Diary of an NQT The classroom shoot-out


WheN I think of the first weeks of term, aside from putting up with everyone in the staffroom competing for bragging rights on the best holiday, I am strangely reminded of those old Spaghetti Westerns – when a group of unruly bandits stand po-faced and menacing at the entrance to the town, flinching hands poised over their pistols just daring someone to confront them. Then the saloon doors


swing wildly open and emerging from a cloud of dust comes the proud sheriff of the town; stern yet authoritative, the deep wrinkles etched round the eyes showing hints of a hidden warmer side or perhaps just keen eyes used to years of a hard, glaring sun.


What ensues is a stand-off;


cue distant lingering whistling soundtrack, fleeing townsfolk and either a forceful warning drives the bandits from the town with nothing but a petulant spit and a grimace or we have to go to an old-fashioned and bloody gun-fight. Most teachers will understand


the extended metaphor. The first week in many ways is


a strange one; packed full of endless meetings, petty bureaucracy and awkward attempts to ingratiate yourself with your new colleagues. Your computer password won’t work and


your new timetable may seem to fresh eyes like an algebraic equation. Undoubtedly, however, the most important part


of your week is the first impression you leave with your classes, the classes you will take through to next July. Nothing in your training quite prepares you for standing alone in front of 30 children for the first


time. Piaget may have told you how their brains work and your PowerPoint may even have moving graphics but it is that instant, early and formative stamp that may come to decide how the whole year goes.


So no pressure then... During my teacher training the


best advice I received was not to copy anyone, pick bits you like but always be yourself. Some people will tell you not to smile until Christmas whereas others say you should start with a joke. I personally try and find an


achievable medium between eccentric and authoritative and mostly miss on both points but at


least I am myself and seem to survive some classes. Obviously a large part of teaching


can feel like acting, but I am a big believer in that if you start by showing a genuine passion for education and that you care about the students developing the same passion then you are well on your way to winning the


battle. If only they knew that many of the teachers (especially us in the NQT Brigade) are equally as terrified as them, and are holding the lesson together with nothing but a strong coffee and a well-thumbed


30-year-old textbook. Those early stand-offs can be pretty


hairy and invariably most of the reprobates will try their luck to see how far they can push it, but I personally am hoping that they


realise I am the sheriff of this town and it ain’t big enough for the both of us.


• Tomas Duckling is a history NQT at Queens’ School in Hertfordshire. He returns next week.


A sledgehammer to crack a nut Once a teacher...


SOCIeTY hITS a crisis and the default position is to demand schools solve the problem. Internationally uncompetitive: make foreign


languages compulsory for all. Drugs addiction costing society too hefty a price: a compulsory drugs element in personal and social education. Too many obese kids: two hours of compulsory Pe each week. It’s almost always a sledgehammer to crack a nut


and there’s never any suggestion of what ought to be omitted from the curriculum to make way for the latest, new priority. The most recent such offering


was from someone who usually knows better. harry Reid, author, former editor of The Herald in Scotland and a man of balanced arguments, looks askance at recent urban riots. he identifies the roots of the rioting in a range of causes: ill-prepared police, unemployment, the loss of social cohesion, and he calls for renewal. he writes: “The key component


in the renewal is better education. A decent education is something that far too many young people in Britain are still denied despite the mind- bending sums of money that have been spent...” Mr Reid is right. Social cohesion


and social responsibility are being dissipated. he also notes that religion, once a social cement, is no longer the power it was (true, certainly of the Christian religion). But a series of other changes, some


for the better, some for the worse, have contributed to this summer’s lawlessness. While neither a reason nor excuse, it is also necessary to remember that summer riots in the most deprived communities have been a recurring part of modern American history for several decades. Unemployment has of course risen dramatically.


There was of course mass unemployment in the 1930s and no parallel incidents. eighty years ago, however, aspirations were different. Today, in de-industrialised Britain, we produce


next to no real wealth. There is no half-finished boat on the stocks to maintain hope that work might return. In many cases these are young people from families which have been workless for generations. Today we have a generation raised on a high expectations consumer culture. It is bombarded


with propaganda suggesting that status comes with possessing high cost items, whether trainers, clothes or the latest mega-television set. It also sees success measured in multi-million bonuses for those whom even the least educated can recognise as having a major responsibility for the current economic crisis. Today poverty is exacerbated by racism. Without


detracting for a moment from the courage of many of the police officers facing the mobs, it is also the case that many of the most hopeless teenagers have been soured by daily examples of police racism. Today fame and celebrity are


touted as values and aspirations in themselves. And there must be some brief, local celebrity for the petrol- bomber or the leader of the looting mob. Today we have increasing numbers of young people raised in families where adult authority is seldom exercised with finesse or


effectiveness. Mothers desperately seek to hold households together and a series of vague father-figures drift in and out of young people’s lives. Teenagers with no norm of


respecting adult authority in the home are hardly likely to respect it in the streets when the flames are burning and the adrenalin pounding. Schools have a role in healing a fractured society, but before they can even contemplate going beyond applying a few sticking plasters, a


wider consensus requires to be reached. What kind of society do we want? What is the relationship between


education and work and between work and reward? On what ethical standards will society be built?


There has not been much from the politicians or the newspaper editors on these issues.


• Alex Wood has been a teacher for 38 years. Prior to his recent retirement he was headteacher of Wester Hailes Education Centre in Edinburgh. He is currently an associate with the Scottish Centre for Studies in School Administration at Edinburgh University, and he is also a member of Seced’s editorial advisory board. He returns in two weeks.


LEARNING SKILLS The seven


Supporting students to develop their capacity to


learn and to be reflective, independent and confident is increasingly seen as crucial to education. ELLI – the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory could provide an answer. Alison Thomas explains


L ‘ 8


eveLS AND league tables, targets and testing. In the drive to raise standards, educational outcomes are scrutinised as never before. But what of the process of learning


itself? Is there a way of measuring students’ capacity to learn and


providing structured support that will empower them to develop and grow? One answer goes by the name of eLLI, the effective Lifelong Learning Inventory. Based on research led by Dr Ruth Deakin-Crick


of Bristol University with funding from the Lifelong Learning Foundation, it comprises seven “dimensions of learning power”, each with an element of thinking, feeling and doing (see boxout). These provide the framework for an online questionnaire, which students complete to produce a learning power profile, paving the way for mentoring conversations founded on heightened self-awareness and a new, shared vocabulary about learning to learn. “eLLI is a tool which shines a light on what


matters for individuals and helps them to become more reflective and more confident. It doesn’t make change. It inspires it and illuminates the path,” said Tim Small of viTaL Partnerships, a charitable company which provides eLLI training for teachers and manages research and development projects, at home and abroad. Today 50,000 profiles and a wealth of empirical


evidence bear out the truth of his words across the whole education spectrum, from pre-school children to adults in the workplace, from disaffected teenagers to university undergraduates. For Dr Deakin-Crick, the depth and breadth of


this validation set eLLI apart from other languages of learning. It is also unique in the way that it connects with the personal story and identity of the learner where other models tend to be teacher-led. however, this requires teachers to step back from the


traditional role of instructor and create the conditions where independent learning can flourish. She explained: “The quality of language that they


use and the ability they have to move between being a coach, an expert, a mentor or a counsellor are important. So too is the context. A school that is committed to culture change provides a fertile ground within which to use the instrument.” eLLI’s database shows that learning power declines


as children move from primary to secondary school and again as they progress through key stage 4. It also reveals that among adults, the group with the lowest levels of learning power are university students aged between 18 and 24, while those with the highest are adults engaged in work-based learning. Meanwhile, employers are looking for creativity, teamwork, problem-solving and other valuable lifeskills that the current curriculum framework fails to deliver. Dr Deakin-Crick continued: “This suggests a system


that is out of balance. eLLI is about trying to put the balance back. And actually, if you get the learning right, the performance follows, but in a results-driven culture it takes courage to buck the trend.” One cohort of schools that has found the courage are


the participants in the Learning Futures programme, a joint initiative of the Paul hamlyn Foundation and the Innovation Unit, which is exploring ways of inspiring deep and sustained learner engagement, using eLLI as the evaluation tool. This work has confirmed how powerful eLLI can be in the right context. An exceptional example is 12-year-old Daniel from


Matthew Mosshigh School in Rochdale, who reported in interview that discovering the seven dimensions had given him the strength to persevere in pursuit of his goals and to develop skills that would enable him “to get a long life easier”. he even described his ability to “develop new skills without acting up” as a gift from God. Daniel made frequent use of story and metaphor


throughout his account and this is a key feature of eLLI pedagogy. Abstract concepts such as strategic awareness or critical curiosity are hard to grasp, but they come to life when a skilful facilitator guides students to find other ways of expressing them through narrative and imagery. In a case study of Daniel’s personal journey, Dr


The aim was that, by allowing them to explore


something that had personal meaning, they would learn, and that learning could then be transferred into the national curriculum. In some cases, it


happened quite naturally. One boy, whose chosen theme was penguins, started looking at pollution and how that affects the balance within eco- systems, a topic we were just about to study


SecEd • September 15 2011 ’


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