Now I am no great gardener, but as I was pruning back my
grapes earlier this afternoon (I can now feel some of you are nodding ‘yes, you
are no great gardener, way too late!’) I was struck with a small epiphany that
I needed to put into words. And now I am sharing this with you… but first I need
to give a little more context…
You see I didn’t just wantonly run out to the glasshouse
with my clippers and start hacking willy-nilly, not at all. I know enough to
check (and already had an inkling that the best time to give the vine a good
hacking was in the middle of winter dormancy) so I did what I often do in these
circumstances, search the net until I find someone else who has done things not
quite at the right time and got away with it. Invariably, I always find some
obscure chatroom that provides me with the green light, and often a little sage
advice to go with it. Today, I found my green light (obviously, although I was
fairly committed to the course of action anyway) and also a possible answer to
a problem that had vexed me with my grapes last season.
Last season I had a bumper crop of grapes on the vine, there
were bunches upon bunches upon bunches, a sea of little greenish-purple orbs
dripping along the roof of the glasshouse and I eagerly awaited the time they
would reach full, juicy, delicious ripeness.
Oh, the anticipation.
Oh, the
disappointment.
Yes, some ripened and were delicious as anticipated but most
just didn’t get there. I thought it was the dodgy weather we’d had, and I know
I hadn’t been very attentive to the needs of my garden as I was toiling in the
fertile soil of masters research writing instead. But in my search for a green
light to prune back I happened upon a little statement that suggested if the
vine was overladen with bunches that selective pruning of some bunches could
help as it allowed the light to reach the others so they would ripen better. As
I said earlier, and some of you will possibly be nodding vigorously in
agreement now, I am not a great gardener and I don’t know if this is true or
not but it sounded feasible and herein lies the reason why I am writing.
As I was hacking away, and trying to, not altogether
successfully, avoid the cobwebs and dead leaves falling into my hair or worse
still down my top, it occurred to me that letting the light in to help things
reach their juicy, delicious, full potential is what I have started to
appreciate in my classroom teaching. We are advised to accelerate our learners,
to choose target students and provide specific interventions to ensure they
meet a required standard. (I do wonder at the turn of phrase ‘target students’-
is that like putting some kid in a firing line and then shooting additional
resources and interventions at them until they reach some arbitrary standard so
we can move them along and bring in another target for our attention? I
digress.) Please know, I am committed to all my learners achieving their
potential and reaching for greatness in their own way, I want the best for my
kids. But I wonder if sometimes we crowd them so they struggle to reach the
light and therefore miss the opportunity to fully reach their potential.
Now I am not suggesting we prune out learners, heavens no! Although
a class size and adequate support to be able to engage meaningfully with the
learners in our care would seem sensible to me. I do think however we need to
prune back some of what is happening in classrooms to allow our learners to
ripen and bloom when the time is right for them and our job as teachers is to
provide the conditions to do so. Since returning to classroom teaching three
years ago, I have noticed that cutting back some of what I was doing is leading
to positive outcomes for my learners. I used to try to see all my reading and
maths groups at least every second day and have set activities for them to
follow up independently from the learning session we had had. I also tried to
make sure I conferenced with every child for writing at least once a week. I
ensured my special needs and target students were getting time with teacher
aides for revision/over learning whilst I saw them more often for guided
sessions on top of all this. Poor wee guys were probably exhausted with all this extra support!
What I was doing in actual fact was setting myself and my learners up for
failure. My group sessions were often rushed if they happened at all as more often
than not I couldn’t actually see everyone I had planned to and so I was
rewriting planning or then planning day by day to cater for my lack of ability
to push everyone through. If I did see everyone as initially planned then I didn’t
engage in thoughtful or meaningful conversations because I was distracted by
time and also monitoring what others were doing around the classroom in the
various ‘meaningful’ follow up activities I had assigned for them. Now it wasn’t
a complete disaster and there was progress made but it was stressful and I
posit that much of the stress was unnecessary.
As with my gardening, I am no expert teacher but I am a
committed learner and this is what I have learned. I have shifted my focus, I
now do less but I feel I do it better. I see some groups more often and some
groups less often depending on what they need and what we are doing. Some
groups of learners are undertaking set assignments within our classroom
programme where it makes sense. My students have a lot of choice about how they
respond to a text or a maths lesson, sometimes there will be little follow up,
other times a lot may happen. Recently I had two learners who made a frozen confectionary
after they created a recipe, were given the ingredients and told that the most
important thing about baking is cleaning up then left to it… this came in response
to a novel we had been reading. I spend time talking with, and most importantly
listening to and observing my learners and I feel like I know them better. I
see my writers at varying times, sometimes with self selected teacher groupings
after a specific inspiration for writing but other times because they are at a
stage they want feedback from the teacher or when I am roving around the
classroom between group sessions. I trust my learners to get on with what they
need to and we are building a culture where this is creating success. Yes, just in case you were wondering, I still
have interventions for my target students (I don’t make them wear a shirt with
a bullseye on it or anything though and they don’t get paranoid that I am going
to leap out and teach at them when they are look like they might be relaxing).
The systems in my classroom are far from perfect and I feel
like I have a long way to go but I can appreciate that what I am aiming for is
creating space so that the light can come in and great, juicy, delicious,
flourishing can occur naturally. We don't have standardised brains, we don't learn in standardised ways (oh, how easy, and how dreadfully dull teaching would be if this were true) so teaching our students with an expectation that they will achieve, or flourish, in a standardised time frame seems somewhat counter-intuitive really. By letting the light in, and noticing when I am not, I feel like I am giving my learners a better deal than I was and am seeing the growth in confidence, self management and personal drive to learn. It's a start and it all came from pruning back a little, even if I was a little late!
