D. Lambert | Secondary | Science
As I took the dogs for a walk today I saw a kid cycling his bike and he was struggling. He wasn’t struggling for balance, he was struggling to generate power. I could see he was confused, he wanted the bike to go faster and was putting in the extra effort but the bike wasn’t responding. What he didn’t know was that the back tyre was soft. A soft tyre drains the energy inputted into a bike and the bike is less efficient. Due to this fact it is difficult to push the bike, never mind doing wheelies or travelling greater distances. The fancy stuff is extremely difficult to do well, because the wheel struggles to just roll. All this reminds me of the current trends in education.
Is our focus on doing wheelies on the bike without checking the tyre pressure? When the wheelie attempt fails is that the fault of the person or the bike? There is no point doing the tricks if the bike won’t roll. The tricks in education to me are things like once off resources, the drive for technology and highly specific CPD on niche things. Is there any point in using things like these if they are difficult to implement? Technology is great so long as the class behaviour is good enough to use it. Group work is effective so long as you can ensure all members are thinking hard about the content. Any new policy is actually effective if you have the data to prove it. A PowerPoint off Scoilnet is only as good as your explanation. My point is I do not think teachers and schools are focusing on the basics. We are all caught up in this need to work on complicated things (doing wheelies) that ultimately have little effect because we have neglected the systems and environments (tyre pressure) that actually allow the more complicated things (again doing wheelies).
I am not against the idea of doing more complicated things. I am just highlighting how many of things we think are good, are actually dependent on something foundational. If the foundation of our practice is improved, then every practice we do after it is naturally improved. If I do CPD in group work it will affect less than 10% of minutes I teach in a given week. If I do CPD in behaviour management then it affects 100% of my week. Which is a better return? If my classroom management is better will I be likely to increase and improve my use of group work, most likely yeah.
In 2008 Barack Obama was mocked for suggesting that if every vehicle had the correct tyre pressure then emissions would drop. He was right and his advice is where I am ending this blog. It doesn’t matter if you are driving an electric 2 seater, a 3 litre SUV, a monster truck or even a push bike, it won’t work at its best unless has the correct tyre pressure. Fix the basics first and then use that as a strong, solid foundation to then focus on the more complicated stuff.
I once played a game of football against a team not known for being any good, but on this particular day they we proving to be a challenge. Their manager kept shouting at his team saying “KitKat, KitKat, KitKat!” We hadn’t clue what it was, I thought maybe it was someone’s nickname. Turns out he was shouting “kick and catch, kick and catch, kick and catch”. He was always advising his weak team to do the basics. That’s what they did and they did it well. The ball was kicked early and was caught cleanly. I can only imagine the team went from strength to strength. They mastered the basics and moved on from there.