It certainly has been a while since my last post! I seem to have been stupidly busy over the last few weeks (months!) and have really struggled to find the time to write anything. This has been made worse by my dissertation starting to kick off meaning that I now spend every waking minute trying to read about various research theories / philosophies and trying to figure out what philosophical angle I should be using when I really couldn’t care less about whether its an ethnographic study or a study based on grounded theory…YAWN!
Another reason that this Blogging malarkey and I haven’t really fallen in love is because every time I begin to write something it turns out to be a mini (or mega!) rant. I don’t like that and I definitely don’t do it on purpose. If truth be told I think I am, or can be, a fairly critical person. I don’t mean this to be a negative because I think that you can be critical but still in a positive way. I actually consider it one of my strengths. Being critical allows me:
- Not to become sucked in by other people speaking nonsense. I’m not much of a follower of reputations and titles but of compassionate and respectful individuals.
- To develop my own professional skills by being brutally honest with myself.
- To approach my profession with honesty, compassion and little humility – nodding heads and people who agree for the sake of agreeing or agree to avoid offending people can sometimes cause more damage.
However, I can focus too much on the areas which need developing either in myself, others or the educational system as a whole and I ignore some of the highlights and success stories. I wonder how many of us fall into this trap and don’t recognise the rewards which being in the educational sector offer us?
I am absolutely loving my role as a development officer this year and the highlights have been plenty. For instance, on Friday afternoon I had possibly one of the best PE lessons I have every taught. In fact I can’t even say I taught it – in reality I gave the children a few short instructions and then handed the responsibility for the lesson over to the children. My only input was some questionable choices of music!
When working with a class which is not your own it can be difficult to let go of the lesson and transfer the responsibility for learning to the children. It relies on a solid relationship of respect and trust. However, after only two lesson with this P5-7 class we managed it. I will attribute a great deal of that to the wonderful responsibility + leadership qualities of the children…a little bit of it was down to the ‘Better Movers and Thinkers’ approach adopted during the lesson…and I think my choice of music had something to do with an enjoyable atmosphere. The children might disagree on that last point!
If I have taken anything away from this year is that the quality of learning sky rockets the moment we capture the essence of children taking ownership. Children taking ownership over their learning is a bit of an over used phrase at the moment and something which is all to often undertaken in schools via very contrived methods (sorry I am being critical again). However, if it is an ethos which exists throughout a school community then it can do wonders for a child’s cognitive and personal development. This is only my opinion but from what I have seen this year on the odd occasion where I have truly nailed it and achieved that full transfer of responsibility (I always strive towards it but often it is only a partial transfer) then the learning experiences of the children are so enriching and rewarding I cannot see how we can improve on that.
I’ll try not leave it so long next time. I appreciate this is probably me just making a promise to myself as opposed to reassuring my many many fans out there that another post will be coming soon.
Jamie.
My Teaching Blog 