Cathartic Non-Constructive Crankiness

My hand is broken. My fourth and fifth metacarpal have been snapped and dislocated, leaving me one-handed over Christmas. I can barely type, cannot write and struggle to wipe. On the plus side, I'm not allowed to wash up. Hopefully the metalwork holding my paw together will be removed in mid-January and I can begin functioning like a proper human being again.

My busted hand has not been my only frustration recently. I am seething with rage at just how useless my university has been during my PGCE. My anger at this educational institution grows daily and any success I have achieved so far has been in spite of them, not because of them.

The course has, thus far, been divided into the following components: a two week placement in a primary school; a series of 'theory' lectures on Monday mornings; subject specific lectures, workshops and tutorials on Fridays; a placement in a secondary school. All of these elements must be documented and uploaded onto an online tool which logs our work and progress. Seems reasonable, eh?

The primary placement was perfectly fine. I arranged it myself, picked a lovely local school and enjoyed acting as a TA to a Y6 class. I'm not entirely sure what the point was - we were told it was to give us an idea what pupils were capable of when they joined secondary schools as Y7s - but given that these adorable rugrats were a full year younger than Y7 pupils at a time of huge growth and development, i'm not sure there was much value in this.

Lectures have been even less useful. Sold to us as 'a series of provocations' designed to encourage our own thoughts and studies, these have been nothing short of appalling. It seems the only qualification to present these lectures is that you must be a former student of the course who enjoys drinking with the course leader. I'm not actually sure what the majority of these lectures were for. Some were so woeful that, despite attending and taking notes, I hadn't realised the topic had been covered. When it dawned on me that I had to write a 6000 word essay on AfL I complained that this subject hadn't been covered. It had. I rest my case.

Subject specific sessions have been little better. The course leader has apparently been trotting out the same sessions for years, is a patronising twerp and makes some of the most absurd and unreasonable demands you could imagine. He clearly has no sense of decency whatsoever - confirmation of which arrived at around 3pm on December 21st. While everyone else in the world of education packed up and pissed off to the pub, this man was emailing the PGCE English cohort asking them to write a short SoW based on two stories from the Sunlight on Grass anthology. These are to be presented in the first session back after New Year. The timing sucked and, at the end of a long and demanding term, this put people's backs up. Worse still, getting hold of said anthology (not commercially available) or the stories it contains (impossible to find online) during the holidays is like plaiting fog.

Much of this section of the course has involved micro-teaching. Usually, this involves a group of twentysomethings acting like petulant children in an immature attempt to replicate the behaviour of a 'typical' class of children whilst being 'taught' by other group members. It is bullshit of the highest order.

Thankfully, the tutors in these sessions are thoroughly lovely and charming: old-fashioned teachers from the old school. Unfortunately, this causes misunderstandings and leads to mixed messages. While they are happy to trust our judgements and abilities, their laissez-faire attititude to documentation and 'Offsod box-ticking' leads to confusion and panic - not least when compared to the course leader's anal approach (this may or may not be a euphemism).

The key to this confusion lies in the very software designed to combat grey areas. This piece of software (which shall henceforth be known as The Twat) is meant to keep an electronic copy of all our documentation and evidence. Each file uploaded can be linked  to the Teaching Standards, thus creating a wonderful and convenient compendium of evidence which can be accessed by anyone who needs to, whenever they need it. Hallelujah.

In practice, The Twat is an absolute twat. It's like comparing the internet to Ceefax - badly designed, cumbersome, confusing and (already) embarrassingly outdated. Rather than saving time, it creates far more additional work. Written observations must be scanned and uploaded, every single resource and lesson plan must be uploaded (one at a time), items cannot be dragged/dropped like you'd expect, many documents must be uploaded twice (once in one folder, then again as evidence against the standards), every lesson must be evaluated and a reflective journal produced (in which you repeat work by replicating your evaluations), ad infinitum.

As well as creating absurd amounts of admin and being enormously time consuming, this piece-of-shit software is managed inconsistently. Messages are sent from the various disparate departments of the university updating instructions on its use (the record is eight contradictory emails in less than an hour) meaning that school-based mentors, university tutors, course leaders and office staff cannot agree on a uniform approach to The Twat's use - what the blue-blazes are us poor students supposed to think? I don't know anyone on the course who wouldn't prefer having a folder filled with evidence which could be presented as required. What luddites we are.

Luckily, I spent two years working as a Teaching Assistant in an English department prior to my PGCE. As such, I had hundreds of hours of practical experience, had taught plenty of lessons and had a bank of useful knowledge ready and waiting to be used on my first placement. I hit the ground running, made 'outstanding progress' and have been offered (and have accepted) a job. Bully for me. But many of those without my experience have struggled, with four falling by the wayside already. This infuriates me.

There has been much talk of 'setting pupils up to succeed'. Unfortunately, these words do not seem to apply to PGCE students. We are encouraged to make success as easy to achieve as possible for our young charges. The same words feel empty when applied to us. The way our course is structured means it's perfectly possible to teach English having only ever seen around ten lessons of that subject taught. How can that be acceptable?

There are PGCE students in my school who are fresh from university. They have no school experience. They don't know what activities work in the classroom. They don't know how much can be squeezed into an hour. They don't know how to assess formatively. They don't know how to plan for progress. They haven't been taught these skills. They haven't seen these things done. And it's not their fault.


My university has taught me nothing. And have charged me £9000 for the privilege. Despite telling me they'd make life as easy as possible for me, my second placement school will see me spend three hours a day travelling. And then at least an hour fiddling around with admin. What I want to do is plan brilliant lessons and teach them. But when will I find the time?

Inactive Listening

The last thing you should do for your students is spoon-feed them. And hopefully you'll never be called to wipe their arses. So praise the Lord that our PGCE course leader made a stand today against the dunderheaded dipsticks who waste his time with inane questions which he's either answered or which are addressed in the course literature.

It is slightly worrying that such a high percentage of our future educators seem so unwilling to engage their brains before they engage their mouths, listen so inattentively and are incapable of independent thought. With his affably amiable demeanour visibly dissolving, our fraying lecturer taught them the 'three before me' rule. If nothing else, his stance should at least teach them not to mollycoddle their own pupils. It might have been the only thing they learned today.

PGCEeeeeek!

Three weeks into my PGCE and this is my first blog in bloody ages. If only someone had warned me that this course would be so time consuming! I'm already into my second placement (the first was seven days in a primary school - eek!) and have spent hours and hours reading and annotating educational theorists' theories and Ofsted reports. I've observed good, bad and indifferent lessons, met some inspiring practitioners, spent half my bursary on printer ink and have now, thankfully, managed to overcome my shyness and forge some fledgling friendships with fellow students.

The course itself seems excellent. A varied programme of guests, tasks, workshops and lectures has rarely been anything other than illuminating - and has often been thoroughly good fun. My personal tutors (a job-sharing combo of avuncular idealist and maternal pragmatist) are utterly wonderful and, other than the token loud-mouthed irritant, the other student teachers are a decent bunch. I'm the eldest by a good few years, and although there are a couple more 'mature' students, the vast majority are fresh from university. I've yet to succumb to the temptation of going out on one of their regular post-lecture boozing sessions.

The workload has been enormous, with reams of reading to be done, auditing of our own subject knowledge to be completed, spelling and grammar tests, refelective journals, literature reviews and various other tasks to be completed. I'm keeping up admirably, but it's soon time for our first major essay and my first foray into masters-level academic writing. I'm shitting my pants at the prospect - it's a long time since my dissertation on how Napster would change the way we consumed music* - and i've done nothing similar in scope or scale since. I'll need plenty of help with it.

* Reading it again, my dissertation could have been written by Nostradamus. It predicted the rise of mySpace, Spotify, artists giving music away for free, online-only albums and various other digital music innovations. I'd like to have it retrospectively re-marked so that it got the grade it clearly deserved rather than the 2:1 it was awarded.

The Spelling Test

A tiny post this, but one that might interest amateur psychiatrists/psychologists (what is the difference? Is there one? Does anyone care?).

When I was fourteen I did a spelling test. I got 49 correct answers from 50 questions. The word I got wrong was 'restaurant', which I spelt 'restaraunt'. I was fucking furious with myself, despite getting the best score in the class.

This incident was almost twenty years ago. But I remember it vividly and, for some strange reason, recalling that spelling test and my (understandable) error actually embarrasses me. To this very day. Recalling it makes my face flush and burn.

How strange that such a seemingly insignificant memory can provoke such a strong reaction.

My Bestest Teacher Eva

Outside of my amazing parents (foster carers/adopters of troubled children/selfless angels), the most influential person in my life was my drama teacher. To preserve his modesty and my identity, I'll not name him here. Instead, I'll use the pseudonym 'Mr Garbutt' - an in-joke which i'm sure he'd recognise were he ever to read this piece.

Mr Garbutt was everything I'd like to be as a teacher - and lots of things I'd not be allowed to be in the modern profession. As well as being my drama teacher throughout school, he went on to be my Theatre Studies teacher at A-Level. I loved both subjects and achieved an A grade in both - thanks in no small part to his excellent teaching.

Far more important than his skill in the drama studio, though, was the influence he exerted on me outside of class. It's not mere speculation to suggest that he saw something of himself in me - I was a bright kid from a largely uneducated, working class family, just like him. For all their love and affection, my parents could only nurture my intellect to a certain degree. Mr Garbutt recognised this and immediately began the process of stretching me and filling me with a love of books, language and culture which has burned in me ever since.

He furnished me with novels, albums, videos and dog-eared copies of plays. He introduced me to Themroc, Kurt Vonnegut and Harold Pinter, ignited my love of Shakespeare (and The Tempest in particular) and gave me my first taste of Lou Reed. He encouraged me to read a play every week, told me that Antony Sher's The Year of the King was the greatest book about acting ever written (it is - and was discussed with relish with my PGCE interviewer) and it was Mr Garbutt who put me in front of audience for the first time.

From the age of eleven, I was in every school production until I left at eighteen. I was Ariel, Reverend Hale, a cavalcade of colourful characters in Mr Garbutt's original productions and many more. I performed at the National Student Drama Festival, helped run his theatre workshop for younger kids and even returned for a guest appearance in their play after I'd left school.

Further than our 'working' relationship, we had a personal one, too. Post-production parties would be held at his house so the (largely sixth-form) casts of his plays could gather for drinks and food. As I got older, the pair of us actually went out for a meal together a couple of times - probably the first time I'd ever been to a restaurant or eaten Chinese food. I once met him for a chat one evening (he was rightly concerned about some of my extra-curricular activities) and ended up back at his house having a Southern Comfort and watching a documentary about the Manic Street Preachers.

Just as I was set to become the first person in my family to go to university, the whole system of student finance changed: grants abolished, fees introduced and huge loans. I had one of my many crises of confidence: my parents couldn't afford to support me so I couldn't go. What was Mr Garbutt's reaction to this? First coffee. Then counselling. And when that failed, he made me pack a bag, stuck me in his car and drove me to Edinburgh to see an ex-student of his. We stayed in his digs, got a guided tour of the campus, drank in the student union - and I came away invigorated, determined and desperate to escape my tiny town and sample the big city.

I haven't done justice here to the lasting influence Mr Garbutt has had on me. He shaped my life in a way which was above and beyond what ordinary teachers do for their students. Of course, our relationship would be deemed wholly inappropriate now and he'd probably be investigated, castigated or worse. But without him, I wouldn't be who I am today. And although we're still friends over twenty years since we first met, I have never really thanked him.

A Fish Out Of Water

Having laid out my clothes and packed my lunch last night, my first real decision today seemed to be a simple one: left or right. It's a fifty/fifty choice at worst. I chose badly.

Arriving absurdly early, i located the correct building and poked my head inside. There were two waiting areas, one on either side of the doorway. The area to the right was populated by small groups of PGCE students chatting amiably to one another. The one on the left was entirely empty. My choice was thus:

• Triumph over my sense of social awkwardness, disrupt an existing conversation and ingratiate myself.
• Sit shyly on my own and hope that a newcomer would come and talk to me.

I opted for the latter and watched the room fill up. But not a single soul came over to my side. Everyone congregated together. I was caught in a Larry Davidesque situation: swallow my pride, get up and go over to everyone else or stubbornly ride it out. Like Larry would've, i chose the latter.

It didn't get much better. I didn't speak to anyone for the whole day unless i was forced to. I'm now worried that i seem aloof or uninterested. I'm not. I'm just fucking dreadful at meeting new people. But given that i'm not shy in a classroom/lecture theatre, i'm aware that i look pretty ignorant elsewhere - it's hard to believe that someone so confident in one sphere can be so utterly useless in another. The sooner my cohort is divided into smaller, more manageable groups, the better.

I also managed to get lost, eat my lunch before 12pm and mislay my favourite (and very expensive) fountain pen. Worse of all, i'm now absolutely shitting my pants about the academic side of the course. The essays, assignments and literature reviews are something i haven't done in more than ten years - and which i did badly then. I'm aware that i'll need extra help with this stuff. But whilst i'm nervous about this, i guess others are more so when it comes to the teaching side of things. What you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts.

On the positive side, the course leaders and tutors were charismatic, dynamic and inspiring, the freebies from the unions were cracking and the course sounds absolutely brilliant. I'm sure i'll soon get into the swing of university life and my first placement (in a primary school around the corner from my house) begins tomorrow. There's a lot to be done - and a lot to look forward to.

That's it for now - i've got shitloads of papers and handouts to file!

Samsara

As i'm sure many teachers do, i spend inordinate amounts of looking around for inspirational lesson ideas and wondering how i can transform everyday instances from my life into whizz-bang lessons which link learning with experience in a truly memorable form. Today, i watched a film which did that around 25 times in 100 minutes.

That film was Samsara, an extraordinarily visual documentary crammed with evocative images, eery sequences and arresting ideas. It's a documentary with no dialogue whatsoever. Instead, music links individual scenes from around the world which show everything from religous worship to factory assembly lines to massed martial arts demonstrations. Shot on 70mm film over a period of five years, it's a striking and thought-provoking piece which could have dozens of applications for educationalists.

Often the film's focus is on juxtaposing growth/decay, wonder/disgust, life/death, etc. That's a lesson in itself, illustrating perfectly why juxtaposition works and setting the wheels in motion for some original writing. There are also some wonderful characters whose stories could be explored, amazing landscapes and vistas to inspire writing on setting and some excellent sequences to inspire debate on issues such as vegetarianism and/or animal cruelty.

There's plenty here for teachers of other subjects too: Geography, RE and Citizenship could all draw heavily on passages and scenes of natural phemonena, the nature of devotion and numerous moral issues. Each scene is only a few minutes long too - there's no need to lose half a lesson to showing a clip.

Of course, it'll be a while before Shantaram appears on DVD, but the moment it does i'll be buying a copy. The value of the moving image is huge and it's rarely been captured so beautifully or powerfully. And it beats jerkily buffered YouTube clips any day.

Blogger won't let me embed the trailer here for some reason, so click HERE to go somewhere else and watch it instead!