I haven't posted since September last year, to my shame, but real life intervened in the shape of back surgery and rehabilitation, which happily has gone well. So having just returned from the ICT and languages conference in Southampton, I'm energised and ready to blog!
"El que se atreve a enseñar nunca debe dejar de aprender". They have a way with words, these Spaniards - "Who dares to teach should never stop learning." I found this in each and every one of the 45 or so AST assessments I carried out. Although there was no mould or template for an AST, what defined them for me was a never-ending quest for the strategy that would unlock a child's potential - the absolute embodiment of the self-reflective practitioner.
My career spans five decades in the business. As a new teacher my days were defined by weaving into classrooms with purple fingers and piles of damp paper, slightly high on the fumes of Banda fluid. My reel-to-reel tape recorder was ready-threaded, with scraps of paper marking the part of the tape I had to get to, as the counter was invariably bust. The ripped, sagging blackout curtains were as drawn as they were ever going to get, and the filmstrip was threaded into the projector. The lesson would proceed with me standing next to the projector, advancing the filmstrip one frame at a time, each time the tape emitted an electronic "beep".
We booked into the language lab once a week to practise 4-phase substitution drills (hear a stimulus, manipulate it, hear the correct response, repeat it). All out of context, and in sequences that read like surrealist poetry (French Language Drills, Mavis Beal, Macmillan 1967. Footnote - Mavis was Head Teacher of The Girls' Grammar School, Weston-super-Mare), e.g. Stimulus- "Mets tes chaussettes dans le tiroir." Response - "Je les y ai déjà mises."
We wrote picture stories about dogs stealing sausages from the butchers using "Histoires Illustrés" (first published in 1951 - the year of my birth). We translated passages into French from Whitmarsh with titles like "A Malay prepares to run amok". We were ecstatic when Tricolore was published. It was a real exercise in logistics keeping track of the "Pegaso" magazines in the fourth year. (That's Year 10 in new money) and trying to be enthusiastic about "El gaitero de Pontevedra". The curious landscape orientation of the fifth year (Y11) book "Zarzuela" which was just annoying, introducing dual linguists to Spanish for the first time with the crash course"Calatrava" (p1 contained the immortal sentence "Señor Morales es jefe de una agencia de maquinaria agrícola." Highly relevant in the east end of Newcastle.)... the list goes on.
No doubt some of the attendant pedagogy was successful,but we didn't really question any of it, and we certainly didn't know which aspects were successful and why. In short we taught the subject, not the children.
So my difficult question for myself is "Have I had 39 years' experience, or have I had 1 years' experience ands repeated it 39 times?" As that callow youth I had to make the same choices in my lessons as new teachers do today - which strategy, which resource, which grouping, which technology. But my experience today is light years away from the era where your tape recorder was the size of a chest freezer and actually recording students' speaking output was not even remotely considered. They did O Level or CSE Mode 3 and that was that. HMI came once every Preston Guild if you were unlucky. No league tables, no OFSTED, no meddling megalomaniac Secretaries of State. (Do you know who was Sec Ed in 1975? No? Neither did I until I Googled it - Fred Mulley (Lab). I couldn't have told you that in 1975 either.)
Could I have carried on with my Banda sheets and antique technologies? Unlikely, given the pace of change, and particularly in the last 10 years, even. Even my beloved OHP has now gone to that resource graveyard in the sky, along with my epidiascope (Google it) and my flannelgraph (Paco y Anita, ¿dónde estáis ahora?).
I have kept on learning, and hopefully I have kept the same objectivity I had as young practitioner - how will this help my students to learn? The willingess to explore new ways of encouraging my students to learn, and the courage to accept that sometimes it doesn't work, so drop it and find something else.
The #ililc4 weekend was another step on the learning journey. To spend two days in close proximity to such a group of inspirational people is a real privilege. I found myself devising activites using Triptico, setting up a Google form exercise and having it assessed by Flubaroo, discussing approaches to mixed-age classes in small primary schools, creativity, breaking down the nouncentric approach, broadening the repertoire of available web tools and sites giving access to superb authentic material.
I have learned, even at my advanced stage. But most of all, I have had reinforced my belief that the current polarisation of the debate between skills and knowledge, "progressive" and "traditional", la trousse and le-sac-des-filles.net is deeply unhelpful. All the more so for being promoted by an extremist Secretary of State bolstered by unabashedly right wing media. If only the Darling of the Daily Mail had been at Southampton this weekend (his reception might have been interesting) he would have been able to engage with serious practitioners in a meaningful debate instead of mudslinging about areas of the country he's never visited, like East Durham. I suspect, sadly, that he would fall into the category of 1 year's experience repeated however many times - he's not renowned for listening.
He would have seen the true definition of the rigour he so much likes to pontificate about. This is a rigour that applies not only to the experience of the students in the classroom, but also to the forensic manner in which our subject is dissected and debated. Rigour is our middle name. While some might dismiss the role of new technologies as mere gimmickry, there is a debate to be had, and who knows, the nay-sayers might learn something in the process.
The Southampton conference demonstrates that we are passionate, enthusiastic, dedicated and prepared to go many extra miles to secure excellent, meaningful learning experiences for our students. To paraphrase Clare Seccombe's conclusion to her inspirational keynote address (feedly.com/e/Cr00QeXl), it's just that we like to do it our way.
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