Welcome to ‘Diary of a Teacher’. Here, you’ll learn what it’s really like being a teacher - but through a very delibrate lens of positivity. I approach this newsletter through my 3Gs - growth, giggles and gratitude - to rip up the online negativity around teaching and show the world how fortunate we are to be educators.
Educational strategies, life lessons, reasons to be grateful or a little laugh - there’s something here for everyone.
“Prior preparation prevents poor performance” - James Baker, US Republican politician.
Growth - does it?
I was never one of those university students who stayed ahead of my work. Every year, every semester, every last piece of work, we were told to start planning the final piece weeks in advance. We were told to add to notes to these plans incrementally with every lecture, leaving no stone unturned on the rocky beaches of tertiary education.
Not my style.
At university, I always preferred to wait until the last minute and scoop these stones up in one fell swoop in the hope of finding something useful underneath, something that reflected what I’d be learning.
You know what? It always worked.
“Prior preparation prevents poor performance”. Right, James Baker? I’m afraid, like many politicians, the man is a little out of touch with the people of the world.
I was happy enough with my undergraduate grade, but I didn’t enjoy the subject very much and never really engaged with it. Since turning to teaching, though, I’ve achieved high grades in my PGCE and my Master’s. I started writing my 14k word Master’s dissertation with 25 days to go. I gave a presentation on it that I put together the day before. I actually missed the deadline for my proposal (and was very fortunate to be given a second chance there with only a small penalty). Still, I scored well.
It’s stressful working that way but it’s what I’m used to now and it gets results.
But why do I prefer this method? I’ve thought about this for ages and whether my upbringing, earlier education or formative years have had an impact.
The truth is, I just do not engage without some sense of urgency. It’s difficult to explain – if you’re not the same, you’ll probably (and justifiably) think ‘why not just start earlier?’ Reasonable question.
If you’re the same as me, you’ll agree with me that it’s just not that simple. Without some sense of urgency, I totally lack focus and exhibit zero productivity. I’ve tried it – I spend hours getting absolutely nowhere.
However, I don’t remember being taught to plan large pieces of writing as a young child and I wonder whether this is teachable.
With our students, we give them opportunities to plan pieces of writing that might even only be a page long. Even if they’re short pieces, this helps them maintain structure, cohesion and quality to the end. Without the plans, they become loose and fall apart.
The plans usually look like this:
They’re linear, functional and independent.
Instead, I tried something else this week.
Our children are writing diary entries in role as refugees in a refugee camp. Yes, they won’t fully understand what this is like but exposure to this world is a powerful way to introduce them to the ways others are forced to live and how vastly their day-to-day existence differs from others.
Instead of the linear planning, I chose four styles of sentences that would add well to their work: short, impactful sentences; emotive sentences; sentences with ‘show-not-tell’ writing; and sentences that use the subjunctive form.
I gave them a planning sheet with the sentence type at the top and stationed them around the room. In groups of 6 or 7, they then had 3 minutes to add as much to these as they could. Here were the academic results:
Of course, it’s not just about the academic results. I care equally about what the children think of this as an experience, and the overall feedback is that they loved it.
They like moving around. They like working collaboratively. They like noise and dynamism.
As such, this went down a storm. In fact, they gave me that feedback without me even asking.
Not only did they work well collaboratively, they supported each other when certain individuals were struggling, showing patience beyond . I’ll try to repeat this conversation we overheard word-for-word:
Child 1 (not real name): “Child 2 (also not real name), how would you feel if you were in a refugee camp?”
Child 2: “I’d want to eat everyone.”
Child 1: “Ok, apart from wanting to eat everyone, how else might you feel?”
Not only does this interaction show the kind hearts children have but the incredible understanding of others they can develop. I know that Child 2 gets an idea and doesn’t like to be told they’re wrong or should choose something else. Child 1 had worked this out too. Rather than battle it and say, “that won’t work,” they accepted it as the most normal thing in the world and encouraged Child 2 for another answer.
Child 2 had been experiencing a very challenging, reluctant afternoon. This encouragement and tolerance helped them get back on track and they ended up contributing just as much as everyone else.
Above all, though, this “prior preparation” is designed to “prevent poor performance”. Did it?
The planning method didn’t work perfectly: for all the planning they put together here, they didn’t apply as much of it as I would have expected. But that’s a good bit of lesson feedback. I can use that to modify the next lesson when we do the same again. I’ll encourage them to search for more opportunities to apply the planning directly.
It’s something different and I like it.
Giggles - it says ‘shut’
Handwriting is, ludicrously, a key focus in Year 6. I want our education system to face facts and adopt more technology. We have announced that, soon, our GCSE English coursework will be entirely written digitally for the first time.
In secondary schools – starting with Year 7 – joined handwriting isn’t an expectation.
Yet, to achieve Year 6 standard handwriting, it is. All this pressure to perform an arbitrary skill, one that doesn’t account for neurodivergences and disabilities, and it turns out it’s not required even the next year, never mind for the rest of your life. Bloody ridiculous.
However, I DO think that – for as long as pens are pens – legible handwriting is useful.
Why?
Well, you wouldn’t want someone to misconstrue what you’ve written.
As I almost did with this student.
“Just do me a favour and rewrite that word there please.”
Gratitude
You know what dawned on us in our class this week?
For all the wondrous virtues the children in our class possess, we aren’t responsible for them.
Our classroom culture propogates the behaviours we want the children, sure. But they are fantastic individuals - and a fantastic group - anyway. So I’ve got to show some gratitude to their parents here. They’ve been brought up incredibly well.
They’re polite.
They’re investied in school.
They’re caring, tolerant and hopeful.
And there really is a limit to how much of that a teacher can do. I’ve felt little support from some groups of parents in the past and felt that their attitudes to school and to certain behaviours are the defining influence on their children. Not what we teach them but what their parents do.
Looking at the example above - one student supporting another - that really is a perfect example of how our children act.
Go parents.
If you’re a parent of a kind, polite, school-invested, supportive child, give yourself a pat on the back. I don’t have children - I have no idea how much it takes to raise a child at all, never mind in that way.
Go you.
Thank you for reading - if you enjoyed this and know anyone else who might, please recommend this to others or share it by clicking below. I write for myself but I love to share it with others and connect with like-minded writers, and every new pair of eyes is a chance to make a new friend.
Thank you for the 💡
I would like to try this with my online students. There are platforms that will allow for the looser, collaborative style and I think we could generate some real discussion.
Sidenote: As a dyslexic student and reluctant writer all through school, I have always had real difficulty putting my thoughts into coherent sentences. The more structured planning style is the only way I can write anything longer than this note! I sometimes think that people who are comfortable communicating in writing don't understand how much support it takes for the rest of us. Those writing plans exist for good reasons, they are not just to stifle the creativity of good writers 🤔 Although every good writer I know hates them
Have you ever used the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) with your students? It is a fun way to generate a ton of questions as quickly as possible.
https://rightquestion.org/what-is-the-qft/
My students love these divergent thinking tasks.
Great post! I really enjoyed reading it. I definitely plan on using your non-linear brainstorming format in my next writing lesson. Thanks!