So What Can We Teach?

A couple of stories (along with comments from some of the louder and more obnoxious members of the Edublogosphere) have popped up over the past few days. Most relevant to my own teaching is on the subject of SRE lessons, which will now include aspects of respect and intolerance of violence against women. Relevant to Paul is the introduction of an A-level in Creative Writing.

Where these two seemingly divergent subjects meet is in the overwhelming criticism of both SRE and creative writing, namely that teachers are woefully underqualified to teach both of them. Apparently our relationships are train-wrecks by and large, and we shouldn't be giving advice to students on their relationships. And the only people who will be able to teach Creative Writing will be those who have been successful writers in their own right. I'll address this one first.

"Only successful authors can teach Creative Writing effectively"

Fortunately, Paul is a successful writer and editor and would be able to rock that A-level teaching. But do all teachers of creative subjects need to be accomplished in that field? The actual creation is not the majority of the qualification - in Art I spent a lot of time learning ratios, perspective, techniques, history of various movements. In Music (I didn't do any qualifications save for my AB exams) there was a formula for composing music, which I was supposed to demonstrate in my Grade V theory exam. I would imagine in Creative Writing there are similar theories and formulae that can be used to help students write creatively.

But surely this is extended to the supposedly non-creative subjects. Do I need to be a successful biologist in order to teach A-level Biology? I most certainly am not. I'm not even a biologist, though I have a masters in Biosystematics. I'm a geologist and I have one published paper. I don't have a PhD - I failed to do that twice. No, I need a good understanding of the subject matter and an ability to pass that understanding to my students. I can do that without a PhD, long publication record, grant applications and the other characteristics of successful scientists.

"Teachers are the last people who should be advising on relationships. Look at us!"

My marriage is not perfect. Many people close to us know we've had some trials and tribulations. My family's story would be rejected by sitcom writers for being too outrageous and unbelievable. But despite all that (or maybe because?) I still deal one-to-one with a large number of students with boyfriend/girlfriend problems, family issues and so on. I'm now certified to give out condoms to students under our borough's C-Card scheme. In Biology classes I discuss IVF, contraception, STIs, abortion and drug use - sometimes it's even relevant to the specification. Why shouldn't I take the opportunity to discuss relationships with the students too?

There have been some concerns that certain supposedly controversial issues such as homosexuality would be difficult to teach about in SRE if one's religious beliefs state that it's a sin. Well, the same colleagues who would have issues also have serious problems with evolution and an old Earth, but no one has suggested (apart from me) that they shouldn't be teaching Biology... If these colleagues can teach a topic they think is inaccurate and wrong, then they can jolly well teach about the full range of human relationships.

Given a framework, regardless of our experience in the world of relationships, we can raise discussion points. We can ask the right questions. We can get students to reflect on their own relationships and those they see around them. I'm not a role model - I have tattoos, blue hair and am contemplating a nose ring (hey, it's MY midlife crisis, right?). I drink and occasionally smoke. I eat poorly. I still have to teach students about the importance of healthy eating and the dangers of lung cancer. No one has suggested that, because I'm overweight, I shouldn't be teaching students about a balanced diet. So why should private relationship woes prevent a teacher from teaching about positive relationships and respect for each other?

Right. Time for caffeine. I don't usually write before my first cup of the day. It probably shows.

The Many Vices Of Steve

Every biology teaching lab should have a skeleton. The best lab skeletons have names. My skeleton is Steve.


Steve has featured in a number of outgoing class photos, and it is a joy for me each September to see how long it will be before the new students try to make Steve grope his non-existent breasts. Just over a year ago, the Class of 2011 decided to show one of Steve's peccadilloes - in this case, it was bestiality:


He likes Halloween, and was most impressed with his outfit:


And in the absence of a Christmas tree, he gallantly stepped up to be covered in decorations:


Courtesy of the Class of 2012, Steve lost his head and indulged in a bit of fisting:


But on Friday it all got a bit too much for him, and my HND class made him into a NEET:


After many years, two dislocated shoulders, a missing atlas and a pigeon chest, Steve is retiring. He has been replaced by Steve 2, who is taller, better put together, and crucially this time, actually a male skeleton. Steve 1 is coming back to Jurassic Towers, which will be his forever home.

Wordless Wednesday: Land Of My Fathers

Just A Teacher

Occasionally, though I barely interact with anyone on it these days, I see on Facebook a "repost-if-you-agree" status doing the rounds. It approximates to:

JUST A MUM????..... I cant stand it when people say, "You're JUST a mum?" Yes, I am a Mum! That makes me an alarm clock, cook, maid, waitress, teacher, nurse, referee, handyman, security officer, photographer, counselor, chauffeur, event planner, hairdresser, personal assistant, tailor, ATM & I scare away the boogie man. I don't get paid holidays, sick pay or days off. I work through the DAY & NIGHT. I am on call 24/7 for the rest of my life. And that's just with BEING A MUM!! I may not be anything to you but I am everything to someone!! Re-post if you’re a proud mum, that would do ANYTHING on this planet for your children!!!!
And so worth it!

Various things a few days ago got me thinking about all the different roles I have as a teacher (along with a good old " 9-3 job, my arse!" rant). So it seemed like a fun idea to do a similar status...

Just a teacher? I can't stand it when people say "You're just a teacher?" Yes, I am a teacher! That makes me a mentor, professor, scientist, psychologist, counsellor, police officer, judge, examiner, chauffeur, fashion adviser, stand-up comedian, DJ, bodyguard, lawyer, nurse, cash machine, animal trainer, gardener, personal trainer, dietician, sexual health adviser, social secretary, careers adviser, social worker, friend, big sister and, yes, mother. I work during my holidays and never take a sick day. I think about my students day and night. I am on call for those students 24/7 for the rest of my life, and if they need me I will drop everything to go to them. I may not be anything to you, but I am everything to someone. Repost if you're a proud teacher, that would do anything on this planet for your students. They're worth it.

Perhaps I'm just a little tired and emotional...

What Went Well; Even Better If

Ah, the old WWW and EBI. Tools of formative assessment. Praise what was good about the piece of work, and then tell the student how they can improve on the work. Personally, I like to add on TBSDDIA - That Bit Sucked, Don't Do It Again...

It's a chance for me to regroup and gather my thoughts for the next academic year (though I have about ten months of sleep to catch up on, plus a load of Jeremy Kyle to watch). So here's some formative self-assessment of my performance over the 2011-2012 academic year.

What Went Well
I am more confident and knowledgeable with the A-level subject matter in particular. I have made a stimulating environment in my new lab that is conducive to learning. I have raised the aspirations of many of my students, helping them to investigate university courses and careers that they hadn't considered. One of my BTEC girls has got into Liverpool to study Pharmacology. Again, I have students that will turn up to my class when they won't to other lecturers' classes, because they believe it is worth their while. I had the best feedback in the department in terms of the quality of my assessment. I organised a kick-ass National Science and Engineering Week. I got four students to consider Oxbridge, and to go to Caius College for an open day last week.

I tried a tactic of bringing in little bits of evolutionary theory to all the topics we discussed in A-level classes, so that addressing evolution and natural selection at the end of AS didn't come as a surprise, and it worked well - it was the first year I'd had no objections to the topic. I started using social networking for the students, with Twitter and Audioboo, and it was appreciated. The student blogs are looking really good.

Even Better If
I still don't think I teach some topics well at all. I still struggle with the immune system and windows of development in the brain, and my students deserve better, so I should be reading up more in detail on these subjects. I think the coursework for A2 will be better if we revert to fieldwork rather than labwork. I dropped the ball on the Level 2 forensics unit, and must put the same amount of effort into this class as I do into the A-level and Level 3 course - I promised them a trip to the Crown Court and then failed to deliver on this promise. Also, the crime scene needs more blood. I need to improve my understanding of SOLO taxonomy, and roll it out to more classes - using more techniques than just hexagons.

I should be encouraging more of a collaborative effort in teaching where there are two teachers teaching the same unit to different groups. It can get isolating otherwise. I should also be getting more involved with the teachers on Twitter, especially those teaching OCR A-level, or HND Applied Biology, as these will be new courses for me this year.

That Bit Sucked, Don't Do It Again
Laying into one of my more feck-deficient BTEC students, starting with "Are you taking the piss?" and going downhill from there. In front of his classmates. That was the last one of my lessons that he bothered to turn up to. I think there's a causal link there...

Gove And Mullen

Politicians in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere in the world) have an annoying habit of pretending to leak stories to the press, when in actual fact it has been carefully planned and directed to certain media outlets. Late last night the Daily Fail (please don't feel obliged to click on the link - it will only give them advertising revenue) "broke" the exclusive that our favourite Pob look-a-like, Michael Gove, plans to scrap GCSEs by 2016 and replace them with a two-tier system of O-levels and CSEs, like we had before 1988.

I think this is a monumentally bad idea. He is simply pandering to an elitist bunch of old farts who look back on the 1950s and 1960s as a Golden Age of Education. The GCSE system is not perfect by any means - we could always stand to improve on it, and given proper consultation I would be in favour of this move, but going back to a set of qualifications that were deemed unfit for purpose in the 1980s seems a little antediluvian, to say the least. He's also planning to get rid of the National Curriculum (opening the door for all sorts of pseudoscience and creationist bollocks to be taught in the name of science), and to replace the three big exam boards in England with a single one (the least bad idea of the lot, but Gove will not find it easy to destroy three big companies like Edexcel, AQA and OCR).


How many teachers are feeling today...
There have been some quite excellent posts expressing the overwhelming teacher opinion on this all, including the Grauniad, and the FT. The latter has the advantage of data, showing clearly who the most adversely affected will be.

And then there's this article from the Torygraph. According to Peter Mullen (do check out his Wikipedia page - he's one of the worst ambassadors for Christianity I can think of), we are useless, illiterate, ignorant, airport novel-reading, rock gig-attending, anti-elitist, "overpaid, unionised thugs".

How demotivating. For me and for my students. The students are in the middle of exams at the moment - many in the College are part-way through their GCSEs. They've just been told that their exams are meaningless. Paul and I saw a number of tweets this morning from students wondering if they should even bother to go in and sit the rest of their GCSEs. It was very sad to see.

I also saw tweets from other teachers, saying this had reinforced their decisions to leave teaching, or was likely to result in them leaving in the next few years. It will probably reduce the number of people applying to become teachers. Why would they, when a distinctly un-Christian priest who can't keep from breaking the odd Commandment is telling them they're shit?

I am not a shit, useless teacher (though on bad days full of BTEC I sometimes feel that way). I look after my kids, even the kids who are older than me. I teach them to be enthusiastic about biology, to develop their inquisitive skills, to be able to apply their deep subject knowledge to new and interesting situations. I give them a well-tuned bullshit detector and the ability to do Harvard referencing in their sleep. I cuss, I speak sarcastically, I tell dirty jokes. Hell, I've baked them all flapjacks for every single A-level exam, because I know that for some of them it's the only meal they're going to get all day.


Flapjacks, cooked to the recipe I posted yesterday.
So, as pissed off as I am, and as hurt by the words, I know that I, and the vast majority of teachers, do not fit in with Mullen's attack. I do not recognise the people he is criticising. I just wish that this sort of attack didn't demotivate and sadden.

But if Mullen wants to put his money where his mouth is, I'd be more than happy to go head-to-head with him sitting a load of GCSE exams. I'll take on Gove too. I'd like to see these arseholes demonstrate their supposed superiority. And if they decline, well, fuck them.

Flapjacks

I don't think I've ever done a recipe on here, but my students have asked for my flapjack recipe after I inflicted some on them before each A-level exam, so I may as well share the love. This is a mutated form of a recipe I think my mum got from Mrs Beeton's book - I've adapted it for my own needs, and I think it's clear that I'm a biologist rather than a chemist or physicist...

Materials
200g butter/butter spread
200g demerara sugar
500g porridge oats
2 massive tablespoons of golden syrup

Method

1. If you remember, shove the oven on to about 180°C.
   
2. Melt the butter or spread in a saucepan on a hob.
   
3. When liquid, add the sugar and stir until it's all mixed in.
   
4. Add the oats and stir well.
   
5. Add the golden syrup and find someone with half-decent upper body strength to stir it a bit better.
   
6. Grease a baking tray. Actually, sod that, just line it with kitchen foil, because otherwise you'll be chiselling flapjack off the tray.
   
7. Pour the mixture into the tray and spread out with a wooden spoon until it's evenly distributed.
   
8. Put in the oven and watch it intently until the edges look as though they might start to burn in the next minute or so.
   
9. Remove from the oven and cut into pieces before allowing it to cool.

Once you have this basic recipe working, you can experiment. For instance, I did plain flapjacks for the Unit 1 exam, but then put a layer of milk chocolate cake covering over the top of cooled flapjacks for Unit 2. For Unit 4 the request came in for white chocolate and strawberry flapjacks, so I added two packets of dried strawberries to the flapjack mix, then poured white chocolate cake covering over the cooled flapjacks.

I have no idea what to bake for Unit 5.

Gifts

After several years of teaching a class of students, I feel compelled to give them something to remember me by; something they can take with them on their next step. Last year I had a really small A2 class, so I bought them all a copy of Do We Need Pandas?. This year's cohort is nearly twice the size, and it was clear I couldn't stretch to buying books for everyone.

So I've gone with something much more personal, but significantly cheaper. Still, it is most definitely the thought that counts in this case (I nearly made the Chemistry lab technician cry when she saw what I was doing). I've found quotes for each of my students, printed them and framed them:


This is what I've found for each of them.

The student whose devotion to their daughter has been a delight to watch:

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. (Rachel Carson)

The student whose study strategy has been a rather scattergun approach:

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last. (Hugh Walpole)

The student who has suffered through my teaching for two years with barely concealed despair:

No man who worships education has got the best out of education.... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete. (G.K. Chesterton)

The student who just never stops to sniff the roses:

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' (Kurt Vonnegut)

The student who was notably excited upon learning that research was something scientists could do as a career:

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer. (Max Planck)

The student who has dealt with major issues and come out the other side relatively unscathed:

A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

The student who nearly left it too late to ask for help:

No man is an island, entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. (John Donne)

The student who is going to train as a midwife:

You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. (John Updike)

The student who does not, and will not conform to expectations:

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. (e.e. cummings)

The student who desperately wants to change the world:

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. (Marian Wright Edelman)

The student who perseveres and claws back success from the jaws of defeat:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)

The student who never quite lets on how brilliant they are until the last moment:

Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable. (Wendy Wasserstein)

The student who needs to know things get better:

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The student who is a hopeless romantic:

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible. (Ray Bradbury)

The student who has changed paths:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. (Robert Frost)

Each framed quote has been wrapped, and accompanied by a little card bearing the words Myosotis arvensis. Some of these students have been mine since GCSE, and it's a wrench to see them go. That said, if they cock up their exams I'll probably see them next year as they get a place on our HND through Clearing...!

Lab Animals

I've had plants in my biology lab for a couple of years now - the bog-standard variegated Pelargonium, a couple of parrot plants, some cycads too fragile for my garden and a Sarracenia that uses more distilled water than all the week's practicals put together.

But it's clear that all labs need some animal life (in addition to the students), whether it's hamsters, fish or something a bit more exotic. Dave had suggested Mexican blind cave fish, which were a really interesting species. I'd been interested in cichlids, so I could point at them and shout "SYMPATRIC SPECIATION! LOOK!!!" at incredulous A2 students. But tropical fish would have been very high-maintenance - too much for a lab that would be shut down entirely for ten days at Christmas, even if I could have come in to feed and clean the fish during the holidays.

Then, one dismal Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, I went to the Isleworth Spring Fair, to support Paul, who was working on a stall. We had a bit of a wander round on one of his breaks, and saw a tent with a bit of activity going on. As soon as I walked in I saw there were lots of animals there to be handled! I chatted to the owner of the animals - he works for the education department at the Natural History Museum normally, but evidently has a bit of a side project bringing his pets to events for people to learn about. He had a python, corn snake, milk snake, veiled chameleon, bearded dragon and loads of invertebrates.

Including a giant millipede.

Turns out these guys are really low-maintenance and fascinating creatures. It's a bit like being walked on by a toothbrush. They are herbivorous, and detritivores at that, so the freshness of the food is not really an issue. They have a commensal relationship with cleaner mites, and their anatomy is really interesting.


They arrived by courier on Wednesday evening and I brought them straight into the lab. The first one I put in the tank was absolutely enormous, bold as brass and very curious. It investigated the tank thoroughly, then positively inhaled a slice of leek. The second one was grumpy, curled itself up in a ball and sulked for hours. I'm astounded that it didn't cover me in cyanide, it was so pissed off with me. They are both pooing like it's going out of fashion too.

For reasons that will only be clear to my A2 students, the first one has been named Bodman (left in both pictures), and the second one Moisted.


Two of my students have held them so far. One of the BTEC girls asked to hold it and then got scared when its legs started to move. And I made my prospective vet student hold one and told him he'd better get used to them as he might have some as patients.

With my AS students in the middle of exams, and my A2s about to start, and my BTECs starting to wind down and finish their assignments, it's nice to have something still alive in the lab to nurture, sustain and care for. It might make the end of term seem a little less wretched than it usually does.

Hexagonal Learning

The spring term ended today, and unlike the end of the autumn term, where I may have slightly gone down the pub a bit, I came straight home to unwind. And yet, here I am, blogging about an awesome teaching moment today.

For a while I've been playing around with SOLO Taxonomy as an aid to learning. I'm trying it out with my AS Biology workshop, a one-hour class for extra support across both AS groups. They use sheets as devised by Tait Coles to get to grips with the hierarchy and identify targets for themselves. My main aim was to get them beyond multistructural thinking and into relational thinking.

For the final workshop of the term this morning, I decided to try the Hexagons. Some of the students were still struggling to consolidate their learning, so I asked them to pick the topic they were struggling with most. One group managed a little, and were able to put key events of mitosis into a sequence (though I may have pared down some of their text a bit):


Where it really worked, however, was with a small group of my high-fliers. They started off looking at cell membranes:


But it kept growing and growing. Periodically I came over, wrote another key term on a hexagon and threw it in to stretch them. By the end of the lesson it looked like this:


They had linked it through to protein synthesis, protein transport and the cell cycle, and at one point when they linked both CFTR and protein synthesis through to genetics I wondered if I should have got them to stick the hexagons on a ball to make all the links! They were thinking about where to put the hexagons and make the links, and one girl said she hadn't realised all the topics were so interlinked.

The next stage of this is for them to think about the nodes between the hexagons. They're showing relational thinking, but I need to get them to extended abstract if they are going to get the top grades at AS and A2. I should probably have tried to get them onto that today, but they were so enthusiastic that I wanted to let them continue for the full session!

Christmas Presents

It's difficult to escape the topic at this time of year - teachers all over the world must be comparing their Christmas presents from the students. For a couple of years I watched as my colleagues got bottles of wine, chocolate, "best teacher" mugs and even £200 (!). And though I know there is not a vastly well supported correlation between "number of presents" and "quality of teacher", it nagged at me.

This year, however, my students went to town. A2 students bought me spirits - a litre of Baileys and a litre of tequila (they know me very well...). One gave me a necklace she'd asked to be sent over from Kenya. There's a nice little box of Ferrero Rocher too. I took part in my BTEC students' Secret Santa, and received a gorgeous perfume set from one lad who managed to keep his identity secret for about half a millisecond. And then I had this:


This had me in tears in the staffroom. Hand-drawn and painted by one of my AS students. It's hanging up at home now.

As sickly sweet and sacchariney it is, of course the thing I've found most touching has been what has accompanied each present - "thank you for all your help". In a line right out of Hallmark, the knowledge that I have helped these students in some way, through proof-reading personal statements, writing UCAS references, advising on university choices, counselling through personal grief, and spending one-to-one time with them on biology, chemistry and physics work, is the best Christmas present of all.

Though the booze definitely helps.

The Sound Of A-Level Revision

Back in October I announced that I had set up an Audioboo account under the name "BioLecturer" with the intention of producing short podcasts of the specification points for the AS and A2 Edexcel criteria.

I have, after two full days of shouting into my laptop, completed Topic 1, Topic 5 and Topic 2, in that order. So I'm alternating AS and A2 topics. I have Topic 6 to complete, which may not be so great as it's the only one I haven't taught this year (though I did teach it for the previous two years so it should be okay).


So you can listen to my dulcet tones if you're really interested. A number of the teachers on Twitter have already given the links to their students, so I hope that they're already getting some mileage out of them. I'll see my AS students on Tuesday and the A2s on Wednesday, so I'll have a chance to tell them then.

As so often happens, I expect to receive nothing but criticism from the students for missing bits out or not being quick enough uploading, or not getting it done over half-term. I put all my notes up on Moodle, along with copies of the handouts, worked homework answers after they have had feedback, past papers and useful links to extra resources. However, if I'm two days late putting the notes up, I get complaints. Clearly I've spoilt my students...

Three Masters' And A Cert Ed...

In my mission to collect as many degrees as I can, I have added a Professional Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) to the array of qualifications I have. I graduated today at Royal Festival Hall, along with loads of the friends I have made over the past two years. Paul was there to support, hold bags and generally be a rather dashing cheerleader. He also took a few photos of me looking like a right wazzock:


A gin and tonic, a walk across the stage, a handshake and two glasses of prosecco later, and we were standing on the balcony overlooking the Thames.


I went into college this morning all dressed up. Most of the comments from the Year 1 BTEC group were along the lines of "You look really professional Miss" (which rather implies that I don't normally...). However, the Year 2 lot, mostly young men, were a little more appreciative, saying they didn't think they'd be able to concentrate on work, that they wished I'd go graduating a bit more often, and pretending to warm their hands on me (!). Thank goodness they're all adults...

Back to work tomorrow in sensible jeans, t-shirt and flat-heeled boots, to disappoint hormonal boys.

Strike Three! And Being A Versatile Teacher

I'm on strike today as a member of UCU. My husband decided he couldn't walk past his colleagues on the picket line today, and so despite being on a fixed-term contract and therefore not likely to be able to benefit from union membership, he signed up for UNISON. We stood side by side on the picket line this morning outside college, and I think my students were highly amused to see me there. My hope is that they've seen that, having spent the week explaining why I'm striking, I'm not all mouth and no trousers.

I've been plagued by a black dog for a few days. In my previous jobs I'd have found it impossible to do any work, and would have been mindlessly surfing the net. That isn't an option anymore. Everyone's experience is different, and some find teaching makes it worse, but it's been a life-saver for me. I have to walk into that laboratory and teach, and I have to deal with the students, and I have to get them comfortable enough with the topics that they can cope with the exams and advance to university.

Coming out of the funk, I decided I would call the black dog Fenton. Mainly because when Paul and I see it running wild in my mind, we both sit there and cry "Oh Jesus Christ!"...


I got pissed off with the BBC News - in a story on MPs anger as science proposals are 'rejected', there was the following quote:

A survey published by the Wellcome Trust on Tuesday found too many newly qualified science teachers lacked the specialist knowledge they needed to teach the subject effectively.

The research showed that half of trainee science teachers are in fact biologists, who often struggle to pick up chemistry and physics knowledge during their one-year post-graduate teacher training courses.

I've looked at the Wellcome Trust press release, and I fail to see where they say that us biologists struggle with physics and chemistry knowledge. Seems like crap journalism to me.

I'm unimpressed with the accusation levelled at biologists. Mainly because, in my department, I am by far the most versatile of the teachers. Sure, I teach A-Level Biology, and the BTEC Level 3 Physiology, Genetics and Plant Sciences units. But I also have to teach units at level 3 (KS5, sixth form, or 11-12th grade for the colonials) on law, media studies, politics, philosophy and psychology. At level 2 (KS4, 9-10th grade), I regularly teach chemistry and physics. And I do a damn good job.

I've been tutoring AS Chemistry - my inorganic chemistry is a bit rusty, but my organic and physical chemistry is pretty fresh still. I've also started tutoring AS Physics to the same student - one of my biologists who is really struggling. I can't remember much of my quantum physics, and I rather suspect it has changed a bit in the 13 years since I studied it. However, projectiles and viscosity don't change very much, and in the space of two hours I achieved more than a colleague had in six weeks. I'm pretty sure I am just one of a large number of biology teachers who are very happy with chemistry and physics. Maybe there are biologists who shy away from maths. There are certainly physicists who find biology repulsive and respond viscerally to the thought of teaching it - every physics teacher I work with is like that. But I also know physicists who love to teach the other subjects too.


Maybe I'm lucky because I did Natural Sciences. I got to study aspects of all the sciences, and to develop a holistic view of the subject. I've done more chemistry and mathematics than pure biologists. In doing HPS as a second year subject, I learnt about philosophy, and some of the more interesting "How Science Works" bits of the course. The stress v strain and viscosity calculations I did in geophysics are beyond anything the A2 physicists have to do. Yes, at the moment I'm bragging. Because teachers are degraded and reviled at the moment, and now the BBC is trying to say biology teachers in particular are rubbish.

I'm one of many science teachers comfortable teaching any aspect of science. As Taylor Mali says, the miracle is education - I'm just the worker.

Caring For Students

One of the more hurtful comments I see from time to time about women who do not have children is that we are incapable of empathy. It is a ridiculous assumption, but it's bandied about more times than I care to recall. This week has been a physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting reminder of why such assumptions are bollocks.


By the time I start teaching most of my students, they are already 18, so there are rarely any safeguarding issues. Students can therefore come to any member of staff and talk about things in absolute confidence. For many reasons - I'm one of the younger lecturers, I teach biology (making me a target for all health-related questions), and I have a reputation for being available for students out of teaching hours - students confide in me more than any other member of staff, often including their tutors.

So at the moment I'm supporting three students through some major personal difficulties. I've held up the next class at the door letting a student say what they need to say or seek advice. I've extended deadlines or forfeited homeworks altogether. I spent over two hours helping one student get to grips with AS Chemistry, though it's over 13 years since I did it myself.

On the flip side of this, I've had to discipline two A2 students for plagiarism. They say they were so worried about not having any homework to hand in to me that they resorted to copying a friend's. I had to explain to them why I was so much harder on cases of plagiarism than other teachers - that I had been a direct victim of a minor case of it, and that I had seen it cause major problems for friends. I spent an hour with these two, them licking their wounds and accusing me of hating them. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Sometimes truly caring for students means having to tell them off when they do something unacceptable, to impose sanctions on them, and to punish them if needed. Sometimes caring is giving up your free time to help them, or even just sitting there quietly with them while they sit there quietly. Sometimes it's buying Hill & Holman's "Chemistry In Context" and Muncaster's "A Level Physics" so you can fill in the gaps left by your colleagues. Not bad for someone with a barren, nulliparous womb...

The hardest thing is not losing myself. Everything I'm doing at the moment is nurturing, mothering, caring. I look after the students. I look after my garden. I look after Jabba (always able to cheer me up when I'm shattered). Paul thinks that photography might be the thing that allows me to be just me and do something for myself. The macro lens I've asked for as a Christmas present will help.

Some have said I'll worry less the more experienced I become. But I don't really like the thought of worrying less, of caring less. Though I am absolutely exhausted, and find myself lying in bed unable to sleep, thinking about these students, I think I would be a worse teacher if I didn't take such personal responsibility for their well-being.

Boo! Using Audioboo In Teaching

I joined Audioboo a short while ago. Paul has already used it for brief extracts and short stories, and as he's often the leader technology-wise in our household, I saw what he was doing with it and thought about how I could use it in my own role.

Last year, a dyslexic student asked me if there was any resource for A-level biology that he could listen to. I was able to refer him to Examstutor, but I don't know how good the podcasts are (oh if I had time to listen to podcasts!). I wondered if I could use Audioboo to make my own revision bite-size podcasts.

The result was the BioLecturer Audioboo feed. I've only done a few so far - the aim is to get AS Topic 1 sorted before the end of this week, and then move on to A2 Topic 5, then AS Topic 2 and A2 Topic 6.


With the caveat that you can all say "I think you'll find it's a bitmore complicated than that" about everything in the specification, I'd be grateful for feedback, listens, comments - if I've got something wrong or if there's something the students might find interesting associated with the boo, please leave a comment on my profile.

Science Ink: It's Here! (Nearly)

Everyone who knows me knows I have tattoos. I am fortunate enough to not be remotely required to cover the ink when at work (it is one of the things I love about working at the college), and it gets to be a conversation point. I submitted photos of them to Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium. When he asked for high-resolution versions for a book he was writing on science tattoos, I (along with hundreds of others) obliged.

The result of several years' work is "Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed" (link for British customers).


© Carl Zimmer, used with permission (of course!)
There are reviews on Carl's website. The Americans get it released on Tuesday 1st November - in Blighty we have to wait nearly another week.

Which tattoos went in? These two:

   
There are more on the horizon. But of course ink is an expensive investment and requires careful saving. I'm also a firm believer that planning, thinking about design and making sure the design is right for and unique to you is the key to not regretting it. A Darwin doodle - the famous "I think" tree - is one I want (though I am aware there are many evolutionary biologists with the same). I want a gecko - not one of my geckos, but a stylised one, just over my shoulderblade. I'd love one on my hip, or snaking up my side, but perhaps that should wait until I've lost a bit of weight - if nothing else it might be a bit cheaper then...

I could look at tattoos all day - I'm fascinated by them. I'm contemplating asking our library to order a copy of the book too (wouldn't that be awesome?), so if it's good enough for the college library it's good enough for your coffee tables. It'll make a great early Squidmas present.

A Gneiss Photograph

I was flicking through some photographs this evening, and found one of my favourite photos of Paul.


It looks like an old photo, perhaps from the 1960s or 1970s. In fact, it was taken on my SLR with what I later discovered was damaged film. It was our honeymoon in 2006, and when this was taken we had paused on the crest of the Bighorn Mountains on highway 16. He looks like a rock star, rather than a newlywed legal secretary.

Behind him is an outcrop of the Precambrian gneiss for which the Bighorn Mountains are renowned. The Roadside Geology of Wyoming says these are Archaean - once sandstones and shales, metamorphosed and folded.


I couldn't resist taking a proper geology photo, with lens cap for scale, of the folded gneiss. Paul let me off with this bit of geo-geekery, even on our honeymoon. After all, as they say, geologists make the bedrock...

Drawings Of Scientists

I am teaching, for the second year running, the BTEC Level 3 unit "Perceptions of Science". We kick off with what a scientific theory is, and I beat them soundly over the head with Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. We had an interesting chat at the start of the lesson about the CERN neutrinos and what it was that scientists were trying to achieve by releasing the story and data prior to publication (and whether this was going to follow Popper's or Kuhn's ideas about how science works).

Now we've moved on to science and the media, and I'll be showing them various clips and programmes, including Brian Cox's 2010 Huw Wheldon lecture and "Mad and Bad: 60 Years of Science on TV". But I thought I'd start off with the good old Fermilab Drawings of Scientists game.


I got the students into groups to do this, and was delighted with the results. Now, I have had conversations with some rather smug, sanctimonious types (the sort who don't really like talking to anyone who isn't either a scientist or important), who think that there is no merit in this whatsoever. Still, I persevered. And the students noticed that their scientist drawings all contained:

• Glasses/goggles
  
• Wild hair
  
• Beards
  
• Labcoats
  
• Test tubes or other "typical" lab kit

And that's all rather expected. They are, in some ways, choosing avatars of scientists - representatives of entities recognisable as scientists. Whether that is the fault of the old Frankenstein movies, or dodgy Open University shows from the 1970s is perhaps up for debate. We were able to discuss the clothes that scientists actually wear, and that labcoats are really only appropriate for a very small number of scientific disciplines (I like showing them photos of palaeontologists wearing labcoats, overalls, hiking boots, jeans and t-shirts, and even medical scrubs for aspects of their work).

What they didn't pick up on was that all the scientists they had drawn were male. And the girls in the group were in full indignant feminist rant mode, when I also pointed out to them that, for such a diverse group of students, they'd all rather stuck with white scientists. They were horrified. One student asked for his group's poster back so he could shade the skin. I was pleased with the reaction - I simply noted for them that it seemed a shame that, for all that they were achieving in the college, they still had an idea of scientists as not necessarily being people like them.

I think they'll have mulled over this tonight. And while students still have this reaction, then I still see merit in the exercise, whatever certain scientists think.

Stiffen The Sinews, Summon Up The Blood

The wailing and gnashing of teeth has reached deafening levels on Twitter this afternoon, which can only mean one thing - term starts tomorrow. I'm fortunate enough that the full timetable doesn't get going until a week tomorrow. However, from Wednesday we have induction for the new bugs, and presumably the returning students will stroll in at some point if only to ascertain whether they need to get up for 9am next Monday.

After two years of teaching full-time and doing the PGCE part-time, I'm really looking forward to a year of simply teaching. I only have one new class - the science equivalent section of the Access to HE course. Having seemingly had to make everything from scratch two years running, especially at the start of the year when the few classes I had already taught the previous year were yet to begin, it has been a wonderful thing to spend perhaps half an hour putting together my first AS class materials. I've checked the PowerPoint, modified the worksheet, ascertained that the awesome video of a basilisk lizard is still available online, and set some homework.


I do enjoy the first lesson about the properties of water. I have a bit of fun with them with resources from the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division about this incredibly dangerous molecule, which seems to make them less furious when we have to do dipoles...

The mantra for this year is "Do less, teach more". I'm consolidating my teaching and focusing on getting the best out of the students. I'm no longer treading water - I'm actually swimming. I'm not saying "yes" to every extra little thing. My extra bits are investigating how to improve female students' achievement in our science courses, trying to find a case for teaching A-level geology (two of the major FE colleges in the area have closed their A-level science programmes, so we really have only two major competitors now, and we should definitely be aiming to offer as many A-levels in science as they do), and plotting whether we can do the Extended Project Qualification.

Some NQTs have asked for tips, and I put a few of mine on Twitter. Because 140 characters are not enough, here are some more tips that I've picked up:

• Even if you have the best subject knowledge ever, you won't know the answer to every question the students ask. This is especially true at A2, where they start asking degree-level or even PhD-level questions about the topics you cover. I feel pretty confident answering anything about ecology, evolution and the fossil record. I am so screwed the moment they start asking complicated biochemistry questions. It is tempting to give them a bullshit answer, but they see through it. So far better to admit that you don't know, and for you all to work together to find the answer. A superb resource for that is, of course, Ask A Biologist.
  
• Don't blind them with PowerPoints. For my first few classes I just lectured at them, because I'd only ever taught in HE, and university lecture halls with no interaction between students and lecturer were the only way I had ever taught (this is not, in fact, teaching...). I set myself a target - have at least one handout per lesson, and one extra resource online for them to look at through the VLE. That might be a link, a video, or a journal article. It's a start towards having varied resources and that dreaded word - differentiation.
  
• On the subject of journal articles, let the A-level and BTEC Level 3 students have a go at reading them. Journals are a lot more accessible now than they used to be. Any teacher on Twitter can ask for PDFs of a paper (especially if they have the DOI number) using the hashtag #icanhazpdf. It's awesome. You might not always have a response, but it's great to have friends in universities who can help out.
  
• You've probably been advised to get the students blogging, creating wikis, tweeting and all other manner of social media and web use. Although I've seen some fantastic examples of student blogging, this has rather embarrassingly (for the secondary and tertiary sectors) been mostly down to primary schools. Most of my students have found Facebook and porn and stopped there. One former student said "But I don't need anything else!". So don't plan expecting these teenagers to be super-web-savvy. You might actually be the most computer-literate person in the classroom (the students still had to help me with the interactive whiteboard though...).
  
• The first lesson of the term is not going to be that content-heavy. I'll be going over course handbooks, outlines to the course, when exams will be, when coursework is due in, looking at assignments and getting to know the class. My returning A2s are going to need a fairly extensive debrief on their underachievement in the AS exams, with a pep talk and possibly concilatory box of Celebrations. I've championed him before, but I cannot recommend the Teaching Science blog highly enough, and his post on Setting The Scene should be mandatory reading for NQTs.
  
• From an A-level perspective, the absolute best textbook ever is Advanced Biology: Principles and Applications by Clegg & Mackean. If you don't have them in your stationery store, then order yourself a copy at least (and if you have to go anywhere near a physics class, then A Level Physics by Muncaster is essential, incidentally).

I busted my guts last year preparing an entire A-level's worth of resources, test papers and slides from scratch. I'm buggered if I'm going to willingly let another teacher do that. So if you're an NQT biology teacher, find me on Twitter - I'm @morphosaurus - and ask me if I have something you can use. I have a load of PowerPoints saved in my Google Docs account, and the only reason they're not public is because I'm not sure if that constitutes fair use of the images even if they're credited. But I'll happily open up my files to you via e-mail. And I have a load of stuff in a private Dropbox folder too.

Good luck NQTs, and for the rest of us - Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!