New placement. New rules...

Oh dear. I'm not very good at this blogging malarkey am I? 17th January was the last one... Using my marvelous Mathematical skills I can tell you that was over a month ago.

So since then, much has happened. After finishing at Norbury Manor I was delighted, nay, thrilled, at the prospect of having sessions at IoE again. We welcomed each other back like comrades after war, we swapped harrowing tales of misdemeanour and rudeness, fights and confrontations, and bitchy rumours about other student teachers. But we had survived Placement 1 without failure or 'Cause for Concern', every student teacher's nightmare. We also had celebratory hummus after sessions.

Two weeks flew past and before we knew it we were back in school once again, for School Placement 2. I'm sure I mentioned it previously but my new school is Haberdasher Aske's Hatcham College in New Cross... formerly a Girls Grammar, then a mixed yet still selective state school, now a fully fledged mixed comprehensive academy in the heart of New Cross. Did I mention it's in New Cross. Wedged between Peckham and Lewisham? That's the one.

I'm actually 5 weeks into the placement now. During my time here I've discovered lots of new things about teaching and teachers and pupils and things. Mostly about what it's like to work in a school where hardly any of the other teachers want to be there. The pupils aren't actually that bad at all - obviously there are some pains in the backside and some with filthy attitudes to learning and teachers in general...

"Miss she never teaches us! All she does is go through an example on the board and then get us to do questions! Sometimes we do other stuff too, like games and activities and that, but she doesn't know how to teach us properly!"

Some kids these days. Don't know they're born.

I think what's mainly so difficult at this placement is the attitudes of the other teachers and members of staff here. Early on in my placement, one lunchtime, I found myself sitting among a throng of teaching assistants while we were all eating some lunch. The conversation quickly turned to the morning's lessons;

"Oh my god, today I was in this student teacher's lesson. She was so shit, she couldn't keep them under control."
"Yeah I know. These student teachers are rubbish, and they always look down on us. They don't know anything about teaching."

No shit Sherlock. Obviously they didn't know I was a student teacher, but I just couldn't help getting annoyed. Doesn't the phrase 'student teacher' tell you something? We're not even qualified - of course we know fuck all!

In addition to this, there is something that feels so... lax, about the attitudes of the other teachers. At Norbury, all the Maths teachers cared about their lessons; even if they had 7 lessons in one day, they would still make the effort to make some of their lessons different, and interesting. Caroline and I were always remarking about how much pressure we felt there was to match up to their standards, and as a result our lesson plans are now top-notch. But here, most lessons aren't even thought about until they arrive. It's a case of 'open the textbook, here's a topic we haven't done yet, do example, sit back while pupils get on with it'.

And the nightmare of the student teacher: I'd planned a double lesson (that's 1h40) for a Year 8 on Probability. Only to discover they had already done it earlier in the year, and the class teacher couldn't be bothered to remember, or check my lesson plan and tell me that they had already covered it. Did he help me out at that point? Did he fuck. I then exemplified the typical Hatcham Maths teacher, chose another topic out of the textbook, did an example altogether, and let them get on with it. But what did they expect me to do? Pull out another lesson from the bag that I'd done last year? I've been doing this for under 20 weeks.

Oh well. I'm learning a lot about Behaviour Management. Like the fact that no-one knows how to help me deal with it. I don't think this is anyone's fault, really. So I'm partly still trying to find my own way, but I'm just so glad I'm only here for another 5 weeks after Easter.

Hopefully I won't need it. For my NQT year at St James' Senior School for Boys!

Quite simply can't wait.

I didn't realise lesson planning was so hard.

I think this will just be a short one - the point I'm making is self-evident in the title really.

So at Norbury Manor, there are 16 student teachers. Yes, 16. We've pretty much invaded the staff room, with our enormous cafetiére and shared coffee mornings (I now know why teachers smell of coffee - without it teachers die), and also our stories about our first teaching experiences. But, we two in the Maths department (Caroline and I) have been feeling slightly left out, in that most of the ST's in other subjects have taken over their given classes already. I was thinking it might be to do with the nature of Maths, that you can't really chop and change too much with the topics you're teaching - you can't teach 'Equations' before you've taught 'Algebra' for example. But I've been there for three weeks now and I'm getting a little bit bored of just observing.

So I mentioned it in my mentor meeting, that I'd quite like to get stuck in and start teaching. Personally I quite like being chucked in at the deep end and told to get on with it, something about the pressure of it. Might also explain why I preferred exams to coursework. So we've been given a nice little folder with the pupils' scheme of work in, and told to start preparing some lessons to give before half term, with the aim of taking full responsibility for classes after half term (one week to go!)

So I read the advice from the IoE regarding lesson planning. It says that, initially, planning for an hour lesson will take us 2-3 hours. This was my expression at first;

But it actually does.

You have to think about, and plan for, many different scenarios apart from the actual teaching of the subject itself. What pupils might struggle with. If any pupils in the class will need extra support. How long certain tasks will take. Extra provision for those really nerdy kids that finish really quickly. Also continuous assessment is a big thing at the moment.

Next to every task or activity you set, you have to explain how you are going to assess the pupils' learning, and whether they have learnt anything from you in the measly 50 minutes you have with them. Mini whiteboards are bloody great.

So this is a Year 7 class 2 times a week, a Year 8 class 3 times a week, and my wonderful Year 10 bottom set 4 times a week. That's 9 classes a week, and I just know that proper teachers are thinking 'That's nothing...' But they've got bare skills (yes, I'm down with the kids) in lesson planning, some saying they plan lessons in their heads. Except when Ofsted pay a visit. 

So in conclusion, I started my lesson plans for Year 8 'Pie Charts' and Year 7 'Angles' at 7.45pm tonight. I started writing this blog post at 11.23pm. And they're not finished yet. 

"So has everybody understood?" "...Yeah." "So what's the answer?" "... I don't know."

Every Wednesday at the IoE, we're given the chance to attend lectures from illustrious guest-speakers on areas of teaching which are relevant to all teachers, regardless of which subject you choose to teach. So far we've covered Teachers' Legal Obligations, Classroom Discipline, Voice Care, Special Educational Needs (SEN) and English as an Additional Language (EAL), the last two of which we have been told firmly are not related in any way. It's not surprising children with EAL struggle to learn and develop at the same rate as their English companions - have you ever been given part of a History lesson in rapid French and been expected to understand what was going on? 

We have. Even though I have a little grasp of French, I was so busy trying to translate what I'd just heard that I missed the next part of the lesson. That was a great way to help us empathise with EAL pupils, who are regularly considered slow learners and not very bright, and we received some very valuable information about how to help such pupils. 

So that was last week. Today we were given some incredibly helpful tips on assessing pupils' progress, from a man who you might recognise from BBC2's 'The Classroom Experiment', and is Deputy Director and Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the IoE... *phew that was a mouthful*. Here is a picture.

Dr. Dylan William. He was actually pretty terrifying. Especially stalking the lecture hall rows with a big red microphone getting people to answer questions. Fortunately I had some kind of sixth sense today, which told me to sit in the middle of the row.

But there was plenty to think about, safe with twenty trainee teachers to the left and right of me. The importance of good questioning was touched on, where you plan your questions beforehand to ensure you get pupils thinking and also, curious! There was a really good example, more science/geography than maths but I loved it anyway.

Ask your pupils "why is it colder at the top of a mountain, when it's closer to the sun?" and watch them rack their brains coming up with an answer!

Even better, there followed a great maths question.

"Can you have a triangle with two 90 degree angles?"

This elicited some very intriguing answers.

1) "The triangle would have to be infinitely tall. Because parallel lines meet at infinity..."

Clearly this teacher had put some very strange ideas into this pupil's head. At this point you'd probably try and explain that parallel lines never meet. Not in 3 dimensions anyway... 

2) "Well, angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees. So there's 90 + 90 already. Can you have an angle of 0 degrees?"

This went on to a discussion about a 0 degree angle, and plain straight lines and so on.

The final answer... quite simply, I hope I get a pupil as bright as this.

3) "Yes you can. What if you start at the North Pole, and put the other two points somewhere on the Equator?"

... To have a pupil naturally refer to non-Euclidean geometry, without prior knowledge of the subject, I believe is quite something. This is why I can't wait to get into the classroom; pupils will always surprise you with completely unique ways of thinking! I now just need to get the skills to help pupils from all walks of life, with different brains, different ways of thinking, develop their understanding. Without just doing it my way.

How intelligent do teachers need to be?

Well hello. We meet again...

This will be me next Wednesday. I have been given the name of the school I'll be working in for four months, Oct-Jan: Norbury Manor Business and Enterprise College for Girls. I'm rather excited about it... mainly because LOOK AT ONE OF THE BUILDINGS

I'm thinking of getting the girls to work out the volume of the building. They could take one cuboid each.

But in all seriousness. If you have read this blog title, you'll know I've been thinking about teachers and their intellect, and whether people necessarily have to be brain-boxes with PhD's and insane mental arithmetic skills in order to become good educators in Mathematics.

In short, my answer would be no. Of course you can't teach something if you have no knowledge of the subject (well, I don't believe you can teach effectively if you haven't got that good subject knowledge) but, it requires a hell of a lot more in terms of fully understanding your subject, being able to make connections, and of course social and communication skills, in order to impart knowledge to your learners. 

To take an analogy from my own degree experience. Those who had extremely in-depth, extensive knowledge of their subject (not mentioning any Cardiff University Mathematics lecturers *ahem* Marletta) I felt, were in fact the hardest to learn from. They certainly were impressive to watch, with their 6 chalkboards full of calculations and 5-A4-page long proofs, but rarely would they stop to explain what they were doing, why "for any ε > 0, δ >0, and complex number w, there exists a complex number z in U with |z − z₀| < δ and |f(z) − w| < ε " (Casorati-Weierstrass Theorem, Complex Function Theory, 3rd Year, aka Worst Year Of Maths Of My Life)

I'll be honest - I didn't do terribly well in my degree. Well, in the Maths part of it anyway - luckily I had my Music to back me up and scrape me a tidy 2.1... but on its own, the Maths was dreadful. But I don't think that puts me at any disadvantage in becoming a good Secondary Maths teacher. As long as I have the sufficient knowledge to talk about GCSE/A-level Maths confidently, freely (and clearly!), I think I'm set. 

There are obviously so many other things which are important to becoming a good teacher. That is my ultimate goal of course, and I don't think I'm anywhere near it yet. But the idea of teachers' intellect was playing on my mind today after a particular incident in a session at the IoE today.

One of my course-mates - and I mean 'mate' in the loosest terms possible - I understand holds a PhD in Mathematics and Philosophy from Cambridge, and is currently teaching postgrad students there, part-time between sessions here at the IoE. In a presentation a friend of mine (Ben) was giving, about vocabulary in probability, the following conversation (accusation?) took place;

Lee-of-superior-educational-ranking (L.O.S.E.R) : "That thing you said about an equal, 50/50 probability being 'fair' is completely WRONG. You shouldn't be using language like 'fair' when you're talking about probability, it describes the situation like 'fair dice' or 'a fair coin'... *more philosophical nattering* ... but yeah, what you've said is just WRONG." 

Ben (B) : "..."

So is that how Lee is going to react when a pupil makes a tiny misnomer like that? Luckily Ben realised Lee was being his usual academic self and brushed it off, but a young 14-year-old really trying to understand this new topic of 'probability' would probably have been completely crushed, and disillusioned to further learning, for fear of being completely ripped apart like poor Ben was.

So I believe it's really not enough to have infinite wisdom on the subject matter, but to be open to learning how to effectively impart your knowledge, and how to help young Mathematics students reach their full potential.

... I mean, I still can't do mental arithmetic. There's an interesting doodle at the side of this page if you look closely; 1 + 1 = pencil. 

An introductory rambling.

Welcome, welcome! 

I've decided to start keeping a blog during my ITT (initial teacher training) year, not just to keep all you lovely folks partially amused but mostly to keep track of my experiences, thoughts and progress through the year. So really it's more of a diary. Which anyone in the world can read. You nosy people.

Anyway, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere if you want some juicy gossip - today is the first day, of my third week, of my Secondary Mathematics PGCE. I have been attending numerous tutor-led sessions, regarding educational hot topics such as The Nature of Mathematics, Pedagogy (a strange word which refers to the way in which you teach your chosen subject), Microteaching, SEN, and of course, Behaviour Management.

Managing Behaviour. It seems to be the primary concern of all trainee teachers, especially after receiving this interesting snippet of knowledge: 

The working atmosphere in the classroom: a ten-level scale

Level 10 sounds like a dream. "You feel completely relaxed and comfortable; able to undertake any activity without concern. Class control not an issue - teachers and pupils work together, enjoying the experiences involved." Stevie Wonder's Ebony and Ivory is playing in my head.

Now have a look just a couple of levels down, at Level 6. "You don't really look forward to teaching the class." is the first line. It goes on to say "... At times you feel harassed... it is difficult to get pupils to stop talking... it is a major effort to establish and maintain a calm working atmosphere."

... You know you want to hear about a Level 1 classroom atmosphere. Well here you go; "Your entry into the classroom is greeted by cheers and abuse." 

Good start. 

It continues. Yes it does. "...you turn a blind eye to some atrocities(!) because you feel your intervention may lead to confrontation, or escalation of the problem." The punchline? "You wish you had never gone into teaching."

We have been assured that our lessons, on the scale, rarely drop below a level 6. I should bloomin' well hope so. 

But herein lies the crux of the matter - how do we achieve higher levels of this scale in our own lessons? It looks like an immense balancing act; there are so many things to remember. Such as, asserting your physical presence, acting confidently, use of contingent praise, whilst making your lessons interesting and engaging, not being too munificent with praise or punishment, establishing your reputation AND... breathing.

But we have been assured it takes time. We won't be experts straight away, but we have to simply try our best and the technique will come. 

Hopefully soon-ish. Since our first placement starts in a week and I'm worried I might resort to the ol' Karate Sensei Disciplinary Technique of giving push-ups. Mightn't go down too well.