NEU BEC Conference 2024

What an absolute pleasure.

As if speaking at the London School of Economics was not already a treat in itself. Here I was standing infront of educators, some with greater tenure, experience and skill; providing continuous professional development.

I initialy thought to myself that I was in out of my depth. I came to find out that it was at that depth of unclarity that i needed to be at. However it would take further thought and consideration into the diversity in teaching environments across the UK to share a message that would benefit all.

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/implementation

Sharing good practice has always been an integral part of teacher development for me. Quite like chinese whispers, we pass on our activities, tricks, routines and hacks to one another on a daily basis. All in aid of securing a deep and secure subject knowledge and personal modus operandi of pedagogy. There in the battle begins though, to see who will be the best provider and who ebbs more on the side of the reciever. The receiver who must adhere to an almost enforced role of the learner alone. This learner must test, try and adhere to the the teachings of the higher ranked provider.

Provider	Reciever
Teacher	Learner
Caregiver	Ward
Source	Observer

In all honesty, one way in which I have survived , made progress and met targets throughout my own professional development was by experiementing in both of these roles (provider and reciever). Perhaps 'unfortunately' much of learning is underpined by two factions: those who teach and the whose who are taught. It was with this thinking in that I knew best place to share my findings was through ensuring that participants could 'become the learner'. In essence, ask the participants to take part in the activities we ask of our learners to do in orer to assess thier effectiveness and out efficency as the role as the facilitator (the provider).

Photography by Kois Miah www.koismiah.co.uk

My favourite aspect of becoming the learner is through the use of drama, talk and discussion. It is at those times, when we experiment with the tools we provide to our students with, whether as: talk scaffolds, dictation or worksheet, that we are able to appreciate and witness futher the misconceptions and struggles that our learners ultimately face during periouds of study.

I would have never expected to have spent more than 5 minutes on this slide with the participants. Going in of course I estimated perhaps 2-5 futher minutes may be required to duscss the outcomes and what this may have looked like in the classroom. What I could never expect was the eruption of discourse that came from this slide alone. There was already so much rich subject knowledge in the room, the skills to create, develop effecive questions and follow on and prerequisite acitivites. It was all there. Every practitioner in the room had theability within them. Unfortunately, what was missing was a sense of agency.

My peers had many a great concern about the limitations, boundaries and lack of access to recouces. There were few who would be interested in created a bespoke range of resolurces but many (and I do understand this) wanted access to ready made, ready to go, perhaps politically correct, goverenemnt acreditied resources. I undeerstand this also. Its hard to 'rock the boat'. My feelings are.. Who are the children you are teaching? What do they deserve to know? How can we prepare them for the unseeable world they will be stepping in to? How are we building well rounded global citizens? Why am I doing this anyway? What is the essence of teaching itself?

This leads me back to my early days in teacher training. My wonderful professor enlightened us to a literature that supported the idea that the word teacher came from engineer. Throughout my roactice this has seemed to devloped into a conclustion that to teacher is to find solutions, pathways and adress bariers to creative and conclusive thinking. This thought of mine is still ongoging.

Like i said, in the beginning. It was a true pleasure. Another experience of imposter syndrome....

Though this time I was washed with the knowing that there is a slight joy in this imposter feeling. It reminds me that all providers and recievers must adere to a contant state of life-long learning.

See you at the next conference :)