Michaela School and behaviour - AIBU

[herculepoirot2]

AIBU to think that you might read this behaviour policy and think it is authoritarian and unnecessary, but to also think that, with results four times better than the national average, these people might have a point about the benefits to young people of being expected to work hard and behave well?

mcsbrent.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Behaviour-Policy-11.02.19.pdf

Does anyone else shudder when they hear the word consistency? Or is that just rebellious old me?

I do and I don’t. I would far rather do everything my way. The problem comes when I end up cleaning up the mess when other teachers who want to do behaviour “their way” and just let the kids piss about all lesson. Then the kids are like, “But Mrs PissAbout doesn’t mind if we talk when she’s talking!”

As much as individualism and different forms of expression are important, I would far rather see them from a base of consistent respect for people and learning.

Not intended to be kesstrel but I have visited these schools. Lessons are preplanned. I also teach English and do know most English teachers have limited knowledge of classics. It's an Achilles Heel ( pun intended). What I am contemptuous of is a school that claims all its teaching and teachers are better and cleverer than anyone else, makes people pay to visit, and doesn't believe it has anything to learn from anyone else.

None of this may be fair bug it's an impression I gained upon reading the books, the website, and visiting it's acolytes.

I don't in general do contempt .

Apart from the call and response bit that bit you just pasted does sound much more Alex Quigley and is pretty sensible.

That said, the new specs do suit a vote learning style more

Perhaps in English, this is certainly not true in Maths.

I love a bit of etymology when teaching vocab. It only works if they’ve learned other words though. It can be interesting to have a brief discussion about what impotent means in the context of the impotent poor in the 19th century. They can often figure it out... but only because they’ve memorised the meaning of omnipotent for RE.
If they never rote learn any vocab then they are less likely to be able to guess new words.
My GCSE kids get vocab and fact lists for each topic that they are expected to learn. I have quizlets to help them remember them and look-cover-write sheets for their folders and they get tested regularly to see that they are learning them. That way I can spend lesson time on far more interesting things like debate and discussion. It’s hard to get a discussion going about whether the outcome of the 1948-9 war was inevitable or a result of Arab overconfidence and strategic mistakes if the kids don’t can’t remember what the war was, or which countries were on the Arab side, or the main events and turning points.
They might be able to have an opinion but that isn’t the same as constructing an argument. I don’t spend much time at all in class drilling stuff and getting them to rote learn it but I do expect them to learn it at home.
One of our science teachers gives out “Just learn it” sheet with the factual bits that they just need to know for a topic. One of the kids once said to me... “miss, we all know that in her head they are really called Just Fucking Learn It sheets.”

Consistency in behaviour expectations, yes. In exact lesson routines, not so on board. This is why quite a few teachers leave schools : the repression of originality and flair. I did see a clearly frustrated teacher at the school I visited. He was way off piste! But the no marking and the excellent behaviour keeps staff so it's a bit of a decision about what matters most.

Apart from the fact that Michaela pupils must be able to apply their knowledge given their results, it’s very difficult to writes exam papers that test skills and not knowledge.

KS2 Reading paper, and the old writing paper are a pretty good example of this. They mostly do a good job of writing the papers but every now and again they get it wrong a group of otherwise able readers gets disadvantaged during because the subject content of the paper is completely inaccessible.

Well Sabine that's where you and I differ. The words and terms bit is my heaven ! I tried Knowledge organisers but couldn't live with the spoilers!

Michaela's headmistress:

“But we’re not saying everybody else does it wrong,” she retorts, incredulously. “We’ve copied other schools in many, many ways. I go and visit other schools all the time and take ideas, and people come here.” The schools she cites by name are also KIPP-inspired: Mossbourne, Dixons Trinity and King Solomon Academy...."

schoolsweek.co.uk/katharine-birbalsingh-headmistress-michaela-community-school/

Interesting interview.

Isn't it great that a bunch of teachers are so passionately debating the hows and wherefore of teaching?? Sadly, not something we often get to do, or are allowed to do at work!

That said, I do know that teacher debate is squashed at Michaela.

This is why quite a few teachers leave schools : the repression of originality and flair. I did see a clearly frustrated teacher at the school I visited. He was way off piste! But the no marking and the excellent behaviour keeps staff so it's a bit of a decision about what matters most.

It is. And I think behaviour and classroom routines are so intimately linked that it is hard to separate them. I had an email from a (barking) parent once, complaining because I had asked the students to work in silence. Apparently () I was the “only teacher in the whole school” who had ever asked her child to work silently. And did I understand how stultifying that was for her child, who enjoyed her lessons where she was able to chat with her friends?

I bet she did. 😂 But she wasn’t learning.

KSA is Michael Wilshaw's ex place. I have lots of admiration for KB. Not so keen on MW. Not a nice man.

I go think she only wants to learn from certain sources but, to be fair, at least she has worked elsewhere. She likes to recruit people who have no prior schools, though.

Oh dear hercule, how dare you!?!

Sabine

They might be able to have an opinion but that isn’t the same as constructing an argument. I don’t spend much time at all in class drilling stuff and getting them to rote learn it but I do expect them to learn it at home.

People who don't know much about it seem to think Michaela lessons are nothing but "drilling". But from what I've read, in blogs by visitors randomly observing classrooms, as well as in what Michaela teachers themselves write, that's just not the case. They read aloud, work/discuss in pairs, do practicals, practise maths problems, write, take quizzes etc. Yes, they use knowledge organisers, but pupils are expected to drill themselves on these as homework

The schools she cites by name are also KIPP-inspired: Mossbourne

That explains a lot. Have a look at Mossbourne's determined attempts to keep pesky SEN children out at around the time when she was probably being influenced by it: www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/education/disabled-boy-rejected-by-mossbourne-1-1396701
www.theguardian.com/education/2012/aug/20/academy-loses-challenge-special-needs

I agree Piggy! I was so interested in how they would approach the teaching for Computer Science because it is so far removed from rote learning and that puts a lot of people off. For example, there is a 2 hour exam in problem solving (here’s a problem, write an algorithm about how you would solve it but won’t be a problem you will have seen before) and I struggle in the short curriculum time that we have, to build pupil confidence and background knowledge first to even begin to utilise some aspects of problem solving skill in computational thinking.
But alas, it was not a subject they wished to discuss with me.

Incidentally, who has seen that INSET day rap doing the rounds at the moment? As funny and true as it is, I would absolutely prefer to have the time to ‘talk’ with other departments and ‘debate’ like we have here!

It’s interesting- would you have felt the same way about them if their results had been poor?

Even more so!

Don’t get me wrong. I like teaching word meanings. My “where do we think this word has come from? Do we recognise anything in there that is in other words we know?” actually made it into the impression that some Sixth Formers did of me. What I’m less fond of is teaching the meaning of the same word every time we come across it because no bugger has bothered to learn it.
Is a fact list what a knowledge organiser is? I keep coming across “has anyone got a KO for X topic” posts on Facebook and didn’t realise that my fact lists counted. Everyone else’s look fancier and far too time-consuming to make. My first reaction to seeing one was to think “they have a textbook, I’m not making all of their revision notes for them too!”.

@herculepoirot2 - yeah, it is hard to fit it all in and I see why classics would be lower in the priority list...

The language work is quite different from the stories. That’s not to say you can’t gain from the stories.

that's just not the case. They read aloud, work/discuss in pairs, do practicals, practise maths problems, write, take quizzes etc

In fairness, of the three lessons I saw, there was no discussion at all, even in pairs. There were quizzes yes, I didn’t see a practical but then I didn’t view a science lesson but there was a lot of dictation and write this down and a lot of standing up and recite this phrase/definition. I didn’t see any independent note taking or pupils giving their opinion. The lessons were lovely and calm and the pupils were so polite and thanked the teacher one by one as they left the room. But a lot of my pupils also do that to me when they leave the room and my lessons are also calm (and would be more so if I ever would do dictation but I don’t like dictation).

I think KOs arose from the death of the textbook ( I am amazed you have them! Lucky you!) and the rise of the knowledge curriculum. Yes, they are those scarily busy and time consuming to create this you have seen and that some teachers now seem unable, or aren't allowed, to teach without. I use them sometimes but usually after teaching a topic In Michaela et al ,the students have a huge booklet of them.

Chloe

You've based all this on your observation of only 3 lessons? Plus the head's obvious reluctance to discuss with you how she theoretically might implement a practical subject that she has no expertise in and that the school doesn't teach? A headmistress who arrives at her school at 6:30 every morning and is clearly incredibly busy?

Sorry, don't buy it.

In Michaela et al ,the students have a huge booklet of them.

Really useful when it comes to GCSE revision, I suspect. Middle class parents just buy expensive revision guides....

Piggywaspushed

KOs drive me crazy when they are used inappropriately. The idea ought to be, give students a physical framework to order what you have taught them and they have learnt.

But no. Give them a massive sheet of paper covered in teeny tiny text, nothing of which they know or understand, and call it an education.