I’m a teacher get me out of this classroom

This month, I found a grey, well technically white, patch in my beard. With that one discovery, I have convinced myself that I am now officially a wise old man. My youth is slowly ebbing away like blood being sucked by a vampire. Education, sadly,  has an issue with ageism and management. 

I haven’t always been an English teacher. In fact, I worked in the building trade and insurance before I even stepped before a white board. By my late twenties, I had experienced numerous leaders and working contexts. Then, I started working in schools and, to be honest, that’s where I found things different. Instead of working to be the best at your job, there was a constant narrative about promotion to leave the classroom. Promotion was viewed as spending less time in the classroom. The classroom was seen as toxic. I even had a fellow student teacher telling me on my PGCE course how they only wanted to spend three years teaching and then after that they’d consult for schools.

From the beginning of my career, the narrative was that to survive in schools you needed to reduce the amount of teaching on your timetable. That alone created this thread of promotion or ‘stagnation’. Yet, alongside this, ran this other problem: what happens to the teachers who were weak? Simple answer: occasionally they were promoted to roles where there were less teaching hours. All roads lead away from the classroom. 

We have a massive problem in education. Those that can teach… are subconsciously and consciously told to move out of the classroom. 

The classroom, the beating heart of all schools, is the one aspect of schools people are clambering to get away from. Clambering away from it if you are good at teaching. Clambering away from it if you are bad at teaching. Surely, we have to ask ourselves why the classroom is such a problem.

If we want to address teaching retention numbers and the number of teachers joining the profession, we need to change the narrative. We need to stop the idea that the classroom is the stepping stone for headship, consultancy or a three-year book deal. This ephemeral nature to education, and the role, is damaging. It gives this idea that things can be obtained quickly. Things can be improved suddenly. That schools can change in a heartbeat. The speed and immediacy of this approach means that ‘crafting’ and ‘refining’ the art of teaching is lost. The emphasis on quick fixes and ‘identikit’ teaching methods is a problem. Instead of schools honing experience and skills, we are looking for quick fixes. 

Look at how all adverts for teaching training feature a young teacher supposedly inspiring young minds because he / she is young. The narrative is that  ‘young blood’’ in the classroom is good and ‘old blood’ in the classroom is bad. It’s a damaging narrative because it conveys that you have to be young to be engaging in the classroom. Somehow, a whiff of Ariana Grande perfume or a Superdry top is going to inspire people for life. Something more is needed. Youth doesn’t mean a natural passion for the subject. It just means their trousers or skirts might fit a bit better. 

Mr Llewlllyn was my equivalent in my school. He was a DT teacher, but he had a perm and he played rugby. That was catnip to students in a Welsh secondary school in my day. There wasn’t a whiff of grey in that chemically permed hair- it wasn’t natural and I wonder if he is paying for it now with baldness. Anyway, the teachers that I enjoyed were greying. Mr Bic who made us write stories in lessons. Mrs Keeling who read the Guardian and was enthused about reading all the time. Mr Ross who loved literature and shared it. They all made me the English teacher I am. They stoked the fire without a whiff of Lynx Africa, a perm or Adidas - it was the 90s! 

We need a massive change in how the classroom is viewed. The narrative is broken. Our structures are broken. The management of schools is broken.  The SLT office is the pivot in which schools move around. The classroom should be the pivot. It should be the beating heart. It should be the centre of what we do. If it isn’t working in that classroom, it doesn’t matter how silent or noisy your classroom is, it doesn’t matter what uniform they wear, it doesn’t matter what structure you have in the lesson, it simply doesn’t matter. Everything boils down to that experience. Too much of the time in education is focused on ‘the outside looking in’ on the classroom when we should be looking at the ‘inside looking out’ of the classroom. The people. The teachers. The experience. The crafting. The skills. Their value. 

You can paint or rename schools as much as you like, but we are not going to retain teachers or attract teachers if we build negativity around the classroom experience. Now, I am not talking about the behaviour of pupils (but that also doesn’t help), but I mean the experience. We paint such a bad picture of classroom life. We equate success in teaching in terms of leadership roles, but we don’t equate it to time spent in the classroom. That is where the problem lies. We view success as being something outside the classroom. Not in it. 

I am not anti-leadership (in fact, I work with a great team), but I feel we have such a problem around this narrative.  I have been on leadership courses, led things across schools, participated in leadership teams, but, at the moment, I haven’t committed to moving to senior leadership because it will move me out of the classroom. Therein lies another issue. The disjoint between leadership and teaching in the classroom. Yes, we have teaching leaders, but you cannot deny that it is hard to straddle both camps.  You are, generally, either a classroom teacher or a leader. Rarely can you be both. Therein lies another problem. Why can’t we have both? I am not prepared to have the platitude ‘I might not be teaching a class, but I am having an impact on all students’ as the one thing that excuses why I am in a role, when I could be teaching a whole class. I teach full time as an English teacher and a curriculum leader. I don’t have a desire to run a consultancy firm, run off into the sunset and write teaching books or anything else that takes me out of the classroom. Change happens in the classroom. I want to be where that happens. Not in a meeting talking about it. I want to see and experience it with my own eyes. 

We need to work on making the classroom a better experience and form a better narrative around the classroom. Being in the classroom shouldn’t be the equivalent of Boxer waiting for his time to be sold by the farmer to the glue factor. The classroom is the beating heart of schools. 

We are in danger of becoming a profession of people who talk the talk and not walk the walk. We must never lose sight of the classroom or the classroom teacher's role in improvement. People improve schools. Systems and strategies don’t work without people. 

I salute all the teachers working the classroom full time.

I salute all the teachers who haven’t taken on promotion.

I salute all the teachers that want to stay in the classroom. 

For they have experience, knowledge and skills that everyone should learn from.

Have a good holiday, 

Xris 

P.S. An alternative title to this blog was 'The Crystal Maze'; however, I felt that might be showing my age. Well, at least, highlighting the white patch.

Crying over words. They are more than tiers.

In English teaching, we tend to neglect the fact that students arrive in our classroom with a suitcase of words in their brain already. We can easily neglect it by obsessing over fancy words. A student can spell ‘hamartia’ correctly but cannot articulate a character’s journey to that point. They know what the character’s flaw is. They know what ‘hamartia’ means. They know ‘hamartia’ is important so ‘that’ becomes the impetus for their writing. Just like I have written ‘hamartia’ four times, because supposedly it makes me sound clever. 

Words can be fooling and deceptive. Words don’t necessarily equate to meaning. I have taught students who have thrown words at me with the hope that one or two stick and make them sound clever. I still to this day get students throwing in ‘discombobulated’ into their writing, thinking I’d be suitably impressed. Secretly, I think, when reading it, how no writer uses that word in a normal conversation or their writing. Ok, maybe, Jane Austen. Even then, she’d use it in an ironic way. 

‘Word soup’ is often the phrase I use to describe these pieces of writing. The writing usually goes something like this: 

The juxtaposition of hamartia and catharsis connotes the Elizabethan Chain of Being. 

Like a massive juggernaut, these tier three (fancy words that ‘supposedly only academics and rich people use’) drive the writing. The student has said goodbye to the text they are studying and joined the jargon bus. Now, there might be a glimmer of meaning there, but the reader has to do a lot of the work. The reader has to unpick the meaning. The student isn’t doing the work. The reader is. That ‘word soup’ sentence doesn’t show precise meaning. In fact it shows very general meaning and every ‘show boat’ meaning. The words, therefore, give the illusion of understanding. They are the English teacher’s equivalent of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’. The writer thinks they are dressing their writing as something fancy, when in reality the writing doesn’t cover the ‘crack’ or ‘cracks’. 

The problem I have around vocabulary is that when you put words into tiers you forget the connectability and contextuality of words. To talk about ‘juxtaposition’, you need tier 2 words (the fallen down the crack of the sofa words) and some tier 1 words (the words you use every day). That one word doesn’t work on its own, which is what some weaker students think. You cannot write the word ‘catharsis’ in a sentence, roll your sleeves and say, ‘job done!’. Nor can you proceed with an explanation of what the word ‘catharsis’ means. Sometimes, you get to a point in the subject of English where it isn’t so easy to itemise and compartmentalise things. 

Precision around word use is what we see in the best responses in English. They don’t throw words at the reader, but they carefully select the right word for the context. Their meaning is measured, clear and precise. It is hard to get students to mirror that. The root of the problem is nouns. Lots of us spend ages getting hung up about adjectives, verbs and adverbs when getting students to write analysis. They are usually window dressing. I have seen the verbs around a writer’s intent, which can give the sense of meaning, but without the understanding they fall flat. 

Lots of the time, when we are working on analysing texts, we focus on the addition of words. Adding words to a sentence. Adding words to a paragraph. We’ve often forgotten about nouns. Look at any weak student and you see the variety of their nouns is limited. Romeo this. Romeo that. Students might have some adjectives, but without some decent nouns to attach the adjectives to they generally falter. For that reason, that’s why we have been working on nouns and building a student’s knowledge of nouns. Unless they know alternatives or are directed to them, they rarely use them. That’s why I have started producing text sheets like this one for ‘Romeo and Juliet’. 

Nouns for characters	Nouns for events	Nouns for character aspects
husband	truth	arrogance
father	threat	bravado
villain	discovery	care
generation	kiss	carelessness
hero	plan	caution
admirer	actions	determination
priest	consequences	duty
wife	wedding	fairness
beloved	secret	haste
women	grudge	honesty
rebel	grief	humour
family	conversation	idealism
parent	suicide	ignorance
mother	understanding	kindness
gang	insult	knowledge
support	cause	loyalty
lover	deception	optimism
son	action	passion
servant	death	pessimism
child	fight	playfulness
leader	fallout	power
men	disagreement	pride
bystander	reconciliation	rashness
dreamer	feud	responsibility
guardian	infatuation	romanticism
authority	devotion	sensitivity
friend	miscommunication	strength
daughter	vow	warmth

If we think about child language acquisition, we learn nouns first when learning to speak. Students are often limited by their use of nouns. Yes, teach them some fancy words, but if they are not using precise nouns and synonyms then the foundations of their ideas are limited. If we look at the best writers, they tend to cycle through nouns but also make inferences through nouns. The ‘cause’ in one sentence connects to the ‘fight’ in another one. By providing students with nouns we can start formulating some sentences. 

The priest's caution over the wedding causes the child to want to do it even more. 

The child’s loyalty to her father is questioned. 

Once students have got these nouns they can add Shakespeare or any writer. They could add Shakespeare to that sentence or even write an additional sentence. 

Shakespeare uses the priest’s caution to reflect the gulf between the old and young generations. 

Shakespeare uses a child’s loyalty to highlight the problem that women faced in Elizabethan society: a duty to a husband outweighs a duty to a father. 

Of course, we now have another set of nouns for students. Nouns to describe the thing Shakespeare is tackling. Or any other writer for that reason. 

 

gulf	problem	fear	insecurity	divide	issue
divide	challenge	apprehension	uncertainty	separation	concern
gap	obstacle	anxiety	self-doubt	partition	matter
rift	dilemma	dread	vulnerability	schism	topic
chasm	difficulty	phobia	instability	discord	subject

  

danger	contrast	dilemma	consequence	conflict	distance
risk	difference	predicament	result	disagreement	separation
hazard	distinction	quandary	outcome	clash	remoteness
peril	divergence	enigma	repercussion	strife	gap
threat	disparity	conundrum	aftermath	confrontation	distance

You could go on and on with looking at nouns, because the next stage would be the themes. What nouns could we use to describe the themes in the text? This could carry on with the writer’s feelings and so on. 

Nouns are the bricks that form ideas. Without a good collection of nouns, your ideas tend to get nowhere. I do think there is some merit with teaching students to work on their verbs, adjectives and adverbs, but without the nouns to construct the framework of meaning we are generally chucking tinsel on the writing. 

Another way to look at it is how we use nouns to refer to characterisation. We can start constructing meaning by using these nouns. 

Motive	Fear	Confidence
intent	insecurity	security
mission	paranoia	bravery
purpose	cowardice	determination
desire	hesitation	audacity
hope	anxiety	heroism
wish	pessimism	fearlessness
aim	phobia	guts
objective	panic	boldness
target	dread	arrogance
agenda	unease	blindness
scheme	agitation	commitment
goal	repulsion	endurance
plan	disgust	strength
design	avoidance
intention	aversion
focus
dream
drive
rationale
impetus

Mercutio’s rationale is about looking for fun in all situations which might indicate his fear of growing up and taking responsibility. 

The Nurse's aim is to make Juliet happy, a substitute for her own daughter, which gives her confidence to challenge Capulet when he attacks her verbally. 

Of course, when you have nouns then you can  build around them. 

Shakespeare highlights the gulf … 

• ‘subtle gulf’ - add an adjective 

• ‘the subtle gulf that drives a wedge across society’ - add a verb 

• Controversially, Shakespeare - add an adverb

As you can see, there’s so much you can do with nouns. Recently, with a Year 9 class we spent a whole lesson looking at nouns we could use to describe characters and events in the play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. It was much ado about nouns. Sorry - couldn’t resist! Then, we explored the adjectives we could attach to nouns. However, one student decided to offer ‘big’ and ‘small’ for every option. We explored how Leonato could be described as a ‘fickle father’ with his ‘conditional love’ for Hero. We discussed how Don John could be described as an ‘ineffective villain’ because of his ‘weak plots’. This led us to explore how we could use the adjective ‘effective’ and ‘ineffective’, exploring what context the words work best with. We were building links, but refining and correcting understanding at the same time.  To be honest, this is quite a simple activity or thing to do. Provide students with a grid and get them fill the grid with nouns and then look at adding adjectives to those nouns.

There’s so much potential for exploiting noun usage when studying a text. If we are serious about schemas and developing word knowledge, then we need to take a closer look at the language around texts. Especially the nouns. We are happy to throw in a high-brow concept  in a lesson, but what if a student hasn’t got the words or nouns related to explaining that concept in their own writing? I feel that maybe in our search for improving students we have been misguided like the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’. We need something. Nouns.  

Thank you for reading. Because you have made it through quite a long blog, I have included a link to one of my booklets around teaching aspects language precision in Year 9 here. 

Xris

P.S. I apologise if any nouns have been injured in this blog. Of course, some nouns can be adjectives. Word class often depends on context.