Friday 15 December 2017

No Quite Rooms for Primary Schools in Russia

Nationally we’re seeing in these years far more highly disruptive behaviour in younger children. All primary school teachers and special educators in Smolensk say they have disruptive children in their class. Those kids who behave well most of the time also have their lapses. Teachers say that dealing with bad behaviour fre­quently gets in the way with teaching. Bad children being verbally and physically aggressive regularly disrupt classes refus­ing to to do what the teacher says. But few teachers will talk openly about violence and disruption they face. If you do so, you will be quite clearly put around that you are a trouble maker.

It stands to reason that if these children with conduct disorders were taken away from the mainstream class, the mainstream class could function prop­erly. But, as I have already said, teachers feel they can’t actually talk openly, so such children are not excluded from school.

Although teachers report aggressive behaviour is more often a problem with boys, girls too can be hard to handle. I had a child in year 2. She would swear, she would punch and hit children next to her, kicking off so bad that chairs were being turned over. She was under tables, over tables, completely unpredictable. And sometimes when she was playing it wasn’t what we call ‘nice play’. Can you imagine a child like that being in the class and your child being in there frightened and scared of her?

Smolensk is one of Russia’s most western cities. With high levels of drug and alcohol misuse, violence and unemployment it’s perhaps not surprising that children are bringing issues to school that affect their behaviour.

The head of the educational area cannot alone reinforce good behaviour. But what special here is that the staff has no specific responsibilities for ‘key’ children needing particular help. In practice classroom teachers and schools in general are simply devoted to areas with dining tables where children get the attention they need to overcome the immediate problems and come down. Schools simply cannot afford pastoral care teams, family workers, behavioural support assistant, and the quite room or the ‘bib room’ - an empty space with bare walls and no furniture to throw or climb on for children identified as having special social and emotional needs.

Full school funding approach as well as early intervention funding are difficult politically because of their long term effectiveness. Bureaucrats do not look way beyond the child’s behaviour and they do not seek to address the root courses of moral degradation with the families and with the children. On the contrary, schools are in many cases facing funding crisis as local council authorities look for savings.

Yet there are proving strategies to address these problems. An investment of just few million roubles early on could make a big difference. But in reality what primary schools have is a bit of a post code lottery in terms of the provision that local authorities make available to them and it can be patchy across the country.

So it’s not surprising that some teachers leave the school due to increasingly disruptive pupils, leaving aside the constrains imposed by poverty and social injustice.

Friday 1 December 2017

13 Vyazma Primary School

  

  It’s strange how memories of so long ago seem like only yesterday. Most schools in Russia have numbers, not names. Did any one, like myself, go to 13 Vyazma School in the 70's. I can remember a great number of fellow pupils in the same school year. My mum worked as a dinner lady at the infants for quite a few years. Anyone remember the fish tank in the hallway leading into the assembly hall/gym? I used to get to go back to the school to vote. How small everything looked! 

And then 40 years later everything changed. The government’s agenda for transforming primary education includes three main measures: instituting a ratings system (1); encouraging technological innovation(2) and competition (3). If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because they've played this tune before.

However, as the practice shows test-based teacher-evaluation has so far eluded any empirical justification. The best way to game social indicators, of course, remains cheating. In other words, it’s easier to change numbers than people. This came to be a well-worn chestnut in Russia.

Also of note, data-driven measures can distort school systems in more insidious ways. If the leading indicator for schools is graduation rate, it’s likely some fudging and manipulation will result.

Competition among schools and school districts has led some school leaders to find ways to increase instructional time. In many places this has meant less time for children, even very young children, to have time to just play and take a break from the rigours of the academic world. That said, primary schools today are much different than they were years ago.

Friday 24 November 2017

Language School as a Cult

The Cyril & Methodius Language Gymnasium in Smolensk sometimes produces better-than-av­erage academic results, but it also selects students based on ability, whereas all-in­clusive compre­hensive schools accept poorer students in the first place.

All language schools, have juvenile subcultures. You have skaters, punks, goths, met­tallers, jock and a mix of other cliques in the western tradition. You will never be­lieve me, but it is consid­ered to be normal and to suppress it is unhealthy and impos­sible. I remember sitting in a meeting and someone from Cyril & Methodius would be making Halloween PowerPoint presentation. Cam­eras flashed and teachers ap­plauded ...

Yet few today in Smolensk are aware that this holiday originated in paganism, not Christian­ity, and that it is the most dangerous "holiday" in the year. For long ages, Hal­loween has been a night especially dedicated to satanic agencies. How can it be that teachers of the Orthodox Lan­guage Gymnasium in the name of saints brothers Cyril and Method­ius think that worshiping west­ern cults can brush up your Eng­lish? How can any­one be Christian if they believe in pagan­ism? St John the Apos­tle gives the answer to that (in verses 24-25), “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead”. 

To have language schools where everyone is part of the same cult or group, or are taught a particular western ideology, leads to a complete separation between those who at­tend the language school to those that don't.

When these English speaking people come to mix with others with other views, the ideologi­cal conflicts are very much amplified.

Saturday 4 November 2017

Anyone for England?

Consciously or otherwise, I do remember that there is such thing as Englishness that cut across champion racehorses, fashionable shops, seedy pubs, flirting rather than fighting night-clubs, congenial street corners, leather-clad bikers, Friday dress-down, double-decker buses, maverick royal family members… you name it.
     The more salubrious aspects in the macho field of indoor plumbing England comparing human and primate development include a rather wimpish aversion and a sort of unease to the primitive sanitation and ghastly food that characterise the mud-hut societies of the Eastern European landmass and Russia in particular.
     I am clearly not suggesting that the search for inferiority in the natives’ behaviour becomes almost a reflex or a pathological compulsion of the True Brit. My claim is only that the degree of surprise or outrage provoked by the deviation from English culture provides an indication of premature post-mortems on countries other than Britain. At the same time, I am conscious of the wider danger of blindness to the similarities or cross-cultural universals between the English and other post-Christian cultures.
     Half a century ago England was a Christian country (albeit of the Anglican variety, mostly). It was at one time taken for granted that people were Christians there. Not only that, but it was understood – because it did not have to be stated – that this was a country whose culture, morals and outlook had been formed by the Christian faith.
     This country bent over backwards to be welcoming and tolerant towards those who came here from the 'swingin sixties' onwards who were not Christian, and, indeed, for the most part, Moslem. At the same time, we saw a growth in secularism, materialism, modernism, and the dilution of the Christian foundations of the British society. Only recently has it become apparent that the Christian faith here needs defending, but such has been the progress of those elements in society which oppose it that views which were the norm only thirty or forty years ago are now condemned as rabidly reactionary.
     Good Old England has been rushing along a godless road to destruction for the past fifty years. Britain legalised sodomy, some drugs ('the morning after pill' is among them), pornography, pre-marital sex (Rock N' Roll), murdering unborn children (Latin: abortio), feotal craniotomy (crushing the baby's head with forceps while still alive in the mother's womb). Today Britain is described as brutal and broken even by leading politicians. Most of the towns and cities up and down the country are dealing with the yob culture, with multitudes of young people pouring out of pubs and clubs and vomiting and fighting in the streets, due to excessive binge drinking and supermarkets opening 24/7.
     I hope and pray that mud-hut nations will stand together to tell Britain at the end of the world a few home truths about basic morality and ‘cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease.’ – Isiah 13:11, winning few souls up and down the nation.

     With this new focus, Englishness is often feels rather like you try to admire a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.

Sunday 29 October 2017

The Importance of Learning English

I think secondary education authorities walked into a cult. There crime? They had declared “Wake up the English exam is coming!” pioneering modern methods of psychological torture for the young Russians.
Their aim is to build a new national English speaking identity here in Russia similar to cheap English speaking African or Indian labour under the British Empire. And this is not so very surprising since at every opportunity particularly through the presentation of the notorious Federal State Educations Standard as the only method of school teaching, efforts are made to indoctrinate the spiritual and cultural descendants of Saint Kirill and Methodius into thinking this is the case.
The national education system has been most effectively shaped and moulded to teach children the English language. Ordinary people may have seen this as a noble objective, but the global elite was clear its concern was to fight to hold on to as much as possible of the massive chunk of the global labour market they already owned and controlled by destroying national identities and cultures. Yet, so successfully have ESL teachers been indoctrinated into the mythology of the Federal State Educations Standard that most of them refuse to entertain any alternative possibilities.
Following this approach clear economic and personnel decisions are being made to disregard the explicit use of the Russian language. There is instead informal English which is relaxed and friendly without being restricted by rules – just enough to organise the workforce at their foreign masters’ commands. Technically, it is achieved by bringing to English classes the so-called Communicative Approach – an influential idea dominating 21st –century linguistics in this country and notorious universal educational activities.
On a brighter note, it is possible that most Russians will speak English when travelling abroad in the nearest future. (Fr: Eh bien, chapeau bas à vos compagnes, mais je ne vais pas construire ça!)


Sunday 22 October 2017

Following USE Requirements

For the most part Unified State Exams (USE) in this country are extremely formalised discouraging good pupils, smart ones from language learning. Also of note, ESL language proficiency in Smolensk is significantly affected by schlocky bachelor and master courses.

These are some points that may be discussed later in greater detail.
1. Here in Russia, to know how to fulfil all the requirements of the assessment policy with the bureaux of the parent bodies is of major importance. It seems to be more important than teaching itself. Following this approach, the teacher should not correct identical grammar errors. But, everything must be done to ensure that the address in a letter, for example, should be written on the right side because this requirement was once spelled out in the guidance document.
2. USE experts recruited lack a common understanding of the ways of measuring the pupils oral answers. It is not allowed, for example, for a pupil to describe a given photo by saying something like “I took this picture... / This photo was taken by me...” because such a claim might lead to a factual mistake. Instead a decent pupil should have come up with something neutral like “ The photo in this picture shows ...etc”.
3. Security during the school USE is heightened with metal detector searches, police presence, and ID checks humiliating both teachers and students as though they were thieves or petty criminals.


On a brighter note, the Department of Education is examining ways to further reduce the time taken to mark the examinations and to provide administrative support for the examination process. Okay, ha ha, very funny! But, this is just a rough sketch.


Tuesday 25 July 2017

My Teacher's Guide to Blogging

Blogs are increasingly popular source of information and communication tool for teachers to communicate with staff and students. Said another way, I enjoy reading about blogs. I think you will too. Just read it... "Blog Matters!"

Saturday 1 April 2017

Post-16 Education and the new GCSE Grades

Good news for students but another example of DfE incompetence in the introduction of new GCSEs. https://www.tes.com/news/school-news...5-4-dfe-u-turn

They had the same tweaking the first year GCSE's replaced O-levels. It's kind of inevitable I guess. 

I have taught English as a foreign language in comprehensive schools, Russia, for three years. Here are a few of my thoughts...

Grading in education can be a touching subject. The stringent structure is much more liable to subjectivity of the teacher, which makes it more difficult to directly compare pupil performance.

Schools in Scotland, for instance, are now moving away from the Standard Grade system. The four-point system is one of the most recognised grading scaling in the United States, 0 being the lowest and 4 being the highest possible score. In Russia, pupils are mainly exposed to one system, the five-point system. Although any mark from 5 to 1 is officially accepted, the latter is used less commonly. 

The E-S-N-U System can be found sometimes in lower grades of state secondaries, introducing a more 'playful' approach to younger children, but not much beyond third grade usually.

Don't forget about the eleven-point system with letter grading or even a 12-point grading scale, adding A+ at the top. This is tedious but it does provide an absolute calibration for me, 'cream skimming' the brightest kids when they join year nine or higher.

Please note that marking is best seen as a dialogue between you and the pupil. Grade descriptors or comment-based marking provide you with this dialogue and can help to enthuse them. Even more, comment-based marking helps you to formulate your positive response.

Also of note, English teacher's red-pen response can spoil everything!
 

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