We’ve got the FEAR: Fantastic expectations; Amazing revelations I love this song by Ian Brown. Play it as you read on…is there a better acrostic song?! It is better sung than written down but here is a sample: For each a road For everyman a religion Forget everything and remember For everything a reason Freeing excellence affects reality Fallen empires are running Fantastic expectations; Amazing revelations Final execution and resurrection Free expression as revolution Finding everything and realizing We’ve got the FEAR This post is meant to be more than an excuse to post one of my favourite songs. I believe that too much of our discourse in education is characterised by fear, to an extent that holds us back from taking the steps we need to improve our teaching, to improve our schools and to improve the system. Headteachers scared of: results going down, losing their jobs, public humiliation, OfSTED reports, a critical Chair of Governors, pushy parents, newspaper headlines, union action, being unpopular: Failing. What is the answer? But who starts?
Mindset for the New Year I have a growth mindset– anyway, that’s what I thought. I believe that anyone can grow and change. I learned that the brain is plastic — they call it neuroplasticity. That means you can change your brain. In reading, Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset” people have either a growth or a fixed mindset. Dweck states that everyone is born with a growth mindset and potential to do whatever they want to do. In an interview on Education World, Dweck discusses mastery-oriented qualities. “There is no relation between students’ abilities or intelligence and the development of mastery-oriented qualities. I just read George Couros’ great posts More Mindset than Skill Set and More about Mindset and Learning where he shares stories about an 82 year old woman who wanted to learn how to play the cello so she took lessons. So why did I ask about having both mindsets? Growth mindset = transformer. I believe I have a growth mindset and so do so many teachers I work with. What about you?
Government backs drive for young to learn poetry by heart From the 14th century Middle English of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to a 2010 composition by Jacob Sam-La Rose, A Life in Dreams, the 130 poems selected under a new government initiative to encourage young people to learn by poetry heart span 600-plus years and should cater to most tastes. That said, as with any such sweeping literary selection, there will doubtless be quibbles over the verses chosen for a competition in which school and college students are challenged to memorise and recite poems. Poetry by Heart, a Department for Education-funded contest, will see school champions fight through to regional heats, which in turn will select the best reciters for a weekend of finals in London this April. The contest, open to pupils in England in from years 10 and above, is intended to spark interest in poetry.
From The Editor - An unfinished revolution in the reign of timidity - opinion Comment:Last Updated:16 January, 2013Section:opinion Revolutions vary. There is the French variety (bloody), the Russian version (very bloody), the British (minor scratches all round) and the American (utterly harmless and more of a whine). The academies revolution that has engulfed the majority of England's secondary schools in a few short years is at the American end of the revolting spectrum - short on casualties, long on tedium. For all the fury of academy opponents and the zeal of their supporters, now that the dust has settled, surveying the hundreds of sponsored academies and their converter successors, it's tempting to conclude that not a lot has changed. The commission set up by Pearson and the RSA to explore the implications of this educational upheaval doesn't put it quite like that (pages 14-15). That shouldn't surprise. Attaining academy status is certainly no guarantee of improvement. Unfortunately, the system is stacked to deter the bold. gerard.kelly@tes.co.uk.
Getting the scale right: attitudes before systems. After millennia of battle the surviving G’Gugvuntt and Vl’hurg realised what had actually happened, and joined forces to attack the Milky Way in retaliation. They crossed vast reaches of space in a journey lasting thousands of years before reaching their target where they attacked the first planet they encountered, Earth. Due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was swallowed by a small dog. Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I love this Hitch-hiker’s Guide story. 1. Short-term accountability pressures force us to be diverted from thinking about the heart of our business: the quality of teacher-student relationships and interactions. 2. Here we have a fleet of policies and systems, reinforced by OfSTED and the latest accountability drive. I’m a pretty good teacher. Here is my radical contention: If we burned or deleted all the Performance Management files it would be a long long time before any student noticed a difference. 3. But that is all.
C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: What Is the Fourth Way? "We need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather than profligate approaches to testing." -- Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley The Fourth Way is a powerful new vision to bring about effective educational reform. Even after one has identified that the old ways of doing things are no longer working, coming up with system-wide comprehensive solutions as to how to develop better schools and school systems is challenging. Professor Andy Hargreaves and Professor Dennis Shirley believe they have found those solutions. "Alberta funds almost all its schools and districts to design and evaluate their own innovations. In your own words, what is the Global Fourth Way? Our new book describes a better "Fourth Way" that draws on our first-hand international research to get us beyond those limitations. Three things are critical.
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