Do you know what you need to be a primary school teacher in Britain? A 2:2 in any honors degree. Because most degree programs are cash cows for research facilities, you could get into one with quite a mediocre set of A levels. As long as you have a passion for looking after children, you’re in. Which stands to reason because the education system is so dire that they need individuals who want to look after children. They need teachers to be the sort of people who will do their best to help, do their best to support and above all, continue the process and follow the rules.
Yes, teaching children to read and write and be healthy is really important, as is early math’s sense and an understanding of how the world works. And I cannot stress enough the value of social and emotional health. It’s a tough ask though. Teachers at this level are overworked, over stressed and generally outsource their own parenting to others for a paycheck.
As it currently stands, teachers at this level are not educators, they are facilitators. They guide children and support them and encourage. But the increasing challenge of behaviour management suggests to me that this isn’t working.
Children don’t always respect facilitators. “they should” is the attitude. “they will” is the goal. “we will find ways to convince/force them to” is the ethos of almost any school.
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of attempts to address why.
Well, I have some theories. I have observed parenting a long my journey. The most respected parents, have interests and skills to offer. No, it’s not a stand alone requisite. Plenty of skilled adults are terrible parents. But then plenty of them don’t have the qualities a primary school teacher currently has: patience and understanding. But there is some correlation between parents with an interest and skill outside of helping their children survive, and the level of respect they show that parent. But we don’t expect parents to be perfect, there’s no test for becoming a parent. There is, however, a test to become a teacher. We do (and probably should, in community valuing cultures) expect more from out teachers than our parents. They are the knowledgeable ones.
But this knowledge is precisely the gap that needs closing. Primary school teachers are not necessarily knowledgeable. That sounds like an insult. They are often fantastic people with plenty of qualities. But in terms of actual knowledge, it’s a bit hit and miss.
I’ve spoken to kids about things. I’ve learned some things. Kids seem to understand that their primary school teachers aren’t skilled experts. They seem empathetic of this. They don’t seem bothered whether or not their teacher is proficient at playing an instrument, can rewire a house or fix their car, although they are hugely interested in any skill the teacher does have that is outside the classroom environment. They seem to understand that these skills are not for everyone and different adults are good at different things, the same way children are. But they do seem to react strongly to applying the importance of what they learning to their life. They do seem to question why they need to do things. They do question the diversity of their experiences in their own quirky ways.
Primary school is about teaching children how to be humans. How to learn. How to grow. How to adapt. And plenty more skills. Children at the upper end can explain this to me in detail. They know what school is for. They know high school/secondary is where the chemistry labs are, the ICT suites, the theatres and workshops. They know if you want to learn a skilled trade like electrician or carpenter, you can get apprenticeships (child language was “learn on the job” but they have the idea right). They know if you want to be an astronaut or an engineer, you need to spend years at university. 9 year olds know this. Granted, the older ones are more aware that there are plenty of skills to be learned through technology and ‘getting a job’ is not the same as ‘being skilled’ and are more interested in individuality. But the most compelling answer I ever acquired about what primary school was for, came from a cheeky 8 year old: “how to human”.
I started to incorporate this idea into my teaching. Yes, teaching. I don’t just facilitate. Kids will learn what they want to learn, some want to learn from ME. I approached my teaching from the attitude of “this is how we human”. It worked in almost every lesson in almost every grade (at primary level). From geography lessons that focus on how the land we live on exists, to history lessons that focus on where we came from. Anything to do with writing and spelling is about communication and reading is about learning and understanding. Physical health is about how our bodies survive through moving and nutrition. Science is the building blocks to the universe and math is how we calculate those building blocks for accuracy. This is not an exhaustive list, just an example. Now this won’t come as a shock to anyone with any experience in this area. Current curriculum designs include all of these features. And the detailed progression tables and learning objective maps and assessment grids ensure teachers at least structure lessons with ‘this is how we human’ in mind.
But primary school teachers don’t necessarily know how to ‘human’. They might well be acceptable humans who human just fine. But do they know how? Can they explain? Judging by the focus on behavior management and schemes of work, possibly not. They are quite good at following schemes of work and highlighting progression folders with the appropriate assessments, though. Does this help the job? Of course. Does this persuade children to learn?
I know a fair bit about how to human. I’m not expert, but I have a background in psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, language etymology and philosophy. I can’t build a car or fly a plane or play Mozart, but I know the theories of where humans come from and how we’ve evolved. I understand how the world has changed. I know how societies work and the impact of when they don’t. I understand how the brain works and the limitations of our understanding of the brain. I know how ancient philosophy can influence thought. I can apply this knowledge to lessons in front of me when persuading children to make the most of their opportunity to learn without relying on archaic authoritarian mechanisms that manage ‘behaviour’. I can apply this knowledge when deciding what parts of learning need to be focused on rather than tick boxing every eventuality in my planning in the hopes that someone else’s understanding will somehow shine through.
My motivation to learn how to behave like a human in any way possible (people, books, tv shows and art) was related to the era I grew up in. I wasn’t born with the internet and all it’s distractions. I was born during a time where you learned to fit in and were ostracized if you failed. I was born before autism and ADHD were understood. Through my learning, I found that many humans don’t human the best way. Moreover, they don’t even know how to. I’ve spent many years coming to a point of acceptance and empathy. But given that primary education is seen by children as the place where you “learn how to human”, surely it should be filled with adults who know how and can explain it? It seems clear that this gap in skills is possibly the cause of frustration felt by children around the country. And that frustration comes out in their behavior.
Why should children listen to an adult who doesn’t really understand why they are teaching what they are teaching to begin with? They call it ‘passion’ but passion needs time to thrive. In between managing a school day and prepping resources and reinventing the wheel, there’s little time left for teachers to follow their own passions, let alone passions that should drive the job itself. The focus on behaviour management, addresses the immediate issue in front of them, but it seems that managing the behaviour of teachers is just the same thing but on another level. Educating teachers to teach children isn’t the focus, finding ways to convince/force them to follow the rules is much more important, the curriculum does the educating. But the challenges of behaviour in UK schools should be an indication that this hierarchy isn’t working. It certainly isn’t ‘excellent’ teaching.
Perhaps Teacher training shouldn’t focus so much on classroom organisation, assessment and pupil management skills. These things can be learned ‘on the job’, and the required year of supervised practice in the UK means it’s already set up to achieve this. Teacher training should be teaching potential teachers about how and why we human. It should be a whistle-stop tour through ancient civilizations, wars and evolution and ways people communicate and how the world as we know it came from this. It should involve mapping out our society, how trade, globalisation and politics impact individuals. It should include analyzing brain scans and identifying how our brain is influenced as we grow. It should teach potential teachers about philosophical attitudes to living and the benefits of artistic expression. Because that is really what we are teaching children at this stage. The maths and literacy skills are all well organized into neat schemes of work already, thank you conservatives, you’ve done your job now sit down and let the humans get to work. Grammar skills and scientific terminology can be learned on the job and are far easier to pick up than trying to learn an attitude or idea.
How to network, create Powerpoints and highlight progress files should be a prerequisite to get onto the course to begin with. These skills could be achieved in many ways through college courses, volunteering and other jobs that are less impact-full than shaping the minds of small humans.
With smaller class sizes, teachers could actually keep up with progress in these areas as well. I’m not advocating for class sizes of 6. But classes of twenty or less with each one having a support adult should be the norm, not the lucky exception. Many classes in the UK are upwards of 30. Marking 30 books for three/four subjects each day takes 1-2 hours. The expectations for planning and adjusting for individual adds another 2 hours to the daily paperwork. On top of that, teachers need to prepare for and manage all the classroom activities that fall outside the learning curriculum. Sports day, bake sales and book scrutiny all have to come from somewhere. Then the holidays are used for long-term planning and sourcing resources for multi-disciplinary learning, because that’s still left ‘down to the schools’ and sold to them as ‘keeping their autonomy’. Teachers spend their own money on resources because of time constraints then get told “oh but you get 14 weeks off work each year you lucky sod”. It’s like giving a child the rules for a complicated board game that’s outside their cognitive abilities then expecting them to create their own board and plastic game pieces (or asking them to spend their own pocket money and buy one from the shop), then asking them to prove they’ve created and played it correctly, whilst also telling everyone around them how lucky they are for getting to spend their spare time playing board games.
Unfortunately, re-educating the workforce is not close to the top of anyone’s list, neither is investing money into support staff. And this is utopian post, I know. But whenever I see any school/council/curriculum state excellence or using the word “best”, I roll my eyes. Best way to navigate the chaos that is life, perhaps. But best education, it’s not. Yet the kids aren’t allowed to be fallible, faulty and chaotic.
Teaching in the UK is part of the squeezed middle, there’s little opportunity for being good at human-ing. Like the rest of the working class, they are just trying to get by. Children have already decided primary school is where you learn how to human, they also have the time to use the internet and learn for themselves, and experience a variety of human-ing procedures within their own families. Much of this they are questioning, like children do. And when the teachers can’t answer the questions because it’s not in the lesson plan and they genuinely don’t know the answer themselves, children quite understandably switch off.
FaerieFalls 