Hello.
This is the second assignment for the course and I have just finished writing it. It is ready to be posted to Manchester today. The task was to choose a magazine that I am interested in, to review it from the perspective of a submitting writer, and then to write an article for the magazine. I have not included here my synopsis or my article plan, just the article itself.
For interest's sake, the magazine I had in mind for this was New Internationalist, which you can read for yourself at www.newint.org.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
SECRET MEN’S BUSINESS
Eleven year old Alan[1] sits still and quiet in the middle of the classroom while his teacher walks around discussing the similarities and differences between Chanukah and Christmas. Alan is a big boy and often finds it difficult to sit and listen for long periods of time, but today he is motivated to patience because he knows that History is coming up next and History means Mr Dunn and the opportunity to engage in boy stuff. Across the corridor Daniel Dunn is reading over his lesson plan. Today is lesson three of five on the topic of The Lives of Children during The Blitz and he has two specific tasks for his class: one suggested by AQA and the other of his own choosing. This is the first time Mr Dunn has departed from the school’s approved syllabus and although he has the blessing of Mrs Johns, the Assistant Head Teacher who approves all lesson plans in advance, he cannot quite stifle the sense of nervousness.
The issue of educational equality for boys is a new one in the Developed World; historically the question has been one of raising girls’ education to the level of their brothers’, but is the tide turning against young males? It has been observed that school is becoming more “girl-friendly” as the more practical and active tasks of a generation ago are replaced by theory-based, written work: indeed the goal posts seem to have shifted such that a teacher’s goal now seems to be getting the girls to achieve and the boys to behave[2]. But boys today are not just doing worse compared to girls, they are doing worse compared to themselves, to what they might be or become with the right help and motivation.
Tony Sewell is Chief Executive of the initiative Generating Genius and he argues[3] that if boys are encouraged, like their sisters, to help with household chores they can adapt more easily to the routine and methodical nature of such tasks; but is this the entire answer? Certainly the social climate of (Western) Europe and North America has changed to allow for, indeed to expect, men to carry their weight, (and push their iron and cook their supper) around the home, but what of the boys who are still children who become less able than their sisters to deal with the style of schooling in those same geographical places?
Experience has shown that boys like clear instructions; indeed they often need help in making connections and benefit from having tasks broken down into linked, discrete, doable chunks. Girls are better able than boys to cooperatively in a team; boys will attempt to establish a pecking-order in any group task, but is that always a problem?
The bell has rung and Alan waits excitedly while Mr Dunn passes around the instruction booklets. The teacher has allowed each of the children a choice of task today and the divide is not uniform to gender although there is a distinct bias toward each one. Next to the window a group has a pile of items to try out and then write about: the experience of a wartime evacuee in either a letter home or a diary entry for 1941. A gas mask is there, with two 1940s style food tins, a ration book, a woman’s hat of the era, a pair of silk stockings, (not genuine they are rayon and belong to Mrs Dunn), and six photos of the town where the school is located taken in 1943. Of the eighteen children in that group thirteen are girls. Next to the door a group has three Airfix models, one each of a Mark VII Spitfire, a Hawker Hurricane, and a Messerschmitt ME 109. Paints and modelling cement are provided but Mr Dunn alone has charge of the craft knife. Of the eleven children present in this group eight are boys. Alan is in the model-making group and has taken charge of the cement, even though he knows that the painting must come before the cutting and sticking. He is content to wait and to talk about the planes and their uses with Mr Dunn and the group in the knowledge that his turn with the plastic kits will come.
Teachers like Mr Dunn are becoming more common, and not just amongst men. Projects such as Essex County Council’s Mantle of the Expert[4]developed by Dorothy Heathcote indicate that it isn’t only men who are interested in how boys are educated. My own experience of working in a Behaviour Support Centre with an all-female staff (except for me) demonstrated that the necessary qualities of an effective teacher for males can be found in women teachers as well as men, but all agree that it is vital that boys have access to the right type of men while they are at school, men who can act as suitable male role models.
Teachers of boys must be firm, focussed, friendly, and funny; a boy can only learn from teachers he believes like him. (Unfortunately for the boys, and girls, of a Behaviour Support Centre they tend to think nobody likes them, but that is another story.) Boys are competitive, generally more so than girls, but as is shown by young Alan waiting his turn with the cement many boys find comfort in the competition because it establishes place. Boys are role-focussed and place-centred: everyone has his fit in male society and everyone knows his place where the climate is one of up-frontness and easy honesty. For “problem boys”, a spade is always a spade.
The lesson ends with Mr Dunn carefully moving the painted sections of the model kit to the windowsill where they will dry before the next session with this class in two days’ time. Alan has not been able to use the cement today, but he has earned himself a green square (for good behaviour) on his IEP chart and he will be rewarded with five additional minutes of Golden Time on the computer on Friday afternoon. Besides this he has heard about life under Blitz conditions and shared his views on how he would not have liked to have been evacuated to the countryside. His turn as leader will come, but in the meantime Alan has managed forty-seven minutes in his seat and has not raised his volume above Partners Voice. “Mum will be proud of me and dad won’t believe it.”
[1] All names have been changed for anonymity.
[2] Steve Biddulph in Raising Boys (Thorsons, London: 1997) page 133.
[3]Address to NASUWT biennial equalities conference Boys To Men: teaching and learning masculinities in schools and colleges (2006).
[4] http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com
Monday 24 March 2008
Assignment One point Two
Hello.
Here is the second piece from my first assignment. I wrote these in late December, about the time I posted my first entries on Blog Spot: I hope you enjoy them and that you will stick with me to see how my writing develops over the next few assignments.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
Visit...a place that interests you...(300-500 words)
The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban has the longest nave of any Christian church building in Western Europe. This fact meant very little to me until the day I entered the place by the West door for the first time. I was awestruck, I’d seen nothing like it before, and even now when I wander in as a nonchalant local from time to time I am still taken by the size of this one room and its procession of columns and windows, ending in a vast pipe organ and carved stone screen with brightly painted stone statues of saints and martyrs from St Paul to Martin Luther King.
I am Australian, our oldest church buildings date from the 1820s and were built to look old. St Alban’s was built in its current form in 1077, even the “repairs” date back to the fourteenth century, although there is Victorian mock-gothic as well in some places. The place where I do church is a theatre in the West End, we have no statues of The Virgin, or frescoes of the saints, we have photographs of Freddie Mercury and an enormous LED screen. St Alban’s is therefore quite different to what I have known both architecturally, and as a worshipper.
Recently I attended a pilgrims’ service in the abbey: I was passing by at the time and so went in to look. The nave had been emptied of its thousand chairs, and was filled with people. Children ran around the columns, playing chase-and-hide; older people sat on blankets on the stone floor eating picnic, (it was raining outside), tourists with cameras looked at the frescoes while pilgrims sat anywhere they chose, just watching the scene and resting their feet. The service was lead by the sub-dean, who joked his way through the lessons, songs, and sermon; it was all very light-hearted and welcoming for those who had travelled a long distance to be there, and just as much for me who had “popped in” uninvited.
This is a cathedral which feels more than just a place where Normans used to gather to sing, or monks to chant, or Roundheads to pillage. For me, on that one day when I saw it “in action”, it felt like a church, where Christians would celebrate their common faith in God and St Alban, and where travellers on “the road of life”, as well as the A5, were made to feel as if this was home, at least for a short while. This is not my kind of worship, but on that day it was my kind of Church.
Here is the second piece from my first assignment. I wrote these in late December, about the time I posted my first entries on Blog Spot: I hope you enjoy them and that you will stick with me to see how my writing develops over the next few assignments.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
Visit...a place that interests you...(300-500 words)
The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban has the longest nave of any Christian church building in Western Europe. This fact meant very little to me until the day I entered the place by the West door for the first time. I was awestruck, I’d seen nothing like it before, and even now when I wander in as a nonchalant local from time to time I am still taken by the size of this one room and its procession of columns and windows, ending in a vast pipe organ and carved stone screen with brightly painted stone statues of saints and martyrs from St Paul to Martin Luther King.
I am Australian, our oldest church buildings date from the 1820s and were built to look old. St Alban’s was built in its current form in 1077, even the “repairs” date back to the fourteenth century, although there is Victorian mock-gothic as well in some places. The place where I do church is a theatre in the West End, we have no statues of The Virgin, or frescoes of the saints, we have photographs of Freddie Mercury and an enormous LED screen. St Alban’s is therefore quite different to what I have known both architecturally, and as a worshipper.
Recently I attended a pilgrims’ service in the abbey: I was passing by at the time and so went in to look. The nave had been emptied of its thousand chairs, and was filled with people. Children ran around the columns, playing chase-and-hide; older people sat on blankets on the stone floor eating picnic, (it was raining outside), tourists with cameras looked at the frescoes while pilgrims sat anywhere they chose, just watching the scene and resting their feet. The service was lead by the sub-dean, who joked his way through the lessons, songs, and sermon; it was all very light-hearted and welcoming for those who had travelled a long distance to be there, and just as much for me who had “popped in” uninvited.
This is a cathedral which feels more than just a place where Normans used to gather to sing, or monks to chant, or Roundheads to pillage. For me, on that one day when I saw it “in action”, it felt like a church, where Christians would celebrate their common faith in God and St Alban, and where travellers on “the road of life”, as well as the A5, were made to feel as if this was home, at least for a short while. This is not my kind of worship, but on that day it was my kind of Church.
Assignment One point One for my Writing Course
Hello all.
I haven't been in for a while, but I have been busy. I have been studing writing with a crowd in Manchester and so have been working on my assignments. Here is the first one for your reading pleasure: the important people in Manchester liked it.
Tell us in about 300 words why you want to write...
I want to write because I enjoy writing, and always have done. As a child I often made my own little books and newspapers, and I enjoyed English writing tasks at school and university. Now, as an adult, I still enjoy writing letters and stories for friends; but I would like to take this further and make writing part of my career, if not a new career entirely. There are many things I want to write about, both in fiction and non-fiction genres, or perhaps a mix of both. In the past I have been a school teacher, and liked to teach through stories; I would like to write in this way too, perhaps sharing new ideas with people through anecdotes, or even “parables”. I would also like to write stories for others to read simply for pleasure.
My hope from this course is that I will pick up tips on how to write “properly”, to improve my written English, and also to learn the best ways of seeking publication. I want to write better than I do now, and I want to be able to be published so that I can share my ideas with others.
In the future I would like to be a platform teacher/speaker in the church, teaching from my books about the things I have learned in life. Writing is then a means of sharing information with those who would come to hear me speak, or even for those who’d rather just read than listen, (as I usually would). I don’t want to be a vicar or an “evangelist”, but to be a teacher in the broadest sense, and I see writing as the central part of that.
I have set a target to be teaching from my first published book by the time I am forty. I shall turn thirty-six in May.
I haven't been in for a while, but I have been busy. I have been studing writing with a crowd in Manchester and so have been working on my assignments. Here is the first one for your reading pleasure: the important people in Manchester liked it.
Tell us in about 300 words why you want to write...
I want to write because I enjoy writing, and always have done. As a child I often made my own little books and newspapers, and I enjoyed English writing tasks at school and university. Now, as an adult, I still enjoy writing letters and stories for friends; but I would like to take this further and make writing part of my career, if not a new career entirely. There are many things I want to write about, both in fiction and non-fiction genres, or perhaps a mix of both. In the past I have been a school teacher, and liked to teach through stories; I would like to write in this way too, perhaps sharing new ideas with people through anecdotes, or even “parables”. I would also like to write stories for others to read simply for pleasure.
My hope from this course is that I will pick up tips on how to write “properly”, to improve my written English, and also to learn the best ways of seeking publication. I want to write better than I do now, and I want to be able to be published so that I can share my ideas with others.
In the future I would like to be a platform teacher/speaker in the church, teaching from my books about the things I have learned in life. Writing is then a means of sharing information with those who would come to hear me speak, or even for those who’d rather just read than listen, (as I usually would). I don’t want to be a vicar or an “evangelist”, but to be a teacher in the broadest sense, and I see writing as the central part of that.
I have set a target to be teaching from my first published book by the time I am forty. I shall turn thirty-six in May.
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