Guy Claxton and the "slow, gradual but relentless" approach

I was very lucky to have a pretty much private audience with Guy Claxton with about 20 other teachers at Sacred Heart in Hamilton last night.  If you get a chance to hear him talk - do so.

http://www.buildinglearningpower.co.uk/

As teachers, of course, we want students who are academically successful but we also want students who have the skill set to be able to live successfully in our every changing, at top speed, world.  What Guy said was that we should have both - oh yes we should!!

What he said really resonated with me - especially as all of my teaching has been about the education "plus" and is very often non-measurable.  When teaching PSHE (personal, social and health education) in the UK the Principal at my first school asked me why should we teach it as we can't "easily" measure it - not without hard evidence? His beliefs were that if we can't measure it and the Government don't ask us to we shouldn't teach it.  Later he also asked me if working class kids should be taught Sociology - but that is a different story.

Subjects like PSHE are hard to measure - you have to try and measure attitudinal beliefs and attitudes which is not easy but do-able. Do you measure the amount of pregnancies/STIs/Drug mis-use - straight away or within 5 years?   However, if measuring attitudinal change it might just be a very small change that happens at the time and then grows later on.

My other roles in schools and as an advisory teacher have also been pretty "wishywashy" (according to some people - my previous Head included) but I don't care as I totally agree with Guy who talks about the importance of pro-social values and that "education is a moral enterprise of what we want our young people to be like."

"Wishywashy" doesn't mean that the subject can't be rigorous at the same time.  Health education, here in NZ especially, is not just about condoms and cannabis (although some of it is) it is about critical thinking and the WHY, the big picture and how we as individuals affect others and society, and vice versa.

My other role as a Dean and as the Pastoral Team coordinator is also more about the plus side of education. Especially with working closely with young people and their families dealing with any issues that were affecting them and therefore, generally, affecting their learning.  Restorative practice fits in really well here as I had some students who basically ran their own restorative meetings - they needed a place and a general outline on how to deal with their differences.

Health, including the Friends programme, is also all about how to be resilient, how to make decisions and how to deal with issues if you or people you know have any.  This to me is all the "plus" side of education and very vital. However, even now at my current school, which is 100% better than my previous ones, they are not seen as "that" important - by where they sit in the importance of them at school.  The Deans have a major role in the school but the Deans nor SLT are not automatically trained in RP when they join the team. We can talk the talk but not walk the walk.

Guy also made me think about whole school policies especially in relation to change.  I must admit that I feel frustrated about the pace of change at school but Guy reminded us that our approach may have to be "slow, gradual but relentless."

When dealing with change I have always believed in fighting from the inside and you can still do the best for your students from within the reactionary education system.  Guy said that sometimes If u hav 2 "park ur learning power" coz if u have to play the game u got to play it.   This has been my attitude throughout my own education and for my students but Achievement Standards can be pretty flexible. Frustrating but true.

My challenges from Guy's talk
1. Use PB4L to teach pro-social skills and reflectiveness to help with understanding learning
2. Think about how to measure Health and the "plus" side of education
3. With past students ask them questions about the attitudes and values etc some years down the line?
4. We have to talk as a school about academic success and key competencies - much more
5. We have to, have to create a school vision that is for everyone is our community and make sure that our community understands that Education plus is the only way to have truly successful students
6.  Finally as a personal thing I have to be aware that patience is needed but keep going

Some top tweets
Teachers r like sport s coaches but we r mind coaches do we want healthy ss with gr8 Hauora?

Teach ss to question what they read/hear. We hv to teach the ungoogable stuff in our classes

If u hav 2 "park ur learning power" coz if u have to play the game u got to play it. Need to change this

Got to re-educate the parents that we can have great results and have ss who have gr8 key competencies

Name of my blog, twitter and #edchatnz

Well, that was pretty tough - naming my blog.  I was debating between "blog from a small town," the uncatchy "my personal challenge to write a blog" and ummm not sure but I suppose "Collecting my thoughts" is actually what I am going to do.  I wonder if I can change it?

I have recently, well since about 3 months ago, become very attached to twitter - I have definitely found my "nerdy self" in it.  I enjoy the challenges, the co-constructing of ideas and general way of connecting with many similar minded people that you get from twitter and especially #edchatnz which is fab fun to take part in.

It was actually #edchatnz which has challenged me to do lots of things that I have been thinking about for a while: making a Facebook page for my classes - well one of them, giving me more confidence to consistently discuss issues in SLT, among other things. As an aside I would have liked to have thought more about modern learning environments before we revamped a science room in the block I teach in during the summer 13/14 - another blog topic I think.

Of course it was also #edchatnz that encouraged me to blog.
In one such conversation we were discussing "students teaching teachers" and it made me rethink my year 12 assessment to really emphasise this.  Now the students are starting to teach the teachers and I couldn't wait to tweet the people I had been discussing it with.  I will blog more later about this as I think I want to write an article about it.

Is this what blogging does - it makes you want to discuss more and more things in greater detail?!

Now the next thing is to publish. Haha!  Not yet - a bit scary actually - maybe later tonight?!