In September 2017, I wrote a piece called Individualism.
In the article I mentioned that staff had joined together during INSET time to pass professional comment on what they felt teaching and learning meant to them at St Peter’s and within the wider educational arena.
We as a team accepted four main things:
- A teacher is anyone who affects the environment so that others learn. This does not always have to be an adult.
- Learning is skill acquisition and increased fluency. The impact of this learning involves a permanent change in knowledge or behaviour or skill set.
- Teaching and Learning are the actions necessary to accomplish a goal in education/life.
- Teaching and Learning are linked. Without one there is not the other. The teacher and the learner are therefore also linked.
The staff were then set one simple task:
| Around your Teach word – write what you ‘do’ in your teaching space with the pupils. Around your Learn word – write what you see in your teaching spaces from the pupils. |
They came up with some fantastic responses to my challenge:
In a later Teaching and Learning piece called Everyone Should Keep On Learning, I explained how I was struggling with writing the new Teaching and Learning Policy, even with the staff team’s notes from the INSET session. I noted that the policy was challenging me. I was not able ‘yet’, to put into words everything that we aim to achieve for your children. I surmised that…
‘It is clever teaching that ignites the difference in a pupil’s learning … but it is the pupil’s learning that ignites the clever teaching’.
Back on January 29 2018 I said that I would update you with the new Teaching and Learning Policy as soon as it was complete. I can now present this policy to you:
If I could summarise this long(ish) policy into just one key message for all to access then I would ask you to watch this short video entitled “You Can Learn Anything“.
This was shared with me by our Head of Maths and Yr 6 tutor, Mr Payne – it succinctly summarises our message about learning. We should all know that we can learn anything we choose to. And I want the staff to know they have freedom and choice over the destiny of their teaching too.
What better summary quote than this one from Nelson Mandela:
Lucy Ball, Deputy Head of Teaching & Learning
