I did. Unbeknownst to me he then shared it with every staff member in the team, mentors, coaches, TA's and teachers. Everyone threw their two penneth in and the next time I looked at it the document didn't resemble anything like I had planned. Thankfully I used version history to revert to my version, saved a copy for me, restored their version and moved on doing my original plan. I hadn't been asked to collaboratively plan and I wasn't ready to let go. I knew what my end vision was but we hadn't discussed it as a team. I wish we had and I wish we had been given the time but we weren't and I felt that I had to just move on with my plan.

In 2017 I was asked to plan with the same team again. I established from the beginning some roles and duties with my manager. I added columns with each staff members name on and we began. Three weeks later, nothing. Not a sausage. No one contributed. I asked my manager what to do and he said, just do what you did last year. So again I wrote my version of what I thought should happen for our learners in the coming year. Instantly the sheet was filled with thoughts, tweaks, changes and amendments. It ended up in a mess. I tried to tidy it and move bits under each person's column but it still wasn't a practical document. For example, I would pop the session title in and some key bits to cover. There would be an extra row added from the mentor saying that she was on holiday that week. There would be a comment added by the other teacher from the other group saying they wouldn't cover this then as they had their own plan. In the column under her name the mentor wrote "Student B didn't like this topic last year, can they do something else?" You get the picture. Not a practical document in terms of something to pick up and run with in the classroom. Most of the teams contributions had some merit or relevance. My manager hadn't asked us to collaboratively plan though. He had asked staff to contribute to my plan. They weren't invested, it wasn't their end vision.

In 2018, my last year with the team, I was asked to start planning again. This time I added a column for key dates, meetings, trips, staff absence, hoping this would avoid extra rows being added. I added a column for the other teacher to put her topics in to see when she taught what and to see if we could move some stuff around to tie up a bit. I added a hooks column and asked staff to contribute. The hooks were meant to be things that were exciting about that topic in the real world. I was hoping that by focussing on how to engage learners we would avoid the negativity of Student B didn't like this comment. Again I sat and waited with my blank document of columns, nothing. I added in my part. Nothing. I tracked down the other teacher, we sat together and we came up with a plan where we both taught the same topics each week. We then talked about sharing the planning and resources. We recognised we both taught differently but agreed the resources would always be similar so shared the planning of those taking a week each. We then asked our manager to share the document again in the team meeting, we asked him to ask the team to contribute to our plan. On paper copies everyone else contributed and I typed them up onto the document afterwards. We ended up with a column for my class, a column for the other class, a column for who was responsible for planning, a column of hooks and a column for key dates. It was beautiful.

In the beginning my manager had mistaken the fact that a document can be shared for a collaborative document. I wasn't asked to collaboratively plan and not were the rest of the team. They probably felt aggrieved that I had planned so much of it already without asking. In 2017 I learnt that the team didn't didn't believe we were collaboratively planning. They hadn't been asked to. They felt, rightly, that they were contributing to my plan. We still didn't get it right but by sitting down and discussing things we moved a lot faster and closer to what we were trying to achieve in 2018. We never truly collaboratively planned. We contributed to a shared plan.

Collaborative planning is more than working on a shared document. It is about setting working parameters, assigning roles, discussing and aiming for the end goal and vision. Everyone will come to planning from a different viewpoint. You need to agree and establish what it is you are aiming for as a group to then allow the plan to support your vision. Without roles and an end vision established collaborative planning will probably always end up in a mess like my 2016 document.

Things have moved on since then and now we are asked to virtually collaboratively plan. Unfortunately I am seeing documents being shared with "pop any bits you want to add on", that isn't collaborative planning. That is sharing a document and asking for ideas. Collaborative planning, virtual or face to face needs a planning meeting, an opening discussion. This doesn't have to be face to face, it can be on a Google Meet. It doesn't even need to be a meeting, it could be an opening email of "we are about to start planning...and I wanted to see what roles and ideas everyone wanted to bring." It gives everyone an opportunity to get their barriers out of the way. An opportunity to establish roles. An opportunity to clarify and aim towards the same end point. It's personal!

However if your email is looking mahoosive and you fear that the focus will be lost, you may want to pick up the phone. You will be surprised what a difference it makes hearing people's voices rather than reading their words and it may make planning a more enjoyable experience. SJ

Techquity

Ken Shelton and George Couros

I love being inspired. I mean genuinely when someone shows you something and it then changes the way you look at things forever. George Couros has done this to me on many occasions. I cannot see a week where I won't value his blog or podcast. This week I watched his conversation with Ken Shelton about techquity. It was a revelation. Ken said "Not every student comes into a learning environment with the same experiences, same resources and same understaning and so if we continue to do towards the middle being the standard then there's just as much inequity as treating everyone differently." 

That's it, that's the moment that will now change my approach to tech in the classroom. Teaching in FE we have an intake from every school and college across the county. We see it all the time that topics we expect to be covered at a lower level are not fully understood. We know we have to do mini refreshers on topics before we build on what should be existing knowledge. We know that when we teach fractions in maths we need to go over the basics before we move into addition and subtraction with fractions. We certainly know when we cover German history we have to recap GCSE content to access the A Level content. We would be shocked if we had made assumptions on prior knowledge. Yet, when we come to setting independent work we assume everyone can access our content. When we get the Chromebooks out in class we assume everyone can log on and access our material. This isn't techquity. 

Why do we make these assumptions? In my case it's because I see learners with their phones and assume they have the technology at home to access my work. Or that they have the technical skills to get on with remote tasks. I am being honest, it is an assumption that I have made in the past and probably as recently as pre lock down made the assumption too. However I was in a purchase meeting with a software supplier and we didn't go ahead with the purchase because it didn't support historic iOs versions. I was only observing and I asked the meeting holder why it was important. He explained that yes our learners have iPhone but that they are old kit. They run on old iOs. I had never noticed. 

I set a group of learners some work in Google Slides via Google Classroom. I wished them well and off they went. A week later I had no submissions, we then logged on in class and I couldn't believe the lack of digital skills that the learners had. Some didn't know how to insert text into Google Slides. Some had finished the task and forgotten to hit the hand in button. My assumptions were wrong. 

We need to stop aiming for the middle and a one size fits all approach when it comes to our approaches to tech. We need to personalise our tech the same way we personalise the learning intentions. We need to make sure everyone has a fair shot and level the playing field. I don't know how this will look but after my inspiration today I am looking forward to seeing me try. SJ