Teacherspeak - Part 5 (P to Z)

P is for persevere, which is the last refuge for you, the advice-giver, when you have no more ideas on how to get a student to learn something.

Student: I can’t do it.
Teacher: Just persevere! Keep trying. There’s no such word as “can’t”, there’s just the questions of “how” and “when.”
Student: How can I do it then?
Teacher: By persevering.

And don’t ever write persevere while marking, because it looks to a student like perverse.

Q is for quickly and quietly, adverbs you most commonly attach to the imperative of the verb to go.

R is for remember. We bestow upon students hundreds of facts and instructions every day and then tell them to remember what we’ve said. Research suggests that they will remember 20% of what they hear each day and you can be pretty sure that most of that is what their friends have said to them, hence the need for teachers to use other R-words, repeat and revise.

Teacher: I’ve already told you once.
Student: But research shows that I have only remembered 20% of what you told me once and in fact, as I am a visual learner, because you didn’t actually show me, I have remembered none of it at all!
Teacher: I had you in my mark book as a kinaesthetic learner, which reminds me – didn’t I just lend you a glue stick?
(see K)

S is for satisfactory. In effect, this is the most important word in teaching. It is the centre of the educational solar system, around which everything gravitates. On the ground, at grass roots level, it is the word you use to describe a student’s effort that is neither particularly good, nor particularly rubbish. In essence, if you can’t decide which, you use satisfactory, which denotes that something is neither. It is the word of complete indecision, the epitome of fence-sitting neutrality, the Switzerland of judgements. And when you are indecisive about whether or not to use the great word of indecision, you dilute your judgement further by adding fairly. A fairly satisfactory effort written in an exercise book is you telling a child that they haven’t worked hard enough, but you have seen worse.

Translate the word into the colloquial and you get OK. Isn’t that just the worse way to describe anything? It’s better to just say that something’s shit, at least then people know what you mean.

How’s the meal I just cooked for you?
It’s OK. (means – it doesn’t taste like turd.)

What do you think of the new album by the Eels?
It’s OK. (means – it has absolutely no emotional effect on me.)

Do you like my new dress?
It’s OK. (means – it kind of makes your arse look fat and your boobs sag, but most people might not notice and I’m not going out with you tonight anyway, so who cares?)

Even on an everyday level – and this might just be peculiarly English – people always ask:

How are you today?
I’m OK. (means either I am an emotional shell whose life has so little meaning that I am beyond even being unhappy, or I'm good and I can’t be bothered elaborating.)

Students tend to use this colloquial abbreviation in preference to the full-length satisfactory, and this is why the longer word is added to our ever-expanding alphabet of teacherspeak.

As I was saying, it is a fulcrum around which everything spins. All other judgments are measured relative to satisfactoriness. The comments in mark books, the reports we write, our analysis and evaluation of exam performance and most despicably of all, Ofsted pigeonholing of schools. You can only be outstanding, good, satisfactory or inadequate as a school in the outcome to an inspection. Please note that satisfactory is the 3rd of the four depreciating branding irons. In true Orwellian style, Ofsted also decided that it wasn’t satisfactory to only be satisfactory and that if you were satisfactory in every area but good in no area, then this was in fact unsatisfactory. Every few years, once most schools have flagellated themselves into improvement, then what used to be satisfactory becomes inadequate and to be satisfactory you have to be what used to be good (and if you were good before, now you’re only satisfactory.)

Which kind of proves that the word has absolutely no meaning whatsoever, in that it is relative to expectations, which vary and change with the wind, and therefore is as redundant as the term that kick-started this list, the equally non-objective appropriate.

T is for target. This concept marks one of the biggest changes in teaching from when I went to school to when I taught in one. Nowadays, targets predominate at every level as the prescribed manner in which qualitative judgments can be made on the standards of teaching and student learning. By qualitative, I don’t mean that these are “quality” judgements. Far from it. They are too simplistic - by necessity in order for them to be qualitative. Any other judgment would have to be subjective, and thereby carry as many advantages as disadvantages. So, these targets range from the individual students, who have bestowed upon them a grade or level that they are expected to achieve based on national averages and data regarding their own previous attainment, to targets for schools to meet to prove that they are not failing. The expectation is that all schools should have exam results higher than the national average. Now if you take half a second to think about what the word average means, then you’ll realise that half of schools will never be higher than average! Meaning that they cannot possibly be satisfactory!

Such is the way of the world and such is the meaning of targets these days. When I was at school there were three kinds of target. One was the student at the back of the room whose non-stop talking prompted my Classics teacher to send the blackboard rubber flying in his direction like a thunderbolt from Zeus; another was the clock in our French classroom at which we aimed our McDonald’s milk-shake-straw pea-shooters, until it was covered in chewed up, saliva-imbued pellets of soggy paper; and the last was the fat, smelly, stupid kid with the wide shoulders that made a noise like a floor-tom when you punched them. (As a teacher, I cannot condone the final action and would also make a plea that we don’t describe any student as fat, smelly or stupid even if they clearly happen to suffer from any of these three anti-social handicaps.)

U is for underachieving. In other words, not meeting your target. In other words, a need to be more accurate when hurling your lightening-bolt-board-rubber; a need to take into account trajectory and wind-speed when aiming for the clock; and a need to make sure that the fat smelly stupid boy is distracted by the cake stall at the school fete when you approach him ready to strike.

V is for vague. Sometimes this is the only word to use when reading a piece of work by a student who doesn’t have a clue what he or she is on about. It isn’t as harsh as bollocks and is intrinsically vague in itself.

W is for well done, because it takes so much less time writing this than it would to actually give a more constructive evaluation of a piece of student work.

X is for an incorrect answer, but under new safeguarding procedures designed to protect children from harmful approaches by adults, it is recommended that you do not confuse a child with mixed messages; and so, just in case they misconstrue their crapness at mathematics for a show of affection from you in the form of a whole page full of red kisses, it is advisable that you write the word nearly next to each wrong answer.(see N)

Y is for young man/ young lady. If we teach them nothing, surely we should be teaching them about the laws of relatively as opposed to Platonic absolutes. (Have a minute to work that one out and forgive my obtuseness.)

Z is for zero. It sounds like an actual number; so when a student gets fuck-all right in a test, then at least they can be awarded a legitimate score.

Now, count up how many of these words you use on a regular basis.

If you scored more than 20, then you are truly lost in teaching. Well done!

If you scored between 10 and 19, then you are satisfactory.

If you scored below ten, then you are nearly making the most of your opportunities, but currently underachieving. To reach your target you have to develop your ability to apply teacherspeak in more situations, by remembering these words and showing some perseverance in terms of managing to use them on consistent basis. In other words, you’re gay!