Diary of an NQT Still learning hard and fast


WOW I needed that. Towards the end of December, I could feel


myself losing the battle to carry on. Now I am back, ready and raring to go and have reserve supplies of mince pie-fuelled-energy to burn. Even though Christmas is always


a wonderful time for reflection it is more filled with celebration, and if my headache on Boxing Day was anything to go by I definitely did enough of that. However, New Year is when


we humans seem to take stock of the year just passed and make (often futile) resolutions for the year coming. Well, why should I be any different? What a year. This time last year I


was blundering through a mountain of Graduate Teacher Programme paperwork, cramming every document I touched into any plastic wallet that would have it. I was battling problem classes


and practising any technique I could get my hands on to try and shut them up.


I was learning hard and fast every


day about how to teach and more importantly how to survive. Reading that back, I am truthfully not sure I could honestly say things have changed a huge amount. I have got better at teaching but I am still as


close to perfect as the Euro is. I still come out of every day feeling like I have learnt a hundred lessons, whether it be how to interact with my colleagues, how to motivate the unmotivated, or how to lose a to-do list. I try and be as wary of management speak and


education-psycho-babble as possible, but I do have a soft spot for the idea that a good teacher needs to be a life-long learner.


Teach it like Torno! Pension tension


“The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.” TS Eliot.


As one year leaves us and another one begins I have begun to reflect on my time in teaching and what I would still like to achieve before I retire. Having said that, retirement still seems such a long way away – 28 years in fact. Let me remind you about pensions.


In 1908, the first state pensions were granted to those who were 70 or over. More than 100 years later and we learn that the expectation is for public sector workers currently in their 40s and below to retire at 68. How long will it be before the


retirement age reaches or even exceeds 70? In fact how many teachers will even be alive to claim their pension at 68? I am really tired about the feeble


excuses we are being given as to why we must pay more and work longer. One of them is that people are living longer. That may be so, but how do they know that I will live longer? My mother died aged 41, my father aged 68, and my eldest brother aged 35. Whose to say I will live into my 70s? If I am really honest, it’s not


so much that I resent paying more into my pension scheme – I don’t – but I really object to working to well into my 60s. Surely after working for 40 years or more we deserve some sort of recompense to take us into the late afternoon of our lives? Another thing that bugs me is the


now all-too-familiar cry from the private sector that they are subsidising public sector pensions as well as questioning the earlier retirement age. Well, as far as I am concerned, it’s a very simple


argument – if you have spent your life dedicated to the service of others and have chosen to forego the salaries that are paid to the city bankers and other so-called “high flyers”, then you should be rewarded with an earlier retirement. It is just and fair. We have to constantly put up with the reports every


year of city workers receiving unspeakable bonuses, amounts that would take you or I two or three lifetimes to accrue. More than that, is the fact that teachers,


nurses, social workers among others are the bedrock of society. We are the ones that maintain civilization. At the end of last term, there was plenty of criticism


directed at teachers as we joined in with the national public sector strike on November 30. Christmas is now behind us and, for many, it would


have been a tough one, financially. In this climate, does the government really believe that teachers wanted to strike on November 30? We entered this profession because we believe in the next generation, but there are times when we all must stand up and be counted and this was one of those occasions. We’re not just fighting for our own futures, but for those of our children and grandchildren. Many times in this


column I have stated what a useful vehicle history is for predicting the future and I am being proven


right again. We are slowly but


surely returning to a world previously inhabited by our ancestors. A world of the haves and have nots, a world where the gap between rich and poor is striking, and a world in which education is only available to those with money. This is Britain in 2012, but it could easily be the late 19th


century. One of the issues that faced the Liberals and Conservatives in the 1890s was the issue of poverty, especially among the older generation. The general attitude was one of “laissez faire” and non-government intervention. Unless we fight the proposals of this government we will be condemned to a life


of misery and helplessness in our old age. Remember, the likes of David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg are millionaires


and politics is but a game to them. For the likes of you and me, however, this is reality. So it is up to us to make a difference. As you’ve heard many times before in the words of Barack Obama: “We are the one’s we’ve been waiting for.”


• David Torn is a professional tutor at St Edward’s School in Essex. He is a former Teacher of the Year for London and co-author of Brilliant Secondary School Teacher. He is passionate that the purpose of education is to change lives. He returns in a fortnight.


If you stop seeing the students as young people


who can challenge and teach you things, then you see yourself as nothing but a robot working on a perpetual production line – completing your one section, spitting out the product and then moving on to the next without a thought of the last’s destination or achievement. If you get to that point, the game


is lost. So New Year’s resolutions, what


have I got? First and foremost I intend to sort


out my administrative problems. If I touch a document, I am going to deal with a document. There are only so many times I can forget to hand something through


to the bureaucracy machine before I am going to start looking like a weak link.


I am going to look after myself


better. Cliché warning! Did he just say get fit as a New Year resolution? No, well not quite that bad, but at the start of September I was not drinking coffee during the week and


attending the gym at least twice. At the end of December my gym bag had an inch of dust on it and my coffee mug’s handle was eroding away


through over-use. This job can be so all encompassing and exhausting that finding time to do the things that make you feel good can be impossible, whereas finding time to do things that make


you feel bad (wine and junk food etc) seems so much easier. So roll on the year ahead, if the last year is anything to go, 2012 should be a good one.


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


BEHAVIOUR


Drawing from his recent book on managing behaviour in


the inclusive classroom, Colin Lever looks at the behavioural problems that SEN students can exhibit, and explains how teachers can and should prepare themselves to handle them


arrangement, aimed at keeping “likely suspects” apart. He gives her “the look” but is ignored. The


teacher walks over to Liliana in an attempt to stop her talking, which works until he steps away and then she commences her dialogue once more. “Liliana, carry on reading please,” he asks politely. “I can’t find the place.” She pretends to look. The teacher asks the boy sitting next to her to show


L


her where they are up to. There is silence. “Well, come on Liliana.” The teacher prompts,


softly. “I don’t want to read,” she replies curtly. “I have asked you politely, there is no need to be so


rude,” the teacher points out. “I don’t care,” Liliana returns, “I’m not reading.” What does the teacher do? He has to make an


instantaneous judgement call. Let’s press pause on this dialogue and consider the


problem that is running through the teacher’s mind right now – how does he deal with this situation? When faced with aggression it is a natural


response for teachers to respond with one of the Fs (fight or flight). We are hard-wired, physiologically, to react in this way to any threat and so any aggression aimed in our direction is likely to be mirrored, escalating a situation into a spiral of conflict that ends with both participants stressed to the point of exhaustion. However, if a teacher does not respond to


oppositional behaviour then they are in danger of losing the respect, and ultimately control, of the rest of the class, it is an invidious position to be in. But why is Liliana refusing to read? Let us


brainstorm some possibilities: • She cannot read the text because she needs glasses. • She cannot read the text because it is too difficult for her.


• She is seeking confrontation out of sheer devilment. • She does not like the subject and/or the teacher. • She has deep-seated social problems that affect her behaviour in school.


• She is hungry, tired or under the influence of drugs. • She has a cognitive impairment that sometimes affects her behaviour in class.


Which of these are part of a teacher’s remit?


Which are not? If he is thorough in his planning and preparation then many of the possibilities will have been accounted for. For example, he will know if Liliana has any underlying social or emotional needs, he will know what the reading ages of each of the pupils in the class are and will have written the worksheet to suit their needs. Furthermore, he will have been trained, or at least


been given advice, on whether Liliana has any cognitive or pedagogical issues so he can quickly rule out most of the possibilities and hopefully make a better assessment of the situation and how to react. But what if the teacher is not party to any SEN


that Liliana, or any of the other pupils in the class for that matter, have? Maybe he has not planned his work thoroughly enough, or maybe Liliana has “slipped the net” and her needs lie undiagnosed. How can he hope to make the right choice? Let’s roll the story on to find out what really happened. “I am not asking you to read, I am telling you read.” “Then you know what you can do don’t do?” She


replies with a nervous giggle. “Liliana please leave the room.” The teacher insists. Liliana walks slowly and deliberately out of the class smiling to her peers as she leaves.


SEN and behaviour Teachers are the first point of contact when it comes to having to deal with pupils that have SEN. They are


8


the people who first raise the alarm bells that there is a problem, they are the people who have to try and include each child in their classroom. As a result, they have to put up with the abuse that


often goes with the task and they are ultimately the ones who dictate whether a child is excluded or not as it is them that provide the evidence that is used to deliver the sentence. So why is it that all teachers are not trained in all


(most?) aspects of SEN as part of their professional development? Why is it they are only instructed on a need to know basis about one or two cases within their school? Too much unnecessary information or too expensive to fund? If not trained, would the teacher know if Liliana


was refusing to read because she was dyslexic? Had English as a second language? Was autistic and the flickering of the strip-lighting in the room was irritating her? Pupils with SEN are eight times more likely to be


permanently excluded than pupils without. Children who are eligible for free school meals are three times more likely to be permanently excluded. In fact, Department for Education statistics from


2010 show that 75 per cent of pupils excluded have SEN and 27 per cent of pupils with autism have been permanently excluded (significantly higher than those without autism). Some of the pupils excluded have a Record of Need but many do not. So how are the teachers supposed to know who is in need and who is not? The sure sign of an underlying issue is that the


behaviour of a child has been persistently challenging over a long period of time, or that the challenging behaviour is sudden and unlike the “normal” behaviour for that child. Either way, the child is not just a “naughty child”


and so the teacher should take this into account when making their decision. This does not mean that any form of challenging behaviour should be condoned, just that how the behaviour is dealt with might be different. Having set tariffs for each and every in-school


misdemeanour is unlikely to solve the problem for many. For example, if Liliana is refusing to read because


she is autistic and the lighting is distressing her or she cannot access the work because she really cannot read what is in front of her then should she be sanctioned the same as a person who refuses to read just to be obstructive?


Reasons for behaviour


So why can Liliana not just tell the teacher? Here be the dragons!Children (and many adults!) can tell you when they are hungry, tired or uncomfortable but are not so forthcoming when other needs are not being met. Consider the following expletives and try to work


out what it the child is actually saying. • “This work is shit.” • “Fuck off and leave me alone.” • “I don’t care.” • “S/he hates me.” • “This is boring.”


SecEd • January 5 2012


ILIANA SITS at the back of the class talking to the girl sitting across from her. They are reading from a worksheet with the teacher choosing pupils, seemingly at random, to read out loud. There is a seating plan but Liliana is defying the teacher’s


B


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16