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!