Tag: pupil/student/learner voice

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involver blog

School council interview questions

Feet of a student and a teacher in an interview
Photo by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/maiapedro

If you’re a teacher who’s about to be interviewed for a new job by a school council or other group of students it can be daunting to prepare for. Below is a list of questions that school councils we’ve worked with have asked and some general advice.

Questions the school council might ask you

  • What activities should we have in our school and why?
  • How would you make our school better?
  • What would you do if there was a pupil who is angry with his/her friend?
  • How do you help children have fun?
  • What would someone have to do to get sent home?
  • What does bravery mean to you?
  • Why do you like teaching?
  • What did you enjoy most when you were at school?
  • What’s the best lesson you ever taught?
  • If you weren’t a teacher, what would you be doing?
  • Who do you most admire?
  • How would describe your teaching style?
  • What’s your favourite subject (other than the one you teach)?
  • What do you think about homework?

What the school council might be looking for

A teacher who:

  • Is fair (particularly in terms of being even-handed)
  • Runs a classroom in such a way that everyone can learn
  • Is enthusiastic about her/his subject/teaching
  • Likes young people
  • Will challenge them
  • Will challenge bullying
  • Has a sense of humour
  • Is a problem-solver
  • Is an expert
  • Is a professional
  • Is caring
  • Is ‘strict in a polite way’ (i.e. doesn’t scream and shout to create discipline)
  • Is fun (i.e. likes to have fun and help others have fun)
  • Can make learning fun
  • Acts the same with pupils and teachers

General advice for interviews with a school council

  • Talk to the students – If there’s an adult in the room (there should be) remember that she/he is just there to support the students, your interview is with the students, so direct your answers to them.
  • Ask them questions – ‘Does that happen in your school?’; ‘What do you think needs changing?’. This shows that you would listen to them if you came to the school. It’s also a great way for you to find out more about the school. You can even use their answers in your interview with the adult interview panel: ‘When I was talking to your school council, they said that …, which I would try to address by …’
  • Use concrete examples – ‘In my current school …’; ‘When I was at school …, so now I …’
  • Relax – Difficult in an interview, but you’re in front of young people all the time, right? The students might not be as understanding of your tension as adults, never having been in a job interview, but remember these students just offer a recommendation to the full interview panel, they don’t make the decision.
  • Be yourself – The school council will be frustrated if they think you’re trying to spin them a line. They want to respect you and get on with you: none of you will be able to tell if that can happen if you’re not being yourself. If you do get on with them then great, if not, maybe it’s not the school you want to be at anyway.
  • Be honest – This will be respected far more than you making something up on the spot.
  • Take time to think – Just as in any interview, they’re looking for a considered answer, not a quick one. As students they appreciate time to think about their answers: if you show that you understand that and sympathise, they’ll warm to you.

If you want advice on how to set up school council interviews, have a look here: Pupil interview panels – getting it right

What questions have you asked or been asked in interviews with a school council or other students? Do you have any tips for people facing a school council interview panel?

Add them in the comments and I’ll update the list above.

 

Find more great school council resources at the Smart School Councils Community.

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involver blog

Old fashioned discipline is not what rioters needed

A common refrain from those discussing the cause of the riots taking place across England is that if there was more discipline at home, in schools and in society more generally this would not have happened. What most people seem to mean by ‘more discipline’ is ‘harsher punishments‘.

But listen to the rioters explaining their reasons (you can hear some from Manchester here: BBC), they are doing it because they think they will not be caught. How the hell did we get to a position where you can burn down someone’s home and potentially kill them BECAUSE you won’t get caught? That’s the idea that we need to address if we are to stop this happening again:

The reason not to do bad things is because you will be punished.

Changing the punishment for those who do get caught misses the point. We have to get to the position where everyone understands that:

The reason not to do bad things is because it will harm others or yourself.

More discipline/harsher punishment won’t change this, what is needed is greater understanding. Not in a wishy-washy sense of ‘we need to understand the rioters better’, but that we need them to understand the consequences of their actions. The consequence of driving a car in to people, isn’t a life sentence (or even three), because that’s only a consequence if you get caught. The real, inevitable consequence is the despair of families and friends who will never see those three people again.

Schools play a role in engendering this disconnection between cause and effect. You avoid doing bad things at school (breaking the rules) because you will be punished, not because you understand the values behind those rules. Equally, you work hard and do good, not because what you’re doing (acquiring knowledge and skills) has intrinsic value, but for a reward: a sticker, an ‘A’ grade or a promise of a successful career.

We need to ensure that schools are places where young people learn by doing things with real consequences, not just playing at things with often unrelated or arbitrary rewards and sanctions. We need people to understand that community isn’t something that happens around you, it is something you are part of forming. To do this we need to engage the whole school in the running of their school; they need to understand the reason why things work how they do and know how to challenge this constructively.

Some of the calmest and most pleasant schools I’ve been in are the ones with the fewest rules, these often take a form such as:

Respect each other; respect your environment; respect yourself.

What this means is that students and staff have to engage in an ongoing, constructive debate about how respect is shown and earned. This teaches empathy and understanding. Those people not rioting aren’t staying at home because they are scared of the punishment, but because they understand the harm the riots are causing. What’s lacking with the people rioting is empathy not fear of punishment.

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Newsletters Resources

Newsletter 9: Weddings, MPs and Smart School Councils

Hello from involver – newsletter number 9

Sorry there was no newsletter last month but we got a bit distracted by Asher’s wedding. We promise it won’t happen again (at least until Greg gets married).

Resource: Get a politician in to your school
This free resource from the Hansard Society shows you how to get the most out of bringing an MP or Peer in to your school. There are also tips for how to get them there in the first place. Order your copy here:
http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/citizenship_education/archive/2010/10/28/2779.aspx

Resource: Young people’s governance in schools
A new short guide from Participation Works that looks full of useful information for those involved in running schools. You can buy a copy here:
http://www.participationworks.org.uk/resources/how-to-involve-children-and-young-people-in-school-governance

Video: Challenging educational paradigms through student voice
Project REAL is the way in which this school in Australia is trying to reassess the way they teach and learn. These two videos from the students explain how they’re doing it and why they feel it’s important. Really worth a watch:
http://ihsprojectreal.wordpress.com/

Research: Student voice reading list
We met with ARK last week and they wanted us to persuade them that student voice should be central to the school’s they’re setting up in Uganda. We created this list of research on the subject for them. What have we missed?
http://involver.org.uk/2011/07/student-voice-reading-list/

Community: Smart School Councils help each other out
The Smart School Councils Community is a new charity we’re setting up along with students and teachers from 15 founder schools. It will be free for anyone to join and share good practice on how to involve your whole school in student voice. Watch this space:
http://www.smartschoolcouncils.org.uk

Awards: John Bercow awards best school council projects
Body image, anti-vandalism, LGBT sensitivity, classroom pets and Ecostars projects were selected by the Speaker of the House of Commons (and friends) as the winners of the Speaker’s School Council Awards 2011. We had a great time helping out at the ceremony:
http://involver.org.uk/2011/07/a-fun-day-at-the-speakers-school-council-awards/

And now we’re off to help judge Haringey Junior Citizens Debate, which should be great fun,

Greg and Asher

http://twitter.com/doingdemocracy
http://facebook.com/involver.org.uk

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involver blog

Student voice reading list

Bibliography image by sukisuki on FlickrLast week we met with educational charity and academy sponsor, ARK, to talk about student voice and school councils. They’re going to be setting up a number of new schools in Uganda and wanted to know whether and how they should embed student voice in them.

Naturally, we’d love the opportunity to see schools with student voice as part of their founding principles, rather than something (often awkwardly) added later on. So I put together this reading list for them.

This isn’t an exhaustive list and I’m sure there are many important things I’ve missed. What are they? Add links in the comments below.

ARK are especially keen on quantitative data that show a link between increased student voice and improved attainment, do you know of any? Again, add links or references in the comments. Thanks.

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involver blog

School councils and democracy: pick your model carefully

Modelling democracy is an incredibly important role of the school council, but it’s something that’s easy to get wrong. The first thing to think about it what type of democracy you want to model. The simplest answer is to base it on our local or national model. The problem with this is that most people adults feel pretty disconnected from this. Another option schools go for is what some schools might call the ‘effective democracy’ model: there is some voting involved, but staff push certain students who they ‘know would get things done’ into position. This model of democracy has recently been rebelled against in various Arab countries, but is still being used in Zimbabwe.

involver voting+ logo
There's more to democracy than voting. That's what our logo's supposed to represent: a voter's X with a +

I would suggest the type of democracy schools should want to model is one where:

a) People are engaged throughout the year, not just once when they vote.

b) Where representatives are picked they are selected solely by the people they represent.

What I mean by being engaged is that the whole school is involved in:

  • Identifying issues
  • Creating solutions
  • Carrying them out
  • Evaluating them

These aren’t things we expect other people to do for us, just because we elected them at the beginning of the year.

So, here’s what you need to do:

  1. Decide on what type of democracy you want to model – what values are important, not what structures.
  2. Decide on what kind of elections would best achieve this.
  3. Understand that any elections and representatives are just a small part of this.
  4. Get in touch with your local authority’s Democratic Services; they can help you out with ballot boxes, voting booths, etc.
  5. Give people plenty of warning about standing and help them to find out what it would mean to be a representative.
  6. Make sure your elections are open and fair and run in the same way across the school.
  7. Set up and keep up excellent communication between the whole school and the school council.
  8. Make sure everyone has the chance to get involved in problem solving through class councils, action teams, whole school meetings and so on.
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involver blog Resources

Pupil voice, creativity and learning detectives

A couple of great pupil voice resources found their way in to my inbox yesterday (thanks to Google Alerts) that I think are really worth sharing.

The first is from the amazing Wroxham School (@wroxhamschool). It outlines some of the ways Wroxham has been using pupil voice to enhance creativity in their curriculum.
If you haven’t used Prezi before, just click the play button to move from ‘slide’ to ‘slide’:

Whole Education – Creativity and Pupil Voice on Prezi

I really wish there was a way I could remove that last image.

I visited Wroxham School as part of our research for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and they really do do some inspiring stuff.

The next resource is a write-up from a Archbishop Benson CE VA Primary School in Cornwall of how they set up a ‘Learning Detectives’ scheme to give pupils more control of their learning. I really love the way they’ve matched up the animals with different aspects of being a good learner.

[gview file=”http://www.campaign-for-learning.org.uk/cfl/assets/documents/CaseStudies/Archbishop_Benson2%5B1%5D.pdf”]