Educational initiatives-have they changed your teaching?

Bobtheman

The last ten years we have had AFL/ Learning outcomes, Literacy,Numeracy etc Im wondering if these have really changed your teaching?

I cant say they have. I think AFL and learning outcomes are a ton of bull. I always focused on the exam. Learning outcomes are too narrow and academic studies have disputed their effectiveness
if you have a student who does not see the point of education or has poor literacy then he or she will always fall behind
We cant change poor literacy levels unless kids read. Did we get funding for libraries-no!

This is a rambling rant. I will straighten it out later

Bobtheman

look up Hussey learning outcomes 2016

byhookorbycrook

Not a bit. I'm teaching 30 years and whatever spin you put on it, children attending for literacy still have the same needs- 42 letter sounds, phonological awareness skills, comprehension strategies, high frequency words etc.The new primary language curriculum, is, frankly plain stupid, it's more a checklist (and a silly one) than actual content.
My teaching has evolved to include different strategies and resources obviously. SEN teachers need to have a wide range of strategies to meet individual needs, but none found to any so called initiatives.

gaiscioch

Bobtheman wrote: »

Educational initiatives-have they changed your teaching?

I'm certainly doing less of that actual teaching stuff but sure that's only a minor point. I'm also more adept at not challenging the bright kids in the class as I have to include the weaker kids and I apologise for my former sins in this regard. I'm now really, really, good at ticking all the boxes, I know all my paper deadlines, and I'm getting really good at attending meetings and recording all the time spent to the minute. I'm ozzing with pride at my newfound awareness of time measuring; a bit like that young lad on The Late Late years ago, John Joe the horologist.

I'm great at nodding affirmatively at everything, and declaring "Yes, I agree, that's another really, really important meeting which will enhance our professional development immensely." I've also embraced all those really brilliant buzzwords to describe the very same things I was doing ten years ago. They just feel so fresh and new now, like entirely new ideas. Sometimes, I confess, I feel a deep urge to turn my de facto administrative office into a classroom again where I can inspire learning but I succeed in suppressing this pernicious urge and return to faciliating the students ticking all their boxes. We get loads and loads of pages covered so that's always a successfull class. Everybody is a success now, with even the more intelligent students having the opportunity to enhance their laziness and dossing skills at this new academic level. They'll all be challenged enough in the real world so we wouldn't want to be doing that to them in schools.

I am so proud of our heroic reformers in the Department of Education. They have created a worldclass education system where Irish teachers will ultimately reach the great prize of being a carbon copy of the world-acclaimed English system where 40% of new teachers there are so impressed with it that they resign in the first year and heaps of the established teachers have the honour of exploring previously unknown aspects of their mental health and therefore living fuller, more rounded lives.

Teacher0101

No.

Educational theory is like fashion. They have to pump out PhDs and management have to look like they are on the cutting edge.
Many teachers from my school implemented ****ty initiatives only to move away to another school a couple of years later as vice principals.

Implement all the initiatives you want, if students don't read or have no support from home, there's little chance of them having any effect.

In the last ten years I've observed the top number of students staying more or less the same and the bottom, the middle have decreased in number, have very little general knowledge and are very weak.

Bobtheman

Thanks for the comments. I personally believe that unless teachers are willing to Put the boot in the vast majority of kids in school will plod along to the grade they were always going to get. By put the boot in I mean be a pain. Detain. Write home etc or perhaps exclude. Etc
How much of that you can get away with depends on your school.
Yes being prepared is important but if the student doesn't care and doesn't have the boot put in by you or home, only so far he or she will go.
I no longer put the boot in..too many croke park hours. Too many of my own kids to look after etc plus I've worn out my shoe leather!

FFred

Initiative overload.
Dumbing down.
Box ticking.

That’s my summary of the profession at the moment.

Teacher0101

Bobtheman - it depends on where you work and your clientele how much you can 'put the boot in'. In a disadvantaged area, 'putting the boot in' achieves very little.

Icsics

FFred wrote: »

Initiative overload.
Dumbing down.
Box ticking.

That’s my summary of the profession at the moment.

Yes dumbing down big time. This is what the new JC does, brings them all into a middle band...but nobody 'fails' everybody is 'in line with expectations' or 'merit', meaningless jargon

Bobtheman

Can't deleted this post

Bobtheman

Teacher0101 wrote: »

Bobtheman - it depends on where you work and your clientele how much you can 'put the boot in'. In a disadvantaged area, 'putting the boot in' achieves very little.

I agree in the main . I know some teachers in our place resort to personal detention but only with honours groups. With the ordinary it's largely pointless.

Mardy Bum

Teacher0101 wrote: »

Bobtheman - it depends on where you work and your clientele how much you can 'put the boot in'. In a disadvantaged area, 'putting the boot in' achieves very little.

Nothing worse than making excuses for poor behaviour. Simply perpetuates the disadvantaged tag and allows the cycle to continue. Sometimes compassion is gross negligence.

DEIS funding needs to be used wisely. Not on the latest iPad as a panacea but on proven strategies that work - a progression model from Junior Infants to 6th year that is explicit and teachers are able to implement would be a start for some particularly disadvantaged areas. Not vague curricula that usually young inexperienced teachers have to unpack without training. There are students who cannot add or spell when they are 15 who have little chances in life because of unnecessarily overloaded curricula which encourages a huge amount of time wasting initiatives. These students have no interest in school at this point and cause havoc as a result and putting the boot in as you said can achieve very little by this stage and expulsions are needed at this point.

spurious

Bobtheman wrote: »

I agree in the main . I know some teachers in our place resort to personal detention but only with honours groups. With the ordinary it's largely pointless.

With the Ordinary and Foundation, I found 90% of the game was making them believe they had a chance of passing at all.

One lad after getting his A in HL told me the exam he got was different to the one his cousin got a B in down the country. I had some work to do to convince him that no, it was the same exam and he did better than she did.

Bobtheman

We need to realize that kids -all kids need to read more. That makes their access to education so much easier. The department hasnt provided an extra red cent for school libraries. If we focused on this one thing in a serious way then we would seriously see a big improvement.

Instead we flail about like mad men and women trying to do 10 things at once.

judeboy101

It all comes down to reading, writing, arithmetic and a culture where getting those right was the most important thing any parent had to do with regards to their Childs education.