Shamed

I was running the blogging part of my blogging and wiki course again this week, twice, and was ashamed that I had not posted in so long as the attendees were using my blogroll to get to others.  I resolved to post that night (Monday) and yet here I am on Sat morning just getting round to it, although about two hours later than planned after catching up on loads of other peoples blogs and finding some great new ideas, especially new wikis that I can show at the wiki part of the course next week.

I have just felt too busy to blog even though I have had loads I could have written about this term.  I have been keeping my running one up to date as it is my training diary as well as a blog and so it has taken priority.

Work has been super busy, but brilliant, I have been trying to train for these crazy running races I am doing (which are getting frighteningly closer) and I this last couple of weeks I have travelling around the country a bit and organising my summer!

In the last two weeks I have been in Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow at a series of networking events for International Education masterclassers and others like global teachers and link schools.  I was there with the charity LINK that I went to Malawi with to highlight the glow group I am working on with them which will be primarily for global teachers and link schools but obviously for anyone else who wants to join as well.  It will sit within national international education glow group and one of the things I was doing was gathering resources from people to share within the group.

Glow was one of the things brought up quite often, especially when in the afternoons the groups split into their local authority groupings with some QIO’s present by this point.  It was fascinating to hear what different councils thought of Glow, obviously based on the experiences that they had to date and what stage their council were at in rolling it out.  It made me realise just how far SLC and other early adopters like Dundee had come when I when I came into contact with authorities who were at the very beginning stages.  I did feel bad talking about sharing resources and ideas etc on Glow when some teachers still seem very far away from getting a glow account.

There seem to be many different ways of rolling it out within authorities and I am not even going to pretend to begin to understand the work needed in setting up the infrastructure for local authorities when they sign up. However with the amount of content now on the national site both in terms of resources and in glow groups  it seems unfair for teachers not to at least get their username and password so that they can access the national site, even if nothing else is available for them at a school or local authority level.  I  did hear of this happening a bit in one council but I am sure there are very good reasons for it not happening too!

I had three brilliant days of co-operative learning training recently and have since been anxious to try it out with a class, particularly since I am now expected to deliver training on it.  So I asked at Castlefield and will be trying it out with a class who are particularly in need of some social skills!  I was amazed at the training at the things I thought I had been doing well in group work that were really just scratching surface and I now feel really enthused to try out things ‘properly’ like think, pair, share and peer teaching as just two examples.  I would previously have said I was doing these things, but now have an entirely new take on them!

I am going to tie in this work with Malawi.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  My school has recently become an official link school with the school I was in in Malawi (Gwengwe Primary) but I was was not feeling terribly enthused as I was unsure of how to take it forward when I was not actually there.  Going into the school this week to talk to the SMT about it and getting their support has helped, as did going to all of the networking events and getting ideas and the fact that just this week, after huge amounts of time on the phone, I have booked flights and trips for the summer.

I am going to Malawi for 2 weeks with one of the other teachers from the programme last year.  We are doing this independently although since we are both link schools the folk from LINK out there will give us a hand getting to our schools, either themselves or by arranging transport for us.  I am then leaving and going back to Nairobi to then travel to Tanzania and climing Mount Kiliminjaro.  I was talking about this last year so I had the idea before I knew about the celebs doing it!  I paid attention to what they did to prepare though and have watched the programme twice now so it was actually useful that they did it first!  In fact it persuaded me into spending yet more money to do a longer trek and not just doing the quickie, cheaper one to the top which you have less chance of getting to the top with anyway!  Not that I was trying to cut corners but with a brand new kitchen and huge total costs for this trip in total I was a bit worried!  When I saw how slowly Fearne Cotton was wallking and how much of a struggle it was for her I thought I would pay atttention!

Travelling back to Nairobi after that and going onto the Masai Mara for a three day camping safari and finishing with a couple of days in Nairobi.

The Kiliminjaro trek is partly to help raise funds for the teachers house I am raising money for in my village.  I am looking forward to going out and telling them that I am doing this for them and hopefully I will be past halfway by that point with a further very generous sum to come from someone if I make it to to the top of Kili.

I had sent letters asking about coming to stay again which unfortunately never arrived and so I had to text and ask but I got lovely texts back from my head teacher saying they would love to have me back:

“Caroline, your message has answered the dreams of a lot of people here.  They were asking me to call you and have a visit at Gwengwe school,  but I had nowhere to start.  Come and visit us.  You are most welcome.  The village headsmen, the family and all the teachers want to see you again.  The DEM and PEA say you are most welcome.  I am Jimu”

I since then asked them what they wanted to work on while I was there and they said english grammar, alphabetical order, global map, phonics and other things for maths.  Now despite my A at English higher I would not say my english grammar was the best and neither would my dad whenever he proof reads my assignments.  I am also not convinved that should really be a priority but I am going to keep thinking of it in terms of infants and maybe things like sentences and simple ideas of verbs, adjectives etc.  I would like to do more this year where I worked in english but the teachers helped the pupils to do it in Chichewa so they have a better understanding.

I would like to take out really simple jolly phonics books as well as teachers guides and other picture books and loads of other resources.  I will have to buy gradually over the next few months since I am already spending so much on the trip as a whole.  As part of the co-operative learning teaching I will try to enthuse the class I am working with at Castlefield to do things/make things/write to Malawi and work with the rest of the school to raise awareness and get behind the link and my visit.

More to follow on all of this after the holidays and a couple of questions to finish this one.

I signed up to twitter but have not really got into posting although I do log in and see what other people are saying.  It is blocked at work and I do not have present have internet access on my phone, although not sure if I can change this.  Can I send ordinary texts to twitter that would go on the web – that would be useful, and I hope interesting, when I was in Malawi again.  It was hard enough getting phone reception though never mind internet access so I doubt I would be able to do it through the internet even if I had it on my phone. 

Also I have been trying for a while to put powerpoints on slideshare, to then put on glow – it looks so nice!  These are all to do with Malawi and are reasonably big with lots of photos.  I am having terrible trouble getting them onto slideshare and just wanted to check if this was down to the photos and size of them – if it is I will just have to split them into smaller sections.

Catching up

I thought that with doing those lessons on literacy I would feel I had teaching to write about and would keep this up to date but obviously so many other things have got in the way that I have been too busy to keep this up.  I have really  been trying to focus on my running blog lately to help me keep going with that as the 53 mile Highland Fling race from Milngavie to Tyndrum is only 11 weeks away now!  I am starting to wonder how I am going to keep going for about 12 hours!  

I did 5 lessons in a primary 5 class on Lets Think Through Literacy.  The p.5’s were definitely at the bottom end of the age group for these activities and the ideas were very typical of that age.  When we had the training day we actually did some of the lessons as if we were pupils and had some great ideas and really got into it.  I think this may have given my too big ideas of what to expect from children as their ideas were nothing like ours!  Maybe if I did it with p.7 it would have been slightly different.  I was pleased to be in this class though as the teacher was really enthusiastic and followed and took notes through every lesson.  She was definitely the type who thought that children should be given the chance to use drama and talking and listening to gain in confidence and she could see big differences in some of the pupils from the beginning to the end.  I am looking forward to running some CPD on this next year and getting teachers to do this in the same kind of way we did at the training.

And then I started doing lessons in a secondary!

I was looking at shoo fly resources and as I am going to be running CPD on that next year as well I thought I had better pilot some lessons on this.  This resource had specifically been given to a secondary to try and I was working with the PT of the English department when I suggested I do a series of lessons which he watches and then he does a series that I can watch. 

I chose to do the poetry work as it is one of my weaker areas so I thought I would challenge myself but it was also probably the piece of writing the children would find most interesting as it was a bit scary and was entitled ‘A Gothic Tale’.  The resources can be used on the interactive whiteboard or viewed through power point, which was what we had to use. 

It was a first year class, and although I have done a lot of Malawi work with classes from 1st to 6th year this was my first time at trying out teaching at secondary level and it’s fair to say I was a bit worried!  The class are an absolute dream though, I would have loved to have them in p.7.  The things we could have done!

So we spent time on the poem, wrote a synopsis and researched gothic culture and history so far.  Tonmorrow we will write a poem and then on Wed they will put it onto powerpoint like the original poem and make it look gothic.

I have really enjoyed working with the class and find secondaries fascinating but being stuck to a timetable is very restricting and I am not sure I would want that all the time while teaching.   50 – 55 mins is not very long to discuss things and get the associated work done and I have felt I, and the children, are just getting into things properly when it is time to stop.  And that is with a wonderful class where the behaviour and the work ethic was as close to perfect as you get.  With Curriculum for Excellence schools are definitely going to have to look at timetabling, as I know some are, so that pupils can go into a particular topic in more depth and not be restricted by time.  It made me realise how lucky we were in the primary if we were given the freedom to be loose with the timetable and spend longer on subjects/topics the children were interested in and that consquently generated more learning.

Fundraising challenge 1…….Done!

last lap!

Edinburgh Triathlon – despite being absolutely terrified before the start I enjoyed this today and will be signing up for another one in June!  I surprised myself with how I did, considering how little training I had and look forward to improving on it.  Bring on the training for the Highland Fling now!

Overspending for shoeboxes

Last Thursday I did my biggest training input so far on Glow.  This was to all the team leaders within support services for two clusters within East Kilbride.  I felt they were all really positive and quite happy to take forward the work on passwords, being able to see how it carried on from their work on Seemis.  They were also asked to see how it would be used with the children so I took them through a couple of glow groups.  This then led to them asking if they could have a glow group and I was later (once I found out) able to tell them that one was in the process of being built for support services.

I spent my Saturday morning at a ’speed net’ event at Holyrood Secondary for the Scotland-Malawi partnership.  It was basically like speed dating, and talking about Malawi in that way was hard enough, I would never be able to speed dating!!!  It could have been really useful but unfortunately there were an awful lot of us there who wanted to find out more and not enough people who had done a lot to be able to tell us, still I might have made another couple of useful contacts!  I was invited to visit the school by the depute head and I think that would be really interesting.  Holyrood and their associated primaries and nurseries raised £75,000 in one year and were able to send some teachers and pupils over to Malawi to help build and/or repair school buildings in three schools.  3 of the pupils involved spoke to us and it sounds like an amazing experience for them.  I then heard from my dad that they also spoke to the Council Management Team involving the Chief Executive and the Heads of Service for Glasgow City Council this week – what skills they will be gaining from this whole experience!

I have been in schools a lot the last week and working with children often too on Glow and that is great.  I am really seeing the enthusiasm grow in the schools I am in and am lucky enough to be working with some excited and willing glow mentors.

It is not only within South Lanarkshire that my face is known for Glow – I turned up at the running club tonight to have one of the guys, who works at a school in Renfrewshire, come over and tell me that ‘I was glowing tonight’!  He had been waiting for a couple of weeks to ge that pun in I think, having seen me on the LTS website.  I was certainly glowing by the end of the session, just getting myself back into it after a bit of a break after the Chicago marathon, meant I hauled myself round the route in what I felt was a very slow pace!  And only for the kids shoebox appeal would I then go to Asda still in my running leggings to spend about 5 times more than I intended to on buying enough goodies to fill 8 shoeboxes.  I actually had a couple of people ask me if I buying stuff for shoeboxes as it was that obvious!  I love doing the shoeboxes or backpacks as it is so nice to imagine them getting them but I always get totally carried away!  It also always totally sickens me though that the world is such an unfair place that we have to be doing this and people are not able to live in the same way we are.  I always make sure I get hats and gloves etc as I can’t bear to think of children being cold.

And lastly I had a lovely pile of thank you nletters arrive from a primary school I did a Malawi presentation on a few weeks ago.  They included things like I was inspirational, very informative, I spoke very clearly (always good to know!) extremely interesting, someone was going to give their sweetie money away and lots more similar things.  One of my favourites (along with the inspirational one) was one that typed and was obviously supposed to say ‘I really appreciated it’ but came out ‘I really parachuted it’!

Reunion weekend

I have been in 12 different schools during the last 2 weeks, for Malawi talks, rich task discussions and work on Glow.  It has been really interesting going into the different schools, especially the rural ones around Strathaven and seeing how they work in different ways.

The Glow Mentors in each school have been really interested in how they can start to use Glow for learning and teaching and I have been really encouraged by this and am keen to get in and work with the teachers in the classroom.  I now have some times set up in a couple of schools to do this.  I am drinking far too much tea and coffee though from being offered it everywhere I go!

I also did my first CAT night in another school by myself – luckily I was too busy in other schools to worry about it too much before it started.  I was doing the e-beam and easiteach and went through the programmes first and then was lucky enough to have some time left over for them to practice using it.  This was what made the difference I think as they were apprehensive while I was showing a lot of the different things that could be done but giving them the chance to try them out right away would help them to remember it.  I got really positive feedback from it.

Glasgow Airport 27th June

Friday and Saturday this week I was at the Stirling Managment Centre for our Global Teachers post-placement training weekend.  This was done in a different way to previous years.  LTS have now partnered up with LINK Scotland to do the Global Teachers Programme and so Friday was a nationwide conference for all present and previous Global Teachers, LINK schools co-ordinators and this years participants to Uguanda with SCIPD in partnership between LTS and LINK, as I suppose a kind of launch of this and to allow all of us to begin to network with each other.

Kaye Livingstone and Nick Morgan from LTS spoke to us and then a couple of global teachers.  It was a really positive day I thought as hopefully from this people should be able to swap ideas and help each other.  One of the things we were discussing was Glow.  Nick and I have been working on a few ideas for the national site and I mocked up a Global Teachers group, although in reality I think this would change to include link schools too, so that people could see how they could share ideas and resources that way.  There was a really positive reaction to this, I thought, even though the vast majority of the people there were not even on Glow yet.  I am going to do this, and my children’s Malawi glow group, as my follow up work for Glow and will be able to work with the Link staff on this which will be good as they are really enthusiastic about it too.

In the evening and on Saturday it was just our group who were there, to reflect on the experience and start thinking about our follow-up work.  It was great to all meet up again and share what we had been up to – and we finished at 2:00pm on the Saturday so still had some of our weekend left!  It was somewhat nicer than being at the youth hostel in Edinburgh for our training although we were only at the management centre because it was LTS who organised and funded the conference.

I feel quite strongly from discussions at the weekend that I want to do something a bit more sustainable with pupils in South Lanarkshire, not just going in to do assemblies and then leaving again. I have not quite worked out what yet though!

Reflections on a holiday

Well my time was rubbish for the marathon but I knew that was going to happen; a lack of proper training, the travelling and jet leg and what ended up as 30 degree heat on the day were factors that were always going to give me trouble.

I did manage to mostly enjoy it though as I kept telling myself too!  I had a few low points,  but the volunteers and the spectators really kept me going.

It sounds corny but doing that marathon reminded me that most people are nice (I can’t think of a better word, too tired with jet lag).  It’s too easy to concentrate on anti-social behaviour, ASBO’s etc, especially when you have noisy neighbours, but there were 1-2m people spectating on Sunday, a lot of whom cannot have been supporting specific people but just generally there to give support to the 36,000 people who started the race (46,000 registered and 31,000 finished).  Then there were the people setting up showers with their hoses as the weather got hotter, giving out extra cups of water, ice and lots of sweets!

It was the volunteers who I really paid attention to this time though. Usually I carry my own water and have only just started drinking sports drinks so have never used the aid stations as much as I did last week.  There were 20 aid stations, about a city block in length with first aid, toilets, drop out truck and gaterade and water taking up most of the block on both sides of the road.  Half of the aid stations were manned by running clubs and half by high schools.  My guess would be that of the total number of volunteeers on aid stations 80% ish were teenagers.  Not only were they super at what they were doing but they were also very vocal in their support as well, particularly in the latter stages.  I am not sure this number of teenagers would volunteer, although it would be nice to think so.  Certainly I do not remember noticing this at either of the two London marathons I have done.

2 favourite slogans on banners from supporters:

“Pain is just weakness leaving the body”

“The reason your feet hurt so much is because you are kicking so much ass” (very american but funny!)

I love big cities like Vancouver, New York and now Chicago, partly because of the range of different cultures that they are made up of.  I was always turning round to admire beautiful children in the street of African/American or Asian descent.  However it was glaringly obvious that by far the majority of manual labour, low paid jobs that I saw were being done by mostly black people.  In comparison going shopping down the magnificent mile, going to museums with entry fees or to the theatre you were surrounded by mostly white people.  Then on my last day I saw a queue for a soup kitchen and 95% of the people in the queue were black and male.  When I saw that it brought it home how recently really that segregation was in force in the USA.

On a totally different note now, I had my first day of presentations on Malawi to secondary school pupils today at Strathaven Academy.  I was a bit worried about this as I had not really been in a secondary since my own time there so was expecting, pessimistically, bad behaviour and poor listening.  However I was pleasantly surprised at the behviour and attention that was paid to me in each of the six talks I did to 1st to 4th year.  They were a bit sleepy first thing in the morning and there were not many questions but the different classes livened up as the day went on.  I found the secondary pupils a bit harder to read than primary pupils during the talks but was convinced of their interest when it was often the pupils who started spontaneous applause when I finished.  The only un-related question I was asked was the very last one with one of the girls in third year asking me if my nails were real or not – I think they had a bet on!

Off to run and shop in the Windy City

Perfect holiday starting tomorrow – a world marathon major to run combined with a week of shopping with a lot of dollars to spend (I might manage a little sight seeing too)!

Been really busy at work, that nice steady to the session has certainly gone but I am loving it!  Been involved in some web design with front page and uploading that to Glow, helping with catch up glow training training giving training on the ASM role to support services staff and that’s just some Glow work within the last 8 days. 

I have also given some presentations to AIFL named teachers on rich tasks and how to use them as an assessment tool, continued with my management and leadership certificate, presented on Malawi at a CPD twilight and went to my school’s parents evening and afternoon to talk about and show photos from Malawi.  I am keen to keep my school involved especially as we are linking schools and keeping the parents informed is an important part of that.  Also hoping they will help me with fundraising for the teacher’s house I want to get built in my village.  The PTA are great and being supportive with this.

I have done 3 school visits to help with getting passwords etc up and running.  As a council we decided to ask schools what support they wanted in terms of passwords and then learning and teaching so that we are only now going to go out to schools who want the support and want to move on with Glow.  Doing all of the ASM jobs is not exactly my favourite part but I am getting more confident the more I do it.  I can’t wait to get on and help with learning and teaching in schools though. 

I am offering membership to my Malawi glow group out to quite a few of my schools, certainly for the glow mentor and an older class in the school so that the group continues to get used even though I am not in class.  I am updating as I go along.  I am particularly pleased with my gallery page where I have got 4 folders of photos like food, school, family life, village life and then I have a discussion web part below with questions set on what they can learn from the photos – one set of questions for each of the folders of photos.  Now I just need to have a class actually do it!

The children’s passwords etc have been straightforward but I am discovering a few anomolies with probationers, area and cluster cover and my own situation being on secondment!  There is one school in particular that I think I am really going to like working with.  I did a talk there last week (using GLow to show my pictures) on Malawi with p.6 and they were so well behaved but even more importantly asked such brilliant questions the whole way through that I just had a brilliant time.  Things like how I felt about going, when I was there and how I felt leaving, what the kids thought of me being there, language barrier, what they were learning, and much more.  Then today I went again to work with the glow mentor, whom I had met briefly a couple of times and even though she was at very early stages and did not know how to do very much she was so excited about it and could really see it’s potential.  She was desperate to use it to help a child who is off on long term sick and to have a glow group for collaboration between her class and a p.7 class in another school as they already email each other.  So I was able to help her set up those things and I am going in to support her in class after the holidays.

Bonus of my leadership course being cancelled tonight – nice to finish early before a holiday and gave me time to do this.  I will post up my self-reflection and action plan from the first module if I pass them; I posted them today.

Mash up

I don’t really know where to begin today! 

Excited first of all as I got a text today from the head teacher of my school in Malawi today saying they had received and given out all of the photos and letters I had sent out during the middle of August.  Then when I got home from Body Attack (I don’t know how anyone can’t love exercise if they try Attack!) there was an envelope from Malawi, one of many that I had left stamped and addressed to me, with letters from each of the teachers inside telling me all about what they had been doing since I left.  It’s hard to know how much they are actually doing of what they say but I will give them the benefit of the doubt!

Apparently puncuality is better and they are using all of my strategies for that, they are using my new timetables and the composite class are still working together and it is a lot better.  They are improving in mental maths, thinking critically, marking each others work, using the ball and number fans etc for active learning.  I had totally forgotten till it was mentioned that I had bought about 100 red pens in Dedza and passed them onto the depute at the inservice training for peer marking as the kids had thought if they were doing that they would have to provide their own red pens and they really wanted to use red to see what the corrections were etc. 

Even if not all of this is being done how, or as much, as we might do it just to know that they are still trying and that they are obviously very keen to keep contact is so rewarding.  I am in the process of beginning to officially link Castlefield Primary with this school and I now think it will work really well.  I can’t wait to go back next year!!!!  One of the questions from one teacher was ‘Can’t you change your mind to come here again?’ and she finished by saying I wish you could come back again very soon!

There was also a card for my brother that had got missed when I was given the other ones, so now I can give the one to my sister-in-law as well that I had been keeping back as I would have felt bad only giving one to her!

I feel I have missed the boat with writing anything much about SLF now, I enjoyed a weekend in Aberdeen with 4 very special kids instead.  One thing to mention about that is that I took them to see The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and I would highly recommend it.  The kids were p.7, 2nd year (those 2 had read it in 1st year and done a lot of work on it) and 4th year and they all really enjoyed it and thought it was very well done and true to the book as did I.  The only thing would be I would say the ending was more graphic/real than I expected, I do not think the book goes into that much detail and some kids might find that upsetting.  It was the longest silence I have heard, or not heard, at the end of a film in ages but considering the most recent trips I can remember have been to see Sex and the City and Harry Potter that is not surprising!

So back to SLF and all I will say is I really enjoyed although it was a totally different experience for me as I was on the SLC stand quite a lot and seeing it from a new angle.  I felt I did a rubbish presentation in the Glowing Lounge but I was last and most things had been said before me, and anyway according to Andrea I did okay (as her adopted daughter!).

I signed up for TeachMeet and to go out for dinner after and this was a big deal for me as I may have done loads of things recently, like go to Malawi for 5 weeks with strangers, but I still felt I was going to be shy and awkward with all of these people I only knew from blogs.  Luckily Jaye was going as well and looked after me!

She and I both had to disapear off quickly on the Thursday to the next part of our Leadership and Management in Education course, of which we are now doing the second compulsory module.  After a late night on the Wed night at the above ‘Local Government in Context’ was not perhaps the most exciting topic for 3 hours after driving up to Hamilton and it’s fair to say I struggled a bit!  I am enjoying the course in general though and spent my holiday Monday in my pyjamas writing my assignment (I eventually got dressed at 6.45pm to go to the running club, how shocking is that, but at least it was not to go to the pub!)  I will write a bit more about that shortly – just letting my proof reader look over it just now – but it is basically a self-reflection of your career and practice so far and an action plan to follow on from that.  Followed by a critical evaluation of a leadership article but I am putting that bit off!  As Andrea Reid’s adopted daughter I have to say that she features heavily in what I was writing in my reflection as I can honestly say I would not be the person I am today, and that is professionally and personally, without her support/guidance/pushing/mentoring/everything really.  And I have only known her 3 1/2 years!

Reinforcing the message at insets!

Tuesday 22^nd July

Each of the insets from Tuesday to Thursday would last from 9am to 3pm with a half hour break in the morning which we went for at 10.40am and lunch was an hour beginning at 12.30pm.  Even deciding this was not straightforward as we had to decide what was going into each session and how long it would be.  On the Tuesday as it was management and leadership there would be about 40-50 teachers there; mostly heads and deputies.  On the other days there would be 70 as there was actually another zone that had been invited to come the whole week as well even though they had not had any global teachers.

We knew from the outset that teachers would be late but we had to show a good example and start on time so we tried to start with something that it would not be too bad if people missed.  We also tried very hard to stick to the timetable we had on display to show good practice with this. 

We had decided our saying for the day, which actually really turned into everyone’s saying the whole week, was:

‘The teacher is the most important resource in the classroom’.

It became a mantra that we always had on the blackboards, timetables and flipchart sheets, as well as saying it all of the time.

We actually ended up being a bit late starting though which we were quite annoyed about as we were ready to leave when Link said but they were not.  It takes about an hour and a half to get to Tchetsa zone and we were picking up the PEA’s for both zones on the way so it was a long time in the land rover each day.  So by the time we actually started and had the welcome and prayer most people were there; some of whom had travelled a long way to get there for that time!

All of us were aiming to make all of our sessions all week as active as possible as again we wanted to set a good example.  We also did walt and wilf, plenaries, other AIFL techniques, brain gym and self-evaluations.

Timetable for the day

We started off with team building as our first session, after an initial ice-breaker.  We used the characteristics of a football team for this to give an example and then had some group work on characteristics of an effective team.  We had a flip chart prepared after that to show the benefits of teamwork.

Benefits of teamwork

We then used this to introduce work on staff meetings.  Our statement for this was:

‘One of the ways of bringing staff together and working together as a team is to use staff meetings.’

We asked the teachers to do think, pair, share to discuss what staff meetings could be used for and we during the share part of this we recorded the ideas on a mind map.  I led this part and think I did pretty well in speaking slowly and being understood.  I have the evidence of this as I was videoed doing this and on looking back afterwards I could see the improvement I have made over time.  So now I will need to just pretend whenever I am doing public speaking that English is not the audience’s first language!  It also made my accent not sound so bad, as usually I hate listening to myself but this was not so cringe worthy!  We then displayed for them what we considered to be the elements of an effective staff meeting and discussed this with them.

What can staff meetings be used for?

It had been made clear to us that the teachers should all be taking notes for their own CPD and that they should come prepared to do this but also that some wouldn’t (!) so we bought pads of paper and pencils etc and dished them out.  We decided to tell them that we would let them know when we specifically wanted them to write something down and be clear about what woudl be written for them to copy later rather than them either not writing anything or trying to write everything we said as we had also been told that some would not do it unless seriously prompted.  We found throughout though that the teachers were more enthusiastic and willing than I think they had been given credit for and most were writing things either at break or lunch because they wanted to know it all.

Use recycling to play at lunch!

After break – during which they were given a bottle of juice and a roll and this happened again at lunch – we looked at the key roles of heads, deputies and section heads and split them into these groups for this.  We asked them to brainstorm what they thought the key roles were and then decide on the top ten through voting individually for their top three and counting them up.  I took the deputies and I had to prompt them for things like setting a good example on time keeping and things that we were trying to push the message across on.  We thought, and this did happen, that very adminy things would come across and we wanted to try to get away from that.

The roles of the DHt, before narrowing them down

We then brought everyone back together and had some discussion with the whole group.  We then put our ideas up on flip chart paper (for schools here, not Scotland) and compared and contrasted them.  Instead of saying any were particularly right or wrong we then asked them individually, and without having to share it, to think about whether they would now change their top three and record that for themselves.

What they thought the role of the deputy HT was

 

What we thought the roles of the DHT and Section Heads were

What we thought the role of the HT was

In the afternoon we looked at monitoring, and as with all of the day there was so much we wanted to cover and so little time that we had to focus on just a couple of things – these being timekeeping, timetabling and classroom observation.

We began with timekeeping and had the following questions on the board:

Why should teachers be on time?

How can teachers best support learners?

What is the managements role?

We asked for ideas and stuck them up on the board too.  We then gave them a list of strategies that they could use to encourage staff, trying to be mostly positive but we did also say what they should do if the situation did continue with an individual (and we had consulted the PEA on this).

This did lead to one of the funniest moments of the day as one of our strategies was simply to praise and thank individual teachers who came to school on time every day for a week.  Someone asked us for an example of this so we thought they meant a demonstration of giving praise !?  I went for it (and drama is not something I am usually into) and laid it on really thick to Jill, who pretended to be the teacher as I pretended to be the head teacher.  I was practically hugging her and going on about how pleased I was etc etc and she was nearly in tears as she was so grateful and so on.  Well when we finished the same person said ’so you didn’t mean a reward of money then’!  We had a good laugh about it afterwards and hopefully it still taught them something.  Emmanuel later said (as he sat in on everything) that he thought it was great and learned a lot from it so maybe the others did too as I don’t think they are in the habit of praising each other at all!

We then moved them into their school groups and looked at timetabling to try to minimise learners missing out by latecoming or lack of teachers.  We asked them to discuss:

Is the timetable being followed?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of your school timetable?

They were asked to give feedback on one weakness and one strength and then to discuss how they could minimise the timetable weakness they had just identified.  Most of them had said the timetable was being followed, maybe because the PEA was in the room?, but then their weaknesses showed that this could not possibly be the case.  We gave them strategies to help them but this was where we ran into resistance as things like changing the school day, changing when maths and language was done or making composite classes some of them just could not see the benefits of.

We did not have much time left for classroom observation but did ask them for their comments on what the purpose of a classroom observation was and then gave them strategies on how to do it.  We did a role play on feedback with me being the head teacher again.  First we showed a bad example of it with Jill being the teacher again and nearly in tears again but this time because I gave her such rotten feedback and then with Robert as the teacher and I gave him constructive feedback using 2 stars and a wish.  They thought the one with Jill was hilarious as she was acting the part so well!  They are on video to be used later!

Each day we did a recap and an evaluation and although we handed them into Link I kept a note of some of the comments and will write them up later.  It was the first time I had experience of having written feedback on inset I delivered and as soon as we were in the land rover I read them all out to everyone – which was not easy in the back of that and on such bumpy roads.

I had already been feeling like I was getting a bit of a cold but ended up running back the last 3 miles or so to the hotel – in the dark and feeling awful, one of my worst ever runs.  Check my running blog for the full story of why I ended up doing that; Emmanuel was so helpful about dropping us off but I would rather not have gone, didn’t feel I could say that though!  Straight to bed after the meeting with no dinner!

Wednesday 23rd July

I was off on Wednesday with Jill and Kirsty, unfortunately I was feeling pretty lousy with the cold and had no energy as I had not eaten any dinner the night before after a really bad running experience.  I still did not feel like eating today as I had a bit of a sore stomach too so although we went to Dedza pottery for lunch I only ate a bit of a roll and a scone.    Other than that I only ate some tea biscuits and rice just to make sure i only had plain stuff.

There are a few touristy shops in Dedza – and we went to them all!  I got some pottery to go with what I bought last year and some cards but apart from that I was pretty sensible.  I got a lot last year and I had so many gifts to take home I did not have much room in my bags!

It felt really weird being at the meeting that night when I had not been out doing an inset during the day.  Stayed up afterwards to do more planning for the next day with Jill and Kim.

Thursday 24th July

Back off to Tschetsa today with Jill and Kim, Roger and Emmanuel.  I was feeling rubbish with the cold still and it felt like a really long way to get there!  Most of my staff were there today and this would be the last time I would see everyone except my head teacher.

It was literacy and numeracy today and we started with literacy and more specifically phonics.  We asked for some think, pair, share on what literacy meant to them.  We gave thinking time first and they were getting used to this by now but at first on Tuesday it had been really hard for them.  We had gone for one minute thinking time but we were lucky if they managed 15 seconds.  Better today though!

Kim led the next session for nearly an hour on phonics and she was amazing!  We looked at making sounds and simple words with the most common sounds in english.  We then asked them to think of the 6 most common Chichewa sounds, which took a while, and then we made some common words up with them.  This does not sound like much but we spent quite a long time on each bit and the teachers were very interested in it and very enthusiastic!

Kim at work on phonics

We split the time up with some brain gym and then did some literacy activities before break, which we just did between us.  We put a group of words up on the board and they had to spell them on each other’s backs, we also had them try to make other words with the word ‘hospital’ which they were very competitive about and some other activities which I now can’t remember, or understand what I wrote now!

After break we moved onto mental maths and filler activities.  We specifically wanted to show activities that the teacher did not have to be there, since that happened a lot!  It would mean children would still have a useful activity to do.  We started off with the counting stick, including crossing over 100.  We used sugar cane for this to show them another example of talular (teaching and learning using locally available resources) and they got to keep the sugar cane afterwards, which they closely guarded!

working with the sugar cane for maths

We had had to stop on the way to get sugar cane and we cleaned out the boy at the side of the road that we stopped for.  He was delighted as he was now off the hook to go and play all day!

Again we just split all of these activities up between us and did rythmn clapping next in different ways and the pendulum swing. 

We then played slam which went down an absolute storm, once they got the idea!  We put numbers on the board and they had to give sums that made that answer and played countdown.  There were some other activities we did as well and we made sure we discussed ways of encouraging thinking and participation particularly in games like countdown.

The PEA, Mr Balaka, did the next part which was great as we had wanted them to be involved.  He did self and peer assessment and had them moving about, discussing and being active.  I have lots of video clips of today which I will try to make into a more coherent short film and post at some point.  The October holiday would have been the perfect opportunity but the Chicago Marathon is going to get in the way!

Mr Balaka at work

Mr Balaka was good but his style was still so totally different to ours.  Not that ours was perfect, although KIm and Jill were amazing I thought, but he was not as encouraging, it was more of a ‘you must do this without question’ way of doing it I thought.  Great though that he was getting involved and on something so important as self and peer assessment.  The teachers were a little resistant to soem of this as they thought it would encourage cheating.

In the afternoon we were doing a session on developing literacy using books, well really Jill was doing it!  I videod the whole thing as she was so good.  I told her afterwards it would be perfect for showing students as a model lesson.  She had the book of The Hungry Caterpillar, told the teachers they were all going to be children for the afternoon and proceeded to spend 45-60 mins telling them the story.  Of course she started with the cover and pictures, the back, the author etc and told the story asking many open questions the whole way through and using wonderful expression.  It felt like a real privelage to be watching it and the teachers absolutely loved it.

I was supposed to follow this up with how to use books for older pupils and we had wanted to use the textbooks they have but they only had one copy at the school as the older ones take their books home.  We were also really running out of time and I just had time to show them how to ask questions about the title and the one picture while then describing how they should read it with the children, and make sure they understand the english etc.  We hit home on that point as many times as we possibly could; that there was no point in doing all of the teaching and reading in english if they did not understand and that it was okay to explain in Chichewa.

I was feeling better today stomach wise and asked Emmanuel if it was possible to stop in Mayani for chips, especially since I had helped him do the money all lunchtime.  (This was reimbursing the teachers for their lunch and travel expenses.)  Of course he said yes and I did enjoy them!  They are much nicer than the chips here as it is nicer potatoes, the chips are cooked fresh for you and the oil seems nicer.

We are really late back every day coming all the way from Tchetsa and we were pretty much having our meetings nearly as soon as we got back, as even though we finished the insets at 3 it was much later than that when we actually left as we would be talking to people etc.  I found it hard to today to say bye to Mr Kalivute, the deputy head, as he had been so great and Jill’s family lived right beside the school and she had to say bye to them.  I was crying for her just about as there was a young teenage boy in her family who had been really great and had been very upset to see her go when we left the villages that I met today and had to watch them say bye again. 

Sharon, Shiraz, Maureen and I spent some time in the evening preparing the inset for the next day on p.e and a general recap of the week.  Sharon and I had already done a lot of it one night before dinner – in bed as it was cold!  We were so busy doing it we did not even notice the electricity had gone and I was managing to write in the dark.  When someone came to offer us candles they thought we were a bit odd!  As it was the last day it was only going on until 12 o’clock which meant there was not that much time to do a lot.  We were going to Sharon’s zone which was nice not to be travelling so far and to see somewhere else, and we got to have Emmanuel as our driver still so even better!

I commented to Sharon that we were doing the equivalent of getting **** faced every night, except with chocolate and crisps rather than alcohol.  I had been so good in the village but it was partly tiredness and the cold etc, I just really wanted comfort food even though I was really enjoying myself.  We even ordered tea one night and got into bed with our tea and chocolate – bliss!  Although we were trying to write our big evaluations at the same time – not so blissful now!  Our diaries also fell way behind this week and I finished writing mine up on the plane which is why I keep having to say I have forgotten things from these days!

Frustrating start to the day, but it ended up a highlight!

Thursday 17th July

Again I sneaked a bit of marmite for my bread today – it felt like such a treat!  The kids were really late today and we did not get started for ages.  I found today frustrating because the head teacher had been called away to fill in some forms (why did someone, like the PEA, not come round with them!) and would be away all day and the teachers, although definately not the pupils, were in holiday mode and really winding down.  This was hard for me as I knew this would be the last teaching day and there was still so much I wanted to do.  I found myself being quite tetchy with the teachers and I know this was wrong, and knew it at the time!, but our time was so short we wanted to make the most of it.  They did not seem to notice or pay any attention to it if they did though.  I was glad at the weeked when I found out that most of us had felt like that and had been in the same sort of mood as I had felt really bad about it.

I kept having to tell myself that they get paid a pittance etc and that if visitors came to use at the end of term with new things to try out and do we would have told them where to go probably, whether politely or not I am not sure!

I did some more activities with St 1 and 2 first again and looked in a few times on St 6 and 7.  I had asked the deputy if they could reply to the letters that the p.6 class had written to them so they were thrilled to be doing that and spent a long time on it.  I, mistakenly I think now, had not been sure how much english they would be able to write and so we gave a few starters for them like name, age, family members, what they liked in and out of school and so they just ended up using those and they probably could have added more of their own.  I am sure they will be writing again though!  I have loved working with these 2 classes as they got more and more confident about trying their english, the boys hung out with me in the afternoons, they loved all the activities and trying out things like the dancing and the teacher being so enthusiastic made such a difference too.

St 1 and 2 drawing letters on each others backs

 

St 6 and 7 pupils writing letters to pupils here

I then went into St 3-5 which because the HT was away were being split between the St 3 and St 4 teachers, the St4 teacher actually being there today was amazing!  It seeemed though that unless I was actually in the room there was no work being done.  And this was not that there was work there and the children were not doing it, it was that they had not even been given any work and the teacher was away doing whatever else they liked.  I ended up getting so annoyed that I went to clear out the two cupboards in the school as they had been horrifying me!  One was filled with rubbish really and was easy to clear out and sort.  The other was full of textbooks and they were in an awful state.  The photograph is not even from when I began as I did not think to take the photo till later.

Before

and after!

I could not believe they could let textbooks get in that mess and yet they were complaining about not having certain ones etc.  They were mostly infant books and some junior, as everyone expcept the infants tends to take their books home with them.  Even if they were not being used anymore it was still an awful way to leave books and I was going to be leaving a lot of gifts etc behind so did not want them to end up the same way – hence me taking a photo of it tidy!  I have sent a copy of both photos back to the school, as well as many, many nicer ones, to encourage them to keep it tidy.   I did warm them I was going to do that!

One of the things I was going to be leaving was 50 story books with 10 different stories in Chichewa for the pupils.  These are beautifully illustrated and brand new and I did not want them ending up the same way!  It was the children at Castlefield who raised the money for these and for the parachute.  I then, in Dedza, bought a further 20 in English so they could have the same books in both languages.

Virsula the Giant

I really wanted it to be demonstrated how to look after the books and for the children to see them and know about them so that hopefully they would not just stay in the cupboard so I decided to disrupt lessons – well if you could have called it that anyway – and ask to do some paired reading!

I took the books and explained this concept to the deputy head who as usual was very excited and launched into a big explanation to St6 and 7 about how, with prompting from me, to look after the books and how they should be read to younger ones.  They were very excited!

Mr Kalivute explaining about the books

We had break and then brought all the children who were left into the St1 classroom and explained what we were going to do, rather unfortuntely the infants had already gone home but that was probably enough children for the first time anyway.  Mr Kalivute spent ages explaining how to look after them etc again but I had to close my eyes when then seniors came to pick a book as they were all grabbing and pulling them as they were so excited.  They quickly picked kids to read to and went outside.  Luckily the coldness of this week was going and it was nice and sunny.  I expressly told all of the teachers I wanted them to be involved and go round and see what the pupils were doing and listening in.  So no wandering off for them and to be fair they didn’t as they were really interested too.  I had suggested maybe about 20 mins but it lasted an hour as they were all so interested in the stories and pictures and they just kept swapping the books around. 

He is using his finger to follow the words!

 The older ones were amazing; they used their finger to follow the words for the younger ones, spoke with expression, asked questions about the pictures and got the younger ones to repeat bits back to them.  Some of this we had told them about but I am sure they used their fingers instinctively. 

I love the smiles in this photo

This whole activity made me feel so much better about this last day of teaching as I think everyone learned so much and the books are, I hope, such a useful gift that I am leaving them.  Some of the pupils actually taught some of the teachers a couple of things I think!  Even better was that then Mr Kalivute brought them all back together and was asking open questions about the stories to all of the children.  I really could have hugged him as I was so pleased with what he was doing, everyday, but that is so not the done thing in Malawi, certainly not between opposite sexes.   When asked about personal and professional highlights I now found it easy to pick – going running with all of the children was definetely my personal highlight and my professional one was the paired reading as it really perked me up and had a little of everything in it.  I wrote a case study about these for the LINK Malawi office.

Check out the pictures, they will never have seen books like this!

I took St 5, 6 and 7 off to do some more dancing while the teachers did the second part of the testing with the St3.  They were supposed to do it yesterday but most of them were part of the World Vision visit and did not want to leave the various queues which was fair enough really, it was just bad planning that we did not know about that beforehand and could have planned different days.  We had just got them to do it straightaway and not go home for lunch first as I did not think it was going to take that long but, and this really angered me, the teachers were totally unprepared for it and kept the children waiting for ages while the faffed (there is no better word) about not even trying very hard to get ready.  So not only did they keep the children waiting about an hour before starting but they also had had no lunch.  That would just not be done here at all but they had no concept that the children mattered!  They would not even have thanked them for staying back if I had not insisted on them saying it about three times from me and there was no praise.  I was feeling doubly bad as it was explained that it was really because of me being there that this was being done and I did not want them to think I was making them stay back etc!  It is not part of their culture to thank children ect for that kind of thing but I just thought it was bad manners.  They were probably also worried about what the results were going to show.  The maths results were a lot better than the Chichewa marks but this had been expected and is really the same in all tests nationwide.  It only reinforces the fact that it is reading that is more of a problem.  I gave the children biscuits that I had bought for them to keep them going and then a balloon each as a reward.

The boys who did a lot of the dancing with me, not quite sure why they had their hands in my hair!

Mr Balaka was there for some of the afternoon and I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought would most improve schools in his zone and he said more teachers houses as the teachers do not want to come and live in rural areas but if there is a teachers house it does encourage them to come.  He would like several schools in his zone to move to having eight standards including Gwengwe, but my school would definetely need another teachers house for this as you could not add on another class without having another qualified teacher there.  There are enough volunteer teachers already.  Hence why I would like to raise money for another teacher’s house in my village as this confirmed what the pupils had said the day before about wanting more teachers.

We had a staff meeting after the testing and I softened them up with fanta and scottish food like shortbread, macaroon and tablet.   I did maybe come across quite harshly at this point but I was really trying to get the message across about timekeeping – how can you expect the children to come on time if you do not – and staying in the class, which I actually found to worse in this school than the timekeeping, especially after what I heard from some other people when we all met up again!  Other than that we went through everything we had achieved since I got here, revised some things like thinking skills and questioning and talked about how they would carry things on.  I know I did most of the talking here and that was totally wrong but I was so aware of time marching on and wanting to get through things but I really should have let them have more discussion time.  That was bad modelling of a staff meeting!

Things we did while I was there

I had been adament that I would have to go and use my phone afterwards as I wanted to see if I had a message yet about when I would be picked up by link on Saturday so I could tell the pupils and it was also my wedding anniversary so I had thought I had better give a call home!  Of course we got all the way up the hill before I realised that the batteries on both of my phones were dead.  I knew one had been about to go but I had just had the other recharged in Mayani on Tuesday so that should have been fine.  I had played some of the boys some music on it though and must have left it on so there was nothing!  That was me, I knew I was in trouble when I got home!  In the immediate future I was more worried about not getting the message from Link as I had no clue when they would come and really restricted what I could do on the Saturday.  The boys tried to come up with solutions of someone going to Mayani in the morning to get it charged but I did not want to waste their time doing that and just left it.

gooli-wan-gooli or something like that. Part of their witchcraft traditions.

When we got back I went to do some work in the classroom but a couple of the boys came and called me down to the bottom of the hill at the back of the school.  I was totally mystified as to what I was to see but it was a large group of the St6 and 7 boys making me my mat out of bamboo that the children had brought in the materials for.  I had wondered why Philipo had a knife with him to school that would have been a dangerous weapon in a ned’s hands in Glasgow.  And probably similar has been seen in schools here!

Some of the boys who made the mat

I stood for ages watching them, really touched at how much effort they were putting into this and how much time it was going to take them.  They ended up bringing me down a desk and chair and I brought down my work (they told me to run and be quick while I was doing this as they did not want me to miss anything!) and I did some work while they worked and we had an awful lot of amusing, if stilted, conversations. Some of the younger kids came down as well when they realised I was there and the bigger ones tried to chase them away until they realised that I did not mind them being there and they were practically cuddling up to me on the chair – no wonder as it was getting cold as it was quite late in the afternoon!  I was there for 2 hours and they had started before that and continued with detailing it the next day, I was about in tears at the time and effort they put in and it really was from here on in that I was an emotional wreck about leaving.

using that sharp knife!

 

Some of the boys at the end of the afternoon

 

One of the other global teachers I was with, and who was in the same zone as me, started a blog shortly before we left for Malawi.  Check it out at http://clarecaley.edublogs.org/