Application forms for primary teaching jobs are all fairly standard, and will need to be accompanied by a Supporting Statement or Letter of Application.  Although your statement should be professional and formal in tone, it is vital that you also convey your passion for teaching and avoid sounding too detached.   Start by examining the Person Specification and then structure your statement according to it, addressing each requirement in the same order as they have been listed in the spec, though where possible stick to the order below, as there is a sensible narrative

 Content

• The 1st paragraph should explain in a nutshell why teaching is important to you – the message should be clear and powerful.
• The 2nd paragraph should explain why you want to work at that particular school. Do your research and find out what their vision, aims and strengths are, and link into this,  but dig beyond the first page of their website. BEWARE: this is about what you can offer the school, not what the school can offer you.

NOTE: The above 2 paragraphs should each  be no more than about 5 lines long.

• The next part of your statement should be fairly ‘hefty’, and should demonstrate that you have a thorough understanding of the primary school environment. A good approach is to describe in detail what your classroom would be like; the atmosphere, your relationships with the pupils, the physical environment (including displays, the ICT facilities, how the tables are arranged to create a flexible learning space and so on), your behaviour management techniques and how you would support the school behaviour policy (research what this is and the exact term that they use for it), your relationships with the adults in your classroom such as the Teaching Assistants and the parents (and how you communicate with them and build these relationships), your approach to supporting pupils with additional needs, and your use of homework.

NOTE: Avoid referring to yourself as having a ‘subject specialism’. Newly qualified teachers do not have these, you need a Phd to be a specialist.  Instead, you could explain that you have chosen to focus your studies to a particular subject, and that you would like to share this passion with your pupils.  The points you raise in the above section, and the order in which you address them should directly reflect the Person Specification.

In the next part of your statement you should reassure them that your numeracy and literacy are at the required standard. You could give an example of a good Maths lesson and a good English lesson. Remember, a good lesson is one where the children learn something, not just one where no-one misbehaves! When describing your English lesson, make sure you mention phonics.

• Next, talk about how you would go about your professional duties such as assessment, planning, record-keeping, working with your colleagues, and safeguarding your pupils. Also talk about your commitment to CPD and acknowledge that you’re aware of the fact that you’re just starting out and have a lot to learn. This is your ‘good employee’ paragraph!
• Finally, address any other parts of the Person Specification that have not yet been covered.

 Important points

• You should tweak your statement every time you apply for a different job so that it reflects the Person Specification as closely as possible. Save every version as you can then choose which one you tweak for the next application.
• Your completed statement should leave the reader with a very clear story, and a clear idea about what drives you to become a teacher and how you would go about your job.

 And last but not least…WORDLE IT! Wordle is an easy and fun tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in your text, so this is a useful tool to make sure that the key messages in your text are relevant. The words that should stand out in YOUR word cloud are ‘children’ and ‘learning’.

whiteboard.  I have to say that this is insanity.  The concept of linking a touch sensitive device to a touch sensitive device is lunacy.   There is a place for an iPad to replace a podium presentation tool in a large lecture theatre, allowing speakers to be more mobile, and this can be achieved with some ‘jiggery pokery’ and an apple TV, as I understand this, it is viable as a one off solution but not as an enterprise solution for a large organisation.  An iPad can be run in a wired fashion through a projector, but to play that onto an IWB is slightly missing the point.  iPads are personal devices and have a significant role to play in the future of teaching and learning, IN THE HANDS OF THE LEARNER.

My explanation as to why begins with a film from Monty Python. This was suggested to me by a student @JCBarrington in his blog ‘Monty Python as an Analogy for the poor use of ICT in the classroom’ He spotted a killer link between Python and the use of technology that I had forgotten.

We must guard against spotting the next shiny gadget and finding tenuous way to justify it.  This is the tail wagging the dog.

I expanded on this, pulling together Bloom’s digital taxonomy and some material from the BSF programme which is soon to disappear following the ‘Great Cull of 2010′.  The film ‘e-words for ICT and classroom creativity’ by Martin Blows, who developed the thinking behind this is well worth watching and downloading while it is still available.

My version, ‘ICT and Bloom’s Taxonomy’ is available here.

The thinking is that there is a rubric for evaluating if the use of technology is effective and adding value:

Exchange: Much use of IWB could be perfectly well done with an OHP and some Acetates, this rig costs £200, much less that the total cost of the IWB + PC + Projector.

Enrich: The projector and PC can be used to enrich children’s experiences by providing  a wider range of film and activities to enrich a learning event.  The IWB has no part in this.  Do not kid yourself that any child learns anything by coming to the front and revealing a word.  You only need the projector and PC.

Enhance: Again the PC and projector can be used to great effect to provide experiences using Google Earth and other modelling or simulation activities to enhance the learning in a way impossible without the technology.

Now comes a change from technology being the lever to pedagogy being the lever.

Extend: If you provide the children with a compelling problem and then ask them to collaborate to solve it using the IWB then they will find their learning is extended and challenged and they end up Empowering themselves to try harder and more involving tasks.  These must require a visual/spatial element to capitalise not he functionality of the board. (think CSI).

We must always challenge ourselves to look at the impact on learning of a new technology.  We have been guilty of buying machines that go ping, not choosing the right tool for the right job.  ’It went well’ is not good enough a justification, nor is ‘the children enjoyed it.’

Here is the link to the film I made for iTunesu 

What is significant with this model it that it makes it ok to know that there are things in the set up of a package that need to be addressed at the start but most users do not need to remember any more than the fact that it can be done.  The ‘known unknown’ model works for this – you know it can be done but there is no need to remember how.  In other words – it is ok for some things not to be an unconscious competence.

Here is Donald Rumseld’s take on the whole idea.

Story telling is the most ancient tool of the teacher.  Their impact has been charted in many cultures through out history.  There seems to be  particular text that is referred to regularly:

Hardy,B (1977) Narrative as a primary act of mind.  This work is cited by many seeking to assert that narrative is a tool for learning, including Daniels (1996).

I have been conscious of this notion since becoming aware of Pat Sykes & Ken Gale’s work on Narrative approaches to education research. (2006) They begin this with the following statement:

“Human beings are storying creatures. We make sense of the world and the things that happen to us by constructing narratives to explain and interpret events both to ourselves and to other people.”  Sykes & Gale (2006)

This notion crosses cultures and is well summed up in the guidance on digital storytelling by Gail Matthews (2008) Digital Storytelling – Tips and Resources, which has an extensive set of links to storytelling in many cultures.

Wikipedia provides the bridge to the thinking I have been undertaking in this area.  The storytelling entry begins with the cultural history of story telling, and goes on to explore the impact of storytelling in business and marketing: The key work seems to be Jameson’s (2001)

article on Narrative discourse in Management.

“…narrative discourse helped resolve conflict, influence corporate decisions, and unify the group. By collectively constructing stories, managers made sense of the past, coped with the present, and planned for the future.”

This is extended by Jones cited in Huang (2009) who suggests there are 4 steps to selling to people using story:

Stories should be drill able. (Activate the public’s curiosity, enough to sleuth out more depth and detail on their own)

Each piece of the story should be enriching, but not vital to the understanding of the story (so that a customer can still have a clear idea of the bigger picture even though he has missed a part of it)

Involve the fans in the creation process.

Build a world in which your story can evolve.

People this is dynamite!!!!!!!

When planning your themed unit of work apply these principle and those contained in this blog by Kevin Moloney on Transmedia Journalism.

What is outlined above is the logic behind a simple and beautiful concept.  A themed unit of work is not enough.  We must apply theories of advertising and journalism, with roots in ancient teaching.

Don’t teach the Amazon as a theme, sell the children a relationship with a person, Eduardo, who lives in Brazil and is on a  journey through the Amazon for a reason rooted in current affairs.  Give children a narrative, or a map of the journey, they can contextualise it and build meaning around the journey.  This is the real meaning of cross curricular.  This is valid for any idea; Great fire of london becomes the story of a child living in Pudding Lane; World War II becomes the story of a family and evacuation.

I have wondered for a long time what impact sales strategies can have in the classroom.  Is one of the reasons we have de motivated children, that we lack the skills to make them want to ‘buy’ what we are selling? There’s more on this to come in future blogs.

References:

Daniels, D (1996) Are You Telling Stories?  Early Child Development and Care   Vol. 116, Iss. 1, 1996

Hardy, Barbara (1977) Narrative as a primary act of mind. in M. Meek, A. Warlow and G. Barton (Eds.) The Cool Web; The pattern of children’s reading. London: Bodley Head

Huang, Christine(2009). Advertising Age, Volume 80, Issue 40, p. 13

Matthews (2008) Digital Storytelling – Tips and Resources. Simmons College Boston. [online] Available at: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI08167B.pdf ( Accessed 10th February 2012)

Sykes & Gale (2006) Narrative approaches to education research. Plymouth. Available at: http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/narrative/narrativehome.htm (Accessed 10th February 2012)

Jameson, Daphne A. (2001). Narrative Discourse and Management Action. Journal of Business Communication, 38 (4), p. 476-511

Moral Authority to ask questions:

I am going to address these issues using Theology  - this may be flawed, I didn’t really pay attention to many of the thousands of sermons I have listened to because I either disagreed with the point being made or was irritated by the delivery of the speaker.  Which rather goes to illustrate my point, what right did I have to critique their style?

I am taking of the pieces of theological writing of C.S. Lewis, ‘The Screwtape Letters’  Particularly Letter 16 ‘The dangers of church shopping and criticism’.  I think there are parallels to be drawn with learning in secular fields in this letter.  The premise of the Screwtape letters is that they are correspondence between a senior ‘demon’ , Screwtape and his junior mentee, Wormwood, who is seeing field action for the first time with the mission to distract a young Christian from developing his faith.  It is satirical, the ‘Enemy’ is in fact God.  The premise is that the best way to stop development in the ‘patient’ is to befuddle, confuse, and eventually corrupt a person rather than to tempt.

How does this line up with a teaching and learning context? To draw some loose connections;

• Learning is equivalent to developing a faith (Jesus is considered to have been a constructivist educator)
• Learners suffer many distractions when focussing on studies, which could be attributed lightheartedly to ‘a monkey on your back’  or prevarication or procrastination.
• Church Ministers are teachers and could be considered the equivalent to secular educators or teachers.

So, what students do when faced with varying modes of pedagogy and command of a subject by their lecturers is to slip into the habit of critiquing their delivery or fall into indifference.  Either way the work of the demon is done, because the student is no longer engaging with the learning but evaluating the style and knowledge of the teacher. The other risk is that students allow themselves to be drawn to those who make them feel comfortable, and reject the challenge of learning from others.  Again the focus has been removed from the discipline of learning about the subject and focussed on the sense of ‘gratification’ of the learner.  In other words, the credibility of a teacher might be based on the way they make students feel, rather than their ability to make them think.

To answer the first part of the when can I disagree with a lecturer question;  first ask oneself if this is about the subject or the experience.  If it is the former, then a respectfully challenging question rather than a direct challenge is always appropriate.

Authority to challenge Knowledge or rightness:

I read a journal article by Tweed comparing Socratic with Confucian learning several years ago.  I found it a challenging read and was struck by the concepts within it.

Socrates: Provoked learning by prodding his students, by using questions to expose flaws in knowledge, It occurs to me that he may in fact be the father of the ‘coaching gravy train’ (A subject for a future Elephant in the room Post at a future date).

Confucius: Was a relentless instructor and  was anxious that his pupils were not merely to parrot the words of authorities, but to truly understand and be reformed by the knowledge contained in those words. ( Tweed, R)

The long and short of this is that when a student is working with  a lecturer, they should identify what ethos the lecturer operates under, any lecturer with Socratic style will welcome any debate, but may not be merciful in the corrections of misconceptions.  A lecturer with Confucian style will expect equal understanding and dedication to a subject before being challenged.

Are you a clanging bell?

I’m heading into scripture now;

1 Corinthians 13 v 1-7:

¹ If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

My analogy is this:

First how does one ‘love’ a subject, this is where I refer back to Confucius, who effectively said that before one has the authority to question any knowledge base, then one must have devoted oneself to understanding it fully first…..in other words, and stretching the analogy; ‘fallen in love with what exists’.

To gain the authority to question the knowledge of a Lecturer, a student must ‘love’ their subject more than they do.  I am suggesting that if a student does not, they sound like a clanging hollow bell(v1), which can be jarring on the ear of the listeners.  It does not matter how firmly the student holds their view, what acts of self sacrifice they appear to make, unless they ‘love’ the subject, they lack authority (v2&3). The passage then goes on to define the attributes a true disciple of knowledge will display towards that knowledge in order to truly ‘love’ it.

Shades of Grey:

Many people who do not truly ‘love’ their subject present what is a point of view as a fact, education is a field of views, opinions and theories, not absolutes.  Nothing is ‘right’, it is only the most sensible opinion given the context and culture of the situation.  Sometimes it is enough for the student to know themselves that what is being presented as black or white is in fact a shade of grey, it doesn’t need to be pointed out to the presenter.

Conclusion:

Fay’s question was: ‘when will I be free to give my opinion 100% truthfully?’

My answer is to apply these tests and then decide:

1. Are you being a connoisseur of delivery?
2. Are you speaking with Socrates or Confucius?
3. Are you in danger of being a clanging bell?
4. What will be gained by the challenge?

You have ‘fallen in love’ with your discipline, dedicate yourself to perusing that with unfailing effort and then, one day, you will know what to say and when to say it.

Until then, ask respectful but skilfully disruptive questions:

Ask for clarity, direction to further reading, ask for recommendations of further theorists, other examples to amplify the point, explanations of things you have seen that differ from the message being expounded.  You can express your disagreement without telling them they are wrong, which is actually just a different shade of grey.

He introduced me to this fabulous raconteur , Victor Bourge, a very funny man and concert pianist.  Victor was responsible for some very funny sketches such as ‘inflationary language’ , ‘page turner’ and the masterpiece ‘phonetic punctuation’. Mind you the ‘William Tell Overture backwards’ is also amusing.

I first tried this with a year 3 class in 1999 as part of a real push on getting them to think about the impact of punctuation in sentences.  The basic premise is that the punctuation has a sound and can be celebrated in a sentence with both sound and mime.

NB Just because the children are making movements, DOES NOT make this kinaesthetic learning. The fact that there is an added context for the learning of fullstops makes it helpful to most learners, all of whom process in a Kinaesthetic mode.

I can clearly recall the smiles on the children’s faces and the increased engagement when we focussed on it.  I also recall the need for some very clear boundaries.  I cannot say for certain that it had any impact, those records won’t exist now and anyway at that point in my career I was focussed on it ‘going well’ rather than the impact of my teaching on learning.  I have since come to understand that children can have a really nice time and still learn nothing. Fun does not equal learning.

So I leave you with the film of Victor, make of it what you will and please share any stories of impact in your classroom.

In the UK the VLE market in schools was stimulated by the UK Government document, Harnessing Technology (2005), which specified how technology should be used by the wider learning community, including schools, to harness technology for learning.

The points made within it can be summarised as follows:

• Provide an integrated online information service for all citizens (Govenrment & Local Authority Websites – not really part of schools’ responsibilities)
• Ensure integrated online personal support for children and learners (a personalised online learning space & online reporting)
• Develop a collaborative approach to personalised learning activities (rich, shared content)
• Provide a good quality ICT training and support package for practitioners(horses were taken to water, but they didn’t drink)
• Provide a leadership and development package for organisational capability in ICT( SLICT, BSF & initial teacher education)
• Build a common digital infrastructure to support transformation and reform (Regional Broadband)

A Wordle of the Harnessing technology document reveals the total absence of the words Virtual, Environment and Platform.

The notion that by 2010 all schools needed a VLE is just plain wrong.  What they need is the ability to provide the above services to a learner and their family.

What is a the function of a VLE as compared to an OLE?

I gathered some words used when discussing VLE implementation and use:

Permission

Access

Limited access

Rights for guests (or visitors)

System

Control

Identification

******This is the institutional language of a prison.******

Did you know that most of the readers of this blog are a risk to children?  Let me explain the logic: @ethinkingjnr is taught that strangers are dangerous and that the ‘interweb’ is a risky ,dangerous place where everyone is out to get him.  You are a stranger to him and on the ‘inter web’:  QED you are all a risk to him….its nonsense.  We are teaching children to fear the world. The VLE  is designed to pander to the worst paranoia of the weakest teachers.  They were designed for the lowest common denominator.  We have built prisons in the sky, to keep the world out control children’s thinking.

VLEs were designed from the ground up but the designers did not manage to design out the need for training.  The systems in general are not intuitive.  Though this is improving, they are becoming more flexible and dynamic. It also seems there is growing evidence of schools giving up on their VLEs (@chrisrat).  Some have even argued that the VLE is dead or even undead (@timbuckteeth)

The VLE has been sold to many schools who make good use of 90% of the functionality, many more  who use less than 50% and too many who use less than 10% (unsupported numbers).  The issue here is that a school can’t buy the bits they want to implement at first, they buy it all and pay for it all, despite to needing it all yet. In the world of VLE phased implementation exists, but phased purchase does not.

This does not address the moodle experience, the moodle experience can be more flexible and is apparently ‘free’ or cheap.  The issue here is that schools seem unable to evaluate the total cost of ownership of a moodle environment.  A day for a teacher costs £200 (6 hours work) so £33 an hour.  The cost of administrating any system must be added into any cost benefit analysis.

A new vocabulary?

I have been discussing this with my students and  they came up with a suggestion to do away with the VLE and develop an Online Learning Environment (OLE), A collection of tools developed by the school using A web page as a front door linking to a suite of tools meeting the Harnessing Technology Agenda.

Here are links to their blogs:

@emmtaylorson

@mr_j_stoner

@scottparkerLAD

I’m not challenging the concept of online learning, nor the existence of a coherent online environment for children to access learning. What I am challenging is the term VLE and what it has come to represent.  It represents a time gone by, where knowledge was locked away deep in a silo.  It does not embrace the freedom and beauty of the social web.  It represents a prison in the sky.

If your VLE is better than that, then it isn’t a VLE, it’s an online environment, it’s a learning space or maybe its just a part of school – so give it a name…..so don’t say it is on the VLE, say it’s on ‘Malcolm’ or ‘Squiggle’.  If you are being effective, then it is despite the technology of VLE, not because of it.

The VLE has become an elephant in the room, a solution waiting for a problem.  The providers have encouraged schools to replicate their buildings in the cloud…not enabled them to embrace the most powerful.  The VLE is another example of the tail wagging the dog, the cart being placed before the horse; we placed technology ahead of pedagogy.

Someone recently protested against my stance via Twitter – they said their Moodle environment was intuitive and after only 30 mins training everyone was uploading content.  This sums up the problem; successful first steps are considered to be creating a file store online.  That rather misses the point.

Content is not what online learning is about.  Online learning is about conversation.

I just spotted this as someone’s twitter avatar.

It relates to this article in the Guardian and this press release by OfSTED.

3000 schools serving 1,000,000 have sustained performance of ‘satisfactory’ through two consecutive inspections.

Translation:

1,000,000 children are in the care of professionals who do not aspire to be good.  Actually thats not true – they might aspire, but they can’t quite translate that into meaningful action beyond wallowing in self pity.

Never forget one of the key values of the British:

Mediocre is the goal. So long as you are happy. It will be ok.

Visual – pictures

Auditory – Listening

Read Write – Text

Kinaesthetic – Movement

Simples ……………………………………………..NO NO NO NO NO!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thowra/

Lets begin with a summary of Flemming’s Theory.

• Visual Learning is receiving information presented in ways which enable one to create pictures. Not portraits. Pictures of information. So the work of David Mcandless is really helpful. In short Visual Learning is converting data into images that can be retained. A viable and important tool for EVERYONE.
• Auditory Learning is about receiving information in conversation. Not Podcasts or didactic teaching. Discussion of ideas is at the heart of this important processing tool for EVERYONE.
• Read/Write Learning is a fudge – its actually processing information through rote learning. This is an important tool in many professions, I have distant memories of medical students learning lists of muscles in order, when studying anatomy. This is a tool with a narrow application for EVERYONE.
• Kinaesthetic Learning is about processing information by situating it in a context. There is a laughable tool on the website which encourages one to move a blob to access each section. NEWSFLASH moving a blob on a screen never helped anyone learn anything. ( Take note interactive whiteboard users) So in short if information is presented in a context, then one is likely to process it in a Kinaesthetic manner. This is a widely employed strategy by most people. It is a tool for EVERYONE. it does not involve running around, it does not placate the fidgets in your class.

To summarize, Flemming is defining ways people process information, not mutually exclusive permanent ways of thinking. He is defining the 4 colours of the effective learning chameleon.

If you pidgeon hole learners as requiring a particular style, you are condemning them to becoming ineffective learners. The role of the teacher is not to pander to existing learning styles, but to develop children’s ability to process information in ways that they find challenging, in exactly the same way that they develop the social abilities of those same children. To fail to do so is negligent.

Learners who complain that information is presented in a way that they cannot access are not actually exposing the inadequacy of their ‘teachers’ but rather their own inadequacies as learners. Their desire to blame someone else for those inadequacies is evidence of their own inadequacy as people.

I have endured years of working with teachers who dismiss online learning as ‘not my preferred learning style’, particularly in the days of the National College of School Leadership “Strategic Leadership in ICT” course. Online learning is NOT a learning style. An effective online discussion or blog can provide the conversation to stimulate auditory processing, the context for kinaesthetic processing, the text for wrote processing and with the employment of tools like wordle, the data for visual processing. The dismissal of online learning as ‘not my style’ speaks more of the sloth of the learner and their inability to step over the threshold of their comfort zone, than it does the effective nature of the tool.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bayhaus/

My colleague Professor Steve Wheeler wrote a blog entitled a ‘convenient untruth’ in November of 2011, where he discusses the voracity of learning styles and questions their existence. I am not questioning their existence, rather the quality of their application. VARK is one way of representing the skills required to be a learning chameleon. In fact if one bothers to read beyond the dictionary assumptions, they make an amount of sense as information processing modes. The debate about existence runs the risk of taking our eye off the real ball: Our responsibility as professionals to ensure learners can process information quickly and effectively.

Why are they so unquestioningly misapplied? As a profession, too many of us view the world through fluffy spectacles, everyone is different and differences should be celebrated.

I offer the counter view: When it comes to processing information, everyone should be the same: A ‘learning chameleon’, able to adapt and use whatever skills are required to optimise the information to be processed. We should not be celebrating and promoting difference in learning styles, we should be challenging children to step beyond their comfort zone and confront their weaknesses. To do that we need to challenge ourselves and do some decent reading and thinking ourselves.

Its all gone black….Why?

Big Brother is watching you.  Censorship has only been a heartbeat away for years.

Not only does the system know who you are and where you are, it knows what you think (its in your SMS, emails, skypes and tweets).

The digitally literate have been aware of this for many years.  Information is connects dots, you should hope the system does not decide those dots are subversive or criminal.

1984 in 2012?

Thought Crime?

Trust no one.

Nuff said.