SURE AS EGGS IS EGGS! The Story of a School Visit

Ah well, Bank Holiday Monday’s over and done. My head and notebook are still full of everything I saw when I was visiting London last week. But that’s for another post..

Instead because the Big Back to School Week is almost here, I’m looking at diaries. So this post seems a good space to mention the good eggs.  

Eggs?

Yes, eggs!  Read on!

 I rarely write in detail about any schools I've visited as an author - for a mix of reasons - but I've decided I must use this resurrected blog to tell you about the good egg school, and how very pleased and hopeful that author visit made me! 

For a start, the school buzzed with busy, happy learning. It was a village school, tucked deep within the Yorkshire Moors. Sounds idyllic?  Yes, but rural schools can have their own particular problems. Village school children often return to isolated homes, where they spend long hours on video-games or in front of the tv or computer. A child’s only company may be their siblings. Busy working parents may not have time, travel-time or money for the range of outings possible in cities. Additionally, rural children may grow up meeting very few people outside their own small and remote community, yet that is unlikely to be where their twenty-first century life will lead them, or even their secondary school years.

Yet, because this particular school recognised the need for enrichment, for widening the children’s interests and experiences, they involved the children in music, art and craft. They brought in all sorts of speakers and activities. This school staff chose to give their children the real experiences – not just “interactive white-board experiences” - of the wider world. 

Each year, the children were taken to the theatre in the nearest seaside town and the oldest children went down to London by train for an overnight stay. The staff saw such outings as a way of developing the children’s future independence and knowledge.

During the school day, as I was rather busy, I didn't have much time for idle observation. However, I did see something I haven’t seen for years: school pets! Happy school pets. Those three guinea pigs were the most charming, socialised and well-cared-for pets I’ve ever met, totally comfortable in the children’s arms.. I think I heard rumours of giant snails elsewhere, but I didn’t go searching . . .

Now for the main thing! What I really want to mention was their whole-school initiative., known as "Forest School.” You can find out about it, in general, here at the The Forest School Association

Each term, every school year group makes visits to a designated wooded area nearby, and follows a seasonal programme. This was not just a lazy walk in the woods. During their primary years the children would be involved with such activities as:

Story-making

Constructing “fairy houses”.

Identifying natural materials

Story boarding using natural materials

Using natural materials to make art.

Tracking in small groups.

Studying the living creatures and animal inhabitants.
Constructing dens

Constructing experiments

Identifying plants and trees

Studying maps and landscape features

Cooking outdoors, from marshmallow kebabs to making and lighting fires.

Reading Books, both non-fiction and fiction, on related topics - from the Gruffalo to Stig of the Dump..

Record-keeping, as well as various forms of account and diary writing.
And real LOG BOOKS – made of split logs, string and laminated paper entries.

Wish I could have taken a picture.
And there was much more I didn’t have time to find out about. 
Think amplified Andy Goldsworthy with much much more attached!

What I particularly noticed was the effect on the children’s body language and behaviour. The children seemed friendly, confident and generally at ease within the school and classrooms. They did not seem to jostle for territorial space and for teacher’s attention. They did not “agg” each other. They did not seem full of stress..

When I commented on this, the teacher explained that the Forest School programme gave children opportunities to show and value a wide range of skills and abilities, far more than those required by a restricted classroom setting. I also felt, as the day went on, that the Forest School fitted in with the school’s whole philosophy of education.

Certainly, such stuff costs, so the school is constantly fund raising to help the pupils. I felt very honoured to be the chosen “author experience”, and hope the children and staff enjoyed the sessions as much as I did. It is also a brave stand at a time when many schools are cutting out anything but OFSTED requirements - yet this programme had been closely matched against those needs. Yes, it was a very very good day!

Over lunchtime, I watched the children playing in “their” field and clambering on the climbing frames. I was told about the school garden and observed the fat brown hens running about in their grassy pen. I must admit it was wonderful to be there, and I almost wished I wasn’t working just to spend more time observing and finding out about this hopeful style of education. 

However, teachers, school staff - and children - are all busy people and the day passed and as I left I was presented with a dozen eggs, laid by the school’s hens.

And over the next few days, as those twelve good eggs turned into an omelette and more, they reminded me of a really cheering day, one that I’m smiling about again right now.

Wishing you all a good September,

Best wishes

Penny

PS.. Rather sadly, I’ve heard of urban schools who might have been just as interested if their nearest woodland hadn’t been dangerously full of drug-taking detritus and similar health hazards. So very, very sad! Nevertheless, it’s good to share the happy stories too, despite everything.

Musing and Ranting: The Bright Light of Technology?

“Use Powerpoint!” That was what I’d heard from so many people: writers, teachers, artists and various publicity people.

So I set to work. I collected an interesting set of images to act as background to some of the moments in my book, A BOY CALLED M.O.U.S.E.

The set included photographs old and new, landscapes and people, coloured pictures and black & white drawings. A whole variety of visual images, in fact. I wanted to illustrate, through the range of source material, how many different moments can be gathered together to inspire a book and to show that these were mine.

When I talk about my book, I don’t – honestly! - just show the slides and drone on. And on. I stop to ask questions and involve the children. I narrate some parts of the novel and read short extracts most dramatically. If there’s time, I play a game or two. When the whole thing works clearly - and it has, it has - the sessions are very good.

However, when - once or twice - this hasn’t worked, the feeling of disappointment is for more than myself. I get cross too, especially as the “not-working” has never been because of a faulty memory stick or problems with the computer itself. It’s been a problem that I hadn’t expected, not in schools now, and it has inspired this rant: the quality of the available light

Travelling around, even with advance notice to the organisers, I have at times ended up with projector lamps and lenses so grimy with age that any subtle or complex images seem faint. How do the schools and the pupils manage, now that so much is done via the interactive white-board? Is this wealth creation for the opticians?

I an sure this is definitely not the bright white light of technology. It is the ageing, uncared-for end when the projector beam seems to be drenched with nicotine.

Not only but also there is the matter of the screens. How they vary! I have met vast wonderful double-screen systems as well as some opposites: a narrow section of grubby off-pink wall or a screen made up of paper taped together. And this is without any conflict caused by daylight streaming directly in to the space.

Get a mix of these factors – say, a dim light plus a tiny blemished screen and a large dining hall and the Powerpoint just doesn’t work. It is not wonderful. My carefully illustrative images end up too faded for the audience to see. This is not quite the cutting edge of modern technological provision I’d expected.

Add in another few crinkles in the circumstances. Now I once believed that the organisers know and understand the space they have given me, as the venue may not be free for me to enter until the last moment. This can be when the technology person rushes in to set things up and I glimpse something of what my audience will be facing on the “big” - not the laptop - screen. It can also be the moment when the eager audience is arriving and the point when the Show Must Go On.

When there’s clear, bright light projected and a good wide screen ahead, my collection of images works very well. When there isn’t, both heart and eyes fail.

I have had the wit, at such times, to revert to Plan B and step out of the Powerpoint. Yet it’s not always easy to slip in a flash of light from a talk with a fixed running order into the freer form of author talk.

But, unless those bright lights start shining, it’s back to my old, bold style of session I’m heading.