The Friday Mindset - Issue #28

October 15, 2021

Hello! It's Friday!

The last two months have been relentless for us both; Steve in the Middle East setting up a sixth form and running it through it's first few terms, Martin in the UK where a return to face-to-face CPD has meant day after day of train journeys and training sessions. It's been great, though! A quick reminder that...

(i) our online platform is now more popular than ever. We're working hard introducing schools to the online psychometric test and electronic resources. Say hello at [email protected] if you'd like a tour of the site and an explore of what it can do for students.

(ii) Our staff training is full until January 2022, but dates look pretty available at the moment in the spring term, so get in touch if you'd like to find out more about one or more of our five training sessions (an introduction to the model, coaching, implementation, VESPA for tutors, or our VESPA Champions training package.)

Right. With that said, let's kick back and take a moment. We had a very complementary email this week telling us how the newsletter 'prompts deep thinking where otherwise there would just be end-of-week brain fog', so let's hope this issue does the same.

Brew up. Find a classroom where you won't be disturbed. Steal a couple of Quality Street from the office staff - those gold-wrapped caramel sticks that everyone leaves to the end - and settle in.

Something to try...

We've been exploring vision with students by discussing what their goals were as children, and how our goals change as we grow. Taking a long view has been helpful in opening up conversations about what it is we might want at different stages of life.

One of the things we constantly see is how open and confident younger pupils are when discussing their goals. We've worked in primary school classes where kids are entirely unabashed as they discuss becoming footballers, architects, doctors or actors. Then, gradually, their self-awareness grows and with it, a desire to protect the ego and avoid failure... so that once we're older, we can find ourselves denying an interest in the very thing that excites us.

That's why, in a GCSE Mindset activity called Five Roads, we've found that the road labelled 'the 8 year-old me' (at the end of which students have to record what they wanted to achieve when they were younger) is often the one that is filled with the most notes and triggers the most conversations.

A good way into this whole examination of goals at different life stages is using the following video, in which seventy people, from the ages of 5 upwards - one person representing each year of life - discuss what their goals are. It's always a popular way into discussing vision for us!

p.s. a bad joke to accompany this session: "Time is a great teacher. (pause for dramatic effect) Unfortunately, it kills all its students." Ho ho.

Something we've been reading...

Not so much reading this week as watching. We've been following the progress of a team of Maths teachers at Runshaw College in Lancashire. They've decided to use a small number of VESPA activities with their retake GCSE students to see if the resources had an impact on the students' mindset, positivity, and eagerness to work harder at more tricky tasks.

We suspected they would - a short, informal study at another college amongst retake GCSE English students had shown a significant positive impact on pass rates - but we weren't entirely sure, particularly since the study took place during the 2020-2021 lockdown.

But the results were really impressive, and early feedback was presented at the college's CfEMLive2 conference. We've summarised the key points in some short clips (give us a shout at the usual address if you'd like them; they could be good at persuading other staff members on board...), but the full video is here:

CfEMLive2 – Friday 2nd of July 2021Intro Music Used (no copyright): Purrple Cat - Sundae SunsetVideo Edited by - @TediousVisuals

Our latest offer(s)...

It seems a good number of people would like us to run our free webinar on Practice again, so we're going to! The date for the repeat session will be Thursday 4th November; we'll start as usual at 3:45pm and run for about an hour. You get a copy of the powerpoint to share and re-use at work. For those of you who missed it first time around it's a good chance to catch it again. We're limiting the number of spaces on offer so that it doesn't feel too huge - but if you're pretty quick you should be OK.

Email us ay [email protected] and we'll send you the Zoom link. See you there!

And why not come along to our London training day? Picture the scene: it's December 14th. Snow falls in lacy curtains. Victorian street urchins tip their caps at you as you pass by, your bootsteps echoing. Somewhere in the distance, a choir sings carols.

None of those things are going to happen. It'll be raining and a balmy 16 degrees. But we'll still have a good day! We'll be exploring the model, discussing implementation, covering coaching, sharing new resources and answering any questions too. For newcomers and early adopters alike, it should be a good day. Details here:

Eventbrite - Steve Oakes & Martin Griffin presents VESPA - Full Day (London Course) - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at Union Jack Club, London, England. Find event and ticket information.

And that's it for this week. For us, it's just one more week to go and then it's half term... hopefully that's the case for you too. We'll do one more newsletter next week, then we'll take a HT break and resume on Friday 5th November - bonfire night!

Have a good weekend,

Steve and Martin

p.s. We'll try and run another training day in the North - probably Manchester - in the Spring/Summer of 2022, so look out for that. More details when we have them.