The Uphill Struggle

 The marking stacks up, the need to make sure your tracking and data input is up to date, internal verification sampling, chasing non attenders, pastoral admin, this is just a snippet of the roles teachers play before they even get to think about planning and delivery of learning to students. Teacher workload is spoken about all the time but little seems to be done about this challenge. There have been initiatives and reports but has the finding of these made their way to the frontline? The huge increase in 2020 for digital online teaching has left teachers on their knees in many cases. But, could this move be the answer to reducing teacher workload and making the profession more sustainable?  

I would describe teaching in the further education sector as constantly being in the path of a tornado. Tornadoes generally have wind speeds up to 110 mph. You can see them due to the condensation funnel they travel for a few miles and then disappear. This metaphor I believe is a good way to describe the ever changing landscape of FE, the new initiatives with some sticking and some disappearing after a few miles. This constant change, pressure and lack of time to adapt causes many teachers to take a long hard look at their jobs and go “is this really for me?”

Tornado alley is a term penned to parts of North America such as Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana where tornadoes occur most frequent. Teaching in FE is somewhat like living in one of these states, you know the weather can be unpredictable and at certain times of the year your home could incur damage or be destroyed thanks to mother nature. Although an extreme example, the pressure that FE teachers face at different times of the year is quite immense. This year the use of technology and blended learning has provided the latest tornado, but this one isn't going away and actually we need to learn to live with it.

 

Perhaps the biggest challenge we all face, not just teachers is a lack of perceived time. This has been dramatically increased this year due to the requirement to plan, teach and deliver online learning. But as a result how much innovation do you think has occurred? Teachers trying things they might never have tried before and potentially failing and trying something new again. Amazing. Technology really can be our extra pair of hands if we know what's out there and how we can leverage it to our advantage. Moving away from the fear and resistance to make it work properly and developing our knowledge working with it in partnership. The road isn't smooth and there will be lots of challenges. 

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford

The celebration of the volume of innovation in my own opinion has been overlooked throughout 2020. There has been so much great adaptation and practice to the way we deliver learning it's like ten years rolled into one. So could this new found innovation and practices support teachers on managing their workload in the long term? I believe the answer has to be yes….. And I will tell you why.

When you learn to drive, let's be honest it's tough. Most of us would have been passengers in a car but there is nothing quite like getting behind the wheel for the first time. 10mph feels like you are driving a racing car; it's such a weird feeling. After years of driving it becomes second nature you don't have to think about what you are doing, your subconscious basically does the job. Have you had one of those journeys where you arrive at your destination and you remember nothing of the journey? At present many teachers find themselves at the learning to drive stage. We have gone through various amounts of lessons, we might have also completed our hazard perception and now we are looking forward to the test. Everything is a process, getting our heads around new ways of working, learning and living will of course take time, provide us many barriers and challenges but as a result help us grow. As with every new skill the key to mastery is consistent practice and self discipline. It is key we maintain the progress made as I believe the use of technology will have the greatest impact on making teacher workload sustainable.

If you have read any of John Maxwell's books on leadership you may have come across his uphill and downhill metaphor. Uphill is very hard, it's challenging and everyday we have to take a few steps in that direction, tackling head on the challenges before us. Downhill is easy, we can slide away with very little effort required. But if we slide down hill we lose all of our uphill progress. Now, for many, times are hard, it's a challenge we may even hate it, but it is forcing us to grow and develop. We must continue the uphill struggle, because when we get to the top the view is magnificent.  

The next 12-18 months will be key to our uphill struggle. Teachers who are confident with digital tools are going to need to work with colleagues to support them and their upskill up the hill. The driving instructors to the learners. Together is better, learning is messy but many hands will make light work on the clear up. If the digital capabilities of teachers improves, it is my belief so will the ability to develop working practices and save time in administration and workload that occurs outside of the classroom. There is so much information and resources out there that there is almost too much. My advice to teachers would be to look at what you know and what you think would benefit you in your journey up the hill. Talk it over with a colleague, ask for help, open the door on your practice and reap the rewards. 

The tornados will keep appearing in FE, who knows what the next ones might be, but over time we can predict, monitor and overcome these challenges. Working together is key and making sure we do not start sliding down the hill. Let's keep talking, working with one another, sharing our uphill struggles and keep moving towards the summit.

Thanks for reading.  

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