An Inquiry into… Teaching and Turbulence

Flags fly outside my classroom, AISM

Well, many weeks have passed again since the Davis family’s last blog – we’ve probably lost most of our readership by now. Going back to teaching does this to you: when all your creativity is being directed towards tomorrow’s lessons, next week’s lessons and next month’s lessons, it’s hard to send it in any other direction!

So let’s just be practical about this. If you promise not to grow bored, I will simply record, every other week, what has been happening in our lives. If it happens to be exciting, that will be a bonus – if not, you can always stop reading whenever you feel like it. But for now… a quick update on the past month – in true PYP style!

Line of inquiry 1: The Unexpected Joys of Teaching

Going back into the classroom was indeed an unexpected joy. After four years away from full-time teaching (I don’t think we can count Sunday School), I half-expected that I would simply have to confess to the school after a couple of weeks that I just didn’t know how to teach any more and I had changed my mind! Thankfully that didn’t happen.

Of course I can’t write about my actual class here, but suffice to say that it is mainly because of the children that to be teaching again is such a joy. Before I went back, I was remembering only the stresses of planning, recording evidence, marking, meetings, and so on – and of course all those things are still a challenge. However, I had forgotten how continually interesting and amusing children are, in their individual and unique responses to life and to learning, and how quickly you come to love them.

Another joy is working with like-minded colleagues; with professionals from whom I learn something new every day about dedication, commitment, creativity and patience, and these new colleagues are quickly becoming friends.

Line of Inquiry 2: Letting Kids Go

Teaching the PYP (Primary Years Programme) again is also a revelation. After the rigid structures of the British National Curriculum, being back in a flexible Programme of Inquiry is a wonderful thing.

It’s such fun setting the children up in their own investigations and then stepping back and watching where they end up; constructing ever-more-intricate circle designs with compasses just because they love the feeling of describing the perfect circle; bringing in a massive whale vertebra found on the beach to show the class because nobody knew what a vertebra was (well, they do now!); creating ‘Mr Men’ and ‘Little Miss’ characters that perfectly reflect their own personalities – and so on.

I’m still learning the best way to let kids inquire freely whilst ensuring that they still learn all the skills, concepts and knowledge they need – but looking forward to getting there little by little.

Line of Inquiry 3: Dealing with Disruption

Turbulence in Maputo

The first of September was a Red-Letter Day for Mozambique. Rumours had abounded the previous night that the rising prices of bread and fuel would lead to strikes and riots, and text messages had circulated to encourage protest gatherings and demonstrations.

After an hour of school the evacuation bell sounded, over the background noises of gunfire and shouting, the acrid smell of burning rubber, clouds of black smoke hanging over the city like thunderclouds, and what one of my class described as ‘packs’ of local people armed with sticks marching purposefully past the school.

In less than an hour, almost every child had been collected by worried parents, and many later told tales of driving through angry crowds and past burning road-blocks to get home. Living so nearby was a blessing for us, but we were then effectively trapped in our house for three days, hearing occasional gunshots and reading online about the deaths, injuries, arrests and looting going on throughout the city. Will, rattled by the unrest, spent a couple of nights sleeping in our room.

Finally the government did a U-turn, promising to subsidise the price of wheat and therefore keep the price of bread down. I make no claim to understand how this can be a long-term solution, but we continue to hope and pray for stability for the people of Mozambique.

Teaching in Maputo – like teaching in Argentina (where similar rioting and looting took place following the collapse of the economy in 2001) and in Sri Lanka (against a frightening background of bombings, curfews and shootings during JVP terrorist activity in Colombo in 1989) – has so far been challenging!

But what is life without a little turbulence?