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_________________________________|—–

allowing wormhole: need
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,

 

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Totnes

Tags

2015, arrival, being, career, communication, dandelions, dog, drawing, feet, identity, lifetimes, living, looking, meaning, muse, others, passing, pattern, pink, pointlessness, portrait, ripple, river, society, sound, talking, teaching, tide, Totnes, travelling, value-bled education, value-led education, values, work

 

 

 

                                                              Totnes

                                talk
the 250 miles long about the work and the communication done –
                done – thud! – with balls on the table –
                                and working with value
                                              and never the twain shall meet
                                                              with all the crack of void amid

                                hah!
                I tried to navigate between value-bled and value-led teaching
and can only work part time now –
                                splintered work from life

                                but
                you have to stick to the A roads
                                whether they are by-passed or not
                                              and eventually you have
                                                              to arrive
                and watch the dandelion stems by the river
                                is it out or coming in …?

                                I think
                                I learnt
to let lives be and not disturb the ripples
                                but all along
                I didn’t realise the ripples have no pattern –
dogs on the quay wag one end pant the other
                look up river look down
                                then sit
                                panting

                                I thought
                to read the ripples, tell their hidden story
                                for all the world to see
                                              (for all the world to flow)
                but I didn’t realise all the while the ripples have no pattern
like the heh-heh-hrr-hr conversations
                                from the spreading terrace of the
                                              Steam Packet Inn

                                              ~O~~~

                                now
                there’s a dude with tattoos, vest (and
                                is that a joint?) finished work, she takes a call nahh!
                                              lays down
                and the most beautiful pink
                                soles ‘n’ toes
                                suns rise
                behind topless dandelions
                                              (in the next life
                                               she will sit up and sketch intricately
                                               to the right and just below centre of the next page
                                               of her notebook)

 

(short break from work over a bank holiday, to Totnes in Devon with Carol to see Elizabeth – the medicine of travel)

 

 

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

being & feet & travelling wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
career & talking wormhole: Trinity Arts
dog wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
identity & looking & others wormhole: lifetime
living wormhole: (another / gulp of air)
meaning wormhole: addicted / compulsive / identity
muse wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
passing wormhole: prologue-ing
ponk wormhole: hot summer / morning
pointlessness wormhole: mass
river wormhole: the 20th century
society wormhole: up here
sound wormhole: 1963
teaching wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
value-led education wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II
values wormhole: breathe it all / in
work wormhole: To my Mum

 

poessay IX – … just saying, is all II

Tags

2013, 5*, career, conformity, consistency, dialogue, education, expectation, managerialism, outcome-led education, poessay, practice, professionalism, rhetoric, speech, teaching, value-bled education, value-led education

 

 

 

                poessay IX – … just saying, is all II

                                              listening
                to a teacher delivering to his group: “… them’s the rules and regulations … it is vital that … looking smart …”
                                … something about school uniform
                                                              I guess

                                                              it is this corporate appearance-led rhetoric in education
                which I can no longer even pretend to back
                                because career-long I have not been able to engage any
                                              dialogue with it

                being ‘professional’ has ceased to be a practice
                                              it is now a conformity
                                                              it is now a consistency
                                                                                 no dialogue
                                                                                 just expectation
and we all know what happens to consistency when the lead shifts
                from value-led to outcomes-led
                                (yes … value-bled)

                                              I have not been able to work out a position
                                              behind the rhetoric because
                I have not been allowed the ‘give’ (of course the ‘take’ is ‘rivers deep mountains wide’)
                                              the ‘call’
                                and certainly the ‘response’
                                                              has been dodged and bluffed like a poker hand

                the exercise and practice of teaching professionalism
                                has been ‘chumped’ up down and sideways
                                                              never to be listened to again and again and again

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
education wormhole: I could step / more open
managerialism wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
poessay wormhole: poessay VII: // true revolution
practice wormhole: should is good when / too used to cruise
professionalism wormhole: just saying, is all – III
speech wormhole: a cup of tea, gov
teaching wormhole: letters to Mum III – ongoing-term // eventually
value-led education wormhole: teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?

 

teaching: which is it going to be, procedure or nurture?

Tags

government, managerialism, money, organic education, performance, politics, professionalism, resource, spending, structural time, teaching craft, value-led education, workload

The only solution to teacher workload is to structurally invest time.   Any other spending on education without investing in structural time costs less but is not cost-effective because it doesn’t enhance the provision of education.   The provision of education can only be enhanced by recognising and resourcing the central resource to teaching: the teacher.   The principle resource a teacher needs to do her job is structural time.   The job of a teacher is a holistic job which incorporates many aspects.   The individual teacher must manage those aspects pro-actively, not in crisis, and certainly not compromised into a situation of being exploited.   The teacher does not need to be managed by a system which doesn’t recognise the holistic nature of her job, nor by anyone who is not directly involved in her teaching.   When the job of teaching becomes divided, time-managed, finance-managed, politically-managed, pressure-managed, productivity-managed, then the workload becomes too much.   The cup is not even half-full it is leaking very slowly through numerous hairline cracks and the sellotape used to mend them.

Teachers need to be managed as a human resource rather than as an a-human means of productivity.   When this is done the ethos of teaching will take care of itself.

I see these two strategies (management of human resource; nurture of the ethos of teaching) as being symbiotic: having additional staff to teach the same number of classes will mean that each teacher will have more time to prepare, assess and feedback on the lessons they teach.   It is simply no use at all giving a teacher a full timetable and no structural support time to deliver that timetable.   When no structural time is given to the preparation/feedback of lessons it is left to the individual teacher’s sense of professionalism – in their own, unpaid, time – to provide that preparation/feedback.   If the management of teaching comes to rely on – and expect – that level of professional commitment without either paying for it or supporting it, then it is exploiting teacher’s professionalism.

You would need to halve every teacher’s timetable (// double the amount of teachers) in order to support professionalism rather than exploit it.   Only then could you expect (and receive) true, clear attainment in a school, a year group, nationally and for each individual without at all having to manipulate statistics.   Yes you would have to double expenditure on education but it would be the only cost-effective way of spending that much money.   Saving money by spending smaller amounts on peripheral items of education (yes even on new buildings, computers, status) makes little difference and is soon used up.   A teacher is integral to teaching and lasts for 30-40 years if well-maintained.

The national government ought to do its job (define the Education Act, provision/entitlement – not to stick pins into the system while seeking some other goal); the local government ought to do its job (provide the resources to schools with which to serve the provision/enablement and not have to find ways of saving money but simultaneously expect the same service); and the schools can then do their job: enable.   If this happened there would be no exploitation of teacher professionality, education would happen and there would be no need of bolt-on interaction between governments and schools.   And teachers would work primarily – and happily – with the true sense of professionalism (i.e. vocation) rather than the peripheral effect of professionalism, committed (obliged) hours of (result-only-measured) work.

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

managerialism & money wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
performance wormhole: Continuing / Professional / Development
politics wormhole: management and managerialism
professionalism & workload wormhole: Professionalism … in teaching
resource wormhole: teaching performance
teaching craft wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
value-led education wormhole: I think I know why I don’t like teaching, even though I quite like teaching and am quite good at it, even if I do have to say so myself

 

I think I know why I don’t like teaching, even though I quite like teaching and am quite good at it, even if I do have to say so myself

Tags

accountability, management, performance, professional development, professionalism, results-led education, stress, teaching craft, tick-box, value-led education, workload

a focus on the mechanism used in schools to ‘improve standards’ called Professional Development which actually just measures the effective endeavour right out of the job itself; rendering it Absurd …

I think I know why I don’t like teaching.   In the last 10-12 years the need and obsession to identify accountability as a means of defining professionality in teaching has worked through the system like a virus.   As it has strengthened and gained ‘currency’ as legitimate discourse within public service, it has found ways of measuring the delivery of teaching.   In measuring the delivery of teaching, it has had to focus on aspects of teaching which are measurable (i.e. what can be seen to be done, what can be ticked to have been seen).   To focus on the aspects of teaching which are measurable, the monitoring of teaching can only be done periodically, according to its own timetable (i.e. not ongoingly as part of the whole delivery of teaching in the school), and thereby creates a whole additional pressure and expectation for the teacher.   A teacher is left with a dilemma which they can’t refuse: either teach with humanity, compassion and principle and be declared unworthy of the licence to teach; or teach to the tick-boxes, whatever that takes, and teach yourself not to feel loss.

Because performance management is based on this occasional and additional measure, there is an inbuilt disregard of the motive and commitment – the extra time and energy – that goes into the actual day to day, lesson to lesson, stack-of-books to stack-of-books, tracking to tracking, resource-creation to resource-creation of the job.   That is all extra to a ‘bottom line’, it is disregarded (it is taken as given), and it is especially disregarded when the adventitious measure of the teacher falls short in some way.   In this way morale is deflated – ongoingly and relentlessly.   The only strokes you’ll get from the job will be if you happen to be good at providing things which are measurable, a skill quite independent of the skills of teaching in the first place.

An NQT’s (Newly Qualified Teacher completing their first year after qualification) contract will not be renewed.   Kids love him, he energises both high and low ability pupils because of his natural cleverness and ability to engage young people in a natural, intellectual dialogue.   However, because he refuses to give work and consideration to items highlighted in his performance management – whether he puts a starter here or a Learning Objective there: these things which are easily measurable (tick-boxed) where he doesn’t score well – he will not continue teaching at his initial school.   He has natural communicative and pedagogic ability but the system will not nurture or exploit it unless he mangles that ability into a meticulous, measurable procedure that would numb and atrophy it altogether with fore-thought.   He might chose not to – I would say that is a wise and courageous choice; I wish I had that conviction.   I wonder how many other ‘natural’ teachers are excised from the profession in this way.

Be very clear about this: the teaching profession is being bleached clean by retaining those people who can demonstrate narrowly-defined, adventitious and algorithmic teaching skills (bish-bash-bosh skills, the quickest way to make a certain statistic rise), leaving those teachers inclined to organic and human communication to wait bitterly for their retirement if they can last that long.

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

performance wormhole: Assessment for Learning: the Prologue
professionalism & teaching craft & workload wormhole: Hartley’s Jam
results-led education & value-led education wormhole: ‘but, Mark, what do you want …’

 

‘but, Mark, what do you want …?’

Tags

2011, 5*, career, consultation, education, experience, managerialism, performance management, pupils, responsibility, results-led education, speech, targets, teaching, value-led education

 

 

 

                      ‘but, Mark, what do you want …?’

            well let’s see now what have I got, oh –
decades of experience and experimentation and care –
                                   hmmm

to be consulted-involved-included in the Great and Noble task at hand but don’t give me your shiny responsibility, there is no value in ambush-eyed pursuit of target-endeavour, I’m tired of watching the triangle fall from its point again and again and I’m tired of being measured wanting every time it won’t let me be a part of the dialectic, even though it holds me responsible for the outcomes
            every time

I either play the Manipulate-the-Outcomes Game
            and be ‘successful’
or I can offer my work and thought out of value
            and be ignored
but I cannot play this Game with value although
I must submit my worth to the judgement of its consequence:
            inglorious
            ignominy

so I am left helpless to teach with value versus teaching with outcomes
and the ‘value’ isn’t manifesto-led marching-and-drum
but simply the human practice and craft of communicating and moving pupils
            on

            that’s all

the very value that managerialism marginalises as being detrimental to [outcome -led]
            progress

outcome-led requires value-practiced to be either/or rather than
            pre/with
I don’t want either/or so don’t ask me
            what I want

            let me be
            what I practise

 

 

 

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

career & education & results-led education & value-led education wormhole: Apologia
managerialism & performance management wormhole: Assessment for Learning: the Prologue
speech wormhole: chores to do – diptych
targets wormhole: the ghost with open wound
teaching wormhole: you don’t talk to me
value-led education wormhole:

 

Apologia

Tags

agenda, anxiety, AST, Big Picture, bureaucracy, career, compromise, creativity, dialectic, education, management, managerialism, organic education, performance management, politics, professionalism, resource, responsibility, results-led education, truth, value-led education, values

After years of struggle, isolation, stonewalling (Hadrian-walling!), silence, evasion a teacher might, quite out of the blue, be offered a role or responsibility so that their work might be developed and disseminated for the benefit of educational- (for the Benefit of All!) provision.   At last, recognition!   But then, minutes later you are being led to your desk in a temporarily-divided corridor room (in which you will have to battle for desk space by pulling back the desk through the temporary wall), there where you will practise your advanced skill (by bottling it up into a tube and sending it through the tube system), your very own prison cell …

Recognition (in the system which has systematically repulsed work which is not constructed, developed or packaged in the pre-scribed manner) is the opportunity to be exploited.   Responsibility is the means through which you will be exploited (given with laurel and epaulets into your own hands).   Opportunity is the (‘very interesting’) work of making your skill ‘fit’ into the Big Picture.   Experience is the history of compromise through which values and ideals will be lost into the Big Picture.

Success in the Big Picture Bureaucracy entails that truth is an agenda over which you have no control, principle is declarative, creativity is a formula, debate is a compromise, influence is an exercise of power, delivery is an over-riding Tough Decision, professionalism is the exercise of abstraction.   A skill (in teaching, say) is developed (despite Continuing Professional Development) through a dialectic between the Provision (the Teacher) and the Receptor (the pupil).   This dialectic yields truth which is explorative within the service (not pre-defined or even pre-determined), a principle which is exercised freshly, uniquely and adjusted-ly each time, creativity which comes from the minute detail of the dialectic, debate which is the (means of the) dialectic, influence which is an agreement, delivery which is the nurture to see the dialectic through, and professionalism which is effective (dialectical) giving.

The compromise is not evil, but it is misguided, borne out of an impatience with the progress of organic education, wanting to direct and control the progress of an education which has become ‘intensive’ as a result.   Why was there an impatience?   Because education came to the attention of politicians (themselves caught in their own compromise borne of neo-conservative power-control-agenda in the face of emergent globalisation) and the regulation of education became a propaganda (both ‘outside’ and ‘in’ the service) through which to justify Global Truth as Control…

Therefore I offer my work – itself borne despite recognition, support, investment, enthusiasm from the School – not to the school but wide open to the world of anyone who might culture it.   I will publish it (with a view to balance the paucity of alternative-values educational publication compared to the whole wash of government-published material), I will not make money or career out of it (in order to avoid the Compromise), I will offer it anonymously (as long as I can, in order to avoid becoming a Voice which must be accountable to an agenda item and not the dialectic).   I will cast it as a seed.   Let it stick in the dirt.   Let it grow.   Organically.   If it will.

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

compromise wormhole: just what
managerialism wormhole: nightmare
professionalism wormhole: there was a call and far from no response
resource wormhole: the ghost with open wound
results-led education wormhole: ‘once upon a quarter century …’
value-led education wormhole: through a cracked glass greenly
values wormhole: the path / no echo

 

through a cracked glass greenly

Tags

2012, 7*, communication, disempowerment, glass, management, managerialism, performance, politics, results-led education, system, teaching art, teaching craft, value-led education

 

 

 

                           through a cracked glass greenly

                it’s bad enough
            I offer my thought and care
                and creation
                and you
            sweetly no edge completely
                side-blind me and
                expect of me
            to perform to your management
                which …
            … sorry Mark were you saying
                something?

                                          —o—

            there was nothing wrong with the tri-partite system
            nothing wrong with leaving before 16
            there was nothing wrong with selection
            there was nothing wrong with vocationalism
            nothing wrong with apprenticeships
            there was nothing wrong with the National Curriculum
            there was nothing wrong with O-levels
            nothing wrong with GCSEs GNVQs or Btecs
            nothing wrong with SATs
            nothing wrong with Assessment for Learning
            nothing wrong even with Academies

            it’s just that they all of them
            haven’t been done properly
            because Those Who Don’t Teach
            stand aside
            and see only
            the full stop

            but education is not
                the full stop
            it is not the words the syntax
                the grammar
            it is not the tense the parse
                or the propositions
            it is the communication
                it is the communication

            you don’t see by looking at your own eye lens
            you can’t bite your own teeth
            you can’t teach by plan and performance

                                          —o—

            don’t tell me to differentiate my outcomes
                I prefer to see where on the horizon
                we find ourselves
            don’t tell me to personalise my differentiation
                I prefer to hold eye-contact
            don’t tell me to act with the corporation
                I prefer to communicate
            don’t tell me to respond to OFSTED criteria
                I prefer to make the journey myself
            don’t tell me anything
                I learnt how to walk
            and I learnt how to talk
                when I was two

 

 

 

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

management & teaching art & teaching craft wormhole: plaintive // plaintiff? // but not precious
glass wormhole: ‘staring through the glass …’
managerialism wormhole: I didn’t see it coming
performance wormhole: manifesto
politics wormhole: militant naïveté