6 November

One of the great things about doing what I do is the exposure I have to great educational thinkers. Very rarely are these people politicians or university professors. Their views are not driven by the constituents vote or by a pay packet. Instead they have been developed over  long periods of exposure to the educational sector, with their inherent driver being what modern teaching and learning should look like in an ever changing world.

The week before last I sat and listened to Sir John Jones, one of these people. He took us back to the fundamentals of successful teaching, the relationship between the teacher and the student and the importance of  the student's happiness. Sir John made us all think about the people in our school life who had a real impact. Everyone in the room was lucky enough to be able to at least one of these people and was able to remember why they had such an impact. I am sure you are able to do this too. I was eight years old and my teacher's name was Miss Shea. She lived in an old house with a turret on the edge of the small New Zealand town I lived in.  I remember visiting her in the weekend once with some of my friends while riding our bikes. Those were the days when we disappeared for a day and came home when we were hungry. She welcomed us into her flat and gave us biscuits and a drink. Miss Shea always laughed at my jokes, and allowed us all to shine in our own way. She made us want to go to school in the morning during a time when classrooms had up to forty five students, corporal punishment was used liberally, education was full of rote learning and was essentially a grind we all had to endure. I remember telling my father during that year that I was going to be a teacher.

Something that Sir John clarified for me was the importance of the emotional memory. The emotional memory is the one that stays long after other memories of other knowledge has faded. It stays because we were emotionally connected to the moment or the person delivering the experience. Creating these memories is one of the most important jobs we teachers have. Teachers like Miss Shea in those days were hard to find. I am pleased to say they are easier to find at East. One of my jobs is to find the Miss Sheas out there and offer them a job at our school.

Sir John made us all commit to contacting the people we identified and explain to them the impact they had on our lives. Although this happened a long time ago and anything could have happened to her I will attempt to do this. Maybe you should do the same.

You can listen to a little of what Sir John says at this link