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Well-being thoughts #teacher5adayslowchat

29/8/2016

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At several points today, I have seen, passing my timeline, questions and discussions about well-being, as it applies to children and adults in school. I’ve offered some ideas at appropriate times. However, the discussion is not really one to be had in 140 characters, as it always will be a very nuanced state of affairs.
In order to be able to concentrate on specifics, I’ll concentrate on the adults.
Teaching is a slightly strange job, in that, in order to become a good practitioner, there is a need to immerse oneself in the role, entailing much time thinking, talking and sharing ideas within the colleague team. The internet has added significantly to each of these activities, if the committed teacher then joins an on-line community, or spends time trawling the available information and resources. It can be a case of “How much is enough?” To which the answer is that teaching has the potential to become a 24/7/365 job, especially as one moves into promoted roles.
Exploring the dynamics of a teacher role throughout a career is interesting. I can only look at those lives that have been close to me and my own career, from probationer in 1974, through to 16 years of headship and now 11 years of freelance activity.
The early years of teaching were characterised by long hours, as training opportunities were invariably twilight, with some at weekends. Photocopying and ICT were still being invented, so worksheets and cards had to be hand written. Clubs were a regular demand.  However, for several years, there was still time to play cricket during summer weekends and midweek, as these could be diaried and kept to. Other sports were a little more haphazard, as they relied on diaries tying up, eg squash. An interest in wildlife was supported by Wildlife Trust talks, again on the calendar. Personal time could be created and holidays booked to provide a bit of distance from home and school demands. But, I can still remember visits to places of interest which resulted in some purchases, photographs, booklet retention, picking up shells, stones or other objects that might go onto the interest table.
Family life changed the time dimension somewhat, in that cricket became one weekend game and an occasional midweek fixture, ending when I managed not to catch a ball with my face, which required a modicum of reconstruction. Our three year old’s reaction on seeing me was enough to bring participation to an end.
Folk music replaced cricket, being a little less hazardous. I’ve avoided all contact with Morris dancing sticks! After learning to play the guitar, as a 29 year old, starting with the school beginners’ group, I was asked to run workshops at the Sidmouth Folk Festival, during which I encountered the bodhran. An immediate affinity with the two-ended beater allowed me to relatively quickly develop sufficient skill to join a friend in sharing tunes and songs at folk clubs, then to join a demonstration dance group as one of the musicians, which led to an offshoot barn dance band. While this continued, it allowed regular extended sessions that required full concentration; no chance of drifting back to “school think”.
Conservation activities led to voluntarily running the Hampshire and IoW Wildlife Trust Junior Watch group, leading monthly meetings, coordination a dozen groups and collating the regular newsletter.
Within all this, I also made time for a Post Grad Cert Ed and then a PG Dip Ed! Time and energy seemed to expand to fill the need.
Promotion to deputy headship saw the loss of time for Watch, as coordination aspects of school took that time. Promotion to headship, developing a need school, took away the regular folk playing. Team building required coordination time, so personal time became less available.
Our third child was three when my first wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. This shaped the following eleven years, particularly as one major decision was to buy a cheap house in mid-France, to allow holidays at times other than the summer holiday, replacing the regular camping trips that we had done for fifteen years. It also offered an alternative place for activities that would clear my mind for periods of each day. Worrying about leaking pipes, security of electrics or of your carpentry concentrates the mind. These forays provided the quality time breaks, where term-time was heavily school-dominated.
Now that I am considering a new phase in my life, several of the “lost hobbies” are still in mind. I have, over the past few years, got out the paints and daubed on paper for relaxation. I’m looking for an outlet for folk music, and I’d love to find an over-60s cricket team. I just won’t field at silly mid-on. Perhaps that’s why it has that title! I will make diary time for that, and for the regular visits to France for gardening and maintenance.
Life changes. One has to accept that. We change, too. Developing and maintaining hobbies takes time and effort. Having the ability to diary time for this can be a luxury within family time, but pays dividends, as you have moments of relaxation away from work and family pressures. The ebb and flow of life can challenge our time. Some things fall, to be replaced by other demands. It is important not to feel deprived when this happens, it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry.
Equally, there are no quick fixes. Demands on our time can come from all directions, as young people with older parents, marrying and sharing time with another, children arriving, various transitions then older parent needs coupled with grandparenting. Time demands are individual.
Work makes specific demands. It is timed, from the official start and finish times to the personal needs to arrive ahead of the start and to leave when satisfied that the job’s been done. Sometimes, in order to preserve sanity, “good enough” has to be just that. Perfect may be just one step too far on that day.
School managers need to consider the waves of demand that they put on people, usually eating into personal time, such as report writing and parent meetings, as well as staff meetings and the multitude of other meetings that schools spawn. An annual calendar helps everyone to know where peak demands are and enable adaptation. Where report writing is required, reducing the meeting demands in other ways can be a way to pay back staff for their time. Timing reports at term ends can allow build up and good use of PPA or other support time, rather than after a holiday, where staff will spend their personal time working rather than unwinding.
Goodwill is often a case of very good communication, a well ordered and organised overview and supply-side approach from management, which reduces personal stress that comes from not knowing about an event, or finding that resources have run out. Being able to get on with the job efficiently allows more personal time to develop. Constant adaptation is tiring and demoralising.
Being known as an individual is a key element. Managers who know their colleagues well, enabling them to deal with life issues effectively, recoup their goodwill many times over, as happy staff give far more that they receive. If someone seems to be taking advantage, this can become a professional issue.
Worker well-being is something that schools need to consider, have structures in place to provide personal support within available resources, run a well ordered school, where the team ethic can become self-sustaining; colleagues supporting each other.
On a personal level, find and try to keep personal time for distracting hobbies, whether it’s a half hour walk, time in the garden, being quiet, o something more substantial. Accept that responsibilities will alter the balance, so that they can be accommodated. Look after yourself; eat well, drink moderately, sleep and rest appropriately. Enjoy your life and find balance and contentment. Sometimes this is challenging, but is something to work towards, providing your own “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Learn to look after yourself.   


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On being Human

28/8/2016

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It’s been a good summer. This year, I managed an extended stay in my French cottage, which was planned in order to do some necessary decorating and gardening. The painting was a partial success, in that two-thirds of the plan was effected, largely down to the thermometer hovering around 26C from 10.30am and rising steadily thereafter. The garden tidying did mean time in the sun, to clear a bamboo thicket and a very large conifer that had grown unchecked for several years. It was a case of blood and sweat, and a few tears when I tripped in the bamboo and slightly impaled myself on a small spike!

The heat from mid-morning did mean much time could be spend seeking shade, with litres of cold water, reading, in order to cool and prepare for another short onslaught, to go to town for the shopping or just to have a walk. We have several circuits of different timings that can be accomplished in available slots. Longer walks also happened.
I’m not sure that I have ever read so many books while away. As I was garden or house based, trips to town were fewer, so the option of buying the local paper was not available.

Georges Simenon, a Belgian writer of dubious reputation, was writing from the thirties into the seventies. His best known books, about Inspector Maigret, have been made into several television series, but not in the very recent past. These were “pot boilers”, pocket novels that could be read easily, based around the central figure of a bear like figure immersing himself in the lives of victims, in order to understand the motives of potential perpetrators. It was a human precursor to personality studies. His other novels, or his “romans durs” are a more mixed collection of stories, with a different cast of “heroes and heroines”, but, essentially still with an effort to share the psychological makeup of every character. His books have a certain cinematographic style, which lent itself to film and television adaptation. Every one shows Simenon’s ability to observe, settings and characters. A Simenon splurge, of two Penguins, each with two stories, was a relaxed way to unwind after a period of “green gym”, with greed, insecurity, fears, jealousies and bravado leading to demise, all featuring.

One of my charity shop finds before the holiday was Joseph Kanon, Leaving Berlin, a post WW2 novel, where a Jewish writer is persuaded to return to Berlin after persecution lead to his fleeing the Nazis before the war. This time he was fleeing the McCarthy witch-hunts, but in the hopes of a return to the USA, to be reunited with his son. As an agent, he encounters some of his past, but also has to manipulate events, to provide information to his handlers, but also to deal with personal issues that brought him in contact with Soviet spy networks. It was a fascinating insight into the human capacity to survive, despite a range of pressures.

Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book, has been sitting on the shelf for a few years. I’ve tried several times to get started on it, but found it a little dense. However, this time, I persevered and was very surprised how it drew me in, after the first thirty or so pages. The main story is of Galip, a lawyer whose wife disappears, probably with her ex-husband, Celal, his cousin who was a famed journalist. As Galip explores every possible avenue in trying to find his wife, he meets a wide variety of people and starts to piece together a narrative. As the story progresses, Galip appears to take the mindset of Celal, eventually beginning to write his column. In seeking to discover more about others, Galip eventually discovers himself.

The Village of Secrets, by Caroline Moorehead was another charity shop find. It was a story based on events in the Massif Central in France, an area to the east of my cottage, during the Vichy period. We had a trip to Clermont Ferrand during the holiday, so drove near the area where this story was set. In passing through the rugged countryside, with a few houses dotted infrequently, it was easy to see how the locality would lend itself to hiding all sorts of people being sought by the Nazis. The book unpicks the key storylines, the main characters and seeks to do so unsentimentally. Focused on the small town of Chambon and outlying districts, with a Protestant ethic across many communities, the pacifist, non-aggression approach was followed, as was a code of silence, each building a strong community prepared just to do good for others. While the passage of time allows stories to be changed, added to, distorted to specific ends, the book seeks to provide a balanced view of events, but also to offer the alternative viewpoints. The capacity of human beings to be courageous, generous, brave and single-minded in their efforts to help others was evident, as were the opposite traits, where some were prepared to denounce for money, torture or kill with little provocation. Self-preservation, or fear of punishment is likely to distort one’s viewpoint.

I like Steven Pinker’s Stuff of Thought as a book now to dip into occasionally, having read it earlier. I fits with my ideas that we are all just trying to make sense of life, a series of experiences that are a result of the passing of time and our journeys through different events, with people and places playing their parts. I like his assertion that life is like a series of metaphors; one event linking us to previous experiences, which modify and adjust our viewpoint, either by expansion or replacement.  

I came back to Tim O’Brien’s Inner Story several times during the holiday, in part because it asked me to think, and while every book I read engaged me in different ways, Tim was asking the reader to think about themselves. In many ways, the time and space to think about yourself is a luxury in today’s busy lives. Just occasionally, life provides experiences where this is an enforced activity. Tim uses anecdote effectively to illustrate how this can come about. I reflected back to pivotal moments in my own life, which I have written about at length here, to make my own links with Tim’s book.

Becoming self-aware, taking responsibility for your own decisions, reflecting on outcomes and adapting to these are the essential building blocks of a developing human. We each live life as it appears to each of us. Every situation is unique to the event and the participants. Sometimes these are life-changing; each adds something to our journey memory. We are the product of the sense we make of each of the little experiences that make our lives. Whether we take opportunity when it arises is likely to depend on our circumstance and frame of mind. We operate within a personal profit and loss account; what’s in it for me (WIIFM)?

When we see ourselves, we are likely to be able to see and empathise with others too.

Reading does make you think!

Ps. In case you haven’t seen it yet, the #teacher5aday handbook is a useful insight into ways to add elements to your busy life that might provide some R&R. In my case, this holiday, I managed (a lot of) “green exercise”, reading, photography, painting a couple of pictures (not so easy with high temperatures, meeting friends and, since we’ve been home, some grandparenting in London and clearing and replacing the conservatory tiled floor. Busyness that provides an extended time thinking about something completely different might just be the key.
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Boggle; a three Minute word Game

22/8/2016

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Having just come back from a summer well-spent in the garden of my tiny maison secondaire, which had few facilities, including a lack of internet connection, time was available to indulge in some of the boxed games that pass time, especially of a warm evening, or during the heat of the day, when a hammock isn’t in use.

An old game but a favourite is Boggle. It’s advertised as a three minute word game, but sometimes the time is less relevant, as it is equal for everyone. It provides a mental challenge, with an element of competition. The requirement is to make as many words as possible, with three letters or more, with one point for 3 or 4 letter words, 2 for 5 letters, 3 for 6 and 5 for 7+. The letters have to be linked on an edge or a corner to make a complete word.

For me, this year, it was interesting to reflect on my approach to the game, in line with on-line discussions about word attack skills, including phonics.
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Letter-sound correspondence is a key starting point as is the ability to blend letters together; examples on the shared board might be ea, st or ng. Each offers the opportunity to extend the sound by adding letters before or after.
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St links to ar, to make star, with the addition of e, becomes stare, so we have a one point and a two point word, but this can extend further to stared, a three pointer. Patterns emerge in many games, so that a “part word” can be extended with prefixes or suffixes.

Of course there is always the possibility of a non-word, or a suspect word creeping in, so some form of adjudication might be necessary, either an adult, or a dictionary. It can give rise to interesting discussions, extending vocabulary.

Game playing with a real purpose, making lists of words, often within a “family” of sounds, checking each other and challenging as needed, all support word attack skills, but without the formality of a taught lesson. It can effectively become a test, especially of the random nature of the shaking of the box is removed to provide specific letter combinations that have been recently learned.

It might provide an alternative to word searches. However, you have to put up with the sound of shaking dice.

I wonder how many different words you can make from the example above, in three minutes?

​Probably available from your local charity shop, for a few pounds. 

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    Chris Chivers

    Long career in education, classroom and leadership; always a learner.
    University tutor and education consultant; Teaching and Learning, Inclusion and parent partnership.
    Francophile, gardener, sometime bodhran player.

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