Learning Journal

  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.