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...