#OnlyLearning

There has been much said about the perceived drop in standing of the teaching profession. Some of this I put this down to familiarity. A doctor understands the darks arts of medicine, the lay person has no understanding of this as it is cloaked in scientific and latin jargon and they have never opened a living body or studied the internal workings therein. Similarly, a lawyer understands the dark arts of law. A lay person has no understanding of this as it is cloaked in latin jargon and they have seldom been in a courtroom or studied contracts. However, though a teacher understands the dark arts of teaching, the lay person knows feels they also understand this having witnessed and experienced its effects as a learner, made clear by the professional using simple English to help them thoughout. But there is also a lack of confidence shown by the professional teachers themselves. Teachers experience failure, often. But they have also allowed external actors to dictate elements of their pr...

Amidst a very busy week, I really benefitted from listening to Martin I. Jones, Jonpaul Nevin and Nathalie Pattyn (via the Optimising Human Performance podcast) discuss how good training programmes build both #robustness (how long it takes to knock you down) and #resilience (how quickly you get back up after you are knocked down).  We often discuss teacher resilience, especially in Initial Teacher Education (#ITE), but we perhaps don't talk as much about the need for robustness. A particularly difficult criteria to identify during the application and interview process. With Student Teachers currently on placement in schools, Nathalie's comments that screening and interviewing can only accomplish so much, was a great reminder of one of the core strengths of the #PGDE school experience module: the chance for qualified teachers to scrutinise the #values and #character of a student teacher before we potentially accept them into the profession (à la the GTC Scotland standards) If yo...

Dr. Steve Munby's advice to School Leaders and Senior Leaders when asked, "How can we change the system?" has lived rent-free in my head for over three years because of the power of the embodied sentiment: "Don't try and think you can change the whole system, but you can operate within your sphere of influence. Some fundamental things... believe and behave that children's learning in other schools is as important as children's learning in your own school. And once you really accept that we're here to enable all children to be powerful learners, not just the ones that happen to be in our school - that's a fundamental shift in approach. It means, when a school down the road is struggling, you don't say "Oh great! The parents will send their children to my school". You pick up the phone and say, "How can I help?" and "Come and do things together". Because improvement of all schools in the area - and the learnin...