The start of a new school year brings with it great excitement and just a little sense of panic and chaos. We have new students, new classes, new teachers and new challenges. We spend time getting to know each other and building trust. The first few weeks seem to fly by, and despite our best efforts, we never seem to achieve quite everything we imagined we might. Watch the start of a marathon, and you see a similar scenario as runners jostle position and endeavour to gain an advantage in the first few hundred metres. The start is an explosion of adrenalin and colour as the planning and preparation that has led up to this moment is finally tested. But just like a marathon, the school year is long, and the initial panic of the start is soon forgotten as we enter the second phase between the sprint and the marathon proper.
Now is a great time to focus our attention on the messages we send to our students about the nature of schooling. Hopefully, our students arrive in our classrooms with minds that are open to new learning. They will be excited about the new possibilities that come with new teachers and new classmates. In the opening hours of our year together, we have our best opportunity to establish positive relationships with our students and to connect them with an ideal of learning that will carry them through the year. Our goal is to define with and for our students a grammar of schooling which emphasises the dispositions for learning that truly matter. This concept of a “grammar” of schooling was described by David Tyack and Larry Cuban in “Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform”. The idea is that just as our languages have underlying structures which frame how they are experienced, so too does school. Spend enough time in schools and you learn to understand this grammar and come to know what school is about.
The challenge in these opening days, so full of competing pressures, is to identify and then focus on what matters most. What beliefs would we like our students to form about the nature of schooling? Do we want them to believe that success is achieved through critical and creative thinking? Are grit, determination and a growth mindset beneficial dispositions? Is failure a part of the path to learning and is personal growth nurtured by an openness to feedback? Is learning a consequence of thinking and is understanding more valuable than knowing? If these things matter, how do we ensure all of the messages we send to our students align with these goals? As our students enter our classrooms for the first time this year, will they feel safe, nurtured and be expected to bring their best thinking?
It is easy to think of the messages we send as only those which stem from our deliberate communication. When we speak with our students, we generally send messages which align with our goals. Few of us begin the year by telling our students that they must merely show up, that thinking is not required and that a closed mind will be sufficient for success. We don’t emphasise rote learning and a result on a test is not the singular measure of achievement. The “grammar” of schooling is not shaped by our deliberate communication as much as it is by the other messaging systems which are at play. How do we assess student learning, and what do our assessments value? What does the physical appearance of our rooms say about what we value? Are our classrooms inviting spaces where you would want to spend time or are they dry, sterile places that you pass in and out of quickly? How do we respect and honour student learning? Do we celebrate all attempts at learning or only those that result in a correct response? Unless we are deliberate and attentive to all of the messages we send, we are likely to miss opportunities.
While the start is important and we all like to make a positive first impression the second part of the year is ultimately perhaps the most important. It is in this stage that we set up the patterns and routines that will see us through the rest of the year. It is also a time when we begin to understand our learners more deeply and gain a more complete picture of their needs. This is a process that is worth giving time to. Taking a slower, more relaxed approach ensures we make the right choices and ask the critical questions.
For our students, this is the time when they learn to trust us as the guide they will require for the year ahead. Across the days and weeks at the start of each year, they are told what to expected and what is expected of them. Promises are made, and exciting opportunities for learning are outlined. In the coming weeks, they will judge the reality of their experience. Handled well, the result will be students who feel known and trust that their teachers will meet their learning needs; handled poorly and the damage can be hard to undo.
For students new to a school, the next few weeks may be crucial. The initial celebrity that comes with being new has worn off, and friendship circles are rapidly forming about them. Some will negotiate this with ease, but many will find challenges here. This is the time when our pastoral care programmes earn their keep, and a culture of acceptance and inclusion pays off.
The initial weeks of term are likely to be largely teacher-directed as routines are set in place. With this behind us, we can consider the opportunities to ensure the students own the learning that occurs in our classes. The classroom by now will be showing signs of occupation, and the pretty store-bought posters can give way to items produced by the students. Evidence of the learning process will start to show through, and students should be able to have a say in how their learning spaces are constructed and used. Choice in learning is something discussed previously on this site, and it should extend to the way that students interact with the physical reality of their classroom.
Slowing the pace at this point in the year is essential too. The initial panic at the beginning of the year is often a construct of our fear that we have so much to achieve, and so little time to do it. Compared to the students who have just left us this new group naturally seems to require so much; after all they are a full year behind. The desire to fill that gap is natural but will not benefit our students. Taking a step back and identifying each little step towards our goal for the year is important. This is also the ideal time to remind ourselves that learning should be more about the journey than the destination. Our students might need to be ready for high school or final exams or even University in just twelve months time, but they also need to enjoy where they are now with their learning.
For us as teams of teachers, the start of the year also brings new challenges. We arrive back at school refreshed and renewed. Some of us will be new to the school, others will be in new teams, and some will be renegotiating well-known connections. At the start of the new year, a period of ‘storming; within our teams is typical as relationships are tested and negotiated. Beyond this phase comes a somewhat dangerous period of ‘norming’ where team cohesion appears. This can be a time of calm as much of the stress of the initial weeks is put behind us and the team’s natural rhythm surfaces. The danger is that too much cohesion can lead to ‘group think’ where divergent thinking disappears. Effective teams should be able to shift back and forth between divergent patterns of thinking where new ideas explode into possibility and convergent patterns where the best of those ideas are put into place. All members of our learning community benefit from including opportunities to shake things up with some quality divergence and keep teams fresh.
It might be the start of the term that gains headlines but the coming weeks as we shift into marathon mode are just as vital to success at the end of the year. How we use this time, what we value from our students in these weeks, how we engage them in the process of learning and how we put our philosophies of teaching and learning into practice will set a tone that will carry us through the long weeks to come. This year’s journey has begun; now is the time to settle in and enjoy it.
By Nigel Coutts