Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.

It has been an interesting week at the educational coal-face in the Midlands.  With so much to comment on I thought I'd write about the highs and lows of me, a main scale teacher on a fully loaded time-table, and my week with Year 10. 

This is a sort of disclaimer because it is quite clearly a mix of the good and the bad of teaching: I have no intention to bring my school or my profession into disrepute, just to tell the tale of the demands and joys of a week at work with a specific teaching group.

After spending a large proportion of my Sunday, as so many of us do, planning lessons and marking, I write myself a 'to do' list of the tasks I need to get done this week. 

• Assessment Point 1 data onto SIMS for ALL teaching groups
• Finish marking Year 9 assessments (Jaws analysis)
• Start marking year 8 assessments (Pitch for a new TV show)
• Input my assessment data onto my Excel spreadsheets
• Plan Year 13 Lang/Lit lesson on The Crucible (Tuesday evening)
• Group Year 8 into 'lifeboats' for speaking and listening activity based on Titanic
• Print off literacy work for Year 10
• Pastoral - phone parents of tutees who did not make Parents' Evening a while back and/or those who are arriving late in the morning or having problems.

This is written on note-paper and stapled onto Monday's page of my planner. I  resemble being organised and at this point it is:

Gwen 1 - 0 Universe

Monday is a full teaching day, it whizzes by in the blink of an eye. 

After school: Faculty meeting, it is calm and steady but it runs on late.  Various things are said and more things are added to my 'to do' list:

• A furniture survey of my classroom (something to do with our new build I think)
• Print out hard copies of resources for the Schemes of Work I've written (they are already on the staff shared drive)
• Complete a survey about the school for the Headteacher
• An exam analysis of my Year 11 exam results. I briefly look at the data and the results are colour coded according to how near their FFT targets they are:  'Green' (achieved), 'Amber' (missed but not by much) and 'Red' (a BIG miss).  I have lots of 'amber' and 'red'.  I worked so hard. I spent a large part of last year with lots of stress induced minor illnesses.  The majority of the class got a C or better and I feel fairly demoralised. 

Gwen 1 - 1 Universe

 I don't leave school until about 5.20 pm, arriving home at 5.55pm.  Thus missing my beloved circuit class which is at 6pm. Instead of doing that, I sit and mark my Year 9 assessments and complete the school survey for the Headteacher.

I just have time to eat and have a bath leaving me about an hour to myself before I should hit the sack. 

Gwen 2 - 2 Universe

Hissing snakes and custard pies

I introduced you to my snake-wrangling group in a previous post. My Year 10 are a disparate bunch with lots of insecurities about learning and English and they wear me out. Sometimes they are almost vampiric in their neediness and can feel so exhausted at the end of a lesson I feel like I've done the Tough Guy assault course all over again. Battered. 

   I see them 5 times a week, and due to a colleague returning from maternity leave, I have them as a whole group (all 21 of them), period 2 Tuesday and period 4 Wednesday. I have half the group Tuesday 6, Friday 1 and Friday 5. When I have them as a whole class I focus, at the moment, on their literacy skills. 

  On a Wednesday I have them Period 4 before lunch, so far, although often a tricky start, they do eventually settle and we get some useful and meaningful work done. However, this picture best sums up that lesson:

The pupils enter as a rabble, loud and raucous.  Something must have happened on the way to my class but I know not what. One lad, who I normally get on really well with, is really agitated. His Head of Year comes in and he speaks to her in a loud and aggressive way. He is removed from the class while she tries to settle him. Another two boys, instead of sitting down, lurk by the door, grinning like velociraptors at the spectacle, adding to the agitation in the lesson. Another boy, who is played a part in this boy's upset is also called out by the Head of Year. 

  Meanwhile I am trying to set up my lesson; handing folders and resources out and getting my laptop ready. While I am doing this another pupil shouts at my rather brilliant TA for sitting in the wrong place, and tells the TA, 'You can't speak to me like that!'.  The TA reminds him of how rude he is being; the boy carries on shouting.  Again, I usually get on well with this pupil and recognise when he is not having a good day. He is told to go out into the corridor to calm down as he struggles to control his anger and agitation. He doesn't want to but I remind him I am trying to stop him getting into further trouble, so he leaves.

  I try and teach my lesson, which is reasonably sound. A grammar lesson based on the grammatically correct but tedious sentence, 'The cat sat on the mat'. They are to use complex and simple sentences to change it from tedious, into something imaginative. A short narrative based on that sentence. 

   However, due to the mood of the class, it goes down like a lead balloon. They think I am patronsing them. That is clearly not my intention but they are so entrenched in their negativity, they are unwilling to listen. Some pupils at least try and engage with it; others think it is below them and don't. I coax, I cajole, I snap, I take planners and blunder and battle my way through the lesson.  I take a pupil's planner because he is refusing to work; he glares at me and says, 'Take it for **** sake.' He is sent out straight away.

  The lesson finished, the TAs help me tidy up and I go to lunch feeling a little traumatised to say the least. I can tell I am still traumatised during my Year 8 lesson, Period 6, as I am short and snappy with the class. I sit on SIMS at the end of the day to record all the incidents that occurred in the space of those 50 minutes with Year 10. 

  I drive home still feeling upset and flustered.  I feel guilty about the terrible lesson with Year 10 and equally awful about my snappy-ness with the Year 8 class. 

  As soon as I get home I mark yet more Year 9 assessments and plan my Year 13 Lang/Lit lesson. 

  Dinner is eaten, I bathe and try and relax for a bit in the evening. The train wreck of an afternoon won't leave my head; I am still tense, and I have a terrible night's sleep. 

  Later on in the week I chat to their Head of Year who tells me what happened prior to the lesson. One of the other boys in the class, who is difficult to say the least, caused a fracas on the stairs on the way up to my classroom and hit one the girls in my class. He also wound up the rest of them up into the hurricane that entered my classroom.  He is quite rightly excluded. He returns on Tuesday next week...when I teach them. 

Gwen 2 - 5 Universe

Hissing snakes, custard pies and a triumphant victory all in one lesson. 

Friday Lesson 1, the snake-wrangling class.

My aims of the lesson are quite simple, to be able to know what a Point Evidence Explore paragraph looks like and to identify the different parts of an exemplar PEE paragraph and then to try and write one of their own. Sometime ago I swapped the word 'explain' to 'explore' for this particular acronym. The verb 'explain' makes the pupils do just that, which often slips into re-narration of the text. The verb 'explore' or better, 'explore the language' is far more specific and leads pupils into discussing sub-text a little better, in my humble opinion.

   We re-cap what PEE means, and the exemplar paragraph is handed out. I read it with them and one lad, moans and tells me, 'I can never write something like that, I'm going to fail my Controlled Assessment'.  I insist he won't, that he may not be able to do it yet, that this is what he is working towards. He remains defeatist and that sets the not very nice tone for the lesson. Once again the whole thing seems a struggle. 

Gwen 2 - Universe 6

Although my intention was good, my exemplar paragraph had just intimidated them. I struggled once again through the lesson.  However, towards the end we begin drafting, as a class, their own PEE paragraph about Curley's Wife and her emotions at the start of Chapter 5. They were telling me what to write and how to write it. Something meaningful was rescued form the ashes of the lesson.  We don't quite complete it before the lesson finishes.

Gwen 3 - Universe 6

Friday, lesson 5, the same snake-wrangling group.

  I see them again after lunch.  Again, settling them down takes a while.  I bring up their partially completed paragraph for us to finish.  The defeatist boy is very critical. He tells me, 'But it doesn't make sense.'  

I reply with, 'Ok, which bit doesn't make sense? Make it make sense, tell me what to write.'

He rises to the challenge, telling me, 'We need to change the quotation Miss, it doesn't really work' (The quotation we have is 'she laughed' they worked out it doesn't give them much to comment on).

Another pupil joins in, telling me from memory, 'We should use, 'What's that sonny boy?'' I do so making sure he explains to us why it is better. 

I edit the paragraph according to their instructions. Some of them are getting frustrated at crossing things out, bemoaning, 'But this is going to look messy.' 

'That's fine, ' I interject, 'We have to go wrong before we go right. That's what happens when you edit.' 

I ask them, 'What is her tone of voice?' How is she speaking to Lennie?' 

Another pupil, 'Like he is a child.'  Now they are on a roll and they make comments like:

'She feels content at this moment.'

'She is content because she has found someone to talk to.'

'She can tell someone her dreams, she's not been able to do that before.'

Gwen 4 - 6 Universe

Here is the paragraph we wrote together:

When Curley’s wife appears in the barn, she feels happy that she found someone to talk to, “What’s that sonny boy?” Curley’s Wife is normally lonely and miserable. By finding Lennie, she has found someone to talk to, even though she talks to him like a little child, she is content to tell her dreams to someone because she has never been able to do that before. This also reveals that she is curious about Lennie from what she’s heard about him.

This is by no means perfect but, considering their protestations of, 'I'll never be able to write this Controlled Assessment' at the beginning of the lesson Period 1 I was mighty chuffed. According to FFT data, their target grades are Ds and Es. I tell them I am teaching to a C with the aim of doing as well as, if not better then the other half of the group.

Gwen 5 - Universe 6

The defeatist boy asks, 'Can we do one about Lennie now?' So, taking his lead, I go in the direction he takes us in and we generate a new paragraph together about Lennie, using the same technique, using questions, pausing to allow them to think, listening to their ideas, asking if it is appropriate.  As we go through this process again, I am visibly happy and enthusiastic with the class, they grow in confidence and bombard me with great suggestions. They are working with me AND each other; I praise their ideas and include as much as I can. Their ideas are often showing higher level (at least Relational, nudging towards Extended Abstract thinking). Here is our second, class generated PEE paragraph:

Gwen 6 - Universe 6

At the start of Chapter Five Lennie is buried in the hay because he feels traumatised by the death of his puppy, he cries at the puppy, “Why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so little as mice.”  Lennie’s question shows the reader that he’s confused about his emotions. This also reveals that he is frightened of the consequences of his actions. He knows that George will no longer let him tend the rabbits he would love, and that his dream will slip away from him. The reference to the size of the mice shows that his actions were involuntary.

Whilst we are ending the lesson and packing away, I can barely contain my enthusiasm and tell them, 'Look at what we can achieve when we work together!' I ask them to tell me what they have achieved this lesson, and they do. One boy, the one who was aggressive and troublesome on Wednesday, leaves apologising for his behaviour earlier on in the week and says, 'Miss, we need to show you some love don't we?' 

In my head, a myriad of party poppers exploded. We grin at each other and he leaves. 

Gwen 7 - 6 Universe

By the end of the week, as well as this teaching lark, I have completed all items on my 'to do' list bar the Yr 11 exam results analysis. I think I'll do it the night before my meeting on Wednesday. I'm not sure my morale can deal with it before then. 

Gwen 8 - 7 Universe

A win, but by the skin of my teeth. 

Snake-wrangling in the Midlands

Ok, I know I said I'd focus on the Bard on this blog, but I'm female so I can be fickle. I've decided to digress again. I'll come back to Old Bill when I have more time to give him the pondering he deserves. 

So, what this time? Well, currently, my work environment is tough. I think that can be true of so many of us teachers at this moment in time. I arrived back to school in September fairly demoralised after the combined efforts of Gove and Ofqual made the two years of totally hard graft of myself and the pupils appear to mean nothing.  That was not a great start. 

In September, we began under a worrying and black cloud. At the moment, things are compounded by some tricky work politics. It would be ludicrous of me to divulge the whys and the wherefores here in such a public place, so I won't.  It is one of those times when you can often feel happiest and most content in your own classroom with the hormonal ones. It is a time when remembering the positives is absolutely vital.

Snake-wrangling? In the Midlands?

Am I having a giraffe? Well yes, trying to. 

The phrase 'snake-wrangling' was coined by a dear departed friend, Anthony Fairhurst while he was doing his English PGCE. 

He never finished it, ill health, then a sudden, fatal heart attack saw to that in May this year. 

What on earth could it refer to? A class that is 'less able' or 'challenging' or any other more pleasing to the ear euphemism.  

The thing is, we all get them on our timetables. The class that exhausts every possible teaching and behaviour weapon you have in your armory, so that you have to go off and discover some new ones (and wine). 

So, snake-wrangling, it makes perfect sense now doesn't it?

Volatile snakes.

I have introduced you to these snakes before using the word 'bonkers' in an affectionate rather than a derogatory way. They are my Year 10.  I look back on how the year began with them and I could easily crash my head on the laptop. 

I was so often faced with a barrage of hostility, or 'I can't be bovvered', or playing the 'bat the rat game' as one part of the room settled, a new 'rat' would pop up to disturb that moment of order and calm. It did not feel like I did much in the way of teaching. I'd walk out of the classroom exhausted and drained, flummoxed as to what to do; disappointed at yet another custard pie moment in the classroom.  

The snakes make progress up a ladder

This week they have delighted and surprised me in numerous ways, not all of them directly teaching or learning related. 

1. Relationships are improving

How can I tell? Well, for a start my shoulders are no longer hunched around my ears like the Honey Monster; my stomach is not permanently clenched during the lesson; my palms are less sweaty, and I rarely have to raise my voice. 

The classroom banter is the other way. I have a lad in the class I taught (this is a whole other story, but the word 'taught' is used in its most loose sense here) in Year 7 and again in Year 9. We have a bit of shared history and he can be daft as a brush, punctuated by moments of genius or, in SOLO lingo, extended abstract thinking. First, to the anecdote and the banter:

I had just nagged a couple of female students about their mobile phones, quickly, and gently and not for the first time. They were at last chance saloon time before confiscation took place. 

I also have 'wonky eyes' or a lazy eye which sometimes comes up in lessons.  They don't always know who I'm looking at, and to be frank, sometimes neither do I. 

Pupil, 'Miss?'
Me, 'Yes, JLK, what is it?'
Pupil, 'It's good that your eyes can go in different directions.  It means you can look at different parts of the classroom.'
Pause for a serious bout of laughter, then I mention, 'Well, I have really flat feet too, but they are great for swimming.'
Pupil, giggling along with me, 'See Miss, everything can be an advantage, even your wonky eyes and flat feet.'  

2. They are actually talking about their learning.

Now, this surprised me even more than our bit of banter above. The class were writing sentences using abstract nouns and connectives to describe and explain the characters emotions in Chapter 5 in Of Mice and Men.  This lesson we were focusing on Curly's Wife. The same pupil as above had one of his genius moments as the rest of the lads were joking about the word 'slag' in relation to Curley's Wife, he made this comment:

'The word 'slag' is used in engineering, It's about the bits that are not used.'
I beam back at him, 'Ah yes, you get 'slag heaps' in mining too. What do they have in common?'
Pupil, 'Neither are wanted.' [the next bit of what he said was all him] 'That's why we can use the word 'slag' when we talk about Curley's wife. She's a reject, not wanted by anyone.'

If I was sat on a chair, I would have fallen off it. 


3.From an agitated to an amiable Cobra

Another pupil joined in the conversation, I'll get to it shortly.  In Year 9 this lad could not cope with putting pen to paper; he was crippled by fear of failure; convinced he needed a TA to write for him (he doesn't) and that he was stupid (he isn't).  Consequently, he had a huge range of work avoidance tactics at his disposal, and the attention span of a gnat who had just consumed some Red Bull. 

Pupil, 'Oh yes, slag. Do you remember Lady Macbeth and 'Is this a dagger I see before me?' 
Me, 'Good grief, you just spontaneously quoted Shakespeare at me!'

Now that may not seem that profound, but are Lady Macbeth and Curley's wife that far removed from each other? Had I even instigated the conversation? Had I led them into that thought? No. It is a leap of thought, or faith, that reminds me the moment in 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' when he has to make the leap of faith, to put his foot in a seemingly non-existent bridge,  so that he can make progress towards his prize. 

At the end of this lesson this same pupil asked to take his book home so he could practise writing about the characters emotions in Chapter 5, telling me he really wants to do well in his Controlled Assessment. 

How do you charm snakes?

Hmmm, we must be all of these things in the classroom: 
Fair, calm, consistent, persistent, creative, ambitious, hopeful, optimistic, enthusiastic, in every respect stubborn, positive, encouraging, funny, caring, maternal (or paternal), stern, charming and never, ever, ever let them say, 'I can't do it.' Their self-esteem is already crushingly low, teach them self-belief equally with the course content. 

Out of the classroom: make positive phone calls home and send post-cards of praise for those doing well that week. You'll need to make some not so positive phone calls home too, but keep negatives down to a minimum. Sadly, these kids are all too familiar with negative attention from adults. 

Plan as well as you can but be prepared to adapt and think on the hoof frequently.  If they are just not getting it, find a different angle and go again. 

You can't go far wrong with stickers and sweets...although not necessarily at the same time, it could get messy. 

Oh and drink wine...or real ale, or vodka and coke, whatever your happy weekend juice is. Maybe even drink wine and tweet your tweacher buddies at the same time, you could be in for an amusing and morale boosting evening.  

Should I teach Yr 11 boys love poetry?/Teaching girls to put on make up properly

This is a collaborative post between myself and my fabulous Twitter friend @Xris32.  Thanks for suggesting it @Xris32, when can we do it again?

His bits are in black, mine are in blue.  Be aware, it's a post of epic and gargantuan proportions. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a male English teacher in possession of free time at lunchtime, must be in want of male company.

I walked into the staffroom after a gruelling bout of teaching poetry to a class and made my way to the section of the room that had been secretly dedicated to the English staff. They were sat around chatting and eating salads or sipping vegetable soup and conversing about teaching, life and what was on telly last night. I should inform you that the group, at that time, was all women. Often, the conversation did get on to admiring what the other was wearing, but for the most, I was usually able to join in.

I sat amongst the crowd of eight English teachers (what is the collective noun for a group of teachers? A critique. A sarcasm. A kerfuffle.) and proceeded to eat my lunch. Oblivious to the conversation around me, I opened my sandwich bag and removed the sandwich, or, accurately, two full slices of bread with a slice of meat between them. I never cut my sandwiches up and this caused a number of frowns from some delicate ladies, insisting a sandwich must be cut and not left as a whole slice.

Munching away on my food, I could hear bits of the conversation around me.

“What is it with men? Huh. I mean, why do they like boobs and bums and legs?”

Keep eating your sandwich, I thought. There was no way I could escape this minefield of a conversation.

“Come on. It is silly isn’t it? Men are always going on about a woman’s boobs or her legs. Women don’t do, do they?” This was spoken by one of the younger females in the department. The rest of the baying crowd murmured in agreement like a parliamentary backbencher or nodded their head in agreement. They carried on. “What is it? Chris, what do you think?”

I froze. Shocked, stunned and petrified, I had no idea how to get out of this conversation. I was a twenty something that lacked the confidence that some of my age had. I looked down at the remains of my sandwich, thinking how I could escape the answer.

“Come on, Chris. What are you? A boobs man? Do you prefer legs? What about bums?”

Oh, God. I was in meltdown. What could I say in that situation? How could I escape this? The seating arrangements meant that it was quite troublesome to leave and I would have to ask people to move. I saw the fire alarm. Maybe, I could throw my orange and hit it. Probably not, as I am allergic to all sports. Best to say something. My sense of humour had left me and packed up and moved to Cyprus, so I was running out of solutions. If I said bum, they’d think I was a pervert. If I said boobs, it would make them think I was constantly looking at their breast. Legs, nah! If I said eyes, people would be sick and vomit and I’d lose my integrity as I sounded like some romantic poet. If I said ankles, I would sound like some sort of Victorian gentleman, and we all know what they were like. Hair would make me sound like a serial killer, so I went for necks.

“Necks,” I said with confidence, thinking I had narrowly avoided a massive social blunder.

Mouths stopped munching fat-free salads. Lips stopped slurping on weightwatcher’s soups. Every eye looked at me. My interrogator continued: “Necks! You like necks.”

“Yeah,” I replied nervously, “I just find them attractive.”

Every female in the group made a subconscious movement with their hands to their necks. They all looked at me as if they had just uncovered a strangler of English teachers. Strangely the whole conversation just died from that moment on.

From that day on, there seemed to be a lot more scarves in the department and everybody shivered when I said I was teaching ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. Suddenly, for one term, there were no visible necks for me to ogle over, and it was the summer.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a male English teacher in possession of free time at lunchtime, must be in want of male company. For this blog, I want to look at the question of gender in the classroom. Does the teaching of boys differ to girls? Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus, but where are students from? To help me, I have enlisted the help of  my dear Twitter friend Gwen, so that this blog doesn’t become full of sexist and misogynistic comments from me saying that women are better teachers than men – see what I did there!

It’s all about texts

I am male. Not really a bloke’s bloke, but I am male. I don’t do football, but I do do geeky stuff and I am mad about science-fiction. As an English teacher, I have free reign about the texts I can teach and the choices I make. However, I always try to make a balance between boy-friendly texts with girl-friendly texts. Someone at the back pipes up: “Good quality literature supersedes gender”. But, I question, whether it really does?

 I had the experience of being taught ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as a teenager and I hated the experience. I like the book now, after my years of studying the novel and all its glories at university, but I hated the experience then. At 16, I would read everything and anything, but this book I couldn’t. The teacher was brilliant, but I loathed every second, minute or hour spent on the book.

Now, ‘Jane Eyre', which I read in conjunction with ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, is a different story. It was a book that really appealed to me. The darkness, the Gothic horror, the harshness of it all had and has me reading and rereading the book to this day. I hated the bonnets, dances and polite conversation of Austen’s world, yet Bronte’s world was far more appealing. Both books written by a woman, but they had varying impact on me.

I once had a friendly disagreement with a colleague about teaching boys about love poetry. If grown men find communicating their emotions difficult, what chance does a teenage boy have with discussing love poetry? A 15 year old me would struggle to talk about love, as I was sat next to a girl in the class, and I also struggled to tell a girl I knew that I fancied her. So, Chris, what is this poet telling us about love?

We have to be intelligent with the texts we pick. By picking boy-friendly texts we risk alienating some of the girls. ‘Jane Eyre’ was great for proving this point as it was both boy and girl friendly. I’ve made mistakes too. I taught ‘Lord of the Flies’ to a predominately female top set and they hated the book. They got it, but they could easily be dismissive as it was just about boys being violent. Look at some of the popular books in departments and you can see that they often have male and female protagonists (‘Skellig’ and ‘Stone Cold’).

Boys will be boys

My initials are CC and at primary school I got the nickname of Class Clown. Like ‘Lord of the Flies’, there is a constant battle for dominance in a classroom. Usually, for boys it is about humour. The person with the Conch is the person who can get the most laughs. As a Year 9, I spent times in Physics lessons laughing my head off. I know, Physics. But, it was how you got liked if your weren’t the best footballer, or clone from the latest boyband. Get a quick, cheap laugh and people like you. People always like the funny one. That’s why in a lesson the lads will look for the innuendo in text or laugh at the silly costume in a video, or laugh at the naked bottoms in the ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ DVD. It is not survival of the strongest. It is survival of the funniest.

Male Pride

Conflicts that occur in the classroom tend to escalate with boys because of, simply, male pride. They cannot bear to lose face. Boys will rarely back down in a conflict situation, if there is an audience. It is the great challenge to authority. They cannot be seen as weak. I remember my own fights and arguments with my own father.

Take the boy away from the audience and they are able to function as a real human being and not an angry-stomping-fighting machine. The best thing in teaching is ‘sleight of hand’. Look at this funny YouTube video of a cat falling over, while you stamp a wasp to death.

Body Language

We tend to assume that girls are advanced in the subtleties of human behaviour and can spot a dirty look from a thousand miles, but boys are astute. A nod or a raised eyebrow can establish a connection that a thousand words can’t begin to achieve. I remember a particularly student, who challenged me constantly when we first met. Finally, he mellowed and then all I had to do was nod my head as he entered the room. He would then nod back, as if this was some sort of accepted greeting. It said that we respected each other. And, he stopped other students from misbehaving. This was all down to a simple greeting of a nod.

In the moment

I tend to be a ‘night before’ kind of person. I can rarely plan ahead. It is ‘all now’ or ‘at the last minute’ with me, and I think a lot of boys are like me. That’s why homework from boys tends to have that look of 'writing on the bus' look about it. Have you done the work for Jones? No. Lean forward Bob and I’ll write it on your back.

Our whole exam system keeps changing depending on whether girls or boys are underperforming. If boys are underperforming, the terminal exams are wheeled out. If girls are underperforming, then coursework is dragged out. Girls understand that things need crafting. Boys know that if they do this think quickly, then they’ll have more time to play football. Oh, and they like the competitiveness of things.

Not all boys are the same

I don’t like football. I am not like most of the male population. Not all boys are loud, out-spoken and confident. There are so many different types of boy in the class that rarely two are the same. These might be some of the types you might see in the class: the quiet but popular boy; the outspoken intelligent boy; the quiet reflective boy. There are loads of them. Each one has subtle differences to the others. I think it is healthy to not tarnish all boys as the same. And, for some lessons, boys will be totally different things. I know of students being quiet as a mouse in English and then become positively boisterous in a Geography lesson.

Now, this is where it gets complicated: the girly bit.

Teaching girls to put makeup on properly

It is with much regret I have to admit to never having been in the awkward position as Chris’s, rather funny and painful, staffroom anecdote. I am embarking (or should I say, trying to survive) my tenth year as an English teacher and in all that time, we females have outnumbered the fellas. English departments do seem to be rather oestrogen heavy and I don’t think it’s a good thing. The rather interesting issues that occur when teaching an ‘all girls’class spill out into the female adults who teach the subject, a desire to be good, but not always KNOWING that you are.

I have been at my school for about three years now (do excuse the vagueness, I started in January, and, oddly my brain finds it hard to work out precisely how long my tenure has been). I have taught both ‘all boys’ and ‘all girls’ groups at KS4, and for all its old fashioned peculiarities, I enjoyed both groups, and learned a huge amount from the process.

Context is everything, I’m an English teacher don’t you know?  

 Two years ago, as we embarked on the all new and sparkly WJEC GCSE Language and Literature courses, I was handed a very able group of all girls. In fact, on paper they were the second set, and due to the gendered setting, they were a mixture of a top and second set. The paper work and data said that they were less able than the boys. (Their results told a different story, te he he). Now the management, in their wisdom, also decided that a) we would start the GCSE at the new timetable rollover in June and b) we would teach the outgoing GCSE English Spec in Year 10 b) the new GCSE Language and Literature at the tail end of Year 10 and into 11. Yes, dear reader, three GCSE courses in two years, bonkers no? With the benefit of the post GCSE English fiasco, it now seems a wise move.

 

 Potential oestrogen focused pit-falls

Girls can be bitchy

Excuse the potential political incorrectness here, but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a concern when I began teaching this group. I’d taught some of them before in a mixed gender group and as a new teacher at their school, bitchy-ness was their default setting. However, it was just that. Boys can wilfully disrupt as a tactic to ‘put you in your place’, girls use verbal mechanisms, bitchy-ness for the same reason. You will do wonders by modelling warmth and parental qualities here, modelling non-bitchy behaviour for them, so that they can find their own way to that more pleasant place. You will still potentially have a bitchy nut to crack and a fail-safe tactic is to be utterly, relentlessly nice; you can even use terms of endearment like ‘sweetie’ and ‘petal’ and you make it that much harder for them to unleash the bitchy-ness in your direction. As an aside, this is also a useful tactic with your colleagues. You know, the ones who are passive aggressive or just plain aggressive and have all the natural charisma of a bulldog chewing a wasp. Being relentlessly nice to them will wear them down in the end.

Surely, you’ll need a perpetually evolving seating plan?    

The bitchy-ness could potentially lead to fall outs in lessons and a perpetually evolving seating plan. How do you get round this? Use your emotional intelligence. Get to notice and know their friendship groups. Take that into account in your seating plans. In my class, I had the core of the popular alpha females of the year group. When they all sat together, pre-seating plan, I couldn’t get them to work. I had to use the ‘divide and conquer’ rule, while at the same time allowing the well-functioning and productive friendship groups to remain together. Girls place a high value on fairness. Be explicit and state your seating plan is about helping them achieve, not anything personal and they will accept it with good grace.

Id, ego and superego

It is very rare they you will come across a truly egotistical or egocentric girl (or woman for that matter, but crikey, when you do, AVOID, AVOID, AVOID!) if they appear so, it is merely a front to hide a rather more altogether fragile ego. As I said in my introduction, I found my girls wanted to be good at the subject. Many of them already were, but few of them actually knew it. Even the most able student I’ve taught in many a year, did not want to acknowledge precisely how good she really was.

When teaching something totally knew to them, like Spoken Language, or something they are intimidated by such as poetry, an ego massage is required. Remind them what they are already good at. Tell them that they are capable as often as you can ,and, eventually, the ego will listen. Girls are more prone to worrying about getting it wrong; fear of failure can be crippling. Let them fail, safely, comfortably and kindly in your classroom, so that they know how to avoid it in the exam. Park your ego firmly at the door-  work on theirs.

They can see through bells and whistles.

My colleague and I taught ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at the same time. The resources I was initially given were based around the RSC drama approach to the text. The boys loved it, lapped it up, but the girls found it hateful. They felt exposed and vulnerable and they were not, by and large, ‘look at me’ drama types. What did they like? Old school didactic chalk and talk. It certainly surprised me and I felt a bit, well, fraudulent resorting to such old school methods. I think, I have a suspicion, that they feel the security of needing to know they are being taught by an expert, and this rather old school method enabled them to see that  once they worked out I wasn’t a fraud, they in turn felt more confident, they became a bit more brave in their own decisions.

Girls can see beyond the end of their nose

From the outset, girls can recognise that they are working towards a future goal. Boys struggle with this very concept, they very much live in the present, they are already pre-programmed to ‘carpe diem’. Why do you need to be aware of this difference? Well, if they already have this intrinsic, internal self-motivation towards a future end goal, beating them with a stick will do you no favours. You MUST recognise their emotional state during times of pressure, you MUST empathise with the pressure they are under and alter your lessons accordingly.

Towards the end of Year 11, they became more and more emotionally and mentally drained by the whole process. My solution? Give them a choice of revision tasks, and a choice of methods to use and get them to work in groups for moral support. Allow them to decide for themselves how best to revise and what to revise. Many, chose to do so at home, often asking for more resources to take with them. Trust them to do the right thing and more often than not, they will.

A final thought

So men are from Mars, women from Venus, boys from Pluto and girls are from Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter. We think that gender in the classroom is a complex aspect of teaching and sometimes gender needs to play a part in an IEP. Oh, look they have got this and that, and also they are a girl.

I have to say, after having taught all boys and all girls groups, I loved the experience of doing both. I found with the boys, and my group were very laddish, that some days it was like watching a sequence from ‘Gorillas in the Mist’. They tweaked each others’ hair gel and at one point, one lad gave another who was the ‘alpha male’ a shoulder massage; my flabber was well and truly gasted I can tell you. The girls were by and large a more co-operative bunch and by that I mean with each other, letting go of, or ignoring their differences for the common good and goals of the class. They are also worry warts and want more reassurance, a mix of giving it, and ‘cruel to be kind’ denying it is needed in order to build up confidence and decision making.

Huge thanks to @Xris32 for suggesting we do this and helping me get my blogging mojo back. He's blog is a treasure trove of good advice and easily nick-able ideas, a must read. http://learningfrommymistakesenglish.blogspot.co.uk/

Another digression: It's all about the psychology, innit?

It's going to be a busy blogging weekend as I am currently collaborating on a blog post about teaching and gender with the lovely @Xris32 as well as having an urge to write this one. 

What has spurred me to ramble on this morning? 

An interesting Friday with my Year 10 (I call them 'bonkers', I mean that in an affectionate, rather than a derogatory way) made me think about the psychological trickery involved in teaching.  

This group are hard work, and would you believe it, I volunteered to be their teacher, madness! Well possibly. I'd taught many of this group in Year 9 and my god they were exhausting, but through shear stubbornness and determination I won them over in the end. For that kind of group, full of fragile egos and emotional problems, familiarity with their teacher is a benefit, so, dear reader I volunteered to take them on at GCSE. Do they issue medals of bravery for teaching? Shouldn't they?

Anyway, Friday Period 1 tends to be our best lesson. They are quiet and calm and seem to turn into this lovely studious group of pupils; I wish I could say the same for all of our lessons. On Tuesday last lesson, which is the last lesson of the day, I'm not sure who is watching the clock more sometimes, them or me. 

We have finished reading Of Mice and Men and I had issued them with a series of 'Thunks' about the whole text based on the fabulous range of ideas presented in @Xris32's blog and something that I think I swiped from @kennypieper (All teachers are thieves, FACT). 

We did one as a whole class: 'To what extent is George's killing of Lennie an act of kindness?'  and 'How will George's life be different now he no longer has Lennie to look after?'  Neither question is hardly ground breaking in terms of a 'Thunk' but it was a lead into the more abstract ones like 'Who would you want to sit next to in class, George or Lennie? Why?' (@dockers_hoops) and 'If Lennie is a horse or a bear, which animal are the other characters like and why?'  (@Xris32)

I started by recapping the George 'Thunk' and slipped into a small anecdote about my dad.  I told them how I had watched him die slowly and horribly from liver cancer, that he had died in my arms and how helpless I felt. I had watched him suffer terribly; it was the most painful thing to watch.  I could do nothing about it. Implying my only alternative was to do what George did for Lennie. Although George's situation is fictional and fictionalised, the moral dilemma he is tortured with is very real. It happens to very real people. 

I told them how much I understood George's actions and above anything else, it made him brave. It took courage to do what he did.   Now, it's not often that they listen in ABSOLUTE SILENCE to anything an adult says, least of all me. They did then.  One even muttered, when I told them dad died in my arms, 'Oh Christ'.  I didn't speak for long and got back to the 'Thunks' fairly quickly. 

The change in the atmosphere in the lesson was palpable. The listened in a surprise silence, which I think turned from shock into respect. A seismic shift for this group, to coin Steinbeck, 'a moment had turned into so much more than a moment.' Ethereally, it came and it went like a cloud in the sky and on the lesson went. 

I told them they needed to be brave and show courage in lessons, to make decisions for themselves in order to succeed. It was my Henry V 'Once more into the breach' call to arms (Look, I shoe-horned Shakespeare in there, don't you see?).

They were given their new 'Thunks' to choose from, and they worked in pairs to do so. They were told an IT room was booked so they had to decide WHAT they were going to do, and HOW they were going to do it this lesson.  They beavered away, calmly and quietly as if they were the top set of the year group. Spooky.

What on earth did I do?

This is what got me thinking. What did my dramatic but personal anecdote do? There's even a thought of, 'Should I have said it?'.  

To these kids I am an authority figure, that for all sorts of complex and understandable reasons, they are hard wired to rebel against. My authority is challenged; I have to work hard to maintain it in each lesson. Most importantly though, it really isn't personal.  Essentially, I am a 'thing' rather than a person. Think about it. It is so much easier to throw a really hard punch at a stuffed, inanimate punch bag than it is a real person isn't it? 

I revealed something incredibly personal to them, a traumatic event in my life, they listened intently.  What did this change? I altered from a 'thing' to a person.  This could be a risky strategy, this could expose me as weak, I don't think it did.  They saw the person behind the title 'teacher' and that horrible things happen to all sorts of people. When they view me as both teacher and person, I am less of a 'thing' and more (cliche klaxon) real. 



NB Apologies for the missing accent on 'cliche' - can't work out how to add it on Blogger.
If I have credited the wrong person for an idea I've stolen, do not hesitate to correct me. 

The Bard V Dangerous minds

So, after a minor digression, I'm back to the Bard.  This is thanks to @hgaldinoshea who has shared a previous blog entry with colleagues and @Xris32 who somehow has managed to do a blog entry every week since term began. As you can see from the date of entry....I haven't! 

Why 'The Bard V Dangerous Minds'? 

Well, a few years ago whilst teaching in an inner city school in Coventry, I was given a Year 11 set 5 class, very much like the situation I am in now.  The group had virtually no GCSE English coursework to speak of, and a range of social, emotional, cultural and EAL issues that would make your toes curl in on themselves.  

The class were mostly boys with only one other female present in the room...another pupil.  The boys were full of testosterone, anxiety, and fairly disaffected, much like the class Michelle Pfeiffer has in 'Dangerous Minds', although I am no Michelle Pfeiffer; I am not, and never have been, trained by the Marines, I'm not a petite size 8 or stunningly beautiful. Nor do I own a nicely fitted leather jacket. I very much felt I was up the proverbial creek without a paddle.  

To begin at the beginning

I began, rightly or wrongly, with their Shakespeare text as it is the 'big one' in many senses and I had chosen 'Romeo and Juliet'. Partly because I had taught it for many years and partly because I felt at least secure in my knowledge of the text. Additionally, I'd hoped they would be able to grasp the whole 'gang rivalry' thing as some of them, in all likelyhood, were actually in one.  

Now, I can't say we began terribly well, I can't recollect precisely how I began with them. It could have been so disastrous that my brain has blanked it out, but what I can remember is a moment where things started to work...or feel less like Armageddon. 

We were looking at Act 1 Scene 1, so I am presented with the dilemmas: 
'How do I win them over?' 
'How do I make it relevant to them?' 
'How do they get the humour when initially it seems so unfunny to them?'.  

Easy, I take a leaf out of Mrs. O'Driscoll's (see post on Shakespeare Insults) tried and tested teaching book and concentrate on the rudeness. 

SAMPSON 

    True; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, 
    are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push 
    Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids 
    to the wall. 

So, ask them to underline the word 'thrust'....can you see where I am going here? Point out that a sword is something that you have to thrust...but what else? What is suggestive about this? Here, be prepared for some surprising and funny answers...and a possible side-track into PHSE territory. 

Double-entendre time

Here, you do need to tell them, or give clues as to what a 'maidenhead' is all about...and let the penny drop. You could introduce the idea of double-entendre here, and then move onto the Shakespeare's text. It is important to ask them WHY Shakespeare is getting these characters to be so suggestive and refer to sex so much in the opening? What is the purpose? What are they trying to prove? How will the audience react? What type of play do the audience think they are currently watching? 

SAMPSON 

    'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I 
    have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the 
    maids, and cut off their heads. 

Desperate times call for props and thinking on the hoof

Now, here we move onto a moment of improvised use of props and without it, I could have been flogging this particular dead fish for hours.

GREGORY 

    'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou 
    hadst been poor John. Draw thy tool! here comes 
    two of the house of the Montagues. 

The reference to 'fish' is to do with virility and the, erm, erectness of the member. Whereas 'poor John' refers to a dead or flaccid fish.  Here, dear reader, is my 'Dangerous Minds' moment of on the hoof thinking.

'What is a live fish like'? I ask the class. 

I can't remember the exact responses but they did grasp the idea of the animal's liveliness and strength, of it being full of life and hard to control (I could go one here, but think it moot not to).  

While we were discussing this I held in my hand my whiteboard pen.  My whiteboard pen was held aloft and very vertical, erect if you will. (I'm blushing a bit as I write this) and I do point this out to them. 

'What is a dead fish like?' I ask the class.

They are a bit baffled still, I think I am losing my grasp of the lesson, Armageddon looms large before me. 

'Look at my pen,' I tell them as I slowly move the whiteboard pen from the vertical, erect position, to loose and dangling in my hands. 

I repeat the question, 'What is a dead fish like?'
'Floppy miss!' a pupil cries. 
For the hell of it, I introduce the word 'flaccid' to them and ask some more questions:
'What is Gregory teasing Sampson about if he calls his 'parts' a dead fish?'
'Why are the men teasing each other about their masculinity?'
'What kind of atmosphere does this create in the theatre?'
'Have you seen men behave like this before?' 

If my memory serves me well, the point was deftly grasped even if the language used was less polite and formal than would normally be desired in a lesson. 

Fortunately, @Xris32 has written about the use of props in a lesson far more deftly than me; however, your props may have to be what is nearby, what you can literally put your hands on, and sometimes, you just have to improvise.  There's nothing quite like the thrill of flying by the seat of your pants, and not having an unfortunate accident.  If you have ever been skiing (don't I sound well to do? However, I've only ever been on a school trip), it is very much like the first time you ski down a mountain without falling over. 

The 'focus on the rude bits' tac-tics worked and Armageddon was halted. The class got their coursework done, by hook or by crook, and when they left, we parted on good terms.  All thanks to my humble whiteboard pen that was not used as a whiteboard pen.