Like A Candle

A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others.

I don't know what it is about teaching an A2 class. More so than any of the other classes I teach, these students get to me. Perhaps it's the fact that I am their only biology teacher for two years, but even the Year 2 BTECs don't have such a profound effect on me.

This year is taking a lot - my wick is burning very quickly at the moment. I have high achievers who need to do better in their A-level Biology exams than I ever did (I scraped a B, which made my decision to do Natural Sciences (Physical) a stroke of genius), because they have a realistic punt at Oxbridge or medical school. I have some at the opposite end of the spectrum who I feel like I'm hauling up from a D or E to a C using the world's most inefficient pulley. I have some coasting in the middle, who I want to grab by the shoulders, shake and scream "Why won't you work? You could do so well!" And I have my fair share of utterly heartbreaking situations.

They're all under my skin, despite half the class asking me in my first lesson when their other teacher was coming back from maternity leave (honest answer? I hope never, because I don't like sharing). I know if I let every year continue like this, if I come home every Wednesday and Friday and cry my eyes out for what they're going through, then I'll burn out way before I'm too old for them to want to go down the pub with me after their final exam.

On the other hand, I can't make myself put up an emotional barrier to them. Some of them won't talk to their tutor or the counselling service, and I'm fighting a losing battle trying to get some to see their doctors about depression. I'm all they've got. And I can't separate the caring and support from the emotional involvement. I don't know how other teachers do it.

I'm consuming myself trying to light the way for my students. It will be the end of me. But like the candle, it's my sole purpose in life. So I'd better keep burning.

Up The Creek

One of my little darlings managed to transmit a rhinovirus to me this week, so while my immune response takes care of it, and the Golgi apparatus in my nasal epithelia work overtime to produce how much?! mucus, there are some thoughts based on news in the past week or so.


A bastarding rhinovirus, currently making me feel like arse
GCSEs
Paul was affected quite badly by the AQA GCSE English scandal - he looked at the grades his students got, and what they could have got had the grade boundaries not been screwed, and at least two of them could have got a C. No mean feat for a class of students every school in the borough decided it couldn't or wouldn't teach. He's been following it more than I have - I don't teach GCSE, and haven't for over two years. It's all he teaches.

So, having fallen into that dangerous 10pm sofa snooze last night, I was woken by Paul saying "GCSEs are gone". News was carefully passed on to tame right-wing newspapers leaked that Gove would be replacing GCSEs with O-Level style exams in 2015. The Grauniad picked up the story when it could. Some of the chatter on Twitter last night offered further details, that it would be graded 1-6, with 7 being a fail. Paul pointed out that wasn't Gove recreating O-Levels - he's bringing in Scottish Standard Grades. Recreating his own childhood north of the border perhaps?

There will apparently be a consultation. I suggest everyone who has ever been to, has any children at, plans to send any children to, or feels like employing anyone who has ever been to a school in England, Wales and Northern Ireland at some point, submits their responses to this consultation. Too many people are confusing rote learning with rigour, and the two couldn't be further apart.

A-Levels
Every year, I and my students get a good bashing from the media and pretty much everyone not involved in teaching, to say that exams are getting too easy, and that we are sending idiots off to their universities unable to do the basics. The sensible response of universities to any perceived grade inflation would surely be to raise the offer level? After all, when I went to Cambridge I had to get AAA. Earlier generations had to get AAB, and now students are routinely asked for A*AA to get into Natural Sciences at Cambridge. Seems like a logical and rational choice if one feels that an A grade isn't a true representation of a clever and able individual.

So the Torygraph proclaiming that students are accepted onto degree places with E grades simply makes me wonder whose fault it is that universities are getting students unable to cope with the basics of their subject. Some of my students with D and E grades did get into university - however, with my blessing they've mostly gone to do foundation courses that will give them a further chance to get that grounding, and they'll be better graduates at the end of it. Let's face it, when the shitty syllabus from Edexcel waffles on about plant stanols at the expense of the ornithine cycle, there's not a lot I can do to give the students that grounding is there?

Teaching
I love teaching, I do. Being in the lab or classroom is where I feel most alive, and I really enjoy my work when students have those "I get it" moments. By and large, I agree wholeheartedly with this article about being a teacher. I also have no desire to go up into management. Anything taking me away from my students is bad (though I am happy to have a couple of hours remission to coordinate our HND course).

That said, I did object a little to this paragraph:

I'm very fortunate to be teaching English. If I was a geography teacher I might need pupils to have understood Oxbow lakes, if I were a maths teacher I might need them to know about surds but as an English teacher I want them to understand more than using English devices to generate rapport: I get to give them the opportunity to be a better human being.

Now, English teachers get a rather rosy treatment in Hollywood, what with Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, Dead Poets Society and so on. But English teachers absolutely do not have the monopoly on being inspirational teachers, giving students the chance to be "better human beings" or getting their charges climbing on the desk shouting "O Captain! My Captain!" (though my lab technician would be furious if she found footprints on the benches!).

We all think we teach the best subject in the world. Otherwise we wouldn't be teaching it. But with Gove doing everything in his power to utterly destroy the education sector and the lives of the young people passing through it we could do with a little less point-scoring and a little more presenting a united front.

Three Days In

This year, I think all my colleagues share my feeling that we all started on the back foot. There was so much to do before the students began classes that there was very little time for planning. So this week I've been playing catchup.

My timetable is up in the air a bit, but the best case scenario is taking on two HND groups and losing BTEC for the year. That would be nice - nothing but A-level, HND and Access.

I felt rusty starting up on Monday morning. More than previous years it was striking how much easier teaching is when you know your students. And unusually, I didn't see any of my previous students in any of my Monday classes, or at all until this afternoon. It was something of a relief to see the A2 class - I felt back on top of my game. It helps that I have lucked out again with the students in my A2 class. They even met Hypnotoad, and screamed like a bunch of big girls' blouses when he lunged for his food. And we were studying succession, which as you may imagine, is one of my favourite topics to teach.

(Incidentally, since I get a spike at this time of year from A2 students all over the country googling "succession" or "stages of succession" to do their homework, I recommend going to this website instead.)

Other things I am learning - there are many different ways of getting from the staffroom to the print room if you spot a student you really don't want to speak to near the main entrance to the building. Astonishingly, sometimes Level 2 BTEC groups take better to microscope work than AS classes. And no one brings lead pencils, colouring pencils, rulers or calculators to a biology class anymore.

Also, Paul and I have realised that we have pretty much kissed goodbye to our social lives until at least half-term. We're both working 10-12 hour days in the college, plus whatever we do at home. And weekends are back to one full day of planning and one full day to do every single thing that needs sorting round the house - business as usual. Perhaps the only surprise is that it doesn't bother us at all.

Resolve

The students are back. The new bugs have either been inducted or induced (never 100% sure which is the more appropriate past participle), they have been shown the important places on campus (cafeteria, pool tables, smoking area), and they have been dispatched with their timetables. Tomorrow is the freshers' fair, which was compared (perhaps unwisely) by a senior member of staff to Match.com. Just as well we're giving the students condoms then...


I find it easier to set New Year's resolutions in September than in January. It makes more sense when dealing with northern hemisphere academic years. So here are a few things I'll be aiming for in the 2012-2013 academic year, related to teaching.

• I will get my arse in gear and finally apply for Registered Scientist (RSci).
  
• I will get some fish for the lab. They will be resistant to sulphuric acid.
  
• I will ditch the bullet-point slides and draw and write more on the whiteboard.
  
• I will get ALL my A2 students blogging and tweeting.
  
• I will not let my new responsibilities as a curriculum leader make me less effective as a teacher.
  
• I will not eat burgers from the canteen.
  
• I will fill every windowsill in the biology lab with variegated Pelargonium plants.
  
• I will bring evolution into all aspects of the biology I teach, so the evidence is in place when I cover it formally.
  
• I will mainline Hot Lava Java on a daily basis to keep me at the top of my game.
  
• I will continue to be as sarcastic, terrifying, insane and sweary as I always have been (apparently), and fearlessly overprotective of my students...

Retail Therapy

After yesterday, I needed some cheering up, and Jabba needed some food, so we went down to Ashford to TC Reptiles, purveyors of the finest locusts in town.

We'd missed out on the Kempton Park Reptile Expo a couple of weeks ago, as it was the hottest day of the year and we remembered it being oppressively hot and overcrowded the last time we visited. So I was on the lookout for some more creepy-crawlies for the lab. I had been advised that several students, teachers and lab technicians would not come near the lab if I bought a tarantula, so that was out.

Anyway, TC had some Pacman frogs, Ceratophrys ornata. And they're aggressive little bastards. The owner had his favourite, which was permanently furious, and could be lifted up by the food it had just bitten. We got the second most aggressive.


It doesn't have a name yet. I'm saving the honour of naming it for my incoming A2 class. Though Paul has been calling it Hypnotoad in the interim.

I plan to draft in "Hypnotoad" for informal detentions:

Me: "You, misbehaving student, come here and put your finger in the tank."
Frog: *chomp*
Me: "Now you stay here until Hypnotoad lets go."
Student: *whimper*

Significant Interventions

AS Biology ... has failed to make the required improvements in spite of significant interventions.

This was in this week's staff newsletter. A massive slap in the face from a senior member of staff, for every lecturer, administrator, support assistant to see, not to mention the ladies who run the canteen, the caretakers who check I haven't died at my desk late at night, and the lab technicians without whom I'd be lost.

I rarely criticise where I work. I don't want to do that (that way disciplinaries lie). I just want to wail about how hurt I feel about all this where I know I have a sympathetic audience.

I've been teaching for three years. I have been graded good or outstanding in every observation I have had (and I rarely put on a show for my observers because I want to be graded on the lessons I give every day). I took on a second AS group halfway through the year, and battled through the "we liked the other teacher better" criticism until I think, maybe, some of the group actually liked me and my teaching. I undertook a workshop to boost performance. I pleaded with the students who needed it to attend. I spent hours tutoring students after classes. I embedded literacy. I honed their bullshit detectors. I got them reading and citing peer-reviewed journals (and not just Biological Sciences Review and New Scientist).

In the end, this year, weak students just flopped. They failed physics, chemistry, maths, English, sociology, psychology, and so on. No student who failed biology only failed biology - they stuffed up everything. And yet here I am, as the only full-time permanent biology teacher, taking the flak in public across the entire college.

I am ashamed to see the people in other departments who I know. I can't bring myself to look them in the eye knowing that they'll have read that, and that they'll make judgements about me and my competence. Because they don't know that I eat, sleep and breathe this job. They don't know about the evidence-based teaching methods I use, about the high expectations I hold of my students, about the sheer energy I put into making damn sure the students understand the material. All they see is that I was apparently given "significant interventions" but failed to deliver.

It's enough to make me second-guess myself and my ability. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong. Maybe I've been lulled into a false sense of security by a history of good pass rates, excellent observation feedback, my name being passed around as "one to watch". Amazing students have got crappy coursework grades, and I'm scared a re-mark won't show up any errors of marking. Students who had effectively another block of A-level time for one-to-one tuition haven't performed any better than if I'd left them to teach themselves. I've been flipping between raging indignation that such words have been written about my subject, and self-doubt that I'm a mediocre teacher getting by on sarcasm and charisma, putting on a good show but lacking substance.

By Tuesday, when we return after the bank holiday weekend, I'll probably feel better. Maybe I'll play the video my BTECs made for me. Maybe I'll read some of the cards and e-mails I had over the years. Maybe I'll remember all the hugs from students whose lives I have apparently improved beyond measure.

But for now I'm hurting.

Let The Student-Bashing Begin

Tomorrow is A-level results day. I've been here twice before. In 2010 I wrote a letter to my students. In 2011 I whacked out a statistical analysis of exam command words and concluded that my students were dealing with tougher exams than I had to pass.

I nearly came to blows with an industry scientist a couple of months ago when he told me that the students I and my colleagues were "turning out" were utterly incapable of doing anything for themselves. He maintained that the most important thing was for them to know facts, not to be able to apply their knowledge. To which I respectfully say bullshit.

It doesn't stop the traditional right-wing press student-bashing festivities, which coincide with the traditional right-wing press "sexy A-levels fruity girl jumping" photos. Exams are getting easier every year, say the papers. Something must be done, they squawk. So exam boards were asked to "fix" the results, to ensure that the number of top grades was limited. Ofqual have now instructed exam boards to stall the pass rate.

Gove already has a weird idea that true understanding of a subject involves being able to parrot off facts and figures. To paraphrase Einstein, if we measure a fish's ability to climb a tree, it will spend its life thinking it's stupid. When we are teaching deep understanding of a subject, an exam testing whether a student can reel off the resting blood glucose concentration of a healthy adult is no use whatsoever.

For the past two weeks we've watched world records being smashed in the Olympic Games. Rebecca Adlington's bronze medal time for the 400m freestyle was faster than her gold medal time four years earlier.


Men's 100m times have been steadily increasing, as this analysis in the New York Times shows. Many teachers on Twitter have wondered whether this means the 100m dash or the 400m freestyle are getting easier. I wouldn't be so naive as to say that athletics and exams are absolutely comparable, but is it not possible that students are doing a better job of passing the targets that have been set for them? Are students cleverer but the exams aren't keeping up?

One thing is for sure, the people who are being blamed for this are those who are least able to change the system - the students. Telling them on results day that the exams they've studied so hard for are worthless and far too easy serves no purpose but to make them feel wretched.

The newspapers won't listen to me - there'll be claims all over the place that exams are easier than ever. One wonders if they'll ever figure out that if exams get harder they'll have a smaller pool of fruity blonde girls jumping up and down to photograph. My students might listen to me though - so I'll say this to them: fuck what the newspapers say, I know you worked your socks off.

Good luck to students and their teachers tomorrow. Nil illegitimi carborundum.

Summer Homework 6: A Question For Slartibartfast

Imagine you could ask Slartibartfast (look him up!) any question about the Earth. What would you ask him, and why?

This prompt was a bit of a leftfield task for my students. Many of them have never read/listened to/watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I, on the other hand, apparently made my entrance into this world while my father repeatedly read the first chapter of the book out loud, and the radio series was the soundtrack to many long car journeys.

When I got to Cambridge University, it turned out that one of my lecturers, Simon Conway Morris, was rather a big fan of the book too. His lecture notes were peppered with references to 42, "life, the universe and everything", and in particular the character Slartibartfast. Slartibartfast designed planets - he designed Earth, and after the Vogons blew up Earth #1, he was in the process of designing Earth #2. This prompt is a paraphrase of a genuine Part III long essay exam question we sat. Buggered if I can remember what I asked him - it was a decade ago - but this is what I'd ask this time.

When you make a new planet, do you have to start life off from scratch, or can you copy and paste it in from another planet?
I've already mentioned in the previous post my interest in abiogenesis. If life arises independently on each planet, then the conditions must have been optimum for the synthesis of more complex organic molecules on the Earth at the time. If it is possible for organisms or complex organics to be transported through space, then the conditions under which life originated could be very different to those experienced during Earth history. The hypothesis that living organisms had extraterrestrial origins (and we're talking single-celled organisms or even nucleic acids here, not ET phoning home) is called Panspermia - most of my students will only have heard of it in the context of the film "Prometheus" - the film is not a scientific account of this hypothesis...

What made you decide to go for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen as such fundamental elements? Why not silicon, lithium, boron and fluorine?
Life as we know it requires water. All metabolic reactions occur in an aqueous environment, and I should think (though I am not a great biochemist) that such a demand places certain constraints on the molecules involved in these reactions. But I'd be interested to know if this is the only option. I remember the odd "Star Trek" episode involving silicon-based life-forms - no jokes about Katie Price, these were invariably sentient rocks (oh okay then, you can make a joke about Katie Price).

Seriously, what was wrong with dinosaurs? Why did you kill them off and leave their bones in the ground as tantalising glimpses of our prehistory?
Just because, damnit, I think they're awesome. I'd like to understand exactly what was going on environmentally at the end of the Cretaceous, and to be able to see why non-avian dinosaurs and many other taxa were unable to cope with these conditions. Palaeontologists have a jolly good idea about this, but it would be nice to understand what made dinosaurs so successful, and why they could not weather the bolide impact.

526 words

Some Study That I Used To Know

I saw this parody of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know", and I thought of my students.


However, I shall not be berating my students for forgetting all their A-level biology whilst naked. I'm scary enough with all my clothes on.

Steps Through Geological Time

The great curse of being a geologist is never being able to go anywhere near a landscape without wondering (or being asked) about the geology beneath the surface. The great curse of being a teacher is never being able to go anywhere without thinking about whether it could be a learning opportunity.

So Paul rolled his eyes when I pulled off the main road in Derbyshire to head to the National Stone Centre. It was a popular place for my parents to take me on the way to or from Dovedale (which, as it happens, is where we were off to). Now, it's probably about 20 years since I last went there, so I have no idea whether this is a long-standing feature, but I was rather struck by the Geosteps:


From Precambrian at the bottom to Palaeogene at the top, the stones represent half a billion years of British rocks. And of course I'm going to show you (ages are quoted from the literature at the NSC)...

   
Antrim basalt (58-62Ma) and Portland limestone (146Ma)

   
Sherwood sandstone (230-240Ma) and Magnesian limestone (256Ma)

   
Rough Rock gritstone (316Ma) and Bee Low limestone (330Ma)

   
Much Wenlock limestone (425Ma) and Caradoc granodiorite (463Ma)

   
Borrowdale Volcanics green slates (453Ma) and Strinds sandstone (550-560Ma)
The ultimate destination, however, was a more intimate encounter with the rocks, as we headed to Dovedale to climb Thorpe Cloud.


It's a cracking ascent up a Carboniferous reef knoll for a hot summer afternoon. But it was a straightforward hike, and Paul even pretended to give a damn when I stopped to show him some crinoid fossils in a lump of scree.