I am not a natural runner. In fact, nothing relatively sporty comes naturally to me. Being married to an ex-footballer turned PE teacher this can be problematic. He likes watching sport, playing sport, and reading sporting autobiographies whereas I like eating chocolate, eating chocolate and eating chocolate. There is no happy medium between his knowledge of football stadium seating capacities and my knowledge of which YouTube tutorial makes the best chocolate brownie in a mug.
In January my husband and I will be running a marathon. Well, he will be running like a gazelle enjoying every moment of the wonderful, life-changing experience of completing a marathon. I will be jogging (slightly faster than my walk-to-the-photocopier-3-minutes-before-the-bell-goes pace), crying and eating Jelly Babies as if they were my last meal. We will both start at the same point on the course, we will both finish at the finish line but our races will be worlds apart.
I am yet to develop the thighs of a Victoria's Secrets model. I am also yet to experience the ease or enjoyment of a "short run" as 6 miles is further than I would walk after a Sunday roast in a country pub, yet alone a distance I would like to run midweek after a day at work. What has surprised me, however, is the parallels this training has to my everyday life in the classroom.
It breaks my heart every time my husband dismisses a half marathon length training run as being rubbish when he clocks in at 1 hour and 35 minutes knowing that I will never be close to finishing a half marathon with any time beginning with a '1' and this has got me thinking how some of my students must feel when being surrounded by peers making better progress at a faster rate than they are. Expectations of students are high in my school, I believe they should be, but what about for those students who will never get a C or even at D at GCSE? How can they see progress and do we celebrate their achievements enough? This notion is particularly prominent as our school looks to life after levels and how this will affect the students who are always slowest, find it the hardest and finish last. How do we sensitively categorise these students and what do we communicate with parents?
I have definitely started looking more carefully at these students. Celebrating small victories and moving away from this idea of "rapid, sustained progress" and realising that not all progress will be fast, nor will knowledge be retained from week to week or even lesson to lesson. Progress is in relation to your starting point not that of the person sitting next to your or the teacher who clicked on the button that generated your target grades.
Now, pass me that deep heat.
In January my husband and I will be running a marathon. Well, he will be running like a gazelle enjoying every moment of the wonderful, life-changing experience of completing a marathon. I will be jogging (slightly faster than my walk-to-the-photocopier-3-minutes-before-the-bell-goes pace), crying and eating Jelly Babies as if they were my last meal. We will both start at the same point on the course, we will both finish at the finish line but our races will be worlds apart.
I am yet to develop the thighs of a Victoria's Secrets model. I am also yet to experience the ease or enjoyment of a "short run" as 6 miles is further than I would walk after a Sunday roast in a country pub, yet alone a distance I would like to run midweek after a day at work. What has surprised me, however, is the parallels this training has to my everyday life in the classroom.
It breaks my heart every time my husband dismisses a half marathon length training run as being rubbish when he clocks in at 1 hour and 35 minutes knowing that I will never be close to finishing a half marathon with any time beginning with a '1' and this has got me thinking how some of my students must feel when being surrounded by peers making better progress at a faster rate than they are. Expectations of students are high in my school, I believe they should be, but what about for those students who will never get a C or even at D at GCSE? How can they see progress and do we celebrate their achievements enough? This notion is particularly prominent as our school looks to life after levels and how this will affect the students who are always slowest, find it the hardest and finish last. How do we sensitively categorise these students and what do we communicate with parents?
I have definitely started looking more carefully at these students. Celebrating small victories and moving away from this idea of "rapid, sustained progress" and realising that not all progress will be fast, nor will knowledge be retained from week to week or even lesson to lesson. Progress is in relation to your starting point not that of the person sitting next to your or the teacher who clicked on the button that generated your target grades.
Now, pass me that deep heat.