Institutionally Transparent

From 2020worldpeace

Institutionally Transparent refers to a trusted profession, both as individuals skilled to do the job, as well as providing society with a simple exam system.

I can not stand aspects of our profession. I can not believe that I have to conduct various precautions such as leving my room door ajar if I am with one student, or that I can not interact with a student with a friendly pat. I am treated as a transgressor because there have been some nut-cases in the system. I am all for protecting children from these nutters, but let us be deliberately stringent in our profession for excluding them from work. I would like to have the trust of parents and children and the society at large, to feel relaxed with physical presence in a room. Children mostly learn kinaesthetically, which means that physical contact is sometimes a good way of communicating. Perhaps I am biased because of my Portuguese roots, for the little physical contact I manage is completely harmless. In fact, with anchoring, a practical part of NLP, a touch is often a good way to tie a favourable mental state to a gentle touch. It is the principle that matters. That we are treated as potential abusers is hideous, and though I have never experienced anything untoward (apart from when a few girls once tried to leave while I had my hands spread across a doorway, and one of them remarked that they could not touch me as they would be excluded), I have heard a few teachers who have been put on the defensive through the immediate accusations of students. We can not be on the defensive. Make the entry into the profession strict, and make sure there are ways of detecting such individuals, but let us have working conditions of trust. Let our institution be transparent in this regard.

I also get bogged down with paper-work. I am not an accountant, and this pervasive notion of accountability, is too clumsy in operation. When it comes down to it, I have a bunch of students in front of me. I am responsible for their learning environment, and I hope that I can put them in the best position so that they do well in exams. I want a system which assists me in my efforts, rather than hampers me. It would make my life easier if I had a system which was clear in terms of objective, and then I empowered myself with whatever strategies I have available and the system provides, to be able to achieve that objective. Perhaps that is for the kids to achieve a particular grade in an exam, for them to be able to demonstrate their understanding. I suspect that experienced teachers have managed to stream-line their work-load, to be able to concentrate on what matters. I have not. There are a lot of boxes that need to be checked, and I find it too laborious. Some teachers like to have a lot of boxes ticked, to be able to write reports based on the statistical results of homework output and exam marks. These ways are useful, but not exclusively so. I would like to be trusted sufficiently to determine the needs of the child before me. I do not want to be hampered by having to progress through a syllabus. I would like the trust to make the call of halting coverage to ensure that individuals understand certain concepts. I would like my call, if it is suitably accurate, to be honoured. I would be happy to have both results and classroom conduct to be a measure of my success. Of course, I am not the perfect teacher, and both results and classroom conduct could do with some improvement, but I take the teaching profession to be a learning one too, something I am happy to continue developing because I am committed to teaching.

Simplify the exams, so that people outside the schooling system understand what a grade means, rather than have so many qualifications and types. Modular courses are useful for practical subjects, but it would be useful for us to have some universal measures by which we are all measured. I am perfectly happy to recognise that my musical skills are not high, and my linguisitic capacity is poor. Let us provide a means of feedback for children so that they become aware of their abilities, and what they need to work on to improve. Let's simplify our exams systems. knowledge tree

The Knowledge Tree, is a kind of mindmap, where a student can represent all they need to know at standard-grade say on one sheet of A3 paper, down to specific elements. This is not quite a mind-map, since mind-maps are designed by people to sort out stuff in their own heads, but closer to an objective truth. It could be taught to first years, and as subjects are studied, topics covered, their notebooks can include updates on their knowledge tree. Since recall is one of the most common areas of fault, and because of the abstraction of maths, it should be a simple matter of emphasising these knowledge trees in fourth year in preparation for exams. The visual representation of the different branches of mathematics allows the synthetic thinker to connect up the endless sequence of units, helping all students what good students do naturally, which is to connect up different areas. If we progress with this idea, to develop the links between different subjects should encourage us to develop cross-curricular projects, again promoting what bright kids already know: connecting up what they learn in english helps in maths which helps in sciences which helps in art, etc.

In addition, it would be really useful for staff to share resources. This is obvious, in terms of saving paper and copying, and to pull together good practice. More importantly, I have had the privillege of admiring colleagues at work, and I have heard some interesting ways that teachers have developed when teaching specific subjects. We need to be able to share these. The degree of isolation demonstrates the very isolation that occurs in the kids, with artificial distinctions between subjects, and even between colleagues in a subject. I can not think of a more useful single thing, than to participate as a student in a teacher's class. Not so much as an evaluation of the teaching, but what it is like to be a student. It is an experience we need to be reminded of regularly.

Check snail trail and micro-world.