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.