A pearl in the making

In the last blog I wrote on retirement (in November) I dwelt on the pain of separation from a community – in my case a school – that I had been part of over the past nine years. In fact, this was almost my last blog to date as since then I have been going through another type of pain: moving house.

Stressors in life

It is said that the three most stressful things people go through in their lives (apart from some extraordinary tragedy) are bereavement, the break-up of a marriage (or long-standing relationship) and moving house. In our 42 years of marriage, my wife and I have lived in eight different places across three separate countries and changed house 17 times. I didn’t particularly rate, in advance, the latest house move as being especially traumatic – after all we were ‘only’ moving within England this time – but I was wrong! It has led to a great sense of weariness – not just physical but also mental, even spiritual. This has accounted for my silence as far as blogging is concerned.

Moving on

I have tried to analyse why this last move has been so tiring and draining. There are some obvious clues: I’m older now than when we last moved some eight years ago; I have just retired as a Headmaster and I am still adjusting to a new status and state of being; we hadn’t had a good clear-out since 1995 when we left Scotland for England and put far too much in storage in 2000 when we went to India – and then had no time to sift through this when we returned to the UK in 2009 and straight into another school post: until now! Furthermore, we first put our house in Hampshire on the market in April 2018 expecting to sell over the summer and to move to the Midlands in early Autumn: how naïve we were! We eventually moved in January 2019 and only now, two months later, is there some sense of a lifting of fatigue.

Even more fundamental than the ‘clues’ above, has been what on the surface appeared to be a release: for the first time in our married and working lives we have been at liberty to choose where we wanted to live. No longer was there a tie to a teaching post – and in most cases to a boarding community – and thus, as they say, ‘the world was our oyster’. Sadly, the ‘pearl’ was not immediately clear to see and even now the ‘grit’ in the body of the clam is still being worked over as, I hope, the ‘pearl’ is being created. A decision to move nearer to family made sense, as did a location more into central England in view of the itinerant part-time post I am taking up next month. All of this seemed ‘sensible’ but it hasn’t really accounted for the other stressors.

New beginnings

It is apparent that, unlike when we have moved to be part of a new school community, we are now having to create a brand new fellowship in a fresh town, neighbourhood and church without the luxury of there already being one there pre-formed for us to be a part of. Learning names, finding shops and services, coping without the regular routine of the school day, term and year and managing on a pension have all taken their toll. In God’s strength, we are resilient and also convinced that we are in the right place at the right time – but this hasn’t prevented a sense of loss nor a bewilderment at the new surroundings in which we find ourselves. Some will say ‘time heals’: I don’t believe it’s the time which is the healer, only God, but it is true that this can take time to feel and to embrace. Re-starting my blog, if only for my own health, is a sign that things are stabilising but there is still some way to go. ‘Further up and further in’, as CS Lewis puts it in The Last Battle: gradually my new environment will become clearer and more familiar – and it will also be exciting and invigorating even if that’s not just yet!

A New Year and an Old Story in schools

‘And so this is Christmas, And what have you done? Another year over, And a new one just begun…’ (John Lennon)

It’s time to ‘bash’ the independent schools again: as ever last year we have had the attack on charitable status (again), the criticism of elitism and places at Oxbridge (again and again) and now, as we enter the New Year, too many private schools are apparently offering ‘easier’ IGCSEs rather than the ‘tougher’, newly reformed, GCSEs. Bah! Humbug!

‘Bashing’ independent schools – again and again

It always strikes me as amazing that with fewer than 10% of the UK school population in independent schools, we seem to attract 90% of the Press attention. We are meant to be a Nation which values ‘the little man’, privatisation, democracy and freedoms – individual and collective – and yet somehow when the word ‘education’ or ‘school’ is combined with ‘private’ or ‘independent’ the blood boils, the prejudices rise and ignorance abounds!

We applaud competition on the High Street and online, we allow people to choose between a range of supermarkets for their weekly shopping without comment and, unless you’re the Home Secretary enjoying a hard-earned family holiday overseas, we value being able to choose a whole range of exciting holiday destinations. When it comes to recognising those families who scrimp and save, however, make sacrifices and hard choices in education – even paying twice for the privilege of schooling – all of a sudden we get onto our self-righteous hobby horses.

Choosing where we might be most effective

The arguments are well rehearsed and clearly made but too many people choose to close their ears and trot out the same old invective against those of us who dare to choose an independent school for our children or, what’s almost worse, deign to work in one. The latter criticism is easily refuted, I feel. When as a 17-year-old I spoke to my Housemaster about being a teacher (yes, I went to an independent boarding school – paid for by working class parents who both left school at 14 years and who sacrificed home ownership, fancy cars and expensive holidays), he wisely suggested I consider where I might be most effective. Having only ever been in private schools myself, I told my Housemaster that I felt I should teach in the State sector. He didn’t try and dissuade me but he also knew me well enough to believe I’d be most influential, happiest and fulfilled in a setting I understood best. At the time of our conversation in the 1970s there was much upheaval in the maintained schools and many teachers were no longer offering to help with sport and extra-curricular activities – aspects of holistic schooling which I value highly. Much has changed in State (and private) schools today, of course, but the advice I received remains valid: choose a school setting where you can best use your talents to enhance the lives of the pupils and, indeed, the colleagues around you.

IGCSEs – the easy option?

And so what of the latest attack on schools which choose IGCSEs? The critics forget that some State schools choose them before the Government decided not to include them in annual exam statistics. They also forget that most independent schools chose them not because they were easier but because they were harder and prepared pupils better for the rigours of A level. Many IGCSES, being international in focus, have a broader curriculum to master. Julie Robinson, the independent schools’ council (ISC) general secretary, puts it succinctly: ‘Schools in the independent sector choose the subject qualifications their pupils sit based on the intrinsic educational quality of the course content. They have a responsibility to ensure pupils are fully prepared for their next steps in life, achieving qualifications that are well-respected and valued by universities and employers…Historically, independent schools opted for IGCSEs due to their rigour and reliability compared with GCSEs, before the introduction of recent reforms, which are still being rolled out’.

Contribution to the UK economy

Others, much more eloquent than me, have made the case for independent schools retaining their educational charitable status – the partnership with local State schools, clubs, societies and community projects speak volumes for their real world ethos – but for those who listen only to economics one statistic stands out: the annual saving to the UK tax payer through the education of children and young people in the independent sector is approximately £3.5 billion. (Please note that if independent schools are drummed out of existence then these pupils will need State educating…) Moreover, independent schools contributed £11.6 billion to the UK economy in 2017 and supported 257,000 jobs. (Figures such as these can be confirmed via the ISC website and RSAcademics, a specialist educational consultancy which works across the State and independent sectors.)

I conclude where I started, with some lyrics from John Lennon’s ‘And so this is Christmas’, and the hope that the New Year is indeed a good one in which we find more to unite than to divide ourselves across the whole of education:

And so happy Christmas, For black and for white, For yellow and red ones, Let’s stop all the fight

Back to basics and ‘chalk and talk’?

‘No evidence’ that enjoyable lessons help pupils?

At a time when there is so much Brexit ballyhoo in the Press, I very nearly missed the article last week in the ‘I’ newspaper with its beguiling headline: ‘No evidence’ that enjoyable lessons help pupils learn.

The age of the Banda machine

I am immediately suspicious when I see something in single inverted commas – clearly the ‘school sceptics’ are at work (see what I did there?). My educational antennae are set all the more aquiver when in the first line of the article I find the word ‘myth’ not now inside single inverted commas but within two sets of these over-used indicators! Richard Vaughan writes: The belief that lessons should be made enjoyable for pupils to boost academic achievement is based on a “myth”, according to research. All of a sudden my efforts over the past 38 years to produce coloured Banda worksheets and maps (aka a spirit duplicator invented in 1923), in my best handwriting, to relieve the tedium of monochrome Gestetner copies (first used in 1879) are deemed to be a waste of time. Those hours I spent carefully substituting coloured ink sheets, one after the other, and then reproducing sheets with that delicious smelling lubricant (just heavenly for pupils) were actually null and void. I should have given my hours to honing my most commanding voice, improving my blackboard writing skills, and choosing my nattiest ties to ensure my captive audience sitting in their bare-walled classroom would at least keep their eyes fixed on me.

Computer games, apps and online resources

Gone, too, should be the industry of computer games and apps, whiteboards and video clips in the face of the research carried out for the Centre for Education Economics. (I wonder if the clue is in this imposing title?) A more traditional approach to education, championed by Michael Gove, Nick Gibb et al since 2010, is being giving top marks. The author of this research, Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren, pours much chalk dust on child-centred approaches: The idea that positive emotions and achievement go hand in hand has become deeply entrenched within the education system. Indeed, it is still commonly believed that it is necessary to make learning ‘invigorating’ (there we go again – those pesky inverted commas) for learning to take place at all. Yet our research has found that there is little rigorous evidence in favour of this assumption.

Engaging lessons

Ah! A small chink in the research appears: ‘rigorous evidence’ (sorry, my emphasis this time). My mind flits to the Modern Languages’ classroom next to the Head’s study in my last school where the pupils were invariably excited and interested as the IPads came out, the headphones went on, and the individualised learning started to engage them. (Surely ‘engage’ is the key word here?) Having been so absorbed, the pupils would then chant their vocabulary, practise their pronunciation and even enjoy having a Skype conversation in a language other than their own with pupils in far-flung lands.

My memory now stirs as I recall several ‘learning walks’ (sorry for those pesky commas – I want you to notice this modern? term) during which I come across a diminutive History teacher standing on a desk brandishing a ruler as she led Harold’s doomed forces to quell the Norman invader, the chemistry class in the corridor having exploded yet another test tube leaving their lab filled with green smoke and the English teacher re-enacting scenes from MacBeth outside in the woods complete with mock battles, mysterious blasted heaths and haunting sleep walks. Whatever the research seems to suggest, these pupils were engaged, excited and enthralled by their learning.

Chicken pox

I have just returned from my four-and-a half year old grandson’s house. He was home from school with chicken pox. In amongst the chasing games, the imaginative Lego pirates and the football, I was amazed at how easy it was to engage him in reading using a variety of online and interactive programs, and how effective a booklet on writing skills was in helping him form his letters. Snakes and Ladders was great fun and also hugely useful in learning his numbers and, moreover, this and other games helped him understand the importance of rules, winning and losing. (I was more often than not having to learn how to lose gracefully.)

All I can say, therefore, is that whilst the Centre for Education Economics has no doubt carried out some very useful research, I do hope that it is understood alongside the wealth of attested evidence from hard-working and creative teachers within schools today which more than amply demonstrates that interesting, informed and interactive lessons enable pupils to engage with their learning and to succeed where a diet of chalk and talk teacher-centred lectures will not so readily enable them to do so – even if they sometimes do have their place in today’s classroom.

Stress busting

Teacher stress

We have just had ‘stress in the workplace day’ and the educational Press has again been full of statistics about the impact of increasing workloads on teachers and other professionals. A YouGov survey in 2017 found that 75% of teachers in the UK reported symptoms of stress (including anxiety, depressions and panic attacks) compared with just 62% of the population as a whole.

Research

The Times Educational Supplement last November brought matters into sharp focus as follows:

Teaching is among the most stressful jobs you can do in Britain, according to new health and safety statistics. The latest figures from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that in the teaching profession there were 2,460 cases of work-related stress per 100,000 workers.

This was twice the average rate across all industries of 1,230 cases per 100,000 workers in the three-year period averaged over 2014-15 to 2016-17.

“Stress is more prevalent in public service industries, such as education, human health and social care work activities and public administration and defence,” the report states.

It added that previous surveys had found the predominant cause of stress was workload – in particular, tight deadlines. Other causes were too much pressure or responsibility, a lack of managerial support, organisational changes, violence and role uncertainty.

“Work-related stress, depression or anxiety continues to represent a significant ill health condition in the workforce of Great Britain,” the report concludes.

A recent DfE report on teachers’ decisions to leave teaching found workload was the single most common reason – cited by 75 per cent of ex-teachers as the reason they quit the profession. Changes in policy were the second biggest cause.

I have to say that in my 38 years of teaching, I have indeed come across several colleagues who have had time off for stress or who have ‘battled on’ despite being under tremendous pressure. I believe that these instances are increasing and thus they align with this research. A few years ago I went through a particularly stressful period as a Head – brought on, I feel, by a combination of ‘issues’ to do with school parents and their high expectations (unrealistic in some cases) together with a number of tricky staffing concerns. This experience led me to consider, along with some medical intervention, stress-busting / minimising approaches.

Tips

I hasten to add that a degree of stress is, of course, healthy and like most things in life we are looking to reach a balance. My response to my own anxiety was not revolutionary but, I believe, helped me manage the inevitable pressures that came with my job and also with teaching in general. I stopped checking work emails after 9.00 pm, for example, and, indeed, avoided the computer for any reason after this time at night. Furthermore, on holiday I deliberately avoided all emails and made use of the handy ‘out of office’ function on my computer. (My wife is a very good partner in reminding me about this should I be otherwise tempted!) Just this week I heard in a report for Breakfast News on BBC that the ‘French approach’ to emails could be considered in the workplace: no email should be sent to a subordinate outside ‘normal working hours’. Clearly for teachers ‘normal working hours’ needs defining and so perhaps this could apply between 7.00pm and 7.00am?

I try to get to bed before 10.00pm rather than waiting to watch the News first before retiring for the night. In my workplace I strove to look for opportunities to delegate work and, yes, to trust others to do things better than me! Even if in my view they didn’t manage this, it is their learning experience that’s important. In addition to this, I very consciously tried not to dwell on imaginary conversations ahead of ‘difficult meetings’: it’s fine to plan for these and consider scenarios but as I walked home of an evening (and this woodland walk was a privilege to savour), I very consciously tried to leave them behind recognising that there’s nothing further I can do until the next day – or after the weekend.

Why worry?

We will all have things which suit us personally and fit with our lifestyles to reduce stress further (and for me this includes prayer and Christian fellowship – as well as time with my wife and family). It’s tremendously important, however, to look for those ‘little extras’ which we can do (or stop doing) when the going gets too tough. This may mean a conversation with your GP but will also involve wise advice from those who know us best along with, perhaps, the tips above over online habits and self-control with our endless ‘what if’ thoughts. As someone has pointed out, 90+% of the things we worry about never happen – and so why worry in the first place?

Retirement – rough or smooth?

The retirement letter

‘Dear Mr James’, a civil service department chief wrote to a recently retired tax inspector, ‘Thank you for your 46 years’ service for the Department. In this time, you have had 12 days’ sick leave. As you retire, please make sure you return your leather case and pens. Yours sincerely…’

I am not making this up! This was indeed the retirement letter the father of a close family member received (admittedly a few years ago now). He had had a good farewell party but now his life time employer wanted back his monogrammed leather case (he’d had two in his working life) together with the biros that remained. He was not permitted back inside the office and was thus, effectively, cut off from his former colleagues and workplace.

I am sure that some who retire will be happy being as far away as possible from where they had previously worked and may even appreciate no longer seeing some, if not all, of their former work mates. I can’t answer for Mr James above (not his real name), but after 46 years in one place I am sure that the type of severance he experienced was not only sudden and severe but also distressing, disturbing and needlessly harsh.

The importance of community

I retired as a Headmaster at the end of August this year. I still live within ten minutes’ walk of my former school and continue to bump into colleagues, governors, pupils and parents as I shop locally, play sport and attend church. Like Mr James I had a super ‘send-off’ (several, in fact, from a wonderful spread of people within my school family) but, thankfully unlike Mr James, I did not receive a letter requesting the return of my school leather case (aka mobile ‘phone and laptop – already handed back). I did experience, however, the pain of being separated from a community I had been part of for nine years – and I still feel the separation keenly. (My ‘leather case’ moment was having my request for the birth dates of colleagues, so that I could continue to send cards to each annually, turned down owing to GDPR regulations!)

Don’t misunderstand me: my former school has been very tolerant of me continuing to maintain some contact via the weekly parent and staff hockey team (I’m the ‘Aged Al’ who trots up and down the wing receiving the occasional friendly pass) and they have been very kind with invitations to key events. My successor and other senior staff have also been more than approachable and friendly. The ‘problem’ is partly me (and my sensitivities) and partly the inevitable process involved in leaving an institution after many years at the helm and my determination to steer clear and thus not ‘queer the pitch’ for the new Head and management that have replaced my regime.

Schools can be families, too

An organisation such as a school is indeed a family – and where I worked we regularly referred to it as such. I genuinely miss the pupils and having an insight into their progress (hence the delight last weekend when I met a senior pupil on a train. I had to restrain myself from being too intrusive). I wonder, with a professional interest, how certain appointments are faring – former colleagues in new positions of responsibility and pupils who are now leading the school as prefects. I also miss taking a caring and prayerful interest in the lives of the teachers and other staff, many of whom I appointed and some who allowed me to play a small part in their lives – and not only at school.

There is no easy answer to this loss of a collegiate community, except to encourage other employers to ensure that the occasionally painful part of transition from work to retirement (no matter the position held) is remembered and thought through sensitively. As I have said, I have been fortunate in my former employer and community. No doubt time and distance will bring some more balm: I’m moving to another part of the country once the solicitors in the property chain get their act together – no doubt the substance of another blog! I continue to feel a part of the school communities in which I have served, and especially the two where I have been Head, and so I hope each will also continue to indulge me with occasional news and invitations – and remember other staff who have ‘moved on’ and still feel a part of the wider school family.

Rhythm, routines and refreshment

Retirement – continued

I wrote recently (‘Retiring but not retreating) about what a strange experience it was when I found myself taking my grandson to school for the first time and what it was like ‘on the other side of the fence’ as a carer rather than a teacher. As we have reached my first half-term break from the unfamiliar perspective of outside of the school gates, I have experienced other sensations, no doubt common to other retirees.

Pool and pints

I met three former colleagues socially for a game of pool and a glass of beer on the first evening of the break. I enjoyed their company and the competitiveness of the game but I felt strangely ‘out of it’. I wasn’t especially weary – they commented on how fresh and relaxed I was looking – and in an odd way I envied them their tiredness. I felt they had earned their pints and pool whilst I had not. No doubt this is my usual warped Calvinist work ethic coming out, but therein lies a message. I have given up one very tiring, stressful but fulfilling job – schoolmastering – and have yet to take up another cause. It’s good to rest, to be reflective and to feel refreshed, of course, but I am experiencing some restlessness and need to take on board the advice in Adam Mabry’s book, The Art of Rest.

The art of rest

The subtitle of Mabry’s book is ‘faith to hit pause in a world that never stops’ – and he is primarily writing for those still in regular, paid, work. Whatever your faith position (the author is a Pastor), Mabry’s advice is universal. He cites one of Mother Teresa’s pearls of wisdom: ‘Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin’. And so I am learning ‘to begin’: to sleep for a decent stretch of time by going to bed not too late and rising not so late either – routines for retirees are important, too, and perhaps more so when there isn’t the urgency of staff briefing, registration and lessons. I’m learning to read more and not to feel guilty about reading a book when it isn’t part of a bedtime routine or a holiday luxury. I am trying to be more reflective. I wrote blogs weekly as a Head and these, I hope, carried some thought and reflection. The motivation then, however, was partly marketing and partly highlighting events in school whereas now, I hope, I can be more objective in my blogging.

As a Christian pastor, Mabry is also advocating more time for a proper Sabbath rest (and not simply on a Sunday) as well as less hurried times of prayer and Scripture reading. I’m trying to be more proactive in this area, too, but I am also taken with his emphasis on taking on an avocation. I wasn’t familiar with this word until I read it in his book – essentially something one does which isn’t your principle vocation – but I am enjoying the concept and the practice. I have played more golf (as mentioned in an earlier blog) but I am also enjoying doing things with my hands: gardening and, recently, re-painting a sad looking and elderly garden gnome (acquired at some point in my university days)! He now looks happier, more colourful and refreshed – as I aspire to be.

There is more for me to ‘do’ as I take this sabbatical and learn how to establish positive rhythms and routines, but I hope that I shall actually learn that ‘doing’ is not always the same as ‘being’. My worth does not lie in what I do but in who I am and so the next time I play pool with former colleagues I hope I will be more gracious in accepting their comments about my rejuvenated state and prepared to accept that ‘yesterday’ has indeed gone (but valuable times for all that). And as for ‘tomorrow’…that depends on how I learn to rest and reflect ‘today’!

Lost for words?

Earlier this week it was ‘International Stammering Awareness Day’ and suddenly I was back in my elocution lessons. A feature on the BBC news focused on a school teacher called Abed Ahmed – or rather MISTER Abed Ahmed as he can’t say his first name without a prefix – and again I was reminded of my own occasional struggles to pronounce certain words and sounds. Mr Ahmed was helping the pupils in his school with this speech disability and once more my elocution teacher was there in front of me.

Heartwarming help

This piece of news reminded me of a similar heart-warming article in the Press in January this year about author Chris Young, who was trying to get in touch with his English teacher, a Miss Ward, from the late 1970s. Mr Young, who commended his teacher for supporting him after his mother died and his alcoholic father could not cope, tweeted: ‘I’d dropped into the bottom quarter for English at school. My #English Teacher Miss Ward pulled me out of that ditch’. At the age of 13 years, Miss Ward ‘treated me like a rock star, loved what I wrote and got me to talk in front of the class’. He is now about to launch his first book!

I imagine (and I hope) that we all have memories of someone who has stood by us, encouraged us and ‘been there for us’ when the going got tough. Whilst my early life was very different from that of the gentleman above, I can also remember a teacher who impacted me positively and immeasurably – and who also gave me confidence to speak in front of others. Her name was Miss Margaret Maclaurin and she was my elocution teacher at Prep School in Scotland in the 1960s.

Stuttering and stammering

My parents lived and worked in West Africa and were in a remote area of Ghana when the time came for me to go to school aged five. There was nowhere suitable for me locally and so I came to board, aged five, at Drumley House Prep School near Ayr, Scotland. Whilst I have only fond memories of my eight years at Drumley, at some point in my early years there I developed a stammer. This was probably a result of the separation from my parents (perceived wisdom then was for me to be a whole school year away from my parents to enable me to settle as a boarder). Miss Maclaurin came to my rescue! She saw me once a week for elocution lessons and during this time not only did I learn a few ‘tricks’ (such as how to avoid using words beginning with ‘p’ when feeling tired and stressed and also, like Mr Ahmed, about prefixing troublesome sounds with easier words), I also learnt about speaking in public. Where this was once the most disarming place for me as a stutterer, it came to be a challenge which I relished. Miss M taught me to learn poetry off by heart so that when I declaimed I could concentrate on expression, modulation and emphasis and not have to worry about the words themselves.

As a Head I had to speak in public almost daily and owe a huge debt of gratitude towards Miss Maclaurin. It was a delight to visit her in her home when recently married and to introduce her to my wife. So engrossed were we in conversation that we quite forgot that my wife had gone off to the bathroom (and somehow locked herself in) – but that’s another story!

So, a challenge for us all: think of someone who has had a positive impact on our lives in years gone by and why not surprise them with a letter, a card, a call or even a visit – just to show appreciation? It might prove to be a ‘drop of grace’ in their life at this very moment. You’ll never know if you don’t try it – and who knows, someone may do it for you, too! Don’t be ‘lost for words’, no matter what this might mean in your life.