Blog
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Post-Mortem: UK Public Schooling
Post Mortem: UK public schooling.
Family: UK Government – related to: US, NZ.
Death: Terminated by family.
Age: 100 years of publicly funded education
References: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-35814215
General Body Condition: Diminished frame with minimal experts. Main organs shut down. Donors needed.
CLINICAL HISTORY:
The patient had undergone a variety of surgeries recently, and had come under attack from GERM(s) in quite a severe way. The use of GERM had become quite pronounced and at this time, the although the doctors recommended further diagnosis be undertaken from specialists, the family has asked that the life support be switched off and the body be laid to rest.
POST-MORTEM FINDINGS:
- Poor academic results according to nationalised testing
- Poor performing teachers at schools with poor results. (Unconfirmed)
- Large quantities of GERM infecting the hosts (Department of Education)
- MGD (Michael Gove Disease) present in host from 2010.
- Morgan-Nicky Virus spread throughout workforce from 2011.
- Strong discomfort from Local Authorities.
- Records show that GERM had affected only 14.5% of the 16,766 Public Schools. It was based on this data that lead family to believe that terminating public schools was a good idea.
It is with regret that Public Schooling in the UK will be terminated, as of Thursday 17 March, 2016.
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Education funding review: What will replace school deciles? | Stuff.co.nz
Mum’s level of education will factor in child’s “risk” assessment.Source: Education funding review: What will replace school deciles? | Stuff.co.nz
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Teacher graduates to be bonded to schools | Stuff.co.nz
Labour says “on the job” placements should be a bigger focus across all teacher training courses.
Source: Labour is keen for all teacher graduates to be bonded to schools | Stuff.co.nz
There is a certain degree of irony as we walked the uni halls going from drab lecture to drab lecture as the guiding lecturers encouraged us in the art of teaching and using different teaching styles, making it interesting, engaging our students, using cooperative groups, and yet maintained a ‘sit down, shut up, and listen’ teaching approach themselves.
Therefore, when we were unleashed into the real world of classrooms, with 30 sets of eyes all looking at us like we’d fallen in from a different planet, we were all too eager to get stuck in and learn as much as we could.
I still maintain, that the majority of learning that I did in my four year degree was largely, and even solely, from the practicums that were spread out over my time at teacher’s college. Nothing was more eye-opening, or realistic, than dealing with students, encouraging thinking, facilitating learning, and learning the ins and outs of actual schools, their rules, their expectations, and all that comes with them.
Bonded to Schools
I’m not really sure what Labour is hoping to achieve with this. Firstly, most schools are fully staffed. Taking on a student teacher, not only to be training them, but then supplying a job for them later on, is a little too much for schools to commit to, especially for first time teachers.
Obviously there would need to be a generous amount of sorting this out, and will directly require universities to work a lot closer with the Ministry, and with the placement schools.
What do you think? Are the current systems good enough? Will ‘bonding’ student teachers to schools lead to an equal opportunity for all applicants to positions?
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Getting started with Genius Hour
So this week I was intrigued by the concept of “Genius Hour” or “Passion Projects”. It just so happened that there seems to be a spare hour on Friday where students have finished their handwriting and spelling, and have got some “finishing off time”. Being that we get most things finished each week, this usually means a class full of students with nothing by mischief to get up to.
Background
The origins of “Genius Hour” actually links to a Google policy introduced by it’s owners, where employees were encouraged to use one day a week to pursue personal projects. It actually brought about the birth of GMail, which effectively launched Google’s Apps that we are now familiar with. It has since been abandoned by Google, but the ethos behind the policy has enlightened educators as they look for ways to extend their students into finding passions, and developing valuable skills, and motivating them through their interests.
In simple terms, the idea effectively promotes students to be engaged, inspired, and unleashed.
Getting Started
I set about finding out all about Genius Hour and how other teachers have introduced it. I looked for worksheets and Powerpoint presentations, videos, and rubrics. My class is a Year 5/6 class, but obviously this can be made easier, or harder, depending on the level of your students, as it is about them and what they are interested in, and are able to complete.
Essentially from this I came up with how I wanted to structure the project for the class.
- Firstly, I got them to watch Kid President and accept the challenge and become engaged. I also gave them a brief outline of what they would get up to.
- The next morning I set them up to brainstorm different things they were passionate about. I gave them a list of different projects that other classes had done. The students all went and brainstormed a range of different ideas that they were passionate about.
- I created a presentation / infographic that illustrate the guidelines I was expecting for each Genius Hour project. This is loosely based on a myriad of different flow charts I had seen from my research.
- The next step was to get students thinking about the questions that would guide their project, and some of the surrounding information. There is a very simple and straightforward project page available here. This, of course, can be adapted for your own needs.
- Check off each of these sheets to ensure that the students know what they are doing, and let them at it.
- Set time: 60 minutes / 1 hour. Let Genius Hour begin!
I will let you know how we get on soon!
Related Links & Resources
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Discovery and Inquiry
Last week I was introduced to the idea of encouraging discovery rather than instruction in terms of the way that content is delivered.
You see, back when I was at school, the teacher was the fount of knowledge and learning took place by listening then doing. This is largely because the sources of information were bound between covers of encyclopaedia, and was largely inaccessible for the entire class to access at the same time. For whatever reason, when I fall back to my ‘default’ teaching style, I resort to instructing and then allowing students to do as instructed.
But these days, when the source of knowledge is readily available on a multitude of devices, and accessible these days by all students through out the school day, the idea of enabling students to discover the lesson content completely changed my role as the teacher.
Instead of talking, instructing, modelling, I’m needed more as a guide, to question, to enable, to give students the tools to find out for themselves, and to provide the support and opportunity for this to happen.
Inquiry
Lots has been made of the inquiry model of learning, where students have a big question and dig deeper into it through a variety of sources to gain a better understanding of the topic raised by that question.
This model works well when students are able to define the question that they actually need in order to find out what they want to find out.
However, not every student is able to do this, especially at primary school.
In addition to this, if we were to launch an “inquiry” into something, it raises certain connotations with criminal activities and sinister behaviour. For example; “There’s going to be an inquiry into the Charter Schools.”
Discovery
Discovery, however, has with it a sense of adventure. There’s an excitement of the unknown and the journey to find out more. It takes a student from not knowing, to thinking, finding, expressing, processing, collating, and combining information for themselves to gain an understanding of that unknown.
An example I am using this week has come about while I was thinking what students will need to know to complete some science based experiments. One of the key ideas around these experiments is testing and looking at constants and different variables. Knowing my class (as much as one can after 4 weeks), I suspect that most students will have little or no understanding of the terms “constant” and “variable”.
Now, I could just tell the kids what they are. I could get the dictionary and then get students to write down the definition of both terms.
But how much more active would the students be in this type of activity of they worked with a buddy (which as Year 5 and 6 students they need to given the neurological changes going on for them behind the scenes) to look up two different definitions of the terms, and construct their own definition of “constant” and “variable”?
For one, they get to explore. They get to engage with the learning on a new level. They get to do the learning themselves. And in the long run, because of the hands on experience, might retain the information, as well as learn research and information finding skills that will help them in the future.
