A week in the life of…

The weekend has seen me in a state of frustration. Through my own foolishness I’ve had my laptop stolen from the back of the car. Without any means of communicating electronically I’m feeling at a bit of a loose end. I try and avoid thinking of what’s been lost and focus on the benefits of backup. Bad news is, I feel, lurking around the corner.

Monday morning comes with an inch of snow on the ground. This is great news: seasons! They don’t seem to have them in this corner of England. I miss long horizons, snow on the tops and cold sharp air. I try to get out first thing and go for a walk in the woods nearby. Today it’s crunching through the snow. I’m out really early but as I’m walking through the semi-darkness I see footprints ahead of me stretching out! These are the times I put my thoughts together. I’m due at Millbank Tower in London for a meeting at 11.00. Another hour, once I get in, to finish off the illustrations for the Thinking Profiler I’ve been working on. Sadly, the student questions and guidance – about three days work – went with the laptop. I’ve decided to take the TE Lawrence approach. In 1925 he left the 600 page handwritten manuscript of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom on the platform at Oxford Station. It was never seen again. I expect it might be in the back of the same van as my laptop. He simply started to rewrite it. I suppose it’s a form of drafting.

Millbank Tower is no longer home to Labour Party types. They’ve been replaced by the Specialist Colleges Trust. It’s the 16th floor for me and a meeting with David Crossley. An interesting project with 424 secondary schools on Raising Achievement. I get the impression I’m being invited to be provocative in my presentations, to encourage the idea of step change through innovation and risk-taking. This sounds good. I’ve seen some great ideas working successfully in the schools I’ve been in. The challenge will be to put them across persuasively. David Crossley seems like a good bloke. We talk about the profile of the schools involved and I leave Millbank all fired up. I bet I’m not the first to come out of this building similarly enthused – ‘things can only get better’, as they used to say around these parts.

Marylebone Station is next. A meeting with a prospective associate outside WH Smith’s. She recognizes me and we sit in the Gorky Park like surroundings. She is an impressive woman. I like her. We talk about all sorts of projects as the temperature drops. On the way back I have an idea about mixing drama with Learning to Learn. I know I’ve got a school visit soon and I decide to try and get them involved. When I get back, Melanie – who looks after all my comings and goings - has dropped off my diary commitments.

The news turns out to be bad - but not as bad as it could have been. I’ve lost about two month’s work on the laptop. The man who knows about such things comes first thing next morning with the replacement and all the bits that go alongside. He knows what he is talking about and I bluff as we go in an unimpressive way. Within the hour, we are back live and 47 accumulated e-mails present themselves for my attention. Today’s main task is to drive to Portsmouth to open the new wing of a primary school. I am to do an assembly, say a few words and unveil a plaque. Before then a meeting to discuss progress on the Learning to Learn work we are doing and to update on how our trainers are coping with the revised Accelerated Learning programme we’ve introduced

The school turns out to be a joy. I visit every class. The Year Two’s have one of their number in the car wash. As he goes up the rows of pupils they rub his back, on his return they give him a polish. Apparently his esteem needs a boost. I see him later sitting in assembly and he gives me a wave. I also visit their computer suite which is done out to look like the interior of a space ship. There are special space ship words and rules about how you are supposed to ask questions. They have the six thinking space helmets on display to help! It’s many years since I did a Primary Assembly and have never ever been filmed by the local television news whilst doing so. We do a little piece on being positive and celebrating beginnings and their spontaneous applause brings the little lump to my throat. As I drive out I see a large sign at pupil level on the gatepost asking ‘what have you learned today?’ I think I’ve learned that great schools come in different shapes and sizes.

In a fortnight’s time we are coming back to do our own filming. I’ve been off sick for a while so I’m easing back into the regime. A major project for us is to film schools who have been using the Accelerated Learning model successfully. There are lots. We want to shift the debate beyond VAK, brain gym and water. Some of our critics want to keep us there. We drive into the centre of London with three of the video production team and a big hole in the back window. It’s the morning after the car was broken into. As we filmed Year Five doing Macbeth, the caretaker was negotiating with the glass replacement company: many thanks to him. The Headteacher and the staff we see are outstanding. When we film we use the same format – record the lesson with two cameras, interview the teacher then cut it together. We want to know how the learning is planned, how decisions are made, what works and why. Later I sit down with the team and we decide how to put it together. It costs a small fortune and it’s high risk because we might not sell any! I want to do it to show anyone who wants to see it - just what is possible. It’s become a mission for me.

The Campaign for Learning punch above their weight. They are a tiny organisation but are so well set up and influential that you might mistake them for something bigger. I’m on their Advisory Board for their Learning to Learn Project. We meet once a term. The board usually includes a professional update and this time it’s on involving parents in assessment. Later in the week at the Secondary Head’s Conference, the Secretary of State for Education will blunder her way through her vision of parental rights and responsibilities. I think I prefer ours. After two hours the meeting draws to a close. I’m due at the Football Association in Soho Square next. It’s nearby, so it’s off at a jog.

There are not too many parallels between the world of professional football and education. For me, it’s refreshing to cross between the two. We won an open tender to become the designated learning consultants to the English Football Association. We are helping them re-design their delivery of training and coaching across their business divisions. These include referees, the national game, football medicine, child protection, football psychology and football fitness. Once we have done this we will carry on painting the Forth Railway Bridge. Meetings with the FA are usually cheery affairs with lots of ribbing. This one’s no exception.

As the week nears its end I have pressure on to complete my presentations – delegate pack and slides – for the following week. I have to stay up late and get on with it. I also have to go into a school early the next day to oversee the shooting of photographs for use in our Learning to Learn programme. I notice how the boisterous groups listen intently to their classroom teacher and not at all to me. I must be losing it. After about two hours of contortions, I have to leave to get 35 miles round the M25 to finalise the production of a student study skills booklet. More pressure as the first trial is very soon

We arrive in Brighton for the SHA Conference late. I’ve had a school visit first thing to discuss a school improvement package with a group of Headteachers. We’ve missed the Varndean School Samba band and we’re straight into Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Education. She looks as though she should have been playing in the Varndean School Samba band. It’s beginning badly and I am starting to feel the anxiety in my stomach that’s previously been reserved for the hapless sorts who try to win over an audience at a Comedy Club. Her performance is poor by all objective accounts. Thankfully, there’s a really nice pub tucked away in a back street just next door…

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Ten things I learned at the Secondary Head’s Association Conference

Alistair Smith

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Your teenager may not be as adept at navigating the web as you think

In a study conducted across the world by the Nielsen Norman Group, 38 teens were assigned tasks at 23 Web sites, operated by Apple, McDonald's, Procter & Gamble and other companies and organizations. At the Web site of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, teens were asked to make an appointment for a driving permit. At MTV.com, the challenge was to discover when Norah Jones would be in concert in the Golden State.

The teenagers completed such tasks 55% of the time, compared with 66% of adults in a previous study. Immaturity and poor reading skills partly explained the youngsters' lacklustre performance, the study concluded. So did the teens' weak research skills and unwillingness to tough it out when a site posed design obstacles.

The study, conducted in California, Colorado and Australia, also poked holes in other stereotypes. While teenagers like cool-looking graphics, web designers would be wise to keep glitzy blinking graphics and overly stimulating content to a minimum. Teens preferred sites with a cleaner design.

Amongst the other findings:

Youngsters typically visit the Web to research products they buy offline. They are drawn to games, quizzes, polls and sites where they can communicate with their peers. They like posing anonymous questions on topics too touchy to ask face-to-face.

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Chips with that?

At Alite we've always advocated a healthy diet for young learners (and, in fact, for all learners), so we've been intrigued by the furore around Jamie Oliver's efforts to improve school dinners.

We believe that foods laden with sugar, salt and saturated fat have no place in a healthy learning environment. We've worked with many schools over the years where behaviour and learning have improved when fizzy drinks machines have been excluded from school and the contents of lunch boxes have been brought under control.

Just for fun, we bring you Alite’s ‘School Dinners’ quiz. Scroll down to the bottom of the newsletter for the answers!

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You need hands

The length of a man's fingers can reveal the likelihood of him winning a running race and how physically aggressive he is. The shorter the index finger is compared to the ring finger, the more boisterous he will be, according to University of Alberta researchers who studied 300 people's fingers. The trend, thought to be linked to testosterone exposure in the womb, is not true for verbal aggression or hostile behaviours.

It has been known for some time that there is a direct correlation between finger lengths and the amount of the male sex hormone testosterone that a baby is exposed to in the womb. In women, the two fingers are usually almost equal in length, as measured from the crease nearest the palm to the fingertip. In men, the ring finger tends to be much longer than the index.

One study found boys with shorter ring fingers tended to be at greatest risk of a heart attack in early adulthood, which was linked to testosterone levels. In the current study, Dr Peter Hurd and his student Allison Bailey measured the fingers of 300 undergraduates at their university. Men with the shortest index fingers scored higher on measures of physical aggression than those with longer index fingers, but the study's findings did not apply to women.

Dr Hurd has also been looking at whether men with more feminine finger lengths might be more prone to depression. He said: "Finger length can tell you a little bit about where personality comes from. A large part of our personalities and our traits are determined while we are still in the womb."

Professor John Manning from the University of Central Lancashire's department of psychology, who first realised that sex hormone exposure in the womb influences finger length, says certain individual characteristics correlate better with finger length than others. "For example, if you had a group of runners and they were about to start a race I could predict reasonably well who was going to win based on their finger length.

He said another recent study had found women exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb, and hence a more 'male' pattern of finger length, displayed more frustrated behaviour when answering challenging telephone calls than other women.

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INSET

If you’d like to find out more about:

Please call Hilary on 01628 810700 x 20, email hilary@alite.co.uk for details, or visit www.alite.co.uk

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Learn2 - the unique student learning programme from Alite

Learn2 is the only programme which links how students learn to how teachers teach. Challenging, active, involving and practical - Learn2 goes beyond study skills.

Find out more about Learn2

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Alite 2005

Personalising Learning: Creative Approaches
24 June 2005. Café Royal, London

Alite 2005 is about the 'learning' in Personalised Learning. If your interest is theoretical or practical we have something for you. As well as real examples, authentic stories and practical tips our presenters – including Alistair Smith, Dr Raj Persaud and Dame Tamsyn Imison provide thought provoking insights.

Find out more about Alite 2005

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Answers to Alite’s School Dinner quiz