Teaching these days! Grrr

[Piggywaspushed]

So fed up of not being able to shout at a child in peace (as it were) without a) getting a load of posturing and lip and b) their parents complaining (about the teacher, obviously).

I used to love a good shout and it used to be rather effective.

That is all.

Piggy one of my friends and former colleagues works at Michaela! It's fascinating to talk to her about it. Whilst I agree with firm discipline in schools I absolutely think that their iron fist attitude takes it way too far. Sounds like a horrible environment for both students and teachers

Esker what does your friend say that makes it sound horrible? I’ve only heard propaganda relentlessly positive things come out of there.

I read the most interesting article about Michaela. Terrifying lunch hour.

To me some of the efforts to influence staff feel sinister. E.g. Lots of well known conservative visiting speakers coming to speak to the teachers for compulsory staff training.

I don't want to go into specifics as I don't want to get my friend in trouble in case anyone could work out their identity. Sorry, I know that is annoying!!

Knowing that the discipline policy stems from the head’s belief in original sin makes me uncomfortable. I was reminded of this today reading an OldAndrew blog where he was banging on about it too.

She also seems to have a real thirst for publicity, which I find distasteful. Who's she doing all this for? The kids or herself?

I feel like there's an undertone of 'I want to prove the rest of you are crap'.

She posts utter garbage on Twitter.

Over half term she claimed that 2 generations weren't taught to read because of progressive teachers.
Then claimed that there is a campaign to actively prevent children learning maths (people raised questions about proposed times tabkes tests).

I think she thrives on the drama, but sadly when anyone questions them there's some debate with MCS staff (which is interesting) and then the fan club target and bully people under the guise of 'debate' and then block people so they can't see what's being said. It's quite nasty (though I have to say, their teaching staff aren't involved in thr nastiness online).

The concern to me is that a lot of her ideologies are gaining traction and spreading. She has friends in high places.

I agree.

Some teaching ideas they have are quite good.

I now use booklets some terms for homework. It's been great for independent study.

I also think their challenge to excessive written marking has been useful as well.

Same for learning knowledge rather than fannying around with card sorts etc.

What worries me is that instead of 'here's a school doing it's thing and it works for them', there's going yo be a shift to 'this id how it is done and if you don't do iy that way then you're crap'. In which case all you're getting is the same situation as no teacher talk, engage the children, use learning styles bollocks only from the other end of the spectrum

Well it will be very interesting to see what their first set of results ( I think due 2019) will yield. As far as I have heard, independent thinking is massively discouraged in favour of rote learning. Now as an English teacher I do believe that some rote learning has its benefits - I get my students to memorise and recite poems, speeches etc- however when it comes to the language paper I expect they would struggle to achieve highly on composition style tasks.

I do agree that cracking down on excessive marking burden is a good idea though.

I do , too, although having read the ideas to 'reduce' marking I'm not convinced! I think reducing the frequency and amount of it, and the constant collection of data as if it means something and then the requirements to make them redo things or to phone parents every time performance dips (or improves!) are my bugbears. The actual marking : I'm a pro!

I think their first set of results will be great. Partly because they've had so much attention due to the school only actually having a full set of kids when the first lot reach Y11. Full time teachers with only 1 or 2 year groups in a school can do a lot of intervention! And partly because the kids don't seem to have any down time when they're not chanting french verbs or reciting poetry or whatever. They squeeze a lot more education into school time by adding it to lunchtime and I think they have more lesson time than other schools too.