The Masterplan (Update 1 - Olympic Special!)

It is nearly two months since I started this blog, the aim being that I wanted to tell the whole story of, and be totally honest about, Laura and my plans to sell up, leave our lives in UK and head overseas in 2013 for travel, adventure and work. I promised myself that I would do an update every two months so here is update 1. 


If you have read any of my posts since November you would know that Laura won The Guardian Travel Photographer 'Been There' contest for 2011, after winning the November competition.  This amazing feat has won her a safari photographic assignment with The Guardian in Kruger National Park, South Africa in September and I'll be going too. Winning the competition is more important than the holiday though and the accolade adds considerable weight to her photographic CV. We hope that Laura will be able to be a freelance photographer while we travel.


As for me, I mentioned the original post that I was looking to do the CELTA (teaching English as a foreign language) course during August 2012 and while this is still a possibility, I'm currently questioning whether I would need this qualification with my teaching and leadership experience in the UK and my teaching qualifications including a masters in Education. I'm warming more to the idea of finding international schools and working in them teaching mainstream subjects. It has also been encouraging to talk to an ex-student of the school I last taught at, Chris, who is currently in Beijing teaching English with limited qualifications by his own admission . He encourages me by calling me a 'qualified mother f*****'.           

There is another reason that I won't be doing the CELTA this August.This week I was officially offered a place in the cast for the opening and closing Olympic ceremonies for London 2012 as a drummer! Understandably, I am very excited at this prospect but it has a greater significance for me in that I wouldn't have been able to commit to doing it if I had still been in full time employment as a teacher. It makes me so pleased that I took the decision to 'reclaim my life' back from the madness that is teaching.


I have been excited about the Olympics coming to London since I first found out we had won the rights to host. I was in France on a school trip and just about to see the famous Bayeaux Tapestry. The French cashier didn't seem too impressed however, I think we beat Paris to host. Having watched every Olympics since 1984 it is quite something to think the main events will be just 35 miles from my house and the mountain biking even closer at just 4 miles. Before applying to take part in the ceremonies I successfully applied for and bought tickets for the athletics and was thrilled to get tickets for the evening of 9th August which will include the men's 200m & 800m finals.

In September 2011 I found out that the Olympic organisers were looking for volunteer performers and particularly drummers. I've played drums for over 20 years so thought this could be an amazing way to be in the stadium on the opening night and also to contribute in a small way. I got an audition date for Saturday November 5th at some studios in East London and headed along. There were 200 people per audition and we did a range of exercises including processional walking and dance routines. 

At the end of the first audition I put my name down as a drummer and later that weekend got the good news that I was being recalled for a second role specific audition on 20th November. I was quite happy to find out that many of my fellow auditionees had never drummed before, I thought this would improve my chances. This time we moved through different studios to do different exercises, drumming by voice, drumming by clapping and finally drumming on a upturned plastic bucket. Throughout I kept my concentration levels high and certainly felt I had done enough by the end of it. I even 'broke line' to shake hands with director Danny Boyle when I saw him at the back of one of the studios. Evidently I had done enough and I can't wait.




With regards to other details of our masterplan like selling our house, we will probably put it on the market in the next couple of months then look to rent another property until we leave the UK. I have started to sell some 'stuff' on ebay with varying degrees of success so boot sales look like our best bet to get rid of many of our items. 


Also in the last two months we have been looking at where we would like to or could work. We have been in talks with the Canadian/Bhutan Education about possibly doing some work there and have already had a positive reply but Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam is also on my radar as both Laura and I know people there, I currently work with someone who lived and worked there and there are some good international schools for me to possibly get a job in. 
Maybe more excitingly is that I have had nearly 3000 page views of this blog and am loving every minute of writing it, particularly writing about travel. In the last two months I have become a 'traveller' again which just shows that travelling is as much a mindset as a physical journey.   


So although not a great deal has moved on with planning, we are slightly further ahead but are both 100% committed to doing it, plus we have a great year in 2012 to look forward to with the Olympics, South Africa and a family holiday in Turkey.        

  
Finally, I feel I have to comment on education and the changes that are taking place under this new government. For those unaware, I resigned from a leadership position in a secondary school in England in 2010 on what I would term 'moral, ethical and personal health' grounds. 


I am actually in despair at what I am witnessing daily in the press as Michael Gove does his best to ruin the education of a generation of children. 


Why?


Gove is obsessed by academia and returning to the days where students learned facts and remembered them for examinations. He believes that this enables young people to succeed more in the world of work. My experience is that many employers say the school leavers look good on paper but when it comes to it they are unable to think laterally or be creative when it comes to solving problems. Time after time I heard this in my post of Director of Community Development. It is amazing that he has not found this out himself, if he had he wouldn't be removing statutory work experience at KS4.
My concern is that a return to a more academic approach is going to further polarise the haves and the have nots in our society. I remember that a couple of years ago the percentage of young people leaving schools without the 'magical' five or more A*-C was 55%. More than half! Other than proving itself to be a complete failure of how success should be measured (and who made up '5 or more' anyway?) it means that thousands of young people leave schools at 16 deemed a failure but more worryingly they feel stupid. I know this because I have taught hundreds of students as a full time teacher and more recently as a consultant and workshop leader. The apathy they demonstrate and we have to deal with as teachers in their most important years is mainly caused by their complete lack of self belief and the fact that for their whole education experience they have been subjected to rigorous academic testing which has frequently told them that they seem not to be academic. 
They aren't aware that there are many different types of intelligence, they have only experienced one and if they are not academic, they feel stupid. Changes to the curriculum and reducing subject choices by students is not going to make this better. We need to personalise the curriculum, allow the academic to flourish in academia, let the artistic be creative and so on. 


I am also greatly worried about Gove's apparent contempt for teachers. In the last month we have heard that they are considering extending school days and reducing holidays and on national TV I understand the argument was something like "well if you love our job, you won't mind doing more of it". It doesn't stop there. Apparently if a child from a difficult background comes into a class having not been to bed all night due to family issues and falls asleep... it's the teachers responsibility. In fact, if any student fails, its the teacher's fault. The shifting of parental and child responsibility for their own education onto the teacher is totally unacceptable. 


Also in the last two weeks we have had 'no notice' inspections introduced from next Autumn and 'satisfactory' being replaced with 'requires improvement'. The no notice inspections can only mean one thing for me, that every lesson will require a typed/written up full lesson plan (the type you only had to do once or twice a year back in the day) for every lesson in the year. While some reading this may even agree, in order to do that, all teachers would have to be on 50% maximum timetables. These unrealistic demands of teachers were one of the factors for me deciding to call it a day. From my perspective, a full written lesson plan was only ever useful for me in my training year and part of my first year of teaching. Once I knew what I was doing, all I needed were my resources and schemes of work to know what to teach. I couldn't have been too bad either, one of my students came in the top ten of the country for a Geography GCSE examination. But she did the work, not me and this is where the whole teacher responsibility issue raises its head again. According to Gove, if the teachers are fully responsible then it is me that should be congratulated. This is of course preposterous! Although I could possibly guess at some of the particular strategies I used with that class, I know that Jenny worked hard for herself and probably listened to me more than other students. I was an important factor but certainly not the most important. It had to be down to her as it is with every student in the country.


I am genuinely worried about the future of education in England and feel so relieved that I got out. 


Finally, I tweeted Sir Ken Robinson on Tuesday asking him what he thought about the British Government taking education back 50 years. His reply?

 "ill advised and tragic"