Teach Secondary Issue 14.3

+ Why those delivering careers education should picture how they see students faring in their 40s + Use the ‘counting down’ technique to get your class settled + The emotional toll that school leadership can place on individuals + Which subjects are suffering most from the teacher recruitment crisis? + How one school is helping to forge links between its students and the local community + Why CV writing skills won’t count for much if you haven’t equipped your cohort with a set of specific job application skills + Tried and trusted classroom strategies for supporting students with differing levels of need CONTRIBUTORS ANNA DAWE CEO and Principal, Wigan & Leigh College ROBIN LAUNDER Behaviour management consultant and speaker VIV GRANT Executive coach, author and public speaker MARK ISMAY Headteacher, Claydon High School ZEPH BENNETT PE teacher and school achievement leader LEARNING LAB IN THIS ISSUE AI TEACHERS Thinking about … P upils at a £27,000p/a private boarding and day school in London were recently involved an experiment to examine the practicality of teacher-less classrooms. The school provided pupils who were preparing for their exams with anAI model that was apparently able to adapt to their individual strengths and weaknesses. The students weren’t alone in the classroom. Three ‘Learning Coaches’ were also present – not qualified teachers, but approved staff specifically there to supervise behaviour, not unlike cover supervisors. The risk here is that some of the people increasinglyminded to run schools as businesses will have seen this experiment and contemplated whether expensive teachers could be replaced with comparatively cheaper technology and learning coaches. The independent college in this case might have had three such staff on duty, but will the same apply to state schools? Our existing education system is in urgent need of huge changes. AI could well play a valuable role in that, but not at the expense of human interaction. We mustn’t let the vital role that teachers perform in young people’s development to be undervalued and outsourced tomachines. Children can benefit when new technologies are harnessed in the service of teaching knowledge, but going to school is about more than that. It’s also about socialisation. Good teachers take care of pupils. They listen to them, they provide themwith positive role models. If the emotional side of pupils’ lives is ignored, then they can’t learn. Providing all that is a lot to expect from (potentially poorly paid) ‘learning coaches’. Inmy own classroom, I once had a usually well behaved and quiet pupil who refused to do any work.When asked why, she sat beside me and explained that she was upset because she’d fallen out with her boyfriend’s mother. She went on to tell me how her ‘future mother-in-law’ wanted her boyfriend to follow his Dad into the family window cleaning business, whereas the pupil had visions of them joining the Air Force together and perhaps getting into engineering. Voicing her opinion that her boyfriend was ‘far too talented’ for the family window cleaning business had badly antagonised his mother, who eventuallymoved her son to a different school. This cunning girl had then promptly relocated schools herself to be where he was. I taught her boyfriend design technology and agreed that he’d do well in an engineering role one day.We talked about the situation for around 15 minutes, while I validated her feelings – after which, she was happy to do whatever work I requested. She’d been unable to work until the emotional issue had been dealt with. We can certainly use AI technologies to streamline our admin, and potentially provide personalised learning in some cases. But there’s no robotic substitute for a caring adult when a student is upset about a personal life problem. We’re lucky to have witnessed an exciting era, withmany amazing technologies having emerged over the last several decades. Yet we should never forget the value of humanity and human interaction in education. If we can hold on to that, then we can perhaps enjoy the best of both worlds. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alice Guile is a secondary school art teacher 75 teachwire.net/secondary L E A R N I N G L A B