advice

Why schools close in snow, but didn’t in 1972

Jan 222013

Yesterday was a typical British Winter day with travel chaos, power cuts, abandoned cars and school closures. We all know it happens every year, and we all are pretty fed up with it. This year though there has been a clamour of complaint against the school closures, after all, they didn’t shut when I was a lad.

This nostalgia is quite tiresome and also, I feel, ignorant of the context. Schools close for safety reasons. The safety of the Learners, on the way to the school site and moving around the school site during the day. Snow fall puts a huge pressure on the one or two school facilities staff to maintain access and safety and snowfall during the day is often impossible to cope with. Schools also close for the safety of their employees, teachers, dinner staff, administration and support staff and so on. Everyone is entitled to work in an environment which doesn’t endanger their health.

In 1972 this was exactly the same, so why didn’t schools close then?

In 1972 schools were very local, learners and teachers were pretty much gathered from a catchment area of about a 5 mile radius. In bad weather people could either walk, share cars, or risk a dangerous bus ride or stay at home. There were some pretty horrible accidents, does no one else remember the fatal school bus crashes in bad weather back in the day? Schools had on site caretaking staff and were generally smaller, they probably didn’t need to formally close because there was always someone close and the least they could do was open a hall for 5-a-side or run the library. We might not know if a school was closed because there was no local communication, if you couldn’t get to the end of the street you stayed at home regardless of whether the school was formally shut or not. You couldn’t check on the internet, local radio or even phone anyone up.

Then, along came choice and parents were looking to get their children in to schools 10, 20 or 30 miles away. Teachers also were choosing to travel huge distances. Now a school is not a local resource but a regional one and with every few miles added to the journey the more dangerous it becomes in bad weather. Health and safety is a completely reasonable reason to close any establishment and gung-ho heads who are demanding teachers and children should come in regardless of hazard are guilty of bullying, in my opinion. Let’s get a prosecution and an imprisonment, that should sort the thinking out!

Getting huffy on TV because your child care has broken down is not helping. Back in 1972 the mother was probably at home and there was no child care problem.

The snow is clearing today and normality has returned, work will be caught up, extra homework set and the panic will prove to be unnecessary…. again.

Saying “no”

Ideas, Information, Personal Productivity No Responses »

Oct 242012

I heard yet another tail of woe yesterday, a headteacher on the sick 2 weeks before an inspection, deputy and assistant heads in the dark, teaching staff demoralised. Rather sadly, it is a very common story which I hear far too regularly.

To follow the stereotype through I would expect the head to have had a leadership problem, not delegated sufficiently well and not managed the staff. If this was baseball that would be her error, a stolen base and potential RBIs (hey, its the world series on Wednesday, Detroit versus San Francisco…). But in an organisation like a school the error is often not that easily attributed and I would look at the governors and the deputies as having let the school down as well.

Somewhere along the line someone didn’t say “no” when they should have.

Saying no is one of the hardest things to do in any workplace and something which is accentuated when the management structure is fractured or wobbly. You should be able to say no without fear of retribution or ridicule. You should be able to say no with a clear conscience and mutual respect. You should be able to say no, but I bet you can’t.

We are almost hard wired to not be able to do it. It might be something we were trained out of in our youth, saying no to your parents, for example was not allowed and saying no to your own teacher was also something which would have led to a punishment of some sort. You can check if you can say no, by doing the “sending food back in a restaurant” test… If the food is slightly cold what do you do? Put up with it or send it back? If you can send it back then you have most of the ‘saying no’ tools in your briefcase, if you struggle and would probably choose not to “cause a scene” then we need to do a little more work and go and look at assertiveness, one of my favourite topics.

Assertiveness is the cornerstone of being able to say no and we’ll come back to it in other posts. You can find quite a lot of excellent material on line already. It is also one of the best one day training courses you can go on. Crack assertiveness and saying no will follow…

Brain Pickings, Procrastination…

Personal Productivity No Responses »

Sep 272012

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/21/the-science-of-procrastination/

I wouldn’t go as far as call it a plague, as others have, but I do think many of us suffer from procrastination issues and don’t have any solutions for it. This excellent little video from ‘Brain Pickings’ is probably just what you need to start to put some measures in place to make your work time more productive.

One hour of focused work is better than 2 hours of fannying about.

‘Brain Pickings‘ are one of the inspirations for A* to G, do check out their excellent site and donate if you can.

New (academic) year resolutions

Ideas, Personal Productivity No Responses »

Sep 022012

Here we go. If not tomorrow, certainly this week. If in Scotland, probably last week. More than likely though, it is time to get back to work and start the new term, and for some of you it is your first day at work, teaching a proper class of your own. Good luck.

It has not been a particularly quiet Summer. It’s not been a Summer which has recharged batteries and prepared us to deliver an inspiring and dynamic education experience. It’s been full of stuff. Stuff which we could have done without. It’s been a political Summer (and a wet one) where I’ve had to stop myself from posting angry articles almost everyday (new term resolution No. 1 – no angry posts). Not only have we had GCSE issues, we’ve had free school problems, governor problems, University problems, employment figures problems, NEET problems, A4E problems, G4S problems, funding problems and my guttering gave out in all the rain. Not a great Summer at all.

What we have to do in times like these is focus on the task in hand which is being great teachers and taking our enthusiasm into the classroom. In this spirit I want to talk about what you are going to change this year, your new term resolutions.

You probably realise that new year resolutions, traditionally made in the first week of January are doomed to fail. We stop going to the gym, we do have a glass of wine, we do loose our resolve and revert to the old comfy ways. It’s just human nature. We still make resolutions because we know that we are not perfect and can identify some steps to make things better. We just don’t keep them.

New term resolutions are the same. We probably wont keep them, but it is great to analyse the work flow, identify the areas where we could improve and have a go at coming up with some solutions. Do the paperwork on time, have some more time for year 9, give better feedback, be a better mentor, be a better coach – that sort of thing. But you can make these thoughts more effective, even if you do fully realise that you are not going to keep them after half term. Tell someone, and ask for their support and assistance, share.

Once you have someone with you on the journey you gain extra support and extra perspective and have a better chance of coming up with a work flow which is sustainable and might survive a term or two. It might be your colleague in the department, or just a friend in the staffroom. In an ideal world it would be your line manager, but we all know that is not going to happen. Discuss your thoughts with your team and get them to do the same.

If only AQA had talked to OCR and Edexcel it might have been a different Summer for everybody.

Briefing – Episode 58, The JamHub

Ideas, Personal Productivity, Technology No Responses »

Aug 142012

My experience of rehearsal rooms when I was young was that the equipment would be ropey, your ears bled afterwards and would ring for days, and that you shouted so much that your throat was ruined for at least a week. Oh, and there was always a disgusting old sofa in the room somewhere.

I think those days might thankfully be over. This means you can rehearse with headphones on and control the mix you get without ruining everyone else’s experience. And no shouting, talk through the microphones at all times. That way you need never take them off while you rehearse.

The secret is “headphone busses”, normal mixing desks will provide you with one, maybe two or three headphone outs, which have their own controllable mixing sections. This device designs that feature up front. Each headphone out, has it’s own mini-mixer section allowing individuals to set exactly what they want to hear. without changing anyone else’s mix. These individual busses, yes, that is the word, give the JamHub its USP. Each feature is colour coded as well, meaning that if you are plugged into green, your sound will be on green right the way through the unit. Once you see the colour coding, it speaks for itself, not that the manual isn’t pretty good as well.

I’m guessing that cheaper versions will crop up soon, but I would council against trying to save money on these devices and urge you to teach how to use them safely and carefully before you let anyone rip them to shreds. They are solidly built, but tape two of them together any you’ve got a frisbee. As I’ve said elsewhere before, run a little course that trains people how to use them and rewards the right to have access to the equipment in lessons, breaks and lunchtimes. Having clued up and trained learners in the classroom will repay itself in no time.

Have a look at the JamHub website here for ideas on how they can be used in the classroom and experiment yourself. I much preferred using the JamHub to my Behringer mixer for practicing and I would be very interested to hear how you do use these in the classroom.

No money has changed hands and no promises made to JamHub or its distributors, but I would like to thank Steve, Andrew and Tony for the loan of the equipment.

Briefing – Episode 57, The first 5 minutes…

Ideas, Inspiration No Responses »

Jul 202012

Lessons are often won or lost in the first five minutes of the class, so having some winning ideas, great plans, strategies and resources at your fingertips is important for successful teaching.

Nothing turns learners off more other than doing yet another word-search. They might be fine, but they should not be your only idea. Relate it to the learning, keep it fresh and simple and see where you end up.

Let us know what you use and what you think doesn’t, through the comments box below…

Briefing – Episode 56, Deadlines

Ideas, Inspection, Personal Productivity No Responses »

Jul 202012

A word crops up in here which many people have problems with. Assertive – Lots to say on assertiveness that we’ll save for later, but a crucial skill for all teachers is to be assertive.

Draw a line in your mind. At one end write the word aggressive and at the other, passive.

Aggressive is not good. If you are in any way aggressive education is not the industry for you, you should leave before you get sacked. Passive is not good. If you are in any way passive education is not the industry for you, you should leave before you get sacked.

Assertive is right in the middle. It’s features are firm but fair. Honest, truthful and clear.

I think I’ve made my point.

Presentation fail…

Information, Technology 1 Response »

Jun 282012

I went to a presentation evening at a secondary school last night and watched a senior teacher make what I consider to be a basic presentation blunder which should be a sackable offence. The stage was set with a projector centre font, showing the school logo and flooding the stage with light. As the platform party walked on, huge shadows were cast behind, large lumbering silhouettes of strangely shaped monsters and aliens, like that scene in ‘Close Encounters’.

The projector was used to show a slide show of the learners from the academic year which was put together quite well. After which the stage was cleared and the projector moved for the procession of learners to make their way to the stage to receive their awards. The projector and laptop were on a trolly which was simply wheeled out of the way… while the desktop was still projected, causing the video to blind the stage party and whoosh across the set like some doped out projection from a 1969 Pink Floyd gig. I should know, I was there. The trolly had to move about 10 metres and with each change of direction the image swooped and swirled across the stage. It looked highly amateur.

This is easily avoided. There is a button, probably on the remote control but also on the top of the projector called “A/V mute”. This temporarily silences any audio and turns the screen to black until you ‘un-mute’ with the same button. It’s a key tool during presentations, when you want the class to listen to you rather than to stare blankly at the screen, use this button. It’s a life saver. If there is no button, it might happen anyway, when you close the lens cover.

A further rule for giving presentations, please, the audience should never, ever, see your desktop…

Briefing – Episode 55, Mac rumours

Technology No Responses »

Jun 192012

…and don’t even get me started on the difference between “want” and “need”. The conversations recently have been “do I really need a laptop, should I get an iPad instead?” and I think I would walk away from that one too. iPads are just amazing things in the classroom, great to teach with, super practical, very slick and helpful. Perhaps the desktop machine is truly dead and the sensible choice is for a laptop and an iPad and we can re-claim the computer table. Perhaps we can chuck the computer desk out of the living room at last and use the space for a new radiogram.

The Windows version of the iPad looks good as well, have a search for “Windows Surface” and see what you can find.

That’s enough technology for a while…. honest.

Briefing – Episode 54, Managing files

Ideas, Inspiration, Technology No Responses »

Jun 092012

Oh, and by the way, always make a back-up. Before you pass anything onto learners back up the disk to your laptop and keep it safe just in case something unfortunate happens… need I say more…

Another thing to consider is the syntax you might use when naming files. For example you might have the name of the learners but also a code which points to the class, task or project. One thing you don’t need in the title of course is the date, amazing how many times you see that. File names can be quite long if you want, usually up to 255 characters so enough for several names but consider initials or short names just to keep titles to 1 line on the desktop.

How long do you keep them? 1 term, a year? Do you burn them off onto a CD or DVD? Do the school have a policy on it? Photos are the property of the school so should be covered by procedures and processes somewhere.

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