The Friyay Mindset - Issue #8

March 05, 2021

We've had a fantastic week working with The Girls' Day School Trust [GDST]. The GDST is a group of 25 independent schools – 23 schools and two academies – in England and Wales, catering for girls aged 3 to 18. It is the largest group of independent schools in the UK and educates 20,000 girls each year. Over the last few years, we have worked with a number of GDST schools independently and supported the trust with various projects. This year the focus has been VESPA for key stage 3 pupils, and a high grades strategy for GCSE pupils. We've shared one of the activities we used below.

Here's something to try...

Brené Brown is an American professor, lecturer, author, and podcast host. She holds the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work and is a visiting professor in management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. We've been a big fan of her work for a number of years. In Dare to Lead, she makes the observation that, 'clear is kind, unclear is unkind'. This quote has had a big impact on our thinking. When we haven't had the impact we planned (with teachers or students) the first thing we always ask is, "have we been clear about what we expected?" Brown would argue that not being crystal clear about your expectations of a student, yet holding them accountable or blaming them for not delivering, is unkind.

With pupils returning next week we thought it might be a good idea to include an activity that helps us to be clear on the behaviours for effective learning at Key Stage 3.

So we've come up with 100 statements, describing 100 learning behaviours. The statements work as a great starting point for a structured discussion about clear expectations. What exactly is it that we want from our learners? You might ask staff or pupils to identify which behaviours are most important, and they build a list of their top ten. Or, if your staff and pupils are familiar with VESPA, you could ask them to select two they think fit vision, effort, systems, practice, and attitude.

We've cut the list into two chunks for you. The first 50 are below. We'll include the second 50 next week!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jq2nbhFLu27-HvFT3qvrw2LxPJXFgdkQ/view?usp=sharing

Here’s something we’ve been reading…

David Graeber’s Bullsh*t Jobs caused quite a stir when it first emerged in 2018. It's a superb piece of work, expanded from an article in which Graeber speculates about how different political systems create work. Communism, he argues, creates pointless jobs for the working classes; capitalism, by contrast, creates pointless white-collar jobs. Graeber illustrates his thesis with contributions from scores of people describing their experiences of "pointless work". (Sample response; "My job took one hour a day. The other seven or so were spent watching Youtube. Phone never rang. Data entered in five minutes or less. I got paid to be bored.") It's alarming stuff. The impact on the mental health of those trapped in this sort of work was huge. The book changed the way we conducted vision activities and discussed students' ambitions with them - meaningful work is absolutely central to wellbeing and sense of worth, as the sad stories of those trapped in "bullsh*t jobs" illustrates.

Buy Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work, and What We Can Do About It 01 by Graeber, David (ISBN: 9780141983479) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

Our latest offer...

Our publishers are doing a good offer on all three books at the moment. If you go to the website below and select the book you want and enter the code SPRING30, you'll get a 30% discount. If you are considering a bulk buy for your team, it's always worth contacting Jess at the publishers and seeing what she can do for you ([email protected]).

Read about The A Level Mindset from Crown House Publishing

Have a great weekend and best wishes for next week, if you are returning to school!

Steve & Martin