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Back to school - 15 years on
An interview with teachers from St Aidan's C of E Comprehensive School, Harrogate
By Clare Richards |
Byron Lewis |
Harrogate's leafy prosperity makes it the kind of place where people settle down and retire gracefully. So it is hardly surprising that all my A-level teachers are still there. When I left school in 1989 my friend's dad was the only person I knew with a 'car phone', but in the 15 years that have elapsed, ICT has swept through society: in work, leisure and increasingly education. I was curious to know how my old teachers had adapted and went back to find out. |
The first teacher I spoke to was Mr Lewis: a fiery Welshman whose passion for teaching biology is matched only by his relentless teasing of students. I remember his lessons as lively discussions followed by exhortations to "copy it out and learn it!". And nothing much has changed: his students produce coursework on computers but he doesn't use them in day-to-day teaching. "We appreciate that children need IT but if it's not in the exam we're wasting time," he says, and his methods are backed up by consistently outstanding exam results. He doesn't envisage great changes in biology teaching unless the syllabus changes to require students to demonstrate the use of ICT.
He sees a useful role for computers in learning but thinks that the interaction between the teacher and the students is crucial: "I think that knowledge is best to be discussed and talked about first and then you can test the understanding using computer software," he says. He also has a great idea, which he would love someone to develop - a CD containing short animations for every part of the syllabus, showing biological processes such as osmosis and DNA replication. The department also wants to develop lessons plans to use with the digital projector, but it will be very time-consuming. "We need somebody to sit with us and help us to construct the material." he says.
I didn't realise it at the time but when he taught me A-level English literature Mr Pickford was not much older than me. He is now 39, a father of three and a published poet but remains a dedicated classroom teacher. As a poet he has particular views about the process of writing: "There's no substitute to having a plain piece of paper and a really soft pencil - the feel of it on the paper is just lovely." But he has embraced technology too and is looking forward to using some new camcorders in media studies.
My prevailing memory of English literature was reading through the set texts in class and discussing them. Is it still as simple as that? "We're still very text-based. I sometimes use Powerpoint and computer exercises that are pre-prepared and I get the class to fill them in," he says. Although he believes that technology is a good motivator, particularly for boys, he expresses reservations about its use in English literature: "Essentially the text is there to be read, understood and appreciated and I don't think that will change much. You can make it into a board game or a presentation but your essential engagement with it has to be as a text for you to comprehend what it's about," he says.
And does he think children have changed in the past 15 years? "They spend a lot of their leisure time playing computer games and therefore they don't read so much. Or rather their literacy skills have changed and they've moved on to different areas. I don't lament it, it's just a change," he says.
My other English teacher, Mr Tillyard, doesn't teach English literature anymore. He has gone up the management ladder and collates all the assessment data using Excel. He still teaches English language A-level though, and uses the 'word of the day' on the Oxford English Dictionary website to discuss in class. He also uses a site maintained by a fellow English teacher called Andrew Moore, which is regarded as a great resource for English lessons. Accessing the internet is "a totally natural part of a lesson" for his students and he cites word processing, Excel and Powerpoint as his three main uses of ICT.
My French teacher, Mr Pugh is also a keen user of ICT and would like to use it more. "The current generation of technology is much more modern languages friendly because it's got sound and video - in the old days you were simply filling in gaps and it was very text-based and dry," he says. "Things like flash cards and overhead projectors are probably going to be confined to the dustbin. It will all be done on on-screen projected visuals," he predicts. "The great thing about good DVDs is that you can change the language of the soundtrack. So you can show a film with French dialogue and French subtitles," he explains.
With A-level classes he often uses the website of TV5, a French international television channel, which has information about current affairs and French-speaking countries around the world. He would like to set up e-mail contact in class time with language exchange partners but this is difficult because of the lack of access to ICT suites. But this will hopefully be a temporary problem as the school is investing heavily in hardware and is also constructing a new ICT building.
All my teachers were unimpressed with their NOF training and would welcome more subject-specific training in ICT. Interestingly, none of them found it threatening to get help from students. But however useful ICT is, they all said that what the students value most is the teacher's skill at planning and managing a lesson and their enthusiasm. "Read this, it's brilliant!" said Mr Pickford as I left. It was a copy of a short story that he was teaching for A-level. I walked out of the gate with a sense of nostalgia for my school days and a renewed respect for my teachers and their ability to adapt - perhaps there is something about being immersed in the culture of learning that keeps you young.
Links
St Aidan's Church of England High School, Harrogate: www.staidans.co.uk
Andrew Moore English Resources: www.universalteacher.org.uk/default.htm
Oxford English Dictionary: dictionary.oed.com/
TV5: www.tv5.org/
February 2004
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