Why do we do what we do?
Over the last week I have been reading posts on social media sites from extremely stressed teachers, a lot of them NQTs, who are worrying about the beginning of term and the academic year. As I sit in the sun in my garden on the last day of August I am thinking about my training day tomorrow. I will ask my staff the question in the title of this piece ‘Why do we do what we do?’ and also ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What is our moral purpose?’
30 years ago tomorrow I started my first teaching post, I was excited and nervous in equal measure but I knew why I was there. I wanted to make a difference to children’s lives. I loved children and was fascinated by how they learn, I wanted to provide the best I could for every child to be able to face the challenges of their future and lead successful, happy lives and make a positive contribution to society. None of that has changed, that is my moral purpose.
In 30 years I have got to know a lot of children, there are faces, names and stories that I remember. For those of you starting out it is often the most challenging children who touch you the most and who can be the most frustrating but also the most rewarding. I remember William, who was 4 years old and in my first reception class. Thinking back William would probably today be classified as somewhere on the autistic spectrum, however in 1984 I was told that William was a naughty boy who wouldn’t listen to the teachers and so was ‘behind’ with his learning! I discovered that William could name every planet in the solar system and had a fascination with space travel. I took a child centred approach to William’s learning and he was soon reading non-fiction books about space from the junior department library. There were Patrick and Seamus, brothers from a large Irish family. Patrick was in my class and Seamus in the next year group. Patrick and Seamus only came to school on alternate days and rarely came on Friday at all. It seemed to be accepted that this was just the way of things and of course Patrick was missing such a lot at school. One lunch time when Patrick once again wasn’t in school I decided to make a home visit. I was welcomed in and offered a cup of tea and had a chat. There were 6 boys ranging from Seamus at 6 down to a baby and it turned out that Patrick and Seamus shared their school uniform and shoes so could only take turns coming to school! A simple solution, some second hand uniform was found and both boys were in school. Friday took a bit longer to sort as they went with their dad on Friday to help sell towels on the market! There was Veronica who had become selective mute at the age of 3 having witnessed her dad stab her mum to death in the kitchen. The day Veronica smiled and spoke again is a day that I will never forget!
There are many more children that I could tell you about and there will be many more before I retire and that is why I am as excited about the start of a new term as I was 30 years ago. I am now in the privileged position of being a Head Teacher with the opportunity to influence the lives of many more children and hopefully guide and mentor my younger staff to do the same. Over the last 30 years governments have come and gone, there have been many education secretaries, policies have been introduced, scrapped, reintroduced but the constant in all this is the children. The children will be there at the beginning of a new school year waiting to be educated, nurtured, loved in the same way as they were 30 years ago and that is why I do what I do, that is my moral purpose.
I will finish with the words of Pablo Casals. These words are going up on my staffroom wall.
“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again and what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”
Remember you might have the next Shakespeare, Michelangelo or Beethoven in your class and you can be the person to discover them!

Kathrine

I’m not sure where I saw the original idea, I’ve seen lots of versions on twitter, Pinterest and various blogs. But these will be appearing in my classroom next week to encourage some quality language and story-telling. So easy to make and the possibilities are endless!
Simply collect some smooth rocks and pebbles. Make sure you wash them and brush off any dust/sand. Mix some poster paint with PVA glue to paint the background colours (or you could use acrylic paint if you have it.) Choose your openers, connectives, characters, settings, and go to town! Once the paint is dry, write/draw on your words and faces with a permanent marker. A layer of varnish will make them last longer. I’ve yet to varnish mine but I’m pleased with the result so far!
If you have made some or are planning on making some story stones we’d love to see them! Send us a photo of your finished product and we might feature it on our facebook page!

Hannah

We love this, and think you will to.

All I ever needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum

Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery school.
These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday.
Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are like that.
And then remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK! Everything you need to know is there somewhere: The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology, and politics and the sane living.
Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

play
/pleI/
Verb
1. Engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.

As educators we are constantly hearing and talking about ‘the value of play,’ and throughout the decades numerous people have attempted to define the meaning of this all-important word. The definition above is taken from the Oxford English Dictionary. And I have to say, I’m not in total agreement with it. Enjoyment? Definitely. Recreation? Absolutely. But the lack of serious or practical purpose doesn’t sit right with me. Anyone who has seen children exploring a mud kitchen or building junk models will know that there is an awful lot of purpose in their activity!
I would say that the majority of teachers nowadays would not dismiss the value of play. It forms a major part of the teacher training programs. But all too often we are quick to fall into the routine of “you can play when you’ve done your work.” A classroom with play in does not necessarily mean that the play is being valued. And by teaching our children that what we value is the work they do when they are with an adult is directly devaluing their play and discouraging independent learning.

For me, play is a wildly subjective matter. What could be considered engaging and enjoyable by one could be seen as bland and tedious by another. As facilitators of learning it is up to us to find what play is for each individual chid that we encounter. Having a classroom with well-structured and open-ended areas of provision allows the child to decide how they play and ultimately, how they learn.
An experienced colleague of mine recently described a good-quality, provision-based classroom as “feeling like a chocolate box.” I love this analogy as it conjures up ideas of an environment full of irresistible provocations with endless possibilities for the children to choose from. (And having seen her classroom full of happy and fully-engaged children I know that she has it!)

Everyone will have their own definition of play. (I know I have dozens on a Pinterest board to which I regularly refer!) But what I think should be our aim as educators is not to define play as one specific thing, but to constantly change and adapt our definition and understanding of play in order to best suit our current children.

And who better to ask than the players themselves? I did this with my very first class and I was shocked by some of the responses. The answer that stuck in my head was,

“Play is what we do when the teacher says we can.”

I was mortified! I thought that I had it sussed. I had areas of provision and had read countless books and articles about how to set up a play-based environment. But I was so busy setting up what I thought would be a good classroom or what a book told me would make a good classroom that I’d forgotten about the most important opinion of all: the children.

Taking the jump and setting up a completely play-based learning environment is scary. Especially if like me you are in the early stages of your career. But before changing a single thing, we have to be clear about this ‘play’ thing and what it will look like. And that will be different for every school, class, teacher and child.

If I can give you just one thing to take away from this article, it’s this. If you want to know what play is, talk to a child. Ask them what they think play is. Observe their play from a distance and see what it looks like. Because ultimately they’re the ones that define play, not us.

Hannah

An igloo tent in Year 6, surely not?

This is my Year 6 classroom featuring role-play areas.

The children love the opportunity to act out roles and I have tried to structure each area so that they are linked to the Key Stage 2 curriculum. The children use the areas to inspire writing, develop communication and collaboration and also enjoy interacting with each other in role.

I have recently been part of a project where teachers have been sent to see creative teaching in our school. This is a quote from one of them

“when I first saw the role play I thought, this is year 6 and they are in an igloo tent – how is this going to work? When I talked to the children they explained ‘well when we looked at our APP we noticed that certain aspects were missing. We thought about the genre that would tackle these gaps and we agreed diary writing would, so we are pretending to be the receptionist, the paramedic and the injured climber and then we will write our diary entries in role'”

As a teacher, it is obviously a big tick that they were taking control of their learning and investing in their writing – I was smiling ear to ear !

Alice