A proper open day at last

Open days at school have been a bit of disrupted business over the last two years.  A chance for a school to show potentially new pupils what the school is all about, the atmosphere, building, and of course the staff.  For the first time since January 2020, we invited both parents and their primary school aged children into the school yesterday evening.

For the art department it’s a chance to show just what we are about and stage an extensive display of the pupils’ work, from the youngest in the school (aged 12) right through to the oldest (aged 18).  During the five hours of the open day, we welcomed around 300 ten- and eleven-year-olds into the main hall to show them round. 

But an art department wouldn’t be an art department if there wasn’t something to do and participate in.  Not an insignificant challenge when they are coming through in groups of up to twenty-four children every ten minutes or so.  The resulting activity is kind of formulaic, and maybe lacks a bit in the area of creativity, but it certainly had a good groups participation factor and a wow effect at the end!

For step by step instructions on how to carry out a similar large scale, pixelated portrait click on the link below to download the .pdf file.

pixelated-art-icons-instructionsDownload

Swept along on a wave of enthusiasm

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.

Average???

Pupils sometimes say things in class that prompt a reaction in me. It might be instantaneous, a sort of verbal ping pong if you like. It might leave me pondering the pupil opinion in the train on the way home, or it might even cause me to write something, as in this case.

The pupil concerned was a boy in one of my third year classes (ages 14-15).  Let us call the pupil Jack. Jack said something that didn’t so much make me angry as unsettled when he expressed an opinion that is certainly shared by many of his peers I suspect, but in Jack’s case it was just so up front, it confronted me. I reacted by writing the following text on the train on the way home, initially with the full intention of mailing it to the whole class just to get it off my chest. In the end I didn’t preferring my own brand of ‘slow burn’ solution of classroom persuasion and enthusiasm. It does however make quite a good blog post though.

The written reaction I wrote to Jack’s provocation goes like this:

I’m not picking on you Jack, but your comment about producing work of ‘average’ quality being OK has set me thinking on my way home today….thanks for that! Let me share a few of my thoughts with you all.

I tried to make clear to you this afternoon that I didn’t see ‘average’ effort being quite enough in my lessons. Let me enlarge on this….

Imagine at the start of the school year, your form teacher is telling you your new timetable and who your new teachers are going to be.  Do you want average teachers, or would you rather have all the best ones all week?

On a Saturday morning would you rather play in a football or hockey team of players who just gave ‘average’ effort? Or would you rather play in a team of players who are trying to do their best?

Your mum or dad need their car fixed, do they want an ‘average’ mechanic who does just enough to get the car on the road again, or would they rather have one who understands fully what they are doing and can carry out the work to the highest standard?

Would you be happy with a dentist doing work of an ‘average’ quality on your teeth? Personally I’d like to have one you knows exactly what they are doing and works to the highest standards!

I guess I also like to work with others who are trying to produce their best work. That goes for my colleagues, but also for the pupils I work with. I see myself as being part of a team with my colleagues, but also as part of a team with you….dear pupils 😉

I don’t give you a great deal to do outside of my lesson time, but what I do expect/require is a focused and ambitious attitude in the lessons. This is equally true for pupils with enormous creative talent and for those who find my subject, let’s say, more challenging!

Jack’s initial point of being average might often seem enough on the short term (getting you through into the next school year). But increasingly showing you can do more and shine in what you are doing is going to become important.

I could have ranted on a lot further, but it’s a problem that most of those who work in education will recognize to a lesser or greater degree. In the Netherlands we call it the ‘sixes culture’. Scoring five out of ten is a fail, scoring a six isn’t, although it is only marginally better. But when you can pass with a six, why bother going for an eight?

Much has been written and discussed about this problem. It does seem to be a problem that particularly afflicts boys, but by no means all boys.  The peer group does often to be playing a significant part. Sometimes it almost reminds me of the middle distance (1500m to 5000m) athletics races that my son runs.

When he’s trying to run a personal record in say a 1500 metre race it is all too important that he finds himself in with an appropriate group of athletes. Obviously the abilities in the group have to be reasonably well matched, competition is important in bringing out the best performances. Yet a too evenly matched field, particularly in a championship race where being the first over the line is everything can throw up a bizarrely slow race as everyone spends all their time watching what others are doing, the whole field clumps together and nobody seems willing to take the race on and show how fast they can run.

I understand fully why this happens on the athletics track, but it does kind of remind me about some behaviour that I sometimes see in the classroom, a behaviour that I remember experiencing myself and seems, as I said earlier, particularly to afflict boys.

Ambition to achieve well can be a strangely unpredictable measure in teenagers. It can run hot and cold. Working in the art room I certainly observe this. Triggering interest and engagement is the initial challenge, but sustaining this into often quite extended practical assignments is still more important, and that is what I will be working on with Jack.