The muzzle effect

Let me start by saying, I am not being muzzled but I recognise some of this and wanted to share my thoughts. I blogged about #JoyFE and the power of communities of practice. Then I was presented with my cringe question..."yeah...and so what?" I cringe because it is so powerful. If you don't have an answer that you 100% believe whenever you answer "yeah...and so what?" it quickly becomes clear that there are flaws in your thinking and you cringe! But I do 100% believe in #JoyFE and communities of practice so this should be easy to answer for me, and it was. But for another member of the group they talked about feeling muzzled. Instantly it cut right to the core. I know that feeling, I have experienced that muzzle before in education. 

Have you ever been on a training day, teach meet or an event and felt a buzz from it? The enormity of the power you now have with the new skill or idea you have just learned pulsing through your veins. You can't wait to get back to work and get started! Then someone pops your balloon. Perhaps now isn't the time for your department to try this. Perhaps someone tried it before and it failed. The muzzle is that someone has stopped your buzzing pulsing idea because they don't have the appetite or they are treating you with mistakes from the past that they expect you to make. They have judged your idea and it is going nowhere. 

In this scenario I ask one question. Who's responsibility is it to drive the change that you want to make? The person applying the muzzle or yours? If it is your idea and you 100% believe in it then try it. Obviously never go against rules/procedures or do anything that will get you into trouble. Try to negotiate the time and space to try your idea, short term, one group, one lesson, one starter activity. Whatever the size you can negotiate that is the win and the starting point. From there you can learn and build.

Imagine you try an idea and it gets stuck. It dies. No one joins in. You make a mistake. The muzzle is then applied by others to you or from you to yourself. Again, who is responsible for this idea? If you believe in it 100% drive the change, be the change. Now this is easy to say from here but one thing I can think of that may help you at all stages of trialling ideas is a community, a collective or a support network. Take your school or college blinkers off and look external for these people as they will bring fresh ideas to your thinking as to how best to remove the muzzle. If they are from the same team as you they may also have a muzzle and then you have a whole bunch of muzzles to remove! 

You may naturally have this network through participants from the event that gave you the original idea. I was never a fan of swapping phone numbers at meetings or events but I always do now. I collect a network of people who may want to try the idea that I have in their place of work and together we can muddle through. You may find this network to support you via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. You may see someone posting and like their trail of thought. Connect, don't just like and scroll through, retweet, follow, send a DM, be personal! You may find this network through a community of practice that meets in certain spaces. Don't be afraid of asking for an invitation to groups you see and think I would love to know more. Generally people are welcoming and supportive and, if I am honest a group or collective that is a clique and doesn't welcome new people in isn't somewhere I would want to be and I doubt you are missing much from such a closed set.

Now if you do find yourself in a community of practice you may find yourself with more ideas and things to try more regularly and your community is called upon more often to help you remove the muzzle. There is no shame in this but it would be nice if those applying the muzzle gave you a little more room. I never understand the idea behind applying the muzzle. If someone wants to try something new, one of 2 things will happen. 1 the new idea will be brilliant and everyone will be happy. Or 2 the new idea fails but everyone learnt from the experience. To me this is a win win, hence why I don't understand why you would ever apply the muzzle. SJ

Communities of Practise

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

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

Why don't we celebrate success more?

I was sat reading a new publication and I saw the writers name and thought 'oh I know someone called that'. A quick Google later and I see yes it is the same person. Now this person has worked with me for years. We talked all the time when we were in the building but yet I had no idea they were passionate about this topic. Nor that they were so much of an expert that they would write for a magazine. I was shocked and very proud. I quickly messaged the author and they replied with, "oh that? Yeah I write for X and that is the new smaller version" I was even more shocked. This person was so blaise about their efforts. They were very modest. I said to them "if I was as brilliant as you I would be shouting from the rooftops" we laughed. Now as soon as the words left my mouth I thought 'hang on a minute, would I though?' 

Recently I have been asked to participate in a discussion as an expert for an event. Have I told anyone? No! I'm not an expert in anything so why would I tell anyone I was about to make a fool of myself, right? I'm not talking about my own imposter syndrome, I'm talking about the need that we feel to be modest. We can't be seen to be the ones celebrating our own success, what will everyone else think? We can't be the one making a song and dance, everyone will think we are tools! Why do we think like this?

Another colleague is the exact opposite. They shout about everything. They shout so loud and so often that when something actually brilliant happened everyone missed it. It's a boy who cried wolf scenario! Why have we stopped listening to them? Maybe because we think that they are completely the opposite of us, and they should have some modesty. But how dare we force our views onto this person, let them shout I say!

A great inspiration of mine is the queen of being modest and shouting loud. She is very softly spoken and gentile. Yet when someone does something brilliant she is the one shouting from the rooftops. She has the balance right, for me. Yet some have told me that she shouts too loud and should be more modest so for them she doesn't have the balance right.

It comes back round to, you can't please all of the people all of the time. We know this, but yet we are constantly trying to please everyone! That's why we don't shout from the rooftops about our success. So we need an advocate, someone to shout for us. We need to collectively be the one watching each others back. When we see someone do something brilliant we should shout from the rooftops. We have to, otherwise some voices will be lost and some will be ignored. We can't please all of the people all of the time but we can please ourselves. It is ok to be brilliant, even if it is a short burst before we return to normality, it is important that we celebrate our success. We need to be the ones to shout for others, and karma will lead someone to shout for us. SJ