A Personal Look at Teacher Development in the Create, Speak, Thrive Project.
From left to right: Jenny Ayres, Hannah Taylor, Ahsan Ahmed and Jacqueline Edgecumbe
As part of our first year (2022-2023) of this two-year project, our partner schools collaborated closely with our artists in a series of co-creation sessions and CPDL sessions. Together, they developed various drama and storytelling solutions aimed at supporting speech, language, and communication in the classroom. In the Spring Term, each school was paired with an artist to test these approaches, offer feedback, engage in reflection, and share learning. To delve a bit deeper into the Teacher-Researcher experience throughout the past year, Muneerah Yate, our CST Project Manager, interviewed with Paula Franklin, a Year 5 Class Teacher at Featherstone Wood Primary School in Stevenage.
“At the beginning of the project, my greatest fear was that the children would struggle with the sessions and that their behaviour would let them down. As the weeks progressed, I was pleasantly surprised at the children’s enjoyment, focus and development.”
To begin, we thought we’d ask about the project’s main focus and your personal journey so far: as this is a project about teacher development, how have you been navigating, or maybe, how has it felt to shift your perspective to focusing on your own development as a teacher first before the childrens’?
Shifting my focus from the children to my own development has been one of the most challenging parts of the project and to be honest I am still not convinced that I have fully mastered it.
Reflecting at the end of each session with the artist did enable me to partly reflect on my own development but we often focused on the impact on the children. However, it has made me review my classroom practice. Going forward, when planning for this second year, my focus is very much on my skills development so that I can take the most successful aspects of the first year and try to embed them and further develop them into my lesson planning and delivery.
As this research project is enquiry led, we haven’t set particular goals with strict deadlines for everyone to meet and have rather allowed for moments of learning and reflection and then let that inform our next steps. If at all, how has this way of working impacted or possibly clashed with your current teaching practice and school environment?
At the beginning of the project, the openness of the targets sometimes concerned me. I was constantly wondering if I was making the right choices and taking the correct approach. However, as the project progressed, I felt much more confident with the openness of the project. It’s allowed me to reflect on the learning taking place and consider my own practice. In particular, the support of the artist allowed for more risk taking and encouraged me to approach learning in a variety of different ways.
“In particular, the support of the artist allowed for more risk taking and encouraged me to approach learning in a variety of different ways.”
From your perspective as a Teacher-Researcher what do you think has been useful so far in terms of being able to obtain insightful research and/or create space for progress and development on the project?
As a teacher-researcher, the regular meetings with the other members (teachers from other schools and artist practitioners) of the project has allowed the sharing of techniques and experiences. This has been both helpful and reassuring to see the other group members personal experiences. Having the artist work closely in the classroom with me and then reflecting on the lesson afterwards has been a great way to adapt and develop the lessons and teaching skills. It has also been reassuring to find that we were mostly in agreement about the next steps for the project.
From left to right: Julie Mackerness, Paula Franklin, Ahsan Ahmed, Sandy Wardrop, Dawn Hudson, Jenny Ayres and Suzie Bradshaw
If you could start at the beginning of the project again, with everything you know now and have experienced over the last year, what advice would you give yourself?
The main message that I would give myself at the beginning of this project would be to be flexible. I feel that being flexible with each of the sessions made them far more successful. I was often quite concerned with the outcomes of each lesson. However, as the project progressed it was evident that the lessons were developing the children’s interest and they were becoming much more involved and interested in the lessons. At times, I was very concerned that I was not in full control of the lessons. However, as the project progressed, the positive impact in the children’s enjoyment and learning was evident as I became much more confident to take risks and try new methods of learning.
I know that you’ve touched on this already, but could you tell us a bit more about how working with an external artist practitioner has been for you and your classroom/school? What would you highlight as the successes and challenges of being in this sort of partnership?
Having the artist working alongside me has been invaluable. They have encouraged me to take greater risks and to try new techniques to develop the learning of the children. The artist brings their own unique skills to the classroom. The children have also loved having the opportunity to take part in drama activities on a regular basis and I have seen how the techniques have allowed all groups to participate and thrive.
And are there any moments along the way that have stuck out to you? Or were there any fears you had coming into this project?
At the beginning of the project, my greatest fear was that the children would struggle with the sessions and that their behaviour would let them down. As the weeks progressed, I was pleasantly surprised at the children’s enjoyment, focus and development over the weeks. There was only really one session where I really felt the children’s behaviour let them down. However, on reflection, I feel that they really did well with the task which involved them working in close proximity with each other. I was often surprised by how much the children remembered from one week to the next - the techniques that we were using allowed the children to access the learning and put key facts into their long-term memory.
Lastly, if funding for the project ended at the 2-year mark and we couldn’t continue working as thoroughly as we are right now, what aspects of the project do you think could be continued on to the benefit of your own teacher development, the children and your school?
If the funding ended after the two years, I would hope that I would use many of the (drama, storytelling and SLCN) techniques in my teaching. It is evident that they have opened the learning experience to all groups of children and enabled children who find accessing the complex curriculum challenging to become much more involved. I think that an important next step in this project would be to share the findings with the rest of the school and to embed it into the curriculum.
“I think that an important next step in this project would be to share the findings with the rest of the school and to embed it into the curriculum.”
