You want to know what's worrying me most right now?

First placement is over. Had the Tutor Assessed Visit. Got the school report filed. Got most of the work done on the portfolio that I can. It's christmas. So what's to worry about?
I've got an assignment to write, that's what's worrying me. Here's why: the last time I wrote an actual essay (let alone a post-graduate assignment) was 1978. When I did English "O" level. Sure, since then I've done three "A" levels, picked up a degree and written hundreds upon thousands of words while working as a journalist and in business. But the "A" levels were in maths and physics and the degree was in engineering, none of which were big on essays, even in exams. None required extensive writing and references and stuff like that. So the highest academic level at which I have submitted an essay is "O" level. 30 years ago. There. Had to get that off my chest.
Only one way to find out if I can do it, I guess.

Back on November 10, I wrote that my S3 class was my most challenging. And they were challenging in various ways - too many of them for the room, one disruptive pupil who should have been in a lower ability class but had been seperated from his regular partners in crime, one bright lad who had decided to stop working (or even thinking at times), a couple of girls who missed more lessons through ill-health than they attended and they could all chat for Britain.
But overall, I came to enjoy teaching them most. They generally did cotton on eventually, they attempted theior homework (mostly), they did detention reasonably cheerfully when they hadn't done said homework bubt most of all they had some sense of fun. Yes, I had to quieten them down regularly. Frequently even. But it's hard to get cross and stay cross when the conversation goes like this (names changed to protect the guilty):
Me "Jason! Chantelle! What's all that noise? And what's so funny about frequency diagrams?"
Chantelle: "Nothing, sir (sic). Jason was just doing his Chewbacca impression."
In the end, I enjoyed being with them and I think they enjoyed being with me, which made the whole teaching/learning thing easier for all of us. After my last lesson I even got a high five from one of the boys I'd had to talk to a lot in the first few days.
So here's to classes with spirit. But maybe not tooooo much.
PS Here's the Chewie link on Wookieepedia. I couldn't resist that. Sorry.

Oh dear.... the follow up

Better lesson, better example. Most of them have got the concept of quartiles. I gave them one more short go at it this morning before letting thme loose on "Mr Schafer's Final Lesson of the Placement Stats Quiz", which was quite good fun. The final question was:
"My head is in the oven and my feet are in the freezer. My average body temperature is absolutely normal." What is wrong with this statement?
Got some interesting, imaginative and articulate responses to that one so I would have left the classroom feeling really good, except that I had to stay behind and supervise the three who hadn't done their homework and were going to do it in lunchtime.

Oh dear

Just when I thought I was neginning to get the hang of this teaching thing..... along comes the lesson from hell to elbow me out of my incipient complacency. S3 again, doing statistics. But the problem is not the pupils. It's me. Just me. The whole me and nothing but the me. I'd moved them rapidly on to cumulative frequency curves as they were doing so well with frequency tables. So I dished out the graph paper and went merry through a worked example.Eerything was going swimmingly - the data was on a spreadsheet projected onto the interactive board, I'd pre-prepared two stages of the curve on the whiteboard (that got a laugh - I didn't even have to supply the "Here's one I prepared earlier" line, one of the pupils did that for me). So explained the purpose, did the median and added the upper and lower quartiles, checking all the while they were with me. When I got to the end, I set them onto another question and a single hand went up: "I don't get this...."
So I asked if anyone else was having problems. No response. I thought, "OK, if it's just Jason (name changed to protect the innnocent), that's a result. I'll go and help him while the others get on with the question."
Off I go to help Jason out. The conversation went something like this:
"So, where did I lose you?" (He's copied the curve beautifully by the way)
"Um, right at the start."
Oh.
"OK then I'll go through it again with you."
"Can I listen in too?" says one of his neighbours.
"Mmmmm. Me too please?" says another.
"And me...?"
Now I have the whole table involved. And when I finish there, I have to do the same thing at the next table.... you can guess the rest. Dammit.
Gonna have to do it over again tomorrow, with a simpler example. I'm going to do the curve for them though to save some time.

Precisely who is in the classroom matters...

More news from the Eastern Front (i.e. Intermediate 1 Mathematics with a class where at least half have no interest in being in the room).
Sickness has decimated the group. Actually, no it hasn't. It's even worse than that - only half the group was in today. If you understand that, go straight to the next paragraph. If you didn't get it: decimate means "remove (kill) one in ten", despite common usage, which seems to suggest decimate means leaving only one in ten standing, or something like that. Put it this way, if you are ever captured by a James Bond villain and given the choice "Either choose half of your number to die or I'll decimate you", choose decimation. As long as you are confident the villain uses English precisely (or nicely, in its original meaning).
Anyway, pedantry aside, near half of my S5 class was off today. Funnily enough the group present was almost complementary to the bunch who appeared on Friday. So I had an easy lesson: repeat what I did on Friday...... and the notes and graphs I'd drawn were still on the board. So there's a good reason not to wipe the board clean after every lesson :)
More importantly, the chattering girls were all absent (not all the girls, just the ones with the biggest propensity to chatter and the biggest chips on their shoulders - one on each of course, perfectly balanced). So the ones who wanted to work could do so, while I concentrated on the two groups with some common members: those who really do need help all the way and those who simple like to avoid having to work.
Result? More learning, albeit by fewer pupils. How do I work that equation out? And should I be persuading them not to get 'flu jabs?

The dreaded “crit”

I hate the term “crit” by the way. Somehow it seems to diminish what was (or should be) an important episode in my teacher training. But it's difficult to avoid when everyone else is using it.

Anyway, I had my crit last week. It went pretty well and I was happy with the feedback I got. Just a few general comments about the process....

• a single visit to a single class is hardly representative of what a typical lesson with that teacher is like. I made no attempt to bribe or threaten my S3 class into co-operating for my crit (the lesson went much like most of my recent sessions with them) but they were clearly “playing the game” with a visitor in the class. I had forewarned them there would be a visitor who was there “to inspect the quality of teaching in the school” but no more than that. However, for the most part they were collaborating in the success of the lesson. I appreciate there are time/budget/resource constraints on tutor visits but the “single visit with three weeks' notice” approach is guaranteed to produce skewed results – and therefore not produce the most useful feedback to the student.

• Speaking of feedback with tongue in cheek... if there aren't any areas of development specifically mentioned on my feedback form, does that mean I'm perfect already? And if there are no areas for development, how can my performance be only “satisfactory”? When I used to appraise performance in a commercial setting I would *always* cite at least one area where someone could improve, even if their overall performance was terrific. Not very motivational not to, in my opinion.

• My soon-to-be erstwhile colleagues in the maths department were incredibly supportive in the run up to the crit. They offered more help and advice than I could possibly absorb in such a short time. Thanks loads!

I'm probably in a minority here...

..... but that's not a first.
I've been spending some time with my portfolio over the last few days - impelled towards it by the impending tutor visit (I'll come to that some other time). The phrase most commonly associated with the portfolio so far is "box-ticking", and that's not just at Jordanhill but also out there in teacherland among recent-ishly qualified teachers. And yes, there is a reasonable amount of box-ticking required, literally as well as figuratively. So far, I'm in the majority camp.
Where I suspect that I diverge from the majority is in the value of the tasks we're being asked to complete for the portfolio. Bearing in mind that the idea, I believe, is that teachers should be reflective practitioners and that they should adapt to the context in which they find themselves, I have found the portfolio tasks very helpful.
For instance, I found the primary school visit a real eye-opener. The levels of differentiation and the variety of work going on simultaneously in primary classes puts the secondary classes I observed (and taught) to shame. The responsibility handed to P3 children for there own learning was remarkable compared to that offered to S3 pupils. I know that there are reasons for this and could spout them back at you if required, I'm assuming that's not necessary. But in the context of the portfolio, having observed the difference, some weeks later I had to return to set out those comparisons in words. Which was a very useful exercise. I had to re-read my notes, recall the circumstances, synthesize the learning and spit it out in way that makes sense, to me at least.
Similarly, my placement is at my local, rural school. I've lived in the area for years and know lots about it. But had I ever really considered the implications for education in the area? No I hadn't. My own children go to a different school, for reasons too boring to go into, so maybe I would have thought more about it if they had gone to this school. So thinking about the catchment area in terms of employment prospects and the local economy was a useful exercise.
This isn't to say I've done a great job on the portfolio tasks - there's so little guidance about what's expected that it's difficult to be sure. However, I can be confident that I have at least thought through the issues raised and that I haven't treated it as simply a box-ticking exercise.
Note to self: should pass on some feedback about this I suppose, including .... why not allow/encourage people to complete portfolio tasks online? Via some sort of diary? Or blog maybe? I could have done the lot by now :)

S5, Intermediate 1, Friday afternoons and all that entails

First off, a disclaimer. Over half of my 14 strong S5 Intermediate 1 group don't want to be there. They are only there because they have to choose something from that particular column. All of them have studied maths in the past (funny that, what a coincidence) but they haven't studied any of the other subjects in that option column. So they are doing maths. About a third of them (you'll notice that I'm approximating here, I know that you cannot divide 14 into thirds, not with humans at least, seeing as how they are discrete objects) already have a General pass at Standard grade. So there's not much they can get out of the course unless they get a grade 1. And pass all their NABS of course. Five or six of the group at Christmas leavers. They can't wait to go by this stage.
I see the class three times a week. First thing on a Monday, when they are barely awake. Last thing on a Friday, when their minds are simply not in the same place as their bodies. And Thursdays, after break. So effectively, they have about 20 minutes of useful time on a Monday, maybe 35 on a Thursday and 20 (max) on a Friday - lessons are 55 minutes bell-to-bell but I'm talking about effective learning time here.
Class dynamics work something like this:
* the ones with General passes at Standard grade can cope with the subject pretty easily, certainly to get a pass at Int 1, if not the grade 1 they need to justify being in the room at all. So they aren't well motivated to work. Typical comments "I'm going to pass anyway, so why bother?" and "I'm 16 and I don't have to do it if I don't want to, you can't make me". Horse/water kind of problem. They like to chat.
* the Christmas leavers really can't be arsed to do very much at all, except write in ballpoint on each others' arms. What's that about? It's endemic at this school. They like a chat too.
* the boisterous boys just like making noise. Sheer poetry, no? Honestly, you'd think they were nine, not 15/16. They don't like to chat. They like to shout.
* the one who has had learning support up to S4 has more or less forgotten how to write (he always had a scribe in class with him through to the end of S4, now he's in S5 that doesn't happen) so he sits and stares. At the wall, the ceiling, the window, he's not fussy. But he is quiet.
* the three who want to work, to improve on the grade they got at Standard Grade, and who have the ability to do so, if they put the work in, well, they struggle along in the face of the scorn, pity, aggression and mockery of their peers. Quite sad really. Unfortunately, they are easily distracted and also like to chat.
So it's been an uphill struggle for me. 15 year old girls who have decided that non-cooperation is their raison d'etre don't make things any easier. They haven't actually erupted into all-out conflagration on me yet, though I suspect it has been close. Keeping the group on task (or at least sufficiently on task that those who do want to work can do so with minimal interruption) has been the goal most of the time. It's taken a mixture of persuasion, cajoling and (only to the right recipient) clear, explicit threat about what will happen if they try to spend all lesson flicking pens at each other). Very tiring and not very satisfying in any kind of meaningful educational way.
The top tips I got for dealing with classes like this are:
* be realistic. You are not going to get 55 minutes of work or concentration out of any of them, let alone all of them. Let them watch a DVD for the last 20 minutes of last lesson on Friday.
* they are much more likely to chatter if they don't understand what it is they are supposed to be doing. Beak everything down into tiny, tiny chunks. Assume nothing. Tell them explicitly to write down every line of every note. Tell them explicitly to show their working, every single time. Do not assume they have read the question thoroughly. Or that they have understood your explanation. Or even listened to it.
* negotiate. Yes, they are pupils, yes, you are the teacher and are nominally in control. But it pays to let them win occasionally: let them listen to the radio while they work if it cuts down the extraneous noise.
* come down to their level. Even more so than the younger children, the S5 pupils dislike someone looming over them. Kneel down to speak to them if they are sitting. I found this out almost by accident: one of them was clearly unwell during the lesson and was basically refusing to work, no matter what I tried by way of persuasion. I decided not to create a confrontation but to speak to her at the end of the lesson. Quietly. Which I did, squatting down in front of her desk and explaining in a soft voice that I could see she wasn't feeling well but that I felt it was unfair of her not to attempt to do any work, especially as the people she sits next to have much greater need for practice than she has. Bingo! Completely different attitude: eye-contact, acknowledgement of what I was saying, confrontational stance dropped. Gotta remember that one.
* use humour. Have some fun with them. They are nearly adults (despite appearances!). You can have a joke with them, though pick your ground carefully :)
Overall I probably learned more from S5 than they learned from me, but that's down to motivation as much as anything else.

One week to go

Which, yes, clearly illustrates that I've been ignoring this place for a wee while. Put it down to conflicting interests. However, I may not have *posted* anything but I have extensive notes of things I was *intending* to post. And still may in some form or another. The road to hell and all that.
Anyway, I have four more days in school before Recall Day and then party time. Sorry, did I say "party time"? I meant independent study week and assignment 1... I think I've got the evidence I need for that little project. I've even got a theme. If I told you it was based on a best-selling business book from the 20th century would that give you any clues? Chocolate will be available to the first person to make a correct guess... (Copyright 2008 David Muir).
So today's objectives are:
* plan three lessons for tomorrow - I only have three (yay!) but they are lessons 1, 2 and 3 which I think represents cruel and unusual punishment for a student teacher. The first one is with my S5 Int 1 group, which I last saw lesson 6 on Friday.... what a marvel of timetabling that was. Actually I'll write something about S5 Int 1 classes separately.
* create two worksheets, for S2 and S5. The S5 one is no big deal - they are doing speed, distance and time so this is a case of makign up a variety of questions. S2 however are really struggling with areas of composite shapes, which means I have to fight with OpenOffice to put together a worksheet with appropriate shapes looking approximately right. Sounds simple. Isn't.
* type up a couple more sections for my portfoliio. Rather stupidly, I'd dismissed this a few weeks ago as reasonably straightforward and put it to the back of my mind. I then became suddenly more focussed when I had a tutor visit looming and realised I had to get something down on paper and printed out. I am an obsessive note-taker (former journalist.... it's a hard habit to break) so it's not like I don't have the material. It's just not in a suitably structured form.
* walk the dogs, with my son. Beautiful crisp, cold day. Dry, yippee!