Connectivity

Tonight I saw a man step forward and raise his finger to his lips in a cauldron of sporting lust and fire. 80,000 people who had been chanting his name fell silent and waited with breath held for release as he burst through the tape we all imagine at the race’s end.

I saw a man who lost his leg to meningitis run 100 metres in under 11 seconds in the lane next to his sporting hero, a man who lost his own legs in childhood. A hero who not the month before had run in an Olympic final; refusing to be cowed by the politics, or difficulties he might face.

I saw as the man reached the finish line full not of aggression, or glee in the fall of his foes, but a man who was full of joy for his triumph and full of the praises of his fellows for his victory. I saw a Discus thrower run from his own event and wrap two bear like arms around his slight blonde topped frame. I saw the man’s sporting hero run to him and offer his hand in congratulations and friendship.

Jonny Peacock managed to inspire 80,000 people to see the world his way. Stood next to a man I am increasingly thinking of as my own sporting icon he powered his way past diffidence, arrogance and ignorance; making the planet sit up and take notice all the while.

Life is all about the connections we make. The people we meet and the differences we insist upon the world by our presence.

Tonight Jonny Peacock made sure the world  saw itself a little differently.

What do we do when we fall .....?

It's disheartening sometimes to see the hard work of your students disappear in the flurry of the examination rat race. The creativity, the intelligence, the drive and passion, all get swallowed up by the need to write in the right way, at the right time: to fill the box that JCQ has designed for them.

Sometimes the structures fail and take more of their energy, wasting it, refusing to recognise it.

So we need to regroup and strike out again for the next generation.

But how do we do that?

We do it by continuing to be who we are: teachers who see individuals rather than classes, people who notice the little things and colleagues who support each other in our common aim.

What do we need to do?

We need to test our students regularly and be honest in our appraisal of them.

We need to use every moment to prepare them for the challenges of exams.

We need to share our resources and ideas as we help each other.

Most of all, we must share our passion, our love of the subjects we teach.

Doctors, engineers, writers, sportsmen, artists and musicians are not born. They are inspired to be. That inspiration can start with a simple idea, a kind word, a new thought or an exciting day in your classrooms.

The Olympics were meant to inspire a generation. The thing is. We've been doing it for years.

Good luck with the start of term and remember what we do when we fall.

BC

Something to start the term off with

Consequences

It’s what we teach. Boys and girls, what you do has consequences, what you do will change the way people live their lives, the way people see you and eventually the world.

It is, looking at the past week, our most important challenge for the years ahead.

As teachers we have all had to try and explain the concept of consequence to a student. Maybe they cheated and don’t understand why it’s an issue, maybe they hit someone and can’t see the world from their victims perspective. Eventually we get to them, eventually.

Last week the English scores for some exam boards were published. Rather than the expected grades it appeared the boundaries, the divisions between grades, had been moved up. It was now harder to score a high grade.

No one knew, no one worked it out in time.

I try to imagine the people taking this decision. Pressurised by government, a room somewhere, magnolia walls, an overused flipchart ion the corner, a man in a frayed tweed coat holding his head in his hands, helpless as a bureaucrat draws a line that affects thousands of young men and women.

So they rejoiced. Standards are being kept.

But they fail to see the students who miss their grades. What happens to them? Students who, having failed to hit one of the benchmarks for access to further education are then denied access to courses and institutions to pursue their own dreams: thousands of students who change their plans, who move their entire lives because someone, in a magnolia room, next to an overused flip chart, moved the goalposts.

Actions have consequences. The advantage for the perpetrators of this action is they do not have to look at the lives being changed, watch young men and women tack with the tempestuous legislative wind and end up in a very different place.

If a principle of education is fairness it seems the examination boards have failed.

Now, like adults perhaps they could admit their mistake.

http://howtoteachandlearn.blogspot.co.uk/

I wrote a book!!

So the writing bug bit me.

I have always had a dream to get a novel written. And I've always played at it. Paused, written, paused and written some more. But I never took that leap. Opened up my arms and said, alright world,this is what I've got. I know there's better, faster, smarter prose out there, but this is me.

I should have done it far sooner than now.

As a teacher I am in the business of trying to persuade young people to step up and follow their dreams, but how can I do that when I sit back. The old adage used to be those who can do, those who can't - teach. Well it should, in the C21st be that those who can - teach.

If I want to be a role model - I have to practice what I preach. So I did. And boy was it easy (once the 80,000 words of science fiction were written).

A document - proofed and re proofed, a cover and a title then 30 minutes and it was loaded onto Kindle. A website accessible by everyone with an apple device, a kindle or even the temerity to own a laptop.

It is now as easy to connect with a billion people as with one.

So here is my offering to the grand tradition of science fiction - it's free from tomorrow for a couple of days - if you like sci fi give it a go. But more importantly - if you have a dream to publish your work, your ideas - get out there and do it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Universe-One-Liberty-ebook/dp/B00875HST6/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338404556&sr=1-2

Methadone for belligerence

Is sport really necessary? I suppose the truth of it is that deep down we all want to kill one another. We are competitive angry animals who see whatever rolls over the hills as an enemy. So instead of training our students in the typical Spartan way and giving them a long spear to wield and a Helot to victimise we teach them how to throw, and catch, and kick and jump and run. We give them the competition, no, the belligerence equivalent of methadone. You’ll never kick the habit, so let’s just make sure you don’t hurt yourself in the meantime. As a society we are on the longest comedown from an addition to violence and sport is just a way of drawing it out.

When you look at it - Throwing a ball in baseball or cricket is akin to hunting for rabbits or hurling rocks at any interloper. A bat or a racquet is no more than a sword with which today you slay the fluffy yellow of a tennis ball, but could easily well be something drawn in battle. Athletics is simply training for war alongside the other martial disciplines (Shooting, Archery the modern pentathlon for heaven’s sake!!).

Why do we put so much stock in this as an outlet for our young people? The economic arguments alone could drown me I know. Even the health arguments are there – but I would counter that – what has sport got to do with health – we live sedentary lives: so get up and put down the fork – you don’t have to plough your disposable income into watching Chelsea every weekend, you just have to expend the same number of calories you ingest – that’s maths and once again I’m brought back to the importance of a classroom over a sports field.

In an age where we are hoping to renew all our ideas and build a better world, what kind of planet is it where a man who can throw with accuracy will make $10,000,000 a year while a woman who saves lives every day gets just enough to keep a house over her head.

Why the hell don’t we have competitive math, and why isn’t it popular? It’s a simple question that you hope will get a long and thoughtful answer, but in truth it’s because we would rather see two men tear it up inside the octagon or batter each other with their Queensbury rules.

I ask again. Why do we worship the physical and make it a cornerstone of our society, why do boys put up posters of footballers rather than scientists? I said above that this craze, this culture was simply a methadone for our belligerence, maybe I got it wrong, maybe it is simply a new drug.

Anything can become an addiction if it’s taken to extremes and like all things a little bit of sport is good. Healthy, confident young people engage in sports, but when a society becomes obsessed with the way their national, local or even school team  is doing, when it becomes the obsession, when it replaces religion as the opium for the masses surely we have to stop and ask ourselves: to what end?

In education everything should have a purpose, every second of every day should have a reason behind it and an aim for the young people involved. But with a world ever more reliant on great grades, fantastic minds and intellectual pursuit I wonder why we as a nation are so obsessed with superstars or the fact that Rangers might go bust. We live vicariously through these people instead of accomplishing what we can in the gym or with our friends. It is tribalism: with Alpha males kicking balls instead of taking heads.

I don’t want people to stop playing sport, stop being healthy or spend all their time on fractal equations; I’d simply like sport to be about the individual instead of the individual being about the sport. Let’s live our own lives, not David Beckham’s. 

IT???

Now more than ever before young people have the opportunity to control the flow of information towards them – new trends are being set and old ones dying at a rate we have never seen before – Rocket packs and flying cars were the dream of the 1950s as we were sure that mechanical developments would continue unhindered into the twenty first century and beyond. They didn’t. What we got instead was a change in the way we access and use information. We are now able at the push of a button to recall PHD theses, discover the past, the future or have someone explain how to change a spark plug. The world speaks to itself in the blogoshpere, youtube, facebook et al.

What is the point in being a teacher, who, as Ken Robinson has pointed out, works in and supports an education system designed by David Hume and perfected by the spinning Jenny and Stevenson’s Rocket. We are anachronisms and we are behind the curve.

If we are going to be teachers for the 21^st century then we need to embrace the changes – that is a must – and no one will argue, but we cannot keep up. We cannot jump up and down and buy new toys every five minutes apple-ing or google-fying up our schools to kit them out with apps and tablets and e books or whatever will come next. That is not something for institutions to decide – that is for the people.

Institutions such as schools need to realise that the framework of education is being taken out of their hands, and rather weep – we should rejoice. We can now focus on what really matters. If we can’t control mechanism or delivery – we can concentrate on strategy – showing the world why we need to learn, not how.

I became a teacher because I wanted to inspire young people. There, I said it. Young people today instead inspire me. They are smart, able and intelligent in a way I never was and will never be. Rather than impose my learning structure or thinking process on them, I need to see their naturally evolving practices and show them how to use them to get better and better. Help them see the utility in knowledge, the beauty in art and the rewards of knowing more tomorrow than they did today.

http://howtoteachandlearn.blogspot.co.uk/