A few weeks ago, as a sort of trailer for this post, I published a single drawing I had made of the school where I work. Now the full set……
Night School
I have worked at Maasland College in Oss, the Netherlands for more than twenty years. I teach, I paint in my own studio at home, I draw when I travel, and yet in all that time I have never made a drawing of my workplace. Time for a change! A few months ago I started with a first drawing. Happy with the result, I continued. It then became a series of nine drawings of different corners of the school, based on photographs I took early on winter mornings when it was dark outside and the corridors were empty, almost, you could say, a kind of Night School.
Night School
The school community will be able to see the exhibition firsthand, everyone else will hopefully enjoy the digital version here.
They are a little different to the images that I normally make, but certainly form a good set. You can find these drawings and other series of my studio work at my recently renovated website:
I draw quite a bit. Whenever I travel one of my drawing books travels with me. In my studio work I plan and prepare using drawings (on paper or digitally) to plot the way ahead. Yet in we’ll over twenty years working in education I have never turned my attention towards my working environment in the form of drawing it.
A while back I decided it might be an interesting challenge to pick up, and so a series of drawings began. I’m still working on the series. I don’t think they are ever going to become more than a series of drawings; I’m not expecting to take them into a series of paintings. But they are starting to become something of a ‘complete set’ in my view.
In many ways they are fairly detached from the paintings I make. Although they do share a certain geometric quality. The architecture of the buildings l work in have plenty of interesting angles and lines. Maybe that’s what kept me interested while I have been drawing.
A full display of the series, online, and quite possibly within the school is likely to follow quite soon, but while I’m finishing things off, let me put this first on of the series out there as a taster
The 75th anniversary of the school where I work has been celebrated this year. Reason enough for a whole series of events and activities to mark the occasion. Without doubt though, this weekend was the big one. An afternoon and evening filling reunion that in the end was attended by close to two thousand ex-pupils and staff as well as many of those currently teaching.
I’ve taught at the school for over twenty years and so have been looking forward to the event. I’ve done my part in the preparation work designing posters, display boards documenting the history of the school and coordinating the production of a celebratory artwork.
But I must admit to not being quite sure how I would experience such a mass event of ex-pupils ranging in age from their early twenties, up to a much more select group over the age of seventy.
After my twenty plus years of teaching at the school, I was trying this week, to puzzle out just how many different children I have taught over the years. I’m not completely sure, but I think the total probably lies somewhere between 2500 and 3000. Obviously, they weren’t all going to show up, but a reasonably number could be expected. How would that be? How many would I recognize and how many names would I be able to drag up from the area of memory where pupils’ names seem to pile up in what feels like an incredibly unsorted fashion?
Looking back on the evening I don’t think that I did too badly. I got some names and failed with others! I recognized so many of the pupils I’ve taught even with well over a decade having passed in many cases.
Was it a good experience? Yes absolutely, although at times quite overwhelming. It did me good to be talking with ex-pupils and hear them recount a small detail of something you said during a lesson back in 2010 that they still remember and has caused them to ponder and think about it on numerous occasions since. That is what you are in education for, those seeds you can sow and experiences you can give! One thought I often share with pupils is that teaching art and culture at secondary school level is about giving a little baggage that they will be able to make use of for a lifetime. One ex-pupil at the reunion said he remembered me saying it and admitted to being a little sceptical as a fifteen-year-old at the time. But his summer on a visit to Rome and walking through a museum there, he returned in his mind to the lessons. He found he had a little perspective, a little knowledge that allowed him to find his way into a particular artwork.
Another reminisced about the group artwork we made based of Goya’s third of May painting, another recounted a project that focussed on the Dutch coast. These are the nuggets of knowledge, experience and enjoyment that get carried away. The art lessons are in so many educational contexts the ‘odd-ball’ lessons. They’re different of virtually all the other subjects on the pupils’ timetables. But that ‘otherness’ is the very reason why they should be there and be taken seriously in every school context. They offer pupils a different way to work, to think and to experience the world.
Art teachers are maybe not the most high-profile members of the teaching team in a school. But perhaps more than most subject areas they are called on for extra input and support. In fact, I often ponder the irony of teaching a subject area where pupils and parents often make the observation that there is no work to be found in choosing to study art, whilst I seem to be continually busy with my employer making full use of me (a fine art graduate) to carry out any number of creative tasks. There clearly seems to be plenty of call for creative input and practical skills where I am!
I know I’m not stating anything new to most arts teachers. We are requested to do so many tasks outside of the normal classroom activities. There might be scenery needed for the school play, a poster for a party, a logo for a club, decoration or artworks needed for an empty corridor, an exhibition of pupils’ work to be organised for PR purposes, a design for a t-shirt or maybe critical input on the school’s prospectus or website. I could go own, but I’m sure that you get the picture.
At my own school, amongst other things, I seem to have become the second line of graphic design. We have an external bureau that designs material for us, but I am regularly asked to contribute with a poster, a flyer or animation film. All areas I have no specialist training in but am interested to try my hand and have, over the years put in the hours learning to use the necessary software.
As with all design tasks, it always seems to take a lot longer than I expect to get to the final finished result, and a lot lot longer than most other people seem to think the process of design can take. So why do it? Well, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I enjoy the process and the challenge. I’m not sure that I could design in this way full time, but the occasional work on the side is both interesting and satisfying when designs reach their final form.
A case in point are the five display boards that show our school history (it is our 75th anniversary). I have put these together in collaboration with a colleague from the history department. They are a combination of an interesting text, fascinating historical photographs and, even if I say it myself, some nice design work. This time the finished product is going to stand outside of school for the next year, which is considerably longer than most other similar projects seem to last in the public eye!
During a slightly quiet moment at a conference in Brussels about a year ago, a colleague and I were reflecting on our working lives in education, and in particular on where we currently teach. I say currently teach, but that makes it sounds like we are always switching from one school to another. But that for us is definitely not the case. As it has turned out we have been in for the long haul.
Cathy Silk and I started work at the Maaslandcollege in Oss on the same day back in 2001 and have continued our parallel educational routes ever since, Cathy in the English department of our bilingual stream and me in the art department.
During our reflections last year we found ourselves recalling pupils that had passed through our classrooms, colleagues who have come and gone, and just how many lessons we must have taught. We also made the calculation of how many weeks of teaching we had given to our school. As it turned out, back then it was around 950 each. Yes, we were each nearing 1000 weeks of teaching in Oss. Further calculations and we knew that the milestone of 1000 weeks would occur in mid-November 2020. We could have a small party we thought, maybe a sort of reunion with some colleagues, ex-colleagues and pupils, nothing too official, just an occasion to mark a point in a journey that continues and to involve some people who have shared it with us.
So here we are in November 2020, 1000 weeks of teaching later, but no party. Like so many festive moments, plans have been disrupted. That is of course no big deal, there are more important things in play at the moment, and such an anniversary is just a moment in time. But it is worth reflecting on what has caused Cathy and I to have stuck around in the same school for so long. I think I can probably write for the both of us in saying that quite a few things play a part.
Firstly, being part of the bilingual educational project in the Netherlands and, at the Maaslandcollege in particular, has been both fascinating and rewarding. Our school was one of the first to begin this form of education back in the mid 1990s. A form that sees Dutch children taught in English in order to fast track their language learning abilities and ultimately brings them to levels that surprise me every year.
Our colleagues, both present and past have also been a reason to stay. An enthusiastic, social and knowledgeable group. In the occasional dip moments there have always been people around to remind you that it is a school that makes you want to be part of the team. One colleague, Lobke, should get a special mention, she was a twelve old pupil at the school, starting the very same week as we did. She is now an established member of our bilingual team as a biology teacher, a reminder for us both in the staffroom of the values of the bilingual program.
Educationally, both Cathy and I, have always been given considerable freedom to form and shape our own teaching programs. This is without a doubt one of the main reasons we have remained so steadfastly committed to our Maaslandcollege. By giving teachers space to explore and experiment in their work you keep them interested, enthusiastic and awake to new possibilities.
But then there is the school itself. On paper it is a fairly standard looking sort of school, 1500 or so pupils, quite comprehensive in terms of the educational streams that it offers. But apart from the staff, it is of course the pupils who make a school. It is difficult to calculate just how many Cathy and I must have taught over the years, other than to say that it is plenty! They arrive as, maybe rather uncertain of the themselves 12 year olds, you fight and joke with them through the middle years of their secondary schooling and finally they depart with their diploma and a sort of mutual respect as arrived in the relationship.
It’s nice to be able to follow many of my ex-pupils through Linked-in. The contact is low-key, but does let me see what some of them have moved onto do. I think also gives the pupils themselves a sort of contact route with something of their own formative teenage educational years. It’s a line of contact that is very definitely open (as far as I am concerned) to go further if the need presents itself. Before the summer I was able to help an ex-pupil with the development of a museum educational program she was working on, and next week I will be doing something similar with another who I last taught, I think, about six years ago. As a teacher, such moments are really greatly valued educational extras.
It is always nice to run into ex-pupils, on the train, at the station, in the supermarket. It reminds you just why you are in education. For both Cathy and me it is especially rewarding when these chance encounters involve a young (Dutch) adult launching into an enthusiastic conversation with us in English, fluent and without hesitation, reason enough to have stayed around to reach that 1000 weeks mark!
In education a lot is written about peer group pressure. Generally when it gets mentioned it is very much in a negative context. It’s linked to pupils under-performing because of the influence of others or children being led astray because they don’t want to stand out from the crowd.
These sorts of examples are recognizable to anyone who works in education.
However peer group pressure can have a sort of flip side. Let’s leave all the negative connotations behind and call the flip side The power of the crowd. A winning football or hockey team gets something of this quality, people are swept along on its success, individuals within the team are lifted up by their achievement and share in the achievements of others in the team. We see glimpses of these sorts of qualities in education from time to time, but for me is difficult to imagine anything to match the effects of the music, song, dance and drama project that we have visiting our school this week.
A group known as the Young Americans visit our school every two years. It is a group of about forty or so performing arts students, principally from the U.S. but also from a large number from other countries around the world. They visit for three days and work for that time with all our bilingual second and third classes (ages thirteen to fifteen), normally a total of around 180-200 pupils.
During two and a half days of intensive workshops they put together with the Young Americans, a performance of music, dance and song that is presented to a packed makeshift theatre in our sports hall in the afternoon and evening of the third day. For the Young Americans it is a well-practiced and well-oiled format that allows them to integrate all of the pupils into the performance, often with all of them on or around the stage simultaneously. It is for all the pupils an incredible experience.
I am used to having to motivate and engage a class of thirty pupils. Sometimes that’s easy, other days you have to work a lot harder. I am also all too aware that there are odd pupils in classes that in the normal run of things are simply quite difficult to ‘reach’ or quite difficult to motivate. So how is it that they are up there on the stage dancing, singing, smiling and enjoying it with the rest of them?
Well the answer to that lies in the power of the crowd. It starts with the overwhelming enthusiasm of the Young Americans. The pupils really don’t know what’s hit them to start with. They show them just how cool having a go can actually be. They support and encourage, they applaud and put an arm over the shoulder when it’s needed. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Their high fives and shouts of encouragement edge the nervous pupils forward. And before you know what is happening the pupils are joining in, cheering their classmates on. There is a growing belief in the group that they can make something special. Pupils who are normally ‘background’ inhabitants are suddenly discovered, and they find themselves making the giant step from the background, literally into the limelight.
Come the performance in front of 600 parents, family and friends the tension and excitement rise. Suddenly that thirteen year old who has hardly said a word all year in class is on the stage singing a solo, maybe only two lines before someone else takes it over, but she has done it and in doing so performed to a theatre full of onlookers, an achievement she wouldn’t have dreamed of just two days earlier.
What has brought her to this point? Well that is part the sheer enthusiasm of the Young American group, but it is also partly the subtle shift that has occurred in the peer group. They have been swept up in the enthusiasm, the excitement and plain thrill of performing.
As a teacher involved in the arts and cultural education it is fantastic to see. Often I feel there is just a handful of us at school to defend and promote the importance and value that the arts in the curriculum have. Watch one of these shows and a door is opened on the possibilities and crucial role culture, drama, music, art, dance, etc. can have for our young people.
The Young Americans will undoubtedly be returning to our school.
The project in short has involved groups of pupils (aged 14-15) who have completed the following:
Researched and analyzed, a group of artworks from the history of art that in some way have a relationship with one another
Singled out one artwork and wrote a story (in English, their second language) for younger children in which the afore mentioned artwork played a significant role, and in this way is introduced to the younger readers
Produced illustrations to accompany the story
Photographed the images and combined them with the text to produce layouts for each page on their iPad
Printed and bound the book for a finished project
That was the working process, and as my previous post illustrated there has been seen some good work made, the digital layout work being particularly pleasing to see.
The whole project though has today taken its final turn. I went with a group of nine of the pupils and a selection of the books to visit a primary school, De Fonkeling, where they are also working hard to get more English into the curriculum.
Here, my pupils then read the story books to the oldest children at the primary school (aged 11), explained the project and showed the illustrations.
I entered the school with a group of perhaps slightly nervous fourteen and fifteen year olds, but I left with a group who were clearly surprised by the attention that they were given and the rounds of applause that they received at the end of each story. The younger children played their part fully, filling feedback questionnaires about what they had heard and reacting so enthusiastically. All in all, a very rewarding and authentic experience at the end of a long project.
From time to time I am asked to give presentations to and yesterday I did in The Hague so to a group of Danish teachers and head teachers who were interested to hear more about the form of bilingual education that we offer in our schools in The Netherlands.
I’d like to thank them for their active participation in my part of the day. I enjoyed the chance to share ideas and discuss future possibilities.
I promised to make my presentation material available as a reminder of some of the teaching activities I touched on. The PowerPoint itself is quite brief, so also feel free to take a look elsewhere on this blog and in particular at the CLIL link higher up the page.
In education a lot is written about peer group pressure. Generally when it gets mentioned it is very much in a negative context. It’s linked to pupils underperforming because of the influence of others or children being led astray because they don’t want to stand out from the crowd.
These sorts of examples are recognizable to anyone who works in education.
However peer group pressure can have a sort of flip side. Let’s leave all the negative connotations behind and call the flip side The power of the crowd. A winning football or hockey team gets something of this quality, people are swept along on its success, individuals within the team are lifted up by their achievement and share in the achievements of others in the team. We see glimpses of these sorts of qualities in education from time to time, but for me is difficult to imagine anything to match the effects of the music, song, dance and drama project that we have visiting our school this week.
A group known as the Young Americans visit our school every two years. It is a group of about forty or so performing arts students, principally from the U.S. but also from a large number from other countries around the world. They visit for three days and work for that time with all our bilingual second and third classes (ages thirteen to fifteen), normally a total of around 180-200 pupils.
During two and a half days of intensive workshops they put together with the Young Americans, a performance of music, dance and song that is presented to a packed theatre on the evening of the third day. For the Young Americans it is a well-practiced and well-oiled format that allows them to integrate all of the pupils into the performance, often with all of them on or around the stage simultaneously. It is for all the pupils an incredible experience.
I am used to having to motivate and engage a class of thirty pupils. Sometimes that’s easy, other days you have to work a lot harder. I am also all too aware that there are odd pupils in classes that in the normal run of things are simply quite difficult to ‘reach’ or quite difficult to motivate. So how is it that they are up there on the stage dancing, singing, smiling and enjoying it with the rest of them?
Well the answer to that lies in the power of the crowd. It starts with the overwhelming enthusiasm of the Young Americans. The pupils really don’t know what’s hit them to start with. They show them just how cool having a go can actually be. They support and encourage, they applaud and put an arm over the shoulder when it’s needed. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Their high fives and shouts of encouragement edge the nervous pupils forward. And before you know what is happening the pupils are joining in, cheering their classmates on. There is a growing belief in the group that they can make something special. Pupils who are normally ‘background’ inhabitants are suddenly discovered, and they find themselves making the giant step from the background, literally into the limelight.
Come the performance in front of 600 parents, family and friends the tension and excitement rise. Suddenly that thirteen year old who has hardly said a word all year in class is on the stage singing a solo, maybe only two lines before someone else takes it over, but she has done it and in doing so performed to a theatre full of onlookers, an achievement she wouldn’t have dreamed of just two days earlier.
What has brought her to this point? Well that is part the sheer enthusiasm of the Young American group, but it is also partly the subtle shift that has occurred in the peer group. They have been swept up in the enthusiasm, the excitement and plain thrill of performing.
As a teacher involved in the arts and cultural education it is fantastic to see. Often I feel there is just a handful of us at school to defend and promote the importance and value that the arts in the curriculum have. Watch one of these shows and a door is opened on the possibilities and crucial role culture, drama, music, art, dance, etc. can have for our young people.
The Young Americans will undoubtedly be returning to our school.
Peter Sansom 