allsorts

In trying to get the front garden from this

to this

in preparation for an easier-to-maintain lawn,

we disturbed this:

The best sort of excuse for leaving part of the back garden as a wildlife sanctuary for now!

I am delighted!

I set up a wikispace to explore my family history, as I am the repository for some of the yellowing and faded family photos, documents and letters going back to the last half of the 19^th Century. You can see it here if you’re interested

http://myfamilyhistory.wikispaces.com/My+Family+History

Initially I thought I’d put them on flickr, but found the photos were no good without some of the story that goes with them so a Wikispace seemed the ideal solution.

I told my parents about it. Dad was 81 last month, and Mum will be 76 later this year. They looked and admired and were generally encouraging, and I showed them how easy it would be for them to add the information they have…and… they’ve only gone and done it!!! Both of them…I can’t tell you how proud I am of them! Made new pages, edited others and everything!

It’s salutary, isn’t it, when I think of those dubious faces in some corners of the staff room, when presented with a simple guide to “how you can add stuff to our school website” and then see what people who really want to do something can achieve!

Top of the class Mum and Dad!

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

So…how is Facebook “the last place that I can actually put some genuinely more private stuff, like how I’m feeling, without everyone on my blog seeing”? (Ewan’s comment on John’s blog post about Facebook.)

There must have been a shift in the language. Let’s see…

Private (Encarta Dictionary) 1. not for others; concerning matters that are not for other people to see or know about 2 secluded; sufficiently secluded for it to be possible to be alone and not watched, heard or disturbed by others3. personal; belonging to, restricted to or intended for an individual 4. not public; not open to the public

Is putting how you’re feeling on some social network on the internet really “private” - the same as telling your closest friend? Is this a generational shift regarding where the line between public and private is? Or is it a familiarity thing? Is it that those who habitually use technology just find this the most natural means of communication? It’s almost as if, contrary to the fears of many of my generation, for at least a section of the population, our f2f encounters are going to be the ones with the veneer, and online is where we are honest.

Does it matter?

Well yes. If it’s the case that younger people are more likely to express their feelings or anxieties or concerns only in an online medium, it makes it more difficult for me their teacher, the person interacting with them on a day-to-day basis, to be aware of where they are at. Fiona on the Harward Graduate School Leadership blog, summarises a fact quoted by Millie Pierce when talking about the purpose of public schooling. “Measurable drop in discipline referrals following case conferences – touch teachers compassion – when they understand they change they the way they behave towards children in crisis.” We all know this is true. Children in settings where they feel they are known are less likely to have a disrupted education than where they don’t. (eg Stockard and Maybury 1992)But “crisis” is an extreme term and some children go through many, many mini-crises in their everyday lives. I’ve always thought that teachers who understand where children are coming from are more likely to approach them in a way that accommodates their emotional state and in a way moves on from it.

But does the apparent swop of understanding about public and private mean that kids are going to type their frustrations into Bebo or Facebook and as a consequence no longer sidle up to me when they come in of a morning and say things like “Dad didn’t come to take me out yesterday, and I’m feeling really angry about it”?

Is it just my immigrant baggage that persuades me that “talking about it” online to his “contacts” will not prevent this child taking a swing at some unwitting child who snatches “his” pencil, whereas , possibly the direct human response that he gets from me if he confides in me face to face (certainly empathy, understanding and a sympathetic look, probably a gentle touch or if appropriate, a hug) might?

I’m so pleased because I’ve been able to find a midi file for this song, which a colleague taught me the words for, but I couldn’t remember the melody of. Click on Beebot and all together now…

I’m bringing home my baby bumble bee.

Won’t my mummy be so pleased with me.

I’m bringing home my baby bumble bee.

Ow! It stung me…

I’m squishing up my baby bumble bee.

Won’t my mummy be so pleased with me.

I’m squishing up my baby bumble bee.

Ew! What a mess.

I’m wiping up my baby bumble bee.

Won’t my mummy be so pleased with me.

I’m wiping up my baby bumble bee.

Ew! Still a mess…

I’m licking up my baby bumble bee.

Won’t my mummy be so pleased with me.

I’m lickinh up my baby bumble bee.

Yuck. I feel sick..

I’m throwing up my baby bumble bee.

Won’t my mummy be so pleased with me.

I’m throwing up my baby bumble bee.

Yuck. What a mess…

I’m sweeping up my baby bumble bee.

Won’t my mummy be so pleased with me.

I’m sweeping up my baby bumble bee.

Just like a good child should.

I was led to Prof Paterson’s article (Potholes in the road to excellence; TESS 11 May 2007) from Jim McDougall’s blog but I hadn’t read it until now… I’ve been too occupied completing the inevitable pile of paperwork that accumulated at this end of the final term while I was engaged with active, happy, enquiring 9 and 10-year olds who needed to have me available to them, not immersed in testing them or record-keeping. So here’s a practitioner’s view.

In his acid criticism of ACE, Prof Paterson asserts that “Most worthwhile human activity is quite unenjoyable for most of the time…” What a miserable existence Professor Paterson must lead! All of my pupils and I, would say we worked hard this year, but we would also say we mostly enjoyed the process, and I think that’s because we were motivated by the challenges we set ourselves. I resent the dismissive sneer which implies that a link between learning and good fun somehow devalues it. Is fulfillment only “worthwhile” if we have suffered to achieve it? If we’ve enjoyed it, is it not worthwhile? One small example:by making learning seem to be fun, several 10-year old boys were transformed from non- or reluctant readers to enthusiastic ones. Not worthwhile obviously to a policy maker, but immensely satisfying to me, their parents, and most of all, of course, to them.

Shouldn’t we be teaching children that there are ways of making a rough road more tolerable? Like: find someone to tackle it with you, or who has done something like it before; prepare well; find out first where it is you want to go, and also consider alternatives that occur to you as you go; aim high and set yourself smaller targets along the way, and congratulate yourself when you achieve them; if you hit a barrier, don’t give up, know where to get help and seek ways around it; be able to look back and assess honestly where you came from, how far you got and how you could get here more effectively the next time? Isn’t this the sort of thing that we teachers, as relatively successful learners, have all learned and try to pass on?

Don Ledingham, on his blog, talks about a kind of “groupthink” and expresses the hope that “we could engage in a rational dialogue about the development without anyone who puts their head above the parapet being castigated as a reactionary or traditionalist who is afraid of progress.” I agree with some of Prof Paterson’s reservations in the context of the AifL movement. In my opinon, it is still in thrall to certain self-proclaimed “experts”. However, slavishly embracing their edicts is just as unwise as to admit that you aren’t.

I am glad though to see ACE allowing “the timetable” to disappear from my plans, though we all knew it was a fiction to start with. Of course there needs to be structure and balance, but, in Primary at any rate, a timetable gets in the way of this, rather than enabling it. I welcome the potential of ACE to bring more honesty to planning, including Personal Learning Planning. Further, I hope this is the kind of autonomy HMIe will encourage, one which acknowledges and even seeks links and overlap between disciplines. Professor Paterson considers this process actually damaging to education, however it causes me endless and very observable delight when the children make these connections of their own accord.

And what are Prof Paterson’s desired “independent criteria of accomplishment” really? In the Primary arena, would he mean things like National Assessments? Hahaha. Certainly plenty of opportunity there for children to learn to cope with failure, as he so much desires. I want to be given ways to count what is valuable, not shown that my employers value only what is countable. I hope that ACE will remove the possibility of any teacher ever again being presented (as I was last year, through the “work” of a so-called “Quality Improvement Officer”) with an Excel spreadsheet showing how his/her class’s National Assessment statistics compare with others in his/her school and Authority, without that QIO ever having stepped inside my classroom, or having talked to me or any of the children in my classes. As far as Excel and statistics go, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Professor Paterson considers that ACE is “A curricular reform that threatens to destroy an inheritance by ignoring it, venerates autonomy and spontaneity above all else…”

Or…is it in fact just ever so slightly threatening to those who have for too long dictated, from well beyond the playground gates, what practice should look like, ignoring the professional judgement of its best practitioners with its “we know best” attitude? Isn’t that the inheritance that has been ignored - experienced, thoughtful, reflective teachers who are constantly reviewing their practice in the light of interactions between themselves, their professional development and individual children? The sort of teachers, some of whom are now recognised by the tag “Chartered”. We welcome the autonomy and yes, respect, that ACE promises. And as for spontaneity…isn’t it time that a bit of independent thought was once again encouraged in our classrooms. After all, isn’t it the fostering and valuing of Scots’ creativity that has produced the most notable, some would even say worthwhile, educational, intellectual and cultural advances?