I Should Be Marking

THE concept of “failure” should be removed from the British education system and be replaced with “deferred success”, according to a motion being considered by a teaching union.
Manchester Evening News, July 2005

Most teachers I speak to seem to agree with me on this one. Pupils are no longer ‘allowed’ to fail. They can’t compete in sports competitions at primary school (they all ‘participate’ instead), we have to provide all sorts of support and make allowances for pupils at KS3 and then offer an ubelievable amount of extra-curricular support at KS4.

One of my Y11s asked me when he can drop RE to spend more time completing his coursework for me. And this was back in November! I told him that if he didn’t waste 45 minutes of each 60 minute lesson with me he’d be finished by now, but alas, to no avail.

That same class now has a dedicated mentor waiting on them with regular meetings and other bits of mentoring, a number of them are involved in the ‘Starbucks’ (1) scheme – whereby they get a free trip out for a coffee once a fortnight in return for an hour’s after school work on the off-week, we’ve extended the deadline from Easter (on account of not one of them would pass otherwise) and the latest plan is to get them back after the exams and simply miss the August results day.

I despair, I really do. Because the course doesn’t feature any exams they can’t blame it on an off-day. We either get the work out of them and submit it or… well, that’s just it. There is no ‘or’. Most parents are completely unsupportive, the kids bone idle (and why would they be otherwise? There’s no incentive to work!) and the staff increasingly stressed and harried.

And heaven forbid you actually challenge one of the pupils over their work rate – abuse, storming out, Cold War scale sulking and the inevitable irate phone calls from normally apathetic parents claiming we are bullying their innocent, fragile little darlings!

I just wish that we were in a position to actually allow some of the students to fail. Based on tracking data from KS3, some KS4 students will fail to achieve a C or above – and that’s fine. But this bunch of reprobates with an average predicted grade of a D are all expected to pass, no matter what. Maybe if students were able to see that not doing the work actually means you fail then maybe a few might decide to pull their fingers out…

(1) Disclaimer: Other overpriced, trendy, non-alcoholic drinking establishments are available.

Here’s a new one. The kid who nearly fainted at the prospect of giving a paired talk to 20 other pupils back in Year 10 (not helped when I dropped my cue cards and picked them up in the wrong order – and my partner had a pronounced stammer) not only got into a career where he has to stand up at talk in front of dozens (hundreds, during assemblies) of people every day – now he’s gone and booked himself a gig taking a 15 minute conference session!

Oh. Dear. God. What have I done? Actually, I know perfectly well what I have done – I said yes before I had time to seriously consider it, it was the only way.

Now I’ve never been to a conference, not even as a delegate. So I’ve never seen a 15 minute session before. What the hell do I do? Watching TED Talks hasn’t helped, I now want to curl up in a foetal ball until the world goes away as I’ll never live up to that standard!

The topic is ‘collaboration’ and I think I’ll start with Google Docs (showing my ‘Techy Tips…‘ presentation) and having seen this amazing piece of work, I think I might go on to VoiceThread.

There are also blogs, wikis, etherpad, twiddla, collaborative mind maps, posterous, delicious, diigo, collaboration for students, collaboration for teachers… – but I only have 15 minutes and don’t want to overwhelm people.

Maybe I should get some students to make a ‘collaboration in plain english’ video

Anyways – ideas, help, support, platitudes, cliches and offers of rehabilitation after the event would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime I feel the need for a good lie down.

Work/life balance – the bain of a teacher’s life. We all know people who err too far on either side of the line, and I definitely do. Over Easter I spent far too much time marking coursework and preparing resources and Schemes of Work and not enough time with my family and the garden (which is looking pretty sorry for itself – as do I when Mrs. Hippy tackles me over it).

Last week the family were away for a short break, whilst I was back at school and left to my own devices of an evening – so more opportunities for looking at innovative and interesting ways of sucking more of my personal time away! At least part of the problem is that what a lot of people count as work, I count as fun. Investigating ways to use Google Docs in the classroom – or out of it, creating more graphics tutorials, finding out about new qualifications and so on is to me, what YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are for your average 13 year old.

Those who’ve read Danny Wallace’s Yes Man (the book, most definitely NOT the film) will know what happens when you say Yes to everything. It can be wonderful, but exhausting. I need to get used to saying No! Missing the odd Ed Tech Roundup is not a bad thing! Spending a night or two without using Twitter will not leave me socially bereft! Playing snap with my daughter and reading a book with my son are both more important than making sure a group of pupils have the opportunity to learn how to imitate Roy Lichtenstein using Photoshop, Fireworks, Paint.net AND GIMP!

Now, where did I put that report on Functional Skills…

No, not a warning tale of losing your temper in the classroom.

A student at school has a real passion for video work – scripting, shooting, directing. He’s going to go far I think. His latest piece of work, Control Your Emotions, had me in fits of laughter. Partly because of the 70s head teacher, partly because I recognise the PE teacher being parodied and partly because of the boy in white’s reaction at 3:09 (in fact that whole scene).

One to keep an eye on for certain.