Tag Archives: Teaching

Teaching

Work and Fun

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Work and fun- they seem like opposites, don’t they? The way we think separates these two into mutually exclusive poles. I know that if we scratch the surface even a little bit, we find that it isn’t true. We know that you can enjoy working, and the luckiest of us love our jobs, and we know that loving something that is good for you is the best option, but, even then, we want it to be one thing or the other. Either, it’s not really work because you enjoy it – ‘I never worked a day in my life! I love my job too much!’ Or enjoying something is a way of getting the useful thing done – ‘If the children enjoy learning, then in every lesson they will behave and will progress.’ But why do we need to think like this?

The truth is, everything worth doing, that makes our lives mean something, takes effort and is pleasurable. If we want to sip the pleasure without making the effort, we will never achieve the value. If we believe we can only reach the goal by hard, serious work without loving what we do, then, not only will the joy of life be diminished, but it is likely that the result will not be as worthwhile. I’m sure we can all think of examples of both.

You could take this as a maxim for relationships, for work, for education. If you want only fun and don’t expect and accept difficult times and hard work in a long-term relationship, be that with a partner, a parent, a child or a friend, then your relationship is going to fail. If there is only an earnest ethic of work in your learning, it will be hard to persevere. As this is a reading and education blog, I will focus of educational examples, but I think it could be said to be true in all aspects of life. If a student wants to have fun, and exclusively do that, then they will not develop as they should academically. If a teacher focuses too hard on the work and not hard enough on the enjoyment, then no one will want to even begin to learn.

Normally, when we are talking about our own activities we want to have as much fun as possible. But there is an inescapable idea, in all walks of life, but particularly in education, that without miserable and stony-faced hard work, the results are not worth having. There is also an insidious idea that pleasure is the route to all things, and if only we can make things fun, all is achievable. It may be boring and middle of the road, but there needs to be balance in all things, this included. I have sat in meetings listening to the theory that behaviour problems in the classroom stem almost exclusively from the lack of ‘engagement’ provided in the lessons. ‘Engagement’ here means fun. Nonsense, obviously. As an NQT, that made me feel a failure  – ‘Not only am I unable to control my class, but I’m boring too!’. But I hope we all know that behaviour management is as much about school based structures, school-led expectations, personal relationships with students, routines, environment and a host of other things, as much as it is about ‘engagement’. Fun is not the answer to everything. On the other end of the scale, once out of primary, teachers feel they can’t read to classes, have library lessons, take time to do book reviews or talk about reading in class, except as a ‘fun’ lesson which has no true value in the great scheme of things. Activities which develop relationships between students, improve group work, develop confidence, give a sense of belonging – these are not given space in our schools. They are seen as frivolous and must take a poor second place to slogging through the SQI/PEE paragraphs or learning your times-tables. All this is because playing games, listening to students debate and giving time to work that does not lead to exam excellence is seen as ‘fun’ not serious work.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here. You’re probably thinking, ‘This is obvious, surely!’ But sadly, in everyday ways, in schools throughout the country, we are alternately relying too heavily on ‘fun’ to trick the students into doing their work, like the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, or we are excluding meaningful and valuable parts of learning because they have no countable value and so are frivolous. Is it completely fanciful to imagine that we can encourage students to value their work, not hiding that it can be hard sometimes, but add an element of enjoyment into the proceedings? In fact, it shouldn’t need to be added, because, if we can but be induced to admit it, work can be fun. Intrinsically. Not an added piece of ‘sugar’ to coat the bitter pill, but because work and fun are fundamentally linked.

Exams, Teaching

What are A level grades for?

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I have thought about blogging during this terribly stressful time of A level and GCSE results and the chaos that surrounds that, but every time I put pen to paper (metaphorically) I stop myself. Either what I have to say has been said before, and often by more skilful and knowledgeable people than I am, or I have been so incandescently angry that I would be unable to maintain the balanced, polite and positive attitude that I try to preserve on this blog. And, it can’t be denied, I have been angrier than I have ever been during the results fiasco. It is brought closer to home for me because, this year, I not only have students who I have helped prepare for exams, but my own son would have been taking his A levels. As a result, I have felt first-hand the uncertainty, anxiety and tension every parent has felt in this period, and I have witnessed first-hand the same stress, anxiety and concern that every student has experienced. I acknowledge that for many the stress is not over. For many, hopes of future jobs and courses have had to be put on hold with no prospect of a way forward. Many people have been disappointed twice over, once on receiving their results and the second time when their CAG (Centre Assessed Grades) could not be accepted by universities who had already allocated their place to someone else. For me, however, I have found calmer waters, and can now begin to think more clearly about all that has passed.

The thought which most readily springs to mind is, how could we have avoided this? The answer to that is political, so I won’t follow that thought to its conclusion. The other idea, which is more significant educationally, is what use are qualifications at all? I mean, why do we do them? I don’t mean to suggest that we stop. I just would like to consider our purpose.

Primarily, it seems, A levels at least, have become a way for students to find a place at university. Universities here are tiered. We know that Oxford and Cambridge are at the top. Then we have Durham, St Andrews, Bristol, Imperial, LSE then Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and so on until we arrive at smaller institutions which used to be colleges under the protection of local universities. The higher your grade, the higher up the tree you can go. (I won’t even start to discuss the unfairness of this and how different universities excel at different kinds of courses, but I think you must agree that this is how most people see the system in Britain.) Is this the best way to finish our compulsory secondary education – with a test which is essentially an entrance exam for higher education? I would like to think that advanced level studies have a worth in their own right, and there are certainly plenty of students who decide not to continue with education after A level but opt for a work route instead.

If we start to doubt the reason why we give the grades we do at A level, we might also start to doubt what is taught, how it is taught and how it is assessed. Why was there so much horror expressed at the idea that students might get higher results than in previous years if given their CAGs instead of the moderated grades? Why, I thought, would that be such a bad thing? If results are to indicate the learning and the potential of a student, then why aren’t we glad if the results are better? Who are the results for? If they are for the school, for universities, for the government, for the country, then, yes, these things have an impact. But if they are for the individual, what is the issue? The problem is that exam results are not just for the individual student. They are used as a way to assess students’ ability to go on to higher education. They are used as a measure for institutions and for government departments and for the country as a whole. What is more important to the Department for Education, I am driven to wonder? Is it their own reputation or the happiness and success of individual students throughout the country?

However, I can see that companies and institutions have to compare results across year groups and so it is important that there is a standard which must be reached to receive an A or a B at A level. It is clear, however, that comparing across cohorts is not what the education system focuses on. Instead of there being a definitive standard, grade boundaries are always moved to make sure that a certain percentage of each year group gets each of the grades. Here we are not comparing like with like. We don’t take into account fluctuations across different year groups.

We don’t want students to get needlessly inflated grades either, though. An A has to mean something. And so does a U. But what, in a system which relies entirely on exams, do these grades actually mean? They favour students who have, what my parents call a ‘big match temperament’; they can rise to the occasion, using the nerves to improve their performance, pulling out ideas and applying knowledge even better than usual, knowing that this is the moment which counts. Many students, as we all know, are successful, intelligent, thoughtful students but can not function that way. Instead, they are blocked by terror, forgetting all that normally would be at the tips of their fingers. Do we want results to measure this ability – to remember and apply knowledge under pressure – more than any other? When exactly is this going to be needed again?  The answer is, at university. At work it is much more likely that a steady, consistent understanding and application of ideas is required. Should our final exams exist simply as a way to see if people are suited to further study?

People have complained that the CAGs are higher than the moderated grades, and the grades which students normally get, and therefore students are getting gifts of grades instead of what they have worked for. One reason for that may well be the usual exam nerves which defeat so many young people. Another of the reasons the grades are not so good normally is that the students haven’t had to fight through the vagaries of life to receive their result. No one has had to sit and try and work while having a cold, hay fever, sickness or whatever other illness may have struck on the day in question. No one had to concentrate after hearing bad news, suffering from bereavement, coping with the after-effects of an argument at home or a break-up with a girl or boyfriend. No one found it too hot or too cold, no one found it hard to concentrate with someone chewing their pen in the next aisle and so on and so on. These marks were what students could achieve, on average, over months of work, rather than the usual exam results which record a moment in time. Why would we feel that a system which builds in such factors as luck and temperament is fairer than teachers assigning a grade which is decided on based on two years’ worth of work and effort?

I think (at least) two ideas stand between us and accepting teacher assessment as a final grade. One is that we had to go through exams, so why shouldn’t others. That, I have to say, is the worst reason to do anything. Perpetuating unfair and detrimental systems because we had to suffer through them is unthinking cruelty. The other more solid reason is the general lack of trust both the government and the public have for teachers’ professional judgement. That subject is worth a blog on its own. I have experienced it personally, as has every teacher, I dare say. Putting aside the lack of public trust for the moment, I would suggest that if the government doesn’t trust its teachers it should look again at the training and management of its education providers. Perhaps politicians know how untrustworthy they are and so can not trust anyone else. But to put our nation’s youth into the hands of a body of people you don’t trust does not seem wise on any level. I believe they are trustworthy. If others don’t, they should do something to recruit teachers they can trust rather than setting up a system that assumes teachers can not and will not treat students equitably.

In effect, what I am saying is that treating A levels simply as an entrance exam for university is too narrow, and trusting simply to exams is too unfair. Teacher assessed grades might help combat both these issues, not just this year, but from now on. As so many people have been saying, if we don’t overhaul an unfair, outdated system now, when will we ever do it? I don’t believe the only reason to assess students at the end of school is so that we can see which university, apprenticeship or job they go to. First, we should ponder why we should assess students at all, then try and devise a system which takes those purposes into account. Will we have the courage to take the opportunity to do it?

English Language, Literature, Reading, Teaching

What is English for?

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One of the complaints most frequently heard from children at school is that the work they have to do is ‘irrelevant’. Why study algebra? Why study Macbeth? You will never have to use your knowledge of either in the world after school. I would firstly dispute the truth of that. Anyone who works in engineering or maths will have to use algebra (and many who build, craft, renovate should also know), and Macbeth teaches lessons about ambition, power, regret and honour which are relevant to us all.  And, in fact, the talk about ‘knowledge’ is missing the point. What both these subjects teach is a mindset, a group of skills, which are essential in everyone’s life. But I see the point those students are making. There seems to be a gap between the world and the classroom. I am wondering two things: firstly, how can we make our subjects reflect the world the students will go out into and equip them with the skills they need?; secondly, how can we persuade the students that this is what we are doing?

To answer the first question, we have to ask what education is for. The assumption is that it equips you to work. Of course, it should do that. But that is only a fraction of what it ought to do. That issue is far too big to squeeze into a paragraph in this humble blog, so let me focus on the point of teaching English. What is it we are aiming to do? Essentially, we want to teach our students to be able to understand the written word, communicate effectively, both in written and verbal form, and to become lifelong learners. We want to acquaint them with the culture of our country, open their minds to the cultures of others, and create a love and understanding of language and its uses. We want them to understand the world around them, a world dominated by language.

Do we do this?

I think we try. But I fear we are not successful. To be a good citizen, you must understand what is going on around you. If we look around us we can see that people are fooled, time and time again, by inane political soundbites, advertising campaigns and empty rhetoric. To be able to see the connotations of a word is to be able to see the bias behind a headline. Take, for example, this seemingly innocuous offering from The Daily Mail: Jeremy Corbyn plots tax raid on parents’ gifts to children. The use of ‘plot’ which suggests something underhand and dangerous, and ‘raid’ which suggests violent theft, paints Corbyn as an evil thief attacking poor little parents who just want to be generous to their children. A headline from the other side of the political spectrum might have been: Corbyn aims to fund NHS by targeting the Mega Rich. A middle path might be, Corbyn seeks to reform inheritance tax. My point is, without looking at the bias, the use of words and their connotations, the reader is lost in a sea of words, tugged this way and that by minds and interests beyond their understanding.

English Language GCSE tries to teach this to some extent. Does it, though, make the students into readers who habitually interpret the meanings of words and think about their uses? I seriously doubt it. Sadly, many students struggle to get the basic meaning from a text, never mind the reason why it was written and the effect it has on the reader. The fault here, is not with the content of the course or with the quality of the teaching. It is rather the low level of literacy of the students who have failed to read much since the end of primary school. Another reason why concentrating on making children readers is not a ‘nice to have’. It is essential in equipping them for life after school.

The second question – do we convince the students that what we are teaching has relevance outside of school – I think can be answered very succinctly: no. There is an educational school of thought that suggests that we must create willing learners before we start to teach anything. I don’t know if that is possible, but I think we should try a bit harder than we do. It is part of teaching teenagers, I know, but we need to get away from the idea that we are there to torture the students with irrelevant and useless tasks for our own pleasure and enjoyment. Of course the truth is that we are trying to help and support young people to get the best from their minds (not to mention the rest of them) so that they can be happy and successful in their lives.  If students truly believed that the education they were given was in their best interests, then half the battle would be won. Some students do believe that. Most have days when they might doubt it. But too many truly think that teachers and the state are there, not to help, but to constrain, constrict, oppress and persecute.

Much of that might come from the silly rules school insist on enforcing – “Take your coat off in the corridor!” “No drinking in the classroom” “Conventional hairstyles only” and so on. Some of it comes from the attitude of teachers to their students, and most of it comes from the natural rebellion that teenagers feel towards authority figures.  But do we try hard enough, or, even at all, to persuade students that school and education is good for them? I fear not. Schools are an incredible resource, expensive to society, essential to the wellbeing of young people as well as to the economy of the country and to the health of society and culture. Not everyone has the opportunity to go to school, and they are at a huge disadvantage for all of their lives. It may be an uphill battle, but I think it is worth spending a bit of time trying to help students understand this.

In summary, I think we in education try to give students what they need to live and work in our society. We don’t do it well enough and we don’t persuade the students of its worth. We need to try and change that. In the end, only the student can decide to work, decide to care. If they don’t, they will never succeed, however good the school, however good the teacher. Perhaps we need to focus on this more.

Reading, Teaching

Why does GCSE English repel rather than inspire students?

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Even before I taught English myself, while I was a librarian in a school, I frequently heard of students who had loved reading and had spent hours with me in the library, who, once they had started studying for their GCSEs, declared that they hated English and would never read another book if they could help it. My heart always sank, as you can imagine, since I spent my entire working day, every day, trying to inspire the love of reading and development of literacy in everyone in the school. To reflect on the fact that someone who actually loved reading had been put off reading altogether is disheartening to say the least, especially considering that so many people never get interested enough to read in the first place. I used to speculate as to why this could be so, as my own two children started going through the system, both of whom hated the way English was taught, despite loving reading. After I started teaching English myself, the reasons why became clearer. These, at least, are two of the issues we face:

The choice of the works we study.

The choice of the literature the students study is the first problem, I feel. I love Shakespeare, I love Dickens and I love poetry, but all are so difficult that a good proportion of every mixed ability class will struggle with even the basics of the plot and characterisation without a blow by blow account by their teacher. This is not what literature is for!  The plays are to be watched, not dissected. Novels and poems are to be read and enjoyed. The problem is that those who wanted to read and enjoy are bored with the book long before they finish studying it, while the students who struggle, still get next to nothing from it. Even the 20th century novels or plays are often taken from the middle of the century, making them difficult to understand for many.

What is the answer? I hate to suggest making the works of literature easier, but I wonder if this would help? Or I could even suggest a tiered examination system. Cleverer and better informed people than me discuss this frequently, but I think we can agree that what we have now is not working. The truth is, without knowing about the historical, literary and biographical context of a work of literature, it is sometimes tricky to fully appreciate its merits or meaning. The students often know little of life in the trenches in World War I, the nihilistic attitude prevalent after the horrors of World War II, or the religious, gender-based, or political ideas of the 17th century. I’m not saying we shouldn’t study all or any of these things, but the curriculum across all subjects should interlink so that students have some hope of knowing about the history, geography, philosophy and religion of the literature they are studying.

The skills we expect students to display.

The other problem is what we ask of the students in the exams. We could still teach Shakespeare, but why do we need to do language and structure analysis of something the students barely understand? In fact, why this emphasis on language and structure at all? Discussion of how an author creates a particular effect flows naturally from discussing the effect. But we don’t allow students to come to their own conclusion about what effect it has on them. (This is because it is too difficult for them, so they have no authentic response, awaiting their teacher’s interpretation which they attempt to learn.) If they did have an authentic response to the text, then we could start to ask, why does it make you feel that way? Essentially, we have got the cart before the horse. What happens is we read the story to them, tell them what it means, point out the language and structure features to them and then give them a formula to write about them. How is that stimulating either understanding of literature or pleasure in reading it?

The fact is, the students haven’t read enough to answer the questions they are asked. How can they know what to expect in a fantasy novel, if they have only read this one? How should they know what is a good image or what a cliché is if they have no experience of either bold interesting ideas or common, clichéd ones? Taking that further, how can students evaluate texts, which they are asked to do, when they have so little experience?

I remember one student saying that an extract from a classic novel was boring and badly written because it used too many old-fashioned words and so it was difficult to understand. It had been written in 1896. Clearly, that is not an effective evaluation of the text, only of the understanding of the student. So, we teach the students only to pick out good points about the extracts and say they are successful and why.  This is only a part of what evaluation is, but it would be ridiculous for them to say that Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins was a poor writer. If, however, they had read many Dickens novels, and also books written by a dozen or so of his contemporaries, they could, with some sense, talk about how the characterisation of women in Dickens was in line with that of Trollope and Collins, and was weaker than that of the female novelists like the Brontes and Austen. However, our students have often read nothing much since they finished The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series in Year 7. Great as that is, it is not preparation enough for an evaluation of a nineteenth century extract from a classic novel. That is not their fault. We are asking them to do something far beyond their ability. And because they can’t do it, we have to coach them through every step of the way, making a mockery both of the text and of the skill they are supposed to be learning.

I wish I had the answer. And I, now, have become part of the problem rather than the solution. If your head of department is on board, if you have a forward thinking Head of School, maybe some of these issues can be smoothed away. If not, you are a lone voice, shouting in the wind. But even with support, the issue is that the exam syllabus, government expectations, and education system are so flawed that, instead of turning out readers with open minds ready to carry on learning throughout life, we turn people away from the very thing we are trying to encourage a love of.

Teaching

To serve and never count the cost

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As a child brought up by a church-going Presbyterian, I was taught that to do things for others, whatever the cost to yourself, was the pathway to salvation. More than that, whatever value you have comes from what you do to be useful in the world. That sounds very worthy.  What can be wrong with growing up believing this? I must admit, that this constant nagging in my head to help, to serve, to be useful, overcomes my laziness and fear and forces me to do what I can in the world. I am not the warrior my mother was and is, but I do more because of that voice in my head.

This world view has a dark side, however. It makes relaxing hard to do. Doing nothing seems sinful. I still find watching TV in the middle of the day an almost intolerable decadence. It makes guilt a constant companion. Am I doing enough? Why am I comfortable when others aren’t? The biggest of those negative sides, however, is the toll it takes on the individual giver. The needs of others are never met. Give all you can, and more, and there will still be aching need in the world. It saps your strength, it weakens and tires you. It starts to affect those who you love. You no longer have time for them, for your relationships.  When you are tired and irritable, it is they who bear the brunt of it. When you give your time, you take it from your loved ones and give it to strangers.

You may be wondering why I am writing about this on my blog which deals with literature, reading and teaching. Or perhaps you have already guessed.

My mother, in addition to being a Presbyterian, was also a teacher. She gave her time, energy, thoughts and efforts to her vocation. She happily gave our toys away to the needy children in her class. She took things from home which I missed and used them for the benefit of others. She worked hard and, I really believe, tried her best for some of the poorest children in our area. The idea that you should serve and not count the cost is at the heart of teaching. Those who do it are often drawn to the profession because they long to help others. I think my mother’s Protestant Work Ethic exacerbated the issue, but it seems to me that teaching’s success and downfall lie in that very laudable desire.

The key to the problem is not in the idea of serving others, but in not counting the cost. Teachers are so desperate to help the children they work with that they are willing to practically destroy their own lives to do it. There are many teachers, no doubt, who balance their work and life beautifully. There are lots of teachers who are extremely happy in their profession and do not feel stressed or out of their depth. I am happy to even know one or two of them. It cannot be denied, however, that there are so many others who struggle to find that equilibrium. I think this martyrdom at the core of the profession is a key reason why. Daily on Twitter I read of people who feel they must justify themselves constantly. They have to tell everyone how hard they are working, how much they are doing. They want to claim that teachers have more pressures and harder work than any other profession. It is certainly true that a disproportionate number of teachers end up off work with stress and droves of experienced and newly qualified teachers are leaving the profession in the hope of finding a happier and less intense life in other fields of work.  I am not sure that teachers face more stress or have a heavier workload than other professions do. I think the difference lies in the expectations the teacher-managers have and the teachers have of themselves.

Again and again I read in tweets on my timeline comments which suggest that to count the cost of that dedication is seen as selfish. People who feel burdened with guilt if they are off sick. People who can barely hold it together but carry on to the detriment of their mental and physical health in order to support their Year 11 classes or get Year 6 up to the SATs or whatever it may be. I have an admiration for this attitude as I have for my mother’s daily sacrifice of herself all the years I have known her. But with the admiration comes a degree of irritation. There is an arrogance at the heart of some of this thinking.  The idea that my contribution is so important that without it all is lost, so I must carry on, whatever it takes.

The truth is, in all but the most particular of cases, we are all replaceable. I hope we will be remembered with fondness.  I hope we make a practical, positive difference. I hope we build relationships and change lives for the better. But we are not the only ones who can do it. To ruin ourselves, eking the last drop of our souls out into the ever hungry mouth of that ever present need, is not healthy for us and not necessary for anyone else. However wonderful we are, others can step in. However fantastic our contribution, taking it down 5% or 10% will not cause anyone to fail or stumble, though it may make it possible for us to continue to contribute for many years to come.

I am not a teacher in a school, though I have some understanding of the pressures involved. I understand that much of the stress is imposed from above or from outside the institution.  I know that the impulse to give and keep giving is such a good one. But, ultimately, senior management, the government, our society, will keep on taking from us until we say ‘no’. Until we say, ‘that’s enough! No more’. It is the responsibility of the individual, as well as of the institution and the profession, to look at wellbeing as a serious issue. To stand up to management and say – I can do this much and no more. To try and slough off the guilt and be joyful in grasping the freedom which lies outside of work.

What right have I to comment? None! How you all cope with your difficult, complex and wonderful work is not my business. But as a concerned outsider, I would advise a little self-reflective self-preservation. Just a thought.

Revision, Teaching

How do we motivate our students to revise?

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I hear some demotivating advice given for revision techniques, and I feel I should redress the balance. I know that I am not an expert; I am simply someone who works with teenagers who are taking exams. It may be, therefore, that I have totally the wrong idea and others are more qualified to pass on advice. However, from what I see, students need something tailored to them and their needs, and need to be given time and space to work on improving their own work practices.

I have heard recently that a local school recommended (for the holiday) a diet of 8 hours sleep, 8 hours work and 8 hours to do what you want in every day. That last 8 hours, by the way, includes eating, drinking, washing, dressing and other vital daily chores. I would laugh if it weren’t so desperately counter-productive. This suggestion is not given in isolation.  Barnaby Lenon, a former headteacher of Harrow, suggested students study for 7 hours a day over the Easter Holidays, according to a Guardian article published last year.

At first I thought only about how demotivating this advice would be to the ordinary student. Most students need encouragement and help in organising and motivating themselves.  The suggestion that they do 8 hours a day is ludicrous.  They will either try and fail, leaving them feeling awful and even less motivated than before, or they will laugh and think their teachers are fools, and be as little motivated and organised as before.

Now I am beginning to acknowledge that for the focused and driven student such advice can be just as detrimental. The student who wants to be the best, to get the top marks, will take such advice to heart.  They may even go beyond it, thinking that if all students are meant to do 8 hours a day, then they must do more if they want to be the best. The result of this thinking is over-stress and over-work.  Young people already put their peace of mind and their body’s health in jeopardy at exam times. Every school counsellor will tell you that. Not only that, but it doesn’t work.  Anyone with any sense can tell you that after having done 2 or 3 hours of hard thinking, everything else will be a blur. If you get to the eighth hour, your best work is already a few hours behind you. The danger is you stare unseeing at the paper in front of you and remember nothing of it the next day when you drag yourself reluctantly to try and repeat the process. What we need to do is to teach our young people to work ‘smart’.

Do you disagree?  Do you think that we should be aiming to the top of what is possible (in the hope that something at least will be achieved)? As I say, I am no expert. I do know a lot of teenagers, though. I work with a good number of students who find doing any work outside of lessons is a struggle. Instead of putting a number of hours as a target, we perhaps should focus on teaching our young people how best to organise and motivate themselves. We should be getting them to ask themselves what works best for them. 

Perhaps the pomodoro technique is the best; 20 minutes of work and 10 minutes of rest, repeated as often as possible.  Perhaps setting a particular time in the day when they always work can help.  Perhaps carving out a particular place where they feel comfortable working can help – be that in a public library, school library, work-space or their own bedroom. It may be that working with others can help them get motivated.  It may be that music helps them shut out the world and concentrate on the task in hand.  It may be that they are task driven – they work until they are finished that element of work and then stop.  It may be that time slots work better for them. The truth is, there are as many ways of working as there are people.  Young people are inexperienced and don’t necessarily know what will work best for them, and so, I think, it is our job to speak to them about the different ways they can try and encourage them to find a rhythm that suits them.

Too often I hear comments like, ‘you can’t work while listening to music’, or ‘how can anyone concentrate in a busy room?’ and I realise that the teacher or parent is trying to impose their own study habits and preferences on their student or child. Who is to say what works for them?  Only they can tell.  We need to give them the information and space to help them work it out for themselves, while being careful not to sanction 6 hours of sitting listening to music in their rooms with little concentrated work done. The truth is, when they are 15 or 16 they are liable to make mistakes and need a bit of guidance.  Even at A level and beyond they need a bit of help and encouragement.  But if students are ever to learn to be independent learners, they need to work out how they should study.  We can help them, but we can’t force them into a particular way, even if that way worked for us.

Essentially, as a mother and as a teacher, I have not got a definitive answer to the problem of revision. Hard work wins the day. It will always beat all but the most talented of minds, and will guarantee your child reaches their potential. The problem is always how to equip young people with the internal motivation to work and the sense to work out what is the best study method for them, without putting them off work completely. It seems to me that advocating 8 hours study a day is not the way to do it. What do you think?  Am I aiming too  low or are they asking too much?

English Language

English language – how to make it more interesting!

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It’s a niche subject this week, but it is something that has been simmering away in my mind for a while.

When teaching English Literature, we naturally teach about the texts and develop the skills required in doing so.  When teaching English Language, we can choose the texts.  They don’t much matter as it is how they are written and how the student can understand, analyse, evaluate and compare them that counts.  Why then, do we offer the students such stultifyingly boring texts? So very often the subjects of the non-fiction extracts we see in past exam papers is so divorced from the lives the children lead.  It is actually pathetic to notice how the subjects are the concerns of a middle-aged middle-class audience.  Downsizing was a topic on a recent exam paper.  Which child has ever considered that as an idea?  We know that the examiner may be at that time of life where their children have left home and they are considering what the future holds, but how is this relevant for the average 16 year old?  One of the texts recommended for comparison in the exam board’s literature is about an old man remembering his youth and a woman whose mother has dementia.  Again, perfectly placed to interest me, a middle-aged woman, but of no interest at all to a teenager.

Why does this matter? Well, for the most able, it doesn’t.  To be able to write about any subject which is put in front of you, is a great skill and one which is worth learning.  To understand a topic, even though it is boring to you, or one you have never considered, that is also a skill you may well need in life.  But for those who struggle, these topics make an already challenging exam even more difficult.

We all know the difference it makes to a child who does not enjoy English if we change the topic to one they care about.  Read and write about rugby, or dancing, or fashion, or football – or whatever is your passion – and suddenly things don’t seem so daunting.  Suddenly, you’re in your own world with familiar ideas and vocabulary.  All at once, you are involved in something which means something to you. Recently I have encouraged a student who wanted to write a speech about how Mike Ashley is ruining Newcastle United and someone else wrote an email to Newcastle Falcons Rugby Club asking why they don’t spend more effort on encouraging girls’ rugby. Both students were engaged and interested in a way that they could not hope to be if the subject had been how to decorate the home or what kind of food you can cook on a budget.

Of course, everyone has different passions, and you can’t hope to please everyone. However, I’d like to suggest that some of these topics we see taught in school and we see on the exam papers themselves are deadly dull for nearly all students. They seem to be out of touch in a way which is staggering considering that we all work with young people.

I have been speaking mainly about the non-fiction extracts. It may seem harder to find subjects which interest young people amongst the musings of the nineteenth century classical writers. I’m not sure that’s true, though.  Literature speaks of universal ideas like death, love, danger, loss and pain. Teenagers may have limited experience of these things, but they have a more universal appeal than some of the appallingly tedious subjects that have cropped up in the non-fiction paper. But don’t get me started on the subjects they choose for the unseen poetry comparison  – Snails, cats and the weather – I mean, what were they thinking?

Literature, Novels, Reading, Teaching

Lost Cultural Capital

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To understand the nineteenth century texts that we throw at our unprepared teenagers, they must have more background knowledge than we probably expect.  Some background is taught in school, and some is assessed in the GCSE mark schemes.  But, the truth is, there are students who are at an immediate disadvantage, and, as the world changes even from how we experienced it in our youth, young people get further and further away from the shared culture and societal expectations which are required to properly understand a text.

As we treat the next generation to the delights of A Christmas Carol – taught in my area in the run up to Christmas – teachers throughout Britain spend precious lesson time talking about the ‘invention’ of the Victorian Christmas, Christmas trees, Christmas cards, lights and carols. There will be some explanation of ‘pagan Christmas’ and ‘Christian Christmas’ and possibly Dickens’ view of what it meant. I have taught students who have hopelessly mixed up ideas of Yule and Christianity and traditions in the scramble to get some ideas into the heads of twenty-first century teenagers. Some understanding of The Poor Law, workhouses and other aspects of nineteenth century society that Dickens was aiming to criticise, is also rapidly shoved into half a lesson. Despite this albeit hasty preparation to read the novella, context is not assessed in Edexcel’s GCSE English Literature when it comes to A Christmas Carol.  (Though it is considered worthy to be assessed in other topics such as poetry.)

Assessed or not, schools do not have time to teach nineteenth century politics, law or social history as part of the English curriculum. Inevitably, students have to fall back on their own cultural knowledge.  This will disadvantage certain types of student.

Understanding Greek mythology will help you understand Byron’s poetry; knowing the Bible will help you understand Hardy’s novels; knowing what the gothic genre entails will help you read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is not to say that you can’t enjoy these works without that knowledge, but it is much, much more difficult. Those whose parents do not come from Britain and so have other traditions and histories to tell their children, those who have not spent a life time watching Dickensian carolling on the television, those who have not read Anthony Horowitz or Rick Riordan explaining the Greek myths, these are just a few of the people who will struggle to get the same out of the texts they study as others.

As we travel further and further away in time from Victor Frankenstein, from Little Nell, from Tess Durbeyfield, the less they will be understood.  It is not surprising that Chaucer is rarely studied outside of university these days.  Very few have read Piers Plowman, John Webster’s plays are staged less frequently, Aphra Behn is a name that even students of literature may well be unfamiliar with. The world they wrote about, the understanding they shared with their readers or audiences, these have disappeared into the mists of time.  It takes deliberate study and determined application to appreciate not only the contexts of these authors, but also their language. The same is happening to our nineteenth century favourites. 

For old ladies such as myself, the world of mid to late twentieth century is close and familiar.  It links back much more easily to a time when most of the (educated) people in the country knew about Noah and the Arc, Icarus, Neptune. Even the Latinate language of the nineteenth century novel was still heard in hymns and in speeches. Wandering sentences were not so uncommon. The world is very different now. The writing style of choice, even in formal prose, offers shorter, less complex sentence structures and more Anglo-Saxon words rather than Latinate ones. We’re used to sound-bites, tiny extracts, pithy stories.  We have Twitter’s brevity, three minute YouTube clips and the five minutes the news devotes to the latest issue.  Dickens’ audiences were content to read volumes of his prose, winding their way through the intricacies of his labyrinthine sentences. Our minds are not accustomed to this discipline.

My point is that Michael Gove, harking back to the halcyon days of his childhood in the middle of the twentieth century, was happy to encourage (or impose) the study of texts he will have probably appreciated.  But the difference between him, his cultural knowledge, and the students now and theirs, grows ever wider.  This is even before we start talking about privilege and middle class cultural capital.

I don’t advocate stopping studying texts such as A Christmas Carol.  I love them!  Students learn more than a bunch of language and structure techniques from reading such a wonderful tale. I just want to acknowledge yet another barrier to success that students face, particularly students from working class backgrounds and ethnic minorities. But the biggest barrier is the speed of change our world is seeing. The change from Dickens to my classroom in 1980s Northern England was huge.  But subsequent change makes that leap seem miniscule. Next time we are trying valiantly to cram cultural, societal and political history into the starter of a literature lesson, we might give ourselves and the students a break if the knowledge gap is not immediately bridged.   

Reading, Teaching

How Cool is Reading?

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Reading For Pleasure

The holy grail for school librarians and English teachers is to inspire this – Reading For Pleasure. But is it ever possible to change a child’s attitude and habits and turn them into a reader?

What is at the root of the issue? It seems to be reading ability.  According to a recent study, speaking of children up to 10, () ‘slower readers and poorer comprehenders read less than more fluent readers and more able comprehenders’. (Quoted in a TES article from November 2019) This seems perfectly logical. If you can’t read very fluently, it is not much fun to attempt it. It’s hard work, even. Which child (or adult for that matter) wants to spend their spare time doing something they find extremely difficult? Of course, the gap between what the poorer reader is able to read easily and the appropriateness of the books to their interest and sophistication, grows rapidly. What happens before long is that the books they would be interested in reading are no longer within their grasp.  What they can read seems juvenile and simplistic to them. This makes it even less likely that they will maintain the effort of reading in their spare time.

We have not even yet mentioned the shame and humiliation so many teenagers feel or fear when it comes to reading. No wonder they don’t want to try it or spend any time thinking about it. When someone knows that a book they have is beyond them, often they still carry it around like a talisman, helping them fit in and seem part of the group. I have seen this so often in my work as a librarian. I would love the student to take a book they will truly enjoy and be able to appreciate. Even if they can find one, they are reluctant to be seen reading it, because they know they will be judged by their classmates.

So much excellent work has been done by publishers like Barrington Stoke.  They publish so many fantastic books which appeal to older readers but have simple sentence structures and a specific vocabulary – not to mention many other features such as readable typefaces and cream coloured pages for those with dyslexia. Even these, though, are not the books which a ‘cool’ kid at school wants to be seen with.  Those will be the ones on the shelves of Asda and Tesco which have been publicised to death, and are therefore popular enough to be acceptable in school.

To be honest, though, at school, reading is not seen to be cool at all. As teachers and librarians we continually try to fight that stereotype. But what can we do?  We were never the cool kids at school when we were young, and we certainly have no vestige of coolness now!  Anything we recommend or encourage will inevitably be lame, whether we like it or not. The attempts to make it desirable to be a reader, such as getting points as part of the Accelerated Reader programme, are as likely to backfire as to be successful.  I hope the element of competition does encourage some students to read more, but I fear it does the opposite for so many others. To be the year group’s ‘Word Millionaire’ will only seem desirable either to young children or to people who love reading in the first place. It is certainly not like winning the cup for the school football team, is it?

So, if we come back to reading ability, how do we tackle the issue of improving a student’s chances of being competent enough to be inspired to read?  Truthfully, it comes down to reading practice.  If a baby is read to, spoken to, and interacted with, their language skills will develop well.  If their parents and friends continue to read to them, model reading, encourage reading, they will have a better chance of growing up to be a reader.  If their parents have large vocabularies, if they continue to talk to their children, the children will have a large and growing vocabulary themselves.  This makes accessing books all the more possible. Once the child starts school, reading in lessons, living in a reading culture all day five days a week will help encourage them to pick up a book and make the effort to understand it.

It’s easier said than done.

In the years that I worked as a school librarian, I saw children turn to reading who had never read. I saw the pride of a child of 11 who had successfully finished reading their first ‘proper’ book.  I saw the interest sparked in children who found their place in the pages of a book.  People who had been on the outside suddenly felt they belonged.  People who did not see themselves reflected in those around them, found others like themselves in the books they read.  However, I did not see many children who valued ‘coolness’, popularity or social status turn to reading. By the time they had come to me, it was already engrained that reading was not for people like them. Not if they wanted to carry on being cool.

This is not the key to the issue.  The key is with parent-child relationships, adult literacy, resourcing and working on school reading cultures, school libraries and librarians and so on. But it is a serious impediment to reading for pleasure. Those who love to read can always keep quiet about it – so it doesn’t ruin their reputation at school.  But those who have already slipped through the net will never be caught again because of the fact that teenagers do not aspire to be readers.

As a swot, the least cool of all, I have no answer to this problem. It may be that I have to pass this one on to someone better qualified. The problem is, which of us librarians is cool enough for the task?

Reading, Teaching

Why I support children’s love of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

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Or why ‘encouraging higher reading levels’ is not an easy task. 

Teenagers are reading at below their chronological age. The problem with that is the complexity of GCSE texts makes the English exams inaccessible for many students. Those whose daily (weekly or monthly) diet of reading is mainly Tom Gates and Diary of a Wimpy Kid will struggle with A Christmas Carol and Macbeth. The answer, many schools seem to think, is to force students to read harder books.  I can see the logic, but it doesn’t work.

It’s not hard to work out why.  Reading is essentially solitary.  Of course it is wonderful to read to someone or be read to, but the majority of the reading a young person will do must be done alone.  To do something by yourself, you must be motivated to do it.  Someone who has the choice only of books that are at the top of their ability will inevitably feel less motivated to read alone, particularly if you were struggling to sell them reading as a hobby in the first place.

Schools have got into the habit – especially through the Accelerated Reader scheme (which some day I may have the courage to write about honestly) – of trying to force children to choose books from a narrow range because they are at the ‘right level’. This harms reading habits in at least two ways. Firstly, the students don’t have the breadth of choice they need.  To love reading, you have got to like the genre, the style, the characters, the themes of the books you read.  If you have only a few to choose from, you could find yourself bored or even repelled by what you are reading.  It could easily put you off picking up another book. Secondly, if the books are at the top of the child’s reading ability, they will get tired of working so hard every time they start to read. They will associate reading with hard work, instead of with fun, enjoyment and pleasure.

None of us read to the top of our ability all the time.  It will not surprise you to learn that I am a reader. I love to read and spend a lot of time doing it. I do read books which are very challenging at times. The books I really find a challenge are likely to be modernist works (like James Joyce’s Ulysses or Samuel Beckett’s Murphy), or, alternatively, books written in old English (like Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde or Piers Plowman). There is no way in the world I could get out a poem by Chaucer every night before I go to sleep and still keep my love of reading.  I adore a good murder mystery, a romance, a fantasy book.  I love children’s books of all genres. They do not stretch me as much intellectually, but I love them.  Why do we not allow children the freedom to choose in the way we would like to be able to choose for ourselves?

The other issue I have with reading to the top of your ability is that, if it is guided by teachers, parents and librarians, it will become a way of being judged and judging others.  “Are you only on the silver books?  I’m already on the red ones!” You might hear a comment like that in a primary school where they focus on reading schemes.  But I have taught children who are embarrassed to admit their Accelerated Reading score, knowing it is lower than others in their class.  And I have seen the distress of students wanting to take home a book which is not in their ability band, being refused, and then thinking “Oh that means they think I’m too stupid for that book.  I must be rubbish at reading!”. As soon as we make reading about success and failure rather than fun, well being and interest, we will alienate the very people we want to encourage.  

So, encouraging young people to read is to foster a love of reading. Of course, try and offer other books with other ideas in them, if your child or student has got stuck in a rut with the same old thing. But to narrow down choices, make books about what level you are on, make reading about ‘work’ rather than fun, will be a deterrent to continuing to read. To put it as mildly as possibly, it will be counter productive. We want children to do well, to improve, but we want them to enjoy themselves as well.  If we don’t make it fun, they won’t do it. A simple lesson we could all do with learning!