How do we implicate children in their own learning?

This week I have been reading a variety of views about a learning and teaching strategy called mantle of the expert, an approach first proposed by Dorothy Heathcote in the 1960s. My first introduction was a series of blogs by Debra Kidd (links below), which caught my attention as they talked about engaging a group of 21 Century pupils in a learning experience through imagination and taking responsibility for solving a learning problem. The basis was I suppose somewhere between drama and role play, but with a real thinking experience.

These attractive articles started me thinking about what learning experiences we offer in the classroom each day, and also how much time teachers have to be reflective about the way they choose to teach for creativity, independence and enthusiasm. These characteristics are all too easily overlooked as the curriculum is so stuffed with facts, skills and knowledge that appear to need drilling, learning by rote and inculcating that the delivery of knowledge though old fashioned leaning and practising might seem to be the only time efficient and effective approach.

It would be so easy to forget that the pure content of the curriculum can mean very little in educational terms if it fails to challenge the child in a way that develops cognition, wisdom or intelligence. Without the engagement of thinking processes, adequate challenge, high expectations, fascination, time to problem solve, encouragement to think independently and to evaluate with real honesty and resilience, learning will be very limited. Learning, certainly for primary and younger secondary aged pupils, really means developing thinking skills, extending and enhancing vocabulary, improving thinking speed, working on listening skills, and building on the ability to concentrate in a variety of situations. Children that learn to love the world of books and imagination do better in public examinations. Pupils that ultimately need to retain facts and manipulate these to answer questions for GCSE and A Level perform far better if they have mastered that knowledge through teaching that demands something of them rather than hands something to them. 

Last week a visitor to Notre Dame School spoke to us in broken English, and rather quaintly, referred to our teachers being "implicated" in the education of the children. However, he was utterly right and I believe this to be a brilliant description: we are all implicated in the process of educating a child - but that must, if it to be of any long term use, mainly implicate the child as master of their own learning.

So I urge you read the blogs mentioned at the top of this piece,

debrakidd.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/bottoms-on-fire  and debrakidd.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/bottoms-up  as they remind us how important it is to create educational experiences that allow the child to take part in the learning experience and to learn by inspiration and instinct, creative imagining and having fun. I’m not sure if I wear the mantle of the expert, but I do know that good teaching must make use of every strategy it can to fully involve the children, and that will undoubtedly create experts of the future.

Why is it important to be cool?

This week it was my great pleasure to take Senior Girls’ assembly, from Year 7 – sixth form. Usually more used to speaking to children aged three to eleven, I decided the best way forward was a thought for the day, and here it is:

Before I give you my thought for the day, I’m going to start with some thoughts about what is cool. You might look at me and wonder what I know about being cool, but I do know quite a bit, mostly because I asked a lot of Year 9s to share their ideas with me.

Things were different in my youth. When I was at school ballroom dancing was the least cool thing ever.

Shirts with ruffles were sought after in the shops.

Short skirts were considered unfashionable. I remember hooking an elastic band around the button on my uniform skirt so that it could be worn as low slung as possible over my hips to make it fall well below the knee. The nuns in my school were literally chasing us about saying: “Roll that skirt over at the top it is too long!”

I was lamentably uncool in those days because I couldn't hang on to what was fashionable. By the time I had persuaded my mum to buy me the yellow cotton jacket that I had been going on about for months, it was considered last season, and I looked ridiculous again.

If there is one hard and fast rule about fashion it is that parents just don’t get it.

When I was at school various subjects were cool at different times. I’m not at all clear looking back what that was based upon, but I chose to do art because it was cool, even though I was not terribly good at it. I chose it because the cool girls did it. I didn’t choose music, which given how much time I now spend composing and performing might have been a bit short sighted, but nobody I knew was doing music so it wasn’t cool.

And that in a nutshell is the problem with cool. It is all based around what someone else thinks.

The Year 9 girls I spoke to (thank you - I will stick by the promise of anonymity -  I know it is not cool to have spoken to the Head of the Prep School) gave me some insight.

So these girls told me that cool is about someone really popular choosing something and everyone else following. Only you must not follow too obviously because that is not cool. Followers are not cool, so keeping up has to be done subtly.

I’m told that being cool is often about gossiping or rejecting other people, if they don’t do things that are cool. You can’t be cool if you are not on Facebook or if you dislike X Factor, or if even by mistake you somehow express an interest in the wrong thing.

You cannot be cool in the wrong clothes, even if you can’t afford what is cool or fashionable and it isn’t your fault. The worst thing about cool is that it changes all the time and it is difficult to keep up if you accidentally look away for a minute. I’m told this has impact on what clubs and activities are chosen, on which friends it is possible to have. It makes decisions difficult because you have to carefully check-up whether or not it will affect your cool rating.

Being cool can therefore be expensive, cruel and stressful as well as a source of pleasure. It can take away from friendship, because if you say too much, or you are enthusiastic about the wrong thing, or you make the ‘wrong’ choice over something unfashionable, you can find yourself cast away from the group and you will risk not belonging. Some people, with the wrong accessories or hair-cuts might just never have a chance to be cool at school.

I’m told that some people want to stick out from everyone else by being different. Different is cool as long as it sticks to certain rules. To be cool it has to have a particular style of its own, and never just be a little bit out of step.

I have been told that to appear to be clever is not particularly cool. And to be seen to enjoy school things is not cool unless it is drama or pop music - and fashion is important. It is apparently cool to be good at certain things if you are in a team for something or an award winner, but just to be good at something, or to enjoy it, just because you do, is somehow not supposed to be enough. Everyone I spoke to said they wished that this was not the case, because they all had ambitions and they wanted to do well in class, but didn’t always feel strong enough to stand up for themselves. Many had interests they couldn’t follow or express because it wouldn’t be seen as cool. One girl said that the worst thing she could think of was to be a “stick out”. When I got to this point in my discussions I began to feel really quite sad. I felt sad for people struggling to be cool, as if being cool really mattered.

So I want to share just a tiny secret with you all.

I am in fact, secretly, the coolest person I know. I love choral music, especially sacred music, and I sing at every chance I get, including in my church choir, which is not the best choir I have ever sung with, although the people are genuinely nice and incredibly welcoming. I don't do pop music. I like the kind of folk music that people have to wear woolly jumpers to sing, and with instruments that nobody has been making for the last two hundred years. And I've probably never heard of half the things you like. I am studying my third degree at university just for fun. I never wear make-up. I look this good naturally.

I like polishing shoes and gathering free firewood from the common, and I’m not bothered if you think that makes me weird.

I like loud shirts and patterned socks and pretty much anything that is purple. My idea of a really good time is a 4 hour Sunday lunch at my own table with old friends, most of whom are actually old, or spending a day reading about other people’s assorted views on education or life, or just walking on the common near my home in any weather just soaking up the great outdoors.

These are not the things that make me cool.

What makes me cool to most of the adults I know is that I am genuinely happy, and I have learnt that following my own paths, doing what I think is right and good, is something that fills me with joy and delight. I’m not talking about being selfish, or deliberately being different: I don't have much interest in making a fashion statement. I'm talking about accepting my place in the world, seeing my talents for what they are and being kind and compassionate and helpful to other people. I may be rather old fashioned, but it suits me. I thank God every day for the good things I have, and for being able to be myself. I like to think I have found places where I belong, such as this school. It is actually comforting not to be the centre of the universe.

What makes me cool in my own eyes is that I work hard at my job, which I love, and that I can honestly not care or even think about what makes me ‘on trend’. So I can spend proper time thinking about what I can do that helps other people, or makes me a better person. I have many wonderful valued and trusted close friends. I look after 300 small children every day and they trust me. I have many friends in and out of school, and they know they can rely on me, especially to make them laugh, or to look after them in a crisis. I have things I am good at and that I’m able to spend time enjoying, such as cooking and gardening, singing, running the staff prayer group, and I am realistic about them. That still doesn’t stop me enjoying a few things I am not good at, such as crosswords, painting and cricket. I also know which things are best left to other people.

I learnt a new word this weekend. And this word is cool:

 'Firgun' is a Hebrew word, meaning taking pleasure in someone else's success or good fortune. It is almost the opposite of what we have come to understand as cool, but I hope it will mean something to you.

My thought for today is that I think that the world would be a far better place if we all operated on Firgun rather than cool.