Twelfth Night on (almost) Twelfth Night

This post will feature as a 'guest blog' post for Cambridge University Press to coincide with the upcoming release of their new editions of the Cambridge School Shakespeare resources...

Winter must have been good writing time for Shakespeare. So many of his plays are punctuated by storms, gales and hurricanes that it seems very likely he gained inspiration from rattling windows or shutters as he laboured over his latest masterpiece. Looking out of mine now, it seems possible Feste was in fact prophesising the end of 2013 when he sang that the rain raineth ‘every day’!

Twelfth Night seems to have been stalking me this year. This January the new Cambridge School Shakespeare edition of the play I edited with Anthony Partington will be released; the final version was delivered to us just before Christmas and we are delighted with how it looks. A few weeks ago I started teaching the play to an eager group of ‘A’ level students and we had a great discussion about studying Shakespeare in which we reflected that grasping the details of the plot can be a bit like worrying about getting lost on a walk; once you have faith that you understand the general direction you’re travelling in, you can start to spot the little details around you and really enjoy taking in the views. They are beginning to feel more confident with the language and so they are picking up on more of the jokes and delicious word play that Twelfth Night is so full of. They’ve been greatly helped this term by the fact that my school put on a fabulous production of the play for the Shakespeare Schools Festival in November and that many of them were lucky enough to see a live broadcast of the sensational Shakespeare’s Globe production starring Stephen Fry as Malvolio and Mark Rylance as Olivia. This book we’ve edited is really a blueprint (a shiny, lovely brilliant one!); a map if you like, with the activities and glossary acting like a key or reference points.  The play is the thing that really counts – the enjoyment and thrill of seeing and doing Shakespeare.

So how else has this play been looming over my shoulder all year? Well, I’ve certainly felt a little Sir Toby Belch-ish at times this Christmas, having enjoyed plenty of ‘cakes and ales’! But my inner Malvolio has at times been too prominent; having become Vice Principal at my school this year, I am often the one having to assert authority while trying to avoid tipping over into self-importance. It seems so much of being a grown up is about finding a good balance between fun and excess, enjoyment and responsibility. Shakespeare knew – he always seems to know.

But I’ve also been reflecting a lot on gender and identity in 2013; with two very young daughters (Shakespeare also had two daughters – just saying!), I’ve often thought of Viola and Olivia and how they struggle to be taken seriously in a man’s world. As my daughter’s personalities are developing and shaping I hope for them a more just and equal world than Illyria or Shakespeare’s London was. I hope that they can feel love and be loved one day as deeply as Orsino does, but I also hope that they will be as witty and sharp as a Feste or Olivia. I hope that they will never have to feel that their gender is a constraint and that they will turn out to be as bright, funny and brilliant as so many of the students I teach are. My wife is a twin, separated from her other half by an ocean, and the joy they have in spending time together over Skype or during their occasional visits to each other often reminds me of that beautiful moment in Act Five when Sebastian and Viola are reunited as ‘an apple cleft in two’. That they both, like Olivia, understand the pain of losing a brother and a father adds another layer of poignancy when I watch the play and reflect on my own love for my wife.

Change and identity, two central ideas in Twelfth Night, are in so many of our minds as we make New Year resolutions and take stock of the year past – who we’ve been and who we’d like to be. Just like this time of year, the play can be immense fun but it can also be melancholy and wistful. It has so much to offer, so much joy and intelligence, but Shakespeare teaches us that good things emerge through hard work and often from struggle. So that’s what I hope and wish for from 2014 – hard work, struggle at times, but lots of joy, fun and love.

And, of course, lots of students using our book to discover Twelfth Night!

Happy New Year.

Allow me to qualify…

Allow me to qualify...

'Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving'

Othello

The folk-image of the teacher?

1963 – Think ‘Whacko’: Moustache, sadist, alcoholic, probably a pervert.

1973 – Think ‘Nuts in May’: Beard, sandals, pot-head, probably a Communist.

1983 – Think ‘Gregory’s Girl’: Perm, highlights, tracksuit, heavy smoker, probably writing songs about his sixth-formers.

The cultural prism through which our folk-image as teachers is projected can be an unflattering refraction. We are viewed with suspicion and disdain by many, poor experiences at a formative age amplifying and rippling out much more strongly through our anecdotes and recollections as the years progress. You may never forget a good teacher, but you always remember a terrible one.

One use of the verb ‘qualify’ is to add reservations, to be tentative and equivocal - I’m going to ‘qualify’ a strong statement with shades of perspective and by perhaps acknowledging other viewpoints. A radical government is reluctant to qualify their bold statements and policy pronouncements because the first cut is the deepest and the boldest sound bite the most memorable. The more mundane business of implementation and delivery demands that ideas are qualified with details, folly and errors addressed through compromise. Similarly, it seems the more radical a department or leader, the more reluctant they can be to do this. The current mess in some Free Schools indicates that the (certainly initial) apparently very lax vetting has returned to haunt the initiative and the children unfortunate enough to be schooled in these institutions.

The debate has shifted in the last week or so towards the question of just how essential qualified teacher status actually is. Labour have seen the opportunity to place clear water between themselves and the Tories on the issue and a debate took place in parliament in which a quite stunning lack of understanding on all sides punctuated the morass of ignorance on display. All sound and fury, signifying nothing except a widespread failure to understand the reality of day to day teaching and learning.

So does it matter? Is the PGCE or securing QTS worth a hill of exercise books? It is of great value and incredibly important that the craft and practice of teaching is taught and nurtured in anyone hoping to become a teacher. Subject knowledge can take you a long way in a classroom of willing and engaged young people with their eyes on the prize and a well-developed sense of respect for knowledge and authority. Certain classroom practices are doubtless intuitive and can be picked up as you go along; after all we were all taught once ourselves and all possess some obvious empathy for learners. You will very probably be nurtured and supported by a wise, experienced colleague who may even let you come into her classroom to observe her at work. You may be fortunate enough to work in a school with a library of books about teaching and pedagogy that you can borrow and imbibe. I know that this is how some careers in the independent sector begin and develop and I’m sure that there are some for whom that is a successful path towards a semblance of CPD.

But that is an anarchic approach; a ‘crumbs from the table’, fingers crossed strategy to growing the highly skilled and respected profession we know we require and would demand for our own children. I’m happy when I see ‘Phd’ on someone’s CV when they are applying for a teaching job but there is very rarely a link or connection between this and the quality of interaction, instruction and intuition I then see in a lesson context. Truthfully, I have found that the ‘A’ level results a teaching candidate has are often a better indication of both their work ethic and fundamental intelligence than Higher education. The best performers are not always the best Drama teachers; the most knowledgeable Chemists do not always secure the best results.

It simply isn’t good enough to sneerily refer back to one’s own mixed experiences at teacher training college and blithely declare PGCE a ‘waste of time’ or, conversely, to claim that school based training is ‘lacking in academic rigour’. There are, I’m sure, too many ITE providers in Universities not giving a practical or relevant enough grounding, just as there are too many school-based schemes which do not provide a deep enough foundation in the principles of pedagogy. But I would argue that these are the exception rather than the rule and that reform is a more powerful approach than a wrecking ball. Whatever the complexion and make-up of teacher training, it should be a high quality experience and not an optional add-on. Seeking accreditation should be mandatory in order to ensure that this is the case. I don’t have any problem with gradual routes to qualified or accredited status; I don’t see any reason why a school shouldn’t have the freedom to appoint someone to teach as they gain accreditation, but gaining a qualification and the validation that should go with that, must be part of the deal.

So the answer Hunt should have given Paxman when pressed on whether he would allow an unqualified teacher to teach his child?

‘Yes. As long as they are training and working towards accreditation and qualified status’.

We want teaching to be viewed as a high status profession. We want parents and the public to have a much better folk-image of the teacher than they have in the past. We want to be recognized and rewarded fairly by those in power when we do a good job and, yes, to be challenged and provoked to do even better because standards can and should be much higher.

We cannot achieve this by allowing the job to become a gentleman’s hobby. A pursuit people can play at freely ‘first’ before going on to do something better or more lucrative.

We should offer qualified support to any politician who presents a plan that nurtures these aims. No such plan currently exists and I am getting fed up of waiting.

Ten out of ten...

I'm celebrating ten years of teaching this year. If you buy into Malcolm Gladwell's theory, outlined in his book 'Outliers: The Story of Success', that means I've still actually got a little way to go before I clock up the 10,000 hours required to truly master something.

I've also made fairly rapid progress up the greasy pole of school leadership, so some will tell you that I no longer possess the credibility to comment on matters of teaching, and certainly not of learning, because my careerist tragectory has now firmly established me as part of the problem.

So I may not quite carry the weight of experience required, and I may now be 't'gaffer', but occasionally I've worked with colleagues on helping them evaluate their practice and sometimes they have told me that I've been able to help. So I thought I'd set down a few things I've learned in ten years along with a few things I'd like to be able to tell myself back in 2002 in order to save a lot of time, worry and anxiety.

1. You are probably teaching in a school because institutions and timetables suit you better than being an entrepreneur, an artist or a maverick. Accept that about yourself and the job and you will be happier. You probably could not earn more in the private sector, regardless of your intelligence, for this reason. You are probably liberal by conviction but you will regularly feel conflicted by your authoritarian and hierarchical instincts - this is natural and does not make you a bad person. Children need figures of authority and structure in order to make mistakes, to make poor personal choices and to experience new freedoms safely around people who care for them. You are powerful and important in your role and (without wishing to sound pompous) you have a responsibility to work hard to be the best teacher that you can possibly be.

2. Here are the things that matter in terms of accountability:

• mark their work regularly and formatively; 
• understand the assessment modes and methods as thoroughly as you can and guide them through it as well as you possibly can; 
• always answer queries and requests from students, parents and colleagues quickly and constructively.

3. Here are the things that matter in terms of creativity:

• don't listen to anyone who tells you there is a 'right' method of teaching and a 'wrong' method (only listen when they show or prove to you that a method you have chosen isn't working); 
• not every lesson you plan and deliver can or should be like an episode of 'Glee' (you never see the musicians endlessly practising their scales do you?); 
• the day you stop being open to new ideas, strategies, technologies and techniques is the day you need to start looking for a new job.

4. Here are the things that matter in terms of questioning: 

• the bright child who makes you feel good by answering your question instantly and with relish is not your friend - it was easy and they've learned nothing; 
• the child who looks crestfallen as they struggle to answer your question is not damaged by the experience (but make sure they answer one correctly before the end of the lesson) unless you make your classroom a place where to be wrong is to be humiliated (in which case you are a terrible person); 
• ask questions of everyone and follow them up with probing, searching head scratchers which make it difficult for everyone (that's differentiation and challenge you know!).

5. Here are the things that matter in terms of behaviour:

• some of it may well be down to your teaching, but most of it is usually down to the lack of an effective system in the school (unless you have an effective system and you aren't applying it consistently, in which case you've only yourself to blame); 
• your mood and tone is always the dominant one in the classroom - if you are edgy and cross, the chances are the children will generally amplify and ape this (try to stay cool and try to keep smiling);
• always have and enforce a seating plan and don't listen when they tell you they work best with Sophie - they don't.

6. Here are the things that matter in terms of work/life balance:

• you will get more efficient and quicker at terrible things like marking and report writing but, rightly or wrongly, (and I'm really sorry about this) teaching will always be a job which takes about sixty hours a week to do well; 
• if you're spending eighty hours plus a week doing it, you are doing something wrong and need to work more efficiently (you'll make yourself ill); 
• don't work on at least one day a week if you can possibly help it (your family, friends and mental health need you).

7. Here are the things that matter in terms of presence:

• don't kid yourself with precious notions of integrity and honesty, when you are teaching you are presenting a version of you, and that version requires rehearsal and preparation; 
• where you stand in the room and the way you use your voice is very important, you should be as reflective about this as an actor on stage is - film yourself teaching (cringe and critique!); 
• always greet students at the door and smile and interact with children around the school - you get back what you give out in this respect.

8 Here are the things that matter in terms of literacy and numeracy:

• most students fail to access a lesson because they can't understand what is being delivered (naturally) - this is, more often than not, a literacy issue (we are all teachers of literacy); 
• make sure that you always model written activities or at the very least provide good examples - providing a suggested structure or even a scaffold is not cheating, it is teaching; 
• teach spelling strategies explicitly, get all students reading and never bow to the temptation of allowing SEN/D or mixed ability issues to become an excuse for either dumbing down the texts you use or not hearing a child speak or read aloud to you.

9. Here are the things that matter about planning and teacher talk:

• don't listen to anyone who tells you that teacher talk is inherently bad - the point is not how much you talk but the quality and impact of what you say (boring/ineffective teacher talk is just as useless as directionless group work); 
• the point of a scheme of work should never be to essentially hand you a ready made lesson - they are about sharing ideas, resources and ensuring a broad consistency of experience (don't expect anyone else to plan your lesson for you); 
• never spend more time writing a lesson plan than you do delivering the lesson (I've seen this happen so often), and always sit down to plan thinking about the outcomes/success criteria ahead of what you want them to do. 

10 . If you make it ten years in the job (many, many sadly don't), you will doubtless have formed strong views about the job and of the political and structural winds which batter us as teachers. This is right and proper and natural but it should never be allowed to overpower those core values which took you into the classroom in the first place. Those entry level aspirations were always noble, right, innocent and pure - and the one thing that will never change is the joy that a good teacher can glean from a well delivered lesson and a child who is making great progress in your care. It is, for those with the guts, resilience, tenacity and reflective wisdom, the best job in the world.

Enjoy half term - another of the best things about the job!