Category: Tips, tricks and caveats for teachers

5 Stanislavskian tips for teachers: role play made easy

1. Characters have objectives. This is expressed through the use of an active and transitive verb eg kick off gracefully.

2. Superobjectives  link objectives through a line of action.’ eg kick off gracefully then retire to the bar to recuperate.

3. In analyzing an action, the actor answers three questions, ‘What do I (the character) do?’ ‘Why do I (the character) do it?’ and ‘How do I (the character) do it?’ eg what on earth possessed me to kick off, go to the bar and then end up having a full day of assessment?

4. Truth on stage is different from truth in real life. Just because you are acting a full day of assessment in role, does not mean that is what you are actually doing.

5. The aim of the actor should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In this process imagination plays by far the greatest part. So, an act of assessment would be much better accompanied by acts of fanciful daydreamings. E,g this school should be closed down… But would be so much more effective if it was placed on the top of a mountain.

The feeble child: why being feeble is a neat strategy to survive school.

Feeble children don’t fit and don’t come up to the mark of what is being demanded of them by their teachers or politicians. The feeble child isn’t – and doesn’t aspire to be – independent – or develop skills as an independent learner. They are highly dependent on others, whether consciously or not. The call to be prepared for an independent life fills them with horror.

The feeble child may not actually have many aspirations at all, is content to muddle through the day and has no view to the future. The feeble child is neither gifted nor talented – or is even in special measures and has no serious weaknesses. The feeble child is just that – feeble, weak, and dependent – and as such sits outside of the gaze which is directed at their peers who may variously be described as gifted and talented, ‘hard to reach’; dysfunctional or socially excluded.

The feeble child is not hard to reach at all, indeed their feebleness and utter dependency means that they are hard to shake off. We might harbour desires to exclude the feeble child as their dependency is so exhausting for us – but their strength (for they have many) is their instinct to be included, to include themselves in others co-dependent lives.

Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning: how schools are ahead of the political game

After two years in the making, here it is. Finally.

Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning shows teachers of key stages 2 and 3 how to introduce creativity into what is often seen as a prescriptive and stifling curriculum, and addresses the tensions that can exist between the requirement to follow the curriculum and the desire to employ innovative pedagogies. It offers readers a range of practical and realistic ways that curriculum changing ideas can be applied to individual projects, classrooms and even entire schools.

This book tracks the imaginative initiatives undertaken by six schools as they have worked to change their curriculum and teaching in order to put student experiences at the core of the learning process. Stating its observations and suggestions in a refreshingly straightforward and practicable manner, this book explores:

  • Why a new creative curriculum is needed for the 21st century
  • How to encourage teachers and pupils to ‘own’ the curriculum
  • The role that pupil voice plays in a creative curriculum
  • The environment needed to creatively manipulate the curriculum
  • How to introduce innovation to teaching practice
  • What actually works – considering the limits and possibilities of creative pedagogy

Providing case studies and examples of the ways in which teachers have delivered the curriculum in a creative way, Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning is an invaluably beneficial guide for all those involved in engaging and teaching young people in key stages 2 and 3.

Fascinating stories of challenge, change and inspiration are found throughout the book.

In Chapter Two, Fulbridge Primary School in Peterborough has developed a local, vernacular curriculum which takes as its starting point local histories, geographies and resources as the means to galvanise children’s learning. This work is based heavily upon Kolb’s model of learning from experience and particularly demonstrates how different mediums, such as sculpture, film, animation and drama can be used to explore curriculum links with writing.

In Chapter Three, Dale Primary School in Derby have looked to early years practice of the town of Pistoia, Italy, as a means of providing immersive learning experiences which are engendered through their approach to ‘slow pedagogy’. Theirs is a stance on personalised learning which allows for engagement in a curriculum which is driven by constant formative reflection, a profound knowledge of children’s progression in skills and learning which is fired by children’s curiosity and questions.

In Chapter Four ‘real world’ learning is demonstrated by Old Park Primary School in Telford which particularly focuses on Learning to Learn (L2L) strategies and connects its work with that of Guy Claxton’s Building Learning Power programme as part of its bigger commitment to the Personalised Learning Agenda.

In Chapter Five, Belfairs Media Arts College, a secondary school in Southend demonstrates how focusing on children as independent thinkers and learners identifies a number of strategies which encourage young people to think about, and learn from, their own learning styles. In addition to the L2L programme, the school also focus on and embed a particular cluster of thinking skills across the school curriculum.

In Chapter Six, Kingstone School in Barnsley adopts a thematic approach to teaching to collaborate in order to develop cross curriculum projects that are taught to Year 7 students in a way that bridges the pedagogical gap that exists between the high schools and their feeder primary schools.

Available now from http://www.amazon.co.uk/Placing-Students-Creative-Learning-Teaching/dp/0415570018

Does your school need an international cultural attache? Here’s how…

Could your school benefit from international links with teachers, pupils and families? Are you interested in exploring some unique professional development opportunities with teachers and other educators on the other side of the world?

Over the last two years, the Aspire Trust has organised international conferences for Principals and Head teachers from India, Nigeria and the UAE to visit UK schools. We ran the All Our Futures conference in Liverpool and Wallasey this summer for Indian, Nigerian and other international head teachers and educators. The success of that and similar events has led me to being invited by the University of Tasmania with a view to establishing a similar event there in either 2012 or 2013. The first step in that process will be between 25 November and 13 December this year when I will travel there to make initial contacts with the University and schools across Tasmania.

If you would like me to represent your school with a view to establishing some active, realistic links then I am able to offer you a number of services:

1. Taking promotional material to schools in Tasmania, complete with contact details, so that schools could contact you directly. I will be doing this for 12 English schools so your information would be viewed in this context. I would take 10 copies of your promotional pack which should be no more than 2 sides of A4 paper and one CD / DVD. Materials should be clearly labeled and packaged.

2. or, I could take a more active role in promoting your school by coming to see you, developing an action plan with you, and taking a more proactive role in promoting your school to the schools I visit. In this option, you could supply me with additional promotional material and I would aim to identify a specific named partner school for you as a result of the trip. As this option would require a heavier investment from me in my time promoting your school, I would be looking for a sponsorship from you of £300 towards the costs of my time in this promotional activity. On my return to the UK, I would then revisit your school with an activity report which would specify who I had met, details of your potential partner school(s) and other information as specified in the action plan.

If this is of interest to you, please feel free to get in touch with me at nowen.aspire@btconnect.com

Here’s how a creative school becomes a creative city (2)

Impresa and Coletta’s Tool-Kit for Cities suggests that cities:

* Deliver an ‘appealing reality’, because ‘young people are very savvy in assessing cities’;
* Put values on display, demonstrating how the city ‘welcomes newcomers and new ideas’;
* Keep in touch with former residents, and find ways to have them ‘return to your city’;
* Create opportunities for civic involvement, deliberately seeking out the opinions of young people;
* Use internships to connect with young adults;
* Survey young adults regularly, including ‘exit interviews’;
* Celebrate young entrepreneurs and civic contributors;
* Communicate development plans to young adults;
* Promote your city: ‘place marketing works best when it is based on authentic stories that people are willing to tell about their cities’;
* Promote a young adult lifestyle, particularly ‘active nightlife’, and do not be fearful that this might ‘scare off the soccer moms’

Mapping out these criteria for creative cities against schools OfSTED reports offers some tentative support to the notion that schools, rather than places of teaching and learning actually are better described as creative cities.

According to OfSTED, Fichte Nursery School in Hull for example delivers an appealing reality as what pleases parents most about the school is that Children are expected to work hard as well as have fun in the nursery and this leads to good progress.. The teaching is good and staff have high expectations as to behaviour and the children’s response…

The school also can demonstrate that it puts its values on display, demonstrating how the city welcomes newcomers and new ideas as The nursery classes and corridors are full of attractive displays and a wide range of artifacts that children can see and handle at any time.

The school also demonstrably keeps in touch with former residents, and finds ways to have them return to the city through parents evenings, governors meetings as well as through the development of the Fichte Parents Writers Group (FPWG): a group of parents who, through a creative writing project researched the experiences of previous attendees of the school and encouraged them to share those experiences and stories through that project.

Furthermore, the school creates opportunities for civic involvement, deliberately seeking out the opinions of young people through its involvement in several local and government initiatives such as Sure Start and the building of the new Children’s Centre which aims to support parents and their children in close partnership with the school. It uses internships to connect with young adults by playing host regularly to trainee student teachers and research students. It can also be seen to survey young adults regularly (through regular parental consultative processes) and celebrates its young entrepreneurs and civic contributor’s as: the children’s work is always celebrated by displaying it very effectively across the school.

According to these criteria then, Fichte Nursery School qualifies as a creative City. The implications for this shift are manifold. Membership of school communities becomes more explicitly transitional and relationships between members more based on qualities of corporate society than the kin relationships of community.

New definitions of community consequently emerge in which whilst there are new spaces for diversity and difference to be explored also lend themselves for surprising new conflicts to emerge.

Simple causal relationships between landusers in the city of Fichte Nursery School can not easily be demonstrated; they become spaces in which minor events have major, surprising and unexpected consequences and if Eve Miteldon Kelly is right: when one entity tries to improve its fitness or position, this may result in a worsening condition for others. Each ‘improvement’ in one entity therefore may impose associated ‘costs’ on other entities, either within the same system or on other related systems. Mitleton-Kelly (2003)

This has significant for the successful (or otherwise) implementation of school improvement agendas. Complexity theory would suggest that the emergence of winners brings about the emergence of losers. When schools are engaged in competitions for pupil numbers, for positions on a league table, for higher CVA ratings, it is not as if they are running on an Olympic race track with competing athletes to see who can run 100m the fastest: in the competition that Nursery School Cities are part of, the ‘front runners’ are partially responsible for determining the state of the race track of those lagging ‘behind’.

More on this at https://drnicko.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/how-does-a-creative-school-become-a-creative-city/

How does a creative school become a creative city?

Many cities around the world present themselves as undergoing programmes of regeneration by aiming to engage the efforts of the local ‘creative communities‘ for the benefits of the city and and presenting themselves as a site of creativity and hub of contemporary culture.

In The Rise of the Creative Class Richard Florida interprets these ‘creative communities’ as a creative class: latter day, Platonic philosopher rulers, requiring ‘less creative’ members of society who struggle to cite a single classical composer or who don’t know their Michael Jackson from their Jackson Pollock, to provide services and facilities which they – the creative classes – are either too busy, preoccupied or aloof to have to contend with themselves.

Ironically, the city’s desire to democratise creativity, to become an attractive place for ‘the creatives’ and to make creativity a gregarious cultural process tends to generate a hierarchical structure of city boundaried privileged locations of loft conversions and artistic architraves amongst the archetypes.

Jamie Peck’s analysis of Florida suggests that: Florida’s street level analog of such attempts to ‘harness’ creativity comes in the form of a celebration of the buzzing, trendy neighborhood, a place where everyday innovation occurs through spontaneous interaction… a place where outsiders can quickly become insiders’…

Schools who wish to develop creativity in the classroom perhaps begin to resemble creative cities as outsiders are encouraged to visit them with the enticements of earning potential or employment, becoming in the process a veritable market place for creative practitioners.

Peck continues to identify what is required of a city to make the transformation to a creative city by referring to the development of a Tool-kit for Cities by Cortwright, for the American management consultancy, Impresa and Coletta:

Impresa and Coletta’s Tool-Kit for Cities

* Deliver an ‘appealing reality’, because ‘young people are very savvy in assessing cities’;
* Put values on display, demonstrating how the city ‘welcomes newcomers and new ideas’;
* Keep in touch with former residents, and find ways to have them ‘return to your city’;
* Create opportunities for civic involvement, deliberately seeking out the opinions of young people;
* Use internships to connect with young adults;
* Survey young adults regularly, including ‘exit interviews’;
* Celebrate young entrepreneurs and civic contributors;
* Communicate development plans to young adults;
* Promote your city: ‘place marketing works best when it is based on authentic stories that people are willing to tell about their cities’;
* Promote a young adult lifestyle, particularly ‘active nightlife’, and do not be fearful that this might ‘scare off the soccer moms’

Mapping out these criteria for creative cities against schools OfSTED reports offers some tentative support to the notion that schools, rather than places of teaching and learning actually are better described as creative cities. The pedagogical implications of seeing a school as a city are immense and will be explored in later blogs.

Helping doesn’t only not help, it also un-helps.

Differentiation in classrooms is presented as a means of ensuring children with lesser abilities engage with the curriculum, children with moderate abilities wrestle it and children with higher abilities transcend it. For the higher ability children, there is the allure of extension activities too which enable them to explore bigger existential and metaphorical challenges than whether they are a Level 4+ or 5- in literacy.

The problem is that differentiation may well have the opposite effect that it intends. By separating out ‘lower ability’ children means that everyone knows who they are – and to everyone then staring at who’s on the top table. This can lead to those ‘lower’ ability children switching off and becoming even less able than they had been previously; until of course they find themselves in a learning situation which is undifferentiated and at which they find themselves at the same starting gate as their alleged more talented peers. This is the case that many artists offer when they visit schools and work with so called ‘mixed ability’ classes.

A music friend told me of a case where he was trying to help a young girl count on the beat by cueing her in with a downward arm movement. This had quite the opposite effect in that it led to her being completely confused by the notion of coming in on the beat and switched her off from the task altogether. His attempted helping of her led to being significantly ‘unhelped’ and in differentiation parlance, she moved from medium to low ability in the wave of a hand and would have found herself sitting at the musical dunces table had such a table existed in that classroom.

The notion that helping can cause the opposite of the desired effect has its echoes in how complexity theory informs school improvement improvement agendas. Complexity theory would suggest that the emergence of school league table winners causes the emergence of school league table losers. When schools are engaged in competitions for pupil numbers, for positions on a league table, for higher CVA ratings, it is not as if they are running on an Olympic race track with competing athletes to see who can run 100m the fastest: this competition means that the ‘front runners’ are partially responsible for disrupting the state of the race track of those lagging ‘behind’. They may have started at the same starting gate (which is unlikely) – but the high achieving schools then manage to dig up the race track for those who are slightly behind them; leading to the winners winning by an even bigger margin than they demonstrated at the start of ‘the race’.

Our differentiation of lower, mid and higher ability pupils similarly is not one merely of categorising pupils competences: it also acts to cause those differences in those competences and so un-helps the very people it is trying to help.

Poetry on the Hoof: Terraced? Semi? Detached? Year 7 plan their future homes.

You gotta decide the lighting,
It’s November, remember.
You gotta agree,
Sort it out reasonably.
You gotta think it out,
You’ve gotta act quick.
Silence hush descends.

You’ll need pools of light
You’ll need water, air, space.
Somewhere to park the car
When the days close in.
Can I get a red phone box?
Can I get an allotment?
Silence hush descends.

You’re gonna see nothing
With windows like that.
You’re gonna be a resident, remember.
You’re gonna freeze to death
With walls like that.
Are we gonna pretend?
That we have to pay mortgages an’ ‘owt?
Silence hush descends.

You gotta make a choice,
Or you’re gonna get stuck.
Best to say little,
If you’re not sure.
If you don’t wanna pay for ‘owt can we live in a toilet?
We could use our imagination.
Silence hush descends.

Everyone’s gotta live somewhere
Everyone’s gotta have a place
They can call their own.
But if you’re gonna want a family.
But if you’re gonna get you a mortgage,
You gotta be quick,
You gotta be sharp,
You gotta get rid of those ghosts that moved onto your land.
Silence hush descends.

Some responses by then young people of Kingstone School, Barnsley to recent exhortations to a ‘Housing Revolution’. Readers may be interested to know about similar revolutions being plotted in education.

The rhetoric of crisis is also echoed in housing and education too here.

Reasons to be pedagogical part 2: We’re going to make a slave ship out of pipe cleaners and mudroc

I’m watching a visiting artist, Lisa,  in a Year 6 class  with the teacher, Sally.  Lisa has started a project on Wilberforce, making a model slave ship, an African village and percussion project. She kicks off asking who Wilberforce is and what slavery is. She introduces the task of making a slave ship which she’s going to show – at the end of the week they will have an impressive piece of work which ‘we can display’.

“We’re going to make a slave ship out of pipe cleaners and mudroc” she announces.  Is there something a little inappropriate here?  Would we hear a session in which we would hear about making concentration camps and gas chambers out of ‘pipe cleaners and mudroc’?  Here’s  a Blue Peter version I made earlier….

Lisa demos  how to make a figure out of mudroc and pipe cleaners and takes questions as she goes.   Little slave figures made out of pipe cleaners.  “we don’t want arms sticking out, they should be down at the side”.  She sets up a little production line by asking them to make 2 or 3 figures each.  The class is set on a task of making about 50 – 75 different slave figures between them. “Mould the pipe cleaner, cut up mudroc, soak it, wrap it, repeat”.  I wonder whether someone will point out that they could develop the production line and have one child specialising in moulding, another in cutting, another in soaking.

As pipe cleaner figures start emerging, a few laughs are generated by children – feet are either too bog or heads too small. “He’s hop-along… what’s happened to his arms… mine’s called Gordon, mine’s Edmund… this one’s paraplegic”.  Groups work semi-independently, teacher is engaged in co-delivery of the session, moving from one table to another as Lisa does. “wrap the mudroc tightly around the skeleton otherwise it will fall off”.  Perhaps it would have been better to make people figures who had homes first and who were then enforced into slavery – using the kids enthusiasm for the figures to its advantage rather than opt for making slaves from the beginning.  The production line aspect of this approach ironically endorse the values which make the slave trade possible.  We’re not making  a character which has a personal connection to its sculptor.  There’s one black lad in the class who is joining in with all the activities; a small crowd of white mud roc figures starts being assembled;  some of which are splendid creations, others of which are not so splendid….

The project continues through the afternoon, with no time for play time which means for some kids that making slaves out of pipe cleaners is  becoming a bit of drudgery. The figures are now to be painted black, to represent the figures seen in the picture at the start of the session.  Blackened mudroc figures start to appear on table tops and are taken to the window ledge to dry; of course, they’re various in shape, size and coverage of black paint – but they are still faceless and the products of several cheerful production lines.  No shades of black, brown or tone… End of class, and Lisa moves the furniture back to where it started before I entered the classroom.  The figures are to be placed in the slave boat which is to be built tomorrow.  So what do we know about slavery after all this?