listen willya

Tags

2012, 7*, allowing, anxiety, budget, buildings, business, care, communication, consumerism, creativity, David Cameron, education, evaluation, exploration, extension, flag, Have, history, inclusion, innovation, investment, justice, knowledge, learning, lesson, life, listening, love, management, Margaret Thatcher, market, money, nurture, ownership, politics, privatisation, professionalism, prospect, public service, public service cuts, reform, slogans, society, speech, statistics, status, talking, teaching, time, tolerance, Tony Blair, understanding, value-bled education, value-led education, values, vision, wisdom

                                listen willya

                David Cameron, Tony stupid Blair, Margaret bloody Thatcher,
                and all your snivelling Secretaries of Career, and learn this, now –

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

                you’ve created a RIGHT MESS trying to make it go
                and you’ve spent a QUARTER CENTURY trying to make it go

                trying to work it out with long division, taking everything apart
                to make it go; it just has no value anymore

                nothing has any value anymore, no one cares anymore, we are
                all just anxious; dy’know

                you said KUE* every lesson, I said don’t be so silly,
                I spent five years making it work, I said I’ve made it work

                you said don’t be so silly – it doesn’t influence the statistics;
                I have to go to school now and pretend I’m a professional

                in all sorts of ways to make it look like it goes,
                but it just doesn’t; y’know we’re going to have

                to start all over again if we want anything like education in society again,
                right back to the drawing board; and no history; let’s see –

                                                           _creativity_
                                              nurture ) education

                                               exploration_
                                listening ) education

                                                          _wisdom__
                                              tenure ) education

                           _inclusion_
                vision ) education

                                                                    _innovation_
                                              management ) education

                                                    _extension_
                                exploration ) education

                                 _allowing_
                creativity ) education

                                                            _tolerance_
                                              wisdom ) education

                                                       ___love___
                                              care ) education

                                   _prospect_
                investment ) education

                                        __justice_
                                love ) education

                oh I could go on and on; and – no offence – but stuff your statistics
                and your statuses and your budgets and your slogans

                and your privatisation and your reform, screw them up
                into one huge ball and throw them

                in the bin, and let’s just have some
                honest communication now; you, all of you, went wrong

                as soon as you thought that public service should be value for money,
                (should save money, should make money), but no –

                                               ___don’t go!___
                                business ) public service

                a society that is alive, and rugged, makes money
                to build public service, not own it, to run public service,

                not demand of it, gives service to the public, not a market,
                gives life to society, not just consuming it

                you lot don’t know the first thing about big society, none of you,
                public service should absorb money, it should be

                soaked with money, it should lose money: the only reason
                money should exist is for public service,

                because the service it gives is always far more important
                than a big building and a flag;

                so, stop playing your endless games of balance and measure –
                you’re wasting far too much human –

                and start saying something alive, start doing something truthful;
                c’mon now, you look ridiculous

 

* Knowledge Understanding Evaluation

                                                   don’t go!__
                                business ) education

it might well be that the above format won’t make any sense if you are anywhere under the age of 45: it is the revered and ancient way of setting out division calculations in Mathematics; it ‘reads’, “business [divided into] education [=] don’t go”, where you might more readily have “5 [divided into] 60 [=] 12” … the result appears ‘on top’, leaving the space below to do the working out of long division (“17 [divided into] 43.6299 [=] 2.56646470588”; ‘show your working-out, boy’ thwackk)

I first wrote this in 2012 when there was industrial action over teachers’ pay and conditions – just about the time I started completely losing my emotional marbles at work; I have slightly reconfigured the piece and re-posted it on the day that the NUT is taking industrial action over teachers’ workload, pay and budget cuts: what does the government respond: ‘we are spending more than ever on education’!? … ‘show your working-out, girl’ thwackk!!!

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
buildings wormhole: the policies came to nothing
communication & politics wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
creativity & life & love & society & teaching & time wormhole: ashramas
education wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
evaluation & understanding wormhole: the Apple
Have wormhole: Jericho
history wormhole: currency of generations
justice wormhole: dedication
knowledge wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
learning wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
listening wormhole: plop!
management wormhole: dry rot
money wormhole: tired
professionalism wormhole: dash
speech wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
talking wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
value-led education wormhole: Totnes
values wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,

 

dry rot

Tags

2012, anger, breakdown, broken, care, career, creation, culture, decision, disregard, giving, growth, illness, management, managerialism, resentment, speech, survival, teaching, thought, work

 

 

 

                                dry rot

                                still

                resentment sets in
                                I go to work anyway
                but the resentment is always there
                                I create resources I mark books
                                I teach lessons
                but the resentment is always there
                                I do my fucking duty
                                I do an extra parent’s evening
                but the resentment is always there
                                some manager asks how I am
                                I tell them I survive
                                              (but I don’t tell them
                                               I don’t thrive –
                                               `not quick enough)
                but the resentment is always there

                I offered my thought
                               my creation
                               my care
                because I nurtured growth
                              I cultured way
                              I wanted to give

                                AND YOU PAUSED
                IN YOUR BUSY-NESS AND PRESSURE
                JUST LONG ENOUGH TO GET ON
                                WITH YOUR BUSINESS AND PRESSURE TO COMPENSATE THE OH, SO, ANXIETY OF
                                MAKING THOSE TOUGH DECISIONS FOR THE SAKE OF PROGRESS (PROFIT?)
                                TO OVERLOOK

                                what I continue to think
                                what is still on the table
                                              unopened
                                but which has lost the will
                                              to project anymore

                                              you

                                              make

                                              me

                                              sick

                you made me sick
                                you created a sick teacher
                even while I attend each day
                                for the sake of absence management
                even while I create and mark
                                for the sake of growth
                even while I sit through a meeting
                                which dribbles on about ‘good to outstanding’ until it is running down your neck
                still the resentment is always there
                                sticky invisible and malignant

 

I know: we’ve heard it all before; just indulge this little toddler for a little while longer, will you; it has only slightly altered since I wrote it a good four years ago, like being in a boat on the sea, buffeted and brûlée’d, looking for where the sky becomes screen and the prow rips through it (c’mon, film buffs, what am I talking about?)

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown & management wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,
career wormhole: need
giving wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
managerialism wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
speech wormhole: fine
teaching wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
thought wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
work wormhole: work

 

teached / in the ass

Tags

2011, cognitive hierarchy, communication, conformity, curriculum, expertise, giving, infrastructure, management, managerialism, money, perception, play, politics, power, powerlessness, Principal, public service cuts, results-led education, seeing, value-bled education

 

 

 

                                          teached
                                          in the ass

                      whatever happened to that
                                public service
                      premised on creating and giving to
                                the ways to let one see
                      that its management ends by saying
                                we cannot all do
                                what we want?

                      whatever happened to that
                                public service
                      that proclaimed its strength of body through
                                pool of expertise
                      that its management ends by saying
                                we have no money
                                to do it?

                      whatever happened to that
                                public service
                      host and guardian of the humble exchange of idea
                                in every classroom
                      that its management ends by saying it’s not that simple
                                we have to jump
                                through hoops?

                      whatever happened to that
                                public service
                      that grew its own high-windowed
                                infrastructure
                      that its management ends by saying
                                it’s just not
                                what was needed?

                      whatever happened to that
                                public service
                      that plots a child’s cognitive development through
                                each and every curriculum
                      that its management ends by saying
                                it’s all about parents’
                                perception?

                      whatever happened to that
                                public service
                      that took the tumblings of a child’s play to measure
                                their trajectory
                      that its management ends by saying
                                does it improve
                                results?

                      whatever happened to that
                                public service
                      that pivots on the craft and poetry of
                                communication
                      that its management ends by saying
                                I am the Principal
                                I can do what I want?

                                          there is no good rejoinder
                                          to this song
                                          there is just no end
                                          to lost

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

communication & management wormhole: the MagOO Effect Effect
giving wormhole: plop!
managerialism wormhole: portrait
money wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
play & results-led education wormhole: the Apple
politics wormhole: … anymore
power wormhole: sit
seeing wormhole: gentle

 

the MagOO Effect Effect

Tags

2016, Big Picture, breakdown, career, cartoon, communication, conversation, CPD, detail, discussion, eyes, feedback, humour, identity, looking, management, Mr Magoo, observation, performance management, professional development, seeing, teaching

 

 

 

                                              the Magoo Effect

                when Management observe, they are All Eyes but only see
                                what you say
                                if it runs across a grid –
                                              they think they are doing sudoku –

                if they see what they think they see ‘Good, Good’
                                if they don’t see what you show them ‘Satisfactory’
                                              and no discussion
                                              – they saw it! –

                all the while mumbling about the Big Picture, they just
                                bump into things and have
                                              meaningful conversations with them
                                              which is gruellingly funny
                                              but never personal

C – o – n – t – i – n – u – i – n – g     P – r – o – f – e – s – s – i – o – n – a – l     D – e – v – e – l – o – p – m – e – n – t       

                                              looks me straight in the eye –
                myself and my work all open and akimbo on the desk – and says
                                let us observe you to see what you have
                                              to offer; creeped-out
                                              I still cannot recognise
                                              the development in all
                                              this performance
                                              I have to make:

                                the Magoo Effect

                                mistaking
                the apparent for the actual through seeing
                                selective detail

                                Performance Management
                is to Magoo the communication of teaching
                                into a cartoon

                get your eyes off my residuals

                                you’re embarrassing me

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown wormhole: I survived
career wormhole: … anymore
communication & seeing wormhole: poessay X: soul love – poewieview #2
eyes wormhole: bookmark
looking wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
identity & management wormhole: development
performance management wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
teaching wormhole: bamboo-green boiled sweet / with soft purple filling

 

development

Tags

2014, beach, death, doubt, foundation, ideas, identity, investment, management, pointlessness, professional development, walls, waves

 

 

 

                                              development

                                will never happen
                unless you allow ideas
                                              to die
                                              like waves on a flat beach
                                most ideas won’t work (but that
                management will drive them through
                                to recoup the return
                                on the initial speculative investment)
                                              but then
                                once the doubt is cast
                                              once the walls appear hollow
                                              even the deepest foundation reinforces
                                                              my own transparency

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

beach wormhole: dream 230315
death & walls wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
identity & pointlessness wormhole: spit / spot
management wormhole: my life / of others
waves wormhole: bougainvillea

 

my life / of others

Tags

2012, Allen Ginsberg, allowing, America, awkward, being, bittersweet, breathing, community, decades, desert, doing, echo, eyes, family, fog, giving, gravity, horizon, identity, inclusion, ink, life, lifetimes, listening, loneliness, love, management, marble, mauve, meaning, others, planet, pointlessness, purpose, radiation, relationship, secret, silence, sitting, society, talking to myself, time, twilight

 

y’know; sometimes you’ve just got to have a rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me, pathetic, awkward (don’t forget the ‘awkward’), poor-me whiiine to realise just how rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me-ie, pathetic, and awkward you can be; sigh – but there’s still some poetry in it, so I’ll share the self-pity about (caution: this is quite a high-pitched whiiine; it is strongly urged that you wear ear-protection – or at least stick your fingers in your ear reciting la-la-la – if you undertake to read this; you have been warned)

 

 

                my life
                                of others

                                how long has this been going on
                how long this has been going on

demands in their eyes pull me to them like a planet
                pull on me to contain them
                                pull deep in me through the latest casual orbit

                                I give because I can
                learnt silently over decades
                                              I have lived to allow ever wider
                                in order to include
                                              to neutralise my gravity in order to listen
                and let them breathe enough
                                              to find their own solution –
decades of leaning a hundred awkward ways
                                              to be with others
                                decades of privately finding ways
                to re-collect my own gravity –
                                                              shiny marbles with petrified ink –
                                              and decades having to let them go
                                                              one by one
                                              tearfully
                                eventually

                                              all under the great broad horizon
                                lost before the hills on the great broad horizon
                the beautiful-twilight mauve desert
                                              and the radiation presence of another close planet they
                cannot do the same for me
                                                              they will not do the same for me:

                                the squalls and foreclosures,
                                              they are of my own making
                an audience extends only so far as to conclude that it is all my own awkwardness – all I have to do is fit –
                                              before I have even finished explaining
                usually I don’t bother to finish
                                or even start
                                              the solution is ready-made
                                                              (with a few ‘hmm’s to make it look kindly)
                or just kept to themself
                                echoing loudly behind their eyes

                                              like sharing secrets with the fog
                                                              I find myself alone
                each one of them was the last person I could turn to in the world
                                but they all uncannily agree with each other
                                              they are the Company Man

                                I have done my bit for the family
                                I have done my bit for the team
                                I have done my bit for the community
                                                              all by not being there
                                              all by not getting in the way
                I cried when I was acknowledged once
                                                                                 it never happened again

                                I suppose
                                it’s just
                                              they need to keep from shattering in a thousand pieces
                they need to hold the whole damn thing together
so I give because I can
                                because it is right
                                                              but cannot expect return
                                                              they cannot give
                                                              what they expect
                                                              in return
                                for sure things are done things may be organised
                                                              (sometimes even when I want them)
                                              but for some greater good
                                                              for some greater career
                                                              for some greater legacy
                                                                                 not mine
                                              certainly not mine (‘America I have given you all
                                                              and now I am nothing’)

                                              when I work it is all about them
                when I stop it is all about how they performed
                                all that I do and don’t do
                                              is how it sits as support or burden
                                                              to them
                                conclusion: it is only them who do the work
                                              the thinking the organising
                                                              I seem to do nothing
                                                              really
                and do it annoyingly and awkwardly and thinkingly – roll of eyes – I
                                have to be managed to be of any competence
                                              (that’s meant affectionately) I
                                              am just the recipient of their
                                                              good work
                                                              (what do they call them these days – ‘clients’)
                                              my value
                                              my contribution
                                              what I am
                                                              are the price I pay to receive

                so I don’t say anything much – what’s the point?
                                I’ll put a few things out
                                              tentatively
                                (where I might be patronised at best – if I’m lucky,
                                                                                 if the planets are lined up right)
                                                              told it’s cute
                                              or individual
                                or much too clever to understand
                or it’s not what was needed
                                              or sorry, Mark, did you say something
                                                              and the audience will move deftly on
                                to what it wanted to talk about anyway
                or what it wanted to be doing
                                              all along

                                I mostly keep it to myself
                                                              here
                                              in the place I claim
                                              each day – time to myself bittersweet
                                                              (at siege from service and compliance)
                to ‘indulge’ myself ‘stay up too late’ ‘contemplate my navel’
                                                              otherwise I get ‘grumpy’
                                              I talk to
                                              myself
                                                              I am not the Company Man
                                                                                 no one
                                                                                 to share
                                                                                 me with
                no one beyond the managed obliged corporate return
                                              oh yes I return to myself
                                                              find my own meaningpurposeaudiencelove
                                              safe in the fifty year relationship
                                which is good for only one

                                decades whittled away
                                              here and there
                                                              chips and shavings on the floor
                                leaving a petrified face
                eyes wide mouth open
                                              bas-relief out from being

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Allen Ginsberg & giving wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
allowing & loneliness wormhole: letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.
being & breathing & sitting wormhole: the art of sit and follow
doing & identity wormhole: my beauty
echo wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
eyes & time wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
family wormhole: sometimes
fog homework: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
horizon wormhole: To my Mum
life & love wormhole: I love with all the history and lack of perfections at our command
lifetimes & others & pointlessness & society wormhole: Totnes
listening wormhole: before // writing?
management wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
mauve wormhole: ‘green post …’
meaning & talking to myself wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively

 

poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism

Tags

2012, behaviourism, communication, compromise, consultation, consumerism, creativity, dialogue, education, educational behaviourism, giving, Have, identity, learning, management, managerialism, measure, mechanism, opening, poessay, results-led education, teaching, vocation

 

 

 

                                poessay VIII:
                                educational behaviourism

                     teaching is a
                                conversation
                                          between teacher and pupil between school and teacher

                     management of education
                                has shifted from collegiate sharing to hierarchical interview
                                          without consultation
                     a velvet coup deep into the Heartland of Vocation – the desire to give
                                Opening of Mind –
                                          which has nullified teacher creativity and reduced learning to
                                                      controlled behaviour which you can Have

                                dialogue is dissipated
                                communication devolves to
                                demand and consumption
                                there is no interaction
                                there is no communication
                                only mechanism
                                because mechanism is easily switched
                                and mechanism is easily measured

                     the more that communication is systemic and systematic
                                the more it provides springboard for pupils to define themselves
                                          against
          defining the inverse norm of behaviour in which individuals site themselves
                     and against which education must then try to
                                work

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

communication wormhole: sunny day
compromise wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
creativity wormhole: I don’t think I could do it anymore
education wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
giving & Have wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
identity & teaching wormhole: “I think I’ll have a nice sandwich”
learning wormhole: Assessment for Learning: the Lamp
management & results-led education wormhole: … just saying is all I
managerialism wormhole: that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*
poessay wormhole: poessay VI: // truth

 

… just saying is all I

Tags

2012, career, dialectic, just saying, management, managerialism, observation, professional development, results-led education

 

 

 

                           … just saying, is all I

                           it is a vanity
                           to think you can regulate
                           and quantify teaching
                           and build your career
                           through managing it

                           it is sociopathic
                           to scrutinise the life out of
                           the dialectic of nurture
                           and call it professional
                           development

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

career wormhole: lost self
management & managerialism wormhole: the Lamp
results-led education wormhole: responsible

 

the Lamp

Tags

accountability, assessment for learning, communication, curriculum, learning, management, managerialism, National Curriculum, performance, performance management, politics, professional development, professionalism, resource, responsibility, syllabus, teaching craft

Since 1988 the government has been ‘reforming’ education: to make provision and attainment nationally uniform and transparent equally for the government, schools, employers, parents, teachers and, yes, pupils.   Since 1997 the government has ‘managerialised’ education: it has dismantled the semi-autonomous remit of the teacher to practise h/er vocation, it has redefined ‘professionalism’ away from vocation and value and into process and productivity in the name of ‘accountability’, and it has quantified this process and productivity and called it ‘professional development’ (soon to be ‘licensed’).   This has left teachers estranged from, and distrustful of, the very dynamic that makes teaching happen: the skilful, adaptive, speculative, compensatory, dancing, alternative, bargaining, creative, tentative, controlling, releasing, playing, explorative, human dialectic of communication between teacher and pupil.

How is this ‘reform’, this ‘professionalism’, experienced?*   The National Curriculum has been defined – and is periodically juggled with – into core/foundation/statutory subjects, clearly and simply, so that they could be listed in a pamphlet.   Very quickly these subjects became disseminated out into national/local/exam-board subject syllabi – what needed to be ‘covered’ in each subject, especially when the need to level/grade the content became compulsory as well as statutory (‘so amusing how the syllabi, at this point, became known as ‘specifications’ rather than syllabi).   When the syllabi arrived in schools they had to be managed into a fit state to enter the classroom, so they had to be disseminated again (perhaps, better, ‘dissected’), (or even ‘disembowelled’).   Each syllabus topic to be broken down into differentiated tasks, mapped cross-curricular-ly, and All/Most/Some’d.   The fragmentation going on from the simple National Curriculum to the classroom has been almost exponential.   What was simple at the essential level (government) became overwhelmingly complicated at the practical level (classroom) – it was pamphlet-able at the government level, it became incommunicable, unlearnable, at the classroom level.

* We were having a nice game of football one day.   As with all games there were hard bits, exhausting bits, unfair bits, but we were holding a 1-1 draw.   Then – while we were playing – there were new rules to the game introduced.   The goalposts were left where they were, actually, but we now had to move the ball around the field …on a trolley!   We all had to have trolleys ready for when we had possession of the ball.   The trolleys were fitted with directional wheels to aid mobility around the field, baskets to hold the ball, racks to hold the football boots that we’d need when we had to pass the ball, shoot or defend a negotiated tackle.   We were told, ‘We have given you all this equipment.   In return we want a fast, exciting, entertaining game.’   So we pushed these trolleys around the field.   The wheels mostly got stuck.   The ball usually fell out of the basket.   No one scored any goals.

The pupil thereby received curricula which were overwhelmingly broad and complicated.   They received them in restricted amounts of time (in an ever-squeezed timetable with up to fourteen different subjects including drives on technology, IT, Citizenship alongside the drives within the Big Three subjects) which, even for the most able, required them to develop guerrilla tactics to learn – in, learn-something, get out, next.   The pupil has lost the sense of studying (exploring, wondering … mastering) a subject, it now just receives – it consumes.     The pupil has become passive, incapable of developing h/er skills of independent study – not enough time for it (or rather, not enough perspective to develop any motive other than ‘getting’ it).   The pupils have become overwhelmed, even, with the simple ‘getting’ of education: overwhelmed by content, they have no perspective, or will, to link their knowledge together (to ‘stand under’ their studies to see how they all fit together), and they will become satisfied with a factual-based appreciation of their subjects at best (making A-level teachers scratch their heads at times wondering why on earth some pupils chose their subject).   At worst they will ‘can’t be bothered’ with it all because there is more to be gained in self-esteem by publically rejecting it all rather than the impossibility of trying to master it.

For the teacher: s/he might have been able to rationalise and deliver the disseminated monster that education has become, but it was decided that teachers are fundamentally a-qualified to do the job (certainly, any profession which strikes over pay in the early 80’s needs to be sorted out)!   The nobility of the teacher has therefore been systematically (and publically) dismantled.   Professionalism has been re-defined by questioning the received image of teacher as authority-by-role (both in discipline and knowledge), and even questioning the ‘semi-autonomous professional’, by infiltrating the hallowed ground of the classroom to ensure … measurability of what they do.   ‘Measurability’ of what the teacher does is now quantitative: by input (the production of the paperwork for the lesson which proves that it was planned, what can be seen to be ‘in’ the lesson to be ticked off), and output (professional development is now linked to a performance which is measured statistically – there is so much that needs to be ‘reduced’ and screened out of consideration to make a statistic measurable – even pay is now linked to that same extracted performance).   Teachers are no longer respected but are now accountable (as well as ‘accounted’) to their Head of Department, their Head of Year, their Senior Management team, their School Governors, parents, the government, the public…   The overwhelming proportion of a teacher’s energy has now to be focussed on making sure that they are justified to all parties, before they can start to communicate.   Teachers are now taxed by needing to manage their curricula fit for process and attainment (managing ‘within’) in response to a pervasive management from ‘outside’.   The management of courses has become more important than their delivery.   It is difficult for these courses to be coherent or stepped; it is easy for them to be overwhelming for both teachers to deliver and pupils to receive.   In the past some teachers were inspirational because they could provide the portal to the world of their subject by skill of communication – they knew, through their teaching, what the seed of the subject was that drew a child’s eye.   Now most teachers have a ‘seed catalogue’ and no ‘field’ in which to sow.   Teachers have been ‘accountability’d’ and ‘consistency’d’ out of their skill of communication – out of the skill of drawing the child’s eye – by having to focus on the (measurable) process of teaching rather than the communication of teaching.   Communication has become a rather indulgent distraction in the face of ‘hard’ realities like (selective) statistical results, finance, the school’s PR with parents.    Teachers are left actively paralysed in having to meet impossibly (impractically, needlessly) wide and widening curriculum and (summative) performance indicators.^

                                       ^
                                       The centipede was happy quite
                                       Until the toad, in fun
                                       Said, ‘pray, which leg moves after which?’
                                       This raised her doubts to such a pitch
                                       She fell distracted in the ditch
                                       Not knowing how to run.
                                                     – Marion Quinlan Davis

So how is Assessment for Learning a solution to the atrophying of teacher professionalism?   So many curricular and cross-curricular teaching schemes have been floated during the last twenty years that have shown that attainment (no matter how you measure it) is not affected.   It was necessary to look at the learning in education as much as the teaching.   It has emerged that Assessment for Learning is the mechanism which links the teaching (delivered) to the learning (received) and still enable the measurability so desperately needed (needed, needed) when education has become the political potato that it has.   How does it connect teaching with learning?   It provides a template through which topics can be taught and learnt using the same language.   Topics are delivered broken down into levels 3-8 or grades E-A* and pupils apprehend them at whatever level/grade they can develop.   Both teachers and pupils understand the language of levels 3-8 or grades E-A*.   The skill of the teacher is in providing the ‘field’ of endeavour, the work of the pupil is to cultivate 3-8/E-A* as far as they can.   This co-working, through a commonly understood language and purpose, is called a dialectic; the working of this dialectic is called … teaching and learning.   Assessment for Learning enables that dialectic so that the power to teach and learn can be returned back to their rightful owners.   When Assessment for Learning happens the whole of the edifice which has become education becomes workable rather than impossible – education becomes what it always should have been, an enlightenment.

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

communication & performance management & professionalism & teaching craft wormhole: I don’t think I could do it anymore
learning wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
management wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’
politics wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)

 

Put service back into people rather than productivity

Tags

communication, decision, education, holistic education, management, managerialism, money, organic education, structural time, teaching craft, values

As an individual, and not overly-excitable, teacher I have been growingly resentful of, and frustrated with, and exhausted by, the management of education on a quasi-business level.   I am moved with concern for the whole school when decisions are made on purely structural, financial criteria at the expense of educational criteria.   I am worried that individuals within the school (both pupils and teachers) are seen as secondary concerns with management decisions, not as those who are the beneficiaries of those decisions.

I would like to hear much discussion about why we teach, the value of the subjects we teach, what we would like our pupils to end up with having graduated through our institution, what we consider to be ‘an educated pupil’, how we can best educate such a wide range of ability, effectively, on whether a teacher is an artist or an operative, is a crammed curriculum the proper way to culture a pupil, what are the values of the school and how do we actually communicate them to the pupils etc?

I personally tussle with the way we currently educate our children; I have problems with much of the affective syllabus we deliver.   Therefore I would welcome a holistic and natural overhauling of what we teach and how we deliver it.   But I am unshakeable in the conviction that education is possibly the most important activity that one human being can do with another.

There are only some jobs done in teaching which could be handed over without increasing the need for administrative communication and liaison.   They usually don’t ‘stand alone’ but are part of the business of teaching children.   If you extract an aspect from a teacher’s whole job and call it ‘administrative’ and thereby give it to somebody else, you simply create yet another route of liaison and communication and extend the administrative nature of the task across two people.   It makes it worse.   You need to recognise that the job of teaching has grown plural, but still remains a whole job – a holistic job.   If you try to split the job up into aspects you simply end up making the job even more – and unnecessarily – complicated.   To enable the job of teaching to happen you need to provide the structural time for the teacher to do the whole job.   Money would be better spent on increasing time for teachers to co-ordinate the tasks themselves as part of their teaching.

A teacher – of whatever level or duty – hasn’t the time to do their job properly because they have a full timetable to teach.   The ancillary tasks I input in my ‘own’ time: after school hours and at home.   Because these ancillary tasks – nevertheless essential to my teaching – occur in time which is in conflict with my family and personal time, they are variably performed well or badly (or not at all).   However they are essential to my teaching and therefore my lessons are consequently taught well, badly or not at all.nbsp;  The performance is haphazard and therefore the learning of my classes is haphazard.   The stress I experience in my job is that engendered not only from having too much to do (in order to do it well) but also in knowing that I could have done it well if I had had enough time/energy for it.   I knowingly run substandard lessons because I haven’t the structural resources to do otherwise.

This leaves little structural time for teachers to prepare/feedback on teaching or perform pastoral support.nbsp;  If you increased teaching/pastoral-support teachers you would be spreading tasks which are part of a holistic activity across more than one teacher and learning experience.   The opportunities for that holistic learning experience to fail would thereby increase.   If you reduce the teacher’s timetable, that teacher could do her teaching and pastoral duties herself.

The key to establishing a ‘community’ style of organisation in the school (rather than the present ‘boxed’ one) is to find the mechanism which bridges the gap between teacher aspirations, expertise and experience and the management structure which allows it to work.   As has grown in recent decades, an overly-weighted managerial system seeks to regulate human communication (in this case teaching) within a structure which cannot allow for individualism, spontaneity – the humanity inherent within communication/teaching.   To weigh it the other way – towards establishing a community of educative, human communication – would need the re-empowering of the teacher with trust in the care and instinct which made them take up the profession of teaching in the first place.   There need to be managerial mechanisms which value those instincts rather than just make them accountable.   A new structure of management and implementation must encompass both teachers’ frustrations and their hopes.   If the structure of a school fails to meet teachers’ frustrations it will fail because teachers will retreat to their own efforts and not share in the responsibility; if it fails to meet teachers’ hopes they will start to become frustrated.   A new structure is going to have to be quantumly different – in scope, in value and in trust – from any other business-management scheme which has existed in the last 15 years (since, say 1988) in order to inspire the confidence of a staff.

You do not need to teach teachers how to teach, you need to allow them to teach.   The management of teaching needs to be supportive before it is either organising or assessing.   It needs to treat them like performers rather than operatives.   Change in teaching does not need to come from the bottom up (teachers have done enough of that for the past 15 years), but from the top down.   There is a need for change of the contextual structure in which teachers work.   There is a need of change in the way management views, values and manages its resource: to view it not as a manufacturing tool which is set to optimum productivity but as a human service which needs a supportive culture in order to thrive.

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

communication wormhole: Woodbrooke labyrinth / affirmations
education wormhole: Now, let’s think this through, shall we? The clunkish philosophy driving today’s education.
management wormhole: management and managerialism
managerialism worhole: inverse superhero
money wormhole: dropped ’till you’ve shopped
teaching craft wormhole: teaching performance
values wormhole: where is there a Middle Way when you want one … / … / … oh!?