Rules

A student in my form's father is dying. Well, probably. It's advanced stage cancer, detected very late, and it's not a sort with a good prognosis. Hairy Boy is 13 and he has a younger sister, and their uncle, who has no kids, decided to buy them a family holiday to make the most of the months they have left with their dad. Fair enough. Lovely plan. Only, it's in term time.

We can't say 'Wait til Christmas' because it's already payed for (and they're not wealthy), and, well, Dad might not have that long, at least not in good enough health to go on holiday - but we can't say yes.

New rules came in at the start of this month that say that no holidays can be authorised apart from in exceptional circumstances, for students who have never taken a holiday in term time before, and whose attendance for the last 12 months is over 90%. And Hairy Boy's attendance is 85% - he was really sick last term for a week. So we can't authorise, and there's no appeal system or higher-up power to appeal to, just the rule. You can't. Teacher's can't be trusted to use their professional judgement, so we end up with absolute regulations like this and have nowhere to turn when we find a situation in which they are clearly devastatingly misguided.

Oh, my form

Grumpy 14 year old boy, storming out of my classroom unhappily: *mutters* 'I don't know why everyone says you're such a great teacher, you're not exactly a good form tutor...'

First week back

It was a long week! Let's do this by numbers.

1: snapping at children ('Don't whine, Ali!' to a year 7 bottom set child)
1: putting my head in my hands and telling my TA 'That was the worst lesson in the history of ever' (this 
     happens quite often)
2: times I made a new year 7 cry
2: balls of string used in lessons and now hopelessly tangled
3: hopelessly miss-set children (2 have now been moved...)
3: 'Miss Roots' Magical Homework Pass's given out, to much admiration and joy

4: detentions given to 13 year-olds for calling out in class
4: times a student who had me last year told a student who is new to me this year 'Yeah, she really will do
    that'
5: detentions given (a year 8 girl forgot her homework. Yes, I'm mean.)

And finally...
12: times being called 'Mrs'. Nope, not married!

More Mistakes

I don't know how to deal with a student making a mistake. I mean, really, I don't. My current strategy goes something like this:

If it's in front of the whole class, say, 'Hmm, that's not quite right, can somebody help X out?'

If it's one-on-one with a usually capable and confident student, say 'Nope, that's not quite true' or 'You've made a mistake in this problem. Can you spot it?' - and then wait.

If it's one-on-one with a less confident student, say 'This one here isn't quite right. You do it like this:.... What do you think the answer is now?'

It's fairly disastrous. The first two are more-or-less ok, mostly because the students are fine with making mistakes anyway. Another teacher in my department always says 'Bad luck!' when someone makes a mistake in front of the class, which I like, but in a way I'm not sure it matters what words you use - they know what it means. It's the third scenario where there are huge problems. Fluffy, my smallest and spunkiest year 10, is always kitted out in fluffy bed socks (Why? She's fifteen!). She's the kid in my bottom set who is failing everything. When she's told a problem is wrong, she will totally shut down. Head on the desk, snatches the book away, and grumbles.
'Leave me alone! I'm doing it! Just let me work!'
'I'm pleased you're working, Fluffy, but I think you've made a small mistake in one place. Let me look and we can sort it out, then you can carry on.'
'I know what I'm doing! Stop picking on me! You can look at the end!'
'I don't want you to make the same mistake again, so I need to look now.'
'God! I'm just trying to work! Go away - I'm ok! I know what I'm doing!'
'I'm really sorry, Fluffy, but I'm not sure you 100% know what you're doing, because you've made a small mistake. So we need to go over it.'
'It's fine! It's not a problem! Leave me alone and go and hassle someone else!'

She's crying, I'm frustrated, and we don't get anywhere with the maths. Sometimes she will continue working during the conversation, whilst covering her book up and refusing to stop writing. More often, she won't pick up a pen again for the rest of the lesson. I always feel awful for pushing her, and I can't see it as naughtiness - she's upset and defensive, because she can't deal with being wrong, again.

The only possible solution I've thought of so far is really small problem sets, where each one needs to be checked before going on to the next. That way at least she knows it's coming, so she's not always worrying about me coming over, and I'm not 'picking' on her. I'm sure she won't like that idea, though. There's got to be a way that's less hurtful for both of us!

At the bottom

I've just found out that I'm getting bottom set 11-year-olds next year. It's pretty exciting, because I've never taught that level before - I've taught higher level 11-year-olds, and bottom set 13+. Bottom sets at that age are a bit of a mystery to me, and from the frantic research I've been doing, to a lot of people. Before they enter the world of GCSE target grades (usually 'Get a grade! You're upsetting our A* to G %!') nobody really minds what you do with them. In fact, it's terrifyingly unsupervised and unsupported. And here's the shocker.

Most children in bottom sets in the UK make no progress in maths between the ages of 11 and 14.

None, in over 3 years. That's the sort of stat nobody wants to own up to, and it's the sort that nobody even tries to address, because it looks pretty impossible.

There was an ugly facebook argument last week that I saw, where someone suggested that education isn't good at producing clever, useful people because, well, teachers aren't clever, useful people - if they were, they wouldn't be teaching, would they? They'd be writing software, or working in finance or consultancy, or the civil service, or something a whole lot better than teaching.

It got quite a response, which I shan't bother repeating - if you're reading this, chance are we don't disagree about this anyway. However, it got me thinking of a parallel argument:

Maybe education is so terrible at catering to the needs of the bottom 5% of the (mainstream) school population, because none of the teachers were ever in the bottom 5% of their school populations. In a conversation recently, it turned out that none of the people present had ever been in anything lower than set 2 in school. Bottom sets are a mystery to teachers, and to education advisers in local or national capacities.

A bottom set year 10 kid had me in tears a few weeks ago when she apologised for her shocking behaviour, and explained that she'd just found out she was failing Drama GCSE. As in, she was predicted to get a U, and the teacher couldn't see a way for that to change. She said 'Drama's my best subject! It was the only subject I thought I might get a grade in. Now I'll have nothing at the end of next year - no grades at all. What's the point?'

When she arrived age 11, she met with a host of teachers who had never been in her position, and had little idea how to teach her. She's stuck in a system that really doesn't cater to her, because it was designed by people who had never been in her position. It's probably too late for her to get much out of secondary school, but I want a different experience for my new 11-year-olds, fresh-faced from primary school. How?

Hunt

Year 9 arrive at the classroom. It's the last lesson of the year, and excitement is running pretty high about what they'll be doing. There's a notice taped to the door:
'Wait til everyone is here, then come on in'

At 1.30, they enter and find the room empty, with a large note on the table - in code. They grab some whiteboards and start arguing (love this class!). They decode it to 'Come to the canteen quickly', and they run down.

Taped to the canteen door is a notice reading:
'Grab a clipboard from below, and your first clue is over there >'
There are questions all around the grounds, with answers above them. They answer one question and find the answer on the top of another sheet of paper, answer the question underneath and so on, until they come back to the canteen door. I snuck back and replaced the notice, so now there's another code there. They decode it (this takes them a while - it's a substitution cypher and they go the wrong way, but then realise their mistake) and it reads 'If you are a cookie monster, go to N15' Where there are, naturally, cookies.

I'm sure there are better ways to increase class independence than literally not being there to help when they're desperate to solve something, but I don't think there are as funny for me, watching from various windows!

Novelty in Equation Solving

I tried a new method for getting kids to rearrange equations this week. Astonishingly, given the amount of stuff out there, I haven't been able to find it anywhere on the web, but I'm sure I can't be the first to think of it.

It was stunningly easy. The majority of the class could already do basic rearranging, such as 3a + 4 = 2a + 6 . I gave them that question then, after they demonstrated the method and answer, asked them to divide themselves into 2 roughly equal groups, based on confidence. Now, I hear what everyone seems to be saying about grouping by ability, but I had a real reason for this. Also, it was the kids' own choice which group they went in. Some of them surprised me. Most got it right. The ones that didn't quickly realised and moved.

Each group then got given a bunch of equations on slips of paper, and each student taped one to the top of their whiteboards (held portrait). The more confident group got fiendish, nasty, horrible equations. The others got ones of the sort above. They sat in a circle. Each student had to write the first step of rearranging the equation under the taped paper, then pass the whiteboard to their left. They would get handed a whiteboard from their other side, read what was on it and write the next step for that equation.

It was fantastic. The amount of brilliant maths talk, productive arguing and explaining was huge. Students were teaching each other and figuring out what worked and what didn't. A sample exchange:

Kid 1 'This step isn't right' *passes board back*
Kid 2 'Yes it is, see, I multiplied by 3p'
Kid 1 'Huh, yeah, I guess you did'

pause

 Kid 1 'But I can't see what to do next, after that step. I don't think we can solve it starting like that. Can you do a different step?'
Kid 2 'Oh, I guess not, ok, sure'*

I sat with the less confident group to start with, and when they'd got on the the second set of equations I moved over. The others were really struggling, but making lots of progress. At the end, I did the litmus test.
'So, who learned something today?'
'Who was challenged today'
A resounding success. So much so, that next lesson I got them to split into 4 smaller circles, and we did some more.


*For interest, this equation had a quadratic on the top of a fraction, which they needed to cancel - if they didn't, they ended up needing to factorise a quadratic with a non-1 value of x squared.