foolfillment: the blog

The first thing we did at the Learning and Teaching session on Thursday was to spend a little time on our own, quietly thinking about what our most intense learning experience was. No more detail than that, it was up to us to decide what that meant. I thought I might share what mine was and some of my thoughts about the task.

I had a couple of ideas, obviously to pick out one period in particular is hard, but I first thought about what the task really was. Is the emphasis on ‘intense’? (and what does that mean?) Or is it on the learning bit? A single experience? Initially I thought back to my first year at uni. I was studying Electrical Engineering and throughout the year had a number of assignments to do for maths. These were usually fairly short notice and a lot more work than anything else we got. The questions often seemed really distinct from what we had covered in lectures and tutorials so it was usually a fairly frantic time working out what the questions meant in relation to all the bits we knew and somehow piece them together to get the answers. It felt intense, but thinking back did I learn anything from them? It was tough and I was using things I had been studying, but can I remember any of it now? Certainly not.

What I might have learned from it is the value of working with others to solve problems, or some skills in breaking problems in to smaller pieces. In truth all that I learnt was that if you don’t know what the question means then just try something, anything, and if it still makes no sense then just try a few other things and hand in all of the different bits of work and you’ll get a handful of marks rather than none. Tactics, nothing more, nothing less.

The experiences I came up with that represent some real learning are both caving related. One was the first time I did SRT - this is doing things with ropes at the tops of things like cliffs. You have a harness and a whole range of bits of complex metalwork and lots of ropes. If you don’t use them properly then there is every chance that you will hurt yourself, and when you hurt yourself in a cave then it is usually very serious. So, the first time I went into a cave that required SRT I had to learn how to do it, and I had to learn fast.

The other one was a little later when I learned how to rig caves for SRT, not just going in and using a rope that someone else has put there but being the person who puts the rope into place. Again, make a mistake here and someone could get hurt, or worse. The difference was the person who gets hurt wasn’t just me any more but other people too, now that is responsibility.

In both of these situations I was safe because I was with someone who was teaching me how to do things properly and would stop me before I made a mistake, but I still had to make sure I knew not just what to do but also why I do those things. Without an understanding of all the equipment and knots then I would not have learned how to do things safely, I wouldn’t have learnt anything except how to cope if I found myself in the same cave in exactly the same situation. Instead I worked out what knots to use when, why you route the rope that way in this cave and when you would do similar/different things in other caves. How to go through a procedure of checking in a way that means I am safe and so are those with me. A huge number of things that all fit together into a much bigger picture.

What links these experiences, and what made them intense experiences is that I had a big responsibility, if I didn’t learn then things could have gone horribly wrong if I were to get to a cave in the future without support and realise I didn’t know what to do, or worse thought I knew but got it wrong.

These are very personal experiences, and they were situations where I learned because of a stick more than a carrot. I had to learn so I did, it was that or make both a physical and psychological retreat. The question is how does this relate to my teaching? Of course I can’t put my pupils into a situation where they have to learn else lives are in danger. I think the idea of advance or retreat is important. I learned because I had to but also wanted to. The aim is to find a way to make pupils want to learn rather than to make them learn.

Today was my last day at school. The next time I walk into a school (to teach at least) I will be getting paid for it, and expected to produce some results, it’s quite a daunting thought.

I’ll not think about that much now though, for now I’ll concentrate on the fact that the last 10 weeks have been absolutely fantastic, there have been highs and low, laughter and tears (not mine though), and a huge amount of learning. Even though this blog os anonymous in terms of what school I was at I’d like to still thank everyone who is at that school, especially the technical department, who have been brilliant from start to finish with lots of support and advice (and no fear of just pushing me in front of a class and leaving me to it) for me about how to get ahead in this game. I was humbled this morning when having produced the obligitory cakes for the staff the PT brought out a bottle of wine for me - Thank you, you needn’t have!

I also bumped into a PGCE student on the way home and made the connection with this blog that he’s started writing - probably as a result of David and Ewan.

It’s been a very quick and tiring 9 weeks of teaching but now it’s back to uni, head down and batter my way through the other hurdles between me and graduation. Before that though I’m going to the Kelvinhall climbing wall to teach some freshers how to climb 10′ using only a rope and some clever metalwork - known as SRT to those in the know.