Special...

It is rare that I get the chance to visit "special" schools, but yesterday was one such day. Meadowgate is a special day school in Cambridgeshire that offers education to children with either moderate or severe learning difficulties aged two to nineteen. I had the pleasure of working with Kestrels, Falcons and Hawks - the Key Stage 3 & 4 children.

Over the years there has been a struggle to come up with an appropriate way of describing this sector of the system. Once acceptable terms have been quickly discarded as misleading or downright offensive. It could be argued that, to the casual outsider, the term "special" seems to be a neutral compromise... But if you spend a day in such a life-enhancing place as Meadowgates you quickly learn how accurate it is...

It didn't take long to pick up the positive atmosphere. The sense of joy was contagious and the enthusiastic response was overwhelming...

Often, when performing in "main stream" schools, the contrast between stony-faced teachers sitting impassively at the periphery of things, embarrassed to let their guard down, and the sea of engaged smiling children is enormous. It takes a few well targeted deliberate jibes to startle them into life - experience has shown me that the more involved teachers are in the session the more their children get out of it. There was no need for any of that here! There's no them-and-us at Meadowgates - we're all in this together! Actually, at times it was difficult to tell teachers and pupils apart - if it wasn't for Charlotte's giveaway two-toned nail varnish I would never have thought she was 14!

The day was a procession of magical moments - let me mention two...

Barnaby was an extremely large lad who clearly had very limited communication and motor skills. The smile on his face and the glint in his eye showed he was obviously enjoying the storytelling session, but he could only join in at a very limited level. The story involves gradually packing a series of items into a battered old suitcase and, at first, I didn't think he was up to doing that... Ben, a confident mouthy lad, sat next to him. He was more than eager to come out and help... I sensed quite quickly that he was a rather loose canon and made a mental note not to let him pack anything that might break! As the story progressed, and everyone who wanted to had been out to pack something, I decided to offer Barnaby a cuddly toy - to everyone's joy, he eagerly grabbed it and made his way towards the suitcase. Instantly Ben stood up and placed a supporting hand on Barnaby's shoulder. His cheeky grin now replaced by serious concern, he shadowed his friend all the way up to the suitcase and then carefully back to his seat. Ben's usual manicness only returned once he was sure that Barnaby was settled. It was beautiful. I often come across "natural carers"; children who, completely unprompted by teachers, take on the role of primary helper to a vulnerable peer. At times children can make life seem quite simple - I see someone who needs my help, so that's what I do... simple.

The second incident will live with me forever. The trick of encouraging creativity is to provoke an idea in a child, leap on it, coax them into expanding it into a story by asking a few subtle leading questions and then declare how phenomenal their imagination is to be able to create such a fantastic unique idea. There's a part of this story that refers to "5 climbing kites" and Luke, for no apparent reason, seemed to think it would be funny to replace them with tomatoes - so I ran with it. "But what would happen if one of those flying tomatoes fell to the ground? What if it landed on someones head?!" Luke found that particularly funny and said it would "splat down on them with a splash." In class afterwards, in the follow up workshop, Luke was choosing the things he wanted to draw in his own suitcase. He was bent over the table, transfixed. As I approached I was suddenly catapulted back to 1987 when a 13 year old autistic child named Steven Wiltshire first came to public attention. I watched as his steady, confident hand moved unerringly around the paper. There, as if by magic, was the scene we had spoken about...

...amazing, isn't it! He agreed to reproduce a signed copy for me if I gave him a signed copy of one of my books... I don't know who was prouder when we made the exchange. His teachers told me that I'd made Luke's day and that he'd never forget it - I assured them that the feeling was mutual... Happily, I'm going back in a few weeks to spend another SPECIAL day at the wonderful Meadowgates!

Are you sitting comfortably?

"Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin..." the refrain that seemed to start each of my grandfather's stories when I was a child. It was like a reassuring arm around my shoulder as we travelled into mysterious lands where untold dangers lurked. And although with each retelling the lands became ever more familiar and the dangers expected, it always felt like the first time. When you're six there's nothing like predictability to induce a sense of security. But, as any teacher who has worked with nursery children as well as top juniors will tell you (and I once did that in the same academic year...) there comes a time when repetition does not work anymore...



This is especially true when it comes to the merry-go-round of educational initiatives. The longer you're on it the dizzier you become. But it is so tempting to dismiss anything new as merely rehashed old ideas (I have done it on many occasions...) and I'm starting to think that such a stance is just a simplistic cop-out...

"Teaching" is such a fundamental thing, pre-dating by many millena the establishment of these things we call schools. I'm sure Ug, when trying to teach his son Oog a new way of fashioning flint, felt pestered by his know-all traditionalist father, Erg. Everyone starts out as "Ugs", but, alas, we all become "Ergs" in the end...

I remember, while nervously sipping my first ever staffroom coffee, the whispered advice of a lovely Welsh colleague, speaking from the height of her many year's experience - "don't listen to anyone who tells you they have the next big-thing - mark my words, young man, everything just goes round in circles..." After almost thirty years in teaching, and as I mull over the implications of the latest government initiative (I make that number 6953...), I know what she means - it seems that the "topic web" is about to be reinvented...

At times it really does feel like there is nothing new under the educational sun... but it's an illusion. No matter how convinced we are that we've "heard it all before"(and with every passing year that becomes so much easier to say...) it's the peculiarities of the moment that matters - it's all down to context...

As I embark upon my year as Scholastic's Literacy Time PLUS Writer-in-residence and my private thoughts become puplic pontifications, it's the context of the moment that is exercising my mind. Who knows what is about to happen to the recommendations in the Rose Review or what shape "assessment" or "appraisal" will be in by the time my year is over? What's certain is that by this time next year we'd have gone through an election (and from where I'm sitting we're going to have the first conservative education minister since Gillian Shepherd...), the true effects of the recession will no longer be speculative, the 2010 Key Stage Two SATs may (or may not...) have been boycotted and Arsene Wenger's youth policy would have been finally vindicated (or not, I dread to say...).

Also, I would have visited another 130 schools and tried to convince another 30,000ish children that they are authors - that we are all authors! It's what I do... I've been travelling the world since I left full time teaching 13 years ago with that mantra - it's my passion... I often get asked whether I get bored with peddling the same message and I can honestly say I don't. While my message remains pretty constant the world of schools, where it is preached, is in constant flux - the context.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts with whoever wants to listen, hopefully my observations as I move from school to school will provoke others to share their comments and opinions here as well - I look forward to any responses with excitement and trepidation: authors rarely get a chance to hear the thoughts their words may have evoked...

So whether you are an idealistic young Ug or an Erg who has been round the block a few times, you are more than welcome...