To PGCE or not to PGCE?

Published in The Guardian, 21 October 2011

Before starting my PGCE course, like many people, I thought very carefully about my route into teaching. There are so many options: the traditional PGCE, the flexible PGCE, SCITT courses, the GTP programme, the sometimes controversial Teach First route or just rocking up at an independent school.

There are different pros and cons to each of these options. I eventually opted for the PGCE, considering it the right route for me for a number of reasons. I'm a fairly confident person but I know I need critical feedback, assessment and the opportunity to improve in a structured manner. I want to learn how to be the best teacher I can be, not just hope that I'm pretty good. Being straight out of university and not having worked as a teaching assistant, I didn't have an instant link with a school where I could apply for a competitive GTP place. I also liked the idea of being able to work in more than one school, gaining a broad perspective on different types of establishment.

I wouldn't exactly call myself an ideal match with the university element of the PGCE, which is classroom-based, with lots of group work, discussion and sharing of ideas. Whilst I'm all for this in the workplace, I've never quite got used to it in an academic context. Throughout my English degree, I got used to tutorials on my own or in pairs, with a lot of personal attention and opportunity for me to exercise my sometimes overactive vocal cords. Most of the work was very independent reading and essay writing and there wasn't much that was collaborative apart from moaning outside the library.

The PGCE is entirely different, and requires a lot of patient listening and discussion in small groups. It reminds me slightly of my own school experience, and like I did back then, I sometimes have to restrain myself and not put my hand up at every possible opportunity.

But when I get bored of endless "sharing" or group work, I convince myself that it's making me a better person; a better listener. Maybe it'll help me with my love life.

And I am learning a lot. The PGCE offers the opportunity to have guidance from expert tutors who are both teachers and academics; a potent combination that gives them a unique ability to explore the art of education. There is a lot of self-reflection involved in the course, that whilst it might sometimes seem like paperwork overload, forces you to really consider and evaluate your process and progress. And you get the support, input and ideas of 30 of your peers, as well as that of two departments in two different schools.

Of course, it's the school bit that I'm really loving. It's half term next week and I can't quite believe it. I'm two weeks into my first placement and I have begun to take whole classes and teach my own lessons.

The start of the placement was a whirlwind of getting to know the school and my department, observing lessons and starting to get to know my classes.

I set myself the target of getting to know the names of all my classes and my tutor group: a total of about 120 names, many of them similar and some of them unpronounceable. I must have looked slightly creepy on the bus, muttering over printed sets of photos of the children, but I now think I've got them pretty much down.

I kept in mind the words of my tutor: "Nobody is naturally 'bad at names'. You just have to learn them." And actually, I think she was right. It's just a memory game, and if you can learn endless Shakespeare quotes or phone numbers, you can learn names too. I felt much more confident in my first proper lesson knowing that I was able to address the students by name, and it certainly makes behaviour management far easier.

My first lessons have gone really well, and I'm excited about getting some more planning done over half term (an enthusiasm that I'm sure will swiftly wane but I might as well make the most of it). I am incredibly lucky to have a fantastic, efficient and just generally nice mentor who is generous with her time and insightful and constructive in her feedback, alongside a similarly great team of English teachers in the department.

Over the last few weeks, I have learned that "Excuse me!" exclaimed in a variety of tones and with a variety of facial expressions, is my pet phrase in corridors and classrooms alike. I have also learned, much to my relief, that standing in front of a class feels very natural. I'm loving building up a relationship with my classes and am trying to walk the line between "firm" and "fun".

There's no getting away from the fact I'm working in a tough school. It's an inner-city comprehensive, with a diverse pupil intake, many of whom are from incredibly deprived backgrounds. But it's a hugely positive school, where staff and students are upbeat and engaged with teaching and learning.

Somehow, when you walk into assembly already a cup of coffee down and Lady Gaga's Born This Way is being pumped out at 90 decibels as everyone files in, you can't help but feel optimistic. Similarly, when a difficult Year 8 pupil squeaked out his descriptive writing piece, a description of his own "scary character" complete with adjectives, similes and a bucket load of imagination, to the class this morning, I couldn't help feeling cheesily warm inside.

So, I have survived the first few weeks and am feeling more positive than ever about my decision to be a teacher and the route I have chosen to get there. I know that the first Guardian Teacher Network survey was entitled "I love teaching but…"; however right now for me, it's just "I love teaching."

Lost in Translation

I didn’t think one of the first tasks of my PGCE would be learning a new language.

So when two of my fellow English PGCE-ers, both former teaching assistants, mooted the idea of writing a South London slang glossary, I was a little intrigued. Surely, only four years after leaving school, I would be sufficiently ‘down with the kids’ not to need a translator.

Then I started to think about it. My own school had its own peculiar institutionalised language that would baffle many outsiders. ‘Jockers’ for detention (a noun derived from the verb ‘to jock’ or skip a lesson…obviously). ‘Purple’ for prefect. ‘Business’ (both a noun and a verb, as in I business, you business, he/she/it businesses OR ‘did you get any business?’) meaning an interaction from a kiss to anything just shy of full sex.

However, this institutional slang used (for the most part) by both teachers and students is nothing on the words in the glossary that my PGCE classmates sent round, an extract from which is below:

They range from the horrible but fairly hilarious: ‘buffgash’ and ‘wastegash’ (I’ll leave it to you to Google and gasp) to the worrying (‘I’ll shank you’ as a joking threat…really?) and the downright disgusting (‘bloodclat’ - yuck). Not to mention the racially slurring ones.

The glossary came in handy on my first day - after overhearing that ‘new miss is peng’, all it took was a quick glance at the document to check that I wasn’t being completely insulted and might even be being slightly flattered. By a twelve-year-old. Fantastic.

Of course, teen slang is nothing new. The teenage years are often about drawing lines to separate the group from adult society and define social circles. From Pig Latin to hand signs, text language and seemingly indecipherable Facebook code, young people have always developed their own mediums of communication, differentiating themselves into a societal subculture.

But I didn’t realise I was already so out of date.

No Writing Allowed

Today is No Pens Day Wednesday, a new initiative aimed to encourage schools to teach the curriculum through speaking and listening activities, with no writing allowed.

The event, devised and organised by the Hello campaign - a collaboration between The Communication Trust and Jean Gross, the Government’s rather ridiculously titled Communication Champion (seriously, Sirralun’s a tsar, she’s a champion?) - focuses on developing children and young people's speaking and listening skills.

Being a natural loudmouth with an opinion on everything, I have always had to (or my teacher had to) restrain my input into the class in order to give everyone a fair opportunity to contribute. But while gobby little madams like me are exhausting our vocal cords, it is a terrifying statistic that the average length of an average pupil’s contribution to a teacher's question is just four words.

Four words. Clearly teachers aren’t asking the right questions.

So in order to focus on these all-important speaking and listening skills that can sometimes get neglected in busy, full classrooms, a day without any writing at all has been introduced.

Jean the champion of the world has explained the reasoning behind the initiative as being all about communication skills for life:

So why have a No Pens Day Wednesday? First, because good communication skills are vital for children and young people's success in learning and in life. Children's vocabulary levels are one of the best predictors of success in GCSEs; language levels are the best predictor of whether a child brought up in poverty will escape poverty as an adult. Two thirds of children and young people with behaviour difficulties have speech, language and communication difficulties. So do 60% of young offenders and 88% of long-term unemployed young men. 47% of employers say they can't get recruits with the spoken communication skills needed for today's service industries.

Children and young people who find communication hard find life hard. That is why speaking and listening has to be as important in the classroom as literacy, numeracy and subject knowledge. Too often it gets pushed to the sidelines in the stampede to achieve targets and raise standards. No Pens Day Wednesday will provide a practical demonstration that this doesn't have to be the case.

The second reason for having No Pens Day Wednesday is about school improvement. Higher standards won't be achieved without proper attention to oral language. Ofsted have repeatedly said that outstanding schools are ones where language is a priority. Great programmes like Cambridge University's 'Thinking Together' have provided hard evidence of improvements in test scores in maths and science following an increase in collaborative group work and class discussion.

Other research has shown that the typical pattern of talk in classrooms is the teacher asking 'closed' questions testing recall of facts, followed by pupil responses averaging four words. This just doesn't give children – particularly those who may have little exposure to reasoned discussion at home – sufficient exposure to good models, or practice in their use.

The free No Pens Day Wednesday lesson plans are about getting pupils to debate, plan and deliver oral presentations, make podcasts, use techniques like think-pair-share and think-pair-square, snowballing, jigsaw and barrier games. They are really fun.

And they aren't meant in any sense to displace writing as an essential activity. The materials ask pupils to reflect, after the day, on what helped their learning, what activities they would like to use again – and on those moments during the day when they really wished they had a pen so they could write something down.

Reading Gross’ excellent blog on the Guardian Teacher Network site got me thinking about communication skills and what they mean in schools and in the wider world.

Speaking and listening skills are the key to being able to engage with the world as a functional, useful member of society. Knowing the correct register of language to choose, feeling confident enough to express a view and being able to use language in order to get what you want are absolutely fundamental to succeeding on a daily basis.

Confident speaking skills are also essential in the majority of workplaces. People need to realise that these skills do not always come naturally and have to be fostered in schools alongside literacy and numeracy. And this isn’t just a job for English teachers. Speaking and listening skills need to be emphasised in all classrooms.

In my first ever ‘office job’, an internship at a PR agency, I quickly realised the importance of good speaking and listening skills. In an industry that centres around communication, the people that were the best were interesting, confident and articulate speakers. That summer, I was lucky enough to sit at a desk next to a very accomplished personification of these skills. What I noticed was that when he was on the phone, speaking to a journalist, I could imagine that the person on the other end must be having some of the best ten minutes of their morning. There was no way you’d want to hang up on him. He had the ability to engage and amuse, all while fluently getting his point across. No mean feat indeed.

It doesn’t come easy. I remember my first call during the same internship. I felt like everyone’s ears were on stalks (quite why I thought anyone would have the time or energy to bother listening in I don’t know) and like I had suddenly lost the ability to think and speak at the same time. But it does get easier every time.

That’s why we need to be practising these skills with our students, giving them a voice in classrooms so they can have one in the world. It’s about asking the right questions, giving them the time and space to speak and the confidence to express themselves out loud. I think No Pens Day Wednesday is a great step in the right direction and I look forward to reading more about reactions to the initiative in the coming days.

In Cold Blood

Today the English PGCE cohort were asked to each present a short text or extract from a text to our peers and explain why we had chosen it and why we might use it in the classroom. It was very interesting to get a broad sweep of the literary tastes of my classmates, and to ‘bank’ some great ideas for lessons and for my own reading.
I came away inspired to bulk up my Kindle with Caitlin Moran’s How To Be a Woman, Brian Turner’s war poetry and Chinua Achebe’s ‘Refugee Mother and Child’ among others.

For my own part, I decided to present an extract from Truman Capote’s true crime bestseller In Cold Blood, because it is one of those books that changed my whole attitude to literature and reading.

Handed it by my rather fantastic GCSE English teacher, who told me it was ‘total masterpiece’ by a ‘tortured genius’, I set off with it on my seven-hour journey home for half term and finished it within two.

In Cold Blood, if you haven’t read it (which a surprising amount of the group hadn’t), is the antithesis of how many people think of Capote, due largely to the fame of his novella Breakfast At Tiffany’s, that Audrey Hepburn immortalised into the cultural zeitgeist.

On November 16, 1959, The New York Times published a short account of the brutal and inexplicable murders of a family from Kansas.

This 300-word article interested New York-based journalist Truman Capote enough for him to travel to Kansas to investigate the murders, along with his childhood friend Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird fame. Capote became obsessed with the crime and compiled over 8000 pages of research for the book. The killers, Perry Smith and Richard ‘Dick’ Hickock, were caught not long after the murders, and Capote interviewed them as well as family, friends and investigators. Much has been made of his rumoured closeness and sympathy with Smith, who is portrayed as a fragile ‘torn and twisted’ creature in the book. In Cold Blood took six years to complete and has been hailed as the original true crime novel.

It is not giving anything away to say that the book is about the murder of a family, indeed the subtitle of the novel is ‘A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences’ and the various covers of various editions show guns, prison fences and other violent giveaways. But In Cold Blood is unique in that it not only details the facts Capote gained from statements and interviews, but also includes richly woven stories about the family and the killers that he could never have known. This 'faction' makes for a compelling read, with a jarring sense of reality throughout.

As readers, we get to know the Clutter family with a full awareness that they are about to be brutally murdered in front of our eyes, and that is truly terrifying.

In the two extracts I chose, we gain an insight into the life of teen queen Nancy Clutter before her death. This way of accessing the text might be a great way to engage teenage girls with a text that at first glance appears very masculine.

As I read my extracts, I asked my audience to hold in their minds the fact that some of the text is factual and journalistic, while some of it could clearly never have been known. How does the author conflate the two? And why?

In Cold Blood is an amazing example of the fusion and fission of fact and fiction and is an absolutely compulsive read. If you haven't already, read it.

***

Nancy's bedroom was the smallest, most personal room in the house - girlish, and as frothy as a ballerina's tutu. Walls, ceiling, and everything else except a bureau and a writing desk, were pink or blue or white. The white-and-pink bed, piled with blue pillows, was dominated by a big pink and-white Teddy bear - a shooting-gallery prize that Bobby had won at the county fair. A cork bulletin board, painted pink, hung above a white-skirted dressing table; dry gardenias, the remains of some ancient corsage, were attached to it, and old valentines, newspaper recipes, and snapshots of her baby nephew and of Susan Kidwell and of Bobby Rupp, Bobby caught in a dozen actions – swinging a bat, dribbling a basketball, driving a tractor, wading, in bathing trunks, at the edge of McKinney Lake (which was as far as he dared go, for he had never learned to swim). And there were photographs of the two together - Nancy and Bobby. Of these, she liked best one that showed them sitting in a leaf-dappled light amid picnic debris and looking at one another with expressions that, though unsmiling, seemed mirthful and full of delight. Other pictures, of horses, of cats deceased but unforgotten - like "poor Boobs," who had died not long ago and most mysteriously (she suspected poison) – encumbered her desk.

Nancy was invariably the last of the family to retire; as she had once informed her friend and home-economics teacher, Mrs. Polly Stringer, the midnight hours were her "time to be selfish and vain." It was then that she went through her beauty routine, a cleansing, creaming ritual, which on Saturday nights included washing her hair. Tonight, having dried and brushed her hair and bound it in a gauzy bandanna, she set out the clothes she intended to wear to church the next morning: nylons, black pumps, a red velveteen dress - her prettiest, which she herself had made. It was the dress in which she was to be buried.

***

"Well, it was pretty bad. That wonderful girl - but you would never have known her. She'd been shot in the back of the head with a shotgun held maybe two inches away. She was lying on her side, facing the wall, and the wall was covered with blood. The bedcovers were drawn up to her shoulders. Sheriff Robinson, he pulled them back, and we saw that she was wearing a bathrobe, pajamas, socks, and slippers - like, whenever it happened, she hadn't gone to bed yet. Her hands were tied behind her, and her ankles were roped together with the kind of cord you see on Venetian blinds. Sheriff said, 'Is this Nancy Clutter?' - he'd never seen the child before. And I said, 'Yes. Yes, that's Nancy.'

I went to school; therefore I know how to teach…

Everyone has been to school; therefore everyone has a view on education. If I mention that I am training as a teacher, I can safely assume that I will be bombarded by views on education, opinions on past teachers and a strategy to change the world by whoever I happen to be speaking to.

Even my friends assess ‘how good a teacher’ I will be. It’s odd; I can’t imagine myself speculating on how great an accountant, lawyer, or banker someone might be, and discussing their personality match with their chosen profession. The fact that they have been to school seems to give people the right to analyse how I will fit in in that familiar environment.

Hearing people discuss whether I am ‘authoritative’ enough or have the right personality to teach in inner-city London is incredibly irritating as well as patronising. I don’t presume to comment upon whether I believe my friends are capable of leading a presentation in the workplace – somehow the fact that I am a teacher puts me in the public domain and up for assessment. I am currently learning that education is so much more complicated than what one perceives as a student – how can someone who once went to school feel that they have the knowledge and expertise to assess and even change education? That would be like me making sweeping statements about banking reforms on the strength of the fact that I have an account at Natwest.

Of course, this is the teacher’s long-established moan for depoliticising education: how can we work in an industry that is subject to complete sea-change at the whim of a new government or minister, who might have just shuffled over from the Department for Transport and have a previous career as an economics expert on their CV?

This is obviously simplifying the matter. Politicians have a team of educational experts working behind them on their shiny new policies, and new ideas are never as scattergun in their approach as they may appear in the pages of the Daily Mail.

But on a personal level, it can be frustrating to be judged as a professional by people who base their understanding of education on their own education. Often, people are exceptions not the rule, and are incredibly biased judges of their own education. Just because I don’t remember learning grammar doesn’t mean that I didn’t, and also doesn’t mean that grammar shouldn’t be taught. The fact that I have an excellent grasp of grammar may be due to a vast slew of factors, but these factors are probably personal to me. My perceived personal experience doesn’t give me the right or the prerogative to change how grammar is taught universally.

Many people colour their views on education with the ghosts of their own education. This is, of course, natural and teachers are encouraged to reflect on their own education as a matter of course during their professional training. Nevertheless, these memories are only a starting point and cannot create a fully rounded view on how best to teach any subject or topic.

Next time I am at a dinner party and someone tells me they are a lawyer, I will not be telling them how the legal system should be reformed to reflect my (fortunately limited!) experience of it. But tomorrow, or the next day, when someone informs me of how I should be teaching, or whether I will be a ‘good teacher’ in their perception of the term, I will be restraining myself. Or forcibly restraining them.

Why not to teach?

Published in the Guardian, 20 September 2011


There are lots of reasons not to become a teacher. My family, friends and even occasionally complete strangers have informed me of this fairly consistently throughout the past few months as I wait in joyful hope to start my PGCE.


Graduating from university with a circle of friends who have secured dazzling graduate jobs with banks and law firms and the salaries to match made me think hard in financial terms about my decision to teach. Am I going to be happy watching whilst their pay increases exponentially every year? Am I going to envy their glamorous corporate existence? (Although now I'm living with an invisible investment banking housemate, who leaves before I get up and gets home after midnight, I might substitute the word glamorous for something else...)


It's an especially hard financial decision this year, given that dear old Michael Gove has decided to take away the bursary that I would have got if I'd started training as a teacher last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that. Undeterred, I am resolved to develop into the best teacher I can be and will be working incredibly hard this year to ensure that I do – even if the government don't incentivise me to. I am only sorry that others less fortunate than me will be unable to do so.


Even one of my 14-year-old students on summer camp had his own views on my future.

Him: Why would you go to Oxford and then become a teacher? You know teachers don't get paid very much, right?

Me: Yes, that's true, but not everything's about money. Anyway, I think headmistresses get paid quite well.

Him: Headmistresses? Like in the porn films? With a whip?


There are plenty of other reasons not to be a teacher – obviously there are hundreds of professions out there, each different and exciting. I dipped my toe in the water of a fair few careers before realising that I had always wanted to be a teacher and that probably wasn't going to change.


I had a great time working during my university holidays in PR, local news, breakfast television and drama production, as well as teaching and summer camp work. I even did work experience at the ill-fated News of the World – thank goodness I didn't set my heart on a career there. The media organisations I worked at were fast-paced, high-pressure environments with interesting, bright, witty people sitting at the desks around me.


But somehow, the classroom and all the fun and sense of achievement I get from working with children and teenagers, has remained my ideal working environment. I love the prospect of engaging students with their writing, whether it is a discussion of revenge in Hamlet, a creative piece, or a covering letter for a job. I can't wait to introduce a boy who has never picked up a book to the joys of Alex Rider and watch him devour the series in the space of a few weeks, like one child I tutored.


I hope to find ways of teaching the subject I love to students who don't love it like I do. Above all, I want to teach English in a way that confirms my twofold belief: that English is a subject that provides the essential building blocks for education and later life as well as being a subject that can engage and inspire at all levels. I am looking forward to learning all I can about how to be a great teacher, the kind of teacher I admired at school and learned a great deal from. In short, I've decided on a career in teaching.


It's not at all a self-sacrificing decision and I don't judge any of my contemporaries for not choosing a so-called caring profession. I know that I'm going to be incredibly happy in my chosen career, and that's part of what will make me good at it. And if I thought banking or indeed any other job would make me equally happy and fulfilled, I wouldn't hesitate to be doing something entirely different.


So I'm very excited to say that I am starting my PGCE in Secondary English in London.


And yes, I'm terrified. What if it's too difficult? What if I'm rubbish? What if my mentor hates women, young teachers, privately-educated people, Oxford-educated people, or just hates me? What if I'm not tough enough to work in south London? I went to school where the biggest discipline problems were rats being released in assembly and uniform (including gowns!) not being worn properly. And I look young as well as posh. I just turned 22 and I got IDed the other day in Argos trying to buy a tool kit. Yes, a tool kit.


But my overwhelming emotion is excitement. I can't wait to get started. I am as sure as I can possibly be that teaching is the right career for me. I'll let you know if I survive.

Extinction of RE?

Religious education in schools is under threat, faith leaders have warned.

The BBC reports that "Leaders representing Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists said they were "gravely concerned" about the "negative impact" that current government policies were having."

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph they called for RE to be included in the new English Baccalaureate. In response, the Department for Education (DfE) claimed that the English Baccalaureate "does not stop any school offering RE GCSEs".

Obviously religious leaders will be the first to shout about the loss of their cultural histories from the curriculum.

I come at it from a different angle. As a non-subscriber to religion, I still don't endorse this move at all.

Religious education was some of the only real grounding I ever got in the customs, beliefs and history of other cultures.

The languages (and thus to an extent cultures) on the curriculums of most schools are mostly Western, Christian ones. The history syllabus is similarly Western in outlook. Geography, whilst it might open some doors to different cultures, inevitably does so in a different way that suits some learners but not others. RE, for me, was a way into understanding a little more about other religions, countries and ideas.

Surely education and information are essential ways to provide links between communities, encourage open discussion about cultural differences and to promote understanding about faith.

Having RE squeezed out of the curriculum seems to fight against the Big Society that this government is trying to create, and narrows rather than widens our perceptions of society and culture.

Five schools 'send more to Oxbridge than 2,000 others'

The BBC Today programme's revelation that just five schools 'send more to Oxbridge than 2,000 others' isn't really a great surprise to me.

Having been lucky enough to have studied at Oxford, it is easy to see that independent school pupils dominate the student body. They also dominate the applicants.

I went to an independent school and apart from anything else, their desperate desire to get students into Oxbridge sets them apart. Parents want and need to see high Oxbridge entrance statistics.

Teachers who have been to Oxbridge are recruited. Admissions tutors are invited to speak. Ex-pupils who have attended the coveted universities come back to give talks. Half the year group are encouraged to apply, given the law of averages that means every year some who are expected to get in don't, and vice versa. Those who don't get in often take gap years and re-apply, with the blessing (and financial backing) of their parents.

The kind of pupil who goes to an independent school (especially such academically high-flying ones as the BBC lists), usually has:

- already been selected on the basis of their academic ability and then usually setted on ability throughout their education

- been praised and rewarded for their academic ability, through scholarships and a culture of success

- been raised by parents who place a high value on academic success and intellectual development

None of this should be exclusive to independent schools, but unfortunately a lot of it often seems to be.

Top universities have a responsibility to take the brightest and the best; those who will thrive best in their hallowed halls.

The class barrier and the money barrier are often labelled as the most important factors to achieving the most prestigious higher education, but actually none of the points I have listed are costly.

We need to work towards making these factors more accessible to all students long before we start worrying about what university they'll end up at.