Teacher's TV Competition

It seems that it's competition time in the writing world. Actually, I found a list of competitions the other day, which provided pretty such a long list you could occupy yourself pretty much full-time just creating competition pieces!

I've entered two this month: one can be read on http://greenstory.co.uk which is being run by Green Metropolis (a fabulous website). You can read it all there. The other is a monologue for Teacher's TV, which will be filmed and broadcast on the channel. Just for fun, I thought I would share it with you. The brief was to come up with a monologue of under 1,000 words which reflects an aspect or experience of teaching. So guess what I wrote about.......


“A wonderful way to learn!”



[Woman, ca 40 walks into a room and starts to pour herself a coffee. She sits down at a table, puts her papers and books down in a neat pile. There is a sense of relief in her to be sitting down and having some quiet]


Woman:

Wow, what a session that was! It amazes me how keen they are to learn, and how they go from one thing to another at such a blistering pace! I can hardly keep up with them! Take this morning for instance – I had planned to do ½ hour of Maths, ½ hour of English, then take a break. That should have taken us up to 10:15. And here I am now, only just sitting down and it's already half-eleven! These hours are scandalous – we should have a union!

We started off alright, then about 20 minutes into it, Naomi suddenly asks: “Why did the Egyptians live in pyramids?”. My instinct was to suppress it, to say “Ask me later when we're doing history”, but I'm trying to get that out of my system. I've come to learn over the years that when a child asks, she's ready to learn. Much better to teach her there and then, than to try and do it to your schedule when she's not ready and won't take it in. So off we went...

“What do you know about Egyptians already?” I wisely countered. She shrugged in that special way that only six year olds can. I smiled: this was going to fun. We could start anywhere, and she would be delighted with wherever we ended up! Emily opened up Google, Liesl fetched the Encyclopaedia of World History and Naomi brought us all pencils, crayons and paper. Two hours later, and each of them can tell you anything you could possibly want to know about embalming, canopic jars and brain-through-the-nose-pulling-hooks! We translated hieroglyphs, studied the desert terrain, built sphinxes out of Cornflakes boxes and loo rolls, all accompanied by rousing choruses of “Donny Osmond & his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat”!

That's what I love most about the way that we learn together: it's whole-brain, whole-child learning, and most importantly, it's child-led and child-centred. We focus on people, on their beliefs and values, on their cultures, their triumphs and challenges. It's their learning, so it has to be centred around them. The girls have to invest as much into it as I do, so it's imperative that they lead it. I provide a framework for them, and start the ball rolling, but they are ultimately responsible for which direction it goes in. That way, they know that their input and questions are valid, as are their opinions of what we learn about. Now that Naomi's Egyptian curiosity has been satisfied for now, she will be much more willing to sit down and tackle her Maths book tomorrow morning.


[Camera pans out to reveal not a staffroom but a home kitchen]


They're all out in the garden at the moment. I'll give them ten minutes or so while I do the crossword, then we'll all need to wrap up warm – we're going to see the seals at Donna Nook this afternoon. We do it every year, it's become something of a family tradition now. After that they're off to my Mum's for an hour while I get the tea on. She's teaching them to play the piano. They're coming on great guns too! Two of them work on a jigsaw of the world while the third has a twenty minute lesson, then they all swap round. I bet they'll find Egypt well enough tonight! [Aside] Actually, I might have time to get a load of washing in the machine as well while the pasta's boiling.

It's a busy life as a home-educating mum, but I wouldn't change it for the world. It's given me the chance to get to know my children as individuals really, really well. I could never have done that when they were at school 40 hours a week. It's great here: there's no bullying, no swearing or drugs, no last minute inspections! And most of all, no pressure. I don't need to apply pressure, they can't learn enough – everything they do is learning. They're always pulling leaves off things in the garden then coming inside to find out what they're from. Their bedrooms are full of dead insects, posters of whales and rabbits and goodness knows what else. Our camera runs out of film really quickly these days, because they're constantly snapping some wild creature or other, and taking pictures for their latest nature study. The shelves are full of learning books, and projects they've finished: everything from the Romans, to dolphins, to ballet, to Shakespeare. And what's even better, is that I get to learn it all with them. Sure, there's the odd day when I could quite happily do some ballistics research on them, but those are few and far between. My pupils are also my best friends. It's just the three girls and me, and a whole big universe to learn about... together!