Could I have been a Nazi?

I like a book that gets me thinking and ‘Alone in Berlin’ certainly got me thinking.  ‘Could I have been a Nazi?’ I wondered.

It is Hans Fallada’s brilliantly told tale of Otto and Anna Quangel’s small act of resistance against Hitler’s regime in World War Two Berlin.  His portrayal of Berlin society at that time is terrifying: neighbours spying on neighbours, eager to ingratiate themselves with the Nazi authorities; arrogant young Nazi up-starts indoctrinated in the right of Hitler’s cause; and the ever-present threat of incarceration, torture and murder at the cruel, sadistic and mad hands of the Gestapo.

Into this frightening world step the Quangels and a handful of others intent on resisting the Nazi regime in their own small ways, and for the sake of their integrity more than with any real hope of bringing about the collapse of the Reich.  In fact, the Quangels know from the beginning that they will likely be caught and killed.  Like most of the other resistors in the story, their efforts are tragically futile, except that – as Otto’s cellmate, Reichardt notes near the end – they could hold their heads high, knowing they had maintained their decency until the end.  Hitler’s henchmen could strip them of everything, but not their honour.

Remarkably, there is truth to the Quangels’ story.  There really was a couple in war-torn Berlin who went to their deaths for writing and distributing subversive postcards.  It’s the courage that took that I find remarkable.  Like Fallada’s Quangels, the Hampels surely knew that the odds were stacked against them – every postcard risked their lives – yet this ordinary couple persisted in their far-from-ordinary defiance.  It’s this that got me wondering what I would have done.

Had I lived in terror-ridden Berlin, knowing as I surely would have that I was being watched and listened to and that the slightest utterance against the regime could take me to the Alexanderplatz basement and from there to a concentration camp or the Plotenzee guillotine, I think I may not have had the courage to write one postcard, let alone hundreds.  Moreover, if I’d found one of the postcards, a cowardly shudder may have gone up my spine and maybe I would have handed it in to the Police – an accomplice to the case against the Hampels or the Quangels.

It’s too easy to read a story like ‘Alone in Berlin’ and picture yourself as the brave hero, striking out against authoritarian brutality.  Of course, the reality is that the Third Reich rose because people like me stood meekly by or were easily seduced by power or couldn’t resist the security of Nazi Party membership.  How frighteningly easy it must have actually been to become a Baldur Persicke, an Inspector Escheriche or an Obergruppenfuhrer Prall.

Thank God I never lived through anything so awful, and please God, I’ll never be tested in that way.  Just as it’s too easy to imagine myself as a resistance hero, I fear it’s too easy to imagine that darkness couldn’t descend again.

There’s something a little chilling about the way our post-war rights are often spoken of as taken for granted.  Are we so blasé about them that we could even turn a blind eye as they are set aside?  It occurred to me as I read ‘Alone in Berlin’ that those rights enshrined in the UN Declaration and protected by such things as the UN itself, NATO and the European Union are all post-war constructs, forged while the horrors of that war were still raw in people’s memories.  They are not old and might not be as embedded as we think.  In many of our prosperous, western, liberal democracies, they have not been seriously tested, yet minority groups can still be marginalised, vilified, discriminated against, oppressed and abused.  (Suddenly, we find ourselves seriously asking what is more British: to respect Muslim women and their choice of what to wear or to laugh off crass jokes about them looking like letterboxes and bank robbers.)  Where our rights have been tested elsewhere in the world – be it Palestine, Syria, Rwanda, Bosnia or China – they have been found wanting.  Many people don’t deploy their democratic rights, me included – there have been times I haven’t voted, I deplore injustice and I’ll occasionally write about my concerns to my Member of Parliament or someone, but I’ve never taken part in a serious protest.

Take LGBT+ rights as an example.  Towns the length and breadth of the country have a Pride festival and, whilst they’re colourful, fluffy, glittered-up and fun, thousands of people join in.  Even now though, like the majority of those taking part, you’ll only find me cheering from the sidelines, not proudly marching with my brothers and sisters.  I’ve long thought that the tolerance we celebrate in Pride month teeters on a knife-edge.  Latent homophobia (at best) remains rife – just look at the glittering, red-blooded world of football’s World Cup or England’s Premiership or Championship (and probably – by extension – many children’s leagues) where apparently, there are no gays and a rainbow flag would look decidedly out of place.  Scarily, I doubt it would take much for intolerance and hatred to take hold once more and if Pride marches were met with baton-wielding riot Police and snarling dogs instead of smiling, cheering, flag-waving crowds, how many people would march then?  Where would I be, I wonder?

With direct memories of the Second World War fading and with our links to it becoming ever-more distant and weak, populism is on the rise, extremists reach for the populists’ coat-tails, our rights seem to be questioned more and more and the mechanisms designed to protect them are under threat, whether that’s from Trump, Brexit, Europe’s far-right or Putin.  Are we blindly stumbling into darkness once again?  Where would I stand as it falls?  Would I slink into the shadows, cowardly and complicit, or could I find the courage to confront it like a Quangel, maintaining my decency until the end?

Proud to be a common-sense zombie!

I’m not sure how I feel about some of the to and fro that takes place on Twitter – the replies that turn into lengthy ‘chats’ or debates.  On one hand, it can be quite stimulating; on the other, it feels like there should be better things to do!  This afternoon’s was certainly thought-provoking and at least I was outdoors in the sunshine and the England match had finished.

I’d commented on a piece written for TES (‘Are you teaching zombie lessons?’).  The author was positive about the debunking of various so-called myths of teaching and learning.  Wasn’t it a good thing, he wrote, that we no longer believed in brain-gym, promoting learning through self-discovery, 10% teacher-talk and differentiating tasks to take into account different learning styles, among other things.  And he cited all sorts of evidence to support his argument.  Teachers should not to be tethered to such disproved myths, he said; they should be allowed to fly.

I didn’t entirely disagree but I also didn’t realise we’d stopped believing in these so-called ‘zombie ideas’.  I’d give him brain-gym but there are times, I suggested, that a child’s own questions can be fascinating and the self-learning journey they embark upon – with our support – is extremely valuable and powerful, moreso than what we may have had planned for them.  For some children, they are more motivated by this than by enduring our lessons.  Specifying precisely 10% teacher-talk is errant nonsense but it represents a significant imperative to reduce teacher talk to a point where learners have the opportunity to process what has been said to them and undertake tasks that enable them to practise a skill or apply their learning and so that we don’t drone on and on whilst some children in front of us switch off.  The point was rightly made that good teacher-talk is what is important, but this surely goes hand-in-hand with limiting it.  There are plenty of teachers who like the sound of their own voice a little too much – me included!  It was important that someone pointed this out to me; I forget whether that was with the suggestion that I aim for a particular percentage, but it was good advice.

The debate really raged about learning styles.  What – many hours later - I discovered he meant was giving children a test to ascertain their preferred learning style and then differentiating tasks according to those preferences.  This surprised me; I’ve never been expected to do that and I’ve never known a teacher who has.  In turn, he was surprised, telling me it was policy in most schools in the mid-00s.  (I didn’t dare ask for his evidence of this ‘most schools’ claim!)   I and many of the teachers I know learnt about preferred learning styles, read about the tests that could be done and then adapted it to our own work.  I’ve never grouped children according to whether they had a visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learning preference but I have tried to ensure that lessons incorporate all three approaches and more besides.

It can be important, I argued, to understand what works best for a child and capitalise on their strengths – a good teacher wouldn’t waste time talking through a concept with a child who they know learns better by reading about it for himself.  For some, it’s critically important that we understand what works best for them and that we don’t bang our heads (and theirs) against brick walls insisting they do it differently.  Maybe some of the children excluded from mainstream education (SEN children among them) would have had more success if their teachers had better understood what worked for them.  This isn’t about simply writing off learners’ weaknesses – there should still be opportunities for them to develop a broad range of skills and experience learning in different ways – but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to play to a person’s strengths.  I’m no football pundit but I suspect Gareth Southgate has nurtured his new England heroes by both accepting and playing to their strengths whilst also working on their weaknesses.

I tried to explain that the particular phrase he had chosen for his article could be interpreted in different ways, which seemed self-evident given that I had interpreted it differently from the way he intended.  I suggested that we are duty-bound to take care in how we phrase and explain our points so that they are not misinterpreted.  He was having none of it.  It’s not open to interpretation and it never has been, he said – when we talk about adapting teaching according to learning styles, it means something specific and it’s a myth that has been irrevocably debunked by research.  As proof, he directed me to a Google search relating to this very point.  God knows how many results that search turned up but a quick glance actually showed various interpretations including that there may be three, four, seven or eight preferred learning styles, and the research he had cited himself in his article suggested there might be more than seventy.  I suspect that if I looked hard enough, there was evidence there in support of the very notion he was arguing against.  Look hard enough and there’s probably evidence lurking somewhere in support of encouraging children to discover knowledge for themselves and 10% teacher talk.  I’m sure I remember evidence being quoted a decade ago in support of brain-gym.

Take a broader view of those practices and how they have evolved over the past decade, of the different ways they may have been interpreted and adapted over time and what they might really look like in different classrooms around the country now and there’s probably much good practice that has developed from them.  Dismiss them all outright and there’s a risk of both throwing babies out with bath water and even of defending bad practice.  Research says I can forget about 10% teacher-talk so I all-too-easily slip back into bad habits and blather on endlessly and tiresomely whilst ignoring the fact that the children in front of me are falling asleep.  Evidence says learning through self-discovery is ineffective so I can dismiss children’s questions and miss wonderful chances to engage them in really meaningful learning through which they might even reveal their best work.  Learning styles are out the window so it’s okay for me to disregard what works best for my students and expect them to adapt to what works best for me.  This all does wonders for my workload but I’m a worse teacher for all that evidence and research and the children in my classes are worse-off. 

I honestly don’t know what to do with all the research and evidence that currently bombards us in the teaching profession.  ‘What goes around comes around’ has been said so often it has become a bit of a cliché so there’s an understandable desire to break that cycle and to use research and evidence to determine what works best, as is done in some other fields.  I value it myself.  I read and digest as much as I can and learn from it, it’s interesting and thought-provoking, it often represents the best of academia, it fuels our aspirations and it can be the basis of outstanding teaching and learning.  But when you’re swamped by it, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees and you’re left with niggling doubts that there may well be contradictory advice out there that you haven’t yet uncovered.  Furthermore, we’ve been told the research-backed theories and strategies we were sold at University or earlier in our careers (they weren’t all mere whims) were actually just myths and to ignore them.  How then am I to know that their replacements today won’t go the same way in another five or ten years?  And I’m unnerved by the unquestioning, unbudging zealotry of some teachers armed with their supposedly indisputable evidence who, it feels, we shouldn’t dare to question.

For me, one of the best, most exciting and most motivating things about our profession is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model – I don’t think anyone will ever write the definitive teachers’ guide to teaching and learning.  (I don’t worry about AI ever taking over my job, by the way!)  Learners come in all shapes and sizes; what works for one young person doesn’t work for another; sometimes it seems that what broadly worked for one cohort doesn’t work for the next.  We’re always adapting what we teach and the ways we do it.  Ironically, this fascination with the different ways teachers are successful is the reason I embroil myself in infuriating debates on Twitter!

Research and evidence contributes enormously to improving teaching and learning but please let’s not become slaves to it.  Please let’s keep open minds, respect and show interest in each other’s good practice and points of view, and allow space for professional common sense in the classroom. 

How Snow Days help put our crazy world into perspective

There’s a lot to be said for an unexpected day away from the hectic routine of the classroom.  I’ve been able to get creative with lesson planning, turn ideas that I don’t usually have time for into some sort of reality, catch up with marking and indulge in some trashy daytime television.  Above all though, there’s been time and space to think about things, and I got to thinking about the Snow Day itself.

I don’t have much time for those who roll their eyes and moan about school closures in bad weather.  I could rehearse all the arguments about the safety of children and school staff and the awfulness and mayhem of closing a school partway through a day, to say nothing of the stress caused to children and families of doing so, but I think there’s also another well-being case to be made.

There was a feature on the radio yesterday about Headteachers banning children from playing snowballs or even touching the snow.  Apparently, it’s far too dangerous, yet we routinely put several hundred children on a playground together with minimum supervision and throw a few footballs, beanbags and skipping ropes into the mix for good measure!  I’m sure I’m not alone though in thinking this is also really sad.

As I ventured out into the snow this afternoon, I couldn’t help smiling broadly and feeling simply joyous.  I loved the feeling of the freshly fallen snow under my feet and that scrunching sound that you only get with snow underfoot.  I was utterly transfixed by the lightness of the swirling snowflakes.  I played with the mystery of where the path ended and the grass verge began.  I tried to make sense of that strange quiet and calm that only snow brings.  I was on my own but I was aching to play snowballs and build a snowman!

It occurred to me that there is something simply natural and instinctive about wanting to play in the snow – even for some of us grown-ups.  Yes, this has a lot to do with the vagaries of British weather – we don’t often see snow like today’s – but for me, they’re not something to complain about but to celebrate, and all the more reason to make the most of the occasional Snow Day.  Snow isn’t for everyone and there will be children who would rather stay indoors, but I think it’s plain mean to ban everyone from a snowball fight, let alone even touching the snow.  In fact, based on my own experience today and watching children playing snowballs and sledging, I think it could be argued that – so long as we wrap up warm – snow can be good for our emotional well-being, whereas banning games in the snow, when it’s all children want, probably makes them pretty miserable, running counter to their emotional well-being.

I’d go even further.  I shocked a colleague once when I sympathised with parents who kept their children away from school to play in the snow; I would do the same, I told her.  Too many families are torn apart either permanently or by their manic schedules and the pressures of mum and dad’s work, so I think it’s wonderful that snow can bring families together and give them a reason to just play and be silly.  I’m certain the brief escape from whatever pressures and anxieties children experience either at home or at school can only be good for them. 

This doesn’t mean that Snow Days make snowflakes of children.  It just means that we should allow children to be children – to play and have fun and be silly.  And all the better if they do that with their brothers and sisters and their mums and dads.  I don’t believe that a day or two away from school is the end of the world or that it will have dire consequences for children’s futures and the future of the country.  If we think a Snow Day or two is going to have a terrible impact on SATs results or children’s outcomes or the reputation of our schools, we’ve got something dreadfully wrong with the bigger picture.  I’m no economist (only an E at A’ level) but I find it hard to believe that business isn’t resilient enough to cope with parents needing a day off to care for their children or that the economy won’t recover.  And it’s pretty sad if the inconvenience for parents of taking a day off work to spend with their children is such an awful proposition.

I think a Snow Day might just help to put our crazy world into some perspective.

Sucked In

Last night, I got sucked into a Twitter debate about the Government’s new times-tables tests for children in year four.  I don’t have a massive objection to a five-minute on-screen test but I question its necessity.  I was surprised and disappointed by so many teachers’ enthusiasm for the announcement. 

On Twitter, secondary teachers were decrying their intakes for not having quick and easy recall of times-tables facts and pointing out the challenges children then have in studying the key stage three and four curriculums.  This is a fair point, and one to which, I know, many year six teachers will relate, having prepared eleven-year-olds with poor knowledge of basic number facts for their SATs.  Rightly, there is consensus that children should know their times-tables. 

My surprise is because a test, in itself, is not a silver bullet that will suddenly make children better at learning their times-tables and I thought this was something that teachers everywhere would agree upon.  That will continue to depend on the quality of teaching, assessment and learning.  Like primary teachers everywhere, I know the importance of times-tables and have devoted many hours with every class I have ever taught to teaching and testing them in all sorts of ways.  I reckon there are plenty of children who will remember taking home the ‘Mr Parker’s Times-Tables Challenge’ trophy!  I have also devoted many hours to beating my head against a wall over a hardcore for whom nothing seemed to work.  Rather than pile more pressure onto teachers in the form of another test, I would rather there was investment in understanding better why some children struggle to learn their times-tables, what teaching strategies are most effective and in resources to support top-quality teaching.  And if secondary colleagues know how to do it, I wish they would tell us!

Some people believe that it is only with a standardised, national test imposed by Government that teachers will really know which children know their times-tables and which do not.  Really?!  As I posted on Twitter myself, either a child knows her times-tables or she doesn’t and seriously, any teacher who can’t assess this and doesn’t know it probably ought to be for the high jump.

I suppose Nick Gibb has a point when he says that the Phonics Check had the effect of improving children’s learning of phonics by forcing it to the top of schools’ priorities and focusing attention, training and resources on the issue.  (Incidentally, he also says that a lot of schools are doing a good job of teaching times-tables begging the question of what those schools are going to gain from his test and, despite his assurance that school-by-school results will not be published, possibly hinting at an agenda to identify those schools that are not doing so well.)  What I don’t understand is why we need him to do this for us.  The ‘new’ curriculum with its requirement for children in year four to know their times-tables isn’t that new anymore and we already knew there were children finishing primary school with poor times-tables recall.  Judging by the comments on Twitter yesterday, secondary teachers certainly knew about it.  So why haven’t we as a profession done something about it?  Why haven’t primary Headteachers and their staff effectively grasped the nettle? And if the Heads of Maths in secondary schools had so much to complain about, why haven’t they been more effective in working with their primary colleagues to address the issue?

My disappointment is because of the apparent division within the teaching profession – the doubt and lack of faith in each other and the criticism (at least implied) of each other’s teaching and assessment skills.  We ought to be better at supporting each other and at standing up for our professionalism.  Assessment is one of the pillars of teaching but whenever we call for another test – whenever we say we need one to check our own assessments – we imply, at best, our lack of confidence in our own assessment and, at worst, our inability to assess accurately.  When we welcome a test as a means of driving up children’s outcomes, we express doubt in each other’s aspirations and goals for children and in each other’s teaching abilities and we reveal a lack of understanding of the pressures on our colleagues.  When we defer to someone else’s test, we allow that someone else to undermine our professionalism and set the agenda. 

Perhaps that is a large part of the problem: we’ve allowed Government and its agencies to continue setting the agenda for so long that we’ve become divided, it’s become hard to reclaim the agenda for ourselves, we’ve lost the confidence to do so and we’re so busy dancing to someone else’s tune that we don’t have time to compose our own.

The Joy of Learning

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for ages – about everything I’ve learnt since joining my new school last autumn.  I’ve learnt so much and there’s so much that I’m still learning that there’s going to be more than enough for one blog. 

One of the best things about the career-pause I took and the unexpected decision I made to take my career in a different direction – into the world of special education – has been the opportunity to learn and broaden my horizons.  As a teacher, I’ve always been a learner too, but the intensity of my learning in this new role has been refreshing and exciting.  Pretty much from day one, it was surprising and shocking to me that I apparently knew so little about autism, Asperger’s, other conditions and what it takes to teach children with SEN well.  Suddenly, there were terms like mind-blindness, the triad of impairments, joint attention, PDA and shoebox task that it seemed ought to have some meaning to me but didn’t.

Like any mainstream teacher, every class I’ve ever taught has included children with special educational needs – often a diagnosis of autism or Asperger’s, sometimes a sense on our part that he or she could well be ‘on the spectrum’.  ‘We’re all teachers of SEN’ is a common mantra of mainstream teachers everywhere, and it’s true.  It’s only now though, after fifteen years of teaching, that I realise how inadequately I have fulfilled that role and how poor my training has been.  There comes a point in most of my days when I think of a child I have known in mainstream teaching and wish I knew then what I know now. 

When I think of two particular young people – one boy, one girl – it saddens me that what characterised them most was frustration, anxiety and anger.  More often than not, they were on edge and frequently their anxiety would grow and they would scream, shout, cry, run, pinch, scratch, hit, kick and throw things.  I dread now to think about the state of their emotional well-being.  We talked about the five-point scale and de-escalating anxiety but we didn’t really have the strategies or the resources to achieve it and too often, our responses were reactive and reflected our own frustration (and, for some people, annoyance) rather than being proactive and taking proper account of the antecedents.

The children I teach now get frustrated, anxious and angry too.  They also get excited and it’s sometimes hard to know the difference!  First and foremost, it’s okay for them to feel that way.  Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we don’t pre-empt whatever it was that made them worried, sometimes things happen beyond our control and sometimes those things happen before they even arrived at school.  Sometimes, we have no option but to pick up the pieces, even if it takes hours, and there’s nothing to be gained from getting frustrated or annoyed ourselves; indeed, it can make matters worse.  All good teachers have patience but teaching children with special needs takes the meaning of patience to a whole new level!  It can mean hours of sitting with a child, doing and saying nothing – just being there for her and usually feeling a little sad too.  It tests your own emotions.  It also takes a special sort of wisdom.  When do you intervene?  When do you say something?  What do you say?  Time it wrong and the child you thought was coming down from that angry, anxious high goes straight back up to it.  I’ve learnt this the hard way: thinking a young man was calm enough to discuss a problem only to find myself pinned against a wall and strangled to the point I couldn’t breathe.

‘Calm down!’  If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard a teacher, teaching assistant or headteacher say that to a child …  (If I had a pound for every time I’ve said it myself …)  Now I realise what nonsense it is to simply ask that of someone over whom a thick red mist has descended.  Even if he could hear me (and he probably can’t), he has no idea what I mean or what to do.  Now I say nothing.  If he needs to go outside and run around, that’s fine.  If he needs to kick a football against a wall, that’s fine.  If he needs to sit in a quiet place on his own, that’s fine.  If he needs to draw and colour, that’s fine.  I have a weighted blanket I can offer him, and a squidgy ball he can hold in his hands, and a peanut ball he can sit on or lie under, and thick putty with marbles in for him to manipulate, and a body-sock he can wrap around himself, and much more besides.  What a difference it would have made to that boy and girl in my mainstream school if I and my colleagues had had that understanding and had been able to give them whatever it was they needed to feel better.  They both had one-to-one support so I can’t think of a reason why, when they needed it, they couldn’t have been supported to run around outside, kick a ball, draw and colour or simply find somewhere to be still and quiet.  They didn’t have access to the sensory objects I’ve described, but they ought to have and buying them would be a sensible, worthwhile and – frankly – necessary investment by any school. 

That’s why these children don’t belong in mainstream schools, I’ve been told – special schools can provide for them better and they would do so much better there.  I’m not sure I agree.  They have the right to inclusion alongside their peers and often, they can benefit from the rich curriculum and the social opportunities mainstream schools offer that special schools can’t.  The issue isn’t always theirs; it’s the school’s and how much it is prepared to accept them for who they are, celebrate their personalities and adapt to the children rather than expect the children to adapt to the school. 

Training is an essential investment schools ought to make.  If we accept the notion of inclusion, it should be seen as the right of SEN children to have properly trained staff.  If we expect school staff to support SEN children and confront the challenges that come with that role, it should be seen as their right to be properly trained.  I have the utmost respect and admiration for teaching assistants, but considering the responsibility they often have for some of the most challenging children in our classrooms, their training is dreadfully inadequate.  So, as I have discovered now, is the training of many teachers, and I doubt my experience is any worse than most.  An hour’s INSET here and there throughout a school year will never suffice, not even if it is delivered by the most dedicated and experienced of SENDCOs, and – like telling an enraged autistic child to calm down – endlessly demanding that teachers differentiate is pointless if they don’t really understand the nature of the children they are teaching.

The biggest issue for SEN children in some mainstream schools is the culture of those schools.  I don’t doubt that there are excellent schools with well-trained headteachers and Governors who are properly committed to inclusion and to providing for the needs of their SEN children.  I know there are also headteachers whose understanding is woeful and who lead a culture where SEN children are somehow expected to adapt to everyone else in order to fit in because it’s apparently too hard for the school to adapt to them.

For the best training, everyone working with SEN children should spend a decent amount of time in a school like mine, and we should start with the headteachers.

Resolution 2018 - An Update

Plastic cups!!

Those were the first words I wrote in my notebook when the course I’m attending this week began on Monday.  On each table was a plastic bottle of mineral water and half a dozen throw-away plastic cups.  Why, I wondered angrily, was it not simply water in a jug (maybe with a nice slice of lemon) and paper cups?  Better still, of course, we should all have our own refillable water bottles.  Some do – me included.  (Incidentally, the course has been sufficiently stimulating that I haven't dwelt only on plastic cups all week!)

Such is my heightened awareness of the unnecessary and wasteful use of plastic now.  I’ve been equally incensed by the throw-away plastic cups in the gym at the Hilton Hotel I’m staying at.  They fill a bin by the end of each day.  When I ordered a cocktail at a bar the other evening it came with not one, but two plastic straws.  Really, I don’t even need one!  Likewise, at a friend’s birthday a few weeks back, no-one at the bar was given the option of having a straw in their drink; it was just assumed that everyone would want one.  The irony of this being Turtle Bay – a restaurant named after a marine animal where the food is themed on a famous sea – wasn’t lost on me.  Apparently, in North America and the UK alone, we use and throw away half a billion plastic straws per day.  And most of us don’t need them.  It really isn’t that long since few of us ever used them.

I’ve raised these points with all the organisations concerned, by the way.  It’s one way I’ve started to achieve my new year’s resolution.  One voice may not make a huge difference, but it might get someone thinking and maybe mine isn’t a lone voice.

As resolved, I’ve become much more conscious of my own use of disposable plastic.  One of the first things I did was to give up sparkling mineral water (in plastic bottles) and buy myself that refillable bottle, with one of those cylinders in it that infuses the water with the flavour of whatever fruit I fancy each day.  Who knew water could taste so good?!  I rarely go anywhere without my hessian shopping bags.  I think twice about putting anything in a plastic bag at the supermarket.  Broccoli, carrots, bananas, apples – none of them need bagging.

The thing I am most proud of though is how much the children in my class have taken this issue to their hearts.  We watched some of Blue Planet II and, like me, they were in awe of the splendour of life in the oceans – I think the penguins trying to sneak past slumbering sea-lions was probably the favourite.  They were also horrified by the damage done by plastic pollution – the baby albatross killed after swallowing a plastic toothpick is seared on all our consciences.  Since then, we’ve watched numerous news clips about the issue and explored the facts of it.  I’ve taken them litter-picking on the beach in Bournemouth and we were all appalled by the mountain of litter (almost exclusively plastic) that we collected in just half an hour and over just one hundred metres – three plastic bags full of dog’s mess, a plastic bottle, food wrappers and plastic straws among it.  We’ve visited a local supermarket too to investigate the use of plastic in packaging.  Do flowers really need wrapping in paper and plastic, we wondered.  Why do some greetings cards require a plastic covering while other don’t?  Why do some magazines need wrapping in plastic?  Could fruit, vegetables and bakery products be wrapped in paper or netting instead of plastic bags?  If it’s good enough for mushrooms, why not doughnuts?!

Like me, they’ve started noticing wasteful use of plastic around them; not least at school.  We have a stack of those wretched throw-away plastic cups in our cupboard for when someone needs a drink but I’ve been asked – by the children themselves – to buy them each a re-usable cup that they will take responsibility for themselves.  It will be my pleasure!  After half term, we’ll investigate how many other classes are using disposable cups and share our wisdom.  I like to think they’re on a similar mission at home too!  They’ve asked if we can go litter-picking again – once a month was suggested.  They’re prepared and even eager to give up a play in the park to take responsibility in their community and help protect the local environment.

In English lessons, they have each written a letter to their Member of Parliament, summarising their learning, sharing their feelings and demanding action.  It’s some of the best Literacy teaching I’ve done and I’m very proud of what they’ve written.  They’ve never done anything like this before and they don’t believe I’m actually going to send their letters.  I am, of course, and they’d better get a decent reply!  

A worthy band-wagon to jump on

My New Year's resolution this year was inspired by a good friend from my University days, Nina.  She posted on Facebook that her resolution was to reduce her household plastics consumption.  Over Christmas, I’d discussed this very issue with my parents and uncle and it seemed a no-brainer to follow Nina’s lead and adopt her resolution as my own.

Then I got thinking: Am I just jumping on a band-wagon and is it the right band-wagon to jump on? 

The brilliant ‘Blue Planet 2’ single-handedly raised the profile of the issue of plastic waste for half the country, it seemed.  I was fascinated by the fish with the see-through head, haunted by the ferocious bobbit worms, amazed by the tuna hunting teams of sea-lions and incredulous at the ingenuity of the hide-and-seek octopus, but it was the human pollution of the seas that had the most impact.  Who could not have been moved by the baby dolphin likely poisoned by microplastics, the baby albatross killed by a plastic toothpick and the mother pilot whale cradling her dead calf, possibly poisoned by its own mother’s contaminated milk?  And who could ignore Sir David’s slap across humanity’s wrist?

Since ‘Blue Planet’, I’ve read more about the issue of plastic waste.  The facts are staggering.  Nearly five billion tonnes of plastic waste had accumulated in landfill or the natural environment by 2015.  480 billion drinks bottles were sold globally in 2016 – a million per minute – and each one will take 450 years to biodegrade.  In 2017, the Marine Conservation Society found 718 pieces of litter for every 100 metres of beach surveyed in the Great British Beach Clean Up, including 225.3 plastic or polystyrene pieces, 42.3 packets, 32.9 caps and lids and 26.9 cotton bud sticks.  Once in the sea, something like a cotton bud is broken down by UV rays, oxidation and the waves, then plastic fragments enter the food chain because fish and marine life can not distinguish them from food.  Then we arrive at the shocking sights shared with us by Sir David and his ‘Blue Planet’ team.  And evidently, the effect on humans of eating contaminated fish is still largely unknown.

It’s not that this isn’t a worthy band-wagon to jump on and Nina’s resolution remains mine also.  What bothers me though is that this isn’t a new issue.  We’ve had some awareness of the problem of plastic for most of my lifetime yet still it is produced and consumed in enormous quantities, we don’t seem to have come far in a search for an alternative, and the amount of waste plastic in the environment still continues to accumulate.  I have great admiration for the ‘Blue Planet’ team for being so successful in raising awareness of this issue and inspiring Nina and me to make our New Year’s resolutions, but I wonder why it took Sir David’s appeals and a BBC programme for us to do something.  Why wasn’t this my resolution ten years ago?  Why wasn’t this a serious enough issue before?  And what other issues are we ignoring because they haven’t yet been the subject of a David Attenborough documentary?

I’m a teacher so I’m bound to reflect on my own role and the part education can play in addressing these sorts of issues.  How is it that even I – with my degree level education and such little interest in celebrity – probably knew more about the latest celebrity gossip than I did about the dire consequences of my own plastic waste?  Why is it that so many people are apathetic toward or even ignorant of issues that it turns out really matter but know all there is to know about bland trivia?  Why for many young people has it become embarrassing and shameful to admit they have knowledge and original thought whilst ignorance has become a badge of honour?

I’m endlessly frustrated by our education system – in more ways than one!  It seems to me that the quality of the education we give children should be judged not just by their test results, the grades they get and the proportions going on to University – as important as all those things are.  We should reflect upon whether or not the children we are teaching are growing up to be independent thinkers, adults who want to know more about their world, seek information and question it, and responsible citizens who seek solutions to real problems and are proactive in improving their world.  Will they be the sorts of adults who will not just flick through the gossip pages of newspapers, magazines and the Internet, but search for news that matters, engage with it, find out more and even act to make a difference?  Will they write meaningful news stories themselves and even make history?  Could they be a future generation of Sir David Attenboroughs?

I’ve decided to make a second New Year’s resolution: To be a better teacher.  I suppose that is something I am always striving to achieve.  Really, it is!  This year though, it has a different meaning and I have a new sense of purpose.  I’m going to tell my class about my New Year’s resolution; we’ll watch some of ‘Blue Planet 2’, discuss pollution and work together to find out more; perhaps we’ll decide there’s something we can do at school to reduce plastic consumption or there are letters to be written to our Member of Parliament or the big supermarkets.  Maybe the children will choose to make their own resolutions or try to reduce the use of plastics in their own homes.

I’m going to try to be more aware of issues in the news too and to share some of them with my class.  We won’t be able to do something about all of them but we’ll talk about them, share our thoughts about what matters to us and at least consider the possibilities.  Hopefully then, they will grow up to be the kinds of adults who take an interest in their wider world, are curious about issues that really matter, want and know how to find out more and feel empowered to pursue change themselves.

Who knows?  Maybe one day, I’ll watch one of them fronting a ground-breaking and inspirational television documentary.