Pedagoo London was a fantastic experience; and, again, I met
some lovely people. I thoroughly enjoyed networking, and gossiping, on a
Saturday morning in a building that modelled itself on an Escher drawing. The
stairs! Leaving the building involved me walking up some stairs, down some
stairs, up some more stairs and finally down so more stairs. Logic usually
tells us that down and out is the usual way out, but this building defied
logic. I went up, down, up, across, down, up, across and then out.
Anyway, my talk. My talk was about progress. It is the
latest ball and chain to attach to teachers. The key questions people ask of
students are when they creep into a room:
•
What level are you working at?
•
What is your target?
•
What do you need to do to improve?
All of these are designed to analyse the progress. Does the
students know where they are in the learning journey? Do they know what they
have to do? Do they know where they are going?
We are in the storm of raising progress – I am still waiting
for the eye of the storm. Everything is geared around progress. We must raise
the levels of progress. It is not your ‘A to C’s that really matter now. It is
your three levels of progress. But, I think that a lot of things are in the way
of progress. The key one being effort.
Now, I applaud Mr Gove’s effort. It is excellent. It is
brilliant. He has certainly put a lot of effort into improving education. In
fact, I will give him a nice, pretty, golden sticker, because he has worked
harder than others in politics. But, sadly, there has been little progress.
Effort good. Progress limited. This I feel is the problem with data, reporting
and things in the classroom: we look at the effort first and progress
second.
Look at the sorts of phrases I have been guilty of writing
on students’ work.
Brilliant effort
Good effort
Superb effort
Average effort
Poor effort
Lacks effort
Needs more effort
I recall a student I taught and his poor efforts in lesson.
I nagged. I moaned. I cajoled. I punished the student for not working hard
enough. He did not produce the 50 pages I equate to superb effort in his written
work. Instead, he produced measly pieces of work and I spent hours of my time
writing: poor effort – you must work harder. But, on reflection, I now realise
I missed a key point. He showed progress in those little pieces of work. He
listened to my lessons and fitted all the ideas and skills into his writing. He
did everything (apart from write pages and pages of work) I asked him to do. He
made more progress than others, yet I was punishing him for not conforming to a
model of an A* student. Because he wasn’t working to my idea of what hard work
looks like in a lesson, I wasn’t picking up on the progress he had made.
If I think to my method of marking, the first thing I judge
is the effort. It is either: wow, there’s a lot to mark. Or: phew, not much to
mark – there’s a relief. Then, there are the various shades of grey between those
levels. I know, you are thinking: we mark effort because it is encouraging and
supportive towards the student. Let’s go back to Gove. I could applaud his effort; it might encourage
him to stay in education. He will, however, feel that he is doing the right
thing and doesn’t need to improve or adapt his methods. Unless I inform him that
the level of progress he is making is minimal, he will keep doing things in the
same way. It worked last time so why should I change it.
Rather than comment on the effort, I now tend to use these three phrases:
Progress
Some progress
No progress
Irrespective of the amount they have done, key is the
learning. This doesn’t mean I allow, support, small pieces of work and tiny
efforts in my lesson. I just will not be blinded solely by effort. When
marking, the first thing I think of now is progress. Does this piece of work
show evidence of progress?
We don’t give teenagers enough credit. They know this flaw in our system - they are clever enough to not mention it. If we think writing ‘poor
effort’ on a piece of work several times is going to improve a student, we have
another thing coming to us. If it was simply a case of writing more, then
everyone in schools would be getting A grades. The A grades do write a lot, but
their work shows progress.
Like an Escher drawing, we are in this endless journey of
going up and down in lots of directions. Maybe. Just maybe if we toned down our
emphasis on effort and focused on progress, we might see the progress we all
want to see. Those all-important three levels of progress. Because, for all our
efforts to improve effort, we could be like the drawing going down when it
looks like we are going up.
Thanks for reading,
Xris
P.S. I do intend to blog more about my session, but I wanted
to show progress in the blog and not impress you with my effort. More next
week, I hope.
