Hello World

You have to start somewhere.

As it says on the tin: I’m a teacher. It’s an incredible career, and one I’m proud to be part of.

But a niggling feeling started to at the back of my mind a few months ago.

Teachers don’t do much learning.

That’s perhaps unfair - hardly anyone, really, does much learning past the age of 25. I don’t mean in the self-knowledge, incremental gains kind of way; I mean in the taking on of a fundamentally new skill or new domain, something you don’t already do.

Certainly, we sit through plenty of CPD (of varying quality). But this is often either something we know already, something we’ve forgotten and need to be (legally) reminded of on a periodic basis, or some system that changes something we were doing already.

The rarity of genuinely new experiences is, I think, one of the things that hampers us from truly understanding the mind-bendingly difficult process our students go through 5 times a day, every day: being confronted with something you don’t know yet, and being unsure quite how you’ll ever get to the stage of fully understanding it.

It’s remarkable, really. It’s as though we experience collective amnesia about those horrendous few terms in Year 9 when first confronted with algebraic equations, or that torturous double period on a Thursday as a well-meaning madame patiently explained the past participle for the soixante-dix time. As though we’ve agreed to never speak of them again, and certainly not re-live the emotions.

But ever a glutton for punishment, I have thrown myself back into the unforgiving maw of learning, willingly.

This website you’re on right now - in all its hacked-together glory - represents the half-ripened fruits of that process.

Fit your own lightbulbs

My first, and over-riding feeling? Satisfaction. My god is it satisfying to get something, to go from clueless to clue-full. In that one brief moment (before you see the Dunning-Kruger pit gaping ahead of you) the fabric of space and time opens up and you are master of the universe. You have, through your own fleshy grey matter, taken something that was meaningless and rendered it meaningful. Where that was darkness, light; where there was fear, understanding.

The second feeling, hot on satisfaction’s heels: worry. Because one must then ask the question: how often do my students feel this? This burning, satisfied pride that comes from accumulating another brick of knowledge on their little pyramid of progress? Do they ever? Do I celebrate it when I see it? Can I see it?

When interviewing teachers, one of the most best questions you can ask is: what’s been your favourite moment in the classroom? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the answer will be this. The ‘light-bulb’ moment of understanding, going off in the student (usually recalcitrant, usually male), which briefly illuminates the narrow path ahead of them and makes it seem achievable.

Perhaps we can all benefit from living a moment like this ourselves. Fit your own lightbulbs; remember what it feels like.

Just do it ✔️

The best way to learn is to do. One can read, highlight, bulletpoint, mind-map in a beautifully Pinterest-able notebook, but if you want to form and solidifying those synaptic connections, you need to actually practice. And practice that produces something is even better.

Knowing that anyone with a Wi-Fi connection and a browser can access what you show is another excellent motivator.

Having faffed around with Javascript and a little Python, there’s a great deal to be said for solidifying the nebulous world of monospaced type on a black screen into something more tangible and designed.

This site is less a showcase or portfolio, and more a sketchbook. There are lots of ideas here in various states of completion. Some are demos at 99% functionality, some are projects I’ve put on ice for the foreseeable, and some are abominations of half-formed code that really ought to be put out of their misery.

But each one represents one of those lightbulbs. And even if they only give off a flicker, they’re worth keeping around. 💡