I am MisterJim

We are hypocrites, most of us. We don't mean to be, but we are. Bold words, I know, but I am not attacking us with venom or unreal expectations. This line of thought started when I went on a child protection course as part of my new role I am SDP (senior designated person) for safeguarding. It's not a role I relish, but it is vital. I realised over the day that there is an awful lot of that I am ignorant of. That got me thinking of conversations I've had with people about pedagogical practice. I've said things like, "How did you hear about the child-led learning? Was it based on anyone's work?" To which the response it, in an often patronising tone.  "You know a lot about things, don't you?" No, I really, really don't.  The worry for me is we, as teachers, follow government guidelines because we have to. We teach because we want to. We don't always learn why we do things because we haven't got time to. I recen...

So, another TeachMeet has been and gone in the blink of an eye. This one was particularly good for a few reasons: 1. There were teachers there from both primary & secondary education. 2. There were new presenters 3. It reinforced a lot of common ground that we all have. Oh, the presentations were pretty good too. Ben Gristlewood @mr_g_ict  kicked off proceedings talking about how he uses Twitter to engage his Year 12 pupils. It was a real insight into tackling the misnomer of social media in secondary schools and it'll be interesting to see how it develops over the next few months too. His blog is  http://mrgristwood.edublogs.org/ Next up we had Jasmine Renold @JRenold  who talked about how using Google Docs - specifically Google Forms had eased workload at her school tremendously and how it had helped to develop better relationships with parents. After that, David Mitchell @deputymitchell took to the stage to talk about his favourite two web tools. 1 wa...

...Take a Leap of Faith... Close your eyes. Breathe            D             E               E                 P                   L                     Y                        . Heighten your senses and FEEL things around you. Shuffle forwards and curl your toes around the edges. That's it. Relax. Everything is fine. You're fine. You've got this.  It's okay. There's no rush.  You have to come to it in your own time. Remember everything you were told and just go with what feels right. I know you can do it. Close your eyes. Breathe            D             ...

Now for this week. Very simple: …is it me or are bells ringing?…. My 100WCs have tended to be either serious, or sad. I thought that I would attempt to do something slightly more interesting. I must say that the original draft for this challenge was over 300 words, so a lot has been removed, but I hope enough has also been left for people to fill in the gaps for themselves. "Boy," growled the stranger, "get to the bell tower and tell the monks to ring that bell for all they've got. I'll to the rest." He narrowed his cold, blue eyes and in that moment, the boy didn't know who he was more afraid of. He nodded vigorously and ran. The stranger turned his back to the boy and stood resolutely at the foot of the bridge, arm casually resting on the hilt of his sword, staring at the enemy. The attackers smirked and drew nearer, almost surrounding him. Without a hint of fear, the stranger smiled, "Is it me, or are bells ringing?" He c...

On Tuesday, I set the class a task for homework. Build a rocket or spaceship Simple, right? Well yes and no. I asked them to spend two weeks and they weren't allowed to cop out and buy a kit, they had to make it - the more homemade the better. There was also a catch to it too, Tuesday next week (29th November) we would have an after school gallery where parents will be invited to attend and see their child's work. But wait! What about those who have obviously had help? That's allowed - as long as they admit it. There's this stigma attached by some educators to homework because of the notion that parents 'interfere' with homework tasks, so the work isn't a true reflection of the child's capabilities. I'm really looking forward to bringing the parents into our class and letting them share what we do. Transparency is very important to me as an educator and engaging the parents by enthusing their children is the best tonic for our jaundiced educa...

I set up a Linoit page on my class blog, asking for the children to come up with things they wanted to learn about in the upcoming weeks. I must admit, I expected the ideas to be a bit naff, like "Let's build a rocket and fly to the Moon for lunch." etc. How wrong I was. Here are some examples of the ideas they came up with: I was so impressed with the quality of the ideas that they had, that this Wednesday afternoon, we are going to pick the best ideas and put them into the topic for this term.  Power to the People. 

This evening on #ukedchat, the discussion was about 'independent learning' or 'IL' and it's importance in the curriculum. In my opinion IL is an umbrella title, one so multi-faceted that we probably need to invest a lot of time determining the rationale behind it. One point that came across was from Miles Berry that Independent Learning is something innate, present from birth as a survival mechanism so teaching it is contradictory. This is something that I agree with and yet we are in a system that has institutionalised our lives to the point where children are taught out of this. They become so reliant on being told what, when and how to do things, that they forget what they are genetically programmed to do. And there's my mistake. I'm talking about these children in the third person. The point is that we have all fallen into the habit of providing knowledge as teachers. There is no blame associated with this, we are as caught up in the status quo as...

My father rang me up last week and explained he had found my old school reports and would I like to keep them. My reaction was adamant. No. Never. Full stop. There are reasons for this instant decision. I did not do well academically at school. My reports are littered with examples my failures punctuated, rather unceremoniously with pompous and sardonic comments that did not, in any way, show who I was then, or am now. That got me thinking. I was fortunate to go to a rather selective (and expensive) private school. I was told that it would provide me with a platform for the rest of my life. The school did provide good, solid ‘sit up’ education; I learned the classics, took 3 languages and played sport using facilities most people would give their right arm for. But by the age of 17, I was failing in every imaginable way. I found that the education system I was in required a level of self discipline that I just didn’t have. If there was a crack connecting Set 1 and Set 2, ...

It's been a while since I put fingers to keyboard and wrote something on my blog, or any blog for that matter. I think it has less to do with workload & more to do with overload. Social Networking on various levels had begun to take over my approach to a lot of things, most noticeably my work, but it had begun to encroach on my personal life as well. Frank, educational discussions were taking place after clocking out time, I would lie awake at night and follow a hashtag stream from an earlier Twitter debate. I would be sitting on the sofa with my wife, ostensibly watching the TV, but my head wasn't. I was actually becoming so obsessed with all things that were educationally cutting edge, that I was beginning to neglect my marking, assessment and correcting my planning where necessary. In essence, my desire to push the boundaries was threatening to impact on the children in my care. But how did it get to this? Honestly, I don't know. I suppose I was trying to keep ...

I was looking for inspiration for my class blog. One of the children had written a story and I posted on twitter. Richard, a boy in my class who was 'allergic' to writing in detail, had posted a story off his own back and was developing his own style. I wanted to share this - for him. He isn't the most confident of children and I knew that if he felt that he was valued as an author, it would encourage him to write more. I didn't expect 13 comments. The response was overwhelming and it got me thinking. We should do this more as a class, but I only know a few blogs made by other schools. So I tweeted again, using a hashtag of #classlinkup to encourage other teachers to share their blog addresses and therefore provide a comprehensive list of blogging schools for everyone to use. This was taken up by a lot of people, who added their own class blogs to the list. Evolution. Then a chance comment by Oliver Quinlan @oliverquinlan  got me thinking. I...

Beginnings I’ve always liked using the web to find tools that help my class to learn – even if at first the learning takes a back seat to the playing! I first discovered BrainPOP at BETT in 2010; where a fellow teacher, Tom Sale, was exalting its merits on their stand as a BrainPOPer. If I’m honest, there was a lot I didn’t understand or chose to ignore at first. I spoke to Chris & Eylan, two fanastically enthusiastic people, who convinced me to go home and trial it. I left BETT that day dazzled by the array of talented teachers that BrainPOP had invited onto their stand to simply talk about the impact it had had on their respective classes. With their testimonials & Chris’ sales pitch, I vowed to use it straight away. I went back to my school, walked into the finance manager’s office to find there was no budget left until April (the school was in the final phase of rolling out laptops across all classes & with a school of 570 kids, there wasn’t much left). I also had th...

Before I go into detail of the event itself, I'd like to thank everyone that turned up - physically or virtually. It was really great to see you all. Tom and I had such a blast in January that we thought it'd be a good idea to run another TeachMeet. Well, that was the beginning of a whole horde of silly ideas we had. But do you know what? They were the best type of silly ideas. They were silly ideas that worked. Last Wednesday, just shy of 140 teachers descended on our school. They came both locally, nationally & internationally. In fact, one teacher from Germany was so impressed that he's gone back already plotting his own take on it. I'll admit now, I don't really remember much about the event, which is why it's taken me so long to actually post on it - I've had to read other people's blogs and go, "oh yeah, that was good." or "I presented...really?" This post isn't going to be a generic recap of the event, however. I'...

Photostory + children = chaos A few weeks ago at TeachMeet Yorks & Humber 2010, I presented on how effective Photostory had been when used by Key Stage 2 children (7-11yrs). Ever the optimist, I decided that I would attempt to use photostory with my class (5-6yrs old). On top of this, I thought, I know, let’s link up with a year 1 class in a different school, switch children so we’ve got half each. Design, plan build and watch the photostories – all in 50 minutes. The work was aimed to fit in with our literacy unit of information texts, and hit various other curriculum areas such as PHSE (teamwork & collaboration), Geography (locations), Speaking & Listening and others besides. Children were to organise pictures of their school into a storyboard, looking at including either key words, a phrase or a sentence for each one. Children worked in groups of 3 to collaboratively create a photostory. The theory behind this was to incorporate discussion & compromise into the act...

Educo (v)–  to draw out, to lead, to raise up, to praise, to rear Online Dictionary (University of Notre Dame) While writing this, the main thought buzzing around my head was: it is my job to create tomorrow’s teacher? If this was so, the focus then became what impact we have on the creation of the next generation of teachers. Tomorrow’s Teacher will be the same as the teacher of today. It will require the same empathic nature that makes us able to communicate with others. It will require determination to push those who need pushing; the composure to restrict those who must be restricted; the compassion to comfort those who hope for comfort; the passion to inspire those who dream of greater things; the skills to influence those without direction; the knowledge to develop those who must be developed. In short, these things will always need doing; it is the nature of the job. What we must ask ourselves is what setting will these actions take place in? How will these skill...

Educo (v)–  to draw out, to lead, to raise up, to praise, to rear Online Dictionary (University of Notre Dame) While writing this, the main thought buzzing around my head was: it is my job to create tomorrow’s teacher? If this was so, the focus then became what impact we have on the creation of the next generation of teachers. Tomorrow’s Teacher will be the same as the teacher of today. It will require the same empathic nature that makes us able to communicate with others. It will require determination to push those who need pushing; the composure to restrict those who must be restricted; the compassion to comfort those who hope for comfort; the passion to inspire those who dream of greater things; the skills to influence those without direction; the knowledge to develop those who must be developed. In short, these things will always need doing; it is the nature of the job. What we must ask ourselves is what setting will these actions take place in? How will these skill...