Training courses are an essential part of teachers' working lives. As a teacher, you will be sent on a course for one of a few reasons. Maybe the government has introduced a new strategy that you must learn about, digest and implement by Monday week, and so off you go to learn about it in some third rate hotel in the back of beyond for the day.
Or it
could be that your school throws a load of brochures your way and tells you to take your pick
from the courses, as they've discovered you haven't been on a course for over three years,
and are worried that this must be affecting the way you teach - perhaps manifesting itself
in that grimace every time you have to cover for colleagues who are on yet another course.
For paranoid teachers, being told you are to attend a course on behaviour management, for example, is a huge blow to the ego, and will lead to many accusational stares at fellow members of staff as you think about why you're the only one who needs help with their behaviour management. You may also silently accuse colleagues of grassing you up to the Inset co-ordinator because your classes are always so noisy.
Training courses themselves take on such variety that I will probably save that rant for another time, because it's here that I want to demonstrate what training courses aim to do, and how this affects the mind of an average teacher (like me).
The last training course I was sent on was on behaviour management (see points above), which accounts for at least half of all training courses I reckon, being the issue that will never be resolved in teaching, however many government initiatives are issued, and however many psychologists spend their careers trying to find new solutions to ancient problems. I could sum up all those training courses in one sentence: Kids have been, and will always be, kids, so accept it.
These courses on behaviour management, of which I have experienced a fair few in my time, are not really designed to give you any new and all-encompassing strategies that really work in the classroom, because if it was that simple, I'm sure the inventor or discoverer would sell the secret to a publishing company for multi-millions rather than trekking round the guest lecturer circuit in beige slacks and an ill-matching tie-and-jacket combo. (Training courses leave plenty of time to analyse the clothing choices of the speakers.)
Instead, many training courses trot out the Child Psychology 101 course, in the hope that
it will change the way that you, the teacher, feels about children - understanding why they
swear at you, ignore you, lie to you, and so on - so that you don't become angry with them,
but instead empathise, sympathise, or even reach a state of pure enlightenment with the class
from hell.
This brain-washing effect will work to varying degrees for a limited period after the training course only, depending on how desperate you are to believe it. For example, a couple of the key messages I took with me from my last course were as follows:
But let me put this into context for you, and show you how training courses can allow your brain to accept that you are entirely helpless and unable to adminster the punishment the child deserves, whilst neutralising all urges to show the child how much they have wound you up.
The other day I was pulling out of the school gates when I saw a bad-ass twelve year old
pupil pissing about in the road. He was pushing one of the other kids into the road, and then
kicking the tyres of parked cars, spitting at windscreens, and ignoring the fact that the
road is always a vehicular minefield of double-parked parents, and teachers with their feet on the
accelerator. I checked my mirrors, and there was no other teacher around to deal with it, or not.
As I saw a bus coming down that side of the road, I acted instinctively. Well, that's not
strictly true. I'm afraid if I dig deep enough, my instinct is a dark one indeed - I would have
been quite happy for that little bugger to reap the consequences of his actions, whatever they
may be when he was stood in the middle of the road with a bus approaching.
Instead, my civil response was to beep my horn, wind down my window and call over to him to get out of the road. As I wound up my window, I heard him turn to his friends and say something along the lines of, "No I will not f****** get out of the f****** road", and I'm sure I would have seen the appropriate hand gestures had I glanced back.
So what would your response be? With me, at first, pre-training course teacher emerged. This involved much muttering under my breath, listing ways I could get the sod back the next day, and fervent wishes that he experienced first-hand the consequences of his bloody actions.
Then I checked my rear view mirror. He was no longer in the middle of the road, but was hopping
down the side, one leg on the pavement and one in the gutter (ah, the metaphorical images...).
And then the effects of the training course began to kick in. I felt a calmness wash over me,
with all thoughts of revenge being washed away and replaced by a feeling of peace, and probably
some glib phrase like "kids will be kids".
You see, he had followed my instructions - almost - and got out of the road. The secondary bad behaviour was merely his way of not losing face in front of the others. It can't have been directed at me, his saviour and moral guardian. What he really wanted to say was, "Thank you, I have been behaving foolishly, I will take your advice because I know you are right and that under your stern and nagging exterior you are doing these things because you really care".
And so my evening wasn't ruined by thinking that a little sh*t had got the better of me. The training course works! I'm brainwashed! And I'm trying to block out the thought that all those psychologists are far more successful with adult behaviour patterns than the behaviour of children...
added 8/11/03
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