Involver
Whilst School Councils UK is being wound up, we’re hosting an archive of all the materials from www.schoolcouncils.org.
It’s at: involver.org.uk/SCUKarchive/www.schoolcouncils.org/
Of course doing these kinds of things without a huge amount of technical knowledge always throws up problems. So I’ve been scouring the internet to find solutions, some are easier to find than others. I’m finding myself halfway between becoming a web-guru and pulling my hair out.
Hi all,
So the pupil voice case studies for Specialist Schools and Academies Trust are going well, and have been the focus this week. My computer died though, which didn’t help progress, and I lost my camera, which means that this blog post will feature no photographs.
Not long before the schools come back, so once they are done, it will be a race to get things up and running!
Anyway, off to Leeds festival this weekend. Can’t wait!
So Asher’s away in Lanzarote in 35 degree heat with the family, and I’m spending Saturday writing up good pupil voice case studies.
It’s all good though, there’s a lot of very good practice out there that other schools could learn from and it’s good to be doing some concrete research on pupil voice that works. Trying to understand why is the next step, what are the ingredients in those schools which have enabled success.
Also been doing some work on the website. Thanks to Tim the Intern for his HTML help = legend.
Two useful sites to flag up – if you’re a Governor, David Sassoon produces a very informative website at http://www.governorsagenda.co.uk/.
Finally, if you’re in East London, there’s a great new project helping to empower young people who are at risk of exclusion through an urban beekeeping social enterprise. Very interesting. Take a look at http://www.thegoldenco-op.com/.
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
Albert Schweizer, French philosopher, physician and winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize (1875 – 1965)
It doesn’t matter who you’re teaching, training or working with, this is true; so we’ve made it central to everything we’re trying to do with involver. We know that if we don’t make participation fun, there’s no way we’ll get everyone involved, so we’re trying to have fun whilst we do it, present ourselves in a light-hearted way and use what we do as an example for school councils and other forms of participation.
With that in mind I’ve been working on little bios of me and Greg today, and it gave me an idea of a fun way to get people to know who their reps are. You can read our quick guide here and download for your own use with these links:
[download id=”63″ format=”3″]
[download id=”64″ format=”3″]
Have Fun Getting to Know Your Reps
Update: I’ve created some templates to hlep you to create your own cards like the ones above: Getting to know your reps game template
As involver develops there’ll be more and more like this, so keep checking back, follow me on Twitter (I’ll always let Twitter know about new free resources), or subscribe by RSS.
I came across these two articles over the weekend thanks to Twitter.
The first is on the TES website and puports to contrast two views on pupil/student voice:
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6020426&navcode=94
On one side is Chris Keates, the head of the NASUWT, on the other is Schools Minister, Vernon Coaker. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually do a very good job of this. Chris Keates puts forward a clear, reasoned argument, but essentially based around the idea that ‘advanced pupil voice can be bad for teachers where it isn’t done well, so it shouldn’t be done at anywhere.’ Vernon Coaker’s counterpoint unfortuately doesn’t address this argument directly at all, it just reads like a Government press release on current policy. I’d love to see someone like Vernon Coaker, an ex-teacher and real advocate for children and young people, address the NASUWT’s arguments head on.
However, the other article I came across put the other side of the arguement very well in an incredibly practical way. It from the blog of a couple of teachers (one which I’ll be following closely from now on) and talks about how getting students’ feedback on their schemes of work is an essential part of improving learning and teaching. They’ve got a great name for it too:
http://www.staffroomproject.com/taketheplunge/2009/08/green-cross-learning-stop-look-and-listen
Although you wouldn’t know it from the websites of the Prime Minister or the Department for Education and Skills, today is International Youth Day. The reason I highlight that those two websites don’t even mention it (I’ve searched), let alone put them on their home pages is that this day was instituted by UN World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth in 1998. It’s a shame that it’s been forgotten about already.
Anyway, the point of these days (if you ever hear about them) is to spur you into action. So what are you doing to help young people today? The 2009 theme is ‘sustainability’:
Sustainability does not only refer to maintaining environmental balance and renewal.Sustainability encapsulates three facets of life: the environment, society and the economy. We live our lives in the overlaps and intersections of these facets, and our actions and attitudes help shape them. Their changing shapes in turn affect the way we are able to live our lives. The negative effects of unsustainable behaviour are not easily contained. As has been proven by the global crises in food, the economy and the environment, the concept of the global village has gone beyond being a useful analogy to being a hard reality, making clear the need toadopt a global sense of social responsibility.
This chimes in very nicely with what we’re trying to do with involver. We’re interested in sustainable participation, and using participation to improve sustainability. We’ve all seen apparently amazing school councils crumble when a great student or teacher who knew how it all worked and was helping steer it left. We want to ensure that schools put structures in place to ensure that things don’t rely on one person, but are established in such a way that everyone shares the load, benefits and the ability to run it.
One small thing you can do to help young people is just tell us your ideas about what support you think involver should be offering to schools, LAs and young people to help them enjoy getting involved. Post a comment below.