Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

Today has been a day where the potential we have, as a profession, to positively influence the lives of others has really been writ large in my mind. I had some excellent feedback from parents about the positive influence attending a pre-vocational college course has had on their youngsters.  This was a heartening message to hear given that it has been difficult to fit in the college courses with the mainstream curriculum and that we are trying our best to ensure that the youngsters are fully supported in preparing for their standard grades by adding a period of ‘catch up’ time in Maths and English.  I also had an interesting discussion with a parent about the merits of having the college course delivered on a Friday afternoon, a pilot we are currently trying with S3 youngsters.  There are pros and cons as we are finding out, not least the difficulty of motivating youngsters to attend outside ‘normal’ school time in a location which is alien to them.

I later attended the Extreme Learning meeting in th North Berwick and was further inspired by the enthusiasm and free thinking of those at the meeting.  The more I think about the concept the more I’m sure that we are ‘on to something’ with the idea of Extreme Learning. As we discussed how assessing the projects would be organised, I was reminded of Howard Gardner’s ideas on Multiple Intelligences and how close our ideas of assessing the Extreme Learning projects come to his markers of Individual profile, Mastery of facts, Skills and concepts, Quality of work, Communication and Reflection.  However, I believe that the idea of collaboration which is embedded in Extreme Learning builds upon these ideas further and is a hugely significant ’shift’ in mindset in terms of assessing the work of youngsters.  I am really excited by this as I think we are moving towards a model of making learning both relevant for the learner and motivated by intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic factors.  Can’t wait to get started!

Finally I’ve had my wife’s cousin visiting for the past couple of days, she is an English teacher in the South West of England.  This evening we got on to the topic of the positive (and negative) influences that teachers have had on us all.  She recalled an assembly with a new depute head of her school who quoted a statistic about a survey that had been done asking adults who were the three most positively influential people in their live thus far.  Ninety-five percent of respondents  mentioned teachers, in both the positive and negative lists!  Obviously this is a second hand story with perhaps a 3rd hand statistic, but I think the sentiment is not far from the truth. Teaching is one of the few professions in which there is a very real opportunity to make a lasting impression on someone’s life.  It may sound cliched, but is no less true for it.  How lucky we are, and what a tremendous responsibility. 

A good(if lengthy, as arriving home at Ruaridh’s bath time reminded me) day at the office!