In a school somewhere in the world, right now, there is a teenage boy drawing a penis on his desk or the wall of his classroom. Whether it’s a long one, short one, thick one, or thin one, this universal urge for teenage lads to decorate empty spaces with pictures of willies is only matched by the universal suffering of the caretakers who have to get rid of the drawings at the end of the day.

I can just imagine the scene in Cerne Secondary School a few hundred years ago:

“OK, everyone. The interactive whiteboard hasn’t arrived, yet. Actually, blackboards haven’t even been invented yet, so we’re going to carve today’s diagram into the side of that hill over there. Let’s work as a group on a big picture of a man then label all the body parts in French”.

Three weeks later:

“Well done, everyone. That looks great. Hang on a minute, who added the massive phallus?”.

Now, I’m not a maths teacher, but I’ve covered enough statistics classes for sick teachers to know that roughly 78.2 per cent of people are unable to tell the difference between real statistics and those made up on the spot.

Based on this expert knowledge, I can safely estimate that with ‘desk dongs’ being added to the world at a rate of one every minute and being cleaned up at a rate of one every three minutes (because of underfunding), were heading for a global glut of genital graffiti. So, what can we do about it?

I saw something on Angela Maiers’ blog the other day that might help. Idea Paint is a kind of paint that can turn anything into a whiteboard. I’m not going to suggest painting the whole class with it so the students can put wipe-off willies wherever they want, but having a large space where students could write on the walls (in boardmarker) could provide some scope for really interesting activities in class.

Letting students write on the walls, albeit under controlled circumstances might also reduce the ‘cool’ factor of graffiti. If it’s no longer an act of rebellion to write on the walls, maybe students wont feel the need to do it so much and can focus on really cool, ‘harmful’ activities, like learning languages.

Today’s image is by Induo.

We have been on Every Child Matters overdrive here recently; more initiatives, projects and meetings than they have in Westminster. And that’s all they do in Westminster. Endless chatter.

So you would hope now that all our pupils are safe, healthy, financially secure, full of wellbeing and full of joyful achievement. They might well be; I don’t know anymore because the sheer effort means I now need some sort of government sanctioned intervention.

How would it go?

“Every Teacher Matters: A Vision for Elite Teaching”

Be Healthy: Every teacher has the right to have time to eat their lunch without being interrupted by visits from parents, or ad hoc checks from the head.

Stay Safe: Every teacher has the right not to be kicked, tripped, attacked with paper balls or sworn at. They should also be protected from the irate caretaker at all times.

Enjoy and Achieve: Teachers should not be made to see spots of white rage before 1oam; teaching should involve pleasurable things, like time away from the pupils, hours of silence and achieveable goals, such as getting home on time.

Make a positive contribution:  Teachers shouldn’t have so much pressure. Any contribution will do, however small. Give someone an A. Tell their parents they’re doing well at physics. Lie if you have to. But don’t sweat it.

Economic wellbeing: Bonuses should be paid for every child that doesn ‘t end up illiterate, pregnant or in jail. Golden hanshakes sound nice too.

At a desperate loss for inspiration this morning, (last night there might have been some marking, some reports, some crashing of a certain not to be named laptop, and a small instance of temper losing). So I am defaulting to the genius of someone else who feels as passionately confused, frustrated and excited by education as me….and interrogating the hell out of them. Sort of.
 
Ben Barton has been in educational publishing for the past 18 years; he’s started a couple of companies, worked for large organisations and now consults and enthuses about all things education. He’s been working as a tutor and teaching assistant for the past couple of years; and he has a great blog called: www.keystone-education.co.uk/blog.

So, Ben, what excites you about education?
What really excites me is how technology can move our students on further and faster than at any time before. I’m also excited about the New Primary Curriculum, www.teachmeet.org and a generation of teachers who are better trained and more visionary than at anytime before.
 
And what concerns you?
What really concerns me as we enter an election campaign is the fact that while we expect teachers to be experts we plainly have generalists at the head of our education system. Be it David Laws, Ed Balls or Michael Gove at the DCSF we haven’t got an expert, merely a career politician on the way up or down. I think we should go the USA route and allow the PM to hire the best of the best to support our teachers.
 
What one thing could the government do to improve the state of education today?
Free laptop for every 11 year old as they arrive at secondary school. If we swapped this for the Children’s Trust Fund we would save millions and put EVERY child on a level playing field at secondary school. Oh yes, and get rid of Grammar Schools. Pay for education if you can afford it but please, please dont judge children at 11.
 
What has been the most important technological advance for schools?
Whiteboards have been useful but I think the use of the digital camera is the most important because its the most ubiquitous and has brought simple technology to classes across the UK. The visual element is critical and digital cameras alllow students to become artists, movie-makers and really helps their writing.
 
And what about the most pointless?
I am sceptical about VLEs. My son uses one to upload his homework and its the most unfriendly and out-dated system going. Where central government tries to manage an individual school’s software (through ‘approved’ suppliers) it goes against community, autonomy and pragmatism.
 
What would you do if you were education secretary for a day?
Give out a load of laptops.

I’ve been following the ‘Balls vs. Johnson’ Latin debate avidly over the last few weeks. Being a bit of a linguist myself, I find the debate about whether the fact that Latin is not a living language can be compensated for by how useful it is in academia or its propaedeutic values when learning other languages later on.

While I was doing some background reading on Balls and Johnson, I was a little surprised (and disturbed) to find out that the ‘Balls Johnson’ dance is a kind of male genital gymnastics.

The thing I was most surprised about, though, was that the comments on all the blogs I’ve read about this debate seem to centre on who would win a fight between Ed and Boris rather than whether or not Latin is actually useful to learn at school.

The Guardian’s article, as well as the customary mention of Boris’ £250,000 salary for his column in the Telegraph, offered such gems as “Is he going to butt him in the Ed or the Balls?” from commenter ‘Spoonface’.

The fightin’ talk in the comments beneath the original article on the Telegraph’s website was a little more surreal with one commenter calling for “40 lashes with a wet noodle!”.

The best ‘Balls vs. Johnson’ article I’ve seen so far is over at adamsmith.org. It has a great picture of Ed Balls rocking out and looking a little like David Brent. It’s also well-balanced and contains a lot of common sense. The main reason I like it, though, is because mentions that Balls thinks Latin is ‘harmful’.

I can think of a lot of negative adjectives people use to describe Latin. ‘Boring’ or ‘irrelevant’ are the first two that spring to mind, but I don’t see how learning any language could be ‘harmful’.

Teenagers like ‘harmful’ things, though. ‘Harmful’ things are ‘cool’. Warnings on cigarette packs don’t put kids off smoking, they just make it more intriguing to them. Maybe language teachers could harness this reverse-psychology make language-learning ‘cool’. Are modern foreign languages as ‘harmful’ as Latin? I’m not sure, but if I can make them seem ‘harmful’ enough, maybe my students will concentrate as hard in class as they do on avoiding getting caught smoking.

Right, I’m off to stick “Warning! Language-learning is harmful and my cause cleverness” labels on all my textbooks.

Original photo by Jenny Rollo, edited by SimonSays.

thanks WonderfullyWacky.com

So, teaching is to become a more elitist profession?! Don’t make me laugh. The profession is already worryingly elitist. Filled with self-involved teachers who not only set themselves above their colleagues but above parents, kids and government ministers (though that one I understand).

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a teacher say they’ve got anything to learn. But they’re so busy ‘teaching’ aren’t they?

The Tories keep on throwing more crazy, unresearched crap at us – for a vision of education that doesn’t even make sense. As far as I can tell we will have schools run by parents, teaching only certain subjects that Micheal Gove deems good quality, and there will be a new breed of elitist, Masters educated teachers – who will work where exactly? They’re not good enough to work in the crappy schools being taken over by parents (who of course can do so much better, because everyone can do better when they’re not actually in charge.)

So the future of education is a series of out of work elitist teachers. Of course. Makes total sense.

Although I don’t have any experience of teaching at a faith school in the UK. I’ve noticed them a lot in the news recently. I’m always surprised at the lengths some parents go to to get their kids into these schools. Just because they do well statistics-wise, parents often exaggerate the extent of their religious practices or even claim they are of a different religion to get their kids into these places.

I cant help but think that if you need to lie about a child’s background to get him into a school, he’s not going to have such a great school experience keeping up that lie for however long he’s at the school.

What about teachers, though? I’ve had to wear traditional costumes from various religions and cultures during my time as an international school teacher and found it rather fun. People always seem to save the best food for religious ceremonies, too, so I’ve had the chance to try interesting dishes that many people have not even heard of. I’ve never had to pretend to actually be a believer in any particular religion, though.

This might be different working at a faith school in the UK, though. I know job applications for faith schools are supposedly not based on religion (unless you want to be the in-house Priest or whatever) but I can’t help thinking that being of the same faith as the school must be some kind of advantage when applying for a job there.

In certain ways, teaching at a faith school could be a nice proposition. They’re normally selective (which can be a good or bad thing as a teacher, depending on how you look at it) but they also seem to get lots of funding, which is great if you just can’t live without an interactive whiteboard in every classroom.

Would it be worth ‘faking it’ like some of the parents and pretending you are a certain religious disposition to improve your chances of getting a job at one of these schools? For me, certainly not. I’m terrible at lying so I would probably get found out in the first week, anyway. I think I would miss the diversity I am used to in class, too. I wonder, though. Are there any fakers out there? If so, what does it feel like?

Today’s image is by Robert Aichinger.

…for the SATS boycott. I toyed with this for ages, because I’m not really keen on striking – isn’t striking something reserved for miners, and irrational Royal Mail staff?

But I think SATS are hugely damaging; they not only give an unfair few of a school, but they massively compromise the experience for my pupils, who become defined so early on, for something that seems to decide the rest of their education.

I feel like we have no other choice, which is sad, when it’s not a choice I ever wanted to make in the first place.

thanks flickosopher.com

Monday:A massive headache onset, followed by a twisted ankle as I managed the rampaging bus queue, topped off with a massive case of sneezing as I drove home, subsequently almost hitting a wall.

Tuesday: To be or not to be – Hamlet with Year 11 and a SEAL co-ordinator turned into an amazing lesson on revenge and honour…working with at least five kids who had gang-related allengiances made for a pretty intetresting hour.

Wednesday: That lull of awfulness that hits midweek was further exacerbated by a looming parents evening.

Thursday: Meeting with my newest recruit who used words like ‘inspired’ and ‘motivated to lead the learning’. Christ help us all.

Friday: Ducking out of a staff meeting to write this, and enjoying the free doughnuts and cup of real coffee, provided by my new recruit, trying to curry favour. It’s totally working.

I have a dirty secret. It’s something I’m so ashamed to admit to that I’ve been hiding it for years. I am afraid of interactive whiteboards. The fear isn’t of the technology involved. It’s that I’m going to break it.

A long time ago, when I first started teaching, I ruined a regular whiteboard by writing on it with a permanent marker (they look just like regular board markers, OK?). In the end, we were able to repair it but the embarrassment in class when I wasn’t able to wipe off what I had written on the board is something that will stick with me for a long time.

The first time I saw an interactive whiteboard, I instantly thought “OMG, what if I write on it in permanent marker and ruin it?”. Since then, I have tried my best to avoid them and succeeded until quite recently.

Although I wanted iPads for our department, it looks like we’re getting interactive whiteboards. So, last week, I decided to take one for a test drive with a friend. After checking the labels on the markers (they really do look similar), I approached the board. To my surprise, I found that one of the best things about interactive whiteboards is that if you are well prepared, quite often you don’t actually need board markers. Obviously, there are different types of interactive whiteboards but if the ones we’re getting are anything like the one I had a go on, I think I’m going to enjoy using them.

I’ve seen some great MFL Powerpoint presentations that would work well on an interactive whiteboard and using real-life examples is going to be a lot easier than it was using the DVD player (whenever I was able to wrestle it away from ‘Scary Sue’).

I feel like I’m on a roll with overcoming fears now. Next week, I think I’ll try and get over my fear of crashing into windows.

We have a pretty serious green agenda at school – primaries are better are this than secondaries apparently – and it struck me the other day how good it is for linking with other lessons.

Maths:  By turning off lights and technology, and keeping a chart we have saved the school £45 a week in energy bills.

Science: We started a garden and put the kids in charge of growing their own vegetables, which we now use in the school canteen; saving the school around £30 a week in food costs, and reducing our food miles and carbon footprint.

English and Art: The kids have been making posters about what we’re doing, and we’re now running an award for the best one.

Drama: We put on a play about being eco friendly, at the school fete, and raised enough money to buy a solar panel for the school. We’re going to use it to power one of our temporary classrooms.

It’s simple things, but the results have been amazing and I’ve been so inspired by the enthusiasm of the children. It’s a good sign if they are the generation of the future, as they might care more about our planet than we do.