A Contrarian Questions…

It’s International Women’s Day, or Woman’s Day – there are lots of hashtags on Twitter for it. I have put my contrarian hat on and just have some questions (I’m not going to attempt to answer them, and I have attempted not to load them with commentary – well, not too much). No, they’re not the boring and boorish stuff from eejits asking why there isn’t a Men’s Day (apparently there is, but come on, chaps) nor it is about the pay gap in Education, although probably it should be: it’s just questions arising from having been in professional contexts all my working life where women have been prominent leaders and thinkers and managers, notably in Primary and Early Years education and then in Higher Education in a School of Ed. I am not commenting here on opportunities for women to lead, or anything like this: I simply celebrate my time being taught and managed by women who have inspired me.

Last year, very probably my final year in full-time employment, I had a male line manager for the first time since I was a student. It was a nice experience – Roger is a splendid manager, a lovely guy – at a difficult time, so this isn’t a moan about blokes as managers but it does lead me to my first question:

Was it me, or why did I never see having a woman as my boss as an issue?

I learned so much from having a series of headteachers to shape me professionally: Sr Anna in Esh Laude, Leslie Grundy and Elaine Smith at Grandpont. In very different ways they were thoughtful and mindful of my need to learn my trade. When I was a headteacher, I had advisers like Julie Fisher and inspirational figures like Rosemary Peacocke to nudge me, and writers like Tina Bruce and Kathy Sylva. My next question then:

Should we prepare men coming into Primary and Early Years for some ethos-shocks, or, building on my previous question, might professional development for educators simply take female mentorship and leadership as read? Do men really need their hands holding because they might get told to do something by … a woman?

And finally: well, I continue to work with the School of Education at Brookes, and count its previous and current heads as friends, as well as delighting in working with a strong body of women as well as men. I also work with The Slade Nursery where Carol the head is an inspiration and the staff are a joy. I know umpteen reasons why people press for men to work in Early Years but my last question is

In pressing for men in Early Years are we in danger of seeing the thousands of competent, exciting (female) professionals who are already making a difference to children and families seem somehow lesser mortals?

I said I had a contrarian hat on.

Time for a job: Horror Stories

Three interview questions and their follow-up (all coming from time working as a teacher, a governor, a Head and most recently in ITT in Higher Education) and then some thoughts.

“Tell us a bit about why you want to be a teacher.” Warm-up question to start the relationship, to get the candidate talking and the panel listening. A sound check for the interview. Except the candidate froze, and grinned nervously and said “Don’t know really.”
“In which situations do you feel most confident? In which situations do you feel least confident and why?” This is a bit of a cheat, and I must acknowledge my source: Margaret Edgington’s The Foundation Stage Teacher in Action. The candidate is asked to show their self-reflection on the spot. The best one began “That’s a really deep question,” thus buying herself vital time to muster the argument.
From a job interview: “We have a lot of people in all sorts of roles in this school: tell us a bit about how you understand teamwork.” “Well, as teacher, I see myself as in charge…” And the pens of the interviewers started.

Number one was painful. A half an hour slot for an interview and despite everything we tried, questions were knocked back by increasingly long and embarrassing silences and that dreaded response. Don’t know really. Except she did know, of course; what she couldn’t do was overcome her panic and start talking. I’ve seen panic in interviews in other cases, but this was extreme. At the end of ten minutes we wrapped up.

It spurred me on to getting PGCE students to ask each other questions in a sort of interview game: four students in a group with four envelopes. A opens her/his envelope and turns to B and asks an interview-type question B hasn’t seen and B has to answer it. B then does the same to C… A bit of a giggle – but it impresses on people preparing for interviews that fluency is key. Not gobbiness, but fluency. Rifle quickly through your mental index cards of stories and start with “Well, there was one time when I was in the art base when I was a TA and….”

Number two is there so that I can advertise whole sets of questions around teamwork and curriculum that Edgington poses. They’re not exclusive to early years, and this one – and the third, around team work – might, with a bit of adaptation, come up anywhere. But others might include “How do you know if the children in your class are making progress?” or (this one more or less straight from Edgington, p9) “Can you tell us how you have enabled/could enable a ‘hard to reach’ family to become involved with their children’s learning?” Ask any of these in the interview practice game and a panic starts: but think about the job description you will have had, think about why the question is there. At heart the panel want to know What do you know about record keeping and can you do it? or Have you worked with families before and what’s your vision? The important self-reflective element here is not about to ask the candidate “sell yourself down the river;” the panel wants to know whether you have a real understanding that will sustain you when things go wrong.

What is an interview for? Partly it’s to make sure you are able to put flesh on the bones of your personal statement; partly because you are entering a profession where oral communication is key not just between you and the children, but between you and the TAs, you and the parents, the teacher in the parallel class, the governor linked to your class, the Speech and Language Therapist who visits… And there are some things that are easier teased out by conversation than reading. And this brings me to

Number three. Ouch. This was a tricky one, and having started from there the candidate argued herself into an authoritarian corner from which she would not emerge. The knack again is maybe to ask “What is this question really about?” Maybe your predecessor was immeasurably crap at this and they are looking for a good person to lead the micro-team of the class; maybe there is a recalcitrant resident of the staff room who the Head is hoping you might be the spur to their re-enagegemnt with the school project (and if the Head is hoping for this from an NQT they are either very stupid or very brave); maybe… maybe…. Even with the big hint in the question about “a lot of people in all sorts of roles in this school,” you are unlikely to know exactly what prompts this question, so you have to ask yourself ” Where are my skills? Do I have a story to tell here?” This is where the conversation element of an interview comes into its own. A personal statement that talks about your good team work can now be used as the way into a conversation about attitudes, maybe even your sense of humour.

GSOH: right, a last horror story, even if only a light one. A candidate who wrote “I have a good sense of humour” in an application was once challenged simply at interview with “Tell us a joke, then.” Really? Really?

What on earth is an interview for? Well, the first reason might be that some things on the job description and person specification are very hard to assess on paper or on line. Just like in your reading of the school website and the last OfSTED inspection, this can only take the panel so far. “Drilling down” is a phrase I’ve heard too much, but that is really what the conversational element is/should be about: details, anecdotes, further information. The second reason gets people into serious hot water: face to face interviews tell us what you’re like and (dare I write it?) “whether you’ll fit in.” I must state that I hate this second one, but there it sits, potentially discriminatory, dangerously non-inclusive, menacing an appointments panel from the boundaries between the Head’s responsibility to build and manage an effective team and a possibly illegal unconscious bias for or against this or that person. Good interviewers are at least aware of the baggage they bring; good interview panels work to mimimise the effects of the baggage.

Final point about the interview: what do you do with “Do you have any questions?” As I said in the previous post, a positive answer is better than a weak one, but you might want to know about the school’s support for NQTs, or whether parallel classes plan together, or all sorts of stuff that show you’re interested in them.

I can’t say it enough: this is a two-way process.

Roll up, Roll up: time for a job.

“The new year reviving old desires…” The new calendar year is here, spring is almost upon us…

And the desire to teach starts to stir in the trainee, impatient, maybe, with the rigours of the training programme, or simply thinking “It’s time” or “I’m ready for this.” And it is time, so here are some thoughts, unofficial, off-the-cuff, but stemming from my own experience. You may have other experiences yourself, and they almost certainly differ from mine, but this may at least help you formulate your ideas.

So here is my Polonius-like advice, the bloggiest blog post ever, in some ways, I guess, growing out of experience interviewing people for school and other education jobs. And I’d like to think first about the ambiguities of the interactions before you find yourself sitting in the Head’s Office for the half-hour grilling of The Interview. That’s about thinking on your feet, listening to the questions and having examples ready to tell the story of when you… Or when they…

First things first: selection procedures are not straightforward. They are a very particular set of human interactions, and therefore will have so many variables from the unconscious bias of interviewer or interviewee to whether it’s time for coffee soon. They also have a definite start and end but they are not where you think. They start from the scrappy info the school puts out or the over-shiny telephone system before you get to talk to someone. They might also include the person who answers the ‘phone to you – was that the Head? Will the School Business Manager be the person on the ‘phone, and will s/he set you at ease or be so officious it puts you off? Breathe, and smile, even when you’re on the ‘phone. The relationship games are already starting. No-one really intends them, but they are there. Similarly, at the every end of the interview after the excruciating “Do you have any questions?” (see below), you have to get up and walk out of the room still looking like you are all in one piece. And then the ‘phone call that evening “Hello, Nick: well, we had a very full day, as I’m sure you realise, and the governors have asked me to call and….”

The task of establishing relationships also seeps into the tour of the school. This was my advice to a Brookes student recently:

Be on time;
Remember that whatever Equal Opps say, this look-round is part of the process;
Listen to the hints: “This would be your class; Displays were Ms X’s strong point” is a hint;
Be you: don’t be a pretend you (it really shows – trust me!).

Let’s expand them a bit.

Be on time. Schools are busy places. It may be that there are other people being shown round, or the Deputy or the School Council may have set aside time to see you. This is the first courtesy. The look-round is part of the process. You are looking at them, they are looking at you. It may be that the person showing you round will be asked their opinion, even if only very informally. This leads into being genuine: don’t be a fake version you think they want. I’m afraid I’ve seen them, and they are excruciatingly embarrassing. But remember to listen to the hints. “This would be your class; Displays were Ms X’s strong point” might also be the less guarded, less professional “This would be your class; I’m sure Ms Y’s class have been having a lovely time here today, and she will get round to tidying it up before the morning.” Yes, I have heard both – and worse. If you’ve read their last OfSTED report you may have picked up some the nuances already. Just don’t barge in by saying “Yes, I see the last OfSTED said a,b, c…” especially if the abc were critical. And if you see something you really don’t like, consider: could I be happy working here? As I said, this is you looking at them as well as them looking at you. But be courteous.

What to wear for the tour? Well, not casual: if this isn’t a tour-teach-interview experience, save your interview clothes for the interview. And if it’s during the school day, dress like a teacher in case you need to get down to work with children at a table or help put a jigsaw/pile of maths equipment away.

Do you have any questions? You will doubtless be asked that at the interview, and if you aren’t, then end on a bright note with “No, I think I’m fine for now: the information you have given me was very full, and this has been a very positive experience. Thank you again.” Nervous giggles as “Not reeelly though” aren’t what you need. On a tour that isn’t attached to the interview, you might be more candid with your questions, but try not to sound like you are wary of hard work. I was once asked “How long to people stay in the evenings?” and while it was a very reasonable question, it did come over as “When can I leave?” Questions on pedagogy, schemes of work, things you might be able to get involved in might work – but again: be yourself.

Now, assuming you’ve done all this, and you still like the school and you think they like you, it’s application form (or letter or whatever) time. I’m sure you get some guidance on this as you come to the end of whatever ITT you’re doing, but here are just three things to remember.

Application forms are often read at the end of the day by tired people. Don’t waste their time or energy with

Misspellings and grammatical horrors. Come on: copy-edit ~~ebfroe~~ before pressing send. I’ve known good students lose out on an interview over this.
Formulaic stuff that staggers from catchphrase to catchphrase. I know you have a limited word count, but buzzwords won’t help.
Waffle that doesn’t show clearly how your experience and qualifications make you the person the job description is getting at.

“I know all this,” you say.

Good. Go for it.

Mindfulness

To talk about Mindfulness I want to start with Thich Nhat Hahn. Here he is working – except he says it isn’t work – on calligraphy that conveys his central messages. As he says:

Breathe and enjoy the Kingdom of God in the here and now. Breathe and enjoy this wonderful moment.

I’ll stop there and do just that before I continue.

In preparing a class on spirituality for the Education Studies students at Brookes, I have a number of choices about how to approach mindfulness.

In terms of resources, there is the possibility of using words from Thich Nhat Hanh himself and the wonderful music and Nature graphics in the Great Bell Chant. There have been times when turning the lights back on after showing those 7 mins to students has felt really quite a disruption to a sense of quiet: it is (for me and for some of them) a moving little bit of film.

The universal dharma door
is already open.
The sound of the rising tide
is heard clearly…

(3 mins ff)

and I will probably need to weave these in with this cute and thought-provoking footage from a school in Ireland.

But here I find myself in a bit of a quandary. There seems to me to be something of a divergence of expectations here. Quite what does Mindfulness (or spirituality in general) do in schools? Let’s look at what the children say, speaking of their jars full of sequins and other glittery materials that exemplify their minds – shaken and busy with ideas and feelings:

“Your jar is like your heart and there’s loads of stuff inside it….”

“Your mind is so busy it can’t think of a load of things…”

“…and then when you leave it to settle you take a deep breath and then it all goes to the bottom.”

Lovely stuff, and drawing on a similar story from Thich Nhat Hanh about watching apple juice settle. I would hope that the children are the better in some way from practising this.

The clip goes on, however, to present the children’s acts of kindness and what they are thankful for. They are personal, domestic things – making breakfast, giving mum some peace, feeding the dog; being thankful for food, presents, a warm house. So with one short clip (we have to admit it is short, edited, &c.) we move from mindfulness through kindness and gratitude.

These are interesting values and practices for schools to promote. The way they are presented is that mindfulness makes you think more clearly, acts of kindness earn the approbation of adults, and we can be grateful for what adults provide. Of course, the converse might be things we want to avoid – chaotic thinking from ungrateful, unkind children (or adults), but is this really mindfulness, or a new, maybe more accessible and acceptable catechism? Christian children all must be/Mild obedient, good as He, as the Christmas hymn goes. This is less than the commodification of spirituality that many are wary of, but it could be its schoolification.

So in terms of practice, how might we look at Mindfulness in schools? I think we might take a lesson from Forest Schools. An initiative is seen and adopted faithfully by some, with minor alterations by others, and a dilution takes place until a school calls the weekly visit to the pond at the end of the school field by a name that might also be used by a wide-ranging, risk-taking experience some miles from the classroom. Similarly, a teacher might be a committed follower of the Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, or they might be involved in some kind of sitting mediation themselves, or following a course of guidance on mindful meditation. I suppose That Candle Thing sits somewhere around this marker – and the original project for that was a largely improvised activity. Or they might have read a book on the subject, or seen a bit of mindfulness practice as part of their Initial Teacher Education or some CPD and think that this is something they might spread more widely. I find I am thinking “Think Raisins:” the quick introduction to mindfulness many have experienced as CPD in schools where people contemplate a raisin. Is this enough to think about how one might adapt a practice to school life?

I’m not arguing for regulation and accreditation but for a recognition of foundational ideas and texts. Here – although Buddhist meditation can’t really have a foundation text from the 1970s (can it?) – I would want to refer back to The Miracle of Mindfulness. Not all books on mindfulness will acknowledge the source, something I find a bit disturbing, but here are some of the things Thich Nhat Hanh has to say, first about what mindfulness does and then what we do about or with it.

I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality.

People usually consider walking on water or on thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or on thin air, but to walk on earth.

and then, more practically

Your breath should be light, even and flowing, like a thin stream of water running through the sand. Your breath should be very quiet, so quiet that the person sitting next to you cannot hear it… To master our breath is to be in control of our bodies and minds… Each time we find ourselves dispersed an find it difficult to gain control of ourselves by different means, the method of watching the breath should always be used.

And of course there’s much more.

Is this what the children are doing? Should their eyes be open or shut? Does it matter and if so why? Do the foundation texts need to be in play? And is this spirituality? Well, it will depend (cop-out phrase coming) on what we mean by spirituality. Is it about making sense of self and our relationship with others, in ways that Ursula King or Andrew Wright might recognise? Is it about transcendence, devotion? What are its links to communities of faith?

Some mindfulness practices – sitting quiet, listening to your breathing, trying to just be rather than plan dinner or think great thoughts, or fight feelings of inadequacy (yes, this is me, in meditation) – can be seen as practices arising from spiritual traditions in East and West. In that sense they are part of spirituality. They differ from some (largely Western) attempts to define spirituality in that they do seem, in their purest forms, to lack a goal. Sitting to sit, washing the dishes to wash the dishes: someone who sits in meditation may find clearer water in which to view their past and present (and maybe their future), but they are chasing a bird to put salt on its tail if they think meditation will automatically give that. Sometimes when I sit it’s like sitting on a block of ice, and I am desperate to finish, or I spend all my time chasing what I should have said, how I might have looked. I certainly am not “better” when I get up. It is not Penicillin or Novocaine.

Martin Laird’s books are a good way to see some synergy between the goal-orientated or biography-centred definitions of, say, Wright or King and the goalless sitting of Zen. His (Christian, monastic) perspective looks at the therapeutic outcomes of silence in which arises an awareness of our own psychological states:

The specific focus of this book [Into the Silent Land] will be on the practical struggles many of use face when we try to be silent – the inner chaos going on in our heads, like some wild cocktail party of which we find ourselves the embarrassed host. Often, however, we are not even aware of how utterly dominating this inner noise is until we try to enter through the doorway of silence.

Just sitting, for me, needs my eyes to be open: to sit where I am and see things come and go, rather than plunge myself into the interior cinema of deadlines or wishful thinking or regrets. I’ve written about this before when reflecting on birdsong in the morning. It also needs me to see the things that worry me as the “weather on the mountain:” not me, just the stuff that swirls about me (this is another image from Martin Laird).

Back to the classroom – both the compulsory-age children’s rooms and the HE classroom I’m preparing for. Although it’s a lot to ask, I think I would expect spirituality in an educational context to encompass three or more aspects:

Awareness of self and others
Compassionate attitudes
Practices that encourage these two.

Compassion and spirituality are sometimes artificially linked: Christian warrior monks, for example, in the twelfth century had compassion for some and not others, and coupled this with intense religious practice from Cistercian roots and combat to the death. Similar attitudes might be seen in religious groups today. Nevertheless, in general, spirituality is linked often to the awareness of others we might describe as compassion. It’s a tall order to “get schools” to do this work, but it has been represented in OfSTED guidance and in local curriculum materials. It is there in germ in the aims and objectives of Oxford Brookes and other Higher Education organisations – although I have critiqued this before. Compassionate attitudes, spirituality, real vision and purpose: they might be enunciated but not embodied. Children are wild, students are on their ‘phones, teachers and lecturers are overworked or grumpy, systems prop up systems rather than support users. It is, as I say, a tall order.

If a bit of quiet sitting does form competent, reflective, self-aware compassionate students (and staff???), I’m happy. If a lot of quiet sitting is needed, well, maybe schools and Universities need to think this through and ask what the role of education is. If sitting quiet and sparkly jars help, then fine, whether they have the backing of a training group or no. If, however, sitting and the rest is tokenistic and without wider ripples into school, then I don’t see the point.

So while my class for the Values and Religion in Schools module will have mention of mindfulness, will look at the SACRE on spirituality, and at thinkers like Wright, and Eaude, will mention outdoors and wellbeing and read some Thich Nhat Hanh, I do not see piecemeal adoption of spiritual practices as a cure-all, any more than I think a bit of woodland exploration will save the world. But it’s a start.

They

I had the privilege of working for a short time with Jane Lane, a tireless campaigner (forgive the cliche) against racist attitudes of all shapes and sizes in Early Years. It is her thoughts I want to reflect on very briefly here.

We were sat one rainy evening in a café working through some documents I think Jane wanted some feedback on, and I can’t remember what sparked it, but Jane looked up from the papers we were reading and she gave us all a warning about words to do with water: floods, and influx were already words that warned of an uncontrollable situation, and therefore carried with them negative connotations. She then said “It’s like ‘They’ and ‘Them.” We looked at her, and she went on to say “If someone talks about immigrant children as “they” you know we’re facing a lot of trouble.”

It’s the lumping of people together that, to a greater or lesser extent depending on context, denies their personhood. That’s why when @elly_chapple today on Twitter described inclusion being about humanity, I was back in that rainy café. Inclusion is a problematic term, or at least one we have been asked to ponder at the start of Brookes ITT Inclusion week (#obuinc19), because it is multifaceted, moveable according to who we are talking to or about, evolving (we’d hope) as our capacities and reflective practice change. The head teacher who has staff wellbeing to think about; the teacher whose relationship with the parents hangs on That Tone of Voice when she meets them at the end of a day; the TA whose time is punctuated by demands for all sorts of expertise; the child herself. And this is (so far) one child who needs to be included in the educational project of the school, or the county or whatever; inclusion also has to look at the system-drivers and system-users for Child A who has a hearing loss; for Child B who has foetal alcohol syndrome and is in the Looked-After system; for Child C on the Autistic spectrum… and the temptation is to reach for the They. “Yes we are proud of our inclusive ethos in the school,” says the head, beaming with good intentions. “They are well catered for.” And no doubt the needs are well met within the system.

But inclusion has to go beyond the system. It has to go beyond the number-crunching to the needs – and not just the shortcomings and deficiencies – of the children or their families. It has to embrace, as Elly says, their humanity. It’s therefore not about coping with (or solving) problems, but meeting the child and the family (and those they come into contact with) where they are. Maybe it’s about a smile, a good word as well as a “Can I see you about…” It’s certainly about seeing the child in focus as part of a wider set of societal expectations, but also seeing them as an individual, and definitely not as “one of Them.” Think how many of us might have been excluded at one time or another by being part of “Them;” think how fragile the right not to be seen like that can seem to some sectors of society here or elsewhere.

To those who work with the complexities of atypical development, critical social need or physical or sensory challenge this is probably self-evident. I’m just not convinced that the children and families always hear this, always are aware that they are not They.

Whilst

Up to my (shall we say?) knees with marking and just want to consider one little word. Actually it’s a word that stands for a whole set of assumptions about academic writing. Whilst.

It reminds me of the Grandma who once, in the springtime of the world, came to pick up her grandchild from Nursery. The unfortunate dialogue went something like this:

Granny: Hurry up, Mikey, we need to go.
[Mikey continues to play]
Granny: If you don’t come soon your headteacher will smack you for being naughty.
[I don’t normally intervene and certainly not to contradict a carer but I wade in]
Me: I’m sorry, Mrs S, but we don’t ever smack children; please don’t give Mikey the idea that we do.
Granny: But I’m giving you permission to smack him. Insofar as you are in charge in this establishment I am permitting you to exercise your rights in loco parentis.

Now, this isn’t about smacking or school-based discipline or home-school relationships, but voice. I can see what I did wrong there – but I still think Mikey needed to know I wasn’t going to hit him – but listen to Granny. She didn’t normally talk like this, but she changes gear massively with that Insofar. The awful phrase in loco parentis just adds to the sense that this person is claiming some kind of authority by sounding, well, as if they have some. My dreaded signal while (sorry: whilst) marking does the same. What it too often introduces – like Granny’s insofar – is a sort of strangled over-writing (I still feel much the same about the new(ish) translation of the Roman rite liturgy, if I’m honest, with its sub-Cranmerian verbosity but that is by-the-by).

When I see whilst I have to acknowledge that sometimes it does sounds better. I suppose I could write “don’t use this:” after all, I do have a button in Grademark that just says “Avoid,” but whilst has so much hanging on it I feel I need to explain myself. No-one (in my modules at least) will get marked down for just using whilst, or even (usually) for the occasional “you” or an odd lapse in references. My hunter instincts may be roused, but I will not routinely chase the hare. Does that metaphor work?

I could have called this blog post “please consider keeping your sentences shorter and more straightforward: you will be able to “lead your reader” more effectively if you make less use of phrases such as ‘through this research journal article it has been discovered…'” but I don’t think it’s as catchy, even though I use that phrase (or similar) often enough when I give written feedback. What whilst says to me is “I’m drowning here: how the fuck do I make myself sound like the kind of people I’ve been reading?”

And that is a challenge that assignment feedback can hardly start on. How do we give the complex and sometimes mixed messages about how to join the writers’ club? What about the comment “missing apostrophe” or “italics not needed in Harvard”? How is a student to know where to start with all of this? Or, to make this personal, how do I take my chatty, ranty blog posts and change the voice to get an article from this idea or that?

Students, young writers be aware at least of this:

You are not joining us in an exercise of perfection, but in a struggle for clarity.

Experts

Apparently the dominant idea of this Age that someone on Twitter called the twatocene (pithy or what?) is that we have had enough of experts. Beautifully encapsulated by the “ I prop up the bar and you can’t tell me what’s right” school of philosophy, the dismissal of experts I think was originally from Michael Gove – a man who, allegedly, reads and thinks and has brought that reading and thinking to his work. An expert telling us we have no need of experts? He was joined in the twatosphere by the “ Leeds born and bred” Shadow Justice Secretary this weekend, and signalled, for me, an ungainly collapse of any remaining hope of intelligent debate from politicians.

Therefore, in wanting to propose some resources (see below), I find I need to say that I think we do need experts. We need people we want to listen to – and people we don’t. The ITT student who gathered a whole crowd of Tweety onlookers telling her she was right to walk out when she disagreed with a lecturer, the minister or shadow minister who thinks that this “no experts” line will allow her or him to sidestep a question when someone with some knowledge objects to their line of argument (and then, smooth-faced, to return to their think-tanks of – erm – apparent experts), or the crabby old academic who might have Twitter and a blog at his disposal but really is just mumbling “things ain’t what they were in my day” – we all need challenging. The expert – the person who has tried it out, the person with the reading and thinking and doing to give them authority – has to be heard (and courteously). This is not, by the way, a plea for some bizarre civility to allow numb-nut racists or Climate-Change deniers access to any part of the social media they choose, or to bleat at people about balance when they don’t get it – and the ad absurdum arguments there are beyond me to tackle.

So when I see the SoS for Education advocating lots of outdoor experience I might (and did) sigh deeply at how this really mustn’t become number-crunching target fodder – but I agree with his overall intent and I let it pass. I might debate his sources, or the implications of his plan, but don’t dismiss the National Trust as “experts I don’t need.” Easy one, because by and large I am in sympathy.

When I see the Schools Minister and friends advocate for more content (what they seem to want to call a knowledge-based curriculum) in Early Years, again I might (and did) sigh deeply and since I am not at all sure about the overall argument or the detail of delivery, I will think about it and debate it – and maybe get frustrated at weasel words or underhand dealing – but I don’t dismiss the participants as “experts I don’t need.” Less easy – in fact quite tricky. But it has to be done.

Dismissing the epidemic of young people’s mental health as a snowflake phenomenon would be destructive dismissal of experts. Dismissing advice on children’s activity as just impracticable in today’s curriculum is also plain idiotic. Neither of them make for easy reading – as a parent, an educator, a rather inactive older bloke – but at least they have not been subject to dismissal. The 20-odd-page government-commissioned report on austerity was, however, dismissed loftily by one minister with the words “I don’t know who this UN man is” and the Work and Pensions Secretary condemned it as “political.” And here I come to the end:

These documents are all political, and they all come from experts in one way or another.

Climbing trees not only has ability/disability written into its aspirations it has issues of access, local funding, government spending….
A knowledge-rich curriculum has all sorts of issues about who gets to say what and what is not acceptable as cultural capital, or where libraries and sited and funded;
Why so many people (young and old) are sick at heart, and what we can do about it is tied up with everything from student loans to mobile phones – and the biggest question is at what pin-point entry-level intervention beleaguered and distracted politicians want to aim their funding;
Where in the curriculum we design vigorous exercise – and how its expert teachers are supported and training (and – again – funded) are big questions; these are not freebies, if done properly;
And finally, how has it come to be that “the country’s most respected charitable groups, its leading think tanks, its parliamentary committees, independent authorities like the National Audit Office, and many others, have all drawn attention to the dramatic decline in the fortunes of the least well off in this country”?

“Expert” is being redefined by pundits of all shapes, sizes and political parties as “people who know more than I do and with whom I disagree.” Yes, I stand by the fact that we are seeing an ungainly collapse in any sense of real debate. Come on, please: you’re not playing for points at a college debating society, nor are we paying politicians to put their fingers in their ears when an expert disagrees with them.

Place: literature as guide

This blog – or rather its predecessor – explored place rather a lot. This summer’s trip to Santorini was in part inspired by reading Clive King’s The 22 Letters; Gawain and Ludchurch (“Lud’s Church”) are all over it, too. I have read about places and gone there; I have gone to places and read about them. I read The Canterbury Tales and Mydans’ novel about Thomas Becket and then went to Canterbury. It set me thinking: what might I have made of Paris if I had read Vango first? (After all, after I’d read Becket and its – erm – inspiration, the novel by the great medievalist Helen Waddell, I was disappointed to find so little left of the Paris they describe. In fact, although there is more around Notre Dame than is immediately obvious, there is more tangible stuff left of Clive King’s Ancient Thera in the tablets of Linear B and the archaeological museums than there is of the ill-fated lodgings of the twelfth century canons of Paris.) How do we, as adults, use the written word to tell children about the physical world? How might we (or do we) use story? How might this, in itself, change the visitor’s ideas?

And if Vango might have changed my view of Paris, what of Selznick’s Hugo Cabret? Or Kipling’s or Milne’s Sussex? I could go on… and that’s before we start thinkng of places responding to their visitors – where Canterbury’s rebuild was prompted by its visitors, and Paris still holds the echoes of the Hemingways and Steins so wonderfully celebrated and parodied in the film Anastasia in Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart (of course Paris is particularly susceptible to this myth-making, as is Oxford, my city of aquatint and commuting).

But then we come (of course) to Garner. The creation of the Alderley phenomenon, drawing on myth and legend, changes a bit of whimsical parkland with a few stories attached into a mythic landscape out of all proportion to the stories that we can find readily. It does so almost entirely because of the authochthonic outlook of Alan Garner. We find ourselves in this place or that seeking to see with his eyes, following his train of thought, his access to myth and legend. We are tempted to try and see his Alderley, his Thursbitch, his Ludcruck. Gawain and Beowulf are in his sights; we peer into his horizons and try to see what he is pointing out.

But let’s broaden this out. As I have discussed before, there are clearly places that have myths or legends attached, where stories have been piled up. The Cheshire/Derbyshire border is one such; maybe Oxford is another, or Paris, or Tintagel. Part of the project I seem to be involved with is the uncovering of these story cairns – but there is another part: it is the job of the critic of children’s literature – or some of us – to look not only at what has been collected, but also at the effect of the stories on the visitors to the landscape.

What does the young visitor make (and here we are in the recent Twitter conversation that started my thinking) of Venice having read about the pig Olivia and her visit? And how might the adult draw on this in September to help the impressions of the visit stay vivid?

Mr Gawain, NQT

Now the new year draws closer. Night passes. The day pushes out the dark – as the Lord bids.

Now neȝeȝ ƿe Nw Ȝere and ƿe nyȝt passeȝ
Ƿe day dryueȝ to ƿe derk, as Dryȝtyn biddeȝ…

The new year comes in for the young knight Gawain as he awaits his fate at the hands of the Green Knight: a cocky, good-looking, well-prepared young man, Gawain in the medieval poem had set out from Camelot to meet his nemesis the Green Knight with high hopes – but it was more ambiguous than he’d thought, and now it’s crunch time.

I won’t labour this analogy, but I am conscious that my corner of edutwitter has been pondering the Polonius-like advice for people starting the adventure of a PGCEs or work as NQTs for some weeks now. The time is upon us; that new year is here. Arthur, stirring in Camelot maybe, wonders how Gawain is getting on, just as I sit in my study and wonder how the students I met last year – the “graduands” from our PGCE whom I will meet again on Saturday – are facing what seem like crucial days of in-service training and meeting-and-greeting the team, and then the parents and children…

Does any[one] have any advice on what to do in first lesson…

What sort of lessons should my first lessons with a class be when school starts?

Any last minute advice ?

And the advice about not-smiling (or smiling) before Christmas piles in from

Teaching is 50% words and 50% numbers…but always 100% you

I understand the need for motivation yadayadayada but sometimes I read utter drivel that is solely tweeted for the purpose of likes/retweets and they mean nothing at all!

Right: so bearing that last outburst in mind, this isn’t advice as such, but self-reflection. My biggest changes in terms of work were probably: starting out as an undergraduate so long ago they would be findings for a History of Ed dissertation (as in fact they almost were a couple of years ago!), when I was caught in the headlights until Christmas; my first job in a Faculty library, where all of a sudden I was on the other side of the counter (and loved it); my first day on a PGCE teaching practice (and actually all of my final TP!); my first days in my first teaching job; my first day as Head Teacher – and then this summer, leaving my job in Higher Education to sit in the study here or in the Bodleian. They all have a theme running through them: that I had very little idea what I supposed to do. As a Head – on my own at the start of September – I sat at the desk and thought “Now you’ve done it.” That’s how it feels on my own again today, too. As a library assistant I had people telling me what to do until I got the hand of it; as an NQT, I tried to do the “fake it ’til you make it” thing. It didn’t work and I sat in my classroom wondering what I was there for…

I’m not going to be crass and suggest that training is useless or that only experience teaches – that’s all silly stuff from people with axes to grind. I will say, however, that when I came to education – or to education management, or to teaching in Higher Ed (not mentioned above) or out at other end, at 60-odd, into my eyrie here at home – the things I brought with me were insufficient. It was maybe an easier transition into working in Higher Education precisely because I knew what the initial tasks were, and I knew they would be fun and hard and complex. I would argue that that is the nature of things: the journey teaches, and while I would seriously urge the twin activities of scholarship and practice going hand-in-hand, there is an underlying attitude also needed: a willingness to learn.

Coming to a new classroom (as a teacher or a learner) with “I am all prepared” as your blazon is to lack a vital element. You are already well-liked on Twitter? It may be you have stuff to learn from actual colleagues. You are well-read and a critical reader? It may be you have stuff to learn from the children or your tutors and mentors. You have worked in schools for ages? It may be you have stuff to learn lurking in the library. Whatever it is, it may be you have stuff to learn. Bloody hell, as I exit to the other side and wonder what my new life looks like I can see I do: loads to learn, from how friendships look to how professional communication now works.

E7C55279-0993-4D7C-A0D1-C5D9609D5121 So the advice has to be to recognise that starting out on one of the vital stages of professional formation (a BA, BEd, a PGCE, an NQT year) is just that: a starting out.

And at the start, we all need a friend, preferably a huggable, flesh-and-blood person we know, not just a smile on social media and a “U OK hun?” or people joining you in a moan who don’t know you or your school. Gawain (to return to my original image, with this picture of the Green Knight and Gawain reconciled) could have done with a mentor earlier in his quest to show him ways up the mountain, and Mr Gawain, the NQT (or the new starter on the PGCE, or new head or whoever) could do with some genuine compassionate mentorship – and thinking of Up the Mountain (see the previous post) I might as well include this clip here of the marvellous picturebook about friendship and mentorship because – well, because picturebooks are always a good place to end.

Love

Love is a really difficult term, partly because it is over-used (“I love your hair!” “I love this blog!” “I love Santorini”), partly because it is so much more than this debased coinage: a risky, radical, affectionate, often sacrificial thing, it binds people together, may have an element of commitment and/or sexual attraction – all sorts may happen in the words “I love you.” It was therefore interesting to read this blog post which suggests that “we often substitute the word love with other safer words / phrases like unconditional positive regard, respect, care or compassion.” It draws on this document by a team in Sheffield and the research behind it. It is a fascinating piece of work, and makes me wish I were still teaching the module on Professional Roles or the other new values and practice modules in Oxford Brookes Early Childhood Studies. The interview findings pp12ff are enlightening in the EY practitioners’ discussion of physicality, affection, attention, “reading what is needed to make a child feel loved at any moment in time…” Enlightening is a weak word: this is amazingly honest, difficult, complex sometimes beautiful stuff.

As an early years practitioner (much, much less than I used to be, I know), I found it especially interesting how male practitioners felt drawn to the concept of Professional Love. It is worth noting that the fragile status I found when I first taught four-year-olds in the 80s is still there: the emotional, tactile and joyous stuff can still be pulled from us very quickly by suspicion and by the appalling behaviour of some people. I remain cautious in my use of the word partly because of this, though I have used it about “loving my job” in a previous post.

However, I hope I’m not splitting hairs when I contest the earlier idea that unconditional positive regard, respect, care or compassion are safer words. I’m not sure at all about the first phrase, partly because it smacks of jargon. “What motivates you to work with young children, Nick?” ” The feelings of unconditional positive regard…” Just no; not for me.

I do think, however, that compassion is rather different from love. It is broader, for starters, maybe more analytical. It feels tougher, too: love as affection is breakable in too many ways, whereas compassion is a harder thing to break; love – this Professional Love – is reported as about touch, kissing, whereas compassion goes to the child who is in pain and demonstrating that pain through difficult behaviour whatever their age. They are both valuable and the Jools Page report is ground-breaking in many ways – but perhaps they are dealing with different aspects of professional behaviour. I am always, for example, on edge when I read about relationships and pedagogy appropriate to a 15 yo being applied to a 5 yo (this summer’s Twitter has been depressingly full of this nonsensical secondary-based mansplaining) and maybe I am guilty of something just as woolly here too. Perhaps if we thought more about how we show care care and concern, if we thought about the love we show and the love children need, we would be better prepared for the onslaughts on our practice that come from people who are driven by a need to get children to learn stuff soon and quickly – so many Red Queens dragging children along…

Maybe I am confusing a broader concept of compassion with the behaviour of Professional Love in Early Years practice? Just in the same way the arguments against a therapeutic ethos in schools cannot be applied to children for whom attachment is a key element of their time in an institution (sorry if this is convoluted, but it isn’t just Early Years children), maybe I need to think further about the role of affection for all children. It certainly won’t be a hug and a kiss for a ten-year-old – but it might be time learning the recorder with him, or lending a copy of a book that she might really like… and it might be time to recognise that the profession needs to reclaim terms such as “love” and “affection.” It is complex stuff, as Jools Page and team acknowledge – but it is about as radical a departure from targets and goals as we can get in framing our practice – and still allows us to be passionate about wellbeing, and the long-term aim of working with children and families.

Final thought.

I am nervous posting this; exploring “professional love” is an odd thing for a Catholic to write at this time, with the Pope (rightly) in impassioned pleas to recognise how the Church abandoned its children to abuse. However, reading the reports of what has happened, it does strike me that love was the single thing missing from the cases explored. I’m not linking into the reports – I find them deeply, deeply distressing – but it is clear that the things driving the cover-ups were fear and concern for reputation; the things driving the abuse were as far from the love we should be showing as professionals as can be.