Classroom management

Good evening everybody!

Long time, no see! In the last days I so super busy with the Cambridge Film Festival and the foundation of the International Student Film Association that I had barely time to eat or sleep! Thankfully, life is slowing down to its normal (hectic) pace again and I thought I would give you an update on how the PGCE is going!

I am now in week two of my block placement and teach every day.Overall, I have taken over two German and one French class and so far, it has been very enjoyable. I am not half-dead because of the workload and find the whole planning process fairly easy. Of course this might be because I have worked as an EFL teacher before but I have to say that it was quite new to me to plan so much in such detail- in most efl lessons all you get is a board pen and 10 min preparation time if you are lucky :-D

Now, the only class that is causing me a little bit of trouble is a 28-kids strong Year 8 group. I teaching them in both German and French and although they are a lovely bunch they are incredibly chatty and find it really difficult to listen to each other and to me. I am not used to such big groups and they get each other so excited that they just won’t calm down! As you might have realised I am trying to be an inclusive teacher and educator and don’t like the thought of having to send students out of the classroom or ‘punishing’ them for something such as chatting. I also think that making them write lines can be a tedious and annoying task for them.

From an ‘alternative’ point of view, I would love to try to focus their attention on something that they find relevant and that will foster skills which they can apply at any time later in life even if the foreign language is forgotten. I am not a bad teacher and I always try to make my lessons as engaging and useful as possible. However, if you have 28 students and some of them want to listen to what I have to say and others don’t a predicament arises: how to win over the reluctant students if (1) they don’t want to listen and (b) everybody has to prepare for exams? Even group work is not successful, because their thought just go completely off topic as soon as you don’t check up on them constantly.

So far, have tried to gain class attention by clapping, counting down, picking out the trouble makers, using a bell, lowering my voice, raising my voice, standing on a chair, raising a hand, standing in the middle of the classroom and actually sending people out. I have tried to reason with them and repeated the rules that they have agreed to when they came to the college. I wish I could have written them down together with them but tough luck. They are all nice kids and they will also give your their attention once you ask them to- for about a minute that is. Through the constant classroom management debacle, little learning is going on and the students who are paying attention get really annoyed.

I am working in a state school where children know exactly what is expected of them. It is not an overly strict environment and I guess in comparison to other schools of the same size, Sawston is a really very friendly and positive. Yes, we could blame the exams and the class size and the fact that students are forced to engage with subjects they are not interested in, but if you look beyond that: What can you do? How can you make students listen?? I am looking forward to observing some more lessons in the next weeks and will feed back as soon as I have some new ideas.

On another note, I have more or less finished my MPhil proposal which needs to go out this Friday and will post a link as soon as it is properly done. In my research, I would like to draw a map of the democratic schools in Europe and see how and if democratic education practices can be in cooperated in the British state school sector. Let’s see what Oxford and Cambridge think about that and if I can find some funding...

Fireworks and Summerhill

Happy Guy Fawkes week everybody! :-)

I hope you had the pleasure of experiencing some amazing fireworks in the last days! I was in Cambridge on the Midsummer common on Thursday, together with around 20.000 other people, and the display was great! Tonight, on my way back from London, I was also so lucky to come back into Royston just as they started the fireworks here and with Mendelssohn's Songs without Words in my ear, the experience was even better! I think, fireworks should always be watched with music! :-) (For all non- UK readers: Guy Fawkes Night is an annual celebration on the evening of 5 November. It marks the downfall of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, in which a number of Catholicconspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to destroy the Houses of Parliament, inLondon, United Kingdom.)

So, in London I met up with the rest of the NSFA council and we talked about our launch party, which is going to happen on the 5th/6th December in Bristol- awesome! :-) To quote from my text from the website: 'If you are a student in the UK who is searching for connections to the film industry, needs help with the foundation of a film society or a film festival or just would like to get in contact with other film- enthusiastic students all across the country, the NSFA is for you!' The NSFA has now taken over Screentest, the national student film festival, and although there is a lot to be done in the next months, I can't wait to develop the potential and meet lots of other amazing film students. As you might have read below, I am also on the verge of founding the first International Student Film Festival in Cambridge together with some friends and film provides me with a great balance to education :-)

After only four days of reading, I finished my Summerhill book today. It was super interesting to read about life at the school and really fascinating to think about self regulation and freedom in a community which is almost completely governed by children. I have the feeling that I probably would have gone to lessons as a child there and I am also not sure if being a teaching/ houseparent would be the job for me, but I would definitely like to visit the school to experience the spirit of the community that is living there. As the school has existed since 1921 and won a major battle against Ofsted in 2000, it must have a very powerful and convincing atmosphere! I feel that if I really decide to apply for the Phd and make my topic 'democratic education in Europe', Summerhill is a very good place to start some serious research. I have indulged in a little shopping spree in the AERO book store and am now expecting a bunch of books on democratic education from the States any day :-)

Phd thoughts

After returning from Oslo a few days ago, the cold winter weather has now taken over this part of the UK. Of course we don't have -4 degrees but when I left the house this morning the temperature had come down to 5 degrees. Finally it feels a little bit more like winter in this part of Europe as well :-) It's only 7 more weeks until Christmas!

I almost finished 'How to grow a school' while I was away and I am looking forward to talking about some more great ideas about school foundation in one of the next posts. Yesterday, I also started which Matthew Appleton's account of Summerhill, 'A free Range Childhood', which is now my new travel companion. After doing so much reading and writing about democratic schools in the last weeks I have decided to apply for a MPhil/Phd at the university! The only problem is the funding, but I am so lucky to have a good freind who is doing a phd in education at the moment and hopefully she is going to help me through the process a little bit. Phd sounds very posh indeed, but I am not really interested in the title at all- all I want to do at this point is learn more about democratic education :-)

On Monday at uni we were talking about gender equality and how boys statistically never do as well at school as girls. Since the national Curriculum was introduced in 1988 and GCSE results were analysed for the first time in 1992, there has been a constant concern about raising boys achievement. On average, 8% more girls than boys achieve 5 A* to C grades at GCSE and this has almost caused a moral panic! In my eyes, theorists are approaching this problem from the complete wrong point of view. Yes, it is very important that both of the genders are doing equally well at school, but should we not change the initial 'assessment' of children into something that is a lot fairer, rather than saying that it is the boys who can not perform well enough in the tests? Why pressure boys to do more work in order to do 'as well' as girls? Everybody learns at their own speed and, to voice a stroppy idea, maybe it is rather positive that boys are not quite as likely to please the system?

On the subject of testing, can you remember how we were discussing the abolishment of the Sat's tests in the last weeks thanks to the Alexander Primary Report?The National Union of Teachers are just preparing their next phase in the campaign against the exams and many other parents have voiced their concern about pressuring students much ttoo early into testing. This Saturday, the UK prime minister Gordon Brown said in the Times Educational Supplement that he finds Sats important to hold the schools accountable for their actions. What a reason to test children who are 10 years old!! So basically, the government is supporting exams to be able to see how not only children, but also schools are performing. Maybe they should rather send out a questionnaire to see how happy children are in the school? In my eyes the ultimate measure whether a school is successful or not is if children would also go even if it was not compulsory. Whenever I voice this opinion to other people, they look at me like I am crazy. What is so wrong with the idea of wanting to go to school? I am sorry, but is that an unrealistic expectation in today's society? (Sorry British Sarcasm there :-)

PS: Thank you for anybody out there who is reading! :-) Feel free to send me a mail or comment if you agree or disagree with any of the strong opinions I am voicing here all of the time!!