Target Literacy Conference

I attended the East Lothian Target Conference this morning in Musselburgh. We were there to discuss the nature of literacy and consider what we already do, and could do, to target literacy in East Lothian. There were lots of outcomes from this morning.

Firstly, we got to hear from Matthew Fitt, the author working with Itchy Coo. It was great to hear Matthew speak with passion about the Scots language - although a little uncomfortable to be up pointing to ma ned and gieing ma bahookie a slap! Hard not to join in when there are so many enthusiastic primary school teachers in the room!! As an outsider I’m quite fascinated by the Scots language and love learning the words. For example, I was totally flummoxed when a pupil asked me recently if the graph I was asking him to draw should be muckle.

The rest of the morning was spent in groups discussing what it means to literate and what we can do to promote literacy. This was fascinating on two counts. I discovered that literacy is not as simple a term as it first appears. Is it simply the ability to read and write? Or does it also encompass one’s ability to communicate orally? Does reading body language count? What about emotional literacy? In addition to the discussion, it was also really interesting to speak to people who work in other sectors. As well as us teachery folk there were also NHS staff, police, QIOs, outreach, librarians, parents and a pupil (brave child)! The opportunity to meet and discuss issues with colleagues and stakeholders from other sectors must have been on many peoples’ evaluations at the end of the day, I know it was on mine.

On a different note, my mind was also slightly preoccupied today with the notion that what we are trying to do here has so many similarities to what was going on in the Caprivi Region of Namibia when we were there. Literacy is their greatest challenge to learning and so many of the comments really resonated with my experiences of working there on behalf of VSO. I made a list of the similarities:
- The literacy levels of parents is key to the success of the pupils
- There are many barriers between us as professionals and those parents most in need of support, and it is very difficult to engage those most vulnerable.
- One of these barriers is childcare. Parents here struggle to attend training as they have other children to look after, just like in Namibia.
- Getting the community to actively engage in the life of the school is challenging, and becomes more so as pupils move up through the years to High School.
- And on the notion of language, Caprivians are desperately trying to ensure that all lessons are taught in English as opposed to their various mother tongues. Meanwhile Matthew is busy championing the return of the Scots’ mother tongue to the classroom. A lesson for the future for the Caprivians I think.

I know in many ways it shouldn’t surprise me that we are all so similar, but for some reason it does.

Happy Birthday to me

It’s my birthday today. That’s not much of a big deal these days. It’s not even one of the big milestone birthdays, so why bother blogging? Well, I just remembered that on my birthday last year I was in Namibia. When I got my payslip for June I found I had extra money. After a few enquiries I discovered that it was my ‘birthday bonus’! Such a nice idea I think.

I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in my payslip this month.

Shaggy Blog Stories

My friend Rach has managed to get one of her fantastic blog posts into a book! It’s a collection of 100 short humorous pieces from the UK blogosphere called Shaggy Blog Stories. All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to the Comic Relief charity.

Rach is working as a VSO volunteer in Windhoek, Namibia and her blog makes fantastic reading. Have a look if you like.

Back again

Well, I didn’t really go anywhere - except for the dark depths of S3/4 prelims and reports. As I have four classes at this level it’s been an interesting couple of weeks! At least I can get back to the normal workload - plus S5 prelims of course.

Unfortunately, I received some bad news towards the end of last week. A colleague of mine from when I was working in Namibia has passed away. When I arrived as a regional advisory teacher in the Caprivi I had very little idea what I was going to do - I had only been teaching three years and I was going to have to train experienced teachers. There wasn’t even anyone doing the job already.

Many of the Namibian advisory teachers were understandably quite wary of this young white fellow coming out to tell them what to do and as a result, I was left very much to get on with it on my own. The one encouraging and helpful face I had for my first few months in post is no longer with us.

He always did his best to help me anyway he could and he was clearly a very intelligent and enthusiastic educator who had become trapped in the straight jacket of Namibian bureaucracy.

About 2/3 of the way through my year, he began to have a lot of time off work. He looked sicker and sicker each time I saw him and I assumed that he must have been HIV positive and had now developed AIDS. This is not an incredible assumption to make in the Caprivi as the infection rate is estimated to be 40%. This was explained to us during our induction as almost every second person you pass in the supermarket could be infected. A very sobering thought.

It was actually only last week when I wondered how this colleague was getting on. To be perfectly honest, I was wondering how long it would be until I received an email saying that he had passed away. And then the email arrived on Friday.

Very sad. My thoughts are with his family. Especially his beautiful kids, whom I’ve never met, but seen many times pictured all over the walls of his office.

Hello world!

So, I’ve decided to give this blogging thing a go.

It seems to be that everyone is blogging these days, but I have to admit I’m not entirely convinced that there’s always a purpose. I worry that by having a blog I am just making more work for myself and that it’s all a bit egocentric. Despite this I’ve decided to go ahead anyway. This is mainly due to the fact that I’ve thought of a possible reason for me writing a blog. I’ve trained and taught in England and I’ve made the move North of the border.

I’ve seen and heard quite a few discussions about making this move. Most of them have been along the lines of ‘is it possible?’ and ‘how hard is it?’. It’s also interesting to compare the two systems, and I have experience of one and I’m gaining experience of another.

Why have I ended up in this position? Well, I left Northern Ireland after school and did my biology degree in Scotland. I then decided that teaching would be a potentially good career for me. So I went to England to do my PGCE where they were offering lots of money and my plan was to try to come back up after the PGCE. Unfortunately this was the year that Scotland introduced the guaranteed job for one year for NQT’s. Because of this there were no jobs being advertised and I stayed down South.

With three years in a girls’ grammar school in the South of England behind me, I worked as an advisory teacher in Africa for one year. Returning to the UK was then the perfect opportunity to finally make the move back to Scotland.

So here I am, a few months into Scottish Education and my head is still swimming with terms like ’standard grade’, ‘NAB’, ‘higher’, ‘arrangement documents’, ‘intermediate 1′, ‘LO3′……..

If you like, you can follow me while I try to unravel this confusion.