Teach-Primary-Issue-19.1

Ben Newmark Having ideals is all very well, but we need plans grounded in reality, not your version of Edutopia Giving advice to schools? Be practical, please VO I C E S F rom parents to politicians, university academics to educational psychologists and from consultants to software salespeople, there is no shortage of folk who think teachers and schools should do what they are told. It often feels as though teachers are at the bottom of a professional hierarchy, and that those who regard themselves as higher up, think that teaching and school-based roles should be about enacting the advice and instructions of others, rather than about thinking and making decisions themselves. This can make life very difficult for those of us doing the actual work of teaching children an academic curriculum. Those of us who – frustratingly – end up having to teach classes of 30 or more (even when we think things should be done differently). First, the advice we are given is often contradictory in practice. A pupil passport for one child might say they need a calm, consistent and orderly environment, whilst that of the child sat next to them might say they need regular movement breaks, making it extremely challenging to fulfil the requirements of both documents. Secondly, directions and advice are too often formed in very different environments from those in which children are taught. It’s all well and good to say a child should not receive sanctions because they don’t respond to them based on a theory and a one-to-one session in a clinical setting, but without practical guidance on how this works in a typical school, this is at best unhelpful and at worst downright irresponsible. In the past I have raised issues with practical implementation to those advising me, but these conversations have often felt as if I and the professionals in these meetings were speaking different languages. Frequently, I’ve come away from these conversations feeling as if they believed logistics were my problem alone, or even worse, that they thought I should reform my entire classroom, or even school, to create an environment in which their ideas could be faithfully implemented. This is hugely frustrating, because even if such changes were desirable – and this is certainly not proven to be true of very many of them – making them is not in my gift as a salaried public servant. I can’t get more funding. I can’t change the way education is structured and organised. I must work within the system around me, and that means finding and implementing strategies and solutions that work within my constraints. I can’t help wondering whether those giving advice – and there’s always so much advice – are even interested in the real-life ways in which schools and classrooms operate, and how best to help struggling young people access them better. At my most uncharitable I’ve even wondered whether a sort of moral purity is more important to them; a belief that saying what they should think happen in their personal Edutopia is fighting the good fight, leaving me and my colleagues to find concrete, realistic ways that improve the experience of vulnerable young people we professionally care about very much. None of this – of course – means that advice from outside teaching is useless and should be ignored. At its best it can even be transformational; but those giving it should be mindful that the teachers who receive it are professional equals, and respect their perspectives by ensuring that any suggestions are applicable in context. Thoughtful CPD can help. Rather than giving teachers decontextualised lists of things they should do in their classrooms, good professional development must first ascertain the specific challenges teachers face and then share strategies framed as suggestions, while affording teachers and teaching assistants – the doers – the respect to use, adapt or even challenge and ignore advice if it isn’t relevant or appropriate. Finally, those wishing to change teaching practice should be aware that good strategy begins with what is practically possible. All of us – in wildly varying ways – would like the world to be different from what it is, but responsible advice, teaching and leadership mean putting idealism to the side if it involves advocating for things that can’t be applied in the world in which our pupils are actually educated. Our children – particularly those who find learning hardest – are being educated in the system we have now. They can’t wait for someone else’s utopia. TP Ben is a history teacher and assistant principal for teaching and learning at a school in the Midlands, and co-author of the papers ‘A Good Life’ and ‘Five Principles for Inclusion’. www.teachwire.net | 15 @bennewmark bennewmark.wordpress.com