July was interesting. I spent every working day for four weeks working on writing a book. It's quite long, 25 thousand words. I get easily bored so, in between the chapters of the long book I wrote four short ones. 

This is one in a series of blogs that explored the effects of education communities for the teachers who work in them. Despite our best efforts, we are inadvertently killing teachers.

Educators do excellent work in the development of the social-economic conditions in which we collectively live. They should be fully supported and have their experiences included in the ongoing discussions that inform the necessary changes to the system.

Each of these stories - based on my personal experience - has a few suggestions for developing the education system to better support teachers.

​The five communities in this series are:​

1. Hierarchical community
2. Closed community based on fear 
3. Loving community, financially anaemic 
4. Alternative community, desperate for solutions
5. Education community, financially driven 

One of my last visits to the education world as a teacher was to a private adult education company which offered, amongst other things, English lessons for immigrants who were seeking employment. A certificate in English would help them in their job applications.

I had been given a timetable with eight hours a week teaching English at Secondary level. There were two lessons, each of four hours that would be held on Mondays and Fridays. I thought it was a crazy solution, but I was told that it was the only space in the timetable.

During the first week of my employment, I was required to go to the other classes that were already running at the school, to recruit students to my classes that would start as soon as possible. 

As the number of recruited students increased so did their diversity. There were students who simply wished to have a certificate for their already well-developed English and there were others whose journey through the English language had only just begun. They were still learning the English alphabet.

On the first Monday, I arrived at the classroom to find a huge crowd of eager men and women ready to get started learning English. There were more students than there was space in the room and we started bringing in extra chairs and folding tables out of the way so that everyone could have a place. 

At the back of the room sat the people whose English was weakest. At the front of the rooms sat the people whose English was strongest. It seemed to be a natural arrangement. The students had come from many different countries and yet they seemed to understand that where they sat in the room was an indication of their level of English.
I made a start by saying hello and asking everybody to share their name and where they came from. That indicated their grasp of the English language and that is how I discovered the unofficial seating arrangements.

The greeting process and the spelling of many different names of forty or so people on the whiteboard occupied the first two hours of the lesson. We had a lot of fun but the room was becoming airless. We needed a break.

After the break, I encouraged those students who were most able in English to come up and share one experience they had where English had been useful in their lives, or in their work. This actively involved a handful of students at the start of the second half of the lesson.

I then paired students according to how much English they knew calling one ‘little teacher’ and the other one ‘little learner’. It was their choice of names. 

During this stage, there was a lot of translation between languages going on so that everyone understood my instructions. We discovered that the 40 students represented a dozen different languages. We also discovered that most students already spoke two languages other than English. I was impressed.

The assignment for the pairs was to prepare their partner to say 2 to 3 sentences about who they were, where they came from and why they wanted to learn English.

My aim was to create as many ‘little teachers’ as I could. I knew I was going to be challenged to teach such a wide range of students at the same time on my own from the front of the room. 

The lesson ended on a high note when one student who had limited English skills struggled through the two sentences which his more developed partner had given him. We laughed with him because his struggles were our struggles and his determination was our determination. Tearful eyes and outrageous applause came at the end of his performance.

On Friday, only half of the students turned up. I was shocked. I thought perhaps my interpretation of their enthusiasm was misinformed. Was I being too enthusiastic?  Had I been too demanding?

It turned out that most of the missing students had the same religious background. According to the school’s timetable, Friday was a working day. According to their cultural timetable, Friday was the start of the weekend. They had never had lessons on Friday before and didn’t expect to have them now.

On Monday, we were at almost full strength again and had a great lesson teaching in pairs and small groups - the better-able students would learn from giving support to the less-able student colleagues. I can’t remember exactly what we studied but I do know that we spent quite a lot of time on numbers, letters, colours, animals, other vocabulary exercises as well as verbs associated with work, home, sports, studies so that we could enrich our conversation about such subjects.

The four hours on Monday were quite a slog with forty people in the room or should I say twenty pairs, or were they ten small groups? I put my energy into facilitating the learning that was going on rather than teaching anything specific from the front of the room.
It was soon becoming clear that we needed an external source of teaching materials to support the little teacher - little learner pairs and groups. We needed exercises and activities that could engage them. I went to the school administration and asked which books I should use. They told me there weren’t any books available. I should have ordered them before the start of term (before I started my employment) but I was welcome to use any book I wished.

At the local bookshop, I selected a number of books that I thought would be appropriate for this wide range of students ranging from beginner to post intermediate on the standard scale. I bought, using my own money, a workbook from each step on the scale. About five books in all. 

I presented the books at the next lesson to the students and suggested that they choose one they will work with this term in groups or pairs. I fully expected that everybody would turn up the next lesson with one or two exercise books that they would use for the next month. Naturally, we would also be doing large group activities as well, and even some ‘front of the room’ teaching.

I requested the administration refund my expense for the books. They told me they had not approved the expense in advance and so would not pay for them. I think by now I should’ve realised what was going on, but I was so deep into facilitating the learning of forty immigrants to better able them to get into the job market that I completely ignored the nagging feeling that I’d been fooled.

When we got back together again for the next lesson, I noticed only a handful of students had bought a workbook. I enquired why. I was reminded that being unemployed meant that you had limited money and the expense of buying the book was beyond them right now.

Using my own copies of the book I made photocopies for the students who did not have a book. There were grumblings from the students who had paid for the books out of their own pocket, but when I told them that I had done the same, we felt that we were at least on the same page. And we realised that we were on a very different page to the school administration.

When I was hauled to the administration office for making illegal photocopies I realised that I was well and truly out of my comfort zone. I asked the administrators how they expected me to work without books or photocopies and they told me it wasn’t their problem that the students had no money, and it was not their responsibility to provide material for the students. They showed me the course documentation to that effect. 

My determination to be a teacher in a school system vanished.

​My enthusiasm for teaching never waned. 

This blog is part of a series that explores different education communities and how each of the inadvertently kills the teachers who work in them

Educators do excellent work in the development of the social-economic conditions in which we collectively live. They should be fully supported and have their experiences included in the ongoing discussions that inform the necessary changes to the system.

Each of these stories - based on my personal experience - has a few suggestions for developing the education system to better support teachers.

1. Hierarchical community
2. Closed community based on fear 
3. Loving community, financially anaemic 
4. Alternative community, desperate for solutions
5. Education community, financially driven 

​​And then I discovered Education Otherwise. A charitable organisation that promoted the homeschooling of children by their parents. 

There is a paragraph in the UK education law that says children have a right to education at school or otherwise. It is those two words that created the loophole for homeschooling in the UK. 

The quality of homeschooling varies wildly, from the highly motivated, highly-trained professionals who choose to educate their own children because they see the situation in state schools as limiting their child’s chances of academic success. In some cases, the parents had jobs which take them from country to country which would cause problems for their children changing schools mid-term several times. 

On the other hand, there are parents who keep their children at home for different reasons and offer no help at all. 

Somewhere in the middle, there are highly motivated children who simply want to learn at their own pace following their own intuition who have highly supportive parents who trust that their children are capable of learning whatever they need whenever they need it. 
I contacted the Education Otherwise organisation and was in turn contacted by local parents who wished to buy my services as a Maths tutor for their children at home. 

There was no agreement on the pedagogy that I should use. The parents seemed to trust that I would do the right thing.

The parents had big enough wallets and deep enough pockets to pay for my services, so for a time, I worked as a mathematics consultant to the homeschooling world.

​But this would not change how children were taught in schools. Although it solved my need for an income, it did not fulfil my needs as a person who wanted the education system to reach its full potential. 

This blog is part of a series of stories that explore how teachers are being inadvertently killed by the education communities in which they work.

Educators do excellent work in the development of the social-economic conditions in which we collectively live. They should be fully supported and have their experiences included in the ongoing discussions that inform the necessary changes to the system.

Each of these stories - based on my personal experience - has a few suggestions for developing the education system to better support teachers.
​
The five communities are:

1. ​Hierarchical community
2. Closed community based on fear 
3. Loving community, financially anaemic 
4. Alternative community, desperate for solutions
5. Education community, financially driven 

With so few students it was possible for me to invest time in finding the right material tailored to the needs of my students, often simply making photocopies in the library. I also enjoyed the challenge of finding different ways of explaining so that it could be understood why these differently gifted children. 

There was only one problem. The financing. 

Although the schools were happy to pass on their “challenging“ students to me, there was no financial compensation for the work that I was doing. On the other hand, parents who had money and who could see their children needed tutoring outside the school system were able to pay for my time. I tried to balance the two.

It should be noted that I was also working part-time in the evenings teaching English to adults, for which I was paid. Although the budget was tight, I never lacked food and could always pay the rent on time. I could also go out for a beer every Saturday if I wanted to.
I ran the school from my home, a small basement flat with a garden. We made good use of the garden and the local facilities, the library, shopping precinct and seafront being the most popular.

One boy who was absolutely fascinated with the mathematical number pi had memorised it to so many decimal places that I wanted the world to know just how clever he was. I bought a box of chalks and we went down to the seafront and he wrote along the pavement the number pi to hundreds and hundreds of decimal places. 

People stopped and asked why the boy was not in school and what he was doing chalking numbers on the pavement. When they realised just how differently gifted he was they agreed that he should not be in an ordinary school.

Another boy, who was unfortunately involved in low-level criminal activities, took me for a walk through his community describing what happens there, behind the scenes and just below the surface. It was truly eye-opening for me to realise how tough and challenging his world was and how pathetic and how desperately uninteresting school life was for him.
I ran my school on a month by month basis, scraping together money to pay the expenses. In the end, I realised that this single teacher was ill-equipped to take on the entire education system. 

The school closed one summer and never reopened in the autumn. A choice I regret to this day. But I am glad that I made it. 

This is the second in a series of blogs about how the education system is inadvertently killing educators, It stifles them, straight-jackets them, expects them to behave in 'old-fashioned' outdated ways.

Educators do excellent work in the development of the social-economic conditions in which we collectively live. They should be fully supported and have their experiences included in the ongoing discussions that inform the necessary changes to the system.

Each of these stories - based on my personal experience - has a few suggestions for developing the education system to better support teachers.

​There are five educational communities described in these stories:

1. Hierarchical community
2. Closed community based on fear 
3. Loving community, financially anaemic 
4. Alternative community, desperate for solutions
5. Education community, financially driven 

As a young teacher, aged 24-26, I had no trouble at all being in charge of a room of 15 and 16-year-olds.

Yes, they were cheeky, energetic and occasionally rude. Yes, they got frustrated and angry too. What teen doesn’t? Yes, I understood that they were going through puberty at the same time as they were going through the education system. But the education system had nothing to say about what was going on inside them. Such matters were suppressed.

Some of the teachers at the school had issues with the behaviour of certain teens. It didn’t take me long to identify which teens were getting into trouble with certain teachers. Or should I say, it didn’t take me long to identify the teachers who were having trouble with certain teenagers.

The standard discipline procedure at the school was to issue a verbal warning, a so-called ’telling off’, by the teacher concerned, then by the Head of Department and perhaps by the Headteacher. 

The so-called ‘three warnings’ system was used. The second level would be to send a letter home to the parents saying that the misbehaviour must stop and that the parents should get involved. The level after that involved corporal punishment.

In case you have never experienced this, at that time in the UK, it was common practice for parents to hit their children at home, and it was fairly common practice for teachers to hit students at school. The ‘tougher’ the school, the more likely it was they would use corporal punishment. Sometimes a paddle was used, sometimes a cane. You may have seen pictures of teachers wearing caps and gowns, carrying a cane. That’s what the cane was used for. 

It was enough to swish the cane through the air to remind students that they could be hit as punishment. There were teachers who used this technique a lot. I never did. I never possessed a cane! I would never need one.

The procedure after the verbal warning and a written warning was for the Headteacher, Head of Year, the offended teacher, and offending teenager to be assembled in a room where the punishment would be administered behind closed doors. There was a ritual for this involving the reason being read out to the teenager, rather like a charge being read out in a court of law. The punishment was administered by forcing the teenager to bend over a chair if necessary with the assistance of a teacher who would hold them down. The other teacher or headteacher would use the cane to strike the student on their backside a certain number of times. Depending on the ‘crime’ the number of strikes could be one to six.

The maximum punishment was the so-called ’six of the best’.

Whilst six of the best was a joke amongst the students, it was also a sign of pride to go and get your ‘six of the best’, without crying.

The stories in this series of blogs focus on the different types of community that aim to educate young people.:

• Hierarchical community, Teacher < Headteacher < God
• Closed community based on fear, Corporal punishment still rules here
• Loving community, financially anaemic. You can do it your way but you won’t get paid for it
• Alternative community, Desperate for solutions. We don’t know how it should be done but we will pay you to do it
• Education community, financially driven. High expectations, no resources

I took my first employment as a teacher at a school that was run by a religious order. Not a strange sect, a very common religious order. The Catholic church.

The headteacher of the Catholic school considered himself to be in direct contact with God. It was a natural part of his other role in life to hear confessions and give sermons.

​At this Catholic school, there was a pecking order amongst the teachers, based on service longevity. The teachers who had been working at the school the longest had more power than the ones who were new. I was very new and I was not willing to take my lowly place in the hierarchical scheme of things.

I had just graduated from University where I had learned for four years how to teach and was now the lowest amongst teachers who had been teaching for 30 years with no academic backing for how they taught. 

It was depressing to work in that rigid hierarchy that excluded modern thinking about pedagogy and curriculum. 

​Note: the hierarchy may well have had nothing to do with their religious beliefs. 

In the previous blogs in this category, I wrote about:

• Working in groups, getting started
• Instructions and roles within the groups
• Collaboration instead of competition
• Study materials and support

In this blog, I write about the different ways assessments can be done, if they have to be done at all (!).

Assessments can be carried out in a multitude of different ways. Some subjects lend themselves better to paper-and-pencil assessment, others require student’s performance on stage, in a workshop or a laboratory.

There is a progression of options regarding assessment.

1. The teacher decides what, when and how the assessment will be done
2. The teacher asks for feedback on the assessment after the students have completed it
3. The teacher makes adjustments to the assessment before using it, in collaboration with key students
4. The students suggest a range of possible forms of assessments. Teacher decides
5. Students suggest and decide what the assessments will be, and how they will be carried out.

In the traditional classroom, it is the teacher who decides what and how to assess the students’ knowledge and skills levels. This was most appropriate when there was a fairly homogeneous class of students. However, in the modern classroom, the spread of knowledge and skills is such that a different approach must be taken.

Formative and Summative assessments
Since teachers are responsible for giving grades at the end of term, so-called summative assessments, these are best left in the professional teacher’s hands until such time as these grades are removed from the education world.

Feedback from the teacher
The assessment area which is open for development is the formative assessment where the teacher gives feedback on what the student does and does not know, how well they can do what’s expected, and ways of learning what needs to be learned in order to meet certain grade criteria.

Feedback from students
One way of developing the formative assessments is for the teacher to ask for feedback regarding the students’ perception of the fairness and accuracy of the formative assessment. Some teachers may be concerned that they are giving away their power and responsibility. This is far from the case, it is indeed increasing responsibility, putting it where it will ultimately lie, with the students. 

Teachers can make adjustments to the assessment method based on the feedback in an effort to make the assessment fair and accurate more often.

Students suggest. Teacher decides
The next level would have the student suggesting forms of formative assessment that are appropriate for them. They know quite well what their challenges are and can ask to be assessed in a way that is appropriate for them. At this level, the teacher still decides together with colleagues perhaps on the correct form of assessment.

Self-assessment
As the students mature they can both suggest, and decide in some cases, exactly how they will be assessed. Perhaps by the teacher. Perhaps by other students. Here you can see that responsibility for assessment lies increasingly heavily with the student. This is more appropriate as students reach maturity, and are being treated as adults.

In the previous blogs in this category I wrote about:

• Working in groups, getting started
• Instructions and roles within the groups
• Collaboration instead of competition

In this blog, I write about the ways Study Materials and Supporting students can be varied so that you meet the needs of a wider range of students.

​Study Materials
It is normal that study material is delivered in various forms, videos, pictures, texts, books, websites et cetera. 

• Some material adaptations may be necessary.
• Some of the material may be at a complex level and other material may be simplified. 
• Some language support may be necessary.
• Not all materials have to come from the teacher, but it is natural for teachers to gather such materials that are found to be useful. 
• Not all support has to come from the teacher, students can learn from each other. It’s a useful life skill to be able to work with differently gifted colleagues. That skill can begin with supporting classmates.

An effective way to support a greater number of different students - rather than trying to do it all yourself - is to form groups.
​
Making groups
There are many temptations when making groups. Teachers might seek to ‘protect’ certain students or strategize to ‘guarantee’ good results. Whilst having full respect for those concerns, there is a risk of limiting the learning from getting the groups ‘wrong’. It is worth the risk of giving Lady Luck a hand in making the groups.

Here’s a Lady Luck way to make groups.

1. Prepare a pack of playing cards (or similar) with
2. Enough cards for one per student
3. Groupings by colour or card or number
4. Give each student a card as they come into the room, telling them to make groups based on the colour or suit of the card or the number on it.

It’s quick. And, yes, some teachers do use this method and manage to ‘slip the right card’ to ‘certain students’.

Prepare in advance
The next level is to prepare group lists before the start of the lesson, based on whatever criteria you choose. There is a small risk in this strategy of some students arriving late, or not at all, and thus affecting the ideal composition of the group.

Count off
​Another level is to ‘count off’ the students into groups according to where they are sitting or standing at the time. 
You can count aloud: 

• “Group A is, you, you, you... and you” or 
• “Group A, Group B, Group C etc. Group A over here. Group B over there etc” 

At a higher level, regarding student responsibility, involve them in the composition of their own groups. Say “Choose people you have not worked with before”.

Mature students handle this beautifully even in their teens.

In the last blog in this category I will write about

• Range of assessment

In the previous blogs in this category I wrote about:

• Working in groups, getting started
• Instructions and roles within the groups

In this blog I write about the beneficial effects of collaboration for the teacher, and for the students as future employees / entrepreneurs.

As you can see in the previous blog about working in groups, the rules and the group work roles lend themselves towards collaboration.

However, many students may still have a competitive mindset, where they compete for the teacher’s attention, getting the right answers, getting the highest marks et cetera or competing to get the class's attention, getting the most laughs.

To develop a sense of collaboration, each of the groups can be given a unique task rather than each group having the same task. When you design the group activities, you can consider the following:

Competition
All groups are given the same activities. The ‘winners’ are the students who get the most answers correct, most quickly.

Collaboration
Each group gets a different, but related activities. The ‘winners’ are the whole class with each student contributing to the overall understanding, in their own way.

One way of working collaboratively in groups is to use the Jigsaw Strategy where 4 to 6 groups delve into a package of study material that is unique to each group and then share the results with the whole class. 

Examples
Generally, in the Jigsaw Strategy is a process of smaller pictures being assembled to make a larger picture. 

• In some cases the ‘smaller pictures’ come from mixed media study materials. This might be done at the presentation and teaching stage.
• In some cases the ‘smaller pictures’ come from the memories and experience of the learners. This might be done at the review or assessment stage.

Example 1 From details to overview
In order to gain a complete picture of the topic being studied, each group’s contribution is shared.

1. Take a large amount of mixed media study material.
2. Give each group a roughly equal share.
3. Let them use the materials to get started discussing what they know and what’s new about the topic.
4. Move some students from one group to another. Now they share what they have read, seen, discussed in their two groups.
5. Repeat the process until every student has been in several groups.
6. Share, in writing, Q&A, or performance, what they have learned.

Example 2 Case Studies
In order to solve the problem, each group needs to share their information in such a way that the other groups understand and come to the same (correct) conclusion.

1. Each group gets a different (but related) Case Study. They read, discuss then write their solution describing how they would solve the problem.
2. After a set time, move the case studies to other groups who now validate or correct the previous group’s solution.
3. This can be repeated until several groups have seen and solved several case studies.

In the next blogs in this category I will write about

• Study materials and support
• Range of assessment

In the previous blog in this category I wrote about

• Working in groups, getting started

In this blog I write about the necessary instructions and roles that make groups work collaboratively

Once you have experimented with rapidly splitting the class into groups for short activities under your direct control, the next steps are to run parts of the lesson with slightly more structure and a higher level of independence from the teacher.

In a modern classroom, students need clear instructions about who is to do what, the timeframe, and the expected results.

Example
Suppose you are going to teach a topic and want: 

• To know what the students can recall from their previous school, classes, teacher etc so you know what to teach
• The students to realise what they already know, and do not know, so they are ready to learn new things

You can use this 10-minute group activity for the end of a lesson so that you can prepare the next lesson. You will give the same question to all 4-6 groups and will receive different answers from them.

Instructions
“What do you already know about (this topic)?”

1. You have 6 minutes to write down words and concepts you associate with (this topic)
2. Make sure everyone gets to speak
3. Speak one at the time
4. Give time for group members to write / draw
5. One person will present for the group to the class

In the next blogs in this category I will write about

• Collaboration instead of competition
• Study materials and support
• Range of assessment

In the first blog in this category I wrote a simplified overview of the changing landcape of schools over the past 30 years.  

In a modern school there is great use of working in groups so that:

• The teacher can include a wider variety of students in the same class
• Students learn to appreciate differences as a valuable resource in collaborative work such as they will need in their work as an employee or employer for example

One way of including a range of different students is to work with groups.

Groups function like small classes within the classroom.
​The groups can be homogeneous, or diverse.

• Initially, the groups can be formed at random, although it is likely that a teacher with knowledge of the students in their class will make certain judicious choices so that each group has a fair chance of succeeding with the activity. 
• The group should be small but not too small. Depending on the size of the class, 4 to 6 groups can be made with 4 to 6 students in each group. That covers class sizes from 16 to 36 students.
• The groups should not be permanent, indeed a group could be formed for less than the length of the lesson, or for 10-20 minutes.
• There is an initial effort involved in building groups, when the teacher is not used to forming groups, and when the students are not yet used to working in groups.
• However, over time, the resistance to working in groups diminishes. And by the third or fourth time group activities are used, both parties will be more comfortable with the process and the benefits of working in groups will begin to show. 

Four Corners Activities
An effective way to get started working with groups is to use a Four Corners activity with the teacher as controller or director. In these activities, the students are encouraged to stand in one of four corners in the room depending on which response or answer they wish to give to the teachers prompt or question. 

It should be noted that a Four Corners activity should include a mix of questions of a factual nature with prompts for opinions that are not provocative or controversial. Having said that, Four Corners is an excellent way of promoting deep conversations on controversial issues. That is not our purpose here.  


Example

Question “What is the capital of France?”
A) Paris B) Berlin C) London or D) give me a clue

Prompt “The school lunch yesterday was...)?”
A) delicious B) edible C) nutritious or D) palatable 

Getting started
Start small, and develop group activities gradually.

​The first Four Corners group activity might be done at any time during the lesson - when the students need to move around for example - so the teacher and the students can begin to experiment with dividing up the class in different ways. 

In the next blogs in this category I will write about

• Instructions and roles within the groups
• Collaboration instead of competition
• Study materials and support
• Range of assessment

There was one teacher at my secondary school who liked putting his tongue in my ear.

That might not have been a bad thing. A tongue in the air can be a pleasant experience. Especially with someone you love. 

But this was different. This was a teacher. Someone who should have known better than to put his tongue into a little boy’s ear.

I wasn’t so little, I was 15. But little enough to deserve being treated with care and respect. And he, aged 40 something, was old enough to know better. 

If not by his age, then by his profession. He should have learned that putting one’s tongue in another person’s ear is something that’s reserved for intimate relations. And this was not an intimate relation. At least it shouldn’t have been.

As our PE teacher, he attended the changing rooms. Yes, he watched boys getting undressed and dress in gym kit ready for the PE lesson. He also watched us getting showered and dried after the PE lesson. He was a diligent teacher, he never took his eyes off us.

There was always a sense of tension in the PE lessons. There was something that didn’t feel right. And teachers are the ones who teach you what is right and wrong. This felt wrong.

He had his favourites. There was one boy he liked, a lot. He would let him shower in the PE teacher’s private changing room. We thought it was strange, but this boy, the biggest and most mature of the year group, never said no to the offer of showering in private. Showering his privates, in the PE master’s private shower.

I have no idea what the PE teacher got up to in his private changing room with the biggest boy in the year. But later, as an adult, I can imagine although I do not want to.

The abuse continued for years. Beginning slowly with a hand on the shoulder, or a hand on the arm to attract attention. It escalated slowly to a touch on the hand, a  touch on the bum. 

And then whenever he called, “Richards. Come here!”, I did as I was told. He was after all the teacher, and one is supposed to obey teachers. Even when it seems strange. Even when it felt wrong.

He would whisper in my ear, sometimes words of encouragement, sometimes words of correction, sometimes his tongue. 

To anyone looking, the PE teacher was after all only giving me instructions, correction, or encouragement. Or was he?

Perhaps everyone got the same treatment? But I doubt it.

At school, reputation is everything. You might think it’s grades. It is not. They only count when you leave school. Whilst you are at school is your reputation that counts. My reputation was rapidly becoming “The one who lets the PE teacher touch him“.  For every moment that I did not respond negatively, react or refuse to be touched, opinion grew that I must “like it”.

What chance had I then, a puny 15-year-old who seemed to have the most delectable ears, to say against the growing opinion that I was ‘a pouf’? Perhaps my lack of resistance was construed as encouragement? 

However, even if I was the most encouraging 15-year-old boy on the planet, a normal teacher would’ve refrained from having stuck his tongue in my ear. Wouldn’t he?
And, I had to wonder if I did like it. Because I never said no. Not in any final way. I just squirmed. I think he liked that. I think it was part of his enjoyment to make me squirm.

He didn’t stop until I left school. I never called him on it. He was never called on it. Not by anybody. Not whilst I was at school.

Later, about five years later after I had completed my University degree and the Post Graduate Certificate in Education, I was ready to start work as a teacher. I returned to my old Secondary school and asked if I could teach there.

​Some of my old teachers were still teaching there. Same old men and women that I had referred to as ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’m’ for seven years. Just a little greyer. Happy to see me. Glad that I had chosen such a noble profession.

And guess who else was there? Yes, the PE teacher. Now teaching Maths. His hair was thinning, his face was gaunt. He saw me, and knew that I could end his career with one word. 

But I did not speak. 

The Music teacher was a Welshman. I have nothing against the Welsh people, not at all. This is just how I remember him. 

He was short. We were not. We were changing from little boys to be 6 foot tall men. The Music teacher wasn’t 6 foot tall. That might account for his difficulty in managing a class where the majority of the boys/men were taller than he. 

He used to shout. He had a shrill voice. I think we liked to wind him up so that we could hear his shrill Welsh voice yelling at us to “Be-have”, to “An-swer the ques-tion”, “Boyz, stop fooling a-round.”

In his music lessons he would teach us Composition. Our task was to compose a piece of music which he would then play on the piano so that everyone could hear what we had composed. We were not Composers. We had no idea how to compose a piece of music that would be worth being played on a piano. 

At the end of some minutes of composition, he would collect our music note books and begin to play our compositions one by one. He would almost always mock what had been written, playing it exactly as it was written, note-by-painful-note, written by an amateur desperate to write something, anything. 

Often the review of our compositions would result in a tinkling on the piano followed by the word “Rub-bish!” and our notebooks being thrown across the room one by one, flapping their pages as they went. And landing in a pile on the floor. 

We would sit and hear our work being rubbished. It did nothing positive for our self-confidence.

We would also play music. He will show us the score on the music stand and let us choose an instrument to play. I always chose percussion, because it was the easiest. He knew that, and would mock my choice. He would mock everybody’s choices. There were very few natural musicians in the class. 

He would conduct, we would play. He would shout “Rub-bish”. It was his magic word.
We would also sing, like a choir. Not a choir of angels. A choir of teenage boys, whose voices were breaking. Often breaking mid sentence. We would sing, squawk, pretend to sing, all the time trying desperately not to get caught. He was onto us and our miming strategy. He would walk along the choir listening to each boy in turn. Turning a mocking ear to those who were singing silently in order to protect their dignity. He would shout, “Lou-der!”. But that didn’t help.

I can safely say that any intention that I had to become a musician was thoroughly quashed by those music lessons. I can honestly say that any musician’s soul that might have lived within me, died.

​Perhaps that was his intention, perhaps he couldn’t stand the competition?

I loved my woodwork teacher. He was a big man, slow, gentle and forgiving.

In Woodwork, we had to practice joining wood in different ways. We learned to use a variety of tools: saws, chisels, drills and sandpaper. Lots of sandpaper. I spent hours in my Woodwork lessons sanding pieces of wood. 

Each lesson, the woodwork teacher would demonstrate how to use a tool, how to make a joint, the tenon, the mitre, the dovetail. We learned about using screws, crossheads, counter-sunks cheese heads and black Japans.

He knew his job. He was a carpenter right down to his fingertips. So was my father. 
I spent many summer weeks working with my father building front porches and garden fences, putting up walls, putting up ceilings, putting in doors and removing and renovating windows.

I was excellent at woodwork. I knew the names of every single tool and how to care for them. I knew the names of all the screws, nails, and fixings. I even knew all the names of the joints that we were being taught in Woodwork lessons. I had used them all summer long and they were as familiar to me as the fingers on my hand.

Every Woodwork lesson quickly progressed the projects that I was working on, whether it was a bench hook for woodworking, a chopping board for the kitchen, a handle to put on a knife, or something to put the breakfast toast in. 

Many of these items became birthday and Christmas presents for the family. They could see how well I was progressing in Woodwork. My father was very proud that his first-born son was bringing home high quality items that were also useful.

Even though I succeeded at the many projects during the term, it was the final exam in June that would determine whether or not I would pass. 

There was no theory exam. It was only a practical exam. All that was required was to look at the instructions, measure up the wood, cut to size and assemble. The joint was simple; a dovetailed, half-lap mitre, and it was to be a press-fit joint that did not use glue. I knew how to do this, like I knew how to tie my shoelaces.

On the day of examination, I stood by my bench and ignored the simple instructions. For the next four hours I did nothing.

The woodwork teacher, bound by the rules and ethics of the examination board, was unable to help me. He did, on several occasions, come over to my workplace and give me a very strange look. Here was his favourite, most capable student throwing away the exam. He knew he couldn’t speak to me but his eyes wept volumes. He was confused, and frustrated because he could not interfere or intervene in my inaction.

The French teacher tried so hard to make me speak French. We got off to a good start, learning some kind of code. English words were coded into other French-looking words. I learned to spell those words, including all the accents.

Then he began writing out a kind of chart that showed how verbs change form depending on the person they were related to. This was a step too far. Too much French.
I had no idea why we had to learn French, and so I was making it difficult for myself to understand what he had written in the chart. I certainly could not memorise it, despite many homework being set with that goal. 

I refused to speak French out loud. Especially in front of my classmates. I couldn’t understand why they were suddenly so bloody capable of speaking La belle Français.

​Some lessons were based on audio cassettes, with dialogues. We were supposed to listen and say what was going on. I could hardly hear any words at all.

Some lessons were based on books, with dialogues. We were supposed to act out the scenes in French. Not bloody likely. I am not so easily fooled.

My performance in these French lessons was in stark contrast to my performance in Maths lessons, in Science lessons and in Woodwork lessons. Here, I was a difficult student, and intelligent enough to make life very difficult for the French teacher.

​I knew I could pretend not to understand. He would tell me again, teach me again. I knew I could pronounce the word incorrectly (with a very English accent) because he would encourage me to speak it differently, to copy his pronunciation.

But they never told me why I should learn French. They told me that I should learn French, and it was important. But I never understood the importance.

Whether it was the French teacher or my parents who came up with the idea, I do not know, but we did get a French student come to stay with the family.

I ran. I hid. I ignored the poor girl for all the months she was with us. She spoke English of course, with a French accent of course, but I steadfastly refused to speak English or French with her.

My Sixth form Maths teacher had a wonderful way of bringing out the best in us. The Sixth form was two additional years after compulsory education before University.

We were now adults, and were to be treated as adults not children. The approach of the teachers in general was to include us in the design and implementation of our lessons.

In many Maths lessons, there was a focus on one problem at the time. The whole class would focus on a problem and we would try to solve it together. This teacher’s approach was to draw out the best of us by asking open-ended questions. 

Whenever we gave an answer he asked what our thinking was. Whenever we gave a wrong answer he asked us what our thinking was. We discovered any errors we had made and corrected ourselves.

There were traditional lessons where new concepts were taught, new diagrams were displayed, new applications were made of methods we had learned. But when it came to problems he was the Ringmaster and we were his performing animals. 

He drew out the best of us with open ended questions, nonjudgement, and curiosity about our thinking. 

He was like a Maths Coach.

​What I loved about Physics lessons was that you got to do experiments.

What I loved about the physics teacher was that she let us experiment, really experiment.

One day, after we had been learning about Young’s Modulus - which is about the stretchability of metals in particular - my classmate and I made excellent use of a worm that we had found. 

In the Young’s Modulus experiment, a sample of the metal to be stretched, in the classroom example usually 10 or 20 cm long and a few millimetres thick, is suspended on a retort stand between a clamp and an adjustable weight. To the adjustable weight would be added additional weights and the increasing length of the metal sample would be measured each time.

A graph of the extension over time would be used to calculate the Young’s Modulus of the copper wire, steel wire, elastic band et cetera.

My classmate and I decided to perform a Young’s Modulus experiment on the worm. Perhaps I should interject here that the worm was dead. It had been washed in detergent by another student. It may have died a horrible death but when we found it, it was clearly dead. It looked like a thin strip of leather.

When the physics teacher came into the room and saw that we were stretching a worm she was initially horrified. 

My classmate and I were able to convince her of the scientific viability of a Young’s Modulus test for this poor unfortunate worm. 

She chose to take us seriously in our scientific endeavours. She questioned us thoroughly on our choice of material, the fixing method, the choice of the weights to add, our measuring system for time and length. 

Her questions were answered with the greatest of sincerity which was in strong contrast to the silent imaginary screams of the stretched worm. 

What I appreciated most about the physics teacher was that she took our childlike curiosity, our adolescent playfulness and our budding scientific so seriously. She did not harshly judge us for our naughtiness, instead she respected the young scientists that we were becoming. 

My friend and I became two of the best scientists in the class. Our experiments were always well thought out, immaculately designed and fully written up in the proper scientific way.

I always got top marks in science in fact on one test I gained 106%. It’s a mystery to me to this day.

The fact that I still remember it shows how important it was.

​And still is. 

My Secondary school maths teacher knew the value of setting work that was relevant to his students needs. Yes we did have a book, a very large book filled with hundreds and hundreds of questions and problems to solve. But he chose which questions we would answer according to our ability and interest. 

Those students who seemed less able or less interested, were only required to answer the questions at the beginning of the chapter. These were mostly repetitious and required only simple reasoning to solve. 

The next level of questions were more demanding and required multiple skills to solve. I was glad to be amongst the students who were given the most challenging problems.

The fact that he would automatically issue me and a few of my classmates with the juiciest problems in the book and said that we did not need to chew our way through repetitive exercises, encouraged me to think that I was good at Mathematics. 

I dived into those problems using all my skills in Mathematics to solve them.

I also recall that he would allow us to work in small groups, dividing up the chapter between us so that we would get all the questions answered. Some classmates in the group would tackle the easier questions at the beginning of the chapter whilst I and my ‘anointed few’ got on with the real work.

I felt that I had earned this position, and I was determined to keep it. I was aware that several other students in the class were also capable in Mathematics, and it was my job to make sure that I was more capable than they were.

On occasion, the Maths teacher would be called on to deal with an issue outside the classroom. The fact that he had already divided the class into groups, and the groups were dividing the work according to their ability and interest, we knew what to do. Strangely enough, we needed less help when he was not in the room.

I suspect that he knew this, and perhaps the issue that was being solved outside the room was in fact a smoke break, or a coffee break. Either way he did a good job as a teacher in convincing me that I could teach myself, and my classmates and that I was an excellent Mathematician.

​And I suspect that I learned more about teaching a class from this Maths teacher than any other teacher when I was learning to teach.

My English teacher was an odd character. He loved to perform in front of the class.

The way he got me into Reading was to read aloud from a book. We had English lessons almost every day. On Friday afternoons, he would spend most of the lesson simply reading from “the Hobbit” or “To Kill a Mockingbird”, or whatever other book had been set that year.

He did all the voices, and it was like listening to a radio play. 

I believe that some of my beautiful English intonation stems from this teacher and his use of the English language.

I know the way I teach English to adults is based on the way he taught me.

The way he got me into Writing was to simply give a title and say, “Keep writing until you’re done”. 

I loved writing. I wrote with a fountain pen. Actually a cartridge pen. I used to begin the essay with a blue cartridge, and swap to a green one when I felt I was halfway through the story, and swap back to the blue one when I thought I was coming near the end. In that way, the text started off blue and gradually changed to green and then back to blue again whilst I wrote.

Whenever the English teacher gave out an essay title, he would also give me a new workbook with a wink, saying “You will probably need this”. 

I felt the challenge of filling a 30 page workbook for every essay that I wrote. It was a pleasure to deliver on his challenge.

I can’t for the life of me remember him teaching vocabulary. I can’t remember any charts or diagrams showing parts of the English grammar. 

I do remember a day when punctuation was taught.

I also remember him correcting my work with a red pen, a fountain pen.

​I always looked forward to getting his marks on my work.

When I was eleven years old, there was a test in the UK, called the “Eleven Plus” which determined whether you would be sent to a Grammar School, a Technical School or a Secondary Modern School.

• The Grammar School taught Languages, Arts and Home Economics and was intended for girls.
• The Technical School taught the Sciences, Woodwork and Metalwork and was intended for boys.
• The Secondary Modern School taught everything, to boys and girls.

That was the way it was.

Since I loved Art and was not good at Maths, in Primary School, it was a surprise that I was sent to the Technical School.

It just happened. 

The Stories

And these stories in rainbow shades from light to dark, tell something of what happened there:

Light​
The English Teacher
The Maths Teacher
The Physics Teacher
The Sixth Form Maths Teacher
The Woodwork Teacher
The French Teacher
The Music Teacher
The PE Teacher
Dark

Hmm, which did you choose first?

Martin Richards has taught Mathematics to teenagers and English to adults for thirty years.

He is now a Certified Life Coach and has recently completed an assignment from the Swedish Education Authority where he coached Primary and Secondary teachers and headteachers.

Martin’s Life Mission is to develop the potential of the Education System to its fullest.

Martin Richards works, written in July 2020, include:

• Listening from the Heart in Education (Course book)
• Five Ways to Kill a Teacher
• Ten Tips from the Retired Entrepreneur
• Five Tips from a Retired Educator
• Short Stories (illustrating coaching in education)

Martin’s books and works can be read in advance on his website and bought as paperbacks and e-books from www.amazon.com/author/coach-martin-richards 

I received the above request from a teacher in a Facebook group. What attracted me most about this request was that it was elegant and authentic. The teacher was asking what they could do without making too much more effort than they were already making. 

And that’s understandable and fair because nobody wants teachers to work harder than they do already, even though we do want them to get better results and include students of all levels and abilities in the same classroom.

Getting better results for less effort requires an upgrade to our usual thinking about what education is for, and how it is done. Luckily, the landscape of the classroom has changed since you were in school.
​

In a series of five blogs in the category "Five Tips from a Retired Educator" I share a handful of ideas that will move your classroom teaching into the modern era, and move the workload and responsibility where it belongs - with the students. 

But that shift of responsibility needs to be handled caringly, assertively and with vulnerability from the teacher. These five steps will help you with that. And, if you would like to speak with me about it, click here

This topic has been covered in greater depth elsewhere, but for simplicity, based on three decades of teaching, I offer the following three descriptions, snapshots from three generations of teaching:

Traditional classroom

• One teacher and an ideally homogeneous group (class/set) of students. The students follow the same plan of lessons and activities and are expected to learn in the same way. The teacher generally stands at the front of the room and teaches from the blackboard.
  

​Transitional classroom

• One teacher and a class of students with a range of skills, abilities and interests. The teacher generally ‘teaches to the middle’ and paces the lessons according to the ‘average’ student, and then adds on extra . The result is that both the better-able and the less-able students are frustrated. So is the teacher, who is working hard to prepare several types and levels of lesson to teach simultaneously.

Modern classroom

• The teacher acts as a director and facilitator, designing activities collaboratively with colleagues and students to suit the wide range of abilities and interests represented by the students in their class. ​

I am going to assume that you have not been given any particular training in how to include a diverse range of students in the same class so I will start with two basics.

1. We are all different
2. We all want to be included

In any modern-day classroom, there will be students who are more or less interested in the subject, have a greater or lesser grasp of the skills and knowledge and are more or less socially mature than the average. There are students who are living with an advantage or impairment of some kind and who need special consideration in order to feel included in the classroom activities.

Teachers are professionals, they go to great lengths to prepare materials, activities and assessments suitable for the many kinds of students they have in their room class. 
​
This can be exhausting until the teacher has developed their own library of materials and pallet of activities.

Today’s lesson from the retired entrepreneur comes to you from a hammock in the garden in the middle of real life going on. I believe that’s a baby in the background, not a cat.

Suppose you want to develop your business.
What should you do? What would give you and your business the most benefit? 

Write down a few ideas I’ll give you a few seconds. Meanwhile, we can swing in the hammock and listen to the baby crying. Oh, poor sausage!

WRITE YOUR IDEAS DOWN:



So what are you going to do to develop your business? 
One of the traps people fall into is ‘chasing after clients’. There is nothing makes clients run away more quickly than chasing after them. 

What works is to take a sheet of paper and a paintbrush and a box of school colours - paints that you may have had in school - and paint a picture of how you would like your company to be.

Let your fantasy go wild! Use all the colours in the box!
Perhaps you prefer to write, or to draw or make a video recording like this one? The point is you are putting your ideas about your company your business out into the Universe in the most effective way. 

​Of course, you might choose to share some of those videos, writings, paintings or drawings with potential clients. And then again you might not. It’s up to you.

Either way, the Universe has heard you.

Music is for playing not just listening to. 

It’s a metaphor. What I mean is that we tend to look at all these amazing people who are living lives that really inspire us. We play their recordings, watch them on YouTube, watch their football match, listen to their performance and we say “Wow”. 

But we forget that music is for playing. Playing around, football or music, or whatever it might be.

As an entrepreneur, I get to play my own music. I get to create my own bandstand. I get to play all the instruments one after, or all at the same time. I’m not very good at it but then again I’m not very good at singing either, and I’m not very good at playing football, and I’m not very good at … but it doesn’t matter because it’s not a question of performance it’s a question of playing.

​So yeah, playing music means playing music not just pressing the Play button.

Today’s lesson from a retired entrepreneur is recorded at Central Station in Gothenburg, and has the question “Which is the most important, time or money?”

When people are asked to do things, they will either tell you that they don’t have time or they don’t have the money for it. 

And which is most important depends a little on your age. 

When you’re young, you have lots of time but no money. 

I asked a large group of 15-year-olds, “What’s the most important thing to think about?”, we were talking about jobs and being something in the world, and when I asked them the most important thing to think about they said “Money”. I realised that they don’t have any. 

​If you are someone who is retired or perhaps unwell, perhaps near the end of your life, you have earned and maybe saved money, but are counting the days. What’s important then, do you think? 

No amount of money will help you get your time back.

Whichever seems most important, one thing is true.

​There is never enough.

Today’s lesson from a retired entrepreneur is recorded at Central Station Gothenburg. 

When I speak with teenagers about values, I encounter the difference between us. Here am I, a mature (old) person, and from my point of view they are very young. 

When I ask “What’s important?” they nearly always tell me the same thing. They talk about money. Because money is what you buy things with, and things make you happy. 

They are young. They haven’t learned. Let’s not judge them too harshly.

They nearly always ask me, when I talk about the work that I do, “How much money do you make?” 

I have a naughty trick that I play on them. I tell them, “No, I don’t work anymore I am retired. I have an income every month (that’s the tweak, the word ‘income’), but I don’t have to work. And then they want to know, “How much is it? How much do you get?” 

And I write on the board a two, three zeros, and three more zeros and then the letters SEK. In case you don’t know SEK is the currency here, Swedish kronor. So it looks like I’ve just written two million Swedish kronor and they all go “WOW” because they’re impressed that I could get so much money without doing anything.