Reflecting on my frustrations at the quality of recent reading material. See my post on wider reading. I began seeking out opportunities for real. No longer do I want to read or see what a good one looks like, I want to read or see what happened, what we hope to happen and how we make changes in the classroom. Boring I know, actual real teaching. This led me to join JoyFE. JoyFE is a collective of FE practitioners looking for the everyday joy in what happens in FE. And let's be honest, the whole concept of FE is joyful. Further education (FE) in it's very nature is one of the most welcoming education experiences around. No matter what age and stage you are in life or education FE welcomes you in. Vocational, traditional academic subject or workplace upskill FE has an option for you. So by it's very nature, once you are openly welcomed you can't help but feel the joy.
Like many things though waters get muddy and there are times where FE has lost its way. Time pressures, OFSTED pressures, results pressures and everything in between mean that sometimes FE isn't as joyful as it should be. I remember the day I joined JoyFE. I messaged the wrangler of the joyful rabble, the unbelievably strong and brilliant Lou Mycroft. When I messaged Lou I said "I need to get back to thinking about why we do what we do". And I stand by it. At the time I was lost in a distance blended learning delivering planning storm. I was CAG ing students and the whole word was in lockdown, or so it felt. The joy of being in FE had disappeared for me.
Joining the joyful rabble collective I popped into the ideas room. If you are unaware of the thinking environment then Lou is your lady and she can give you a great insight. The ideas room gave me an energy like I hand't experienced in a long time. A virtual collective supportive hug from a group of strangers had made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Now I have been lucky in that my boss has twice weekly checked in as a team and on individuals since lock down. I have felt connected but the ideas room was different. It was different because there were no limits. This group were and are in a mission to make change. Not just for them but for everyone.
Colleges across the country have little gemstones of members of JoyFE. Practitioners who hold people, thoughts, feelings and joy at their heart. Joyful moments celebrated as a collective. Difficult decisions thought through and discussed as a collective. And that's how the joy starts. The collective nature of the joy spread through you and you can't help but feel energised. Then you feel empowered to make a change and change yours and others ways of looking at problems. Take my stress about CAG. CAG is CAG. We have never been asked to do it before. We are all trying our best. The joy is that we are trying to help students in the best way we can in the circumstances we have found ourselves in. Once I was able to accept that and recognise the joy the stress dissipated.
A community of practice enables me to hear the real, see the real and actually talk to the people living the real. A perfect example is the COVID impact on the beauty teaching staff members of my community of practice. I thought CAG was bad. Imagine having cohorts of learners legally blocked from completing their course. How do you keep those learners engaged waiting for the latest COVID update? Imagine going to work in full PPE just to help keep those learners engage and deliver part of your course. Through the community of practice I hear these stories. I see the photos. I learn how motivation can be created even in the darkest of times. I can then put it into my practice. Even though subjects are wildly different, there are elements I can learn and embed into my teaching. This is the joy of a community of practice and the joy of FE.
Blended and distance learning planning stress kept coming in waves. Staff were panicked. How would delivery work, what would delivery be, how much work was needed. Listening to others experiences in JoyFE, collaborating on working through scenarios. Evolving ideas and creating visions made all the stress fade away for me. The joy is that we will be back. We will be back educating. We will be back building relationships with students. The joy is that we can together share best practice and learn. The joy is that we can build opportunities to develop our own digital skills at a pace suitable for us. No one is expecting every lesson to be perfect. And if we hold onto the joy of that and reflect, no one ever did. SJ
