Frustrations

Welcoming a new class is always tricky, and my lot this year were no exception. I’m not ashamed to say that we had a bumpy few weeks back in September, but I’m also proud to say that lots of hard work bought a good deal of success by December – the kids had learnt lots, with some of the best assessment results I’ve had for a while. And I had also been learning, most notably patience. How to slow down, and live life as the children live it, accepting their individuality and their challenges.

Well, it feels like Santa stole all that hard work over the Christmas break. By the end of Monday, I wanted to scream with frustration at…well, children being children, I suppose. I’ve had to remind myself that they are not (for the overwhelming majority of the time) trying to wind me up on purpose. Instead, I am allowing their behaviour to wind me up, and I need to put that barrier back up, to say to myself: they are children. They have needs. It’s not about me. Breath. And pray.

I have a little daily calendar of inspiration in my classroom – a mixture of bible verses and other wise sayings and affirmations. Yesterday’s was perfect: “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19) It was like a breeze from heaven to cool and calm me, and reminded me, after a bus journey spent rather frantically praying for patience, for anything to get through the day, that I can depend on God. That verse from Philippians doesn’t have any ifs or buts. It just says: all your needs. Amen.

Preparing for a new term

It seems strange to think that I’ll be welcoming a new class in just 7 days time.

I’m looking forward to new faces, and new challenges – and the challenges certainly abound this year. I was fortunate last year to have a class who were basically ‘on track’ – no special needs, which is a rarity now, and generally easy to handle and teach. This year, however, I face rather more on the special needs front, mostly in terms of learning delays of one kind and another. I’m anxious, because I want to make sure I give these children the education they need, but without neglecting the other 80% of the class, who are on track. I’ve also genuinely not had to deal with kids quite this low down the scale before, so that’s a concern.

However. We mustn’t let the concerns become all we see. I’m looking forward to revisiting some old topics, especially those I know the kids will love, like the Romans, and (bizarrely) rocks and soils. I’m looking forward to introducing them to some great books that, again, previous classes have enjoyed: Krindlekrax, Ice Palace, Revolting Rhymes, Charlotte’s Web, and of course a whole heap of poetry. I’m looking forward to getting to know 30 little people for a year, and enjoying the privilege of watching them grow and develop. I’m looking forward to laughing with them and learning with them. I’m looking forward to working with two new (to me) teaching assistants. By the way, it’s worth stating for the record that without TA’s, my classroom, and I’m sure many others, would fall apart at the seams. Teachers might have the letters after their name, but without TA support I’m a tangled ball of stress and exhaustion within 48 hours!

It’s good to take a deep breath in these last moments of calm before the storm to remind myself that, whatever I may say on an exhausted Friday evening, I do love this job!

What do we want our children to be?

I attended a training day today, and while the content of it – the role that skills, as opposed to knowledge, have in our curriculum – was basically uncontroversial, the rationale that seemed to underpin this content was, to my mind, deeply disturbing.

There were 8 or 9 schools present at this training day, and as a starter activity we were asked, in our schools, to look at a number of cards which offered different rationales for introducing a more skills based curriculum across the school. The ones which we chose were, as I recall, concerned with embedding such practice across the whole curriculum, preparing children for the future and ensuring a balanced and well rounded curriculum. So far, so good. It appeared, however, that we were somewhat at odds with the other schools, and indeed with the two women delivering the training, as most everyone else had selected in their top three a card which stated

“Curriculum skills must prepare children for the future (employability)”

Employability. The big reason why. Surely to anyone, this should be a complete scandal. Schools should be – are – about more than just preparing children to be good little consumers, good little members of a free market economy, good little cogs in the machine. Don’t misunderstand me – children need to be prepared for an unknown and ever-changing future, I would never deny that, but surely our vision must be bigger than just employability.

I want the children in my class to find their passions and to follow them. I want them to stand up against injustice in their community and in the world. I want them to inherit a world that is fair, equitable, sustainable and set up to increase the sum of human happiness, not indulge in a race to the bottom. After all, if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat. I want the children I teach to see beyond the 9 to 5, to have the creativity and the courage to carve out for themselves a life where they are truly happy and where they are actively engaged in making the world a better place to be for all her citizens.

And that is why I do, and will continue to, teach in certain ways.

Teaching Politics

I teach 7 and 8 year olds – not a lot of room for politics, you might say. But I, of course, would disagree.

Part of it depends on what you define as politics. For me, politics is how the world works. No one can say that their lives are unaffected by politics, unless they live completely off-grid and with no connections whatsoever to the state – be that healthcare, benefits, education, whatever. And something tells me there aren’t too many people around like that.

So how does politics enter the classroom? In any number of ways.

We’re currently studying the Romans, and specifically Boudicca’s revolt. One of the powerpoints I’m using to teach from is entitled “Whose land is it anyway?”. Enter the whole issue of power vs. indigenous people – does the strongest always win, or do the oppressed have rights too?

In Literacy, we’ve been reading The Perfect Hamburger by Alexander McCall Smith. It’s all about the independent business trying to survive in the face of the new chain restaurant that’s just opened up in town. Cue discussions about supermarkets destroying the high street, the value of local diversity, the very existence of independent retailers.

And don’t try telling me that kids don’t understand these issues. They get it in spaces. If you talk to any young children about fair trade, they think it makes perfect sense – as do many adults, to be fair. They also don’t get why all trade isn’t like that – their opinion tends to be “well, why would we do it any other way?”.

My job as a class teacher is not to push my own political views on my class – indeed, teachers are specifically forbidden to ‘politically indoctrinate’ their classes. Which is why I encourage debate. I may well present my view, but I’ll just as often play devil’s advocate. I don’t want them all to be perfect little clones of me – God forbid! – but I want them to think about these issues. I encourage them to disagree with me – provided of course they can give at least some kind of reason. Disagreeing for the sake of being disagreeable doesn’t get you very far in my classroom, nor indeed in society.

Around the time of the general election, I spent some time with my class discussing what was going on – “so what is this thing all the adults are going on about, then?” For some of them their knowledge didn’t go much beyond the fact that there were blue ones, red ones and yellow ones, but most of them knew who the party leaders were. We also decorated handprints to send to parliament, where the children could write their own ideas for what the politicians should be doing. Their ideas included: cleaning up the streets, giving kids more areas to play, having more police on the streets to make things safer, increased funding for the armed forces so they could have enough safety gear. So once again, don’t tell me that kids don’t get it. Sometimes, I think they get it more than many adults. Indeed, the day after the election, many of them came up to me to ask me “who won, miss?” There then ensued some discussion about draws in football, as a rough analogy.

I’m not saying all this to hold myself up as some model of perfect practice, but more to point out that kids aren’t stupid, and that politics is something which they can deal with, and which they want to deal with. They just need the opportunities.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.

The inspiration for both the title and the theme of this blog – Crossing Points – has emerged from a number of things that I have been reflecting on recently. The real impetus for creating this blog, however, came just a few days ago as I was reviewing my facebook profile. I had started to write, beginning “I am..” and then stalled. There seemed to be so much I could write there, in no particular order: a teacher, left wing, a linguist, a christian, an environmental activist (ok, so not quite yet, but getting there), a mental health patient, or client, or whatever they’re calling us these days, queer, crafty…you get the idea. However, I am none of these things in isolation: I do not change costumes in my life depending on which role I’m currently fulfilling. When I’m stood in front of my class teaching them about the finer points of 3D shapes, I am still a lefty. When I’m sewing a quilt, I am no less a mental health patient. My life, and the things I do, are made up of where these things meet, of the intersections, the crossing points.

If this is true of my life, then it is all the more true of the world we live in. Nothing happens in isolation, not any more (if indeed it ever did). A statement from the chancellor is not merely economics, it is the environment, it’s social justice – indeed, it can go to the very core of what we want our society to be. And so my intention with this blog is not only to chronicle the crossing points in my own life, but also to look at intersections in society and to examine the interconnectedness of all things. Our choices have consequences far beyond what we may imagine, and in a world where all people are linked, as if in a giant and immeasurably fragile spider’s web, we have a duty to examine our action and our inaction.

So sit with me a while, and don’t be afraid to voice your opinion.