Learning Journal

How have I developed my planning and teaching over the course?
Forgive me, of course, my learning journal, for not addressing these concerns all that thoroughly. I suppose that the essence of my reflection is not really at all of myself and my practice within my placement – perhaps an obvious flaw and error – but for me my main interest is to catalogue my own thoughts regarding the system of education itself, the placement of my students within it, and how staff react to all this. This belies my own interests in education, not just as an educator but also as taking a wider view. It should not be surprising that I aim to, one day, do a PhD on poverty and disengagement, inclusion and ‘class consciousness’.
Regarding my lessons, then, to look back I certainly feel as if I have made some progress. In terms of content, I am trying to loose the balloon teaching from the anchors of the syllabus, and fly above it by considering the articles of knowledge more deeply and connectedly. This, of course, becomes harder and harder as strikes and others delays reduce remaining teaching weeks, causing grand ideas to stumble due to simple lack of time. My activities are improving – a movement away from the frankly useless gapped handout, to sets of group and individual activities such as discussions, debates, presentations, roleplays, question sheets, narrative-writings, various tasks, jigsaws, and etc. I am finding more and more ways of relating course content to activities, in an attempt to defeat the ills of teaching by transmission, and its flipside, learning by consuming fact nuggets (and its evil twin sibling, drop-out through absolute boredom).
The bestly improved item is my planning. Previous plans have been three sheets of printed paper – my first observation of this second semester was six. I found more things to say in differentiation, more ways of differentiating in planning and in lesson, and it all comes down to understanding more about the individuals in the group and what they want from a lesson.
I feel as if I am doing all these things, but I am not really interested in writing about them. I am more interested in writing about what my classroom practices reveal about the state of education generally. For example: why is it so hard to unbuckle lessons from overviews of course content through lecture-handout-questions, and develop and facilitate the opportunities educational experiences? What is it about the system that makes it seem rational for the teacher to do a bare minimum and just provide pedagogical materials that condense fact and ask the students to do little more than acknowledge they have read it by answering questions? I would say that it is never enough to give out a piece of textbook writing and ask the students to consider an essay question on these issues. Yet, frankly, the course seems designed to encourage this. Remember the facts, write them down properly, and you’ve passed. The spectre of assessment chases away noble thoughts of improvement and makes the students scared of ‘unnecessary learning’. This is a problem many of my colleagues have; student interest is focussed on passing and not learning.
I find I have to bring in education under the cover of darkness, like a Guantanamo detainee being bundled up in a hood and forced along barbed-wire corridors. And EdExcel don’t help, because they ask for such specific and uninspiring and unrelated things, as if they don’t want the students to be learning about psychology, just demonstrating a willingness to conform to a system. Am I merely testing my students for acquiescence?
What I want to consider is whether it should be like this, how it got like this, how to make it something else. I suppose I do not write about my classroom practice very often in this learning journal, but then again, so little is really asked of me when it comes to teaching. The real task of any teacher, I would contest, is to challenge the students, the staff, the college, those who set the curriculum, the educational system, the government, and anybody else in hearing range to find ways to make teaching and learning better. What happens in the classroom is placed under such an unbelievable set of limits, and these limits must be contested. That is when true reflection about teaching could take place – when the resources and rules allow for all sorts of methods that can do more than just meet limited content outcomes, and the teacher can teach and the learners can learn all in their own ways and time and fulfil their own interests and abilities. I am sure that I can teach functionally, mechanically, taking part in an assembly line of knowledge. What comes next is breaking free of this.