Friday Mindset #128: School's In

Happy Friday!

We’ve dissected the exam results. We’ve sat through the GDPR training and the heads-up about changing Ofsted regimes. We’ve watched the videos about harmful social-media algorithms and the inevitable march of AI. We’ve gone through pastoral stuff for the new year, we’ve compared suntans with colleagues and applauded those who’ve got married, had babies or won the lottery.

Now classes are back and it’s like the summer never happened.

Ah well. Onwards! We’ve got a lot to share this week… and a giveaway at the end too! Let’s dive in.

Something to try...

Over the years, you may have heard us use the Brene Brown quote, “Clear is kind; unclear is unkind.” The first time we heard this phrase, it made us think about our messages to students. In particular, where are we clear on what excellence looks like?

As years 10, 11 and 12 start their new academic year, we’ve found this a great activity to revisit. The image is borrowed from a college we once worked with:

“The Expert Student….”

September is a perfect time to establish standards like this - to get clear about what excellence looks like. Involving students in the process and getting them to think about success helps them reflect on their behaviours and attitudes. There are a couple of different ways of leading this. You might start by asking, “What do we think are the characteristics of high-performing students?” Then, you might allow students to begin to build their own hierarchy - some foundational, non-negotiables at the bottom (say 4), followed by higher-level skills and behaviours above (3, perhaps) then top-level behaviours (a final 3.) This works well if students are aware of the behaviours; you need to tease them out.

Alternatively, you could share a list of behaviours and ask students - or indeed staff - select the top ten and rank them. Either way, by the end of the activity, you should have something like the image above… or the two further examples below. The first is a session Martin ran, where staff began with 25 behaviours focussed on the theme of ‘independent learning’:

And here’s a list generated by a school we worked with - they were particularly keen on establishing higher standards for what they termed ‘borderline’ students:

In conclusion: we can’t expect students to understand what excellence looks like if we aren’t clear on the behaviours associated with it.

Something we're reading...

This short essay by Paul Graham is superb. In it, he tries deconstructing and discussing what persistence is, and how it differs from obstinacy or stubborness.

We want persistent students; we don’t want obstinate or stubborn ones, and this is a really insightful analysis of the difference. There are a range of takeaways that could help improve students’ vision and attitude. Here’s just one: persistence requires creativity, since persistent people fixate on a problem then change their approach when a solution doesn’t work. Obstinate people simply fixate on a solution, and try it over and over again.

Graham always writes with such clarity and intelligence… this would be a great tutor-group read so we’ve given you the link to the full essay:

…but also trimmed and edited it down to 2 sides of A4 in case you want to print it off to read and discuss. Here you go:

Portal Talk...

Connected to Graham’s work is that of Derek Sivers. Sivers recommends that instead of searching endlessly - stubbornly, perhaps - for ‘the perfect job’, we should focus our lives pursuing the answer to a problem, and this should form our “purpose”.

One activity that has been really effective has been “Problem Not Job”, aka “The Personal Compass”, from The GCSE Mindset. I’ve revamped the slides here for you to try…

Our latest offer... The ‘Steve’s Attic’ Bonanza!

Over the summer, Steve was back in the UK and clearing out his attic. What did he find but a box of our books, bought sometime ago to distribute at events, and then forgotten about. So we’ve got three old copies of The A Level Mindset to give away this week.

It’s very simple. If you’re amongst the first three people to email us right now at [email protected], and leave your school address, we’ll post them out to you for nowt. This newsletter lands at 3:20pm on September 6th, and we imagine by 3:45pm, we’ll have our winners. So if you’re reading this and the window is still open - drop us a line!

And that’s it folks. Good to be back!

All the best to you and yours,

Martin, Steve and Tony

p.s. If you’ve read and enjoyed it, we’d love you to give a star-rating to The VESPA Handbook. Just a quick review can help immensely. (As long as it’s a good one of course!)