I have no idea what I will write here today. The Easter holidays are fast approaching and that means there is a tendency for me to switch down from teaching and let the artist emerge… but both have collaborated well together since the last holiday and a good balance prevails…
There is a blurring now between what I write here and on my other shared blog with Elena Thomas… most of the work I’m making is towards our exhibition in October and the majority of the projects I have taught this term are reaching conclusion… Mythical Celtic illustrations, Steampunk sculptures and Floral paintings allow pupils freedom to express and develop ideas already researched… creating their own version… becoming the artists…
My own work progresses along interesting lines, moving away from shared starting points…
Here is different… I don’t write for the sake of writing… words and thoughts are precious and I’m sure readers don’t want to read dribble… writing generally clarifies the jumble of thoughts, ideas and resentments that I carry around… freeing me from them… creating a vacuum that needs filling with something fresh… challenging.
There is a huge requirement for teachers to think… to think fresh… minute by minute… hour by hour… day by day… and so on. I wonder how different this is in other professions? I wonder if we are alone? If the general public fully appreciates the demands of this job? If You understand? That need for originality… the New…
Thinking fresh… now there’s an art. Teaching, like design agency work, has a very high burnout rate… people leaving the profession after a number of years. I’m not surprised and I don’t base this on any official or recorded statistics… added to the pressure of trying to manage often-unruly, young, independent thinking, challenging personalities… no wonder! Thinking novel is a challenge…
I went on a course Tuesday of this week… hosted by Apple it posed some innovative questions for me… The event was really based around iPad’s and to a degree was a commercial exercise between Apple and educators. Yet I came away feeling inspired, as though I’d learnt something new and eager to experiment with what I had been taught…
I’m not one who needs convincing about iPad’s in the classroom. For the two years of my Master’s course I struggled to make contact with some of the leading supporters for iPad classrooms, yet here they were on Tuesday, all assembled under one roof and ready for me to network with… and that freshness of thinking was SO evident…
I came away considering my own secondary education. Why had I switched off midway through Year 9? What had I been taught that I use regularly in my working life after school; if ever? What education now means to me, and primarily, what is my role today as an educator?
In his introduction, Michael Munn, Director for Education, Apple UK, cited an example where 500 teachers at an educational conference where given a two minute familiarization task… they were given two minutes to research a given subject… and to a person, each teacher pulled out their phone and Googled the answer…
Two points to this…
… Not one teacher asked the speaker – the teacher – for the answer!..
81% of schools in the UK do not allow pupils to use their own devices!..
Michael Munn’s point was very simple… “If we teach today as we taught yesterday we rob our children of tomorrow”.
Fresh… particularly in light of the fact that 79% of schools believe in the technology.
If technology is to be embedded at the forefront of future education, “fresh thinking” has to be leading the way. Diehard, out dated philosophies have to be ended. New solutions that embrace technology have to trialed and implemented. The teacher has never been needed more and the pupils’ journey needs to be curated to suit their needs. Learners self esteem is critical. They need to achieve on their own… lead and plan… space manage and peer coach. As educators we need to facilitate these possibilities for them, not hold them back within our own education. As the world moves forward we need to be there, leading the way…
