Me and Mrs Jones: What my teacher really taught me

How much do you remember about your English lessons when you were a pupil? The majority of my lessons I remember as a blur, an amalgamation of lessons over time. It’s strange the small details I do remember, the obscure quotations from texts such as the Merchant of Venice or Macbeth, the distinct feeling of hatred I felt towards Gerald in An Inspector Calls (and presumably because of this, I can remember clearly who read out his part in class). In amongst these recollections is the memory of my Standard Grade (Scottish equivalent of GCSE) teacher, Mrs Jones. I don’t think I would ever have called Mrs Jones my favourite teacher at the time, but now, as a teacher myself looking back, I see that Mrs Jones has shaped my teacher identity more than I perhaps consciously realise.

What Mrs Jones taught me about being a good English teacher 

Mrs Jones never gave the impression that she particularly liked us. There is no one that could give a pithy burn like Mrs Jones. She was quick, concise and devastating with her comments, in a moment she could cut down your 14 year old arrogance in a way that never felt personal or unjustified. This, I now know as a teacher myself is an important, implicit behaviour management technique, a way of putting pupils in their place with grace and humour but more importantly with the edge that lets the class know that they have met their match. Do I always emulate this? No… sadly not, I don’t think I could ever quite reach the Mrs Jones level. Yet, I do think this ‘English teacher wit’ is an important part of a good English teacher’s identity.

As a pupil I was not aware of the idea of someone having ‘high expectations of us’, yet, as a teacher looking back, Mrs Jones embodied this. To us, we always thought she was harsh. We felt she marked our work more harshly than other teachers. She wanted more of us when we gave a lazy answer. Now whilst these things did not make you a popular teacher, when I think about it, it made me work harder to gain her respect.

Who cares?

Now, despite giving the impression that she did not particularly like any of her pupils there are two instances that really stick out to me that shows that Mrs Jones cared a lot. When I was 14 my great grandmother died in very tragic circumstances; she suffered a heart attack after a local teenager threw a stone through the window of her retirement home. In a strange twist of fate, a few weeks after this, we were reading a short story where the events mirrored this in an uncanny way. After reading the story Mrs Jones pointed out a case in that happened locally which showed that this sort of thing happened in real life. I imagine the point she was trying to get across was that as teenagers, our actions have consequences, which is clearly an important message. Yet, for me this was not ‘a story’ in the local press, it was my great grandmother. It was the end of the lesson and I burst into (what I felt) were discrete tears. I don’t even remember telling my friends afterwards what was wrong (although I possibly did). I composed myself and went to my next lesson. Later that day I was in Graphic Communication and Mrs Jones came to the door and asked to speak to me. She had come to apologise for the lesson, she hadn’t been aware that the woman she was referring to was my great grandmother. I have no idea how she found this out but it made a world of difference to me that she came to find me to explain and check I was ok. That’s the thing about English, we deal with subjects have the ability to shock, to upset, to touch us in a powerful way and this always needs to be done with sensitivity… but it needs to be done. Despite my personal reaction and connection to those events, I believe that if the story and the connection she made between it and my great grandmother’s case touched someone else, made them think about their actions in future, it was all worth it.

The second thing is a small point but one I see in a different way now I’m a teacher myself. Now, perhaps I shouldn’t mention this given my job, but I have always struggled with spelling. Clearly Mrs Jones had picked up on the disparity between my general ability in English and my ability to spell. One day after lesson she held me back and gave me a pocket spell checker. Given what I know about teaching now, I imagine that spell checker was purchased with her own money and it is indicative of the kindness that the best teachers seem to have.

So despite the pithy putdowns and harsh marking, Mrs Jones clearly did care. She didn’t need to be our ‘friend’ or be soft on us, but she showed she cared when it mattered.

My best English lesson

At the start of this blog I mentioned how I could not remember discrete lessons, however that is not entirely true… I remember one lesson very vividly. It was the 12^th of September 2001. I know the date because it was the day after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre. Sadly, we have become desensitised to terrorist attacks, for our pupils now terrorism is part of life, but the 9/11 attack was truly shocking and in hindsight seemed to change everything. I remember coming home from school on the day it happened and seeing my mum enraptured in front of the TV as I passed the patio doors to our family room. I remember watching the plane smash into the side of the building on the small TV screen and not quite realising what I was watching, whether it was real or not.

The next day in English we didn’t carry on the lesson from before. We did something different. Mrs Jones had photocopied an opinion piece from one of the newspapers. I remember it was a defiant open letter to the terrorists. Our task was to read through it and then use the lines from the article to create our own poem.

It was powerful.

It is the only English lesson I distinctly remember and the reason for this is that Mrs Jones recognised the significance of this event in history, its raw topicality, the need for us to process what had happened through language. Mrs Jones clearly recognised the need to sometimes take time out from the SOW, the mid term plan, the exam preparation and focus on what is important: The way in which language shapes our understanding of the world.

Mrs Jones taught me two important lessons that day, one as a child and one as an English teacher. She taught me the need for English to be reflexive to the world around us and to use English as a tool to understand and shape the word around us.

I said at the beginning of this blog that I would not have considered Mrs Jones my favourite teacher but in hindsight she was my best teacher and has shaped me as an English teacher more than she could have possibly imagined. It is with great regret that I didn’t say ‘thank you’ at the time and I hope that one day she might know the profound impact she has had on my teacher identity.

This Behviour Blog Won't Change Your Life

Read Tes or hang around Twitter and it is not long before you come across an article or thread about behaviour in schools. I’ve read many, wanting to glean any nugget of advice that will make Friday lesson 4 with that Y9 class that bit more bearable. Yet, after working in three different school contexts I feel like I’ve learned a lot about behaviour. The only problem is the more I’ve learned the more I think I have come to the realisation that most behaviour advice would not have helped me in those early days of teaching, not because the advice is ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ but because ultimately there is only a limited impact you, as an individual teacher, can have on behaviour within your own classroom.

Behaviour starts at the top

When I began my teaching career through the Teach First route, I was placed in a school ‘in challenging circumstances’. We don’t pick the school but are allocated it and we have to remain at that school through our ITT and NQT years. Having struggled with difficult classes for two years I decided for my own sanity to move on. It was move on or quit teaching. Thankfully, I decided to give another school a go and I decided to apply for a school that was infamous for having a strict behaviour policy. It was only through this move, that I was able to gain the much needed perspective on ‘behaviour’. Sadly, what I learned doesn’t really help any poor ITTs or NQTs in the same boat I was in because what I learned was behaviour is this: Behaviour is about culture and ethos and culture and ethos start with leadership in a school. Put bluntly, if your school leadership don’t prioritise this, there is only a limited amount your own behaviour management is going to have.

Looking back, this realisation has given me the perspective to understand that teachers are not the ones who are ‘failing’, it is much more likely that leadership is failing, not only teachers but pupils too. Let’s be very clear: it is the most vulnerable that benefit form a culture of good behaviour and high expectations.

‘You’re nothing without that earpiece mate’

Picture the scene: It is Friday lesson 4. You have that Y9 class that is a potent mixture of rowdy boys, sullen girls, a few big characters and a pocket of quiet pupils who you feel a tremendous sense of guilt for as they try and get through your worksheet, clear in the knowledge they won’t get half the help they deserve in this lesson. You’ve tried everything that helpful colleagues and mentors have told you might ‘engage’ them. The hours spent meticulously planning the lesson at 9pm last night, are wasted, as always.

After the second or third serious behaviour incident you get someone to call for SLT or a Learning Manager. Five minutes later they arrive and the riot quickly ceases. They take out the main offender and have ‘a chat’. As soon as they leave the room, the riot ensues and you question ‘why don’t they behave for me? Why don’t they respect me?’. Ten minutes later, with the main culprit of mayhem removed, the lesson simmers down, pupils are mainly getting on with their work. You feel relieved that the lesson is not a complete write off. But wait, in comes SLT again, ‘they’ve had a chat and now the pupil has agreed that they will take part in your lesson’. No obvious sanction, restorative practice in action! As soon as SLT leaves, the pupil, smirking, resumes their reign of mischief. Another lesson ruined.

The example above is probably very familiar in some schools and would be a weekly, if not daily, occurrence. What it shows is that some SLT will never see behaviour as an issue because the pupils have learned who they need to behave for, and who they don’t. As SLT are the gatekeepers of serious sanctions (such as isolation or parent meetings) pupils quickly learn that they only need to behave for them. This is compounded by the undermining of teacher authority, every time a pupil is taken out by SLT ‘for a chat’ and returned to your lesson with a guarantee that they will now ‘participate’, the message to pupils is clear: Your teacher has no authority therefore you can do as you please. By having a ‘chat’ there is a tacit implication that your word as a teacher, as the adult in the room, is equal to that of the misbehaving pupil. This subtly and insidiously undermines your authority forevermore.   

I once overheard a belligerent Y11 pupil shout ‘you’re nothing without that earpiece mate’ at his Learning Manager and was struck by how perceptive a comment that was. When pupils learn that it is only certain senior adults that have any meaningful authority in your school, and that authority is arbitrary and flexible, then it is the classroom teachers that suffer.

‘Get the kids to like you’

When you have no clear behaviour policy, teachers face a Wild West of trial and error to work out a way to get even the minimum standard of workable behaviour in their lessons. The perennial advice of ‘make sure your lessons are engaging’, much lauded by ITT mentors has been much debated on Twitter. Thankfully, this harmful myth is being rightly challenged. Whilst there is no doubt that a poorly planned lesson can exacerbate behaviour problems in a classroom, it is by no means an effective way of stopping behaviour issues. Sadly, I wasted many a night on trying to think of engaging ways to deliver my lessons and all this did was ensure I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted them to learn, but what I thought they might want to do. A terrible, terrible model of teaching in hindsight. However, that said, there was no way I could have done half the things I do now in my first school. Model an answer on the board? There is no way I could have turned my back on the class for even ten seconds without chaos ensuing!

Perhaps one of the more unusual pieces of advice I received from my school mentor was ‘get the kids to like you’. Now, this clearly terrible advice, but in certain schools it is logical advice. We know that pupils ‘should’ behave whether they like you or not however, this advice is merely a symptom of a poorly lead behaviour culture. In a culture of poor behaviour and lax policies, techniques like this are what experienced teachers do to survive. And it is about survival. Unfortunately for an inexperienced teacher, negotiating the line between being liked (and a push over) and liked (and respected) is very difficult. More often than not, only the former is achieved making life more difficult in the long run. The real consequence of this type of teaching (being the likeable pushover) is that pupils do not learn anything.

‘They behave for me’

Take another example: You are sitting in the staffroom regaling your colleagues about the car crash lesson you have just had when someone pipes up ‘I had them last year, they behaved for me.’ Clearly, the lack of emotional intelligence exhibited by your colleague is enough to take your breath away, however, despite this, it is a phrase that you will have heard again and again in a school with poor behaviour. As a new teacher all you hear, in your pit of despair, is: ‘I am a good teacher and you are not’. Thus confirming every late night anxiety you try your best to ignore and push aside.

Yet, this again is only a symptom of a poor behaviour culture. To have survived long enough to be an experienced colleague in this environment, chances are your ‘helpful’ colleague is a bit of a maverick. They will have their own ways of dealing with things, they have been there so long that the kids know and understand their reputation. If I’m being perfectly honest, although teachers like this inevitably make your life more difficult in comparison, I can hardly blame them when this has allowed them to weather this difficult job for such an admirable amount of time.

All I will say is don’t look to these teachers for advice, don’t think these are the lessons you should observe, you are unlikely to learn anything that will help YOU as a new teacher.

What I’ve learned… For what it’s worth

So, if you are reading this blog to gain some nuggets of wisdom in your ITT or NQT year, I’m afraid I don’t have them. What I do have is perspective. If (like I did), you are thinking you’re a terrible teacher, that can’t manage behaviour, that teaching is clearly not for you, all I can say is… you are wrong. You are a great teacher because you care and because you don’t want to settle for poor behaviour and low expectations for your pupils. Fighting back against a poor behaviour culture is the most mentally and physically exhausting thing you will ever do… but the fact that you do do it is a reminder of why the profession needs people like you. You can be the best teacher in the world but if you work in a school that does not have a positive behaviour culture, with strict boundaries and clear expectations, that is consistent and fairly applied across the whole school, you will struggle with behaviour in your lesson. Yes, there are things you can do to minimise this, slightly, but you are not a failure. Your school is failing you by not supporting you.

One of the most important lessons I learned was that if you think teaching is not for you, it is probably that your school is not for you. It has taken me three schools in five years to find (what I hope) is ‘my school’. Instead of giving you advice that is only ever going to be limiting (and which others have done better) I will instead give you my top tips to look for in a school before you apply:

•        A clearly defined behaviour policy with clear sanctions and consequences.
•        A calm and focused classroom environment, even with new teachers.
•        Calm change overs between lessons and at break and lunch time.
•       Visible SLT on the corridors and in classrooms
•        Centralised detentions

If a school has these in place then it is likely that you will have a supportive environment where you can concentrate on teaching at your best. That’s what you came into teaching to do. Isn’t that what you deserve?

Teaching Shakespeare at KS3

I have always loved teaching Shakespeare, but I’m not sure, on reflection, that I have always done it well. This year I have been thinking about my approach to teaching Shakespeare, especially at KS3.

Big questions about teaching Shakespeare at KS3:  

•         How do we open up debate on why we prioritise and teach Shakespeare?
•        How do we remove barriers to language that can seem inaccessible?
•        How do we negotiate between Shakespeare as ‘literature’ and the play as a piece of theatre/drama?

Why Shakespeare?

This might seem like an obvious question to an English teacher. As an English teacher it is highly likely that throughout your secondary and higher education that the question of Shakespeare’s place in the canon is one that is taken for granted. Similarly, I have read and agreed with many teachers who have eloquently argued why teaching Shakespeare and other canonical writers (such as Dickens) is an almost moral obligation, giving pupils access to the cultural capital which expands their perception and understanding of our cultural heritage. Whilst an idea of a shared ‘cultural heritage’ can be in itself problematic, I understand and tacitly agree with this view of the importance of teaching language rich text over more modern texts which seem more accessible and ‘relevant’ to pupils’ lives. Fundamentally great literature negotiates our understanding of the world through that which is universal and that which explores the specific context of that piece of literature. That being said, the question of the value of Shakespeare in the current curriculum can and should be an open question. I have recently been listening to various podcasts on Shakespeare and one that particularly got me thinking was the BBC Shakespeare Sessions podcast ‘Shakespeare: For and Against’ by Mark Ravenhill. One aspect which the podcast explores is the question of the universality of Shakespeare, something I myself am quick to use as an answer to the perennial ‘Why do we study Shakespeare?’. Whilst the podcast was thought provoking I still very much see the value Shakespeare’s prominent place on the curriculum, especially at KS3, for the following reasons paired, however, with the following issues:

We should study early modern texts as they are an important part of the British literary canon. Pupils should understand Literature as a body of work and not as discrete texts.	We should however acknowledge the problems with the idea of canon, the lack of diversity of voices and how this might impact the ‘world view’ that the text presents.
Amongst other great early modern texts, Shakespeare (in my experience) is the most accessible in terms of narrative and theme for younger readers/ audiences.	There are many ‘lenses’ we can view Shakespeare through and this can be more easily differentiated and then built upon for KS3, KS4 and KS5. There is scope to approach the same text in different ways which suit the age and level of the class you are teaching.
Shakespeare is language ‘rich’ which gives us the opportunity to challenge and expose children to a rich vocabulary that is out with the language they are exposed to on a daily basis.	Not all language needs to be ‘translated’. I explicitly explain that there is a lot of language in Shakespeare that I don’t understand on a word-by-word basis but that doesn’t stop me understanding the broader meaning of the text as a whole.
There are elements of Shakespeare that discuss the ‘human condition’ and universal themes/ideas and emotions such as ‘jealousy’, ‘revenge’ and ‘love’.	It is important not to present the idea that Shakespeare gives a universal solution to problems of the human condition. Analysis should be critical, looking at perspectives and viewpoints that are missing is equally as important.

Most importantly, pupils should not be indoctrinated into the ‘cult of bardolatry’. After studying Shakespeare pupils should be entitled to think that Shakespeare should not have such a prominent place on the curriculum, but this should be through thoughtful critique of these issues, not simply because they ‘don’t get it’.

‘Once more unto the breach’: Breaking down barriers to Shakespeare

The very ‘rich’ nature of a Shakespearean text presents with it the challenge of giving pupils the ability to breakdown language which is often seen as intimidating and impenetrable. Even the strongest readers at KS3 will face very similar barriers to those with low levels of literacy. After recently reading Andy Tharby’s ‘Making Every English Lesson Count’, I have been working on honing my teaching of the Merchant of Venice with my Y8 class. We are currently about half way through studying the text and I have seen a big improvement in the engagement of my pupils and I feel this is down to the following things:

•  In the first lesson, instead of going straight in with the plot or context (which was my usual go to method), I extrapolated some of the ‘dilemmas’ or ‘moral questions’ faced by the characters in the play. I abstracted these and gave them to pupils on slips of paper to discuss. In the Merchant of Venice, an example of this would be ‘You have fallen in love with someone your parents don’t approve of. What would you say to them? What would you do?’, ‘Is it ever acceptable to disobey your parents?’ or ‘Are there some things that are unforgivable?’. These ‘questions/dilemmas’ opened up a rich discussion and by posing further problems or questions pupils were thinking deeply about some of the issues that are central to the plot.
• After this discussion I introduced them to the whole plot of the Merchant of Venice and asked pupils to try and spot which ‘problem’ went with which character. Pupils really engaged with this and felt a knowing confidence that they were able to understand and make connections to the plot in an immediate way.
•         I had been conflicted about whether to tell pupils the plot at the beginning of the SOW as I agree with some critics of this approach who argue this robs pupils of the experience and enjoyment of the plot revealing itself. However, with a Shakespearean text I feel that we do need to sacrifice this to remove an important barrier to the text as pupils are much less likely to be able to understand and fully enjoy or appreciate the play if these barriers remain in place. I will explain later why I did not want to show them a production of the play at this point.
• Before starting teaching the Merchant of Venice (which I had not taught before and had not read since I was in High School) I re-read the text and listened to a version recorded for the Shakespeare Sessions podcast series. I thought about the key scenes I wanted to focus on in my lessons and collated these together in a booklet that would be printed out for pupils to annotate and keep as a working document. In the booklet I included a summary page and a character list which is completed during the first lesson. I also made a space for pupils to write a short summary of each scene as we read it as we progress through the text. At the back of the booklet I created a page which acts as a glossary for pupils to add new vocabulary as we go (from words outside the text such as ‘anti-Semitic’ to words from inside the text such as ‘usurer’ or ‘ducats’). I am lucky enough to work in a department where we have access to the full text so whilst reading we can use these but this would be a particularly useful approach for departments who do not have full class sets of the text).
• The process of making the booklet and selecting these scenes made me think deeply about the narratives, ideas and characters I wanted to focus on and which were most appropriate for my Y8 class. I feel teaching Shakespeare well is about consciously curating the text (just as a director might) for the level of the class you teach.
• In ‘Making Every English Lesson Count’ Tharby argues that we need to break down the process of reading challenging texts to lessen the cognitive load. Based on this I have been using the following method in lesson:

Step 1	I will discuss what has happened previously to give context to the scene and I will pose questions to get pupils predicting what characters might think or do based on these previous events.
Step 2	The class will read through the scene as a whole. I have very confident readers in my class therefore I usually read the key role (such as Shylock) so I can ensure I can emphasise key lines whilst they take on smaller roles. If I had a weaker class I would probably play an audio version of the text rather than let the pupils read and risk losing the flow and meaning of the scene.
Step 3	Whilst this first reading is happening I might pause and explain what is happening or pose questions to ensure that the pupils get the ‘gist’ of what’s happening.
Step 4	After we have read the scene I will summarise what has happened and pose some discussion questions based on the scene so that pupils have the chance to process what has happened.
Step 5	I will then use a visualizer to annotate the key section of the scene I wish to analyse further. Pupils will annotate their own booklet. At this point I will break down the text on a line by line basis posing questions to the class to help them work out the significance of key words and phrases.

I have found that the booklet is a very useful tool to build confidence with the text. To build this confidence, every week I have been getting pupils to think about a different aspect of the play so far (such as ‘How has our opinion of Shylock changed?’). Once the pupils have had time to discuss with their partner and we have fed this back, I have asked them what has happened in the play to make us think this. Once we have agreed on certain events I ask the pupils to go back through and find a quotation to support this. By using their summaries at the front of their booklet they can locate the scene they want and by reading through their annotations they can find the quotation they need. By repeating this skill on a weekly basis they have now become very confident in selecting quotations to support their ideas. I feel that by having ownership of their own booklet with their own annotations, this has broken down some of these barriers and negated the idea of it being an ‘impenetrable’ text.

‘The play’s the thing’: Negotiating the balance between the text as Literature and the text as theatre

When teaching Shakespeare at KS4, I have often felt on reflection that I have not spent enough time exploring the unique literary characteristics of a play-text. This in turn limits the analysis of the text, particularly when considering structure and characterisation. Given the enhanced freedoms that KS3 should offer, I have tried to actively explore this element of the text alongside the more traditional ‘language analysis’ in a complementary way.

When teaching Act 3 scene 1 (which includes the famous ‘If you prick us’ speech) we went through the scene as outlined above. Once the pupils were confident and understood the gist of the scene and had explored the speech line by line to understand the meaning, I wanted pupils to explore it as a ‘speech’ not simply a text. I printed out a new copy of the speech and gave them the following task:

Pupils then had ten minutes to annotate their speech with a focus on HOW it would be performed. At the end of this we had a few willing volunteers perform their version. All the speeches had slight nuances in emphasis, tone and pacing and the pupils could explain and justify their reasoning for after their performance.

After this I set them the homework of watching two different versions of the speech and asked them to explain which they felt was more effective and why. Again, the pupils had differing opinions and could justify their views clearly and articulately.

It is for this reason that I have chosen not to show the pupils a performance of the play at the beginning of the SOW. When the pupils understand the meaning of the text through close analysis they can engage with the performance and offer a more critical perspective. One of the problems and opportunities with a Shakespearean text as a piece of theatre is that there is so little evidence of the authorial intent when it comes to performance, there so few stage directions compared to modern play texts, therefore the scope for interpretation is extremely wide. This can be a barrier but it is also a fertile opportunity for pupils to discuss the wide range of interpretations and think like a stage director has to think when tasked with putting on a performance of a text like the Merchant of Venice. By actively exploring this critical perspective, the responses to the question ‘How does Shakespeare Shylock presented in Act 3 scene 1?’ went beyond the standard language analysis with pupils offering personal engagement with how they felt Shylock’s emotions were being explored. The end result was a much greater range of genuine personal engagement with the text.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…

So, beyond grades on a marksheet, how do we know that our teaching of Shakespeare at KS3 has been successful. Here is my alternative success criteria:

•        Do the pupils have a solid understanding of the play?
•        Will they remember the central ideas of the play next month, next year or even in 10 years’ time?
•         Can they watch a production and think ‘I would have done it differently’?
•        Do they have an opinion on the characters?
•         Do they know the problems or limitations of play’s ‘worldview’?
•        Do they understand the place of Shakespeare in the canon even if they don’t agree with it themselves?
•         Do they know the reasons you love the play even if they don’t agree with them?