(cc image by The Majestic Fool)

I’ve got a big dilemma at the moment. Do I stay with what I’m doing or leap off the edge?

I’ve just spent a year teaching NCFE2 to a fine group of teaching assistants. I’ve built up lots of resources and lesson plans and I’d actually started to feel that I might just know what I’m doing.

Then whoosh, everything changes, again. The place I work isn’t offering NCFE2 next year, only NVQ 2 because of changes in funding. They propose that I just switch to that instead but NVQ2 is a very different proposition:

1. Ideally meant for those already employed, it is less easy for people on voluntary placements. Yet it is mostly volunteers that have already signed up for the course.
2. It involves a much higher commitment to placement observations than NCFE
3. No scope for simulations - everything has to happen in school, no role plays.
4. Much more involvement from placement schools and teachers. Hard to get for volunteers rather than staff members.
5. The dreaded grids need to be tracked, collated and generally understood by all concerned.
6. It’s just been revised and the text books are now all out of date.
7. I haven’t a clue how to organise the materials or sessions so I’d have to start again from scratch with my planning.

Add to this a higher tutor/ student ratio and I’m left wondering if this is going to be more trouble than it is worth.

All of this doesn’t even begin to address the other issues I have with teaching at the moment.

I have been totally unable to find any sort of online network of UK based peers interested in adult education at pre-degree level. No forums, bloggers, twitterers, ning groups, nix. So no personal learning network of peers again this year. (Nothing wrong with all my great primary school network but a few peers would be nice)

The paperwork is daunting, hard to keep on top of and NVQ has even more of it.

I hated the Preparing to Teach in the Life Long Learning Sector course with a vengeance. It was a real pain and had me tearing my hair out. Teaching NVQ would mean embarking on yet another course, this time for assessors of NVQs.

On the plus side I mostly enjoyed the actual teaching sessions, the interactions, watching people grow in confidence and competence. I quite enjoyed the school visits and learning to navigate my way round unfamiliar parts of London.

Not teaching next year feels very high risk. It means I’m totally dependant on my writing and my online activities to provide me with an income. The return might be that with more energy and input from me my other stuff really takes off.

Shall I jump and hope that I can fly?

(cc image by SFTC/Gill)

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Unison finally noticed that teaching assistants are being used as cheap teachers:

Christine McAnea, of Unison, said the practice was “endemic” as it cost less to use support staff to cover teacher absence than to buy supply teachers.

England schools Minister Jim Knight said teaching assistants eased the burden on teachers, but should not lead classes “for more than a short period”

It costs about £150 a day to employ a supply teacher, but about £50 to pay support staff.

Rosemary Plummer, a Unison representative, said in the last few months more than 40 teaching assistants from a small area of London had told her they felt they were being asked to do more than they were qualified for.

“They’re delivering maths, they’re delivering literacy and marking work - that’s a teacher’s job… they’re being used as cut-price teachers,” she said.

You don’t say? Can you believe they’ve only just noticed? I don’t understand why is the NUT not screaming about this too, it is teachers they are replacing after all. Maybe supply and part time cover teachers don’t matter either.

Many teaching assistants are extremely competent but they are not teachers. I know TAs in primary who are doing all their own planning, target setting, and marking for the teachers whose PPA time they cover. For this they are paid only for the hours they actually teach, (no planning time), at Level 3 - not even HLTA rates, even though they are qualified to that level. They also have the joy of teaching with no support, which never happens to the normal teacher in that class.

source

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Unison gives TAs strike advice

Unison has warned UK teaching assistants that they could be disciplined and lose pay if they refuse to turn up for work on Thursday. Up to 7,800 schools will be disrupted with as many as 1 in 3 schools completely closed in some areas.

Unison has told its members that legally they should work as usual on Thursday if the teachers’ strike goes ahead. They should just not do any work normally done by teachers. It’s not really clear if this includes covering classes that the TAs might cover normally for PPA time. Those classes are, at least in theory, supervised by teachers so it’s definitely a grey area.

Unison suggests TAs can show support by attending meetings outside their working hours.

For TAs in schools that are expected to shut fully on Thursday, it is possible that they will lose pay or be expected to put in the hours at another time. In some areas schools will only be partially closed with some staff in but no pupils. TAs will be expected to turn up to school and get on with other duties. I can see a lot of resource areas getting that much needed clean up no one ever has time to do!

People will have to check the position in their particular school. Don’t just stay home because the school is closed, check with your local union rep. There shouldn’t be any picket lines as the NUT has asked members to attend meetings instead. If you turn up and there is a teachers’ picket line I don’t envy you. Personally I couldn’t cross one and then look those people in the eye over tea break the next day. Having said that I don’t remember a huge amount of solidarity from teachers the last time TAs took strike action….

Meanwhile, on Twitter, lots of teachers are planning to spend the day catching up with paper work and planning lessons! Sheesh - you are meant to be on strike guys! Y’know, going to meetings etc, not working! Oh and by the way, that probably includes not edublogging, twittering about work to your personal learning network, finding cool new resources to play with and all those informal learning activities you don’t get paid for anyway!

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Interesting article on brain based learning by a neurologist who is also an educator:

ASCD
Classroom experiences that are free of intimidation may help information pass through the amygdalas affective filter. In addition, when classroom activities are pleasurable, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that stimulates the memory centers and promotes the release of acetylcholinem, which increases focused attention.

The acronym RAD can remind educators of three important neuroscience concepts to consider when preparing lessons:

• Novelty promotes information transmission through the Reticular activating system.
• Stress-free classrooms propel data through the Amygdalas affective filter.
• Pleasurable associations linked with learning are more likely to release more Dopamine.

There are no neuroimaging or brain wave analysis data that demonstrate a negative effect of joy and exuberance in classrooms, yet some schools have unspoken mandates against these valuable components of the classroom experience. Now that hard science proves the negative effects of stress and anxiety, teachers can more confidently promote enthusiasm in their classrooms.

Let’s hear it for classrooms full of novelty, excitement and delight then She even has some quite useful suggestions for how to achieve them. Good stuff

All I have to do is remember that adults need this sort of consideration too!

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“Every primary school should have a maths specialist and parents should have a less negative attitude to the subject”

According to the BBC an interim report by Sir Peter Williams says the UK is one of the few developed nations where it is acceptable to say you are “useless at maths”.

Such attitudes will not help children see maths as an essential and rewarding part of their daily lives,

The study suggests the amount of in-service maths training primary teachers receive is inadequate. Although most (I’d assumed it would be all by now) teachers do have the basic requirement in maths for teacher training - GCSE maths at C or above.

All HLTAs and many TAs also have to have maths GCSE in order to even be considered for a job.
The report had a go at parents as well. It says they needed to have a “can-do” attitude to maths and to learn the modern techniques their children were using to help them and give them a love of maths.

So what do we get from this? More initiatives and funding for family learning perhaps? Parents expected to not only support the children whilst they do homework but also to make time themselves to learn the techniques schools are using to teach maths? I’ve been involved in family learning in school before and they are great for those who do get involved. The trouble is it’s never the parents you really need to reach who turn up to them.

One of the biggest contrast I’m seeing at the moment though is between these attitudes and those of some of my Teaching Assistant students. Mostly educated in non-European countries they express a deep love of Maths and a high level of confidence in their own abilities. They have exactly the ‘can- do’ attitude the report wants to promote, understand that maths is vital to children’s learning and actually look forward to numeracy lessons. As far as I can see the main thing they have in common is that they all did the International Baccalaureate.

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I’m busy working out what to include in a one day ICT workshop for trainee primary school teaching assistants. I’ve got an ICT suite booked from 10 till 3 and I’m wondering what people think the TAs really need to know. I’ve had a few thoughts of my own and some great input from Andy. Last night I found that Anthony was thinking about something similar. He’s planning some longer training for TAs and has narrowed it down to 4 topics:

Redbridge Primary ICT Consultant: TA Training
* Using relevant software to support a child with special needs
* Training other TAs to create banners for display
* Researching websites for teachers and TAs to use in their lesson
* Using the IWB to teach

I agree with these and have added them to my list. I also think he’s hit on a couple of really important points but maybe not spelled them out. Teach one TA in a school how to do something really useful on the computer and it tends to spread without the need for formal training. Teaching assistants tend to be a resourceful lot and if something is actually useful it spreads virally through the school.

Of course I was interested that he’d picked out making banner titles for classroom displays. This is something I’ve banged on about for ages. Hand cutting lettering for displays is a hugely wasteful use of teaching assistants’ time. Often schools don’t even have die cutters for the letters so that means using wooden templates, drawing them out and then cutting by hand. If TAs, and so by implication teachers, learn how easy it is to do banner titles, and how good they can look, maybe this can change.

Other areas I’ve thought about:

• File saving and sharing - an introduction. Basic, but many people, including teachers, have no concept of the difference between files and folders, don’t understand about saving versions, or even sensible naming of .docs
• Calibrating white boards. This is a simple but really helpful classroom skill!
• Supporting from the side - how not to do it for them!
• Very basic troubleshooting. Things like checking knowing how to check the in control panel of the laptop when the sound doesn’t work. It’s often just defaulted to ‘mute’.

I think the best way to take this forward might be to use a wiki page so I’ve set up a Teaching Assistants ICT Training page on usefulwiki.

If anyone wants to join in it is easy to edit. Just set yourself up a user name and away you go

So what do you think teaching assistants need to know about using and supporting with ICT? Either add your thoughts to the wiki or leave a comment here.

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Friday was Work Your Proper Hours Day and the TUC issued this report to go with it.

Trades Union Congress

It looked at variety of professions, 3 guesses which one worked the most unpaid hours:

• Value of unpaid overtime per employee £12,009
• Value on unpaid overtime per profession £7,348(millions)
• Percentage doing unpaid overtime 52.4%
• Average hours of unpaid overtime 11.2

Yep - teachers
So even with the reforms in the workplace, the 24 (or is it 25?) tasks, the Well Being Programmes, and the rest, teachers are still working more longer hours than they are paid. This even takes into account the ‘holidays’ and ‘early finishing’ that people are often so envious of!

What About Teaching Assistants?

I couldn’t find any figures for teaching assistants but I suspect it is vastly more than even teachers! It’s easy to see how a culture has grown up in schools where the teachers are not expected to make a fuss if they work unpaid hours and so they in turn just expect the TAs to do the same. They often forget that TAs are not paid for any hours they don’t have in their contracts, so no paid lunchtime, no paid holidays, and a very low hourly rate.

Not that TAs do themselves any favours. I’ve known people whose hours were cut because of budget issues carry on working.

“because if I don’t there will be no one there to run X for the children”

(OK, I confess - I was that loony!)

Early on in my time as a TA someone told me that schools run on the goodwill of teachers, TAs and the other support staff. I suspect that’s very true. People chose to work in schools in part because they care about children and their education and the institution relies on that.

Now we are expecting education workers to use even more of their ’spare time’ learning about internet technologies and undertaking informal CPD. It’s only going to work if they can see it as a way of eventually reducing those 11+ extra hours a week, not just another burden.

How are we going to do this? Ideas on a postcard please or better yet you could leave a comment below

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Here’s a can of worms being opened! Mathew Needleman states that in his district in the US teaching assistants are being withdrawn from classrooms because they have been shown not to have a positive effect on children’s learning

The first bit will sound really familiar to UK Teaching Assistants since Remodelling the Workforce

Creating Lifelong Learners » Blog Archive » How to Use a Teacher’s Assistant (But Not for Fun or Profit)
TA’s are most often used to do jobs that teachers would do themselves if they didn’t have a TA…making copies, putting up bulletin boards, grading papers, etc. It’s easy to see how these activities improve the life of a teacher but do not necessarily impact students’ academic standing particularly in low achieving schools. In fact, they might contribute to the teacher becoming less efficient in time management because they can simply rely on a TA when they are unprepared.

Hmm, not sure I agree with his conclusion there. Freeing up teachers does take a bit of pressure off them and in my experience it made them altogether nicer to live with! That had a very positive impact on children’s learning and on my job as a TA. When people are over-stressed they tend to pass it on to anyone under them be it support staff or kids. As for the stuff about displays Most people reading this will know that I think working with small groups, talking through concepts whilst making displays is a very valuable and legitimate use of TA time!

Still, I agree some of the admin stuff not always the best use of TA, or teacher’s, time but it needs to be done. Then he goes on:

Another ineffective use of TAs is have them work in small groups with your lowest students while you work with the rest. I’ve known some TAs who were outstanding and as good in their delivery of lessons as the regular classroom teacher. However, the teacher is the only one who is credentialed and trained using core programs

Well, I have to agree that TAs shouldn’t work exclusively with any one group either the “strongest” or the “lowest” student group (and we’ll pass quickly over my objections to the use of that term!!). He goes on to say that really he doesn’t think TAs should be working with any groups introducing work, actually acting as teachers.

The ideal use of a TA then is not to replace the teacher or take care of the messy jobs (like copies) but to provide an additional small group teaching experience with students. The key word here is additional.

Nice in theory However, in practice, I was always expected not just to provide additional support to learning but to deliver original content as well. Particularly with intervention schemes like ALS, ELS, FLS and Springboard Maths and also with Guided Reading. I mostly drew the line at covering PPA time on moral and educational grounds and to preserve my sanity! (It was one of those things where those of us who didn’t believe in it tended to do it less!) Usually it would be mentioned that I was ‘a safe pair of hands’ and I’d be left to get on with it. I suppose if I’m honest I quite relished the chance to get a group to myself and work creatively with them. I do worry about less qualified and confident TAs getting into deep water in those situations though.

I totally disagree with him about TAs working or sitting with individuals and repeating/explaining a teacher’s instructions.

• Sometimes a quiet presence next to them, a calming look or gesture, can help a child with behaviour issues get through a carpet session.
• Sometimes having the teacher’s instructions repeated and simplified is exactly what children with particular learning difficulties need!

It’s not that these children don’t bother to pay attention, it’s that they don’t have time to process what the teacher is saying to the whole class. Breaking it down, letting them deal with it in small chunks might mean the difference between getting some work done, meeting those all important learning objectives, and a child having a ‘melt-down’. A skilled TA knows how to do this but still encourage the child’s independence and a skilled teacher knows how to let them do that.I suppose that what it comes down to, skill. I think a really good TA has a different and complementary skill set to a class teacher. Working as a team they can and do raise standards.

So - how do you use your Teaching Assistant? Or if you are a TA how would you like to be used?

Update 

There’s a couple of other good discussions on this issue:

One in the comments section of a post from Mr Read 

One on the TA Chat Forum

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POP Quiz-Text Version
POP Quiz 1
Do you know the true art of questioning? (If Students Wrote the Quiz)

Can you answer “NO” to all 5 questions?

* Do you put our names at the BEGINNING of directed questions? If you put names at the beginning of a question, the rest of us will tend to ignore your question, since you have already chosen who will do the answering for you! Wouldn’t you, too?

I can mostly answer No to this one, but it’s good to be reminded

* Do you ask “whole group” questions like, “Does everyone understand the difference between…?” Hope not, because it is simply an invitation for a chorus of “yes” responses and the 2 or 3 of us who do not understand probably would not let you know because, “everyone must have understood it but us!” Instead, ask, “Who would like for me to repeat those directions?”

Oh - yeah, I knew that but I’ve still caught myself doing it a couple of times

* Do you repeat student answers? If you do, then you’re teaching us not to listen to each other, because we know the answer will be repeated by you! Instead, try other responses such as “Tell us more,” or “Someone else?”

Ouch! Guilty as charged Need to watch this one!

* Are you always the “answer-giver” in class? If you turn our questions back to us, you will encourage us to do our own thinking and learn to answer our own questions. For example ask, “That is a good question. What do you think?” After giving us a chance to state an opinion, the question can then be directed to the class for discussion. At that point you can add your comments to ours.

Ok I get an A+ for this one, I’m smiling again:-)

* Do you practice less “wait time” for the slower students than you do for the smarter ones? Researchers have clearly demonstrated that teachers typically wait less than one second after asking a question before calling on a student, answer the question themselves, or make an additional comment! Increasing wait time results in dramatic improvements in the overall quality of class discussions.

I’ve been working on this one, counting up to twenty elephants in my head. Adults need thinking time too especially when English is their second language.

There’s lots more good stuff on this site.

What aids do you use to reflect on your teaching?

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I’ve been thinking today, in between lots of other bits of work, about the need to widen my network. I want to start to link up with other bloggers working in Further Education, particularly in the UK. Most of the people I already read are classroom teachers or edubloggers whose main concerns are the teaching of children. I won’t stop reading them of course but I’d like to find some new contacts who are working with adults. Trouble is I’m a bit baffled as to how to do it.

My network of people I read and sometimes interact more directly with grew up dynamically over the last 3 or 4 years. I must have gone looking for people at the start but mostly I just found them from other people’s blogrolls. It’s the same with Twitter. I just added people I saw other people following who looked interesting.

So where to start? Technorati seems like an obvious place. They’ve got a search button and they use lots of tagging. But what to search for? I tried “informal learning uk” as a starting point - I’m not too hopeful, might just link here lol!

Ah - well there’s Ewan of course And quite a few KM (Knowledge Management) bloggers but nothing obviously relevant.

So I tried GNVQ - none

Erm - Further Education UK?

• eew an Official Microsoft blog which hasn’t updated for 88 days. I suppose I ought to subscribe, I do have to use windoze at work
• Going through the Phases might be interesting, not a tutor though. More ICT stuff probably isn’t what I need. Might be fun though.
• EducationState - Promises:

  An alternative and critical view of UK education news, policy and issues and a fly-on-the-wall insight into the day-to-day running of educational institutions.

  But it has a baffling theme, still I won’t notice that in my rss reader and the posts look controversial & interesting I’m starting to feel better!

• AoC NILTA Aha - Josie Fraser, she’s usually worth reading Oh, Josie is listed as one of the authors in Technorati but she doesn’t appear on the “Who we are” page. The writing looks a bit dull but I’ll put it in my ‘on probation’ folder & subscribe anyway.

Everything else is either dead or totally corporate Where am I going to find ordinary FE tutors who love blogging and want to use Web2.0 with their students to read?

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