TeacherBee

'The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.' Read 'man' as 'person' and this well-known Martin Luther King Jnr quote couldn't be more apt to describe some of the truly remarkable examples of educational leadership many of us are witnessing through the current crisis. In Wales, it comes from the very top. Our Welsh Government Education Minister, Kirsty Williams, has shown unwavering support for the profession and given reassurance to parents and children. Her communication has been clear and timely throughout, and she has not been afraid to be a fierce advocate for Wales' schools in the wider arena.  Then there are the Local Authority leaders who, within a very small time frame, offered valuable information, support and guidance to school leaders on school closures, the allocation and organisation of childcare for key workers a...

"What are teachers doing at home on full pay?" was the provocative tweet from  ITV correspondent, Rupert Evelyn this week. A reply from our Welsh Government Minister for Education certainly put the record straight! Whilst school buildings are indeed closed to all but the children of key workers and those identified as vulnerable, it seems not everyone realises that teachers are still working and children are still learning, albeit that both are adjusting to a very different kind of reality.  Many of the children in my LKS2 class have shown extraordinary adaptability and have quickly learned how to use Microsoft Teams to communicate with me and to access their daily suggested home-learning activities. They have regularly had to practise the skill of following instructions and many have been able to upload photos and files to show me activities they have completed. The activities themselves have been chosen either to revisit and practise previously taught knowledge...

A few weeks ago I read  a piece from the BBC on the financial gains and losses    likely over a working life, for people with different degrees.  Unsurprisingly, the Institute for Fiscal Studies' investigation found that studying creative subjects at university was unlikely to result in financial gain. For a woman, the net result was close to zero but for a man, the projected loss was £100 000 compared with their peers who did not go to university.  There is a certain type of middle class snobbery that looks down on, or even feels sorry for young people who choose higher education courses in, say, media or theatre or photography. I know this to be the case from personal experience as a parent of a current photography undergraduate, and some teachers are not without guilt here. There is an implicit as well as explicit hierarchy of subjects and a corresponding attribution of value.  Yet, over the past few weeks, how many of us have ...

This post follows on from Saturday School - What about the Gap? - Part 1 The second session I chose was led by Mary Myatt and entitled 'Curriculum: Controversies, Concepts and Conversations. She began by talking about some of the thorny issues that crop up when curriculum development is being discussed: the notion that skills are transferable across subjects; the ever-present false dichotomy of knowledge versus skills when they are intrinsically linked; the privileging of activity and task completion over thinking and learning (should we ask 'Have you learned?' instead of 'Have you finished?'?), leading to what she called a 'cardboard curriculum'; the superficial links that can be made in the attempt to plan cross-curricular themes or topics; the loss of entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum and access to powerful knowledge for pupils who are too often taken out of class for interventions (this one really hit home).  Mary spoke about the ne...

29th February seems such a long time ago! It was a miserable Saturday morning, with Storm Jorge making his presence felt, as 300-or-so teachers and other edu-bods assembled for the inaugural ResearchEd Cymru. Why on earth would we give up half of our precious weekend to, well, go to school? The idea of teachers undertaking PL activities in their own time seems to divide our profession, even though it is quite clearly an individual choice. What I have found over time is that the more open I am to learning and being challenged, the more I want to learn and be challenged!  The impressive line-up of speakers made it very difficult to choose just 6 of the 30 sessions to attend but as the day progressed what struck me most was the unexpected thread I discovered -  What can and should schools and teachers be doing to narrow the 'disadvantage gap'?  In Wales, despite the focus on this for a number of years, the gap has not narrowed and it is highly likely that at th...

The past few weeks have, for teachers all over the world, been a test of character, both professional and personal. We kept things going as normally as we possibly could for our pupils for several weeks while around us, others were retreating to the relative safety of home-working. We tried our best to give reassurance in response to anxious questions whilst being honest that we, nor anyone else, could actually answer many of them. All the time, we had to put to one side any anxiety of our own. And then things came to what felt like a harsh and abrupt end.  Now we find ourselves physically cut off from our classes and colleagues, trying to ensure that some kind of learning can go on at a distance; hoping that parents and carers at home will be able to support that; struggling to hold on to the relationships we had spent half a year or more nurturing.  Some of us are also involved in providing much-needed childcare for key workers' families, either in our individua...