The Prospect of Headship

A month ago at Wellington College, Sir Michael Wilshaw was asked about Deputy Heads who did not want to step up to Headship as the pressure was not worth the salary increase. His response: “Have some courage, don’t be so feeble about it, have some guts.”

I am a Deputy stepping up to Headship. In his response, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector acknowledges one thing I agree with: stepping up to Headship needs courage.

At every stage in my career so far, there has been someone above me who holds ultimate responsibility. From January, that person will be me. It will be me the Leadership Team turns to for the final word, me the staff look to for a decision, me the Governors hold to account for the performance of the school. If the school is found to be coasting, I’ll be sacked. The buck will stop with me.

“Don’t be so feeble.”

I remember how I felt when my children were born. I remember holding their fragile bodies in the crook of one forearm, and feeling the incredible weight of responsibility pressing down on me. As a Headteacher, I will be responsible for over a thousand children every day, every single one of whom has parents who felt like I did, and they will be putting their trust in me. The safety and well being of the most important thing in nearly three thousand parents’ lives will be on my watch.

“Have some guts.”

The education of those young minds is my responsibility. The curriculum they study, the way it is delivered, the manner in which it is assessed, the way success is celebrated – in the end, I will set the tone for all of this.

“Have some courage.”

The school’s standing in the community is my responsibility too. The Headteacher of the local secondary school is an important community figure and the success or otherwise of the school has an impact on all around it. Regardless of the wisdom of it, there’s a link on every RightMove property to the local schools’ Ofsted reports – the value of people’s houses depends on my effectiveness. I will be a community leader. One wrong move and the Daily Mail is poised to pounce.

“Don’t be so feeble.”

The careers, well being and development of close to two hundred staff will be my responsibility too. As Vic Goddard was told, “you make the weather.” I will make the weather for all those professionals. There are teachers leaving the profession in droves, crushed under bureaucracy and workload, frustrated by the perverse incentives of performance pay. Will I be able to stem the tide? Can I lead a school where teachers feel like they’re making a difference? Where it’s all worth it?

“Have some guts.”

The next five years will see a real terms budget reduction of 7% in school funding. I will be responsible for delivering the highest quality of education on less money per pupil. I will face the toughest of tough decisions – cut posts or cut resources? Slim the curriculum or expand class sizes? Cut corners or do a proper job? I will have to fundraise, bid for every grant going, recruit, and economise, lobby and pressurise to ensure a fair deal for the young people in my care, and hope that someone will listen.

But I will have courage. I will have guts. I will not be feeble.

Because Headship is a privilege.

Because I will have a team around me to advise and help, a wise and experienced Governing body to help set the direction, and a local and national network of Headteachers to consult and support me. Of course, managing that shrinking budget will be hard, but there is comfort in knowing that I will not be alone.

Because Headship is a privilege.

I will be leading a group of teachers. Teachers – the most committed, good-humoured, and dedicated profession, packed with graduates who decided that they wanted to make a difference, to pass on the love of their subject, to give their time, energy and dedication to help the next generation be better. I will make the weather for those selfless, generous professionals – and I will dedicate myself to making sure they know it’s worth it.

Because Headship is a privilege.

It’s right that the school takes its place at the centre of the local community; I want the community to be proud of the school – no matter what Ofsted say – and I will be proud to lead it. I want the community to talk warmly about the quality of education it provides and it will be my leadership that ensures that this will happen.

Because Headship is a privilege.

I got in to teaching to make a difference too. In my classroom I hope I made a difference to the thirty children I had for that year. As a Head of Department, I made a difference to more children, on a larger scale. As a Headteacher, I have the opportunity to make a difference on the largest scale, to set the tone for thousands of children in every decision I take.

Because Headship is a privilege.

Parents treasure their children, thrill in their successes, worry themselves sick about them. The sleepless nights don’t stop when they’re weaned. Those parents place their trust in teachers every day to care about their children just as much as they do themselves. Can there be any greater honour?

Because Headship is a privilege.

The weight of responsibility is not one I shoulder lightly. I am stepping into the role with my eyes wide open, with guts and courage, yes, but also with determination, with confidence. Because, despite the fear, it is a privilege to be a Headteacher. And I am looking forward to it.

Thank you.

This blog was the text of my presentation delivered at #SLTeachmeet for #BELMAS2015. 

#PoetryPromise July: The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins

#PoetryPromise is coordinated through Poetry by Heart with the aim of promoting and spreading the love of poetry. My #PoetryPromise for 2015 is to share a favourite poem of mine every month through my blog. My choice for July is The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Kestrel hovering (source)

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins is another unique voice in poetry. Like Emily Dickinson, he crafted his own poetics. He hammered and twisted the English language into a completely new form, sending red hot sparks spilling off the page with his sprung rhythms and exploding images. Reading his verse is like watching a pinball machine, as the meanings of words collide and spin off in unpredictable and spectacular directions, lighting up in vivid colour.

Although in later years Hopkins’ poetry turned darker and more tortured as he wrestled with despair and shaken faith, I love the unconstrained joy of his early poems. Though I am not religious, I feel the same wonder in nature when I see a marvel like a kestrel, catching the wind’s currents to hold itself aloft, its head a static point as its piercing eyes scan the ground for traces of movement. Whenever I see one above the motorway or over a field, Hopkins’ words leap into my head; his rippling lines catch the constant movement of the bird’s wing and the open-mouthed wonder of seeing such awesome adaptation in action.

Assembly: If not us, then who?

Quote from Freedom Rider John Lewis, painted on the wall of the Central High School Visitors Centre in Little Rock, Arkansas

I have always been inspired by this quotation, and in this assembly I’m going to talk to you about its source and what it can teach us. The words were spoken by John Lewis – not the famous British retailer, but John Robert Lewis, born February 21st 1940 in Troy, Alabama. Lewis grew up in a black neighbourhood in the southern United States – he had only seen two white people by the time he reached the age of six. He described what it was like growing up:

A police sign for a ‘white only’ waiting room at the bus station in Jackson, Mississippi, 1961 (source)

“I saw racial discrimination as a young child. I saw those signs that said ‘White Men, Colored Men, White Women, Colored Women’. … I remember as a young child with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins going down to the public library trying to get library cards, trying to check some books out, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for ‘coloreds’.”

Lewis was 20 in 1960 when the Supreme Court in the United States ruled the case of Boynton vs Virginia that the law which forced blacks and whites to sit separately on public transport was unconstitutional. The law was changed, and public transport became legally integrated. However, although it was now legal for blacks and whites to sit together on buses, and illegal for there to be segregated waiting rooms, in large parts of the southern United States the law was not enforced. John Lewis was one of thirteen original Freedom Riders who set out to challenge the Federal government to enforce the law.

The planned route of the Freedom Ride

The plan was simple. A group of white and black men and women boarded a bus together in Washington DC and set off on a journey through the deep south to New Orleans. They intended to travel on the bus together, to challenge the racist attitudes of southerners who thought that blacks and whites should remain segregated, and to force the police to uphold the law.

Freedom Riders on the bus

The journey started well. Spirits were high, and together the Freedom Riders agreed on their key principles of non-violence. Theirs was to be a peaceful process. However, some of the white people in the south were angry at this display of integration – very angry indeed. And they had not taken a pledge of non-violence.

John Lewis and Jim Zwerg after being assaulted in Montgomery, Alabama, 1961

Lewis was the first to be assaulted, as he left a waiting room in Montgomery, Alabama in the company of his white friend Jim Zwerg. And worse was to come. The police commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama was a supporter of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, and assured the Klan leader that the police would allow them to attack the Freedom Riders without fear of arrest. The initial attack happened in Anniston, Alabama, as the bus was hit with stones and had its tyres slashed. The driver tried to get away, but the crippled bus came to a stop, and the Klan threw firebombs inside. Then they held the doors shut, intending to burn the occupants alive. The police stood by and watched.

The Freedom Riders’ Greyhound bus on fire

Either an exploding fuel tank, or a shot from a highway patrolman, forced the Klansmen to retreat, and the Riders escaped from the bus. After hospital treatment, the Freedom Riders continued their journey, being assaulted, attacked and injured again and again. And they did not retaliate, sticking to their principles of non-violence to make their point.  As Lewis said, “if not us, then who? if not now, then when?”

Lewis went on campaigning for civil rights. In 1963 he was elected chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was the youngest speaker at the meeting in Washington where Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech. He is the only remaining speaker from that meeting still alive today. He was elected to the House of Representatives as Congressman for Georgia’s 5th District in 1986 and has been re-elected fourteen times, only dropping below 70% of the vote once in all that time. If not me, then who? If not now, then when?

In 2008, Lewis endorsed Barack Obama’s campaign for the Presidency of the United States. In the run-up to the election, he said this:

When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought — I never dreamed — of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected President of the United States. My mother lived to see me elected to the Congress, but I wish my mother and father both were around. They would be so happy and so proud, and they would be so gratified. And they would be saying that the struggle, and what we did and tried to do, was worth it.

At Obama’s inauguration, John Lewis was sat right there on the stage. And afterwards, President Obama presented him with a commemorative photograph, signed, with a simple message: “Because of you, John.”

Obama presented Lewis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010

In 2013, John Lewis returned to Montgomery, Alabama where he had been beaten 52 years earlier for using a legally integrated waiting room with his friend. Kevin Murphy, the current chief of police, met him at a church, and handed over his badge out of respect, apologising for the way in which his police force had failed to protect him from violence in 1961.

What John Lewis said has always inspired me, but when I found out the story behind his words, I was overwhelmed. “If not us, then who?” led directly to “Because of you, John.” Lewis saw something that needed to change, and he did something about it. The world we live in today is different, better, because of him and people like him who did not stand by, but who stood up and were counted. Events like last week’s shooting in Charleston, South Carolina show why his kind of non-violent action is still needed today to change attitudes that would seek to divide, rather than unite.

What do you want to change? And what can you do about it?

At Chew Valley School in 2012, a group of students decided that they wanted to change the way in which homophobic language was used thoughtlessly and irresponsibly in our community. Rather than moan about it, or be frustrated by it, they did something about it. They formed the Equalities Team and conducted a campaign to educate, inform, and change attitudes.

Stonewall poster used by the Equalities Team (source)

It’s due to their work that we share a more tolerant, thoughtful and welcoming school. They saw something that they wanted to change and thought “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?” Ofsted recognised this – in their recent report they said:

“The school’s Equality Team, led and run by student leaders, provides opportunities for students to mix in socially diverse groups.Consequently, students demonstrate high levels of respect for each other and are extremely welcoming of difference. Discrimination of any kind and the use of derogatory language are not tolerated.”

At Chew Valley School to talk to staff and students about gay issues. I learned about exceptional work they have done to eradicate bullying.

— Ian McKellen (@IanMcKellen) October 19, 2014

What will you change?

View the Prezi for this assembly here.

Read more:

• Alabama police chief apologizes to Freedom Rider Congressman reported in the Daily Mail
• The President’s Hero – profile of John Lewis’s relationship with Barack Obama in The New Yorker
• The Edmund Pettus Bridge – President Obama joins John Lewis to mark the 50th Anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” beatings
• Get on the bus – account of the Freedom Rides
• The Freedom Rides – video from the Smithsonian Magazine
• Chew Valley School Equalities Team home page and Facebook page
• Stonewall School Champions case study on Chew Valley School
• Using ‘gay’ the right way – presentation by the Equalities Team from Stonewall’s Education for All Conference 2014

Leadership lessons with Linda Cliatt-Wayman

Thanks to Carl Hendrick for sharing this talk from TEDWomen 2015. In it, Linda Cliatt-Wayman sets out her approach to fixing a broken school. She talks about her work at Strawberry Mansion High School in Philadelphia, once branded “the most dangerous school in America.” She illustrates three slogans which, as Carl Hendrick said, set the standard for school leadership.

Slogan 1: If you’re going to lead, LEAD. 

The strength of will to keep going, to set the example, to believe in the vision, is what brings about change. “Leaders make the impossible possible,” she says. She describes sweating the small stuff – the displays, the lightbulbs, the environment, the lockers – and tackling the big stuff. Budget. Behaviour. Scheduling. Support.

Slogan 2: So what? Now what? 

Cliatt-Wayman lists the intimidating odds she and her staff were up against – attendance at 68%, 1% parental engagement, 38% SEN – and uses her mantra “So what? Now what?” This really struck home to me. Here is a problem, or an issue – and that is what it is. A problem. An issue. It is not an excuse. What can we do about it? It reminded me forcefully of Ros McMullen’s wonderful blog on addressing inequality, and her attack on what she calls “cuddle and muddle” culture: “these kids have got problems, therefore we should expect less from and for them.” This isn’t good enough McMullen and Cliatt-Wayman, and it shouldn’t be good enough for any of us.

It strikes me also that “So what? Now what?” is an equally useful mantra for times of success. You get your best ever GCSE results, or a shiny outstanding from Ofsted. So what? Now what? For Cliatt-Wayman, being removed from the “persistently dangerous” list after five straight years was her triumph. Her “now what?” was professional development for her teachers, and an “intense focus on teaching and learning” in order to eliminate excuses for underachievement. The result? A 171% rise in algebra scores and a 107% rise in literature scores.

Slogan 3: If nobody told you they loved you today, you remember I do, and I always will.

At this point, I don’t mind admitting, I had tears in my eyes. John Tomsett talks about “love over fear” and this final slogan puts humanity at the centre of leadership. I know that Tom Starkey has discredited passion, but when you see the passion here, I think even he’ll agree it’s inspiring. She talks about her moral purpose with such heart that you can see her eyes glisten, hear her voice crack. She talks about eating lunch with the students, to talk to them and know them as people, to build the relationships that are the cornerstone of effective teaching. And she talks about the rewards of the job:

My reward, my reward for being non-negotiable in my rules and consequences is their earned respect. I insist on it, and because of this, we can accomplish things together. They are clear about my expectations for them, and I repeat those expectations every day over the P.A. system. I remind them of those core values of focus, tradition, excellence, integrity and perseverance,and I remind them every day how education can truly change their lives. And I end every announcement the same: “If nobody told you they loved you today, you remember I do, and I always will.”

There’s been a lot of excellent focus on women in leadership recently, thanks to #WomenEd and others, and here is a fantastic role model not just for women, but for all school leaders. Behaviour. Teaching and Learning. Love. Now that’s getting your priorities right.

#PoetryPromise June: Blackbird by Paul McCartney

#PoetryPromise is coordinated through Poetry by Heart with the aim of promoting and spreading the love of poetry. My #PoetryPromise for 2015 is to share a favourite poem of mine every month through my blog. My choice for June is Blackbird by Paul McCartney.

This is one of my favourite Beatles songs – favourite songs full stop. It brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it. Inspired by the civil rights struggles in America in 1968, McCartney channelled J.S. Bach’s Bourée in E Minor to create this beautiful solo piece, punctuated by foot taps and birdsong. I bought Blackbird Singing, a collection of Paul McCartney’s lyrics and poetry, for my Dad when it came out. Coming to the lyrics fresh, printed and bound, made me re-evaluate the writing. In the introduction, Adrian Mitchell writes: ‘Clean out your head. Wash out the name and the fame. Read these clear words and listen to them decide for yourself. Paul is…a popular poet.’ I agree.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Doing NPQH as a member of SLT

With thanks and apologies to Kev Bartle for the title!

News from the NCTL

I received notification yesterday that I have passed the NPQH. It’s no longer mandatory to have the qualification to be a Headteacher, but I’ve spent sixteen months on the course. This blog is really for anyone weighing up the prospect of taking it on. I’ll run through my experiences, and try to answer the question…is it worth it?

Getting on the course

This is really, really tough. I can’t actually blog about what happens in the selection process, as we were sworn to secrecy so as not to prejudice or advantage future cohorts. Suffice to say, when our cohort got together for the first time we bonded over the incredibly rigorous, taxing tasks you have to do just to get a place on the course – really, really tough! The idea is that, if you pass the selection process, you’re definitely capable of passing the course; it reduces the likelihood of anyone getting on it, spending a year and a half, and then failing. Sensible investment I suppose, and a good test!

After successfully passing the selection process, there’s a useful 360° exercise where you self-assess your competencies and your colleagues do the same. You get a report of the results and I found this a great starting point to pinpoint strengths, areas for development and discrepancies between my self-assessment and my colleagues’ views. A really useful process.

My chosen licensee

Finally, you have to choose a licensee. NPQH is not delivered direct by the NCTL any more, but by regional licensees. I did mine with CPD Southwest and I was very happy with my choice – efficient administration, knowledgeable and helpful trainers, and a functional online resource bank. I went to an information session before I chose my licensee and this was definitely useful in helping make my mind up. I’d recommend doing a bit of research first! Although much of the material is common across NPQH courses, and the assessment is standard, it’s worth bearing in mind that my experience is with one particular licensee and they’re not all the same!

The Leadership Capacity Matrix. I took the red pill.

Face to face sessions

There were nine of these in total, covering the core modules: Leading and Improving Teaching, Succeeding in Headship, and Leading an Effective School. There were also sessions on Advanced Coaching Skills and a Viewpoints on Style self-assessment day. On the whole, these were useful days! Here are some of the plus points:

• “Talking Heads” sessions: most days, a serving Headteacher came in to talk to us about aspects of their practice and their route to Headship. These were, without exception, really inspiring and useful. There was a huge range, including Heads from large secondaries and tiny primaries, special schools, new heads, experienced system leaders…and all dedicated, positive, uplifting speakers with lots to offer. I was scribbling furiously during these, cribbing tips and ideas aplenty!
• Cross-phase working: the NPQH was a great opportunity for me to work alongside school leaders from primary and special school sector. Most of the CPD events I go to are secondary-focused, so it was really refreshing to get a different perspective and work with colleagues from across a range of schools. My cohort were brilliant – really supportive of one another and thoughtful, caring leaders.
• Time to reflect: there is rarely enough time in school to step back and think properly about what you’re doing. Taking nine days out across ten terms is a considerable investment of time but the opportunity it provides to reflect is invaluable. It felt, at times, like a retreat – and a treat.
• Coaching: this was my single biggest take-away from NPQH. I’d done coaching training before but it hadn’t really been embedded in my practice; now I use it daily in interactions with staff but also with students. It’s worth a blog post on its own! I know Vic Goddard swears by it and I can see why. I was lucky to have Judith Tolhurst running our session, whose book is well worth a read.
• Finance: we were all worried about this aspect of Headship, and there was a really useful session on running the budget of a school. This was a real confidence booster – it turned out I knew a lot more than I thought I did!

Of course, it wasn’t all brilliant. This happened on one of the days:

NPQH day today. Thought @tombennett71 might be interested to see this beauty. pic.twitter.com/CVKbJwxyOW

— Chris Hildrew (@chrishildrew) June 11, 2014

And then there was this:

@tombennett71 you can add this Powepoint slide. pic.twitter.com/oWcnJrZehj

— Chris Hildrew (@chrishildrew) June 11, 2014

I suppose you can’t get through nine days of CPD without being asked to draw yourself a spirit animal! But aside from these points the days were really valuable and the opportunity to take time out from the daily whirlwind was incredible helpful.

Hitting the books…well, the pdfs.

Online learning

Aside from the three core modules, NPQH involves two elective modules. I did mine on Leading Change for Improvement and School Improvement for Effective Partnerships. At the start of my course, all of the material was hosted on the NCTL’s own rather convoluted website, but halfway through that was shut down and the material moved over to licensees. Either way, there is a lot of reading! At the start, I tried to read everything and I did a pretty good job, filing it away and keeping a running record of key points in Evernote. We discussed the reading often on our face to face days – mainly how hard it was to read it all! – and we soon worked out that you could be selective in your choices. However, I would recommend looking at as much of the resource as possible, because there are some gems in there. Case studies, research papers, policy documents, official guidance, legal frameworks – all useful, some essential. I didn’t agree with all that I read, but then as an avid reader of edublogs I’m used to that – and reading stuff you don’t agree with is often more valuable than reading in an echo chamber as it helps you define what it is that you do really believe that little bit more clearly.

Projects

NPQH involves two separate projects: one in your “home” school, and a second in a “Placement” school. My home school project was to implement Teaching and Learning Leaders, and my placement project was an examination of literacy across the curriculum at another secondary academy. This was fantastic – spending five days in another school, seeing what’s the same and what’s different, was an invaluable opportunity. I’ve forged long-lasting links with the SLT there: they came out to visit Chew Valley to have a look at how we’d implemented growth mindset, and I’ve been back there to work on assessment without levels. NPQH forces this kind of system partnership and there’s no doubt this is a real strength of the programme.

Assessment

The assessment part of the NPQH was time-consuming and difficult. It’s necessary, and in all honesty I couldn’t see a way of making it simpler without reducing the quality. It’s supposed to be challenging! Each of the five modules required a reflective “impact evaluation form” – a summary of what you’d learned and the impact it had had on your leadership. Again, the process here forces reflection, which is important for the process of self-improvement the course is trying to implement. But they are time-consuming to fill in!

Towards the end of the course you have to submit write-ups of your two projects. There are very strict guidelines around pages and word counts here, which were difficult to stick to, and the process of writing up took several days for each project. There was plenty of guidance from the NCTL and my licensee, so I knew what I had to do, but doing it within the word-count was tough!

Finally, if the projects pass, there is a face-to-face assessment. I went to mine already having secured a Headship following a three-day interview, and then having a two-day Ofsted inspection the week before the final assessment. It couldn’t be anything like as tough as those experiences…could it? Simple answer – yes. A panel of three properly grilled me for over an hour following a fifteen-minute presentation. It was every bit as rigorous, thorough and searching as my Headship interview and Ofsted had been. And quite right too; although I did things a bit back-to-front, securing a Headship before completing NPQH, there is no doubt that the final assessment interview would be a good preparation for anyone going on to Headship interviews after completing the course.

Was it worth it?

In a word – yes. The longer answer: I know I don’t need NPQH to be a Headteacher. But sixteen months working on the course has forced me to be more reflective about my leadership, to think about why, how and what I do in my job, in a way that I wouldn’t have done in the normal run of things. The online learning, whilst onerous, was useful. The opportunity to meet and work with colleagues outside my school, beyond my phase, with different experiences and approaches, was invaluable and enriching. And the fact that the assessment, both at the start and end of the course, was so rigorous, gives me faith that the standards of leadership expected of Headteachers are reassuringly high. I have gained NPQH and secured a Headship; now I have to ensure that I live up to those standards in the future.

#PoetryPromise May: “Could mortal lip divine” by Emily Dickinson

#PoetryPromise is coordinated through Poetry by Heart with the aim of promoting and spreading the love of poetry. My #PoetryPromise for 2015 is to share a favourite poem of mine every month through my blog. My choice for May is this tiny fragment from Emily Dickinson:

Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
‘Twould crumble with the weight

My copy of The Complete Poems

I can remember coveting Dickinson’s “The Complete Poems” whilst at university. The sheer size of the book, filled with nearly 1800 tiny poems, was intriguing and intimidating in equal measure. I can remember buying it and walking back to my room, the weight of the volume digging the carrier bag into my fingers. Fewer than a dozen of these poems were published during Dickinson’s lifetime, which she spent largely as an eccentric recluse. She often dressed in white and, the story goes, rarely left her room later in life. I still imagine her sister, Lavinia, discovering piles of notebooks and loose sheets in a locked chest in that room after Emily’s death, opening them up and discovering the scope and breadth of her poetry. Opening this book, I felt like Aladdin, stepping into a cave filled with enigmatic wonder.

There is so much to marvel at in Dickinson’s “quiet – Earthquake style” – her idiosyncratic use of the dash being one. These tiny bars work hard to restrain the pace and isolate words and phrases in her verse, forcing a kind of breathlessness into the reading. Her contained meditations on the nature of emotion are at once detached and scientific and passionately involved. I still find her poems fascinating little worlds.

Dickinson’s original manuscript (source)

I have chosen this poem as it contains a message I try to remember every day. Once words are spoken, their impact and message cannot be controlled. Anything we say – to anyone – has unimaginable power on the recipient, irrespective of the intention. A flippant, offhand comment, delivered with barely a thought, can ruin someone’s day or stay with them for weeks – or longer. A well-intentioned intervention can backfire and make a situation worse. Our words have the power to can lift, raise and bolster – or crush,  shatter and destroy. Teachers, and especially school leaders, wield this power every day. What Dickinson’s poem teaches me is to weigh the words I am about to say, and deliver them with care.

#HeForShe, or I am a feminist

I have been really inspired this last week by posts from two of my favourite bloggers: Summer Turner‘s “Miss, is it true you’re a feminist?” and Jo Facer‘s Women through the ages. Jo posted her fantastic scheme of work to explore feminism in her all-girl’s school, and Summer explained how important it is to stand up and be counted as a feminist teacher. I completely agree. This is me, standing up to be counted. I am a feminist.

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If not me, who? If not now, when? Emma Watson's passionate, wonderful UN speech on gender equality: http://t.co/gRbD3q4LtQ #heforshe

— Chris Hildrew (@chrishildrew) September 22, 2014

As soon as Emma Watson launched the #HeForShe campaign back in September, I signed up. Her passionate, often personal, and powerful speech vocalised everything that I believe to be important about gender equality. In the sign up, the campaign asks for a commitment to:

1. Express zero tolerance for discrimination and violence against women and girls
2. Believe in equal access to social, political and economic opportunities
3. Understand that taking a stand for women and girls is taking a stand for humanity
4. Speak up when you see physical, emotional or sexual harassment

These were not difficult commitments for me to make personally, but reading Summer’s post made me realise how important it is for me as a male teacher to make them professionally. It is vitally important that the students I teach in the schools I lead see that gender equality is an issue that affects men and women, and that it is male attitudes that need to change for the benefit of both genders.

I remember witnessing a conversation in a school where a female teacher was telling a girl off because her skirt was too short. The rationale was not “you are in breach of the uniform policy” but rather “it’s too distracting for the boys in the class for you to wear that.” It was only years later that I realised why this conversation made me so uncomfortable. This kind of conversation legitimises the male gaze and the objectification of the female body, encouraging the girl to feel ashamed of the impact it would have on uncontrollable young males. This will not do. Of course, enforce a uniform policy, but more importantly challenge the boys in their attitudes towards young women. Don’t allow attitudes where the objectification of the female body is taken as a given. Encourage girls to be confident, not ashamed; as the new #thisdoesntmeanyes campaign spells out: “what I wear and how I behave are not invitations.”

It is not just with students that my feminist commitment applies. It is a scandal that, in a profession with a 74% female workforce, a higher proportion of men make it to senior leadership positions than women. I am one of those men. It is my responsibility as a school leader to encourage and develop female leaders, to redress this balance. Sexist attitudes are endemic, ingrained and often almost overlooked, as Ros McMullen has described. This cannot stand.

I do think things are changing. I can see it in the students I teach – and those that I have taught. As Jack Howard says in the video above, “we’ll be the last generation to say sexist and homophobic things, and our grandchildren will say ‘why was this ever allowed?'” Young people are prepared to engage with the ideas in feminist discourse and high profile campaigns like #HeForShe, #ThisGirlCan and #LikeAGirl help introduce this. Schemes like Jo Facer’s Women Through The Ages can build on that introduction and create a better future, where gender equality benefits all of us. Sophie from Over17Mirrors also provides a handy guide for teen feminists everywhere:

“Feminism is about not limiting people’s opportunities.” My #HeForShe commitment is to live these values in every aspect of my professional life – because I’m a feminist, and it matters.

So happy to see the women's #boatrace2015 on an equal footing at last #ThisGirlCan #HeForShe pic.twitter.com/P8URfvOUyI

— Chris Hildrew (@chrishildrew) April 11, 2015

Assembly: Concentration

This assembly owes much to a presentation on the brain given by Bradley from Inner Drive (@Inner_Drive) at #GrowEx last year, and this excellent TED talk by Peter Doolittle (@pdoopdoo) on working memory shared by Huntington Learning Hub (@HuntingtonLHub). It’s well worth a watch:

The PowerPoint slides are shared at the bottom of this post.

We start with a test of working memory (see the video for this test). I am going to ask you to remember five words just by holding them in your mind. Here are the five words:

1. Tree
2. Motorway
3. Mirror
4. Saturn
5. Electrode

Whilst you are remembering those five words, I am going to set you three challenges.

1. What is 23 x 8?
2. On your left hand, use your thumb to count your fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then back again 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
3. Now in your head recite the last five letters of the English alphabet backwards.

How many of the five words that I asked you to remember do you still have in your memory? Does anyone still have all five?

The reason why many of you will have forgotten some of the words that I told you only a minute or so ago, is that the capacity of our working memory is limited. It can only hold so much information at any one time. Daniel Willingham provides a simplified model of the brain here:

A simple diagram of the mind (source)

In our test, the Environment (me) provided some information which was fed into your working memory. You didn’t do much with that information, and immediately afterwards I distracted you with three more activities which demanded space in your working memory. Little wonder, then, that when I asked you to return to the original information (the five words I asked you to remember), some or all of it had been pushed out of your mind without ever having made it into your long-term memory.

There are some more demonstrations that will help us understand why sustained concentration on the task in hand is important. The first is to do with focus, and multitasking. You might think that you are really good at multitasking, and that you can easily do two, three or more things at once. Where some of those things are automatic – walking and talking, for example – that is probably true. However, your working memory can only focus on one cognitively demanding task at a time. In that way, it’s like focusing a lens – you can only focus on one thing at a time.

You can only focus on one thing at a time (when in doubt, reach for the cat gifs)

Let’s take this optical illusion as an example. In the picture, the man’s face can be seen looking to the right, or looking straight ahead. See if you can see both!

Looking to the right, or looking straight ahead? Both – but not at the same time.

Now try to see both at the same time. Your brain switches from one to the other – it will only let you hold one interpretation of the picture in your head at one time. This is what happens when you try to multi-task. Your working memory actually switches from one task to the other. This is called context switching, and you may be able to do this quickly (there is some evidence that women are better at it than men), but you are not multitasking. You can’t.

Finally, here’s a demonstration of context switching in action. I need a volunteer from the audience to take this box of multicoloured balls, and arrange them in rows of four in the order of the colours of the rainbow. At the same time, they will be solving some Mental Maths Questions from the KS2 Maths SAT Buster book.

From this…

…to this…

…whilst solving these.

I know this challenge well, because Bradley used me as his volunteer at #GrowEx when conducting the same experiment. Essentially, your brain can either focus on arranging the balls, or on doing the maths – but not both. As I was trying to arrange the balls, I got simple questions wrong. When I thought about the maths, my hands stopped moving. My working memory would not allow me to do both things at the same time. I felt embarrassed, but I shouldn’t have; I was simply demonstrating a human characteristic. Our brains cannot do two cognitively demanding things simultaneously.

Let’s think about how we can apply what we’ve seen today to the classroom. The first thing is that it only takes is a small distraction for information that you have just learned to evaporate. If you are getting to grips with a new concept in your lessons and you then think about the piece of gossip you meant to tell your neighbour, your chances of transferring the new concept to your long term memory are dramatically reduced. Distractions are compelling – it’s very easy to be like Dug from Up: 

Distractions can take your mind off the task at hand

And don’t kid yourself that you can do two things at once; you can’t. Once you’re distracted, the damage is done.

Put simply:

1. Concentrate on the task at hand
2. Focus on the learning
3. Apply and use what you have learned straight away if you want to stand any chance of remembering it.

And, by the way, 23 x 8 = 184.

Good luck!

Here is the PowerPoint, though the gifs don’t work in this slideshare version. Click on this link for the full version: Concentration Assembly.

#PoetryPromise April: The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

#PoetryPromise is coordinated through Poetry by Heart with the aim of promoting and spreading the love of poetry. My #PoetryPromise for 2015 is to share a favourite poem of mine every month through my blog. My choice for April is The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. After all, “April is the cruellest month.”

Title page of my copy of the poem. Annotations start here…

I first read Eliot as an A Level English Literature student, and I was awestruck. From the Latin/Greek/English/Italian epigraph onwards, this was a work of dazzling ambition and scope. Eliot cuts across cultures and through time in multiple voices, all the while maintaining powerful poetics, rhythms and sounds. The characters and places he establishes are haunting and powerful; I wrote a terrible short story based on the typist and her “young man carbuncular” and whenever I return to London I hear “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many…”

But this was a hard poem. As I began, I found myself asking the same questions as the poem posed:

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images”

I knew there was sense in it, but I couldn’t fit it together. As a life-long lover of puzzles, however, I couldn’t resist trying. The Waste Land is like a web, with words tugging on references to other texts which, when decoded, shine a light on the meaning of the whole. This was modernism, a text which existed in reference to other texts as well as to the real world. The trouble was, I knew hardly any of the references. Eliot’s own notes were a starting point but are often more opaque than the poem itself. But in tracing the lines of the web out to their historical, artistic and literary anchor points, I began to appreciate the richness that cultural capital could bring – and I wanted in. I read, and read, and read. I was voracious. And when, later in my course, I read Milton’s Paradise Lost, I found myself recognising more of the allusions. My experience was richer for it, and chasing down inter-textual connections and references still gives me a thrill of accomplishment.

The text of The Waste Land is too long to publish here, but can be found here or here. The typist section that inspired my short story is below. The story, I’m glad to say, is lost.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.