Sunday thoughts

 

Finding your voice...

I’ve been inspired this time by @Toriaclaire and @LukeCHale to say in a little more than 280 characters what I once heard @primaryartist describe as a personal manifesto for school year 2020-2021.

I should start off by saying that I neither feel ecstatic nor ambivalent about the start of school year 2020-2021.  My senior colleagues allowed me to work from home between late March until June when I assigned to support the ‘bubble’ structure that was put in place on a very modified and truncated timetable until the end of the school year.  My wife is a Nurse working on the very front line of the vaccine trials.  She and her colleagues are working incredibly hard to find a solution as quickly as they can so that normal can hopefully resume soon.  Until then, I will wear a face covering when travelling on public transport and when supermarket shopping but due to an underlying health condition (I take medication for asthma) I am applying for medical exemption and do not intend to wear a mask when teaching.  I do expect a second wave and am concerned for my elderly parents but will not let that inhibit my life.  I think the best way to describe my feelings right now is cautiously optimistic. Only time will tell…

Anyway, back to the reason for today’s entry.  I was actually introduced to Twitter in 2011 during my PGCE year @GoldsmithsUoL by Natacha Kennedy who herself has a really interesting story given her expertise in transgender issues.  I eventually signed up in August 2012 but really had no idea what to do with my Twitter profile especially when I found getting into teaching and completing the NQT process so tough.  Again, that’s another story.

It wasn’t until 2016 when I joined my current school and meeting @LegoJames on the Raspberry Pi Educators weekend workshop and members of the Computing at School Community that I started making use of Twitter where I shared my ‘Hello World’ moment using a @Raspberry_Pi as one of my earliest tweets.  Wind the clock forward to 2018 and receiving an invitation to speak on the main Arena stage of the opening day @Bett_Show 2019 where I shared a platform with @zinca who was at the time Director of @idea_award.  In 2019 I also managed to secure invitations to talk about the amazing work that I’ve had the privilege of being involved with at three other events as well as the opportunity to attend the International Society for Technology in Education or ISTE Conference in Philadelphia where I represented @TeamKano at their stand in the Microsoft Village.  Given all of these public speaking and networking opportunities, I had thought that my number of followers would steadily increase so that I might become an influential voice in the Twittersphere.

However, the kindest way to best describe what happened towards the end of 2019 was that my ‘take’ and attempts to engage in debating educational policy and strategy wasn’t appreciated by all to the point that I had to decide to delete my Twitter account.  Those of you who know me in the real World like @anoara_a and @Penny_Ten know a little more of this part of the story and were as well as continue to be incredibly supportive.

When users decide to delete their Twitter accounts, there is a 30 days grace period for accounts to be reinstated.  However, by the time I had decided that I wanted to re-join Twitter, that period of grace had lapsed so I had effectively lost all of my previous connections and posts.  Apart from messages I had posted that I had been particularly proud of and the connections I had made, I didn’t find the decision too lamentable especially given the warm welcome back I received from those I regularly engaged with such as @MissyMusician81 and many others who try to make Twitter a kinder and more smiley space.  For those who frequently scroll past my posts, my approach is a taking a sideways glance on life with frivolity and irreverence although those who know me in the real World also get to see a different side of me too.  Some like @oggs26 @MissSDoherty @Missycrobs @MsWarnersWorld @MissBTeaches_ and @MissB_TeachKind have posted messages that mean so much more to me than they will ever really get to know.

As the first #EduPubChat following a short summer break for 2020 got me reflecting, working from home between March and June with shorter times being physically in a classroom meant that I’ve been more engaged and active on Twitter. Pretty much as @LukeCHale said in the excellent blog he recently posted.

Before I finish for now, I wanted to be a bit more open about what I am about to embark on professionally.  The school I work for is part of a Multi-Academy Trust of thirteen schools – ten of which are Primary and three Secondary.  The Trust is located across three geographical clusters in East London, Kent and stretching across what I would loosely describe as the Midlands to Buckinghamshire.  My senior colleagues, recognising my passion for teaching technology have offered me the role of lead teacher for Computing at the Primary school I’m based at.  As part of that lead teaching role, I’ve been tasked to spend forty percent of my time working at one of the Secondaries in the Trust supporting the Design and Technology KS3 team as well as teaching A-Level Computer Science.  As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had originally wanted to teach Secondary Computing when I left the Civil Service in 2010.  With an incredible level of support from @WeAreComputing and a whole host of Twitter contacts made through virtual CPD events since May, my ambition has become reality…

Thank you for reading.

The next chapter...

 I realised on the first Sunday of August in a year that I don’t think any of us will ever forget in a hurry that it had been eight years since I received that Certificate which confirmed that I had “attained qualified teacher status”.  The day before, I saw a tweet posted by @MrWithers2020 asking if there were any others like him who had a work-life before teaching.  So, inspired by brilliant blogs from @ChrisBravery and  @marmitecamel, @MrHtheteacher setting the World to rights or the strength and candour of @teacher_mr_r writing openly about how mental health matters, I thought I would break out of the 280 characters I regularly post with irreverence and frivolity to show a deeper and more thoughtful side of me.

My route into teaching hasn’t been a smooth one at all.  Like those appointed to teach ‘Defence of the Dark Arts’ at one of the World’s most infamous ‘schools’ until the day that Tim Peake boarded the International Space Station in December 2015, I had not survived three consecutive terms at any of the schools I ‘worked’ for following QTS.  Indeed, in similar vein to @teacher_mr_r honesty on the importance of mental well-being, my own was completely shot to pieces in less than a year of qualifying that I had asked my GP to refer me to psychotherapy which I received for almost a year.

The turnaround point for me was joining the amazing school I currently work for in Christmas 2015.  A school that had been ‘rated’ as ‘Requiring Improvement’ which had been incorporated into a Multi-Academy Trust.  The new management or leadership team invited me to join them and I have not looked back since.  Their ‘can do and want to’ attitude was effectively the springboard that led me to be the teacher I am today and how I see myself over the remainder of my career.

To be able to perhaps understand a little better of who I am and where I’ve ‘come from’ as it were, it might be worth winding the clock back with a personal potted history.  My parents came to London from Hong Kong in the 1960s and I am the oldest of their three sons where my brothers and I were all born in London. For those who might consider them as ‘immigrants’ my parents have since just before the start of this century been residents of the United Kingdom longer than what might be described as their ‘Motherland’.

As the first born of Cantonese speaking parents, my earliest recollection of school was being treated with complete distain by the teachers who evidently knew not what to do with somebody who was learning English as a new or second language.  The EAL provision in 1970s schools in London was effectively limited to encouraging me to sit in the book corner for many lessons and finding things to read.  So when I meet children and their families whose first or home language is not English, I always make sure that I go out of my way and as best I can to get as many resources as possible to support their learning.  I hope that when I share this story with my students of my experiences about learning English for the first time and where I’ve got to today as a ‘native user’, it might just inspire them a little to know that I was once an EAL learner exactly like them.

School during the 1970s were frequently disrupted by industrial action.  For those who are enthusiasts of Modern British Political History, these years were the ‘Winter of Discontent’.  Three day working weeks became the norm at one stage. My school would often be ‘closed’ because if it wasn’t for the Unions directing school site staff to take strike action and directly forcing schools to close, it would be a lack of fuel deliveries to heat the school or hours of imposed electricity cuts caused by power stations having insufficient coal stocks to meet demand.  So for those who continue to speculate on the disruption to learning and the long term socio-economic implications as a result of the public health ‘policy response’ to Covid-19, it maybe worthwhile to draw and reflect on the past collective experiences.

Despite these disruptions to my primary schooling, my parents were and continue to remain incredibly supportive of the opportunities that school and more broadly education provides individuals.  Their encouragement for me to work on my reading and writing meant that the teachers working with me began to see the potential I had to actually be a very capable learner to the point that by the time I entered Secondary school and during my time at lower Secondary level, I was regularly scoring the highest points in internal assessments for almost every subject.  With sets or streams in practice at the time, I was destined or expected to be one of the select group to achieve the maximum number of GCE O-Level passes (yes, this is how old I am), perform well at A-Level and easily secure a place at one of the Russell Group or traditional Universities.

However, teenage curiosity got the better of me in 1982 when – and this is another aspect of history that will never repeat itself – I unscrupulously and dishonestly ‘acquired’ a credit card and attempted to buy a Citizens Band handset or ‘transceiver’ as they were known then along with the electronic game that was trending for Christmas that year.  Being fourteen and dressed in my school uniform, I would never have passed for a credit card carrying adult.  I received a Police caution following my arrest.  Thankfully, the whole experience was so daunting and seeing the heartbreak on my family, I stayed on the straight and narrow to the point that I’ve had DBS clearance to be able to have had a very interesting work life before becoming a teacher – but more of that later…

Although I didn’t turn into the vilified ‘juvenile delinquent’ that certain parts of the media would have adults believe some young people are pre-disposed to becoming, the experience of the arrest and Police caution inevitably had an adverse impact on my learning.  I was effectively ‘relegated’ from the group of students who would sit all their 16+ examinations at the higher GCE O-Level standard to the more coursework based Certificate of Secondary Education or CSE Examinations.  Given this life-line, I managed to secure a handful of school leaving qualifications and enough to progress onto ‘converting’ the CSE qualifications I had attended into GCE O-Level grades to qualify for a place on the school’s A-Level programme to study Maths, Physics and Chemistry.

However after two terms struggling with these subjects, the Head of Sixth Form at the time persuaded me that the best course of action was to cut my losses and consider seeking full time employment.  With unemployment at its peak in the mid-1980s, the prospect of securing full time employment was daunting.  With the support of the Local Authority Careers Service I managed to secure a quick succession of successful job interviews with different Government Departments.  Being the naïve and unimaginative individual I was, I decided to accept the offer to work with what was then a new organisation that had been established that year – the Crown Prosecution Service.

It was working my way through and round the Crown Prosecution Service from Caseworker to a Middle Management role by the time I left, senior colleagues regularly praised me for my ‘people skills’ and would often assign me to roles where I was essentially training others including a stint working on the BTEC in Estate and Property Management programme at the now defunct Civil Service College.  In 1997 when the ‘New’ Labour Government swept into power for their first term of three consecutive Parliaments that they announced the first major ‘root and branch’ reorganisation of the Crown Prosecution Service since its inception eleven years before.  It was at that point, seeing senior colleagues receiving significant salary compensation offers to leave the Civil Service that I decided I should have a plan should that opportunity ever arise for me.  Boosted by the encouragement of my Managers, it was then that I revisited the idea I had originally envisioned while at Secondary school of becoming a teacher.  Making such a forecast about myself at Secondary school for an English writing task, I distinctly remember the teacher pouring such scorn on my ambition that it still bears an impression to this day.

Concurrent to all of this, I had originally intended when I joined the Civil Service to only stay in full time employment until such time I had ‘saved’ enough cash to return to full time study.  The allure of having a full time salary meant that I decided instead in 1991 to try to secure a place on a degree course at Birkbeck College, London which specialised until a few years ago to offer undergraduate study opportunities on a part-time evening class basis.  So for nearly six years I would work my ‘nine to five’ then travel across Central London for three hours of lectures and seminars two or three nights a week.  I graduated in 1997 with a Lower Second in Economic and Social Policy.

It was because I was or am a graduate which meant that when the Labour Administration led by Gordon Brown realised in 2010 that the Treasury coffers were virtually out and a radical overhaul of the whole of the Civil Service was necessary, that I was offered two years salary to leave the Crown Prosecution Service to pursue the dream I had of becoming a teacher.

As I had spent most of my time at the Crown Prosecution Service showing how digitally literate I was and being assigned to roles where computerisation and technology were significant elements of my duties, I had initially thought that I would apply to teach Secondary Computing.  However, one Admissions Department offering a PGCE in Secondary Computing thought I had poor charisma and connection with secondary students which caused an unexpected rethink.  The rethink didn’t take long as I had also secured a volunteering role at an amazing Primary School which opened my mind to the idea of becoming a Primary teacher.  So it was through that volunteering role which became a part time paid role as its ICT Technician that I managed to get a place on a PGCE Primary programme with Modern Languages given my interest in wanting to specialise in teaching Primary level Chinese based on my ‘Mother tongue’ subject knowledge.

I wouldn’t want to put words into the mouths of those who most inspired me and gave me the opportunity in June 2016 to attend the Raspberry Pi Certified Educators Workshop weekend in Newcastle.  It was there that I met the brilliant @LegoJames and other members of the @CompAtSch Community who encouraged me to apply for my school to secure certification as one of the Computing at Schools Centre of Excellence which the school have held since 2016.  As a Multi-Academy Trust, the Board of Trustees have a very forward thinking vision in the professional development of its staff and in 2017 sponsored me with a cohort of others to being our Masters in Educational Leadership at Manchester Metropolitan University.  My interest in the notion of Scientific Capital and bringing equality of accessibility to Computer Science for under-represented groups and specifically gender equality meant that I got to share these ideas on the opening day of the BETT Show in January 2019 where I was on the central Arena Stage appearing soon after the then Education Minister had made his address.  Having such an involvement and passion for promoting teaching excellence of Computer Science meant that it has only been natural that I should want to begin the next chapter of my professional story by offering to lead the CAS Waltham Forest Mixed Community as I expand my role to specialise in teaching Computing from KS1 to KS5 combining my Primary experience with working alongside the Secondary schools across the Multi-Academy Trust.

In thinking about all of these examples, the common theme that drives me is that when those metaphorical crossroads appear, I seem to have had the benefit of somebody giving me another chance.  My primary school teachers realising my learning potential rather than limiting my learning because I was EAL.  The pastoral care I received through the difficult times at Secondary school which enabled me to make sufficient recovery to secure the handful of school leaving qualifications.  The support of the Local Authority Careers Service with enabling a gawky and unconfident 17 year old to secure a relatively successful, long and interesting career in the Civil Service.  Birkbeck College for the opportunity to become an undergraduate as a ‘mature student’ which ultimately enabled me to qualify for a place on the PGCE programme I completed.  Working for senior colleagues who have a ‘can do and want to’ attitude creating the opportunities to lead me to where I am today, taking me into tomorrow and beyond.

Hope my ramblings inspire you.  If not, maybe someone somewhere.  Thank you for reading.