Learning Journal

One thing that has been concerning me of late has been EMA payments. Over the past few months, since the first block placement, I have become steadily more and more critical of certain students. Let me explain.
The EMA was an idea brought about by the need to widen participation, and increase student numbers in FE. It is advertised quite widely - I see animated adverts for it with spies in all over the internet, and what more is going to advertise something to a teenager than a cartoon spy? - and I presume it has been successful. Certainly, many students rely on their EMA payments, and many students without it complain that they want one too. It isn't exactly fair that some students get £30 a week, and students who don't get it do not receive £30 a week from their parents, but it would be hard to force parents to do this.
I am not sure, though, if such payments really allow students to join college courses. They seem to, I feel, motivate students to join, for the financial incentive. It is hard to see that £30 a week is going to persuade a student to join college rather than work, even on minimum wages, which would bring in considerably more. Instead, it is an incentive for students to join, and some of them seem to think that, in return for the EMA, they only have to turn up for class.
One case in point is a student who was in my class during observation 5, with my college mentor. I moved around the students to new groups for a discussion task, one that went very well and my mentor was pleased with. I purposefully placed this student in the group that was sat next to where my mentor was, in order that she might be persuaded to do work. Normally, this student sits with her friends, and responds to work by naming her handout and then leaving it. She rarely fills anything in, and when being asked to do work responds with a sigh. She often feigns an illness, a pain, a tiredness, and to start with I was quite considerate. But without some explanation, it is hard to understand that a student can be constantly ill in different ways, and she refuses to talk about her problem. I presume that she might well be working over the weekend. More importantly, though, she has no interest in talking to me, in trying to do the work, and simply files handouts away and listens mutely when I am speaking. She spends most of her time talking to her friends about various goings on and occasionally laughing too loudly.
When sat next to the mentor, she merely stared unpleasantly at the people around her, and upon leaving, my mentor mentioned that I could exclude her from class for her unco-operativeness and belligerence. I happily kept this in mind. I do not like to exclude students, and have only have to do it before for extreme lateness, but a student cannot come to class merely to get their EMA forms signed, doing nothing that could be construed as learning.
So, recently, I have been asking for signs of work in order the EMA forms be signed. This student has taken to turning up, enquiring whether my rules have changed, and then leaving early. I suppose that she doesn't want EMA anymore, or could be forging my signature (my students tell me this is a common practice). I've informed her personal tutor to ask if this is going on, and I log her leaving each week. I don't know what she's going to do when it comes to her exam, but I'm not sure she ever cared.
This sort of example makes me think that EMA, as it is, might not be widening participation as much as making college an easy place to be.

  This week, I might be expected to talk about my observation six, or my experiences at the interview on Friday.  But these really weren't the most striking events.  Passing the observation was an excellent experience, but I did put quite a bit of work into it - albeit less than any previous observation, as I think I have become much better at planning good lessons.  But passing wasn't really a definitive event, as I believe that there is still a long way to go to becoming a very good teacher.
  The interview was also not definitive.  It was good experience for such events, and I'm glad I was not offered the job, as what I saw of the school was in some ways quite unpleasant and I don't think I could have fitted there.  The best thing about it was wearing my nifty new interview gear, with a nice suit and shoes and a bag and everything.  Very 'britpop'!  (Yes, I know, I don't know what I mean either).
  From this last week's events, the most formative experience happened in class.  While facilitating the smooth running of a nicely planned worksheet with questions and tasks and activities and so on, I noticed that the general air of activity was swirling round the class and somehow missing one corner.  Why, a student isn't working! I thought, and immediately leapt into action.  The student in question looked up at me with kindly, triumphant eyes, as I had interrupted him in doing a different kind of work.  He was writing his rap lyrics.
  Well, being a sensitive soul, I was unable to merely tell him off and ask him to do his worksheet instead.  So I entered concerned, nurturant, supportive mode.  I read his lyrics and empathised with his message.  He was writing about how he grew up in the West Midlands, in 'the projects', and how if anybody tried to 'beef on him' (start a fight) only they would get hurt because he's too strong.  Through the lyrics I got the sense of this young man - albeit not much younger than me - attempting to prove himself to the world in his own way.  Although they weren't at Eminem standard (not enough references to being the best rapper in the world, for a start) they were still very important to my student.  They were part of his identity.  So I talked with him, about his plans, about why he wrote, about what it was like to be a student and a rapper at the same time.  I think I left him feeling as if he'd had some approval, as if he could both pass his A-levels and write lyrics, and have his own identity in class.
  Obviously, I still told him to get on with his work.
  It's episodes like this that bring home the importance of the learner.  Not as merely a quantified unit of 'learning styles' or a personality based on an ILP.  The learner is a real person, doing real things, who is capable of going out into the world and failing, or succeeding, or improving something, or breaking something.  How are we supposed to understand and deal with this?  I don't think that I have enough time to teach learners - I have time to teach the class, and talk to a few people.  But so much of each person that I meet each week passes me by, hidden and unnoticed.  So much is assumed that very few aspects of each person are reached by me as a teacher.  So little learning or education really goes on.  We concentrate too hard on certain aspects of interaction, and a lot is being lost.  Why don't we admit that the classroom is really a much more complex place than we are assuming?  And what can we do about it?
  I suppose that I don't really know.  It seems that I'll have to keep figuring it out as I go along.

The FE sector is quite disorganised, in my opinion, on Tuesday evening a headmaster from a south Birmingham school rang me up to tell me that I had an interview on Friday, and please could I prepare a 20 minute lesson on key assumptions in psychology for a class of 'twelve to fifteen students'. How thorough.
Anyhow, I've done my best with it, and a Magnum Opus of 'What do you think about Freud' has resulted. It's better than the deal my mom got - she is going down to London tomorrow for an interview she's only known about for a week, to teach 50 minutes of physics. The amount she has to teach she'll usually cover over a number of weeks, so she's panicking.
Compared to her, I'm more picnicking.
A problem with this course, I feel, is that just as we need the chance to wind down from teaching, with our hours mostly done and our projects all due in, the college ramps up its final blitz towards the exam. With the revision classes now being taught, I'm up to 8 hours a week of teaching, with 7 hours of this original lesson that I have to plan for painstakingly. And then I have to go home and attempt to write 2,500 word essays. Hurrah!