Saturday 23 November 2013

Long week and new ideas

That was a really hard and long week. Lots of late meetings, Sixth Form open evening, after-school revision sessions and an INSET session. I wonder if there is any other job quite like teaching for throwing those kind of crazy weeks at you and knowing that next week will only be slightly less intense.
My lessons this week have been ok - not my best but some unexpected high points. A year 13 lesson on Germany in 1919 developed into an in-depth discussion of the merits and faults of democracy with the students showing admirable insight and perception.
The real highlight for me was an INSET day led by Elaine Brown from T2Tuk on Kagan Structures. I have to admit to being a little sceptical going in to this. I am a huge advocate of collaborative learning and students work in pairs, threes or other groups in virtually every lesson I teach. Rather arrogantly I went into the day thinking I had probably seen most of what would be presented. I was wrong. Whilst some of the ideas and techniques are already in my toolkit, most were slightly different or completely new. More importantly the ones that were slightly different were better than what I already do.
On Monday I will definitely be using Rally Robin, Timed Pair Share and Write Round Robin. I also appreciated that the presenter took the time to explain the psychology and pedagogy around the techniques she was using. This was more than just a bag of tips session.
It is testament to the quality of the session that at the end of a manic week I felt inspired and looking forward to Monday's lesson.
One other thing did strike me this week and that is that I am now being seen by others as a 'veteran' - and I think that scares me. I realised on Monday that on our College Leadership Team there are only 2 of us who had experience of teaching pre National Curriculum. During Friday' INSET one way of randomising groups was to create a line of experience. We had to arrange ourselves in a line around the room based on number of years teaching x number of schools worked in. Out of 100 people only 3 had a higher number than me - 23 years x 5 schools = 115. The only consolation is that in Gravity the role of the veteran is played by George Clooney - at last we have something in common.
Roll on next week


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