i see tea

Teacher Intangibles – you can’t touch this!

The things a teacher does that you cannot count.

Each summer, NFL teams draft players from colleges around America. Losing teams get first pick of the best players. There was much debate about how high in the draft Tim Tebow would come. My stepson showed me a video of Tebow’s intangibles (will link when I find it); the things (leadership?) Tebow does that adds value to the performance of his team that cannot be measured in metres and points.

The smile. The right word at the right time. The energy you muster in the pupils before you. The belief you breathe into young spirit. How to strike the balance between firm boundaries that instill self-discipline and inspiration to fuel the drive to succeed. Poigniantly, I was discussing this with my partner and she flipped it at me citing moments when our blissful union had collapsed and I would defend my position with a list of tangibles and she could say nothing that would quantify her discipline and dedication being mother to our three (all teenagers now) – nothing to do with household chores – how she carries their lives and hearts in her mind, steering (masterfully, I must emphasise) the ship of our family.

Back to being a teacher and the contributions you make that no-one can touch. Do you plan it? Do you resource it? Thinking time? Reflecting on learning? Push them? Work them harder still? Formal or informal? Google 20% time? Mountains of work or less is more? Carefully prepared activities or spontaneity? Collaboration or solo pursuit? It is rare that the very activities you do in a classroom will make the difference. A teacher must inspire a pupil to pursue success when they are not in the classroom. A colleague of mine argues the case for drilling the pupils with exams. Everything must be exam content. I favour wider exploration.

I watched an awful film last week called Forever Strong. Larry Gelwix coached rugby in America – not an easy thing to do. 1976-2010 he oversaw 404 wins and 10 losses. He said, “I don’t build championship teams, I build championship boys.” He is talking about the individual person, not the rugby player.

I do not want to churn out pupils who get top grades on my production line. I want to inspire people to be more than what they believe to be their best.

Programming the Maths Curriculum

This was written as a response to Pete Bell’s blogpost ICT and Computing in Schools – Harness a new dawn

Show me the money (image by me)

AQA have attempted (2009)to take this issue seriously and consulted IBM, British Aerospace and other big corps to identify what they want from graduates. The answer, according to Barbara Wilson – chief examiner at the time – was business-savvy young people who understand how technology can add value to an organisation and the complicated process of implementing tech successfully. The new ICT A Level spec attempts to do this. I quite like it. Paper projects are still a problem. I hope to see the end of these shortly, but it is not easy to nurture the real-life project process without interaction (research, deliverables, testing) with users and clients. A controlled assessment approach might otherwise be a good idea. Fixed time frame. A range of problems set by the board. Effectively a practical exam.

The BIO takes this format but it is quite raw and difficult programming and I think there in lies part of the problem no-one seems to talk about. Programming is hard. [The one student I enter for the BIO - he got distinction last year - is the best mathematician the school has seen in 20 years.] I guess that’s why these conversations inevitably encourage everyone to start learning code young. I might, maybe after a pint, argue that all the visual programming simulators (Scratch et al) are doing a diservice to the cause. In Bob Noyce‘s final interview (in the 1990′s) he said that, if he were in charge of it all, he would like to “make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest, as well as at the graduate school level.” I’m not sure these immediate gratification software applications are the answer. Love them as I do. The joy of programming is writing lines of code to achieve a solution to a problem – not make a game or an animation. Who would be interested in programming to visually uninteresting outcomes after the rich loveliness and quick win play of KODU.

My cigarette packet solution is the Maths curriculum. Maths is already embedded in the heart of every school and connected to programming via algorithms and logical sequencing etc. I feel that the most effective and efficient way we can impregnate coding into UK schools is via the same route as algebra and geometry. Who should we be talking to? Those in charge of Maths. What’s the probability of them saying yes? One or zero.

42/365 My students get their own space in school moodle

39/365 I got played…

35/365 Binary on University Challenge