Insights into Happenings During a School Year

Ken Jackson, UK

Ken Jackson has worked for most of his life as a teacher and head teacher in Primary education. He has worked in UK, U.S.A., Japan and in the U.A.E. He is now employed as an Educational Consultant in Dubai. His job consists of bringing speakers to the Magrudy Teachers' Centre to conduct seminars for teachers on various aspects of education. E-mail: ken.jackson@magrudy.com

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The boy who hated school
The boy who lied
Two events in my school that made we feel we were doing something right

The boy who hated school

I was a teaching head teacher in a small village school. One the first day of the Autumn term a small wild American boy came to my school. His dad brought him in and the boy looked very uncomfortable indeed. His father was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University from Harvard and he told me that the boy had a very bad attitude to school. I told the father to leave and we would look after his son. I asked three boys to look after him and befriend him. Suddenly one of the boys rushed in to say the boy was kicking the other children. I asked him to come in and talk to me. He was angry. I asked him why he was kicking the children and he answered, ‘ Because I hate school and I hate you too’. He calmed down after this outburst and I asked him to write down all the reasons he hated to school. He worked with a will, the fire bursting out of him. He plonked the finished paper on my table and said, ‘That’s why I hate school, and teachers’. I asked him if he could read them to all the school children so that they would hear why he hated school. He said he was willing. He read very well and his ideas were well and thoughtfully expressed and I realized that here was a very bright child. I asked the children in the school which of them would hate school if our school was the same as the one the boy, Dominic, described. They all said that they would also hate such a school. This result pleased him and he seemed to relax a little.

The other children set to work and I asked Dominic if there was anything he enjoyed, He answered ‘Only Space, space flight, history of flight and stories about flight’. I told him that would be his year’s work. We found many books and materials about Space and he set to work with a will. He made planes, flying machines out of different materials, of different weights, of differing sizes. He creating a launching pad made out of elastic bands as he said that he had to make sure the launching power was constant. He measured angles at which his flying machines took off. He measured the distance they flew. He said he discovered the best angle to obtain maximum distance was 45 degrees.. He studied about Icarus and Daedalus, We made a large balloon like the Montgolfier brothers and launched it. We nearly set fire to a thatched roof adjacent to the school. I would reach school every day and he would set to work. I only had contact with him if he needed something like red paint or some materials. He wrote a paper about the likelihood of there being life elsewhere and worked on methods of sending messages to aliens.. He made pictures of future airships using a multitude of materials. His writings were factual but also poetic as he described the hatching of a little bird that flew in to the sunset. One concern was that he must also study mathematics so I asked him about his maths knowledge and I realized he had a very good mathematical understanding. But he surprised me by saying his dad had spoken to him about something called differential calculus and he declared this is what he wanted to study. So, being close to Cambridge, we asked a lecturer to come and teach Dominic differential calculus. I kept out of the way as I thought Dom might ask me to help him!!!!!!!!!

Three weeks before the end of the year an inspector came into the school and I showed him Dominic’s folder which was full of his writings, paintings, poems, research projects. The inspector asked him about America and what he would do when he returned home. Dom said ‘I am going to learn and learn about Space’.

The inspector asked him if there was any thing he had seen the other doing that had taken his interest. He said I loved the story of Beowulf and that he would one day study the Anglo Saxons. The inspector asked him if he would do a little mini project for him on the Anglo Saxons. Dom was eager. He spent the next two weeks researching his topic. He knew how to use an index and the contents page. He knew how to pick out the main points of the text and write it in his own words.

He illustrated his work. He was fascinated by the runic letters and he asked me for a piece of sugar paper. He folded it in half and on one side he wrote his name in runic letters in charcoal. He folded the paper over and then filled in the name with colourful chalks. He put in two huge eyes and he declared that this was the monster Grendel. He made little Viking boats and, with a hair drier, he blew them about in the swimming pool. Not allowed today because of Health and Safety. He changed the angle of the sails to see what happened.

I stood aside and thought; ‘ This boy is now educated’. He knows how to research, he loves to learn, he possesses all the skills necessary for further learning, he is intellectually curious. What does this say for the National Curriculum

The boy who lied

Several years ago I was a teaching head teacher in a small Primary School in UK. At the beginning of the autumn term a new boy came to into my class and stated, in a loud voice, that he was not good at anything. For the first few days I did not expect him to participate in the work of the class as obviously he hated doing school work. Gradually he became bored and also curious about what the other children were involved in and then I found him suddenly painting a picture. This painting of this picture showed that he had not learned much about colour mixing or drawing. However, I thought that now was the time for me to move in very surreptiously. We talked about painting and I showed the other children’s paintings displayed on the walls. I asked him which pictures he liked and why. He answered quite straightforwardly what he thought about each painting. This led to us talking about how to mix colours to obtain the colours he liked. We practiced colour mixing and I asked him questions like ‘How would you make this paint lighter/darker etc?’, and he obviously was enjoying what he was doing. I suggested he paint a picture using as many different greens as he could produce. He set to work with a will and he came up to me and said ‘I can make millions?’ So I told him to fill the paper with all the greens so that the paper was filled completely. He carried on and an hour later he boldly declared that he had finished and that he had made and used 17 different greens. I had to count them I said I could see 21. He answered ‘I told you I was useless at Maths’ We laughed together. I said, ‘ Look Paul you told me you were not good at anything and then you produce a lovely painting so I think you are teasing me’ He answered heartily ‘I ain’t, honest’ We mounted the painting and I put in the entrance of the school where all could see it. I kept taking people to see it and he came along. I could see the pleasure he had when other people commented on his painting. He then went on to join a boy who was working on some Maths work. I found him joining in. I said ‘ Are you enjoying that? ‘Yea ‘ he said, ‘This is easy.’

He spent the rest of the day doing the maths with his new found friend. I gave him some paper to work on and at the end of the day I asked him how he had done in his Maths work with Tom. ‘OK’ he said. I looked at his paper and he had done some calculations about building a plane made out of cardboard. It was very clever showing me that he had a really good sense of number and could use this knowledge to solve his problems. I looked at his work and then shouted ‘Stand on this table’. I looked severe. I said ‘This boy is a liar. Look at him. He told me he could not do anything and yet look at his beautiful picture and this clever Maths work.” What have you to say for yourself?’ He answered,’ I expect I lied.’ And he laughed convulsively and I never had to persuade him to work again

Two events in my school that made we feel we were doing something right

One day in September one of our pupils came to me and asked if I had noticed the tramp who walked passed our school about lunch time each day. Of course I had as everyone had seen him. He was homeless, dirty, smelly, lonely, hungry and mentally ill.

Katherine said she would like to invited him to school dinner. I went to the police station opposite the school and asked if this man was safe with children. Roger replied that he was safe and I told him we wished to invite him for lunch He said it would be all right.

The next day Katherine, her friend and I went out to bring him in. The girls took him by the arms and brought him in and seated him at a table. They then proceeded to serve him. He ate hungrily and never said a word. He never spoke and he suddenly got up from the table and left.

The next day, Katherine who came from a Christian family asked if she could address the school which she did. Katherine told the children that she had done the best thing she had ever done. She said she had fed Jesus, Jesus the hungry, the homeless, the smelly, the social outcast, the dirty, and Jesus the mentally ill.

The children were enthralled. I told them that if they wanted to do something similar they must ask their parents, the policeman their teachers.

Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology and Language for Primary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.