Merv’s Memorial Service at St. Luke’s Chelsea

Today was the day we all had a chance to say celebrate the life of Sir Mervyn Dunnington-Jefferson at his wonderfully moving memorial service at St Luke’s Chelsea.  The church was packed (600 approx) which was in no way a surprise nor was the fact that OER&TC, IZ and Ramblers ties were all much in evidence.  I only knew Merv for the last 15 years or so and so it was great to hear stories in the address about his life as a young man.  The music from the choir was truly exceptional I thought with two beautifully sung solos in two of the anthems.  Merv’s son read a poem called “The Eighth at Brancaster” most apt of course as this is where Merv played his golf.

Merv always struck me as a man who could squeeze every last drop of enjoyment and fun from any experience.  He was a true supporter of Eton Rackets, always keen to hear how the boys were doing and generous with helping us financially with tours and prizes for boys.  For many years, and in spite of all my advice, he would place a bet on the Eton runner in the Foster Cup at Queens.  I don’t think he ever won.  The one year in which we won, when Merv could have got some of his money back off David Makey, was the year of Will Hopton’s success and Merv inexplicably decided not to make his usual mistake and instead backed the top seed and favourite, who we beat in the final.

I loved talking to Merv about horses.  I used to bump into him frequently at York for the Ebor meeting in August and Merv would regale me with his tales of woe about the 2 year olds he had in training with Paul Cole.  Each one was a disaster, never fulfilling potential or breeding promise, but Merv’s grumblings about his horses were always delivered with a twinkle in his eye.  Merv loved the competition, he loved the stories and characters in racing and clearly loved York.  I will miss him massively in the summer when the flat season starts once again.

For the past 10 years or so, Merv used to come to Eton just before Christmas with his great friend Dudley MacDonald to play rackets.  Peter Brake and I would play what came to be known as the “Christmas Doubles” on what was always a cold Monday morning with Merv and Dudley.  The knock ups and match usually lasted 45 minutes or so in total with many expletives and profanities uttered by Merv through the game.  We would then adjourn to Gilbey’s on the High Street for a lunch that normally took three or more hours.  Having worked our way through some of the wine list, always chatting about rackets, cricket or the horses, in conversations accompanied by raucous laughter, I would stagger home up the road and usually crash out on the sofa.  Merv would drive back into London for a drinks party in the evening.

It was clear from the service today that Merv was clearly a beloved friend to many and I am sure that all 600 of the congregation could tell similar stories of happy times in his company.  The last few months of his life were sadly blighted by illness but prior to that Merv had lived his life to the full.  His service reminded me today that our time is limited, that family is the most important thing and that every day gives us the chance to laugh, to enjoy time with our friends and to have fun.  Merv I never got a chance to say any of this to you in person and you would certainly not have found this on Twitter.  But I valued the kindness and friendship you showed me more than you could know and I miss you.  RIP.

Revision tips for IGCSE Biology students

The syllabus has now been completed for the PMG Y11 Biologists so for the next few weeks the focus shifts onto your personal work and learning.  I am available throughout the Easter break of course so please email/tweet etc. with any questions or problem areas. I will try to post a few interesting things onto this blog to keep your motivation levels up!

The main challenge for you looking ahead to these exams is to master the breadth of knowledge and understanding needed.  There are few areas that are conceptually too challenging but there is plenty of content to learn and this can only be achieved with organised revision.

Here are a few PMG tips for revision planning:

1) Time is Limited so you need to make the very best use of it in every revision session for Biology.  Every session you work on Biology you need to be actively using various parts of your brain not just the visual cortex. Don’t read but instead make summary notes, flow diagrams, Flash Cards etc.  Then practise questions, copy down mark schemes onto card etc.  Make revision movies or Powerpoints – make revision fun!

2) Your textbook should now come into its own.  This book has been specifically written for our specification so it should include all the subjects you need to know about with no extraneous material.  I would use this textbook now as your primary source for revision, using notes and other sources when needed if a particular idea is unclear.

3) You now have three booklets of past paper questions (together with mark schemes if you have been to my lab to collect them!)  These booklets should be used for testing your own understanding once you have revised a particular topic.  Don’t ever look at the MS unless you have attempted the question:  this tricks you into an alternative reality in which you think “oh yes I would have said that”.  Don’t fall into the revision trap of thinking past papers by themselves are the answer.

4) Revision is not about how many hours:  it is about how much you have learned, understood, remembered from the time you spend.  If you do the calculations we talked about in school, I think during the holiday you will have at most 10 hours in total for Biology. Use this time wisely.

Finally a few general tips about organising your revision.  My experience with many years of Y11 boys over too many years is that you will be much more productive if you get up in the mornings.  Ask your Mum for help with this:  tell her she can be really useful to you by ensuring you get up before 8am every day!  Divide the day into three two and a quarter hour slots.  Always work in the morning slot and then choose one of the two others each day.

Morning:  9.30am – 11.45am

Afternoon:  1.30pm – 3.45pm

Evening:  5pm – 7.15pm (timing can vary depending on when you eat supper)

And finally do the sensible things you all know but can sometimes get over-looked:  sleep 8/9 hours every night but no more , eat a proper breakfast, drink plenty of water through the day and use fresh fruit as a treat… I know you all can do really well in the summer exams – there are no excuses on offer here.  Work hard, enjoy the challenge and step up to it and you will be well rewarded in August.

 

 

Thoughts on #TLAB14

It has been a few days since the TLAB14 conference at Berkhamstead School and I have had time to reflect and think about some thoughts on the day.  The first thing to say was that the whole experience was uplifting, inspiring and thought-provoking.  It is so easy in our job to get so obsessed with our particular goldfish bowl and spending just a day with a group of great educators from a variety of schools, maintained and private, primary and secondary, was a brilliant way to remind me of what is so great about our job.  I would recommend this conference unreservedly to all teaching colleagues.  It was one of the best days of CPD I have experienced in two decades of work.

The first keynote speaker was Elise Foster @elisefoster, the co-author of a book called “The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius inside Schools”  The basic idea of her presentations was that some leaders act as multipliers, getting twice as much productivity out of employees (and students) by not micromanaging them, giving them true responsibility and holding them accountable.  Too often in my experience the school leaders I have worked for are Diminishers, certain that they alone have the right answers and that their role is to use their intellectual skills to come up with more and more of them.  Diminishers need to retain control over every part of an organisation and although often they manage in this way with the very best of intentions, their actions result in team members just retreating further and further into their shell.  It was difficult to listen to certain sections of the talk, mostly because I could so easily recognise my own behaviours in the classroom when I can act in this way, but also because I recognise all too well the effects of this kind of leadership on my own performance.

I then attended three great workshops.  These were small group activities that I had selected from a menu of options when I signed up for the conference.  The first was on ICT teaching and led by Drew Buddie @digitalmaverick.  He gave a presentation on how his school uses the 4 Rs as a theme to direct all their teaching.  These were Resilience, Resourcefulness, Reflectiveness and Reciprocity.  This might sound like a dry topic but actually we all enjoyed a whirlwind tour through a load of IT resources and I came away with many new websites to explore and loads to think about.  To just give you one example, if you are searching for images on FlickR try taggalaxy.com : it is an amazing site.

I then spent an hour with Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL (@sjblakemore)  She gave me a brilliant presentation on current understanding about the development of the pre-frontal cortex in adolescents.  I knew a little about this from a presentation given in Eton a few years ago but the research findings in the past few years do make you question some of our entrenched attitudes towards adolescents.  The importance of risk-taking behaviours was stressed together with interesting ideas about peer influence, sociability and the developmental progression of this region of the cortex.  Research into this is still in it infancy but already there is plenty to learn.  Quite how we as educators should apply this to our practice with adolescents is less clear.  Thoughts and comments would be much appreciated if anyone out there has the answer!

My third and final workshop was with Daniel Muijs (@ProfDanielMuijs) who is Professor of Education at the University of Southampton.  He gave a witty and entertaining talk on the current state of his research into measuring teacher effectiveness.   This reminded me a few important things about my own practice and indeed it was good to be reminded how important the role of the teacher is in life outcomes of our students.  I think it is too easy to get fixed with the ideas that pupils from higher socio-economic groups just coast through the education system with never a problem and his workshop was a brilliant way to learn about how teacher effectiveness can be measured (no mention of taking classes into a special classroom elsewhere on the site to film them……..)  I loved hearing the idea that the toolkits used in the US to measure effectiveness do not work in the UK because they are not sensitive enough to discriminate between all the high-performing UK educators.  A fact to remember when our profession is being bashed in the media for its inefficiencies.

Often on a conference like this, I am tempted to sneak away before the closing address.  There was no thought of that at #TLAB14 and I am very glad I didn’t.  The final 45 minutes was a truly inspiring talk from Dr Andy Williams, Executive Headteacher at Holmfirth High School and North Huddersfield Trust School.   He took over as head of a “failing school” ear-marked for closure with the prospect of a brand new school (NHTS) to replace it.  As things worked out the new school was never built, so having closed the failing school, he then had the same students, the same teachers all working in the same building starting again a few weeks later.  Now I work in an institution that is old, very old….  This has some great advantages at times but there are many times each week when it is hard not to wish to be able to do just what Andy was forced to confront.  I wouldn’t want to change the pupils, the staff or the buildings here but it would be brilliant to be able to start with a brand new identity and construct the school of which we could all be proud.  Andy was a great speaker and clearly a “Multiplier” in his management of staff and students.  He spoke with passion and clarity about the importance of teaching in changing the lives of young people and I left inspired once again.

If you only are prepared to attend one conference a year about education, I would urge you to go to #TLAB.  The day is run by a group of inspirational leaders and there was little you could fault.  I will certainly be back in 2o15.