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Thoughts from the Head

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The Learning Curve
  • Thoughts from the Head
James Wellings

Welcome to the Learning Curve,

 

A fairly short post from me today but it’s on an important topic. Homework! 

Homework or Home Learning is always one of the more controversial discussion points in education. It tends to bring out very strong opinions and a wide spectrum of them! There are those that believe it’s the sign of rigour and academic quality. An essential element of education. There are also those that detest  it. Believing it to be an imposition on the family home and the wellbeing of children. 

As with most things in life the answer will be somewhere in the middle. There is research on home learning that does indicate that it has value. However, not all home learning is equal. As you will see from the guidelines below the evidence for its benefit tends to get stronger as children get older. It’s also the case that certain tasks are much better than others. Short, recall tasks that consolidate learning are often the most effective. Prep or application tasks come a close second. There is very little evidence that extended research tasks or projects add much value (although can, in individual cases, drive passion and interest). 

We are pleased to announce the addition of a new page on our website dedicated to home learning guidelines. This resource, available on the Parent Room, has been meticulously crafted based on thorough consideration and research. Aligned with the school's learning principles, these guidelines strike the ideal balance between home and school life. The link to this valuable resource has been shared exclusively with our current parents. Visit the Parent Room to explore and benefit from these thoughtfully curated guidelines.

Have a lovely weekend everyone. 

James Wellings,
Head of School

The Learning Curve
  • Thoughts from the Head
James Wellings

Welcome to the Learning Curve,

Learners understand the purpose of their learning and what success looks like.
Therefore  we will ensure learning goals and examples of success are explicit and regularly referred to. 

The second of our learning principles that I shared with you last week is about signposting. It’s long been known that we will engage with learning if we understand the purpose of it. In the classroom this means that students can “see the point” of what they're doing. This needs to be explicit and talked about. In addition, having a good model for what success looks like is incredibly helpful. This works for almost all learning. When beginning to practise how to parallel park our cars we have the very clear model of seeing what good (and bad looks) like. This model lets us see success and feel good when we achieve it. Conversely it allows us to ask the right questions when it goes wrong. All of us who have tried to parallel park know that feeling well. The same concept can be applied to almost all learning experiences. 

There are some hidden dangers here too. I’ll share an anecdote that is illustrative. In UK education about 15 years ago it became “en vogue” to make all teachers write their learning objectives up on the board at the start of each lesson. The first task for students was to write these objectives in their books. The intention was very clear. Students write this down and then they know the purpose of the lesson. This was seen as so important that it became part of the school inspection framework used to make judgements on the quality of teaching in the country. In simple terms  teachers had to do it! 

Beware the law of unintended consequences. 

A few years later I was at a school when a colleague of mine told me about an experience they had just had with their Year 8 French group. She invited them into the classroom and they all sat down, got their books out and started to copy the learning objectives from the board into their French writing books. The teacher looked utterly confused as they did so. 

The reason for this confusion was that the learning objectives on the board were from the  Year 11 maths class that had taken place in that classroom in the previous lesson before break. 

The students had just become accustomed to going through this process and it had become utterly meaningless. So our Learning Principle is not about prescribing such procedures but rather challenging teachers to consider how to do this in engaging and interesting ways. One of the big mistakes linked to the example I have provided was that it presumed that this signposting had to be front loaded at the beginning of every lesson. It doesn't. The “reveal” can be very powerful as a surprise or sometimes even at the end of a lesson. The trick is to think carefully about what will have the most impact! 

PTA Voluntary Contribution - Call for Projects 

Hopefully you will have seen the call for projects in the PTA special edition newsletter this week. We have also repeated the information here. This is an exciting opportunity for you or your children to put forward school improvement and development proposals for funding. I urge you to get involved. 


The Journey 

Following the wonderful  “Journey” trips last year we are just finalising the details for 2024. We’ll be communicating these in the next two weeks. 

Uniform 

I am so pleased to see our students in uniform. The campus feels great with them looking smart and part of one community. I’d like to thank all parents for helping make the start of the year successful. 

From Monday the full policy comes into place so it is now very important that your children come to school dressed appropriately. This is about high expectations and consistency. Please see the information on the uniform page on the parent room for the full list of expectations. We really do not want to interrupt your Monday morning next week! 


Have a lovely weekend everyone. 

 

James Wellings,

Head of School

The Learning Curve
  • Thoughts from the Head
James Wellings

Welcome to the Learning Curve,

We held a minute's silence yesterday in memory of Agnes Lassalle, the middle school Spanish teacher who was murdered by a 16 year old student in her own classroom on Wednesday. This is awful news to hear and our thoughts were and are very much with her loved ones and the whole community at College - Lycee Saint-Thomas d’Aquin.

It’s difficult to know how to reflect on these moments. Thankfully they are incredibly rare but, nevertheless, they resonate very strongly with educators around the world who work with 1000’s of young people across the span of their careers. We take it for granted that the classroom is a place of safety, learning and care. Whilst teaching is not an easy profession it should never be a dangerous one and stories like this are tough to square.

ChatGPT

Moving to other matters in the news I have stayed away from ChatGPT comments thus far as I’ve watched the debate, discussion, panic and planning play out in the world of education. In case you have been living under a rock for the last 6 months ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence program that allows users to:

  • Research information in real time and get very personalised results.
  • Create written content at a very high standard whilst also being able to customise it to many parameters. Including being able to write in the style of a famous person, a high school student and even being able to mimic your own style.
  • Do lot’s more impressive stuff.

 

To say that ChatGPT is sending shockwaves through the education sector (and others) is an understatement. The reaction of teachers and professors around the world to these kinds of things is always fascinating to see. Generally, it runs along the lines of “the sky is falling” type thinking. This is because it is seen by those who have been doing something a certain way for a long time as a threat to their position, profession and person.

Actually this is true, but only kind of.

We’ve seen this before with other seismic shifts such as the internet (see Wikipedia circa 2005 for some world class moral panic in the education world) and mobile phones. Online tutors, homework outsourcing websites and I’m fairly sure the videotape was a problem when that first arrived.

It’s fair to say that the impact and scope of ChatGPT could be greater than all of the above given its ability to personalise, mimic and create. So what do we do about that?

With these kinds of things we’ll tend to see three standard responses. Two of which I think are unhelpful!

- Control & Fight - ChatGPT is a scourge on the education system and a threat to us all. Therefore we must do all that we can to keep our system well preserved. Ban it, block it and teach that it is bad.

- Ignore - If we just pretend it’s not there then eventually it will go away.

- Learn, understand & Leverage - Let’s be curious about this. Lets understand the threats but also seek the opportunities.

 

… and the correct answer is?

 

Learn, understand and leverage. I may be wrong but it is very likely that ChatGPT and programs like it are not going away. The AI engine is going to get better and better and will become part of our lives, and the lives of our children in the same way that Google or the iPhone have.

I’m not sure I like this but that does not change the fact that it’s most probably true.

So the first thing to do. Try it for ourselves. Read about it. See what it does and does not do. Learn about it so we can speak and make decisions from a place of confidence.

Then we need to understand its implications. Both for bad and for good. This should be shared with each other and with students. For example, ChatGPT can do a pretty good job of writing an essay for a student. Fact. We can’t change that.

So what can we do?

Let’s think about the assignments we are setting and how we would like them done. Let’s consider wider methods of assessment that don’t solely rely on tasks such as these. Let’s be clear about expectations that for certain tasks ChatGPT is not to be used because the skill development is dependent on a student doing it for themselves. The vast majority of students will understand this and follow these rules.

We can then look at leveraging this tool. It does some amazing things. As part of a history assignment students can use it to interview someone from the past. It can write passages that students can critique. Students can be taught how to ask high level and probing questions through the program (more difficult than you think). Students can fact check information it produces from a known reliable source. Students can use it to gather specific information very quickly. The possibilities are enormous.

“It’s a brave new world” is A phrase that has been used by every successive generation. There is no doubt that ChatGPT can be a threat and will create some challenges. I’d like to think that we can pinpoint the threats, mitigate the challenges and be excited about what it may bring us in new learning and approaches. I think we can be the masters of our own destiny if we think in these terms.

 

Last question. Was my post today written by ChatGPT?

I’ll let you decide.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

 

James Wellings,

Head of School

The Learning Curve
  • Thoughts from the Head
James Wellings

Welcome to the Learning Curve, 

It’s International Day and as I type the sun is shining. Different weather apps are showing different possibilities for this afternoon and I find myself praying to Anẓar, Hyades and Varshini not to bring their rain today (rain gods from Africa, India and Europe, I looked them up). 

The very word inter - national is an interesting one. National and nationalism certainly have negative connotations from both history and the present. They conjure up images of building walls, placing our own above all else and limiting rather than seeking cultural understanding. 

I listened to a talk a number of years ago that argued we should stop using this word and instead consider referring to ourselves as cosmopolitan which comes from the Greek work kosmopolitēs meaning “citizens of the world”. This is a lovely idea. If we see ourselves as citizens of this planet we might do better at looking after it and each other. 

That talk has stayed with me for a long time because I’ve had to wrestle with the ideas within it. I’m being completely genuine about this, I’ve thought about it more than is normal. 

My conclusion - I think we should seek to be citizens of the world. However,  the reality is that we are people of places, cultures and groups that have an identity that is important to the individuals who hold them. In the effort to be cosmopolitan we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, we are much more likely to become true world citizens if we can seek to better understand, celebrate and respect the places and histories of those who are from different places to our own. 

This does not stop us from celebrating our own cultures and backgrounds but should help us to ask questions as to whether there is anything in those backgrounds that might get in the way of better understanding others. Nationalism is often ugly but truly understanding our own cultures and histories can help us better to both celebrate them and to see any barriers they may place between us and cosmopolitanism. 

This is called intercultural competence. It is something that I hope we can all strive for here at our school. It cannot be achieved only between the hours of 8.30am to 4.00pm so today offers us all the opportunity to find out more about another culture, ask questions and have conversations. It should be a fun day with a serious message. As I shared last week, equality and diversity are two areas for exploration in our strategic plan for next year and today is a great way to kick that off. 

At the last count over 100 parents have volunteered to bring this event to life. This is amazing. With teachers and students all heavily involved, this is a wonderful celebration of our international community. Thank you to you all. 

So, with a last wish to Chaac (Mayan rain god, I looked this up too) to keep his downpour for another day, I hope you all have a wonderful day. 

 

Have a lovely weekend everyone. 

James Wellings 

 

The Learning Curve
  • Thoughts from the Head
James Wellings

Welcome to the Learning Curve, 

The next “thoughts from the head” is likely to be one of thanks and well wishes so I thought I’d discuss a few important topics today. The first is attendance.

We have this year introduced a new attendance policy and this will remain a focus for the 22/23 school year. You can access the policy on the Parent Room HERE

Attendance is a key metric when it comes to student progress and achievement. Therefore, it is very important that students are in school. In the policy we clearly set out what will be regarded as authorised and unauthorised absences. Please familiarise yourself with this policy and the attached procedures. It’s important and hopefully useful. 

Looking forward to next year, I would like to highlight some strategic areas for development. There is a danger that this could result in a dissertation so I am going to try and set it out in a “punchy” format. This will be followed up with a more detailed Take the Stairs podcast next week. 

So, next year… 

We want to improve academic tracking and outcome…

So we will be implementing a triangulated approach to data collection and analysis that will allow us to effectively explore aptitudinal (potential), attitudinal and attainment metrics to better highlight progress and wellbeing. 

We want to commence phase two of our reporting plan …

So we will be looking at individual student data (see above) for more personalised targets and tracking. We will also be implementing a new booking system for teacher parent conferences. 

We want to continue to develop and improve the use of technology in the school… 

So we will be implementing further training and support of our 1:1 program and upgrading many classrooms in the secondary school with new “clevertouch” interactive 82 inch screens. This will roll through the next few years to upgrade all classrooms. 

We want to grow the school in a healthy and sustainable way… 

So we will be adding a new Year 2 class with the longer term view to be a two form entry school all the way through. 

We want to improve and modernise the internal parts of the school…

So we are renovating a number of classrooms including two brand new rooms for Year 6. We will also be modernising the reception area and creating a fit for purpose common room for our growing numbers of A-level students. We will be looking at a rolling program of upgrades throughout the school. 

We want to ensure we have a sustainable, staffable and suitable curriculum model…

So we will be adding Global Perspectives to our IGCSE program and Psychology to our A-Level program. These will replace computer science which is very difficult to staff with qualified and experienced teachers. It is not currently a sustainable offering. We are exploring the possibility of augmenting choices with some online options in the future, including computer science. 

We want to leverage being part of the Globeducate Group…

So we will be taking part in many more competitions and events with other schools. Including sports, arts, MUN, environmental programs and much more. 

We want to develop our offering to our youngest children…

So therefore we will be introducing the Launchpad (see podcast below) and extending the outside space for our 3, 4 and 5 year olds. 

We want to ensure our students are members of a community that supports diversity and promotes equality…

So we will be working with experts in this area from the NGO SheCan HeCan to augment our positive education program with genuine and meaningful exploration of these issues. 

We want to be, look and feel like a close community? 

So we will be selling our community wear and ensuring all students are dressed in Mougins “gear” for PE, trips and events. We will also be releasing the full years calendar of school and PTA events in August. 

…. I have a few more but it’s close to a dissertation already! I’ll leave it there. 

Have a lovely weekend everyone. 

James Wellings