Reflections on Pedagoo Hampshire 2018

The overriding impression from my day at Pedagoo Hampshire 2018 is that one is never too old to learn. Even after a lifetime in education, listening to another can either crystalize an idea or challenge one’s thinking.

The series of talks that I chose were focused around well-being. Five different people sharing personal insights into a singular topic. There was both similarity and sufficient difference in each to create those “nugget moments” that is to be hoped from a day of thinking.

The similarities were along the lines of people helping people, looking out for each other, spotting and engaging when there were evident signs of personal distress. There was an equal focus on preventative approaches, giving background support so that an individual and the context within which they operated could interact and respond according to need.

The similarities were overwhelmingly human. In a system where the “capital” is based on the humans that form the workforce, to identify work practices and demand is a significant element of organisation, requiring high quality communication, both globally, so everyone knows what’s going on, but also enabling high quality 1:1 discussions, where personal information can be shared confidentially.

Ilse Fullarton @kidshealthuk talked about The Children’s Health Project, aimed at providing essential background for PSHE and establishing healthy lifestyles in children, through a combination of basic knowledge and healthy practices; movement, food, habits and thought. All these elements combined in cross-curricular teaching in PE, science and PSHE. As someone who lives what she preaches, Ilse described her own journey to health.

Simon Warburton @Simon_Warburton is a member of SLT in a Secondary school in Cambridge. Simon gave a very honest and clear account of why he has developed such a passion for ensuring that CYP have support and guidance in well-being. Having had a period of stress, effectively debilitating and destabilising his personal and professional life, he took drastic steps to address his fitness and eating habits, losing a considerable amount of weight in the process. He also took stock of his professional life and stepped back from one role, to take on another that would allow restoration of an equilibrium.

In this role, he is charged with the healthy approach of his school, to adult colleagues and to the children, developing a wide range of opportunities for exercise, an education programme and high staff awareness towards each other and their charges.

Adrian Bethune @AdrianBethune asked a “simple” question; can you teach happiness? This happens to be the premise behind his new book, Wellbeing in the Primary Classroom (Bloomsbury).

Adrian explored the research base behind his premise, both psychological and physical, eg stress and anxiety, engagement and meaning. He explained that happiness can also mean experiencing and being aware of low points; self-awareness and quoted identical twin research, considering genetics, as well as life opportunities. The work of Dr Alejandro Adler was used to explain that a well-being curriculum increased academic outcomes as well as well-being, which led to my simplistic reflection, that happy children are more energised to engage with learning, so improving outcomes by being “in the moment”. Adrian used a statistic that emotional health at 16 can be determinant of future success and happiness and that the onset of depression in teenagers growing.

Exploring and comparing ideas of mind full or mindful led to the statement that mindful meant being in the here and now, aware of surroundings and what is happening, whereas mind full could mean overload.

Adrian focused on looking for positives, so had established the idea of WWW; three good things, to talk or write down. @PookyH Dr Pooky Knightsmith regularly uses this on Twitter, to share her three good things. Adrian had also rebranded anti-bullying week to become “It’s cool to be kind week”; emphasising positives rather than starting from potential negatives. Post-it boards recorded random acts of kindness, recorded by pupils and adults.

Mal Krishnasamy @MalCPD was my last session, looking at quick coaching techniques within her 40-minute session. There was a significant focus on active listening, with one participant describing to another something significant that they were passionate about and for the listener to draw a sketchnote of what they had heard, to retell it for accuracy. A second activity took us on a listening journey from the inner space to successively distant spaces, returning slowly to the inner. It was a form of meditation and a very pleasant way to end a busy day.

Mal, Adrian and Ilse gave a similar example of a very straight forward mindfulness practice, to focus on breathing, one thing. Pause time- 2 minutes; put a hand on your tummy, be aware of own breathing, from upper chest or diaphragm. One variation could be to put a soft toy on tummy and to watch the toy rise and fall. A second variation included timings, breathing in, holding and breathing out; 3,6,5 or similar, depending on the children. This activity raised physiological awareness. Adrian described how he used something similar as a teacher; self-awareness of in lesson stresses, utilising breathing exercise to establish calm.

My first session, in many ways, could be seen as the “wildcard” in the series, in that it was a trio of presenters, Max Bullough, Carolyn Hughan and Leah Crawford @think_talk_org presenting on their project Leadership through Narrative. As the session moved on, it became clear that it was “all about the people”; an active listener enabling another to present their story as clearly as possible so that they were in a position to interact appropriately and avoid issues that arise from assumptions. The joint discussion enabled an analysis and reflection before a clear description of future actions, decided by the interviewee.

This session was the “grown up” version of all the others and emphasised completely, along with @SueRoffey opening keynote, that education is totally “all about the people”, any of whom might need, at some stage, another person to care sufficiently to offer mentoring, coaching, or just a shoulder and a cup of tea; someone prepared to listen. Openness, honesty and trust underpinning relationships.
 
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They open their eyes, they sense the world, they look, they listen, they feel, they taste, they smell.
They see apparent chaos around them with a central feature, a parent’s face, their voice, their sustenance.
They respond, through crying, gradually having some muscle control and smiling, making responsive sounds.
It all takes time, but, somehow, while we can only engage with their externalising, their brains and bodies are developing in very sophisticated ways.
They start to interact with their world; their life journey of experiencing and making some sense of these experiences.
 
Each of us carries around the distillation of our passing experiences, formal, some sustained like years in education, or training programmes, many informal, some fleeting experiences, others based on life, our families in childhood, then our friendship groups and personal decisions about partners and life location.

Every one of these experiences impacts on us, some as they are pleasurable, others because they are traumatic. It can be easier to recall life’s highlights or low points than the more mundane aspects of our lives, as the significant events are our life “landmarks”; transitions almost. While our memories do alter over time and recreating earlier life can sometimes lead to embellishment, at any point in time, we are the sum of the parts.

Recently exploring my earlier life through looking at locality maps, it was clear to me that in geographical terms, the bulk of my life to the age of seven was restricted to a distance of around one mile from home, with occasional school holidays spent with more distant family. From the age of five, this was often independent and outside with friends; perhaps a luxury for today’s children.

My world expanded exponentially when we became £10 Poms, sailing to Australia via stops allowing visits to Pompeii, Athens, Aden, Columbo, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, followed by the train journey to Brisbane. Five and a half weeks of watching out for dolphins, whales and flying fish. Playing deck quoits and other novel games. Watching the sellers with their fully laden, colourful canoes arrive beside the ship with their trinkets hoping for a sale, goods and money exchanged via ropes and baskets. Children and adults prepared to dive for coins thrown from the boat. It was interesting at the time, although my adult self can see it as demeaning. It was certainly “eye opening”. There was a very different world from the seemingly grey experiences that had preceded it.

Life has certainly happened since then. I have blogged about it, highs and lows, as I remember them. I won’t rehearse the features now, but it is worth reflecting that life memories are filtered through forgetting, as well as remembering.

On 13.09.18 I tweeted that I was reflecting on the following: -
We’re all constantly creating our internal models, developing them as new information appears. Challenging this creates internal tension; destabilising for some. Learning how to accommodate and adapt to circumstance has enabled ideas to progress; a life skill.

This followed a day when I worked with ITT trainees, followed by a session with their mentors. Within the room of some twenty nine trainees, there was clear evidence that some elements of their new experiences were causing internal tensions; the personal, getting to know their context and everyone and everything within it that might impact on their professional lives; the demands of studying and running a household, some with much reduced incomes; the detail of the academic information that they were receiving, some after a significant gap since their degree. Accommodation and adaptation take time, which, at this point in their existence is at a premium.

Children are learning to take in information, learning about learning, at the same time as having to accommodate to a multi-faceted world. There is a truism that young children are naturally inquisitive, prepared to try things out, familiarising themselves with novel experiences, through what we often call “play”, which they then describe as “fun”.

As an adult, I often engage in familiarisation activity; a new camera, smart phone or laptop requires familiarisation. For a while, I “play” with them to see what they can do, in my case, using prior knowledge that comes from earlier experiences with the same technology. I am sure that my camera, smart phone and laptop can do significantly more than my current uses, but, for now each serves the purposes for which I want them.

If I am listening to a speaker, as I will at an education conference, or in a university lecture from a colleague, I can be distracted by a single point that triggers a line of thinking; it resonates or challenges a previously held piece of understanding. This may lead to a bit of note making or doodling an idea trying not to forget the thought from “the moment”, which can happen with just trying to listen and hold onto everything that has been said. The single nugget can form the basis for further reflection, discussion or reading, leading to a change in my understanding.
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In the same way, school lessons offer a similar scenario with new information being shared hour by hour. The difference could be that in school it is every hour, whereas an adult has the luxury of taking or making “time out to think”. Children in school don’t necessarily have the opportunity to reflect, unless it is built into the plans. It is to be hoped that every lesson offers something of quality to think about, to talk about and perhaps to make notes, or write about in order to remember.

In the early days of school learning, learning to order and organise thoughts is a key element, which is supported by teacher organisation and presentation of the different curriculum elements, ensuring that necessary links are made overt between aspects of learning, so that children are not left floundering with the bits of a jigsaw but no image within which to place the pieces. It is to be hoped, too, that learning in school might lead to extension in the home; appropriately set home activities can extend vocabulary or lead to further discovery. See talk homework.

It is incumbent on the adult generation to offer life opportunities to children, in and out of school, that allow them to participate in the experience, to explore with whatever is their current capability, and to articulate their thinking, enabling an adult to engage further with questions or clarification. The act of learning can be “fun” to children. They need to learn that learning is not something that is done to them, but that they are active participants in constructing their own schemas.

As a headteacher, I used this ideal as the basis for the school teaching and learning policy, which is on the blogsite. It was simplified into one diagram, as follows.  
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At any point in time, we are the product of our experiences. If they are broad and supported by articulate adults prepared to unpick inconsistencies and add further value to the experience, the child can thrive, with the opposite also having an element of truth, although we may have to accept that children can succeed "despite their home/school experience".

If a child lives in a knowledge/language-rich environment they will experience and learn to use a wide range of conceptual words. The Bristol language studies of 1971 led by Gordon Wells showed the impact on less rich environments. It has implications for the language rich environment of schools, too, especially if the home contexts are known to be less rich.

Schools and parents, within their communities, are partners in bringing children into their world. Learning to work effectively together is essential.

When a book starts with a quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who happens to have been one of my heroes, there’s a fair chance that whatever follows will be interesting.

That quote runs as follows, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find why they are falling in.”

This is an incredibly simple, yet powerful message; find the source of the problem rather than always dealing with the outcomes.

Jarlath tells the stories of his early days in teaching, openly admitting to making mistakes, but thinking about them and learning from them. He reflects on much early advice that any bad behaviour was always the “choice” of the child, that there were “simple” ways to ensure good behaviour, such as seating plans, for the class to devise their own rules, don’t smile until Christmas.

The evolution of Jarlath’s thinking, through many described episodes of having to question why some children were causing problems, working patiently with his team when a Head Teacher, building professional in colleagues and personal capacity in children. He quotes the title of Paul Dix’ book; When the adults change, everything changes and Linda J Graham’s Queensland study that found that self-regulation has a great bearing on a child’s educational outcome; it’s the learning to self-regulate that can cause additional social problems.

His introduction ends with a short series of things that he has learned over his almost twenty years of experience: -

·         Some children regard schools as risky, unsafe places to be, where failure is inevitable and painful and must be avoided at all costs.
·         Lasting behaviour change takes time.
·         Learning needs to be an intrinsically rewarding experience.
·         Negative behaviour communicates an unmet need.
·         Behavioural difficulties can be regarded as demonstrations of skills gaps that are getting in the way of a child being successful.
·         Sometimes we choose actions, sanctions and punishments that only meet the neds of the adults. We do this in order to say that we dealt with a situation, but, in reality, the situation remains, at best unchanged. At worst, damaged.
·         Time invested in children is never wasted.

Getting to know the children for whom you are responsible as a class teacher is fundamental to making appropriate decisions at the right time. Early Years and Primary teachers get to know their children very well, very quickly, simply because within a week, they will have worked with their class for almost 25 hours. At most, a Secondary specialist might see a class for 5 hours, some will be an hour or less a week. This will inevitably create a different dynamic in relationships.

The social demands of school will put some children into an anxious state. For adults to be aware of this and to be able to offer support can be the difference between sinking or swimming. Recognising that “they” are not a homogenous group is a first step. “Spotting and dealing” is an important element of teacher awareness. Personally, I have used the term “behaviour whisperer”; getting to a child in time to offer advice and guidance to head off a developing issue. Too often we are just too late and have to deal with the outcomes before the child need.

Some children need help in articulating their feelings; having someone who will actually listen can be slightly threatening if it is a novel situation. Jarlath uses anecdotes to amplify situations that he had faced and his behaviour within and after the situation. Teasing out the reality can be time consuming, something that can be a luxury in a busy school and we have to be aware that behaviour issues cause teacher stress. For that reason, it is essential that whole school systems are very clear, communicated at every opportunity and followed through by every member of the school staff, office, caretaking and lunchtime staff included. Civilised social situations are a team effort.

Some children may need a form of mentoring; someone who is interested in and has time for them. Jarlath quotes Carl Rogers; Show children unconditional positive regard. Our personal manner can determine how some children will behave for us.

Jarlath’s book is an excellent review of the multiple factors that make up a complex school environment including rules and expectations, motivation and rewards, sanctions and punishments, restorative approaches, partnerships with parents, and a chapter on SEN and behaviour.

His last chapter is a reflective challenge to one’s own style, with a refocusing on behaviour as a social interaction, environmental factors in the school’s control including the behaviour policy, ability to adapt to the needs of children in certain situations. He also challenges potential misuse of behaviour policies, with a focus on SEN children and the impact of involving senior staff purely for punishment purposes.

Schools need to be purposeful places if children are to succeed. Internal systems should enable the highest level of success for each child. A “we’re all in this together” approach, including parents, shares the load and offers hope to some vulnerable children. And it’s worth having in mind that we all get things wrong some of the time; no-one is perfect.

Jarlath offers insights, but also, throughout each chapter, points for further reflection on a personal as well as an institutional level. This is a book that would benefit all schools, to be read in conjunction with Paul Dix.
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Jarlath finishes with a quote from Dr Kevin Maxwell; Our job is to teach the children we have. Not the ones we would like to have. Not the ones we used to have. Those we have right now. All of them.

Teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin; on one side, the teacher, the other is the learner. In one lesson the emphasis might be on the teacher to share essential information, in another it is for the learners to demonstrate current achievement. It’s a dynamic, fluid scenario.
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Everything that is meant to happen in a classroom is determined by the teacher, as it always has been.

The teacher is the lead thinker in the classroom, responsible for the analyse-plan-do-review-record cycle as it affects each learner.

Looking at any records that are passed from school to school or internally, is an essential start point for thinking.

The teacher is the organiser of the space, resources and interpreter of the curriculum (knowledge), divided up into appropriate sized chunks to offer on the journey. This journey needs to consider the whole year of journeys, ensuring that all end up at the planned destination. It’s no good starting off in the hopes of getting through everything. Some slippage is inevitable; schools are very good places for creating detours. If it’s caused by bad planning, that’s the teacher responsibility, not the learners. It is imperative to note developing gaps, to seek opportunities to “bridge the gap” at an appropriate time. (See planning blog)

Their ability to weave a good narrative, to speak articulately, using and extending accessible vocabulary and in a register that enables the learners to be partners in the development of their own interpretation. Artefacts, images and modelling are essential aids in supporting learners in creating their own working images; dual coding.

The teacher is also the team leader, especially if there are other adults involved; they need to know what’s expected of them, working under the direction of the teacher.

It’s the teacher plan that determines how everything will run. The teacher is also the determinant of appropriate behaviours for learning in that space. They can appear, on occasion, to be judge, jury and executioner; it is a position of some responsibility.

The learners, at the outset, don’t know the journey, so they need to be shown an outline, an overview, so that all subsequent parts have a logical place, with checks at the beginning that they are equipped to make a start, followed by regular progress/retention checks on the way that they are “keeping up”, or that they are “getting it”.

There are different structural demands within different pieces of work; an example might be the difference between a letter and a report. Each has structural constituent elements that need to be demonstrated within an acceptable finished product. These could be considered as the “success criteria” for each activity; what the teacher is looking for as an outcome.

Using visualisers during a lesson, to show what you are seeking, by using child examples, is an excellent means of sharing emerging quality, especially if it is always supported by further developmental discussion; modelling improvement.

There is subject specific knowledge. If this has to be retained for future reference/use, it can be useful to create aides-memoire, memory joggers, that attach to the edge of books/pages, that can be flipped out to need, especially if spellings are challenging. They can become, over time, if learners are shown how to be ordered and organised, useful aids for revision; personal knowledge organisers.

Understanding whether a learner has mastered essential knowledge is often judged through oral or written responses. Where this demonstrates language needs these can also be highlighted on flip sheets; eg write answers in complete sentences.

Flip sheets offer continuity of expectation, clarity of focus and brings the learner into the centre of their learning. (See blog on exercise books as personal organisers)

Teachers can’t remember the learning needs of every child in every teaching group. This is exaggerated in Secondary, where 200 plus children might be seen in a week.

The closer that a learner need can be tracked over time, the more chance there is that individuals will make progress.

It shouldn’t be down to a flip of the coin.
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So, to summarise
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·         Plan long, medium and short with different emphases on what’s recorded and share with supporting adults. Organise the “knowledge journey” developmentally.
·         Order and organise space, resources and consider the available time.
·         Pitch and pace each lesson to known needs of the curriculum and the learners.
·         Set learning tasks that provide some challenge.
·         Share outcomes as learner models of expectation within and between lessons.
·         Evaluate throughout, ensuring continuity of expectation.
·         Checks en route, memory, use and application in challenge.
·         Simple personal record systems of developing vocabulary and presentation needs.
·         Books to become personal learning records.
·         Know your children as fully as possible, recognising that you can’t see exactly what they are thinking.
 

Education Jig?

For a number of years, I was involved in folk music, either as a bodhran (Irish drum) player, or through teaching. It was a part of the physical curriculum and an after-school club. The dances were learned and rehearsed with village events in mind; harvest, Christmas, spring and summer fairs. On occasion, they allowed for sharing with our exchange schools, so everyone was able to join together, making mistakes and generally enjoying a shared activity. Despite having two left feet myself; a friend who was a regular caller for ceilidhs would always make sure that I was alright, which was kind, but also very embarrassing; a bit like being singled out by the teacher.

Teaching dance came easier, as it involved giving clear instructions and the ability to count. One that comes to mind is the farmers jig, an eight couple, 32 bar, longways dance, four boys in one line facing four girls. There are four key parts

A1 Bars 1-4 Facing up, partners hold inside hands and take 8 steps forward.
            5-8 All turn towards partner to face down the set and take 8 steps back to place. 
A2             1-4 Taking two hands with partner, all take 8 slip steps to the men’s left.
                  5-8 All take 8 slip steps back to place. 
B1             1-4 Couples 1 and 2, couples 3 and 4 right hand star; 8 steps.
                  5-8 Couples 1 and 2, couples 3 and 4 left hand star; 8 steps.   
B2             1-8 All face up the set, Couple 1 separate and cast out on their own side, the lady leading the ladies whilst the man leads the men, everyone dances down to the bottom of the set.
Couple 1 meet and make a bridge in the last couple’s place, the other couples meet their partner, take inside hands and dance under the bridge back to their lines, having progressed one place.
[N.B. As the others dance under the bridge, the dance starts again immediately]
Repeat the dance with a new top couple each time.  

This dance has been around for many years. although it is a very traditional dance, it will have been interpreted through different tunes over that time, some bands drawing from the traditional tune set, others creating their own 32 bar tunes to offer variety; variations on a theme, but it is essentially the same dance, learned by the caller and repeated over time.

It can be a bit like that in education. There are certain things that have been common features throughout my career. If you are sharing information, or giving instructions, the transmission is through direct instruction, largely via the teacher’s voice, supplemented by imagery or artefacts. The imagery might include video stimulus from an external “expert”, such as David Attenborough, enabling something like the Amazon rainforest to be brought to life.

The interpretation of the instruction will inevitably lead to variation, in retention and quality of performance. Keeping with the dance analogy, timing is everything. The “caller” or teacher has to keep a close eye on timing, or everything goes awry, with inevitable slippage and potential disaster as an outcome.

However, once the basics have been mastered, I found that it was possible to challenge the children to come up with variations on the dance, to personalise it to our school. In that way, the initial walk up and down might become boys making arches and crossing over the girls, for a count of eight, repeated with girls making arches. The 32 bars of stars might be altered to right and left arm turns or doh-si-dohs. Within the basic theme, variation allowed the creation of minor variation, which is inevitably how we have such a variety of folk dances, even based around the 32-bar theme, simply because of the maths; 2*16; 4*8; 2*8 +4*4 or just 32.

Some while ago I wrote a blog about virtuosity and how that meant learning to play your own tunes; I could have said dance your own dance. Virtuosity in teaching means trying things out, taking stock of those elements in need of some reflective improvement, trying the changes in practice and refining responses over time. It is almost as simple as that, although I am very aware that current school life doesn’t always allow time for personal reflection, nor for picking a colleague’s brain to support the thinking.

Like any good folk dance caller, a teacher needs to know the dance, the tunes, to be aware of timings and be able to coach those who are in evident need, if the assembled participants are to perform. If they can, the feel-good factor is invariably high, with success making for positive feelings afterwards and once you have mastered the basics, there are many more, really complex movements to try...

You can watch some children, including Argentinian and Spanish visitors, taking part on this you tube clip.

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Map via Google Maps

Browsing the map above, I was able to consider some of my memories for my life up to the age of seven, when, as a family, we became £10 Poms and sailed off to Australia, to return nearly four years later via a homesick mother. Perhaps another blog...mapping childhood to eleven?

Looking at the map, it is interesting to note that from an early age, perhaps four-ish, the cul de sac nature of our road, which was a bit of a hill and very few people owning cars, meant that we were able to play with friends in the road, easily able to get out of the way if a car was moving. Back alleys and easy access, meant that the large field behind the road also became part of our playground, enabling us to make dens, climb trees and generally be independent. Falling from a tree and landing in a nettle patch showed that I could come up in huge lumps, but, apart from that and a few scrapes and grazes, it was an outside existence, meaning that we were out of the hair of our parents.

Bury Meadow meant kick-about football, with the jumpers for goalposts and as many a side as wanted to play, usually after school on light evenings, after tea. Returning home at dusk, because no-one had a watch, we had time to have a wash, a cup of milk and a biscuit, clean teeth and off to bed. It also occasionally meant arguments and fallings out and agreements to meet again the following evening and mean to keep it.

School was St Sidwell’s Primary, which was the basis of “The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler”, by Gene Kemp. Her daughter apparently was a school contemporary, which I found out many years later, as my class, in 1987, wrote letters to her and she replied with a signed copy.

It seemed, as a five-year-old walking alone, to be a very long way to school. Perhaps it was having to pass by Exeter prison, the army barracks, loiter on the bridge over the railway bridge to watch the steam trains pass or cross the busier roads. There was a parent line on the playground, with day one meaning a teacher meeting families as they arrived and sending us children to a specific class line, to troop into school together. School memories include outside toilets and little boys seeing how high they could reach; PE outside on rush mats; being sent to read outside in the sunshine -Janet and John- because I had finished my work early; having a piece of writing about science printed in a school booklet; having the school bully push me against a wall during playtime causing a scar on my forehead that is still there. It was a very happy time, though. I enjoyed school and it was a place that encouraged and fostered a love of learning across a wide range of experiences.

We got a pair of mice from a kind teacher, to have as pets. Of course, they breed exponentially, so finding people to give the resulting offspring to became more and more difficult.

We took in lodgers, who had the second reception room, some through the British Council; Bhati Vadgama, Mr Offer and Miss Alawi are names that come to mind. Miss Alawi’s father was Sheikh Alawi, who was the head of the scouting movement in Zanzibar. He took us to the cinema, but not on Saturday morning, to see a proper film, which was a real treat. Wonderful, generous people, who added significantly to our life experiences.

Saturday mornings were children’s cinema; "We come along on Saturday morning, greeting everybody with a smile…" so started the song that started the screening with the “bouncing ball” on the screen that took over from a man with a pointer.

There was a corner shop at the corner of Hoopern Street which became the happy recipient of our returned glass bottles and the provider of a small bag of sweets, at four a penny, or a wrap of sherbet, to take on our adventures. We often came home with coloured tongues.

We were independent quite young. Playing didn’t cost anything, perhaps apart from the cost of a plastic football. There was a lot of sharing and swapping, so toys and tea cards exchanged allowed access to a wider range of opportunities, although inappropriate swaps did sometimes upset parents. A chemistry set for Christmas was a real highlight, but not when the potassium permanganate solution spilled on the mantlepiece and me.

Childhood is a time of exploration, of making sense of the world around, geographically, seeking landmarks to offer orientation. Wandering around, with friends, allowed this to be a reality. Being responsible for getting myself to school added another dimension. Childhood necessarily has to be different now; the world is busier and, in certain environments, perhaps less safe. Car travel can divorce children from their environment, enhancing their dislocation from the real world.

So, I’d hope that, as young children, they would walk their locality with parents, talking about landmarks, constructing their internal maps, so that, when the time comes, they can safely negotiate the roads and get themselves to specific places and back safely, alone or with friends. To me, it is also the beginning of an interest in geography, enhanced through a variety of relatively simple school experiences, such as making sketch maps of their walk to school, mapping the school grounds or giving instructions of how to get from one part of the school to another, developing an appropriate vocabulary.

Keeping children safe means giving them independence skills.
 

Picture; Old man seated on a chair by Rembrandt, National Gallery, London

Children’s relationships with grandparents will vary, depending on their geographical distance; some will be very close, others more distant, which alters how they might interact. I have many memories of my paternal grandmother, with whom we lived when my parents separated and divorced, and early life memories of my Welsh grandparents with whom we often spent weeks during school holidays. Each of them added to the sum of my existence, either through proximity or quality extended time that allowed walking and talking. None of them was particularly well off, but all were generous with their time.

They form a part of “my story”, my personal history and a rich vein of inspiration. I learned what resilience was from my gran; click to read the blog, whereas my love of nature came from my miner Uncle Don, who would walk the hills with us after a night in the pits.

I used the following short story many times during my career, within PSHE type activities, looking at the inter-relationships between generations.

The story, written by Lynn Bottomley when she was aged ten, appears in the book Wordscapes, by Barry Maybury, OUP, 1970, a book that was given to me by my first ever mentee, in 1978. Short stories are an excellent thing to have on a “just in case” basis, for those five minutes that often occur, sometimes at short notice.

Georgie and Grandpa

Two of the most interesting characters I have met are my little brother Georgie, aged two months and my great Grandfather, aged ninety-seven years and two months.

I am interested in both.

To my amazement their needs are similar and yet I would have thought that Grandpa would have had fewer needs than Georgie. After all, Georgie has need to develop the habits of taking care of himself, whereas Grandpa has already learned these things, yet I have heard mummy say that Georgie is too young to eat meat and Grandpa is now too old for it.

Georgie must be treated with care and gentleness because his bones are weak through lack of age – Grandpa’s bones are weak from over-age.

The house must be quiet when Georgie sleeps because he wakes so easily. Grandpa always goes early to bed and otherwise spends much of his time dozing in his rocking chair.

Grandpa has outgrown the use of a comb and Georgie has not yet grown old enough to need one.

Georgie has not yet the need to a tooth-brush. Grandpa stopped cleaning his last tooth four years ago and cannot manage with the new-fangled ones.

Georgie is quite inactive having not yet the strength or ability to walk by himself. Similarly, Grandpa is unable to walk because he has “screws”!

Little Georgie is without understanding and wisdom and my grandfather is past the age of having to understand; his attitude to be wise, as he was a few years ago, is now gone with his memory.

Sounds mean nothing to either of them. Grandfather cannot hear them and Georgie is not yet interested in where they come from o what they mean.

Sometimes Grandpa utters little mumbling noises to himself which mean nothing to either himself or anybody else, unless little Georgie understands them because he also does the same thing; perhaps they are talking to each other in a language of their own!

Both need warmth and are well wrapped up in shawls. Grandpa sucks his pipe while Georgie sucks his thumb.
Perhaps that’s what adults mean when they say, “He is a chip of the old block!”

Oh, I forgot to say that Grandpa’s name is George…

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