Monday 11 July 2011

Lifesaving Poems: 'Prayer' by Marie Howe

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The most recent addition to my list of Lifesaving Poems is 'Prayer' by Marie Howe. I read it for the first time a couple of months ago next to an interview in the Poetry Trust's Poetry Paper.

It knocked me sideways.

First, I love the clarity of its language. Second, I admire its tackling of complex spiritual material without sounding coy, ironic or mystical. Even though mysticism is directly referred to in the poem, the actual world of the poem remains grounded in the here and now of travel, appointments and 'garbgage trucks'. It is the apparently unresolvable tension between these pressing realities and the call of something other on the speaker's attention that gives the poem its energy.

I love this poem of spiritual longing. I have cut it out and attached it to the shelf above my desk. I lift my eyes from my screen and it hangs there, silently rebuking me. Yet even as I type these words I wonder if I should be checking my Twitter account for an update of the News of the World scandal.

 

Prayer

 

 

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important

calls for my attention – the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

 

I need to buy for the trip.

Even now I can hardly sit here

 

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside

already screeching and banging.

 

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.

Why do I flee from you?

 

My days and nights pour through me like complaints

and become a story I forgot to tell.

 

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning

to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

 

 

 

Marie Howe

from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (Norton, 2008)

 

Wednesday 6 July 2011

On Saying Goodbye to Primary PGCE Students

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Art: Children from Abbas & Templecombe C of E Primary School (Saturn House)

For the last nine years at the end of the first week in July I have been saying goodbye to Primary PGCE trainee teachers as they complete their initial teacher education.

It is a celebratory occasion, yet also poignant. We acknowledge and take delight in the resilience of these bright, energetic and creative people in achieving the status of Newly Qualified Teacher. But we are also sad to see them go. As we have endeavoured to shape them, they have shaped us.

 Many of them come to us having made decisions to change career and set up home in a new part of the country, in strange accommodation. Many come to us not really knowing what to expect other than that they are passionate about passing on their love of learning and teaching because someone passed it on to them first. They all want to be brilliant.

I am in awe of them and their positivity, their iron-clad faith in themselves as agents of change. They persuade me that I have the best job in the world. Watching and talking to them in school and at the university I am further persuaded that everything is going to be all right.

 

Reasons for Life 

after Mark Halliday 

 

Because of the desks.  And the luck.

And because there are too many eighteen year olds

running round with guns because Miss Eve said

‘Not now, Darren, let’s get back to the Pharaohs.’

Because: ‘Not one day went day went by

when reading was easy.’

 

And because Miss Brown ignored

the sunlight, filled with dust motes,

and had you sketching shells

from her Greek holiday instead.

And in spite Miss Janners in Geography and everyone in Physics,

there was Mr Lee in Chemistry and Mrs Crump in Spelling.  Especially

Mrs Crump. 

 

Because once, the classroom emptying,

the blackboard groaning with homework,

someone approached your crouching form

and said how pleased they were

you had attended their lesson

and had you considered reading Lawrence.

 

Because if they don’t get it from you,

who will they get it from?

Because of the desks of forgetting,

the sunlight filled with dust

of wanting to be outside

and the luck of finding someone who found you interesting

enough to believe in.

 

Because your dad was, or mum was

and the sight of a kitchen table piled high with blue books

appeals to you in the way computers and cars

sing to those you grew up with,

who now live in suburbs you avoid

because they are full of roundabouts.

 

Because you burn with it,

basically,

 

which brings you here

to this room, just one more filled with desks and sunlight and dust motes,

and because time means nothing to Isha, and Ashraf

is making plans to look nobody in the eye.

 

 first published in The North.

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Michael Gove needs to get his research right on teacher training -by John Wadsworth in The Guardian

You report that government plans "appear to favour in-school training over university-based courses" (£20,000 offer to first-class graduates who enter teaching, June 27). As a lecturer in education, this is of some concern to me, given that there does not appear to be any evidence to support this preference.

You quote the education secretary, Michael Gove, saying "our teachers are trained in some of the best institutions in the world" – a view endorsed by Ofsted, which rated university-based courses more highly than school-based ones. So why does Gove prefer school-based routes? In the past he's looked at other countries to support his case, but there is no suggestion in the article that he has done so this time. Could it be because the evidence doesn't fit his ideology?

In Finland's "world-class" system, teachers are educated to master's level before being allowed in the classroom. Their education includes a high proportion of pedagogy and they are expected to engage with current research in their specialism both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. In France there are similar expectations. This depth of understanding – not "techniques" – makes for outstanding teachers. As one French student put it to me, "teaching is not like following a recipe" – an effective teacher needs to understand why they are taking a particular approach.

Gove's suggestion that "training does not focus sharply enough on the techniques teachers most need, such as behaviour management and the effective teaching of reading", suggests an alarming degree of ignorance.

Teaching is a complex task and can't be reduced to a simple list of strategies. What works for one child won't necessarily work for another, but theory gives teachers the tools to know what to do when they don't know what to do.

It is true that beginner teachers would welcome more input on the teaching of reading and behaviour management, but sadly there are no magic bullets. Research helps our students understand that learning to read is a highly complex process and that effective readers (even young ones) employ a range of strategies to make sense of texts. They also understand that this process isn't made simpler when working in a highly irregular language like English.

We need to empower teachers to think for themselves. To paraphrase Robin Alexander, director of the Cambridge Primary Review, we cannot expect "children to think for themselves if their teachers only do what they're told". It's unlikely that the quality of initial teacher education in England will improve if Gove decides to adopt his school-based model. What is needed instead is a climate where schools and university education departments work closely to help student teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice.

If world-class education systems rely on teachers who are able to use research evidence to support their teaching, the least we can expect from the education secretary is that he is rigorous in his use of research too.

Sunday 3 July 2011

Put 'I' in GCSE to give pupils their own voice -by Amy Winston in the TES

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Put 'I' in GCSE to give pupils their own voice

Comment | Published in The TES on 1 July, 2011 | By: Amy Winston

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"Are you writing down any of your ideas?" I ask a critically lazy Year 10 boy. He stares at me. "Well, Miss," he replies, "I've got words but I'm not sure where to put them."

I spend my time at school trying to teach meanings, impact, audience, purpose, structure and grammar. "Take scissors to that sentence!" I yell. "Bulldoze that paragraph!"

Some listen and really try to think about where to put their words, but others truly don't know how to choose their vocabulary to create an effect. Often it is too late by the time they are in key stage 4. The damage has been done after 10 years in a conveyor-belt system that rarely asks them to be independent.

They are frightened of failure and look to you for an answer. This neediness makes them good exam fodder, but can be death to effective writing. Our current GCSEs are stripping away pupils' ability to think independently - the very skill needed to succeed in all aspects of life.

It is almost as if we need a measure of achievement that requires pupils to think independently, where choice is paramount and imagination rewarded. Step forward the AQA IGCSEs in English.

If you work at an independent school, the chances are you have been teaching them since they were introduced a few years ago. But colleagues in state schools may not realise that the course is free from the constraints of national curriculum statutory requirements, while adhering to its general ethos.

Because it does not follow the curriculum to the letter, it allows pupils their own voice. They get to choose their own area of assessment and pursue independent research into it. Assessments aren't taught as a whole class, they are individual, leaving pupils the choice to examine a politician's speech or writer's body of work. The stabilisers are off.

Teachers of the standard English literature GCSE will be very familiar with the opening chapter of Great Expectations; Act I, Scene V of Romeo and Juliet; and Act I, Scene II of Macbeth. Why? Because there is so much to cover we have to reduce these great works to the analysis of extracts. Students are aware of the wider plot and themes, but most may only study a select few scenes or chapters, as required.

In contrast, for the AQA IGCSEs you study three or more whole texts. Yes, whole texts. Cover to cover and everything.

But if I went round state schools proposing that they switch to this qualification, most headteachers would laugh me out of the room. The reason for that lies in the dark core of our education system, the part that devours our schools from the inside. To put it plainly, this IGCSE still does not count in the main league table measure, the one for five A*-Cs including English and maths. So, for most schools, it might as well not exist.

If the Government is intent on sticking with such a simplified way of judging schools' worth, they should at least count these qualifications. Maybe then our pupils would learn not only where to put their words, but how to become the independent self-starters our society so desperately needs.

Amy Winston is an English teacher at a comprehensive in the West Midlands.