What you do for yourself dies with you when you leave this world, what you do for others lives on forever (Sir Ken Robinson)

Second week of the term break and I'm still thinking about Sir Ken Robinson. While browsing in Annie's Bookshop at the Peregian Beach shopping centre, I noticed a book by Sir Ken and his daughter. Glancing at it, I was again reminded of his on-going influence. He left quite a legacy!

What I especially love about his thinking is the way he mentions the past, but looks to the future:

One of the essential problems for education is that most countries subject their schools to the fast-food model of quality assurance when they should be adopting the Michelin model instead. The future for education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting groupthink and “deindividuation” but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.

We've still got a long way to go, Sir Ken, but we're working on it! 

Homework

Photo by Compare Fibre on Unsplash

On holiday in Noosa, Queensland, Australia and leaving this post in the capable hands of Sir Ken:

"When my son, James, was doing homework for school, he would have five or six windows open on his computer, Instant Messenger was flashing continuously, his cell phone was constantly ringing, and he was downloading music and watching the TV over his shoulder. I don’t know if he was doing any homework, but he was running an empire as far as I could see, so I didn’t really care".

Sir Ken Robinson (The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything)

RIP Sir Ken Robinson

Sadly Sir Ken Robinson passed away recently, but his influence will certainly live on.

Sir Ken's TED Talk (Do schools kill creativity?) is justifiably well known. If you haven't heard/seen it you are in for a treat.

Here's his lesser known, but also funny and brilliant, sequel to that stellar speech:

Tread softly.

Thank you Sir Ken Robinson.

I still wave at the dots on the shore (Porcupine Tree)

Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash

Recently, in an authoritative voice, an educator said to a group of other educators: it's always the teacher's fault!

Naturally, he was challenged on this statement, but he held firm.

His point, I think, was that teachers are the adult in the room and their emotional intelligence and management of situations should be at a sufficient enough level to teach and guide and handle students' learning and behavioural needs. Even when they are at their most challenging. Full stop.

Therefore, for him, it was a simple equation: it's not badly behaved students causing problems, it's teacher failure to 'deal' with students.

Interesting.

Got me thinking.

Then I saw this article: kids don't fail, schools fail kids.

Three things were going for the article: the title, the source (edsurge) and the subject matter (Sir Ken Robinson's views).

According to Sir Ken: every student deserves to be treated like the miracle that they are—with personalized, individualized education that addresses that “world within.”

Trust Sir Ken!

Imagine all the people living for today (John Lennon)

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

Imagination is the root of creativity.

Creativity is putting your imagination to work. It is applied imagination.

Innovation is putting new ideas into practice.

Sir Ken Robinson

Everyone deserves a chance to walk with everyone else (Family of the Year)

According to Sir Ken Robinson, great teachers fulfil three essential purposes for students:

• Inspiration (inspire students with their passion)
• Confidence (helping students acquire skills and knowledge)
• Creativity (enabling students to experiment, inquire, ask questions, be curious) 

Simple huh!

Happily, there are many great teachers out there. We have all had them! 

Me? Sure thing... and I have learnt from the best. 

Warwick Gibbs at Mount Albert Grammar gave me that confidence in 1974 while I was recovering from illness (details coming on Wozza's Place).

His passion for languages and his interest in my progress was instrumental in helping me become a teacher.

Roger Horrocks, Wystan Curnow, Margo/Clay and others at Auckland University followed up and brought a new world to view.

Roger Moses, Colin Prentice, John Clarke, Jackie Barron along with current colleagues, like Amy, Greg and Toni, continue to inspire me, give me confidence to experiment and enable me to be better.

And so it goes.

I went down to the crossroads (Robert Johnson)

Engage, enable, expect, empower.

No, not the new scrum instructions from the referee. No indeed, these are what Ken Robinson says in Creative Schools are the roles teachers need to fulfil.

Engage needs little commentary.

Enable, though, does. 

Sir Ken explains it (brilliantly) thus: Expert teachers constantly adapt their strategies to the needs and opportunities of the moment. effective teaching is a constant process of adjustment, judgment, and responding to the energy and engagement of the students. 

So...expert teachers enable engagement and learning to happen.

Expect - Sir Ken: The key to raising achievement is to recognise that teaching and learning is a relationship.

We are lucky if we have teachers who believe in us. I've told you before about my teachers at MAGS who never stopped believing in me. It's REALLY important!

Empower - having mentors and guides who believe in us and give us confidence is a valuable commodity for students (junior learners) and teachers (senior learners).

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly and the spiders from Mars.(David Bowie)

Creative Schools is a book by Ken Robinson - yes - the TED talks guy and yes - he loses the 'sir' for the book cover.

Currently, I'm re-reading it. Slowing it down a tad this time. I confess: I skimmed it first up. I'm appreciating his voice as well as his message much more this time out.

He makes a great point about the move towards personalisation of everything these days: Facebook; Twitter; apps on our phones; our clothes; Spotify playlists and so on.

And yet we maintain the rigid industrialised school classroom!! Hugely ironic given what education is supposed to be all about!

In his view, personalised means:

• Recognising that intelligence is diverse and multifaceted
• Enabling students to pursue their particular interests and strengths
• Adapting the schedule to the different rates at which students learn
• Assessing students in ways that support their personal progress and achievement

I really like this.

The movement towards 'personalised learning' in America has been exciting to read about online. Though, there it is hampered by standardised assessment and educations' long established industrial models.

Same in NZ to a large extent.

We also have mandated national curriculums and industrial models for schools. Though, NCEA does allow for some flexibility of assessment.

In my current English classroom I think the first two and last bullet points are being firmly acknowledged.

Via having a huge range to choose from, my students personalise their learning by deciding what they will study, and in what form they will present their learning for assessment.

So that's good.

The fourth bullet point though? 

• Adapting the schedule to the different rates at which students learn ?

Not happening. Not even close. 

Why not? Well, it's not something I can control: period times are fixed, the six day timetable is set, and so the scheduling remains in an industrial model. 

Monday, period 1, is English. At the end of the hour my students have to stop work. Move to another subject. I then teach a different class for the next hour and then they stop. 

Crazy. Nothing personalised about that. 

So it's bad for students and it's bad for teachers. Yes, teachers.

I don't operate well on Mondays, never have. Particularly after school on a Monday. I'm cream crackered by that stage.

In most schools that I've worked in, this is 'meeting time'. I don't function well at 4pm Monday afternoon (others may do). I'm supposed to be present in mind and body but I cannae do it! 

Crazy. Nothing personalised about that.

However, I can control when my English department meets. 

We don't meet on Monday afternoons.  

Luckily the four of us have work desks in the staff room in close proximity so we engage in a lot of banter. Oh, and we also share ideas, moderate, discuss stuff. 

We have our classrooms next to each other so we do the 'pop ins' frequently (Amy is slowly becoming a 'pop in' fan). 

If we ever need a formal time together, we meet during assembly or chapel time.

This personalised English department time works for me. It would be ludicrous for us to wait for our turn in the Monday after school cycle.

Like so many things - if that's good for us...why wouldn't it be good for the students too?

Only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud (Motorhead)

Schools went back to work in the UK this week. Hopefully that means it will be a little less frenetic on the nation's high streets for the rest of our London holiday (which helps explain why this post is a tad late this week).

That said - here are five more cool things from my bookmarks:

1 Your next book

This place suggests your next book for you. For instance My Murakami search revealed Rhys Thomas and Graeme Simsion.

2 Transformers
Richard Wells watched a pile of TED talks and came up with this nifty list of five things that transform a school.

3 New Year mayhem
This is a good example of how people see things differently. And people are blimmin clever when they do! Another great story from The Guardian.

4 Sir Ken Robinson
Creativity is an important word/concept that Sir ken returns to often.  

5 Presentation lessons from Steve Jobs
Finally this week - some nifty lessons to learn from Apple presentations.

It's a world gone crazy (Tears For Fears)

...and school is back (actually for me it started yesterday - Sunday - with Parent Teacher Student conferences).

Hear ye, hear ye - here are five more cool things to bookmark (or they were when I did):

1 Brainstorming does not work! 
What?? I love brainstorming - what the...Have a read! And see your mind ticking over the possibility that working alone may be best.

2 True confession time
I admit it - I am struggling to use my ipad in creative ways in the classroom. My students laughed at me using the ipad to take a picture - I didn't realise (but they did) that it was on video setting! So I read this article and felt better!

3 A great Guardian article on Ken Robinson and creative schools.

4 A personal testament from a Less is Morer about (yeh) Finland

5 I love this one - I've blogged about it before. Books! And why we can't read anymore.

Well you know we all want to change the world (The Beatles)

Sir Ken Robinson is a wonderfully entertaining speaker. He's of course preaching to the choir as far as I'm concerned when he says that we should ditch the industrial model of teaching.

This is worth a look before we start our school year. And don't be put off by the length - the talk is about 15 minutes - there's a random cartoon tagged on at the end of it.