What drives me... (part 1)
Since beginning my teaching career in 1993, I have been struck by the ways in which children choose to be enthralled or dis-enthralled by learning. When delivering Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird during pre-Anthology English GCSE, it wasn’t until we ran a hot-seating session for Mayella Ewell that the students became fascinated. Suddenly the character, a broken child-woman destroyed by her father’s bitter racism and anger, came to life and the voices in the room were authentic in their reflection of the text. The pupil playing the role spoke with expertise and confidence. She was able to communicate the ‘no-win’ life of Mayella and share with us her inner voice that she could never do in the court room under the scrutiny of Atticus Finch or her father. The pupil had been carefully protected into the role and she executed the task with a quiet confidence.
"They listened because they believed..."
And nobody on that wet Wednesday afternoon in a West Yorkshire secondary school laughed. They listened because they believed. They believed because we agreed we would. We had created a psychological contract that said when we did anything that looked like Drama, it would be done professionally – for real. We didn’t need to write it in our books or put a poster on the wall, we just did it because we knew it would work well and add depth to our learning. That last bit’s me paraphrasing and summing up, by the way. They didn’t sit there saying ‘Wow, this is adding real depth to my learning!’
Fast forward to a secondary school in Camden, autumn 2009: The class need an introduction to Genetics as part of the Y9 Science curriculum. There’s plenty on pages 76 to 84 of the textbook, and, to be fair, there are plenty of textbooks in a pile at the front of the room, lovingly arranged by the lab technician.
We don’t need those books though because we have better resources. We have people who have genetic disorders; we have a group of experts in community support, intervention and resourcing, we have a commission from the Government and we have some great support in the form of a number of real undergraduate volunteers from University College London. The learners have never encountered Mantle of the Expert (there is no Drama on the curriculum), the UCL medical students haven’t been in a school since they left a few years previously with, I’m guessing, 15 GCSEs each. I’m buzzing because it’s Drama and Science (my favourite! I got a U in Biology and two CSE Grade Twos in Chemistry and Physics!!), whilst the teacher is looking anxious about learning objectives being met.