There’s a small residual box of my “historical bits” in the loft, which I have reserved simply as keepsakes. There’s a glass plate negative of my paternal grandfather standing beside a biplane on which he worked before 1918. My father never knew his father, as he was born in 1919, while my grandfather died in the Spanish flu of 18/19. Flying solo was a metaphor for my father’s life, as well as my own, as a result of parental divorce.

Flying solo can also be a metaphor for development as a teacher. From the initial stages of learning the fundamentals of the craft, making errors and occasionally crash landings, gradually, controlling the whole class becomes easier, enabling the key messages to be developed effectively. I spend a great deal of my working year with ITE trainees in schools. At every step they are seeking to prove that they are not just developing as future teachers, with potential, but that they are offering opportunity at a good level.

Eventually, the trainee achieves sufficient status and then flies solo. They have to make appropriate preparations and checks before embarking on the journey, to have a log book that records what they intend. They need to learn to read the signals “in-flight” and take notice of potential hazards, without reference to their textbooks, or thinking “What would “expert name” do?”, making appropriate adjustments within the flight. Post-flight, they will evaluate the outcomes, learning for the next opportunity.

January sees many of the School Direct trainees embarking on their second school experience, moving from their substantive practice, where they have become familiar with routines and expectations, to a completely new environment where, within the six week half term, they have to again show they are good, as defined by the teacher standards.

In the best situations a trainee will have a well-informed, very involved mentor, prepared to provide coaching to the trainee, within and between the lesson.

A visit to the Discovery Centre (library) in Gosport yesterday brought me into contact with a small display. What drew my attention was a photograph of a biplane and engineer which was almost exactly like that with my grandfather.

The accompanying text detailed a development made in the Gosport engineering works around 1918, where a rubber tube with effectively a funnel at each end was used to link the trainee pilot with their instructor behind. This simple device avoided more accidents as the instructor could make the trainee alter their behaviour and engage in actions that would be more effective, or resolve issues before they became more difficult or dangerous.

This is a relatively simple act that can prompt behaviours in the developing trainee, altering their behaviour in the classroom context. There are systems now that effectively emulate the rubber tube and funnels, with digital in-ear coaching, while lesson study activities can further develop awareness.

Developing the next generation of teachers is the responsibility of the whole profession. Where schools, as a whole, share responsibility for development, the trainee benefits from the collective knowledge. Where trainees and NQTs are left to their own devices, it is not surprising if they begin to flounder and crash land. Opportunity to talk, to discuss successes and areas for development must be available. Too often, the mentoring role is given to an already busy teacher. This can lead to the mentor only operating in a judgemental role, diminishing the development of the trainee to simplified target setting and achievement. Helping the trainee to understand how to improve is as important as telling them what to improve.

This echoes every learning situation.

If you are a mento to a trainee nect term, the following might be a useful aide memoire to support your and their organisation and lead to early successes.

Considering Post Graduate and School Direct Short Placements.
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Being such a short experience, the six/seven weeks will fly past very quickly, so, in order to maximise the potential for a successful practice I offer the following organisational insights from previous experiences.

The first thing is to secure the professional standards as per this diagram.

#teacher5aday #nurture1617

Happy New Year; pass through your doors gently and be happy. Live each day well and be grateful for waking up!
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​For information, the artist is Bobby Bale. A broader collection of her images can be seen at her website.

It’s as “easy” as TIC, TAC, TOE; team inside the community, team around the community and team of experts. It's also a useful mantra for graduated SEN practice.

If you are old enough to remember the days before Local Management of Schools, LMS, you will probably recall the limited funds available for schools to buy “essentials”, such as all the consumables. If you were lucky, the authority, in the form of an adviser, might look kindly upon a project and offer a small pump-priming fund, usually supplemented by the PTA fund raising.

These were the days of twilight training sessions, often a series of five or six, at the local teacher’s centre, led by local teachers whose expertise was identified as worth sharing. If you were lucky, you got to do a “Gurney Dixon”; a weekend at the County residential centre. It was not as swish as it might sound. On a few occasions, I had to share my room with the caretaker’s stores, but it was taken as the norm; it was cheap training. The sessions cost the school nothing, but did demand a significant commitment to personal development. However, it did ensure that expertise was shared as widely as possible through the authority.

In-house expertise was equally generously shared, so that the “specialist” would be happy to spend time sharing ideas to help less experienced colleagues. I can remember leaving with ideas that I then went back to my classroom and played, or sat in the library and went through the available books. It was a time of self-help and self-reliance; make do and mend was the mantra. Pencil pots and other stationery containers, made from well-washed tins, covered in wallpaper, or if you were lucky, in sticky back plastic. Paper holders were adapted and covered soap powder boxes. Show boxes of the right size housed the cassette tapes.

LMS enabled internal decision making on school priorities, enabling often significant spending on quality equipment and staffing, especially if the school enjoyed a rising roll. “What would you like?” could replace “What do we need?”
Belt-tightening has been on school agendas for a while and may yet have time before the most difficult decisions have to be taken. Staff reduction decisions are always the most difficult for any school.

CPD could become a casualty, unless there are some changes in approach. To send a member of staff off site, to a central site for a conference could cost several hundred pounds, with supply cover, travel, the cost of the conference and perhaps food. It doesn’t take long for even a generous budget to be spent.

It has often been stated that there is as much discrepancy in practice within a school as there is between schools. What would be the case if every teacher in the community was as good as the best and how could that be achieved?
What do you do, though, to address the constant feeling of busyness?

TIC; Team inside the community. Are you a talking establishment? It’s well worth while looking at the mechanisms within the school that enable an appropriate level of discussion and information sharing that starts with induction practices and then continues. Has the school audited the skills of each member of staff to see where well-needed expertise lies? How are staff meetings and closure days used to support the dissemination of expertise? Is coaching time made available? Is expertise made available in written form? Is there a staff bookshelf, and is it actually used?

Short term additional “staffing” can become a reality within partnership arrangements with ITE providers, especially if final practice trainees are hosted. After a settling period, and a judgement of secure practice, the mentor can plan some time out of the classroom. Releasing staff in-house is a great deal less costly than sending them on a course.

TAC; team around the community. Do you talk outside you school; at all levels? It is really important for a school to recognise the limits of the internal expertise, and, when shared, this will become a reality. It is also essential not to feel alone in the enterprise of developing the school. Schools will develop to the level of the best, but, if the best is not as good as the best elsewhere, how can that expertise be accessed?

If the school works within a cluster, or a local academy group or federation, the expertise in one establishment could be deployed or purchased into a receiving school, to mutual benefit. This could be in the form of twilight sessions, as per the earlier model, or it could be purchased release to model and discuss aspects of practice. This is good CPD for the person delivering also, as they move into a training role.

In attending a number of Saturday conferences, Pedagoo, TLT16 and #LearningFirst (Bath) it has struck me that teachers want to get better at their job. This might prove an appropriate model for some. The #teacher5aday group has organised, and is organising another weekend CPD “retreat”.

There are many models that can begin to address development based on local expertise.

TOE; team of experts. How do you decide when you need a little extra? In some geographic areas, the availability of expertise may soon appear to be evaporated. At this point, or to make a significant impact on an aspect of school development, it may be opportune to buy in someone with acknowledged wider expertise. This could be from a local university, a local inspector, or one of the growing army of consultants. It is a case of “pay your money and take your chance”. The brief needs to be clear and concise and the expert has to have the skills to deliver. There won’t be many readers who have not sat through a training session that has not quite hit the mark.

Local clusters of schools, banding together, can create significantly greater budget for a one-off event, which may be much more cost effective.

When it comes down to it, though, there is a significant simplicity. CPD is communicating the knowledge from someone with acknowledged expertise to others with a need to develop. Making some quality time to talk is therefore paramount. This can start from sitting in a classroom with a cup of tea after school going through an idea with colleagues. It does need goodwill and teacher involvement and ownership of their own need to identify and incorporate their training needs.

Learning to teach is a life-long need. There is always a need to accommodate to change, from a move to another year group, another school, or another curricular adjustment.
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Teachers need to remain learners. Learning should be a shared enterprise, or it could become three strikes and you’re out, of date…

In another school, I started the topic with an “I spy trail” creation project with the local Secondary art (photography) department support. Children, working in small groups, started at the “village” centre and went in one of six directions. They had to decide on and record (Juniors drew, Secondary photographed) twenty different features along the route. On return, they swapped drawings and had to follow the trail. On the return to school, the trails were interpreted as sketch maps, with written instructions.
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Within our locality, we also have the Iron-age Farm, which started on the top of Butser Hill, as an experimental archaeological site, developed by the late Peter Reynolds. This has been redeveloped in Chalton, south of Petersfield, still with an experimental brief, but more of a visitor experience. These early buildings were a source of great interest, with exploration of the basic materials, where they might have been sourced, reflections on how they were cut and prepared with very basic tools, moved from distance to where they were needed. Working at heights without scaffolding etc. Challenging their preconceived ideas. The experimental site introduced early textiles, food storage and other basic needs.

A mapping project in another setting, looking at the village development over a few hundred years of maps, sourced from the County archive, led to a drawing and investigation walk to the village centre. The Georgian fronts of the village centre, had been established as false “fashion” fronts to earlier tenements, where inhabitants were explored through earlier histories and census returns, which showed several families in each building. Some obliging local families opened their housed to show the features of the earlier houses that still existed. Finding Roman tiles used as a part of the local church was linked to one child digging up a tile in his garden; verified by the County museum service.

Sketching was a key element of each topic, used as a means to encourage the children to look closely.

Where possible, these were supplemented with photographs; much easier now with digital. Photographs were the basis for recall and retelling, which supported poorer writers to retain some order and organisation.

Basic pictures were given to support dialogue with each other and with the accompanying adult(s), who also had some additional information sheets to share.  

Drawing sketch maps secured some feeling of spatial awareness, extended with giving instructions to get from one place to another, inside school or within the locality, but also extensive use of local maps to aid orientation.

Written reports and instructions were developed, as were histories of some of the individuals who had made up part of the developing narrative; the local Lord of the Manor and his wife were buried in the church, while some of the local people’s headstones were in the churchyard.

​Clay modelling allowed making bricks and creating "dwellings", which in turn became the centre for story making.

​A museum of tools and building materials allowed exploration of modern approaches. Local builder dad talked about some of the issues in building a house.

​Making concrete of different consistencies in margarine tubs allowed some stress testing of materials. 

​Creating a 3d model of the "Village with three corners", derived from a reading scheme, alowed children to picture and develop storylines more clearly, using little model people.  
 
Just opening children’s eyes to what is around them can give them something to talk about with their parents, particularly if they walk the same areas together. This can lead to further personal exploration, which adds to the general stock of knowledge and shows that the child’s education extends beyond the classroom.