Seth Godin, the guru behind “Small is the New Big” and an unlimited number of insightful articles and stories, suggests that we take a good look at what is upstream as well as what is downstream to help us perform better in the stream we are in. I know this sounds like he is a little too deep into the fermented red currants but it actually got me making connections.
As a teacher could I effect what was upstream or downstream to improve my present students’ ability to learn or perform better? Should I poke around in the younger classes they come from or the classes they will go to? With schools constantly battling with good approaches to whole school progress I couldn’t see me getting far with that. Jumping out of the trenches and throwing myself on barbed wire might be easier. Then I thought about ‘home’, the place our students spend 70% of their time. Could our school do something there? Something small but big in terms of the effect it may have in the classroom. I thought about diet. Done to death by Jamie Oliver. Barbed wire flash backs. Then I thought about homework. Hiroshima. I give my 10 minute speech about homework at the beginning of the year at parent teacher evening, I ain’t gonna give up extra time training the good parents (the only ones who ever come to my meetings) in how to manoeuvre through the homework skirmishes and full on face to face homework warfare. Then I thought about the PTA ? (parent teachers association). Every year they raise 4 to 14 thousand dollars for new computers or some other object the school ‘really needs’. What about if they were to spend some of it on the upstream and the downstream. Diet management, counselling skills, behaviour approaches for parents. Parents really helping our parents. Wouldn’t that in turn help our kids and in turn help our classroom learning environments? My boat is certainly in the water on this idea. Anyone got a paddle? Jump in.
By Brian
