The Monkey-Proof Box by Jonathan Lear

Author:Jonathan Lear [Jonathan Lear]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781353288
Publisher: Crown House Publishing
Published: 2019-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

It was brilliant. Basically, you just ticked everything off and you were a nailed-on outstanding teacher. The only downside was that it was exhausting. Teaching outstanding lessons all the time was a bit of a burden, but having the badge made it all worthwhile. If someone important from the local authority turned up at school wanting a look around, I’d be rolled out. I’d turned myself from incompetent waffler into some kind of teaching machine.

There wasn’t anything you could do to stop me – if you happened across my path, I made sure you were well and truly taught. If you had a question or if you put up your hand in my vicinity, I was all over it. I had the answers. If you were a child in my class, you’d go home exhausted from the sheer force of teaching that was flung in your direction.

After a while, though, I noticed that something was up. In my mind, there was absolutely no doubt that my teaching was spot on, but it slowly dawned on me that I hadn’t fully considered the impact of my outstandingness on the children. The first time it happened was when I took a brief breather mid lesson. I don’t know why I needed it; maybe all the progress that was happening had got to me, but the response from the children was interesting. They all stopped too. They looked confused at first, and then, as the silence continued, a sense of panic started to grip them. Some of them were looking at each other as if to say, ‘Don’t worry – he’ll start up again soon.’

It seemed that when I wasn’t leading the way with my usual dynamic and enthusiastic performance, the children were at a loss. They had become entirely dependent on me and whatever I was up to at the front. I’d become Mr Nuts-On-A-Plate, and even though I was serving up some pretty exciting nuts, there was no getting away from the fact that the children were being spoon-fed the curriculum.

This came as a blow, if I’m honest. The children always seemed to be having a good time, so I’d never really paused to think about what was actually going on. I felt guilty at first, but then decided that, actually, it wasn’t my fault. I’ve already mentioned the outstanding checklists that were floating around in most schools, and the inspectors had a big part to play in these being used to make teachers deliver their lessons in a certain way. There were also other phrases being bandied around such as ‘rapid and sustained progress’ and ‘pace’. At the time, we just accepted these things as part and parcel of what outstanding teaching was about, but, in hindsight, they are two of the most damaging concepts we’ve had thrown at us in recent times.

First of all, the idea that a lesson can result in rapid and sustained progress is just rubbish. You can’t see progress (or, in fact, learning) in a single lesson; you can only see it over time.

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