JDMcDsblog

Long haired, bearded, open necked shirt and wearing sandals-thus was introduced Clive Lawton, our guest keynote speaker. A former head teacher and depute director of education in Liverpool, and now a magistrate and contributor to Thought For Today, Clive Lawton who spoke, without powerpoint presentation, in a resonant and compelling voice about “values in education”. Clive challenged some basic ideas and examoned the rules that govern schools, and why we think they are important. He shared his early approach to teaching and learning by describing how we would give (encorage) his pupils the option of doing no work. If they read a comic, fine; if they did nothing, fine. He felt it far more important that pupils believed they were working for themselves. It was a risky strategy; some pupils barely worked at all, others only worked at the last minute, at which point they were desparate for help. It was only then that the learning began.
He asked us to think about the values of our school, and how we transmit these. Do we treat pupils with respect? Do we say one thing and do another? Do we contradict ourselves by our actions? What other values might we consider important in our school- our groups came up with examples such as community, cooperation, service.