I had a kid for detention today for failing to attend a detention for failing to do the homework, for the second time. One of those sagas. She's a nice enough girl, just a bit mardy, and she has blue hair, so we'll call her Blue Frown. She sat and did the work set whilst other kids trooped in and out of the room, collecting work and chatting with me. When they'd all gone, I thought I'd try and have a chat with her, so I asked her something - I think it was 'How come you're not doing the homework at the moment? Are you having a tough time?' and she started talking. It's starting to sound repetitive, I know, but it really does happen like that and it astonishes me every time. One short question and they talk for 20 minutes.
She said she hated school, and she's neither academic nor popular, so I wasn't very surprised. She only comes to school because she can't 'stress my mum out' any more. Apparently her mum was hospitalised with 'stress' for 3 nights last term, and her older and younger brothers are completely off the rails so Blue Frown is really scared her mum will go back to hospital. She said there are constant arguments at home since her dad left, 18 months ago, so she doesn't go home til 8pm. She tries to help her mum, but sometimes she can't help being cross at her brothers and then she feels really guilty.
I almost hate this sort of situation the most. She's clearly in a horrible situation, and frankly I'm not at all surprised she isn't doing her homework - and I don't blame her. But there's nothing serious enough, or that ticks any of the right boxes, to get agencies involved. There's nothing we can do, and she'll still get detentions for not doing homework. I did the only thing I could - I promised to never be mad at her for not doing homework: even though she would have to have detentions like everyone else, I would never be cross or stressed at her, and we would do the detentions and forget about it.
Maths teaching in comprehensive schools in the UK, helping children find roots and wings.
Thursday 21 February 2013
Tuesday 19 February 2013
A Letter
I have received 3 sincere letters of apology in my life - the third today, from a student. A rare and significant thing.
Wednesday 13 February 2013
Control
Three weeks in to this year, I was helping one girl in my bottom set when she stopped responding to me. I don't mean she stopped responding positively, or engaging, I mean she stopped speaking, making eye contact or doing anything at all that I'd asked. She continued to twiddle her hair, but it was like I wasn't in the room, never mind speaking to her. After a minute or so she called across to her friend, and I though it was over, but she still made no response to me.
That's how I discovered that Silent Girl is a selective mute. What that says about the SEN system is another matter altogether, but what it meant for me in that lesson was unclear. I tried, I'm ashamed to say, to force her out of it. Threats escalated as she continued to completely ignore me, including an instruction to leave the classroom. She had an hour's detention, which she eventually did, but we failed to have any productive conversations.
It started to happen a lot, and the pattern wasn't complicated: when the work got too hard, or if she got something wrong, she'd start ignoring me. Once or twice, when something was said that made her realise that an answer was incorrect, she scribbled over it violently before becoming mute. It wasn't a physiological problem in any sense, as she was still able to talk to her friends (so her throat wasn't constricting with nerves, for example). I was at a loss as to how to solve it.
The only thing that seemed to work was ignoring her, and coming back later, but that seemed like an admission of defeat, like I was giving Silent Girl the control in our relationship. When I realised that, it made more sense. In the bottom set age 14, Silent Girl had comprehensively failed at education for the last 8 years. She's sat in classrooms where - however basic the knowledge, however 'easy' the task was proclaimed to be - she couldn't follow. Age 14, she couldn't count to 20 reliably or subtract at all, and she was forced to go over the same concepts again and again, although she still didn't understand. She had no control, and she wanted some.
I was further convinced of this in January, when I witnessed a confrontation between Silent Girl and her form teacher. She'd been avoiding her form teacher, so he found her at the end of my lesson. She ignored him. Clearly very frustrated with her, he began to shout. He hadn't lost his temper, and I could see it was carefully controlled, but it didn't work. She sat there staring into the distance as he shouted until the end of break. He left and she still sat there, and she began to smile. She had, she thought, won some power over him - he could not break her, and she could make him furious.
Ever since then, I have never got cross with her. She occasionally references the incident - 'Do you remember when my form teacher yelled at me? He was really mad!' - and she still ignores me. When she does, I stay as calm as possible and never stop smiling. I explain what she needs to do, leave her for about a minute and return. If she hasn't done it, I repeat my instructions, making sure it's something she's capable of and still being extra cheerful. If she hasn't done it after that, I outline what she needs to do by the end of the lesson, and keep returning - she stays in the room until she's done it.
She ignores me less and less, and when she does she usually gives in after a few repetitions of the instructions. I'm pretty boring to bait now, and it works. It doesn't tackle the root of the problem though: she still has no control over her days and very little understanding. Unless we fix that, she's not going to cope when suddenly, in 18 months time, she has complete control.
That's how I discovered that Silent Girl is a selective mute. What that says about the SEN system is another matter altogether, but what it meant for me in that lesson was unclear. I tried, I'm ashamed to say, to force her out of it. Threats escalated as she continued to completely ignore me, including an instruction to leave the classroom. She had an hour's detention, which she eventually did, but we failed to have any productive conversations.
It started to happen a lot, and the pattern wasn't complicated: when the work got too hard, or if she got something wrong, she'd start ignoring me. Once or twice, when something was said that made her realise that an answer was incorrect, she scribbled over it violently before becoming mute. It wasn't a physiological problem in any sense, as she was still able to talk to her friends (so her throat wasn't constricting with nerves, for example). I was at a loss as to how to solve it.
The only thing that seemed to work was ignoring her, and coming back later, but that seemed like an admission of defeat, like I was giving Silent Girl the control in our relationship. When I realised that, it made more sense. In the bottom set age 14, Silent Girl had comprehensively failed at education for the last 8 years. She's sat in classrooms where - however basic the knowledge, however 'easy' the task was proclaimed to be - she couldn't follow. Age 14, she couldn't count to 20 reliably or subtract at all, and she was forced to go over the same concepts again and again, although she still didn't understand. She had no control, and she wanted some.
I was further convinced of this in January, when I witnessed a confrontation between Silent Girl and her form teacher. She'd been avoiding her form teacher, so he found her at the end of my lesson. She ignored him. Clearly very frustrated with her, he began to shout. He hadn't lost his temper, and I could see it was carefully controlled, but it didn't work. She sat there staring into the distance as he shouted until the end of break. He left and she still sat there, and she began to smile. She had, she thought, won some power over him - he could not break her, and she could make him furious.
Ever since then, I have never got cross with her. She occasionally references the incident - 'Do you remember when my form teacher yelled at me? He was really mad!' - and she still ignores me. When she does, I stay as calm as possible and never stop smiling. I explain what she needs to do, leave her for about a minute and return. If she hasn't done it, I repeat my instructions, making sure it's something she's capable of and still being extra cheerful. If she hasn't done it after that, I outline what she needs to do by the end of the lesson, and keep returning - she stays in the room until she's done it.
She ignores me less and less, and when she does she usually gives in after a few repetitions of the instructions. I'm pretty boring to bait now, and it works. It doesn't tackle the root of the problem though: she still has no control over her days and very little understanding. Unless we fix that, she's not going to cope when suddenly, in 18 months time, she has complete control.
Sunday 10 February 2013
Making Mistakes
Last week, I went to a dance class. I'm a pretty dreadful dancer, and it's no surprise that I was a complete beginner. It went really well, and I enjoyed the successes of getting to the end of each dance in tact - until the last dance. As soon as it started, someone called across to tell me I should be doing something, although I thought I should be standing still. No one had said that I should be doing this thing, but it was obvious to everyone else, as they were more experienced. It was really tough after that to catch up with the dance, and to figure out what was going on, and I got more and more confused until I gave up and ended up being pulled and jostled through to the end. I was feeling pretty cross with myself and with the instructors for not making it clear to a beginner. I felt that I was dreadful at dancing, and that it was pointless to try to improve.
As I was heading home, the parallels jumped out at me. The times when a child panics in class because they don't 'get it', and I tell them to wait - I'll help them later - but they feel the class is running along without them. The times when a student declares a test 'stupid' before they even try, because of a previous bad experience. The many students who give up when they start to find something hard, and look for someone else to blame.
So what can we do about this? How can I make failure less damaging to kids self-belief and attitude, and to my own? Someone once told me never to start by saying that something was easy. It puts the students in a lose-lose situation: if they can do it, that's no big deal, because it's easy. If they can't, well, they must be really dumb, because it's easy. The converse can help here, I think. If the teacher starts off by saying 'this is really tricky', it instantly becomes more ok to make mistakes. If the dancing instructor had said 'this is a tough dance', I'd have felt better when I went wrong.
We can get even more explicit than that though, and I've been trialling it this week with my youngest students. 'This topic is really tough. You guys are probably going to make loads of mistakes, but that's ok, because that's how we learn best.' When mistakes are made, I've been quietly observing them and then writing them on the board in an altered form for everyone to discuss, pointing out how useful the mistakes are. Most kids didn't recognise their own mistakes on the board, because I'd changed the numbers, but the ones who did didn't seem to mind.
I think this can only get us some of the way. I don't want to get into discussing the 'learning objective' culture in detail, but it seems to me that if you have a fixed objective, failure is always going to be more problematic. If it's open ended, not being able to do something is ok. Obviously we need kids to be focussed and have goals, but I think much of their learning should still be open-ended. They don't need to be driven to a specific goal every lesson, and when they instead set off and see where they end up, without fear of failing to meet a criteria, they allow themselves to make mistakes.
As I was heading home, the parallels jumped out at me. The times when a child panics in class because they don't 'get it', and I tell them to wait - I'll help them later - but they feel the class is running along without them. The times when a student declares a test 'stupid' before they even try, because of a previous bad experience. The many students who give up when they start to find something hard, and look for someone else to blame.
So what can we do about this? How can I make failure less damaging to kids self-belief and attitude, and to my own? Someone once told me never to start by saying that something was easy. It puts the students in a lose-lose situation: if they can do it, that's no big deal, because it's easy. If they can't, well, they must be really dumb, because it's easy. The converse can help here, I think. If the teacher starts off by saying 'this is really tricky', it instantly becomes more ok to make mistakes. If the dancing instructor had said 'this is a tough dance', I'd have felt better when I went wrong.
We can get even more explicit than that though, and I've been trialling it this week with my youngest students. 'This topic is really tough. You guys are probably going to make loads of mistakes, but that's ok, because that's how we learn best.' When mistakes are made, I've been quietly observing them and then writing them on the board in an altered form for everyone to discuss, pointing out how useful the mistakes are. Most kids didn't recognise their own mistakes on the board, because I'd changed the numbers, but the ones who did didn't seem to mind.
I think this can only get us some of the way. I don't want to get into discussing the 'learning objective' culture in detail, but it seems to me that if you have a fixed objective, failure is always going to be more problematic. If it's open ended, not being able to do something is ok. Obviously we need kids to be focussed and have goals, but I think much of their learning should still be open-ended. They don't need to be driven to a specific goal every lesson, and when they instead set off and see where they end up, without fear of failing to meet a criteria, they allow themselves to make mistakes.
Saturday 9 February 2013
...and one I didn't catch
I got an email yesterday to tell me that a kid I teach, and chat to, and get along really well with, has just been diagnosed with severe anorexia. I had no idea. I didn't notice anything.
Wednesday 6 February 2013
Again
The other day, a bright, cheerful girl in one of my classes was not concentrating. She was talking to the person next to her, and I when told her to stop, she did - but resumed 5 minutes later. I was pissed off, and told her to move seats. When she'd moved (after a 'no, I'm serious' comment from me), she stopped doing any work, and just sat there. I told her to stop being so mardy, and gave her a minimum amount of work to do, which she did.
At the end of the lesson, I asked her to stay, but before I spoke to her I turned to put some papers on a shelf. As I let my breath out with the lesson over, I realised: this is not how I do this. This is not the right way to do this. My frustration with a normally delightful student was stopping me doing what I know is right. I took a deep breath and turned around to her grumpy face. 'Hey, looks like you're having a bad day. What's up? Are you ok?'
It all came out - a worrying friendship issue and an argument with mum this morning. No big issues, but big enough when you're 12 to distract from long division. She talked for a few minutes, then apologised for her behaviour. I told her that I hoped she felt happier soon, and the next lesson she grinned at me and worked away cheerfully.
Every time. You have to do it every time. When you're tired, when you're frustrated, when you have a headache, when you've got a thousand things to do. I have to listen every time
At the end of the lesson, I asked her to stay, but before I spoke to her I turned to put some papers on a shelf. As I let my breath out with the lesson over, I realised: this is not how I do this. This is not the right way to do this. My frustration with a normally delightful student was stopping me doing what I know is right. I took a deep breath and turned around to her grumpy face. 'Hey, looks like you're having a bad day. What's up? Are you ok?'
It all came out - a worrying friendship issue and an argument with mum this morning. No big issues, but big enough when you're 12 to distract from long division. She talked for a few minutes, then apologised for her behaviour. I told her that I hoped she felt happier soon, and the next lesson she grinned at me and worked away cheerfully.
Every time. You have to do it every time. When you're tired, when you're frustrated, when you have a headache, when you've got a thousand things to do. I have to listen every time
Friday 1 February 2013
Maths in the Library
Last week, there was a maths class in the library for the first time ever at my school. It was amazing. I was trying to figure out why that 'data' topic - a quarter of the course - is so damn dull. I found it dull and, as I discovered at uni, I love stats! I figured that it might be partially to do with the fact that you never get to deal with data you care about in school, so of course the results are boring. And frankly, the colours-of-cars / survey pseudo experiments that are often said to be the solution are almost worse than the textbooks in terms of providing data the kids might actually find interesting.
So, the library. Every kid got a data set that they were actually interested in - world records for the 50m front crawl, for the boy who swims for the county. CD sales per month for the girl in love with Bieber. And one kid - that one, and he's top of the class - comparing sales of cheese to GDP.
Now, every lesson they all draw a particular type of graph - Thursday was scatter graphs - using their own data, and to their own level of challenge. Pick the scales for your axes. Find equations of lines of best fit and predict more data, do some research, do other people agree with you?
It's amazing, producing nearly 100% engagement and raising interesting questions about how to present difficult data that doesn't fit neatly into categories. As a side benefit, I chummed up with the librarian. She just emailed me with a question.
The library 'maths books' budget hasn't been spent for the last 8 years. The ordering deadline for this year is a week away. Is there anything you'd like me to buy?
So, everyone, is there anything I should buy - of course there is! What?
So, the library. Every kid got a data set that they were actually interested in - world records for the 50m front crawl, for the boy who swims for the county. CD sales per month for the girl in love with Bieber. And one kid - that one, and he's top of the class - comparing sales of cheese to GDP.
Now, every lesson they all draw a particular type of graph - Thursday was scatter graphs - using their own data, and to their own level of challenge. Pick the scales for your axes. Find equations of lines of best fit and predict more data, do some research, do other people agree with you?
It's amazing, producing nearly 100% engagement and raising interesting questions about how to present difficult data that doesn't fit neatly into categories. As a side benefit, I chummed up with the librarian. She just emailed me with a question.
The library 'maths books' budget hasn't been spent for the last 8 years. The ordering deadline for this year is a week away. Is there anything you'd like me to buy?
So, everyone, is there anything I should buy - of course there is! What?
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