Days Where you Throw Out the Teaching Timetable can be Ones Where Students, and Teachers, Learn the Most – #JustLetMeTeach
As a Year 6 teacher, Mr J wished his school's Raising Aspirations week would wait til SATs were out the way, that was until he saw how every child responded
- by Mr J
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I consider myself to be fortunate to teach in a school where succeeding in maths and English is not the only measure of success.
Each year, we hold a ‘Raising Aspirations Week’. In a nutshell, this is a week during which we – as the title suggests – raise the aspirations of our children and encourage them to think about what they can achieve as they get older.
This year, we decided to use parental engagement as our key factor: we invited in a number of parents, all of whom spent the day delivering a session, class by class, discussing how they came to gain the job they now hold, day-to-day skills, what they enjoy about their work, what they needed to do in education in order to achieve their position etc.
Fortunately, we had quite a range of professions: a magistrate, a lawyer who now lecturers at a university, the regional mayor, a chief commander in the fire service, an accountant, an environmentalist, a carpenter and a paramedic, who managed to bring an ambulance on to the playground.
Some had created PowerPoints, others purely improvised and were led by the children’s very pertinent questions. One parent had even raided the workplace supply cupboard and had kindly brought each of our 300+ children a pencil case with some stationary inside.
This was how the week began, and what really stood out for me was the engagement of all children.
As any teacher will tell you, in most lessons there will be that one or two children who don’t seem to engage. Be this through behavioural problems, lack of understanding or simply a lack of interest, with the best will in the world, this still occurs.
However, this problem had seemingly vanished throughout the course of this particular Raising Aspirations day.
Ready for the assembly at the end of the day, our headteacher had asked us to nominate one child from our class who had really stood out for us during the sessions. I do not exaggerate when I say that I would have happily sent each and every one of my children up to the front that day.
In the end, I selected one of my children who had shown a fantastic amount of passion and enthusiasm for every session.
This is a child who struggles in day-to-day class work, and who could be forgiven for using this day as an excuse to switch off, but the standard of his questioning was extraordinary.
This child, who isn’t normally able to construct a complex sentence in his writing, was the first to answer questions about the legal proceedings a magistrate might follow, and the type of work a lawyer might carry out – both parents leading these sessions stopped me to say how impressed they were by him.
The sense of passion I gained from the day was one I hadn’t felt in a long time. Not a single lesson plan, workbook, handwriting pen or mini-plenary in sight, yet I left school feeling that each and every one of my children would be going home and reeling off everything they had learned and done that day to their parents.
I asked myself – would they do this on a normal school day? The answer, quite simply, was no. Some would, I’m sure, but what about those that wouldn’t? What was different about today? Why were all my children leaving with a sense of learning today?
Granted, this day didn’t involve much ‘quality-first teaching’ by myself, but I feel that I gained just as much from it as my children did. In fact, I think I gained even more.
My education this day was twofold: firstly, the fantastic sessions led by our parents, all of which I took something different away from, and secondly, I learnt about my children and how I perceive learning within my class.
My passion for engaging my children surged that evening, I wanted them to achieve that same level of engagement each day at school. I understood that this would be quite a task, but seeing each one of my children genuinely enjoying every minute of being there made me determined to achieve it more often.
Such days, where children are away from the normality of set and structured lessons are often met with cynical sighs of frustrations by some teachers, not because they want to work children to the bone, but because they know that such days mean cramming even more objectives into an already jam-packed following week.
As a Year 6 teacher, I will be honest enough to admit that I too shared that sense of frustration, wishing that the Raising Aspirations Day would fall at the end of the year when the pressure of SATs would be behind us.
But having seen the value and sense of excitement that this day had on our children made me determined to shake off the mentality that such days will hinder learning and progress, and instead look forward to the next with a renewed attitude.
I do not believe that just simply ‘coming away from the timetable’ more often is the answer, nor do I think that eradicating standardised testing will solve all the problems.
It is basically about balance: balancing the need for a ‘traditional education’ with that of something which engages and embeds passions for our learners.
Perhaps if schools weren’t under so much pressure to provide improved progress scores year on year, headteachers would feel more comfortable allowing their staff to try more things out, to take learning away from books and boards and find alternative ways of giving those children who believe they don’t succeed at school the platform they need in order to feel success.
If this shift can gradually take place, I, personally, feel it will create a better education, for both children and staff.
Mr J is a Year 6 teacher who blogs at neweraprimaryed. wordpress.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @primaryteach14.
We’re sharing this article as part of our #JustLetMeTeach campaign, in which we’re inviting teachers to share the moments when they’ve been able to pass on what excites them about their subject, and what has excited their pupils too – whether or not it helps children pass a test.
Get involved by using the #JustLetMeTeach hashtag on social media, or get in touch with us on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
