Wall of Sound

Thanks to Seb for reminding me about this great website. I think we should make one of these about the existing Thomas Tallis School.

What do you think?

Dream Big

Awesome Book Tour from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

I stumbled across this story today on Tumblr (my favourite, if slightly infuriating, blogging platform). It's pretty self-explanatory but I like what the film has to say about a lot of things: publishing books in the 21st century, dreams and aspirations, the importance of community (even when it's not on your doorstep) and creativity.

Check it out!

Suggestions for the revised Manifesto for Creative Tallis

Hi folks
Thanks for a great meeting this morning. Here are some of the suggestions for the revised manifesto. Comments appreciated:

Everyone's a teacher. Everyone's a learner.

Learn everywhere. Learn your own way.

Cherish knowledge. Pass it on.

Ignite your learning with the spark of imagination.

Activate your network.

Challenged teacher challenge students.

Learning is limitless.

Failure is a learning experience.

Practice Newology and Wonderation.

Remember to bring your imaginations to school.

Be curious. Ask questions. Take risks. Believe in yourself.

Receive. Use. Share. Retrieve.

Nurture your talents, skills and interests.

Get engaged.

Sculpt your learning.

Love what you do.

The New School

Just a quick reminder that the names of the six blocks in the new school are:

innovate
experiment
question
create
explore
imagine

Would this be an interesting framework for our revised manifesto?

Learning to be creative

Sir Ken Robinson has been in town again and this is a compilation of the best bits from his speech to the Learning Without Frontiers audience. He speaks eloquently about the value of the arts, about the problem with the EBacc, about the challenges faced by aging Western populations, about really "getting back to basics" in education and about the central purposes of education.

Several members of staff at Tallis have now taken part in the 500 words challenge that forms part of the Purpose/Ed campaign. A couple of the posts have appeared on this blog. Click here to check out the archive. It's clear from recent debates that there is no consensus about what this purpose is. There has been quite fierce disagreement amongst contributors about what education is for.

Our challenge as a group this year is to re-write the aims of the Manifesto for a Creative Tallis. We have already discussed the need to make the manifesto a little more accessible, a little harder hitting, a little more provocative and a lot more interactive.

We have a meeting on Wednesday morning. I'd like everyone in the group to bring two statements to the meeting. These should:

1. be brief
2. be challenging and/or provocative
3. be memorable
   
4. say how an individual or the whole of Thomas Tallis School could be more creative
5. articulate something you believe and are happy to support

We will try, in the time we have together, to draft about 10 statements for our revised manifesto.

Gargantua

I've just returned from seeing the amazing production of 'Gargantua' at Tallis. It's part of the National Theatre Connections Festival and is being performed both in school and at The Soho Theatre next week. Fingers crossed we get selected to perform at the national Theatre itself! The show demonstrates the amazing talents not only of our young students (nearly everyone in the play is from KS3) but also the collaborative creativity of our staff. The play is fantastically entertaining and has everything from a live band to huge animations in addition to the wonderful performances.

Well done to everyone involved for another groundbreaking event at Tallis.

The Purpose of Education

In some ways, it is easier to start with the reverse; the purpose of education is not about getting the maximum numbers of students past a particular marker, for example, achieving 5 or more A* to C grades including English and Maths. This should be an outcome of an effective education system but not a key driver.

Targets and league tables have become very important in making sure we raise aspirations and I am a supporter of the way in which they have driven the raising attainment agenda but I do believe there is much more to education than this.

I came into education 30 years ago because I have always been intrigued by the way in which we learn. What has kept me in education for so long is the joy which comes with improving the life chances of our young people by supporting them in becoming better learners and overcoming the challenges which this presents. Learning is not a fixed concept. Nor is it something which is delivered and received; it is a collaborative process which is constantly evolving. It is the research and discussions we have around learning that underpins an effective learning environment.

I listen to people like Sir Ken Robinson, Professor Tim Brighouse and many others and am energized by their views which provide the backdrop for debates within my school. I have just read ‘A New Kind of Smart” by Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton; I thoroughly commend this to anyone involved in education.

Who should be involved in these debates? In my opinion, all those involved in the learning process. Most importantly the students themselves; schools which are making the most progress are involving the students in dialogues around learning and curriculum provision.

We need to model what effective learning looks like. This involves using research to provide us with ideas and trying things out which may involve some risk. The most effective learning takes place when we are on the edge of our comfort zone.

There is no doubt that what lies ahead is of concern. I am worried that the governments’ White Paper ‘The Importance of Teaching’ makes scant reference to the word learning. I fully support the view that we want our students to receive a world class education and to achieve the very best they can but the mechanism proposed in the White Paper seems to date back to a bygone era. The most effective way to stimulate and engage students is to provide them with a curriculum which captures their imagination and gives them the skills they will need in later life

So what is the purpose of education? In my opinion, it is to provide our young people with the skills they will need to become confident, independent decision makers who will be able to shape our future. I’m not sure that many would disagree with this. It is the way in which we prepare them for this role that is of utmost importance and that has to involve a collaborative view of learning and a commitment to continuing to research how we make this happen in our schools.

Rob Thomas

Headteacher

Thomas Tallis School

The Purpose of Education

It's a daunting task to write 500 words about the purpose of education. Nevertheless, after several drafts and much pondering, here is my contribution to the debate.

The central purpose of education should be to identify the talents of individual young people (whatever they may be) and nurture them so that they are equipped to continue to develop them throughout their lives. In order to achieve this, educators of all kinds (including those who work outside formal education) should model a love of learning in order to develop the learning capacities of their students.

The many and various forms of intelligence all have an equal right to be nurtured and the formal school curriculum should provide numerous opportunities for everyone to use their talents creatively. Developing a greater capacity to be creative requires knowledge and understanding as well as imagination and resilience. There is no inherent contradiction between everyday learning in the formal school curriculum and creativity. If teaching is not focused on developing students’ abilities to re-shape, re-present and remix their knowledge and understanding, then learning will be superficial and meaningless. Learning is an active process of meaning making, not a passive fact accumulation exercise.

We need new generations of young people who are optimistic, resilient, imaginative, flexible and who believe in their own capacity to go on learning for the rest of their lives. The ability to interrogate knowledge, to question received wisdom and to generate new ideas are the skills most appropriate for this century. We need a rigorous approach to learning that results in greater numbers of young people leaving school and beginning their adult lives with a desire to change themselves and the world for the better. We need teachers who are professional learners. We should be operating in a learning zone that Stuart Kaufmann (and Steven Johnson) might call "the adjacent possible". We ought to give more thought to the criteria by which a school may be judged successful or otherwise. We should make a greater effort to explore the longer-term impact of schooling on young people’s lives. I recently conducted a small survey on Facebook of my ex student contacts, asking them to describe what they felt they had learned in my school. No-one mentioned their examination results. Some remembered quirky incidents in lessons or expressed regret about not having made the most of their opportunities. Most spoke movingly of projects, school journeys, performances, working with visiting artists, inspiring teachers and members of the local community. They wrote about situations where their lives opened out, where they were given a sense of new possibilities or grew in self-confidence. Often, these moments were related to being in situations where they were challenged or required to take a risk. Learning involves a leap of faith and can be truly transformational when teachers and students take that leap together.

As an educator dedicated to promoting the value of the arts, I believe in their transformative effect on people’s lives and subscribe wholeheartedly to Elliot W. Eisner’s views about the role that learning can play in bringing an artistic sensibility to the act of living:

The arts inform as well as stimulate, they challenge as well as satisfy. Their location is not limited to galleries, concert halls and theatres. Their home can be found wherever humans choose to have attentive and vital intercourse with life itself. This is, perhaps, the largest lesson that the arts in education can teach, the lesson that life itself can be led as a work of art. In so doing the maker himself or herself is remade. The remaking, this re-creation is at the heart of the process of education.

Jon Nicholls

www.creativetallis.com

@creativetallis

This article was written for Purpose/ed @purposeducation

Re-creating America

Check out this film about creative learning in Oklahoma:

For much of its history, the word "America" has stood for the brightest ideas, the most resourceful solutions and the most provocative insights. Is this still true today, and if not, what can we do? The film explores the importance of creativity in education by highlighting four schools in Oklahoma and assessing how the state's teachers are attempting to teach and promote creativity: Educare Preschool in Tulsa, OK: serving a low-income, at-risk community; Flower Mound Elementary School in Lawton, OK: integrating the arts into the entire curriculum with the A+ Schools initiative; Odyssey of the Mind, a creative problem-solving competition at Piedmont Middle School; Santa Fe South Charter High School in Oklahoma City: helping students overcome the challenges of poverty and the high drop-out rate in America's urban high schools. The program asks teachers, parents and national experts: what appear to be the most effective ways to promote creativity, while still teaching the three Rs, and even improving test scores?

Billy talks about ePortfolios

Without wishing to embarrass Billy, I thought I'd share Mr Hawes' recent interview with him about the value of creating and maintaining an ePortfolio. Billy has some top tips for anyone who wishes to showcase their work online and reach a real audience. Check it out!

Space to Learn

Whilst out shopping with my family today I also following this fascinating conversation on Twitter initiated by Ian Yorkston (who says men can't multi-task?) It began with a photograph of a plane that is being used by a Nottingham school as a classroom. Bizarrely it cost less to buy and refurbish than a conventional classroom would have taken to build. Imagine climbing into an old aeroplane for your afternoon lesson? Brilliant. Soon, there was news of other innovative classroom spaces with a transport theme - long boats, WW2 gliders and a London bus. I contributed our Pop Up gallery/Classroom 'The Crate' as another example of how schools are experimenting with unusual spaces in which to learn. I was also reminded of a project a while ago where a primary school were asked to imagine that their school had sunk to the bottom of the ocean and that their task was to find ways of returning it safely to dry land. How much more engaging would this amazing project have been if the students had a mini submarine parked in their playground? Another example of this kind of immersive learning activity is the Matching Green 'Nerva' project that was featured in Stephen Heppell's Be Very Afraid showcase. What if those students, as well as communicating online with operatives in Mission Control at the local CLC, could have solved their various problems from the confines of a spacelab in the school carpark?

The Free School idea may prove to be a turning point in our thinking about suitable environments for learning or it may be merely an interesting footnote in the story of educational innovation in the UK. We may yet see schools popping up in old Post Offices, banks and shopping centres. Our new school building will be ready in about 10 months time. We certainly hope that we will have sufficient, highly specified rooms in which to learn and teach. Some of them will look and feel very different to the bog standard spaces we currently use. We will have a TV broadcast room, for example, and an Olympic standard Dojo. These spaces will hopefully be unusual and inspiring places, partly because they will look and feel like professional working environments. We will also have some outside classrooms, embedded in the landscape, that will provide opportunities for classes to work outdoors.

One of the exciting things about the Nottingham aeroplane classroom is the element of surprise that often accompanies great learning. Stepping into the cockpit of the plane or taking a seat in the fuselage would definitely transport me to a different world and possibly help me to remember the lessons I learned there. What additional outdoor, mobile, flexible learning spaces might we still need in our future school?

Ludus in residence at Tallis

A massive thank you to the inspirational Ludus Dance Company for their fantastic residency at Thomas Tallis School this week. It culminated in a performance of their most recent piece entitled “Consequences” and performances by Year 9 and 10 dancers who had devised their own work in collaboration with Ludus.

An audience of parents and friends left the Sports Hall on Friday evening with beaming smiles and you can’t beat that!