Renewing my vows

Yesterday, I reaffirmed my respect for teachers and primary teachers in particular.  It's fully fifteen years since I last regularly taught primary children and yesterday I spent much of the day at Shirestone Academy in Birmingham. I had been invited by Principal Clare Lucas to kick off National Science week by talking about the Bloodhound Project in assembly and then running a balloon car lesson up to lunch time for year two.  While I was there I was asked to talk to year six for fifteen minutes in the afternoon about why science isn't boring and then I headed home.

And I was exhausted!  After only two and a bit hours of contact teaching time.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon stress testing the balloon car lesson with my daughter and fretting over whether year two would be able to cope with what is effectively a key stage two lesson.  Equally I worried about being found out for my fraudulent championing of science when I am actually a history graduate.  As it turned out I had no reason to worry whatsoever. The children, all of them, were wonderful.

When we asked them what they could do to improve their cars they came up with huge range of ideas: from adding more balloons, adding bigger balloons, improving the materials of the wheels from rather flimsy card, adding more Plasticine to the wheel/axle joint (but not so much that it made the car too heavy), making the car a better shape, not stepping on the car...

One of them even made the connection to Newton's second law, which I had introduced in the assembly earlier with the help of a skateboard.

My point is that any fool can get up and talk to children.  But to ensure that children of multiple abilities and varying interests are engaged and actually learning is hard work.  So hats off to those who do it every day!

With apologies to Hamlet

Musing during my commute this morning about Entwistle's resignation as director general of the BBC and the stunning hypocrisy that appears to surround it.  The following pastiche almost wrote itself:

To Beeb or not to Beeb: that is the question.
Whether tis nobler in select committee to suffer
The slings and arrows of vindictive Murdoch
Or take arms against a sea of Tweeters
And by opposing end them?  To quit, to sleep,
No more: and by a sleep to say we end
The roundabout of dodge and blame
That comes with this job.  Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To walk, to quit
To quit, perchance to work again? There's the rub
For in that gardening leave, what chance remains
When we have shuffled off this poisoned perch
Must give us pause.  There's the respect
Or lack of it as all rush to blame
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time..

You get the gist.

There is something very sad about not challenging authority and speaking the truth to power when it is needed but then gleefully joining in kicking the corpse when it is too late.

Virgin Trains and the wonderful Steven Collins

Today I was stupid enough to get off the train at Birmingham International while talking on the mobile phone.  As a result I left my coat on the train with my keys inside it.  By the time I realised it was too late.

Half an hour or so later I had just arrived at Shirestone Primary School when the receptionist came up to me and said, "Excuse me but did you leave your coat on the train from London?  I've just had a man called Steven Collins on the phone who says he's found it.  He's left his number."

As we walked to the office I wondered how on earth he had tracked me down to the school.  If I he had rung me on my mobile I would have understood... maybe I had left a business card in my coat.  But I hadn't told him my name or the organisation I work for.  I had had a brief chat with him about the best way to get to Lea Hall station (via Birmingham International or New Street) and then we had talked for a few minutes about the awarding of the West Coast rail franchise to First Group.  All I said to him was that I worked with primary schools.

We rang Steven back and I asked how he found me.  

"Oh, I rang all the primary schools near Lea Hall Station"...!

"I just wanted to tell you that your jacket and your keys are safe at the lost property office at Wolverhampton"

All the schools near Lea Hall station!  What a wonderful man.  I wonder if First Group employees will feel as positive about their jobs as Virgin Trains staff do?  Well, having travelled regularly to Bristol, I already know the answer the that one.

Not even close.

So anyway, thank-you very much Steven.  You deserve a raise.  Or at the very least to keep your current employer.

A little bit of politics.. and some project management

Last week I stumbled upon on Andreas Whittam Smith's launch of Democracy 2015, a 'movement' (in true Alice's Restaurant form) that aims to reshape our political system at the next election.  Whether it will work or not I have no idea but I admire the breadth of his ambition.

Whittam Smith's thesis rests on the assertion that we have been let down by the political class regardless of political hue.  A life in politics is essentially that - a life.  It boils down to two goals; the acquisition of power and the retention of power.  This in turn means that politicians only ever really possess one skill; that of selling themselves to the electorate.  They tend to enter political life early without many transferable skills and then try to stay for as long as possible.  Political survival is more important than actually achieving anything.

The genius is in the simplicity of Whittam Smith's solution to this problem.  If the problem is explained by the old adage that 'power corrupts', then remove the risk of addiction.  Any candidate that Democracy 2015 fields in the next election will be required to pledge to serve only one term.  So if you want a political legacy you'd better stop talking about one and get on with building one.  You only get power if you promise to give it back.

Neat isn't it?

Yesterday Brendan Barber (TUC) exhorted politicians to run the UK like we ran the olympics in  a sort of paean to central planning and investment.  I think he is right but not in the way he intended.  Public vs private investment is an old and rather tedious debate.  Most people, when they think about it can see the evils at both ends of the spectrum (namely waste and greed).  It is not central five year plans that we need, it is an emphasis on deliverables. The olympics was run as a project (timescale, deliverables, budget).  The heroes were the project managers.

Give me a project manager any day over a time serving careerist.  I think five years makes it tight for Democracy 2015 but nothing focuses the mind like a deadline.

It will be fun to see how this plays out.

Positively engaged

I learned almost nothing from my last boss.

But this is not an indictment of him.  Indeed it has nothing to do with him.  It is a charge I lay to myself.

Fortunately, during the period there were many other people around me from whom I did learn.  So the time was far from fallow.  But compared to my working environment now or before, it is quite remarkable that I stayed there for so long. Why did I work for him for seven years if my allegation is true?

A recent conversation with a co worker (whom I shall not embarrass by naming) sparked off this reflection.  She said, "The thing I love about working with the Elliot Foundation is that it is such an affirming and positive organisation.  I feel you value me and my work."

She went on, "But I know there will come a time in the future when I do something that is not quite up to scratch and I want you to know that I am happy for you to tell me that it is not good enough.  I am affirmed enough to hear it"

I was initially taken aback.  But then we joked about how wonderful it would be to work in an organisation where this feeling permeated.  Effectively a place where juniors would say to their seniors, "It's OK. I know you love me.  I trust you have my best interests at heart... Go on criticise me.  I know you're dying to."

"The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves".  It is not the boss's fault.  They cannot see that you are not learning from them. They are too wrapped up in themselves (which incidentally is why you don't learn from them).  If you are not learning, move on to pastures new.

Because if you are not learning... you are not really living.

Different strokes?

As Heath Monk’s piece in the Guardian yesterday, "The Mossbourne way is not the only way to be an 'outstanding' school" and the subsequent response on Twitter suggested, there seem to be some pieces missing from the collective education jigsaw.  It can’t be the case that there is only one way to achieving the best education for our children schools.

Putting aside context or 'theory x' vs 'theory y' or ‘command and control’ vs. ‘enabled models’ for the moment.  I think there is a more fundamental problem here as evinced in my daughter’s school’s motto,

“Excellence for all”

I think we ought to pause for a moment for that to sink in…

It is one of the those statements that at first glance appear to be very much what schools should be aiming for but then, like nails down a blackboard, should set your teeth on edge at the appalling sloppiness of the thinking.

In the bluntest terms; all cannot excel! Because if everyone is doing it, it is not ‘excellence’, it is ‘average’.  Now, there is nothing wrong with below average schools aiming to do tomorrow what those deemed to be ‘excellent’ do today, provided that it is applicable to the context of the school and children in question.  But it places an awful burden on those few deemed to be ‘excellent’ to continue to stride ahead and find the solutions for next year and the year after that.

 Better that schools set their sights on becoming their own sort of brilliant - educating radiant children, rather than trying to shoehorn themselves into someone else’s models. Doing this creates multiple future models from which we can all pick,  chose, amalgamate and improve upon.

Interviewing someone for a headship on the basis of a candidate “knowing what ‘outstanding’ looks like” is naive to the point of being almost funny, if it weren’t so tragic.

Brand and the suspension of disbelief

I have been thinking about brands and their impact on us.  I am an Apple fan.  My first ever computer was an Apple... well actually my first ever computer was a ZX Spectrum but you know what I mean.  Then, when I bought a laptop for work in the 90's I defected to Microsoft.  I stayed with Windows until the lunacy of waiting 5 minutes for your computer to start only to crash every hour or so drove me back to Mac.

I loved (and still love) my Mac mini.  I love my MacBook Pro.  But the full conversion, when last year I ditched my Blackberry and bought an iPhone 4 was a step too far.  My smart phone fails to meet even the most cursory definition of a 'phone' let alone being 'smart'.  I have looked in chat rooms on the internet and have learned about the 'death grip', I have switched off unnecessary applications, I have bought a case...  On average my "phone" drops 60% of calls at some point and fails to get through on 3 out of 4 dial attempts and the battery lasts for about 2/3rds of a day.  It is quite simply not a phone.  It is useless.

And yet I persist with it.  My 'love' for Apple has thus far enabled me to overlook the abject failure of the dreadful device.  My belief triumphs over the reality and keeps me going.  This belief exists simply as a result of the branding genius that is Apple.  The emotional commitment to a product that makes me feel special and ignore the set backs.

I wonder if instilling self-belief in children has a parallel with this.  The motto we devised for the Elliot Foundation is, "where children believe they can because teachers know they can".  If we can create a personal brand in children where this is strong enough to allow them to overlook the setbacks of life and keep going then we create better life chances for young people.

Having written down my half formed thought, I have a sneaking feeling that this is actually blindingly obvious...

Oh well.