60 more teaching days to go

It's a sad state of affairs. I'm literally counting down the days to the end of teaching pracitce. I know it's 60 days, broken up with weekends and the Easter holiday, in which time I will teach at least 120 lessons.

That's 120 lesson plans, each taking about 40 mins-hour each, 120 equipment requests, 10 or 12 different topics and hence 10-12 schemes of work, I'll have to learn at least 150 different names of kids (which I'll forget the minute I walk out the door in june) and what makes them tick, do at least 200 hours of marking, 300 hours of lesson observation, and no doubt about 30 hours of detention. After lessons, I'm expected to pack away and write reflections on each lesson to inform my planning and I probably have to kick some small childs arse as well for 5 minutes at the end of each lesson.

Oh yeah and there's about 120 hours of teachin in there somewhere.

So in one term (well two half terms), which is about 12 weeks I'll have been expected to do about 700 hours. I figure that to be a 60 hour week, 10 hours a day and my timetable is pretty slim compared to real teachers. Add to that the work I have to do for college to secure my PGCE, the essays and the portfolio, the background study I have to do to keep up to date with my subject knowledge, the masses of educational literature I'm tryin to get through.

I dread to think how many hours I'm gonna be doing by the end of this but fuck me it will be a relief when they're all over. I can really only see myself teaching part time if anything but it's little wonder that teacher retention is so poor. How the bloody hell can we expect any human being to work under that sort of strain day in day out? Apparently the first year after graduating is the hardest and actually harder than this year. I've already buckled once under this strain.

I can't think about what's on the other side just yet. I really HAVE to get this fucking qualification even if it fucking kills me, cos I can't let some fucking 12 year olds have me this time. But now the focus is less about pulling through and getting the skiills to do a job than it is on simply getting through for my own pride. It shouldn't be like that I know, but this course gives you the insight to see that teaching is really a job for the ultra-dedicated, those angels with hearts of gold and nerves of steel. i think I've got one of those but the nerves are just not there.

Keep soldiering on and come the first week of June I will be sitting in the sun of Roehampton wondering what the hell that was all about and looking for my next adventure. It's been an adventire here, hell the adventure is really just beginning but is it the adventure of my choice? I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing and i'll only really be able to tell you that in June.

...and Friday was a blinder just to finish up that weeks review of highs and lows

I know it makes pretty dull reading and I apologise to anyone tuning in to read my witterings at the moment. Teaching is a profession that, at least during training, takes over your life. I make no apologies for the decline in quality of my blog as this merely reflects the decline in quality of my life.

In teaching the buzzword of the moment is reflection, and everyone aims to be a "reflective" practitioner, whatever one of those is. The word in it's present usage seems to have it's origins with a philosophy professor Donald Schon.

I was directed to the works of Donald Schon on reflective practice in teaching, as part of my adult numeracy teaching course the other day and read through a web summary of what he termed reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. These two terms build on his earlier works on double-loop learning by changing the Governing variables and underlying behaviour instead of superficial action response to a situation, i.e. shifting the focus of response from strategy and consequence to the framework within which the strategy and consequence is framed.

Schons best known work though is that of defining the reflective practitioner, and that is what he is remembered for today. In it he describes reflection-in-action as the sort of spontaneous response to a new situation (like thinking on your feet) in which reflection is the practice of using our past experience to inform our present decision-making process. With reference to double-loop learning this is akin to a single-loop cycle in which we modify our superficial actions in response to a situation.

Reflection-on-action is the practise of reflecting after the event and using this to inform what we do in a future situation. The response after an event could be either to inform our decision on action to be taken (again single loop learning) or a modification to the entire framework within which we think in order to try to prevent the situation arising or to rectify that situation. This is the concept of double loop learning.

Coincidentally I came out with exactly that philosophy myself a couple of weeks back but not in so many words right here and had effectively undergone a double loop transformation before your eyes here (what exactly are we rebelling against again?) right in front of your eyes clear for all to see. Philosophy really is the science of stating the obvious, while the rest of us just get on with it.

It's likely that after this course I will want to double loop back on myself as this is fucking hard. I have a dream which i dream day in day out since being here. Like Bro U I have my motivating dream to hang on to get me through this course, and that's to go and live like a foreign teaching hermit and kung fu monkey in China when this is all over. I dream of waking up in the morning, doing 5000 pushups, teaching some very poor, very appreciative people and being part of a community.

Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I'm tired of life, but London teaching is probably not for me.

And there are shitty days like today

Nothing major just couldn't quite get the message across and couldn't control the class at all. Damn. Oh well, chin up move on, tomorrow's another day.

There are bad days and there are good days

And today was shaping up to be a bad day in the teaching profession. With my first lesson I managed to cock it so badly up that the kids had absolutely no idea whatsoever what they were supposed to be doing. Still, I'm on teaching practice so I have backup to fall back on and the teacher took the reins and things didn't go too badly after all.

Then later, I went into year 11, into one of my favourite classes in the school. Not the top set by any stretch of the imagination but full of some real characters. My favourite a kid I shall call A is absolutely hilarious. He flatly refuses to do any work at all but he is so cool and so funny I just feel drawn to teach him!

he complained to the teacher in charge the other day, saying...

"Sir that Mr Hoang really pissed me off the other day. I hate him and never want to see him again" to which the doc replied "Why's that A?" and he says, "Cos I've been meaning to not learn anything while I've been here. For 5 years I managed to get away with learning a sum total of nothing then this guy comes along and I learn something. I hate him!"

So I have a good thing about that class and I love going in if just to assist at the moment. Today I went in there and it was another stunner of a lesson. I got the kids to swap roles with me. I done their homework while they went and taught the lesson. It was bloody brilliant!

Then finally, I taught the top set of year 8, And man that was good! They are smart and useful all the way and behaviour isn't really the biggest issue in there. I love it. What a wicked class! Then afterwards one of the pupils arranged to see me after school to discuss a project he's doing in DT and wanted my help in trying to get chemistry into it. We stayed behind talking about robots for half an hour after school. It was bloody brilliant!

So some days are bad. Some days look bad. Some days feel really bad and you feel you can get no lower.

But some days are good. This was one of those days, when you realise that really there are few jobs that make you feel as good as this. Watching the future developing and moulding it yourself. It's great.

Glasto Application in

I'm going to Glastonbury again this year as a steward for Oxfam, up in the wusses field. Glasto happens on the 21st to the 26th of June for the Oxfamers and by god I am counting down the days I can tell you. Between here and there is a whole lot of pain and I get the impression that by that point I will really need the rest after a term of teaching and will probably be wondering what way to go.

It's become clear to me since taking up this damn job that though many of us, myself included, claim to long for a job with variety and innovation every day, one where we can make a change in the world, when we finally get one we end up longing for the mundane, just like Jon Ronson

Making a difference to peoples lives is hard.

I want to change the world but I can safely say I can't see myself teaching here in this country for the rest of my life. Ungrateful, unmanageable and spoilt kids, a life that is so busy I barely have time to eat, and the same old, same cold surroundings.

I daydream all the time these days about better things, a better life and strangely that better life is so mundane. It's as though I can no longer take the excitement I once aspired to as this is what this job is all about. No two days are the same and that is the both the perk and the downside.

I daydream about moving to Wudan mountain or the Shaolin temple and letting the extraordinary become everyday. I dream of leaving this place and all my friends behind and starting again with just what I know, and from that forging an existence of routine and predictability. I guess I had always said I wanted to challenge myself and to do a job that didn't tie me to a desk and that changed every day and now that I've got it, I don't want it any more.

Guess there's just no pleaseing some people.

What exactly are we rebelling against again?

I've not seen it (obviously as I don't watch TV) but I have read that Johnny Rotten got pecked by a load of ostriches the other day for the amusement and ridicule of the nation. The figurehead of The Sex Pistols, and at the forefront of the anarchic British Punk movement he stood for years as the epitome of anti-establishment resentment, embodying an ideal many disaffected young people held.

Reduced to a clown on a reality TV show.

But wait. What's this?

According to Virgin Megastores, sales of the Pistols? 1977 album 'Never Mind The Bollocks' have risen by 20% - around a thousand extra sales in under a week.

"It?s a great way for Lydon to reach a new generation of fans who?ve been force-fed punk pretenders such as Sum 41 and Busted. Music buyers, especially ?the kids?, are keen to find out what the fuss is all about when people talk about ?Johnny Rotten?."

At the root of this it seems that Mr Rotten has had to concede that in a free market economy, change is not always effected by outright impedence of market forces but by subtle redirection of those forces. In all his wisdom he continues to subvert the system he initially set out to destroy.

From around the age of 13 I have wanted to be seen as an individual that stands out within society. I have wanted to achieve one aim and to do it independently without the meddling of higher powers that may distill my vision. Essentially nothing has changed in my base philosophy since then and my aim is simple: I want to save the world and be a generally nice guy that is loved by everyone as a result. I love people and want to be loved, and I think I can put my education and training to good use where those skills are in short supply. Simple and easy philosophy and that has been the core of my life for as long as I was aware of having any direction.

At the beginning of consciously taking on this task I concentrated on the idea of independence and this showed. I wanted to be known, and in a way it was as though I wanted what I wanted for personal recognition rather than for the altruistic motive that my aim really is supposed to be based around. Most things I done when I was younger were with the focus of drawing the attention to me and as such, I grew up with a latent resentment of the powers that be.

Those in power seemed to be conspiring against me, and as such the figures in authority, or the establishment was something that was there to be smashed, not a framework that was there to provide stability to facilitate the process of my development. Warwick was the final manifestation of this resentment.

But times have changed. I'm out of Warwick and I can look back with untainted eyes at a period of my life from which I did actually profit significantly, although it perhaps could have been better. In retrospect I could and should have done a lot more myself while I was there and it was very much on my head to make those 3 years what they were. Although I didn't have the greatest time in the world there it wasn't the worst time in my life.

From my new standpoint as a teacher and police officer in training I feel like I've grown and matured somewhat quickly in the last 6 months, and some essential truths have become clear to me. Society serves a purpose and established organisations come about by a collaborative desire for individual improvement (even though some may well serve the opposite function as we have seen)

As much as I came to resent the Warwick 'accountant factory' aspect, we have seen in the last few weeks that the 'marketisation' of education was inevitable as the demand for a skilled workforce grows and it just so happens that Warwick got in there before everyone else, thus being the first British university to be run as a business. As a result our facilities there were all pretty good, as they were paid for by the corporations dollars. This business aspect did lead to some ugly scenes at the beginning of the university's history when, in order to satisfy the demands of the corporations the university denied some students entry in case they tainted the universitys reputation (read Warwick University Ltd by E.P. Thompson for more details on this issue) and they probably still do, but then don't all educational establishments have the right to deny students entry if they do not fit in with the ethos of the establishment? In a way it's better for both sides who would otherwise be at odds for the whole of the course.

It is this sort of thinking I have been going along with lately. The idea that the succcess of the individual is brought about not by merely standing up in opposition of the system, but by being the system. I have no more resentment for Warwick University as it is clear that really it was my choice to go there and if I had done my research before (and members of my family didn't die while I was there) I would have chosen a path that would have suited my needs a little better.

It is by the effective matching of establishment and personal liberties that real liberation is obtained. In a free democracy with freedom of speech we are of course entitled to say what we like but to talk rhetorical crap seems a waste of that freedom. As such, it is actions within the framework of society that define the man, not the words he speaks. If everybody is free to speak then speak he will, but it is not what he says it is what he does that makes the difference to peoples lives. Use your freedom not merely to speak but to make a difference.

Surely this freedom that we have of expression is a powerful tool to effect change, but what really needs to be changed about the way we live at the moment? Of course it is in our hands to change some of the policies made from above we are not slaves to the system, but on the whole in our everyday life it is up to us to develop within the framework of society that is in place. The act of moulding a new framework without actually realising whereabouts you wish to place yourself in that new unfamiliar framework is like trying to reclaim land from the sea just for the sake of it.

It is our duty as citizens of the state to achieve as much as we possibly can within the framework which we currently live in, pushing the boundaries as we do so, but with purpose. Rhetorically slating "The System" and complaining that it is biased against you is vacuous ranting that really doesn't add up if you have not strived to achieve anything within it. The broadening of the system begins with the expansion of the individual, for it is only when the individual lights the way can the state follow.

As a teacher I see kids every bloody day who see me as the system and therefore something that needs to be fought against. What they don't see is that as 'the system' I do everything in my power, I utilise every single fibre in my being to try and enhance their future. Far from being their enemy, 'the system' is actually doing all it can to help them achieve their aim.

As a police officer, I seek to maintain the sort of peace that allows this system to function and evolve unimpeded. Contrary to what is believed by some the function of the system is not to keep things static but provide a system within which it's inhabitants can grow and develop. I want to see change because it shows progress, lawyers constantly have to review legislation to accomodate the changing landscape of society.

In conclusion then, as I have matured I have come to realise that my aim can be achieved through working with the system, or more specifically to BE part of it. Only when I am the boundaries can I change the boundaries, by changing myself.

Andy 2004

PS - Not all lawyers or teachers or police are nice people. A lot of them (especially lawyers) are fuckin scumbags