Accelerated Learning newsletter, May 2006

My week starts with Sunday night in a hotel in Marble Arch. By the end of the week I will have done another three such hotel bedrooms. Don’t do this job if you love your slippers. We find a restaurant nearby which happens to be Spanish and then get an early night. Monday morning comes and a public course on Learning and Teaching. The audience poses a challenge. It comprises all of the staff from one large London Primary School (though their only male teacher fails to turn up), Secondary School teachers, Local Authority Inspectors, three men from a construction industry training company and a Prisons’ Educator. The original plan has been revised. My standard promise of learning model, theory, case study and strategies is tested to its limit. I try to give generously, starting with broad perspectives and drilling down to specific examples. My memories of building sites come in handy. Next day, I get an appreciative email from one of the construction people Howard Lees, the receipt of which says as much about his generosity as it does anything about my training skills.

Public training courses are tiring. Thankfully, it’s only a short journey through London tonight to get home. Over the years I’ve learned to shift my homeward journey focus away from going over anything I’ve done well or badly and think forward to what’s to come. This week is busy. I’m doing lots of travelling so I need to be on top of things. As I sit under Hanger Lane, I work out that my total mileage will exceed 900 miles and I’ll be sitting in the car for at least 15 hours. When my laptop was stolen from the car a year earlier the replacement window did not contain an aerial so there’s no Medium Wave reception. I miss Five Live.

Tuesday and there are seven of us dispersed around a boardroom of the Hilton Hotel in Wokingham. The largest and most obtrusive leather seats I’ve ever seen make it difficult to move without squeaking. Our agenda this morning is to review the time line for the publication of Building Bridges and Phase Two of L2 our Learning to Learn programme. We have two very ambitious projects which are due to complete together. It’s like trying to land two planes on the runway at the same time. We spend the day asking ourselves the hard questions and trying to tie down what remains to be done and who has to do it. Like any successful team, we are a combination of completer-finishers, pragmatists and radical thinkers. Sometimes I worry that we are not radical enough. We have had a hiccup, a log jam which involves ‘artistic’ sub-contractors who are slightly behind on deadlines. Our solution, which pleases me, is radical enough. Employ more ‘artistic’ sub-contractors! We are all aware of a big interest in BB and L2. We announce to cheers that Middlesbrough LEA are taking both for all their schools. We leave the squeaky seats energised.

It’s an early start on Wednesday. I know that later that evening I have to be in Carlisle to meet some old friends with whom I first started teaching 22 years ago. I load the car and then, in my shorts and still wet from the shower, I read an article – ‘Can you Teach Happiness?’ – from the Sunday Times. I think yes you can teach about happiness but this in itself will not make you any happier! I’m writing a book on Happy Schools but it’s a slow burner and although I have it all planned out in detail on the flip chart other pressures have left it behind. Then I tidy up the correspondence. The top items in the email inbox now take over. Can I speak at a conference for 150 Headteachers. Details of how to get to Morton School, Carlisle. The squad for the veterans football semi-final in Bristol. My updated diary from Melanie. Details of flights to Singapore. A copy of the cartoons from the illustrator. Responding takes me into mid morning when I have to don another disguise and go and watch a goalkeeper.

A fallout of work for the FA is that about 40 days a year is spent working in football. This season has seen me do some work with one of the London Clubs. You know you have made it in football when you get a nickname. Before you earn your nickname you are called ‘mate’. This extends to text messages which typically will say “that’s Gr8 M8”. So ‘mate’ is off to the training ground where he will do a bit of listening, have the rise taken from him remorselessly and blag some tickets for Saturday. In between times we will talk about confidence, mostly theirs and hope it translates into three points on Saturday. Immediately I finish it’s back in the car and off north.

The M6 has supplanted the M25 as Europe’s largest car park. It takes me to hotel number two, the North Lakes Hotel, Penrith. Tonight it’s full of Irish boxers and heating engineers. I slope in. My task in Carlisle tomorrow is to open the Learning to Learn Centre in Morton School. There is a lesson to attend, an invited audience and the media. I write what I have to say that morning and take advantage of free wireless broadband in the hotel to send on some course materials. Despite teaching in Carlisle all those years ago I’ve never been to Morton before. They devote three hours weekly to L2 in Year 7 and plan to expand. We are due to see one of those lessons. However, on arrival the words “television crew” and “watch you teach the lesson” are used in the same sentence. This promises to be an interesting tweak as it’s a lesson I haven’t written and never taught before. Despite spending the best part of the morning talking about confidence I have one of those moments. As it turns out I know the journalist with the TV people. The class teacher – David Rossi – allows me to start the lesson, we cut a ribbon, I press my hand into a clay mould, he takes over and things swim along. There’s thirty in the group, he is a good teacher and needs to be with 10 adults and four members of the school council watching. I do a lecture on Learning to Learn, manage not to intrude into any local politics and it’s off that night to Newcastle and hotel number three.

The Bridge Inn has to be one of Newcastle’s best pubs and tonight it’s full of staff from the Inland Revenue celebrating Charlie’s retirement. He must be a very popular man because it’s standing room only. I’m here to visit a software company who are upgrading our learner profiling systems although tonight I’m meeting with Derek Wise and Mark Lovatt from Cramlington High School. We decamp to the Tapas Bar where we talk personalised learning. It strikes me that tapas is the culinary world’s personalised equivalent. When I’m away from home I take two types of reading: worthy and escapist. At the moment Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell is fascinating but likely to keep me awake so tonight’s just before I sleep book is Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. Its historical fiction so will do the trick.

After a full day in Newcastle of talking, conceptualising and converting materials into electronic formats and doing so in ‘geek’ - a language I have little fluency in, my head is about to explode. This makes the A1 seem strangely soothing as I head south. I’ve left it too late to get home at a civilised time so I break the journey. As I arrive at hotel number four I see that its gourmet night featuring Spanish cuisine. Enough is enough and I cut straight to the book.

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Anyone who has spent any time at the chalk face knows that the hours can be long and the stresses can be great. Making hundreds of decisions every hour and managing all the variables that children bring into the classroom can take its toll, not to mention the admin! The impact of a ‘long hours’ culture (officially working 48 hours per week or more) can be devastating. In the DfEE (supported by CIPD) Work-life balance survey (2000) it was found that of those workers who worked more than 48 hours per week:

• 70% of long hours workers were too tired to hold a conversation
• 43% of partners of long hours workers were “fed up” with having to shoulder the domestic burdens
• 29% of partners of long hours workers, felt that the long hours had a “quite or very negative effect” on their partner’s relationship with their children
• 56% of long hours workers say they have dedicated too much of their time to their work
• In more than a third of cases children reported that they don’t see enough of their long hours worker parent

But do we have to work all these hours? Are we working too hard? Is there anything that can be done?

In this series of articles on Getting a Life Balance, Will Thomas explores some of the ways in which you can reclaim the agenda.

What is work-life balance?

Work-life balance is about adjusting your working patterns so that you find a rhythm which combines work with other responsibilities and aspirations.

The result of being out of balance with your workload is that negative stress can occur. The result can be physical, mental and emotional ill health, not to mention lowered performance, expectation and achievement in all aspects of our lives.

Five steps to managing your workload

There are 5 key steps to bringing greater balance and managing your workload more effectively.
They are:

1. Evaluate now: evaluate the current position and plan regular review slots, celebrate your successes plan you’re next steps.
2. Choose your future: identify in detail what kind of balance you would like.
3. Identify habits: identify the habits which waste time and energy and replace with winning approaches.
4. Plan your strategy: Identify the strategies that will move you towards the future you wish for.
5. Act NOW: Take action NOW to start that process of change.

Evaluation is the first step towards further improving your workload management and to bringing greater balance to your life. It is also an essential, on-going process of review.

In the following months we will look at the practical ways you can take these steps to a better work-life balance. In next month’s issue we’ll introduce you to a first class evaluation tool and show you how to use it for yourself and to support others. So what will you do now to begin that process of change? Take the step.

Will Thomas, Author of Coaching Solutions and The Managing Workload Pocketbook

For more details of these books click here

These articles include extracts from The Managing Workload Pocketbook from the Award Winning ‘Teacher’s Pocketbook’ series.

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Pat Denison, Head Teacher of Horsell Village Primary believes that in order for teachers to feel that they can try out new things and take risks in lessons they need to know that they are valued members of the school community whose opinions are sought and valued, and who don’t need permission to reclaim the classroom.

Building a Community of Responsibility

Two events helped formulate her decision: the first was training an intensive Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) course, and the second was accepting an invitation to apply to be a Consultant Head on the NCSL pilot New Visions programme for newly appointed Head Teachers. Her learning from both was huge and, from this, she developed in her school a community of practice, or a community of responsibility, where every individual was regarded as a significant member of this community. Certain conditions needed to be in place to achieve this, and two of these could be directly addressed by coaching:

• Teachers need to be in charge of their own destiny. In order to love their work they need to feel in control. They need to be able to make decisions in the best interests of children and they need the resources to do the job. Pat believes that the five pillars of the ECM agenda should apply to all people in the school and should be at the heart of any policy to develop teachers as learners and as leaders.

• Teachers need to be emotionally safe, fulfilled and healthy. Schools should provide the optimal conditions for learning and affirmation, and should be a place of nurture and quality. Their culture should be gracious, significant, carefully created and nourished. There should be a tangible sense of self-esteem, both individually and as a community.

A coach is someone who has been trained to listen carefully to what it is an individual wants to achieve and then to ask a series of open, searching questions that helps the coachee reach his or her own solution. The coach is totally guided by the individual and in no way attempts to impose his or her views, but can skilfully remove self limiting beliefs and negative self talk, challenge assumptions, spot generalisations or distortions – in other words a coach can cause us to redraw our map of the world. Working with a coach enables us to feel personally powerful; it puts us back in charge of our own actions and behaviour. Sometimes, on our own, it isn’t always easy for us to decide what it is we want to do. A problem might seem overwhelming or unsolvable. That’s when we need a coach.

One of the outcomes of training all the Horsell teachers as coaches is that they now know and understand that they are in charge of their own destiny. If they have an issue that they want to resolve, for example some problems with a parent or difficulty with a particularly challenging child, they will informally seek a coaching conversation with a colleague. The difference from before is that rather than preparing to be given an answer, they prepare for questions. They know what to expect and this makes them feel that they have responsibility for providing a positive outcome and have the resources with which to do it.

Coaching has also made a difference in terms of roles and responsibilities. Year group leaders, for example, use coaching conversations for solutions, rather than think that they have to provide all the answers themselves. And coaching has caused the power to shift in the classroom observation scenario. The follow-up session might begin with the question, “What did you want to do here?” This will elicit a specific response, rather than the vagueness of, “How do you think that went?” and such like. Once this particular goal has been ascertained, then it provides the coach-observer with a focus for the questioning and the reality of what happened in the lesson can be explored. All the time, the teacher will be urged to focus on the specifics, to articulate thoughts and options wherever s/he feels an improvement could be made. The observer will not impose his or her ideas, but will use a range of techniques to uncover the teacher’s resourcefulness to bring about improvement.

Teachers at Horsell Village Primary are different from many others: they no longer need to seek permission to improve. All are members of a community of responsibility and, underlying that unity of purpose, is every individual’s own policy of professional development – as well as their power and resolve to fulfill it.

Horsell Village Primary is one of twelve case study practitioners at Alite 2006 at the Café Royal, London, on 23 June. For more details visit Alite 2006.

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Artist Alison Lapper is a phenomenal success. Since graduating from the University of Brighton with a First Class Honours degree in 1994, her works have been well documented by the media, as well as exhibited in many galleries across the UK. Art colleges invite her to lead workshops and seminars; in 2003 her services to art were recognised with an MBE and, last year, a 3.55 metre statue of her was erected on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth. Alison is also a member of the Mouth and Foot Painter's Association.

In April 1965 Alison was rejected at birth by her mother. As a result of a condition known as phocomelia, she had been born with no arms and legs that were thigh bones ending in feet. She was immediately labelled as ‘severely disabled’ – a phrase Alison hates “with a passion” – and, at less than seven weeks old, found herself in a care home with about 250 other impaired and unwanted children. These “strange little creatures”, as the staff called them, were brought up in a tough, sometimes cruel, environment. Alison tells of her time (from about the age of five) in the ‘lower dorm’ and the regime of terror perpetrated by many of the auxiliary staff there. One of them was outright violent, slapping and punching children and even throwing them across the room towards piles of cushions – and often misjudging altogether. Those who were most impaired received the worst treatment.

Alison can recount many injustices and setbacks in her life – even long after she had left the care home – but she has demonstrated amazing resolve, courage and humour in fighting for recognition. And her successes are numerous, one of the most notable being as a single mother (despite social services remonstrating with her for sacking a smacking au pair). As the classic beauty without arms, Venus de Milo, has been an influence in Alison’s work, it seems pertinent that an icon of the modern art world might well inspire us: how can we remain positive when faced with adversity?

Alison Lapper is a guest speaker at Alite 06; Celebrating Learning. For more details, visit Alite 2006.

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The team from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to scan the brains of nine volunteers as they were given tasks to perform. It was found that when the task was unchallenging, and when a personal emotional response was required, the volunteers showed activity in the superfrontal gyrus – the brain region associated with self-awareness-related function. But when the task was more challenging, and no emotional response was required, there was no activity in the superfrontal gyrus, despite activity in the sensory cortex and related structures.

Ilan Goldberg, who led the research, told the New Scientist: “The regions of the brain involved in introspection and sensory perception are completely segregated, although well connected, and when the brain needs to divert all its resources to carry out a difficult task, the self-related cortex is inhibited. If there is a sudden danger, such as the appearance of a snake, it is not helpful to stand around wondering how one feels about the situation.”

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I recently used Picture the Music with my Year 4 class to deliver an objective in the National Literacy Strategy to understand how the setting of a story informs events and incident, affecting the behaviour of characters. This was linked with how writers create an imaginary world through the use of detail in their writing. Having done some initial work on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the next step was to enable the children to create an imaginary world of their own which they would enter through a door (linking in with entering the imaginary world of Narnia through a wardrobe). From the picture selection of doors on Picture the Music I chose an image entitled 'whole door' and we began by discussing the attributes of the door itself. Next I added a sound to accompany the image - sinister drone - and the children were asked to act out pushing the door open and standing looking at their imaginary world. I then replayed the sound and image whilst the children sketched their imaginary world on individual whiteboards. The next step was to ask the children to talk about their imaginary world with their talking partner - What does it look like? What can you smell, hear?

As you can see, a great deal of discussion took place before any writing and by this time the children were buzzing with ideas! Using a writing frame pupils were then asked to note down words and phrases about their imaginary world. The writing frame was split into sections on sights, sounds, smells and characters. My Year 4 class were thoroughly proud of their work. The final pieces of writing were a delight and greatly enhanced through the use of Picture the Music.

Picture the Music can be used across a wide range of curriculum areas and is very 'teacher friendly' with clear instructions and ideas for use in the classroom. The children find it highly motivating, stimulating a great deal of discussion and ideas for writing. It particularly appeals to me as a classroom teacher because it uses a blend of different teaching/learning styles and contributes to creating an exciting learning environment, accessible for all. I also like the fact that the package includes a separate software and audio CD.

This is a valuable and exciting resource not to be missed!

Alison Slater, Year 4 Teacher, Music Coordinator and KS2 Literacy Coordinator,
St Peter's Smithills Dean C of E Primary School

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