Teaching and Learning Takeover TLT13
What was the first piece of work you remember feeling proud of? When did you write it? Who did you write it for? What impact did it have on you as learner?
These questions began my session at the wonderful Teaching and Learning Takeover this weekend. I think they are essential questions for us to reflect on as teachers, if we don’t consider how we came alive as learners, how can we fully understand the labours of those we teach?
Start there. Start where you were when you came alive as a learner. What did the moment look like to you? Feel like to you? How has it influenced your life since? Have you ever shared it with your students? Start sharing it. It will help them understand your teaching and revalue that teaching: you were a learner once too, you had the same problems and you worked out a way to learn; more importantly, you haven’t buried the discovery. Share the treasure.
• Ron Berger asserts that work of excellence is transformational
• Because it leads to a new self-image
• An appetite for excellence
• Builds pride in excellence
That is treasure worth sharing: the new appetite, the transformation (Frog say hello to the Prince), the new selfie and the rock ‘n roll song of excellence. Now that’s the X Factor. Don’t believe me? Read this article and tell me that I am wrong.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/jan/23/books.usa
One thing leads to another.
The key message for students here is: smart is not something you are, it’s something you become.
When it comes to the Sutton Trust research on initiatives that most support pupil progress, to help them become a smarter learner, these are some of the standouts.
Collaborative learning + 5 Months
Effective Feedback + 8 Months
Homework + 5 Months
Meta-cognition and self-regulation + 8 Months
Peer tutoring + 6 Months
I would argue that Ron Berger’s individual and gallery critiques engage students in practising all of these through the same learning ethos: Ron Berger’s ‘An Ethic of Excellence’.
Moreover ,what lies behind that progress? It is not where you live. Or which school you go to. It is the teacher you have. I love that sentence. But it is also terrifying.
So how can we enable this progress? Shift the focus of our teaching and learning from quantity to quality. Isn’t that the driving force in Jenn Ludd’s latest post? A six week project: time to learn, time to grow a new mind set about yourself as learner? Myself as a writer?
It is about engaging student’s with the learning that takes place inside.
We need to recognise that writing places severe emotional demands on students. It is a thinking task; a language task; a memory task; a problem of what to say and how to say it.
So how can we help them with this? How often do we create environments where pupils can share what they are confident with and what they are struggling with? The pupil to teacher feedback that is central to ‘this is what I am thinking; this is what I need help with – if you really want to help me make progress, let me talk to you.’ If this dialogue comes alive then maybe we are accessing the feedback that is going on inside pupils and, how much more likely might it make them to act on our other feedback? Teacher to pupil?
Are we using department time to discuss feedback? Or is it all devoted to who will teach what and when? Without a dialogue over that central,developmental, focus on the how to’s of the learning.
Who has had the department meeting to discuss: What makes an ‘expert’ Historian? Writer? Geographer? Scientist? Mathematician? Athlete? Artist? Engineer? Aren’t these the big questions our subjects seek to provide answers to? Shouldn’t these be part of our ethics of excellence?
WE should look again at how we plan our department meetings. Change what we are talking about and in so doing change the learning culture in our classrooms.
