Barry Smith - Learning about Learning

I had my first telephone coaching session today.  It was made available to the wider teaching population after depute heads and heads had the opportunity to take part, as far as I understand it.  I think it is going to be some of the best money I’ve never spent!  Taking the time to really explore important issues in relation to effectiveness at work and future possibilities I’m sure will be an invaluable piece of personal development.  Reflecting with immediate feedback, great stuff! 

I have six sessions over the next few weeks and we’ve set out a few markers on what I’m hoping to gain from the session.  The first is a ‘nuts and bolts’, operational target, improving my efficiency in dealing with the large amounts of information you are faced (bombarded?) with as a Pupil Support teacher.  To that end I’m meeting with Rob Jones, an information officer at ELC, this week. I’ll no doubt be blogging more about the sessions as the weeks go by.

I also had a great lesson with my S4 PSE class today.  We were discussing what a Curriculum for Excellence is and what it may mean for future generations of school children.  I asked the question, “What would happen if we abolished exams?” and sought feedback from the class.  Exams are obviously close to their hearts at this time so we had an interesting discussion.  Here is a selection of their responses.

Plus Points of abolishing external exams

Less stress for students

More prepared for working life (comment based on a change in curriculum structure)

Less time spent revising and ‘regurgitating’

Your teacher could assess you (This was seen as both positive and negative!)

Minus points

No evidence of qualifications or skills

Harder for employers, colleges and universities to select the ‘right’ people

Students might not know what they are good at

There is no ‘proof’ of what you’re good at for others

We also tried to think of alternatives and I was surprised by how difficult the students found it to perceive of a different way of doing things.  I suppose in some respects it says a lot for how clearly they identify with the current system and how and where they fit in to it.

Suggestions were things like an online ‘evidence bank’ detailing work they had done and skills they had obtained with evidence.  This was seen as a multimedia ‘package’.  Similar to this was the idea of a skills ‘passport’ (rings a bell with something I heard at the PT Conference).  Finally, the idea of teacher assessment/endorsement was strong, but beyond that not much else.  It made me think what a lot we have to change even in relation to youngsters really understanding and engaging with things like peer and self assessment and how this embeds itself in the curriculum. 

It’s great fun having these sort of discussions with the youngsters and I was interested that many of the themes that emerged were along the lines of current educational debate.  Out of the mouths of babes and all that!

We have our next SQH residential next week.  It is going to probably be the most intensive yet, and certainly will be the most taxing in terms of preparation.  We have to prepare four different pieces of work , three informal, small group presentations and one formal presentation in front of the larger group. In addition to that I’m out of school for three days, so organising three days worth of classes does not fill me with unbridled joy!