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In a world full of need, how can we ensure we help people in the best possible ways?

Mrs Efua Aremo, a Design & Technology Teacher at WHS, explores whether a ‘human-centred design’ approach can help us deliver solutions which are effective in meeting local and global needs.

A World full of Need

It is impossible to adequately describe the profound losses experienced over the past 12 months. There are the more measurable losses such as employment, finance and health but then there are also the relational losses caused by isolation and tragic bereavements. It has been a brutal year for many, and the impact of the pandemic has been acutely felt by the most vulnerable.

When we are confronted with such needs both locally and internationally, we desire to help in any way we can, as Mr Keith Cawsey observed in his December article. However, it doesn’t take long to discover that people have many different types of needs and there are many different types of help we might provide.

What do we need?

“I need blue skies, I need them old times, I need something good…”

Those words from singer-songwriter, Maverick Sabre, powerfully captures the sense of longing many of us feel for simple things like sunshine and for more intangible things we struggle to name.

One of the most popular ways of categorising human needs was introduced by Abraham Maslow in 1943, it is known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

 

‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’ © Verywell / Joshua Seong. Used with Permission.

Maslow’s hierarchy describes five different levels of need:

  1. Physiological: basic needs such as water, food and sleep.
  2. Safety: security and freedom from danger.
  3. Love/Belonging: the desire for relationships of love, affection and belonging.
  4. Esteem: a stable, positive self-evaluation and respect from others.
  5. Self-actualisation: the desire to realise one’s full potential.

How can we help?

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The old proverb quoted above helps us as we think about the types of help we might provide to people in need.

Through observing the charitable work of religious and humanitarian organisations, we can identify at least four levels of assistance:

  • Emergency Relief: giving direct help to meet immediate needs – “give a man a fish.”
  • Longer-Term Development: giving assistance which results in a person or community being able to meet their own needs – “teach a man to fish.”
  • Social Reform: overcoming the adverse social conditions or systems which lead to injustice or oppression.
  • Advocacy/Campaigns: providing information about needs to people who are able to help.

This article focusses on the first two categories.

When Helping isn’t Helpful

© Africacollection / Shutterstock

Sometimes, efforts to provide help do not achieve the intended result. For example, in 2010, a US aid agency installed 600 hand pumps to supply clean water for rural households in northern Mozambique. The aim was to help the women and girls who travelled long distances to collect contaminated water from wells and rivers. The aid agency imagined that the pumps would save time, improve health conditions and empower the women to start small businesses. However, these water pumps were not used by most of the people in the community. What went wrong?

Helping those who are different to ourselves

Though the desire to help others is always to be commended, it can often be accompanied by wrong assumptions which hinder our ability to help effectively. This is especially true when we are seeking to help people from a different economic status, ethnicity or culture to our own.

It is tempting to assume we know what people need, especially if they have basic physiological needs which are not being met. However, even in his original paper, Maslow acknowledged that human beings are more complex than the tidy logic of his hierarchy suggests. He recognised that the lower-order needs do not need to be completely satisfied before the higher-order needs become important. Therefore, when helping the neediest people in society, we need to get to know them beyond their basic needs.

Recognising this fact is key to understanding what went wrong with the water pumps in Mozambique. The aid agency seems to have stereotyped the rural women as passive, needy people and so failed to ask their opinion about where best to locate the new pumps. They focussed their attention on providing access to clean water but did not account for the fact that the original water sites were “important social spaces where women exchanged information, shared work, socialized their children, and had freedom outside the home.” The new sites lacked the privacy, shade and areas for laundry and bathing which the women valued, and so the new water pumps were rejected.

Thankfully, we can learn from experiences like this to devise better ways of helping people in need.

Human-Centred Design: A Better Way?

“In order to get to new solutions, you have to get to know different people, different scenarios, different places.”

Human-centred design (also known as ‘design thinking’) is an approach to problem-solving which involves partnering with those in need of help to deliver the solutions which most benefit them. It involves “building deep empathy with the people you’re designing for… as you immerse yourself in their lives and come to deeply understand their needs.”

 

The Elements of Human-Centred Design

 

But this does not mean that those who are being helped are only consulted at the start of the process. Human-centred design is a non-linear collaborative process which involves back-and-forth communication between those helping and those needing help. Together they produce many design iterations until they find a solution which best suits those who need it. It is obvious how this approach might have led to better results in Mozambique.

Human-centred design involves looking beyond their needs and acknowledging the full humanity of the people who we wish to help: appreciating their culture, discovering what they value, and how they might contribute to meeting their own needs.

Sternin in Vietnam © positivedeviance.org

Taking a more human-centred approach enabled Jerry Sternin from Save the Children to successfully deal with the problem of severe malnutrition amongst children in rural Vietnam in the 1990s. Previous attempts had relied on aid workers providing resources from outside the affected communities – these methods proved unsustainable and ineffective.

Sternin discovered that despite their poverty, some mothers were managing to keep their children healthy. So he sought to learn from them and discovered what they were doing differently from their neighbours: they were feeding their children smaller meals multiple times a day rather than the conventional twice daily. They were also adding to these meals freely available shellfish and sweet potato greens even though other villagers did not deem these appropriate for children.

By empowering the mothers to train other families in these practices, Sternin was able to help the community help itself. Malnutrition in northern Vietnam was greatly reduced through implementing this effective, empowering and sustainable local solution.

The Wonderbag

Wonderbag by Conasi.eu, CC BY-NC 3.0[iii]

Another sustainable design solution is the Wonderbag, which is a non-electric slow-cooker. Once a pot of food has been brought to the boil and placed in the foam-insulated Wonderbag, it will continue to cook (without the need for additional heat) for up to 12 hours. This product was developed in South Africa to address the problems caused by cooking indoors on open fires. It has vastly improved the lives of the women who use them because cooking with the Wonderbag uses less fuel and water, improves indoor air-quality, and frees up time which many girls and women have used to invest in their education, employment, or to start their own businesses. Local women use their sewing skills to customise the Wonderbags with their own cultural designs.

Human-Centred Design at WHS

Year 9 WHS Design Students

In Year 9, design students at WHS are tasked with designing assistive devices for clients with disabilities. One of the first things they need to do is get to know their users; seeing beyond their disabilities and discovering who they are, what they love, and what they hate.

One pupil found that her client who suffers from benign tremors loves to paint but hates having to use massive assistive devices because they draw too much attention to her.  This pupil is currently developing a discrete product which will help their client paint again, meeting her needs for esteem and self-actualisation.

Helping Others in this Time of Need

In the midst of a global pandemic and in its aftermath, we will encounter people in need of both emergency relief and longer-term development assistance. Perhaps by adopting a human-centred design approach, we will be able to help others in ways which are effective, sustainable, and which recognise the beautifully complex humanity of those in need.

REFERENCES

  • Rawpixel.com, Shutterstock Image ID: 212764069, n.d.

  • Keith Cawsey, “What Has COVID Taught Us about Our Relationships with Others?,” WimTeach, 10 December 2020, http://whs-blogs.co.uk/teaching/covid-taught-us-relationships-others/.
  • Maverick Sabre, I Need (Official Video), 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZNtticFI60.
  • Abraham H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation, 1943, http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm.
  • Joshua Seong, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, 2020, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4136760.
  • Timothy Keller, Generous Justice (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010); Oxfam GB, “How We Spend Your Money,” n.d., https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/how-we-spend-your-money/.
  • Africacollection, Shutterstock Image ID: 714414436, n.d.
  • Emily Van Houweling, Misunderstanding Women’s Empowerment (Posner Center, 2020), https://posnercenter.org/catalyst_entry/misunderstanding-womens-empowerment/.
  • Emily Van Houweling, Misunderstanding Women’s Empowerment.
  • Emi Kolawole, Stanford University d.school cited in IDEO.org, The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design: Design Kit, 2015, 22.
  • IDEO.org, “What Is Human-Centred Design?,” Design Kit, n.d., https://www.designkit.org/human-centered-design.
  • Monique Sternin, “The Vietnam Story: 25 Years Later,” Positive Deviance Collaborative, n.d., https://positivedeviance.org/case-studies-all/2018/4/16/the-vietnam-story-25-years-later.
  • Jerry Sternin and Robert Choo, “The Power of Positive Deviancy,” Harvard Business Review, 1 January 2000, https://hbr.org/2000/01/the-power-of-positive-deviancy.
  • Conasi.eu, Wonderbag CC BY-NC 3.0, n.d., https://www.conasi.eu/cocina-lenta/3088-wonderbag-mediana-batik-rosa.html.

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Are you pining for some overseas adventure?

Ali Fryer-Bovill, Teacher of English at WHS, and her family Bov, Darcey and Freddie invite you to a special, travel-inspired WimTeach this week: around the World in 7 menus. Tuck in…

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Quite so, Mark Twain. And how difficult it is for many of us now, who hanker very deeply for positive glimpses of unknown places, to breathe in that feeling that you are doing something far away, for the very first time.

In an attempt to alleviate the sadness caused by our cancelled trip to a Sri Lankan wedding last Easter, Darcey and Freddie set about creating an indoor plane in our sitting room. It featured ‘comfy seats’ in rows with bottles of pop and electronic devices strewn. ‘Beep!!’ they would shout, and dutifully their parents would rush down the ‘aisle’ to answer their every need. ‘Please can I have some sweets?’ or ‘Please can you fluff up my cushions and sort out my blankets while I go to the toilet?’ and even, ‘Please can you give me my menu choices?’

Yup. Choices.

All the treats of travel that begin with choices on the plane – before in fact, when choosing what to pack – which dresses or books you can squeeze in without going over your limit, what new things you (don’t) need in your washbag; everything carefully considered and nothing taken for granted.

And this, when we realised how many small things we each missed about our travels, is when our idea of ‘Around the World in 7 menus’ was born.

We took it in turns to choose our countries. Me: ‘Sri Lanka…’ Darcey: ‘Err.. Spain!’ Fred: ‘Italy!!!’ Bov: ‘Hmm. Peru.’ etc. until we had filled up our first week. The children, using little scraps of paper and a giant stapler, created ‘passports’ and honourably filled in pages of flags and facts in endless styles of bubble writing. And I embarked upon menu-collating, from old friends and family, to see what sort of shopping list I needed to create for my now-much-cherished-once-a-week adventure in a car, to the supermarket.

The most interesting thing to me, as the main cook in our house, was that shopping in this way – collecting unusual items and very specific ingredients – did not add complication or brain-ache to my life. Quite the opposite, in fact. The first time we did it, I did not find myself at 6pm on Thursday with that all too familiar…’oh! Let’s have a look at what we’ll have tonight. Err… an aubergine… some old mushrooms… a bit of out-of-date crème fraiche… ahhh! Leeks! AND… oh. A black pudding.’ Yuck, frankly. Every Thursday the same – just different combinations of yuck.

But no more! Thursday evening would be… ‘let me see – ahh! Thailand!’ and the lemon grass, coconut milk and fish sauce would be ready calling, proud to act as the base for something wonderful sent over on a pdf by our local family-run Thai pub.

We have collated several passports of weeks of world tours at different times in various lockdowns, including France, Russia, Tanzania, France, Sweden, France… (what it is about France that makes you keep on needing to return to its food?) I feel we are keeping our curiosity for new places alive through bringing some of them into our home – as, not wanting to labour the point – what choices do we currently have?

I will now share with you 4 items towards a week of ‘Around the World in 7 menus’: 2 vegetarian, 1 seafood, and 1 meat.

1st stop: Hill Country, Sri Lanka

 

Shani’s dhal: packed with flavour and utterly comforting, this dish was a staple of the Fryer family (4 generations of doctors/ and later tea planters in Madulkele) and something Darcey and Fred will eat for breakfast (if I haven’t got there first). And they claim to have seen me eat it straight out of the pan (blooming fantasists).

Music to accompany: A collection of Sinhala songs and Baila

  • Red lentils – Masoor dal/daal/dhal
  • One red onion
  • Tomato (finely chopped cherry tomatoes add a sweetness)
  • An inch of ginger, a clove or two of garlic
  • A handful of curry leaves
  • A can (or more) of coconut milk
  • Spice powders (turmeric, chili, cumin, coriander, salt)
  • Mustard seeds, Cumin seeds

For the tempering (spicy salsa)

  • More cherry toms, another onion, a clove of garlic and a bit of brown sugar, and same spices

METHOD

Step 1

Start by rinsing the lentils, until the water runs clear.

Step 2

In a pot combine the dal, coconut milk, onion, tomato, spice powders, garlic, salt and bring to boil. Cover and cook until all the fluid has evaporated and the dhal is cooked. If it looks dry at any point, add a slosh of water.

Step 3

Add any spare coconut milk, extra water and simmer. You may need to add more salt to bring out the flavours.

Step 4

We add a tempering (or ‘spicy salsa’ as the kids call it) to the dhal to bring more flavour. Heat a small non-stick pan and add oil, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves, dried chili pieces, chopped cherry toms, sliced onion, brown sugar and garlic. Heat until the toms have melted and it all splutters. Add this caramalised tempering to the dhal.

Enjoy with rice, or chapati, or naan, or pitta, and a very cold beer, or lime juice.

I can hear the Ceylon Hanging Parrots as I type.

2nd stop: Trincomalee, Sri Lanka

Keshia’s mum’s Pol Sambol: another absolute favourite food of mine is ‘Pol Sambol’. I would sprinkle it on virtually anything edible but used to particularly love it smothered over scrambled eggs in Sri Lanka, adding a life-changing punch of sweet, sour and spiciness.

But I have never made a good job of creating it. Believe me I have tried! I think the way I have grated the coconut has been wrong. So I have turned to a culinary mentor within our school community – Nalagini Mahen – to aid me in providing this recipe, and I intend to try it myself next week, to accompany our Friday celebratory breakfast at home of scrambled eggs on toast.

From Keshia: ‘’We had it two nights ago with dosa! Keep in mind the recipe is catered towards people with a high spice tolerance so feel free to lower down some measurements to your liking.’’

  • Grated coconut – 100g (fresh)
  • Dried red chili – 8 to 10 depending how hot you would like it
  • Small onion / Shallots – 5 to 7
  • Curry leaves – 1 stem
  • Ginger- half an inch
  • Lime – As you need
  • Salt – As you need

METHOD

Step 1

In a pan heat half a spoon of ghee or oil and sauté the following ingredients; curry leaves and red chilli but do not deep fry or burn.

Step 2

Take that out and then add shallots and ginger into the pan and toss in the remaining ghee/oil.

Step 3

When this is ready grind sautéed red chilli along with curry leaves and salt in any sort of blender (a food processor is recommended) then empty it.

Step 4

Grab a pestle and mortar. Add shallots and ginger into the mortar and grind until a fine pulp

Step 5

Add in your red chilli mix from the blender. Finally add in your coconut and grind with the pestle and mortar till as fine as you like. Squeeze in a lime or two.

Put in a jar and place in the fridge. Pol Sambol is used like a chutney.

Shani’s Dhal, and Keshia’s mum’s Pol Sambol would go so beautifully together, if anyone is ever stuck for what to give me for my birthday…

3rd stop: Spain

 

Saffi’s Seafood Paella: definite glass in hand cooking this one (Bov’s late wife’s family initiated him into Spanish cooking.) Luxuriate while you watch it bubble and you can actually hear the Catalan rumba calling.

Music to accompany: Paco Pena

 (for a longer playlist)

  • 1L (4 cups) fish stock
  • 1/2 tsp saffron threads
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 300g skinless firm white fish fillets, cut into thumb-lengthish pieces
  • 1 chorizo, thinly sliced diagonally
  • 1 red onion, thinly sliced
  • 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 2 teaspoons paprika
  • 1 long fresh red chilli, thinly sliced
  • 1 small red capsicum, thinly sliced
  • 1 small yellow capsicum, thinly sliced
  • 330g (1 1/2 cups) arborio rice – or any risotto rice alternative
  • 125ml (1/2 cup) white wine
  • 8 large prawns, unpeeled
  • 200g squid tubes, thinly sliced into rings (I buy frozen)
  • 80g (1/2 cup) frozen baby peas
  • One lemon, wedge
  • Chopped fresh continental parsley, to sprinkle

METHOD

Step 1

Bring stock and saffron to the boil in a saucepan over high heat. Remove from heat and cover to keep warm.

Step 2

Heat the oil in a paella pan or large frying pan over medium-high heat. Season fish. Cook, turning, for 2 minutes or until almost cooked through. Transfer to a bowl and cover.

Step 3

Add chorizo and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until brown. Stir in onion, garlic, paprika, chilli and combined capsicum for 4-5 minutes or until soft. Stir in rice for 1 minute. Stir in wine for 1 minute or until wine evaporates.

Step 4

Add stock mixture to pan, reserving 80ml (1/3 cup). Reduce heat to low. Cook, without stirring, for 15 minutes.

Step 5

Push prawns and squid into rice. Add the reserved stock. Cook for 10 minutes. Add fish. Cook for 5 minutes or until liquid is almost absorbed. Sprinkle with peas. Shove lemon wedges in the surface. Cover with foil. Rest for a few minutes and then devour with something crisp, snappy and refreshing.

4th Stop: India

Nazlee’s Tandoori leg of lamb: Another country we find ourselves returning to on our menu tour, with alarming regularity is, of course, India. Here I am going to share a mouth-watering dish from our very own Nazlee Haq, who teaches Maths at WHS.  Like most meat dishes from Asia,  prepare the marinade and allow it to infuse the day before cooking – not only does this aid the fragrances to percolate, but also tenderises the meat.

‘I have made this many, many times and it never fails to please! The key is the marinade, leaving the leg in the marinade overnight and cooking the leg on a long, low heat.’ Nazlee Haq

Music to accompany: Carnatic Music, Fusion music

(Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar)

  • 1 leg of lamb, around 2.5kg

For the marinade:

  • 2 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tbsp cumin seeds
  • 1tsp black peppercorn seeds
  • 250ml yoghurt
  • 1 whole bulb of garlic, peeled and grated (I buy frozen cubes of garlic from the Asian section in big supermarkets, just as good and time saving. Would use three chunks for this recipe)
  • 8cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated (again, you can buy the frozen version. Would use three chunks for this recipe)
  • Juice from 1 lemon (or a few tbsps from a bottle)
  • 1tsp red chilli powder
  • 2tsp salt
  • 2tbsp olive oil
  • Generous handful of fresh, chopped coriander

METHOD

Step 1

The day before serving, score the lamb and trim excess fat but leave some as it will cook and keep the lamb juicy.

Step 2

Take the whole spices (cumin, coriander, peppercorn) and gently toast on a frying pan for no more than a minute – you should smell an aroma! Do not let them burn. In an electric grinder (I have a coffee for this) or a pestle and mortar, grind the whole spices. In a large bowl, mix the remaining ingredients.

Step 3

Put the leg of lamb in the roasting dish/pan and cover with the marinade.  Get stuck in and rub the marinade into the grooves. Cover with clingfilm or foil. Leave in the fridge overnight.

Step 4

The next day, pre heat the oven to gas mark 4/180C/350F. Remove the covering from the roasting pan and add 150ml of water. Cover again with foil, making sure you seal the edges. Place the pan in the oven. Cook for 2¼ hours for lamb that is pink in the middle. I personally cook for at least another hour as like mine well done and at this point the lamb will be so tender it will melt off the bone. For the last 20 minutes of cooking I remove the foil and scoop out some of the juices to make a gravy. I place the lamb back in the oven to let it brown, if needed. If not, let it rest, covered whilst you make your gravy.

When ready, the meat should be very tender. We normally have this with rice, seasoned Greek yoghurt flavoured with chopped mint and coriander (raita) and a simple salad.

And to finish…

Thank you so much to Shani, Nalagini, Saffi and Nazlee for joining us in our home and on our travels around the world, by sharing these amazing family secrets with me, and now allowing me to share them with the whole WHS community.

If anybody does make it ‘around the world in 7 menus’, please do share your discoveries with @WimbledonHigh on social media and perhaps we can make our own bespoke WHS passport of culinary temptations. Or, if you try out any of the above, please send me a photograph, as sharing food with friends and family is something we massively miss, just as we miss our adventures overseas.

Thank you in advance, and safe travels all!

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Why is it socially acceptable to say: “I’m bad at Maths”?

Alys Lloyd, a Maths Teacher at Wimbledon High School, looks at society’s attitude towards Maths, what makes a good mathematician, and how you can compare the retaining of mathematics knowledge to that of languages.

Teachers do have social lives, although to our students this might be a shocking idea. A teacher being spotted outside of school, in the supermarket for example, can send some students into a flat spin. So the idea of a teacher being at a party might be difficult to imagine, but I can assure you, it does happen!

At parties and in social situations with people who don’t know me, I have found that my job can, unfortunately, put a bit of dampener on things. A typical conversation opener is to ask what someone does for a living. The most common response to my saying that I’m a Maths teacher is “oh, wow” then something along the lines of “I was never any good at Maths in school.” Then the person I was talking to politely excuses themselves. I now tend to dodge that kind of question and stick to safer topics.

Why is it socially acceptable to say you are bad at Maths? I doubt that so many people would be so upfront saying that they can’t read… So why does Maths get such bad press?

My Theory

Mathematics is a very black and white subject, with normally only one right answer, although there may be lots of different ways to get there. Many people have been put off Maths because in the past they have got stuck, had a negative experience and not known how to get to the correct solution.

This may have been because the teaching was poor, or the methods they were taught to use didn’t make sense to them, or they didn’t speak up in class so didn’t get help. I believe that by far the most common reason is that they take getting stuck personally. They believe that they didn’t get the right answer because they themselves are bad at Maths. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is something that just happened in the past; it still happens, and I see it happening with the highly achieving girls at WHS. They are not used to getting things wrong, finding something difficult, having to struggle, and they take it personally – they internalise this as a failure: they are bad at Maths.

Which leads us to the question: what makes someone ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at Maths? Who is someone who is ‘good’ at Maths? A Lecturer or Professor of Mathematics? A Maths teacher? Or someone who simply enjoys doing Maths? Is it about who you are comparing yourself to? As a Maths teacher, my level of mathematics is low compared to a Mathematics Professor. Being good at mental arithmetic is not the same as being good at Maths; possibly conversely in fact – professional Mathematicians are notoriously bad at mental arithmetic, as are some Maths teachers!

So, for people who say: “I’m bad at Maths”, they may think that those people who are ‘good’ at Maths never get stuck; never struggle to get to the answer. But I can assure you, that is not the case. I am a Maths teacher and I get stuck on Maths problems. I definitely don’t always immediately know how to get to the answer.

I believe the difference in how you feel about Maths is about what you do when you get stuck, because we ALL get stuck. Being stuck isn’t bad – it’s part of the process. It is a way of forming new connections in the brain; it’s a part of learning.

When I get stuck on a problem I don’t take it personally; I don’t take it as a reflection of my mathematical ability; I think of it as a challenge, a conundrum to be figured out, a puzzle to be solved. If I can’t find a solution quickly, I stop and try to think about it differently. Could it be thought about in another way? Can I visualise it by drawing a sketch or diagram? Is there an alternative approach or method I haven’t tried? Have I used all the information I have available? These are very important problem-solving skills and have lots of relevance to everyday life.

Above: Thinking, via Pexels

 

Use it or lose it

Mathematics in many ways can be considered its own language. When learning languages, you start with basics: hello, please, thank you, and a few important sentences (dos cervezas, por favor); and build up to be able to communicate fluidly. If you have ever tried to learn a language seriously, you will know that it is not a smooth process. You go through phases of thinking you’re doing great, then you feel like you plateau – you realise that there is a whole verb tense you had no idea existed, that you now need to learn.

Maths is similar. You need to know the basics: numbers, patterns, arithmetic, and a few important ideas like algebra; and you build up to some quite complicated Maths like calculus, proof, complex numbers. With Maths numbers and algebra are the words, and rules like BIDMAS are the grammar. They are a means to the same end as languages – to communicate effectively.

One aspect of learning a language (or learning a musical instrument) is that if you don’t practise it regularly, you start to lose the gains you had made; it becomes more difficult, and eventually you forget. I firmly believe – that like a language – if you don’t use Maths, if you don’t practise it regularly, you start to lose it.

For me, this explains why parents can struggle to remember how to do school-level Maths with their children, even if they found it easy when they were young – they haven’t practised it in years. It can seem like an alien language – it’s hard to pick something up again when you have had such a long gap.

Yet even if you, yourself, haven’t used Maths in years, you are constantly using things that have been programmed by someone using Mathematics. Maths underpins everything ‘modern’ around us: the computer at which I am typing this article, the smartphone in your pocket; it keeps planes in the air and stops them crashing into each other; it’s in our buildings, in our clothes; Maths is fundamental to our modern style of living.

We want to encourage our children to feel it is socially unacceptable to be bad at Maths. We want them to be the ones solving the problems of the future, and part of this will certainly require mathematics.

So, what’s the take-home message? I’d like to think it’s this: in Maths, as in life, we all get stuck, but the people who succeed are the ones who don’t give up. And if you are lucky enough to meet a Maths teacher at a party, please be nice!

Above: Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels
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How can studying our surroundings enrich historical enquiry?

Emily Anderson, Head of History, reflects on how the pandemic has thrown the department’s thinking about place into relief, and how this is manifest in the History classroom and in inter-disciplinary thinking.

Let’s observe, Attenborough style, the historian at work. What comes to mind as you peer tentatively into your imagination, careful not to disturb? I would be certain that, to some extent, you would gravitate towards a library, or an archive, and rightly so. For this is where the historian finds their treasure, following lead upon lead to synthesise their research into new understanding, often of people and events far removed from our own experience. Whilst the primary location for our WHS historians is the classroom rather than the archive or library (with a healthy engagement with the latter, of course), the principle remains; understanding emerges through study of the sources.

And yet, how much poorer our understanding would be if we stayed in the archive. Venture outside, and our surroundings become another historical source, there to challenge and broaden our thinking. The potential of this has long inspired me: my Master’s dissertation in 2014 considered how far the political context of the debates over Home Rule in Ireland influenced the construction of Belfast City Hall, building on both an element of my undergraduate study but also my teaching at A Level at the time. Recently, I have felt the draw towards such lines of enquiry particularly keenly, as our world has shrunk due to the pandemic and the opportunities normally available to me and my department to explore the world for ourselves and, crucially, share this with our students on trips (always a wonderful experience) have not been available. Talking with family, friends and colleagues, I know that we are not alone in this.

Within the curriculum

We can, however, still incorporate the study of places into our curriculum. At A Level, we teach a study of the British Empire from c1857-1967. It is, of course, a very wide-ranging unit in terms of geographical reach and this is one of the things which drew us to it; the opportunity, not widely available at A Level, to study global history. The uniting focus of the course is Britain, but to only study the impact and debate from this perspective would be a severe dereliction of our duty as historians. The impact of the European empires on the physical landscape of periphery and metropole alike is striking – the more you look, the more you see and traditional narratives are disrupted. In our city, Notting Hill, now a by-word for the celebration of multi-culturalism, has become so because of migration from what was the Empire. To wander the streets and museums of South Kensington is to experience, to my mind, a showcase of the imperial project. Reading the testimonies of those involved in the Morant Bay uprising in Jamaica, and coupling these with the incredible sense of place evoked by David Olusoga in his documentary work, means that even sites of memory far away and currently inaccessible to us can be explored in the classroom.[1]

At GCSE, our course looks at Berlin during the Cold War. I find the city both wonderfully vibrant and hauntingly evocative, and love taking our students there to experience it for themselves. It is the unexpected, small-scale artefacts that intrigue the most – the oversize floodlight which lit up the approach to the Berlin Wall, still on the front of an apartment block though the Wall is long gone; the first memorial to the Holocaust, barely registered by those who pass it in the suburb of Schöneberg; the American-style cinema built for the occupying troops but more at home in the Midwest. The questions students ask both on such trips and back in the classroom show how such experiences enable them to see the history they study in new ways. Excitingly, our new GCSE, which the current Y9s will study from September, gives us the opportunity to conduct a study of Spitalfields, an area shaped and enriched by the diverse communities which have settled there. Classroom and in-situ enquiry will work together to bring our understanding to life.

At Key Stage Three, we are embarking on a total overhaul of our curriculum. This gives us the exciting opportunity to reconsider how we incorporate our surroundings into historical study, and how we can use trips to their best advantage to complement it. Inspiration has abounded – one of the upsides of the past year has been the extraordinary availability of online seminars and training. We have been trialling some new enquiries with Year 9, including ‘What secrets of the past are hidden within the walls of a house?’, which uses the BBC programme and book ‘A House Through Time’ as a starting point for a study of social change in Liverpool in the 19th and 20th centuries.[2] Again, we have found ourselves drawing on a place – here a home – to focus and enrich our historical thinking.[3]

Inter-disciplinary opportunities

An interest in place, in all its complexities, is something we share with our colleagues and friends in Geography. You will have seen Dr Stephanie Harel’s article in October on this blog and this sparked thinking about how we could collaborate to share expertise and experience and develop understanding.[4] The Y12 History and Geography students participated in an initial exploration of themes around place during the STEAM+ event in November, and led the first joint session of Geog On, History Girls and Politics Society, sharing what they’d discussed. We are continuing our joint meetings this term.

I hope that this has given you some insight into an aspect of our current thinking as a department. We would love the wider community to be part of the conversation about our curriculum. Please do get in touch if you would like to via email or Twitter.

Further reading/ideas – along with the material referenced in the post

There are some wonderful walking tours of London which I would thoroughly recommend – some are online at the moment. Try www.open-city.org.uk, https://sixinthecity.co.uk/ and https://www.womenonthewalk.co.uk/women-on-the-march.

Brian Ladd’s ‘The Ghosts of Berlin’ – a wonderful reflection on this most fascinating of cities.

‘The Companion Guide to…’ series – for in-depth itineraries around different cities and countries.

[1] P. Gopal, Insurgent Empire, London, Verso, 2019; Black and British: A Forgotten History, D. Olusoga, BBC, 2016

[2] A House Through Time, D. Olusoga, BBC, 2018; D. Olusoga and M. Backe-Hansen, A House Through Time, London, Picador, 2020

[3] With thanks to Holly Beckwith for masterminding and planning this enquiry

[4] http://whs-blogs.co.uk/teaching/positive-geographies-covid-19/

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What has COVID taught us about our relationships with others?

Mr Keith Cawsey, Head of Religious Studies at Wimbledon High, looks at the impact that COVID has had on our local community and the impact that small acts of kindness have in helping those in need.

Last December, as I was sitting having a cup of tea with a colleague in the Humanities office, our conversation moved on to this ‘mysterious virus’ that was emerging from China. It was spreading through a city called Wuhan and no-one knew what it was or the impact it had on health. It seemed a million miles away, far, far away from SW19. We discussed what would happen if it travelled over to London, but we both agreed that this seemed highly unlikely. We all know what happened next. Case after case, COVID 19 crept closer and closer and took over our lives in a very short space of time and in a way that we would never have imagined.

I believe that COVID has taught us a great deal about ourselves and the community that we live in.

The first thing to happen was sheer panic. I remember visiting my local supermarket at 0700 when it opened. What I saw was nothing short of apocalyptic – people running through the supermarket (and over each other) to grab the last remaining packets of toilet roll. Quite a few had five / ten packets in their trolley and they then selfishly guarded their ‘booty’ as they waited at the checkouts. Others snatched bread, milk, eggs, teabags, meat, butter – whatever they could find and piled their trollies sky high with food so that their families would not be without. What followed in the news? Pictures of bins piled high with out of date food and meat. It seemed that the whole country had become increasingly selfish and the only people who mattered were the people in their families. What had happened to us?

Every religion is unique, but what is particularly interesting is the similarities between them. One thing that stands out as a ‘golden thread’ from all worldviews is charity and caring for others.

Indeed, every religion encourages its followers to care for others, particularly the poor and vulnerable.

  • Hinduism teaches about ‘atman’ – the aspect of God that is in each and every one of us. As equals on this planet, we need to protect every living thing, including animals.
  • The Buddha taught about compassion and how to alleviate suffering, ‘dukkha’.
  • Guru Nanak taught about the importance of providing for others, physically and spiritually.
  • Jesus Christ taught us to ‘love your neighbour’.
  • At the heart of the Jewish faith is ‘Tzedakah’ – a religious duty to provide for anyone in need.
  • One of the Five Pillars of Islam is ‘Zakah’ – 2.5% of all income is shared amongst those in society who need it most.

As we all know, you don’t have to be religious to feel a moral duty to help others. Humanists believe that by helping others, we make society fairer and it is an obligation of us all to provide for those in need.

So while some where piling their trollies sky high with food that would go to waste, what happened next was nothing short of a miracle. As most of us sat safe at home, we started to think about those in our community who carried on regardless: our refuse collectors, our post people, policemen and women, our firefighters, our nurses and doctors. I am sure that no-one will ever forget standing on our doorsteps clapping for our NHS workers who went to work each day putting themselves in the eye of the storm, quietly, diligently and without any fuss.

It became clear to me that in the middle of such a national catastrophe, there were two types of people – those that cared only about themselves and those who put themselves out to help others in whatever way they could – a phone call / a doorstep conversation / a text to people who lived alone. Streets became connected like never before. People were knocking on their neighbours’ doors. Shopping lists were exchanged and those who were shielding were cared for – food deliveries were made. We realised that even though we were scared about the pandemic, it was our moral duty to care for those who needed us.

In Merton, the following charities helped those in need:

  • The Faith in Action Merton Homeless Project
  • Merton Giving Coronavirus Fund
  • Merton Mutual Aid
  • MVSC Covid-19 Community Response Hub
  • Stem4 (Teenage Mental Health Charity)
  • The Dons Local Action Group
  • Wimbledon Food Bank
  • Wimbledon Guild

Some volunteered, others gave tinned food outside supermarkets and others were able to give a financial contribution.

We realised that even though we live our separate lives, the one thing that unites us is our community.

We will be talking about the pandemic for years to come but I hope that the one thing we will reflect on is the power of community. We will never ever again take for granted the tireless work of our NHS staff and our key workers and we should all aim to keep the conversations going with our neighbours.

We are stronger together and we should always aim to be kind. These are the connections and relationships that really matter. Happiness is sometimes a cup of tea, a meal cooked by someone else or a text from someone who you haven’t heard from for a while. These acts of kindness can often cost very little but are invaluable to the recipient and really matter.

Let’s hope that we are turning a corner with COVID and can get back to a ‘normal’ life soon. But when we do, we should always remember the connections we have made and the power that our community has when we truly work together and show kindness and love for one another.

‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.’

Matthew 25:35

If you would like to support Wimbledon High’s Christmas 2020 Project please do visit our Christmas Firefly Page where you can find out all about our Access to Learning Project, where we are raising funds to support the purchase of computers for pupils in two of our local primary partner schools, enabling their pupils to access learning when they are at home owing to self-isolation requirements. If every pupil in Wimbledon High raised just £10 each, we would have raised over £10000 in total, enabling the purchase of 40 iPads or laptops!

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Steam+ in MFL

Claire Baty, Head of French and Mandarin, considers how Modern Foreign Languages connect with other subjects.

“No subject can exist in isolation: discourse and community are central to the progression of knowledge and understanding”[1]. This is the absolute backbone for the study of Modern Foreign Languages. It makes no sense to learn a language in isolation because a fundamental purpose of learning a language is to communicate; to facilitate discourse between different communities, countries and nationalities in order to further our understanding of each other and what connects us.

It is easy to make superficial links between subjects; learning numbers in Year 7 by doing basic maths or practicing the imperative by giving instructions for a PE warm up in a foreign language. These lessons all provide valuable opportunities to reinforce vocabulary, but they feel like an add on, a tick box exercise. The key to true interdisciplinary learning is to stop seeing our own subjects in isolation and start seeing the themes, the skills, the whole world problems and solutions that we examine with our students.

Above: Business vector created by freepik

Take for example students learning Mandarin Chinese. Being able to recognise and write in character is linked to a deeper insight into the culture and civilisation of countries where Chinese is spoken, which in turns requires an understanding of the history of that country. This inevitably leads to an appreciation of the current economic and political climate in that country. Three key areas of study for Mandarin Pre-U overlap significantly with History, Geography and Economics. This is what is so wonderful about Steam+ as an approach to curriculum building: expertise across the school can be used to fuel a student’s curiosity and develop a passion for a subject that is not limited to one perspective.

At A Level the interdisciplinary links between MFL and other subjects are more obvious; Y13 French students study the occupation of France and German students the reunification of Germany. However, Steam+ is about creating opportunities within the curriculum for all year groups.

Consider for example our Year 10 German students who were able to explore 100 years of the Bauhaus movement by attending exhibitions and screenings in German. The language they had been learning in class to discuss their fictional interior designs gained more significance when they saw it in a real-life context.

Students in Year 7 French consider the idea of secularism and religious freedom and how fundamental that is to the French constitution and everyday life in France when they look at what it is like to be a pupil at school in France. Delving deeper into this value system, alongside others, is an opportunity to encourage tolerance and understanding and to allow students to make connections where perhaps they had not expected them.

The connections between learning a foreign language and travel are clear, so our Year 9 scheme of work is structured around a project where students discover the varied and exciting world that is la Francophonie. Using the vocabulary learnt in class to examining the geography, culture, traditional dress, culinary delights and song of different French speaking countries they are able to broaden their understanding of what it means to be French yet also begin to consider the implications of France’s colonial history.

Languages vector
Above: people vector created by freepik

Reforms to the GCSE since 2016 have meant that the study of literary texts has become an essential part of any MFL scheme of work. This presents so many opportunities for the transfer of skills between MFL and English. The sense of pride and achievement that students in Year 9 experience from being able to decode the future tense from an authentic French poem (Demain dès l’aube, Victor Hugo) is far greater than that any grammar exercise would give them. Year 11 close analysis of Maupassant’s la parure in their French lessons gave students a deeper understanding of French society in the 19th Century, themes occurring in other French works and the literary movements of the time, all of which enhanced their ability to study the same work for GCSE English. The key here is for the departments to work together on devising a programme of study that meets all their requirements rather than teaching the same topic twice in isolation.

Steam+ creates the space for interdisciplinary thought. It is an exciting opportunity for us and our students to collaborate more intensively to explore ideas that do not fit neatly into a lesson plan.  But it is also an opportunity to examine the skills that are required and developed by one subject that can support a student’s understanding, expression and ultimately progression in another. Attention to detail required for effective translation that is also needed when examining data in Science and Maths; performance techniques in Music and oral proficiency in MFL. Yes, at times we are confined by exam specifications, but by encouraging our students to make connections between subjects, they can take their learning beyond the syllabi and into the real world because that is the fun in learning and ultimately the point.

[1] Steam+ manifesto

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Thinking about our Bread and Butter

Suzy Pett, Director of Studies, explores best practice for assessment and feedback.

Whilst cognitive scientists are increasingly enhancing our understanding of how students learn, to all intents and purposes, learning is still invisible. Sometimes we glimpse signs of learning: those eureka moments when a piece of knowledge suddenly clicks into place. But, to see the learning itself is a chimera.

Because of this, assessment and feedback is our bread and butter as teachers. We assess continually in a variety of ways to work out what has and hasn’t been learnt. It allows us to explore a student’s schema (network of knowledge), to put right misconceptions, to encourage individuals and to adapt our own teaching accordingly. In this way, we can make a myriad of adjustments to the way we teach to enhance student progress. Plus, with the help of cognitive science, we’re getting better at knowing what does and does not work in terms of assessment and feedback.

But, the idea of ‘assessment’ can strike fear into students. And, do students fully take on board our feedback, anyway? During our staff study day at the end of last half term, a group of us discussed our ethos surrounding assessment and feedback. It was important to refine our collective understanding of both these fundamental areas of pedagogy. With linear A Levels and GCSEs, we need to shine a light on our assessment methods, making the most of spaced and interleaved practice. But, we spoke, too, of students’ misunderstanding of the purpose of assessment and feedback.

We boiled down our ideas to a powerful message, drawing from our own experiences and in light of reading articles by David Didau, Tom Sherrington, Hattie, Clarke and the Education Endowment Foundation.

We want students to realise that:

  1. Assessment doesn’t just measure learning, it helps learning and it happens all the time in the classroom.
  2. Feedback is not a judgement on their ability but a spring-board towards further personal and academic development. Everything students do is part of a wider personal and academic endeavor.
  3. Feedback is an opportunity for reflection on, and ownership of, their learning.

Let’s dig a little deeper into these three ideas.


Assessment doesn’t just measure learning, it helps learning and it happens all the time in the classroom:

Assessment and testing turbo boost learning: They don’t just measure it, they propel it! The process of recalling knowledge strengthens long term memory; the process of collating ideas and organising them on the page helps consolidate schema. We want students to know this!

Lightness of touch, good humour and warmth: Frequent low stakes testing or quizzing (especially if spaced and/or interleaved) is fundamental in encoding ideas in the long term memory. And, it is an opportunity to quickly put right any misperceptions forming in the student’s mind. Regular testing, should, therefore not feel like a burden, but should be an opportunity to learn.   As teachers, we need to help set the tone for this. With a lightness of touch, good humour and warmth, these low stakes tests can propel more rapid learning and can build student confidence. Our attitude must reflect this spirit.

Toggle between knowledge: We need to be aware, too, of the illusion of understanding. Pupils can perform well in a low stakes quiz, especially if the quiz reflects a unit of blocked learning. However, students might not necessarily be able to transfer the learning to another context, or be able to recall it in an exam which requires them to toggle between different sorts of knowledge (such as in the linear GCSE and A Levels).  A longer, more formal, interleaved assessment or test is still important to gauge how students can pull together ideas from across their different schema. However, a refrain we often hear from students is “Is this an assessed piece of work?”, with rising levels of panic creeping into the voice. So, again, teachers need to position this sort of testing accordingly – as a chance for students to learn, rather than the teacher to judge.

Assessment happens continually, anyway: students need to realise this. As teachers, we’re not judging a one-off performance. Assessment is an ongoing process to help individuals make progress:

  • It’s the checking of prior knowledge at the start of the lesson (helping students orientate new understanding within their existing schema)
  • It’s the Q&A during lessons
  • It’s the one-to-one discussions whilst the teacher is circulating when the class are working
  • It’s the quick quiz during class time
  • It’s the careful observation of student talk/work during activities
  • It’s the mini plenary to judge how well new ideas have been assimilated
  • It’s the exit card for teachers to work out how each individual has grasped the learning.
  • NB: the verbal feedback in lessons and the one-to-one discussions are arguably the most powerful forms of feedback, more so than the written feedback on written work. Students should not underestimate this sort of feedback.


Feedback is not a judgement on student ability but a spring-board towards further personal and academic development. Everything they do is part of a wider personal/academic endeavor.

Low threat to self-esteem: One of the most striking discussions we had during staff study day was around the profound impact of feedback to bolster or demoralise students. An entire page of feedback on an essay may be well intentioned, but it can in fact deflate a student. Feedback is received best when there is a low rather than high threat to self-esteem, and we should be mindful of this. Instead, choosing to focus feedback on one particular skill, or on one particular element of the essay/test can be more impactful for the student, who can use it as a springboard for development.

Get off the hamster wheel! Learning is more that digesting ‘testable chunks’: Fortunately, WHS already has grit and resilience at the heart of the learning experience: growth mind set is firmly established amongst staff and students. However, we still need to beware to avoid assessment and feedback making students feel like they are on a hamster wheel. Instead of narrowing horizons to the next test or the next piece of feedback, it’s important for students to realise why this learning is important, beyond the looming GCSE and A Level. In giving feedback and when quizzing/assessing, we need to be sure that we keep our eyes on the whole and share this with students. Giving reminders of the wider canvas of the learning are key i.e. why is this knowledge/skill/technique important to our subject. Let’s even think beyond our subject divides and tap into our school’s STEAM ethos. We must keep at the forefront that what we are doing is unlocking the expansive, fascinating potential of our subject, not simply breaking it down into testable chunks. Feedback should remind students of this; it’s a chance to nurture their love of the subject.

Ditch the satnav: In contrast, David Didau has coined the term ‘satnav marking’, to indicate the sort of reductive mark that simply tells students the next steps. Whilst arguably useful in the immediate term, it makes a subject operate in a ‘paint by numbers’ capacity. We should avoid this sort of marking, instead encouraging students to think in nuanced ways about their work and their subject and their passions.


Feedback is an opportunity for reflection on, and ownership of, student learning.

If feedback is seen and not heard, it is pointless: Fundamental to feedback is students’ reflection on it. During out staff study day, we spoke about our sense that pupils often felt like they were doing the assessment/homework/test for us as teachers, rather than for themselves. By placing metacognition at the heart of the feedback process, we can shift this student misperception so that students take ownership of assessment and feedback as a personal learning process. Teachers need to carve out time and prioritise students taking on board the comments. Strategies were discussed, such as ‘DIRT’ time; students rewriting sections of their work; students responding to questions posed in the marking; students pre-reflecting on their work to allow teachers to respond to this in feedback; student tracking their marks/feedback using OneNote.

Give feedback on ‘best’ work: An idea that struck a chord was that students need to take ownership of their learning by the effort they invest in their work. There is little point in giving feedback on work students know isn’t their best…the feedback will just confirm what they already know. We need to give feedback on students’ ‘best’ work: i.e. work which is a result of high effort, in which students are invested and which shows ‘liminal learning’ (work which is pushing at the bounds of their capabilities). If this is the criterion for marking work, then students will want to see the feedback.

Self/peer assessment is not because we’re lazy! We also discussed the use of peer and self-assessment in allowing students to take ownership of their work. Whilst students often do not like this method of assessment, preferring the safety net of the teacher marking their work, we know that it develops metacognition.  This is not a technique for lazy teachers not wanting to mark (as we suspect some students think!) but it is a vital tool for student self-reflection.

It’s about a whole school culture. Most important of all is for this mind set of ownership and self-reflection to be reinforced regularly across the school: it’s about a culture which comes from teachers, tutors, form times, PSHE peer counsellors, subject leaders.

 

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Recursive Creative Improvisation: STEAM+ in action

Rebecca Owens (Head of Art), Lucinda Gilchrist (Head of English) and Richard Bristow (Director of Music & SMT Secondee) reflect on recent work completed by WHS pupils combining three art forms; writing poetry, painting and performing music. This event formed part of the recent STEAM Tower opening.

Rebecca Owens – the view from the artist

The Golden Ratio (picture – Wikipedia)
Above: The Golden Ratio (picture – Wikipedia)

The links between art, poetry and music are many and varied, exemplified in the shared language around the disciplines such as composition, rhythm, tone, accent, vibrancy, dynamism. In an effort to create an emotional response in their audiences, visual artists, architects, composers and authors often use underlying mathematical concepts such as the Golden Section in their works. For example, Mozart made use of the Golden Section proportions in many of his piano sonatas. As we are all familiar with seeing the Golden Section sequence in nature, the use of these proportions and divisions in Art and Music is something the artist or composer hopes will help induce a natural affinity towards the composition, enhancing the sense of harmony in the piece of Music or Art.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a music lover and first realised the emotional power of music when listening to Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ in 1880. He then became friends with Schönberg, whose 12-tone method of composition was a turning point in 20th century music. As Kandinsky’s work developed, he came to believe that painting, as with music, should inspire emotions without having to necessarily be a visual representation of a particular thing, place or person. Arguably the first abstract artist, he transformed the course of Art using his synaesthesia to inspire his painting. Colours in his mind were linked to sound, shapes and emotions. Kandinsky said ‘The sound of colours is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble’.

Kandinsky ‘Color Study. Squares with Concentric Circles’
Above: Kandinsky ‘Color Study. Squares with Concentric Circles’
Schonberg’s ‘5 Klavierstücke, Op. 23 No. 5’ bars 1-4 where all twelve tones of the chromatic scale are used with equality, creating atonality which breaks free from tonal hierarchies established in previously tonal music.
Schonberg’s ‘5 Klavierstücke, Op. 23 No. 5’ bars 1-4 where all twelve tones of the chromatic scale are used with equality, creating atonality which breaks free from tonal hierarchies established in previously tonal music.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) who created rhythmical paintings, in which he almost danced over the large-scale canvas which he laid out on the floor. He was obsessed with Jazz music listening to Jazz records for days on end and the controlled elegant movements with which he poured, dripped and threw the paint onto the canvasses, conveyed the dynamism and freedom of Jazz music.

Pollock ‘Convergence’
Pollock ‘Convergence’

Agnes Martin (1912-2004) often discussed the interest in the emotions that music created in her work, and for her there was a powerful link between music and her form of minimalist abstract art. She said ‘Our response to line and tone and colour is the same as our response to sounds. And like music, abstract art is thematic. It holds meaning beyond the power of words’.

Martin ‘Summer’
Martin ‘Summer’

These were some of the starting points for the art scholars, when exploring the connections between music and art, which was initially planned for our Cadogan Hall concert in March 2020. Sadly, owing to the pandemic, this event was cancelled, but the work and ideas were instead put towards the opening of our STEAM Tower in November 2020, with the addition of poets composing alongside the artists and musicians.

The artists responded to the rhythms, the tones and the emotions the music inspires as we work. As with all Art, there will be no correct answer, and in this experiment the process of creating the work will be as important as the outcomes. The speed with which one works undoubtedly affects the marks one makes. With timed drawings, which is something we often use in Life drawing classes, the fluidity and spontaneity of the marks created often more that makes up for the less accurate proportions. With less than 10 minutes to work on these pieces it will be interesting to see how each person responds differently to the music and how the canvasses develop during the time.

Kandinsky ‘Composition, VII’
Kandinsky ‘Composition, VII’

Alex in Year 13 reflects on the creation of her artwork: “Exploring links between different forms of creativity was fascinating. In this process I was able to respond to the music I heard and the poetry I read with a variety of colours, mark-making, and compositions. I was most influenced by replicating bow movements with brush strokes, which gave energy and flow to my artwork. This activity developed my skills as an artist as I was more aware of each creative decision I made.”

View some of the art created during the STEAM opening below.

STEAM Art
STEAM Art

Lucinda Gilchrist – the view from the poet

 We know proverbially that ‘two heads are better than one’, but collaboration is more than just combined brain power. Educational theory highlights that words and language solidify and consolidate thought, meaning that sharing and communicating with others is essential for learning. In collaborating across subject disciplines, we can make the most of others’ expertise in a way which serves to enhance and enrich our understanding in countless ways.

From the perspective of English, in looking at a poem, for instance, we can benefit from a wider contextual understanding that History can bring us, the deeper understanding of rhythm and tone from Music, attention to detail and imagery from Art, global artistic movements from History of Art, forensic attention to detail from Science, and grammatical understanding from Languages. But it is not just about what individual subjects can gain from using different disciplinary perspectives, but how the meeting of different disciplines then serves to open up horizons which would have been unthinkable without the combination of perspectives.

Jess in Year 13 writes: “Usually I would start writing about a preconceived subject matter, whereas responding in real time to music and visual art meant it took longer to establish a topic or a narrative. Therefore I think the influence over the structure of the poems is most pronounced- there’s the dislocation of short or non-sequiturial lines that correspond to staccato parts of the music; but on the other hand, there’s a lot of enjambement, since I think the timbre of the strings might have evoked a watery quality for the writers and painters.”

If lightning could be gradual
If it could be a majorette ribbon
If it could be a suturing needle
If it could be a hairline fracture
If it could be the persistent tautness of a diaphragm
If it could be the searing blaring flaring scarlet that stays in the back of your eyes
If it could cut
If it could be a vaulted ceiling
If it could be sweet, and if it could ache
If it could be the ridge of a mountain
Protruding through snow
Snow packed on scars
When figure skaters turn
And the air takes their necks
In its hands
Suddenly, very afraid of heights
Is lightning catching?
Can it reverberate down vertebrae?
Electrify the nervous system?
Pluck out spinal chords?
The spine a rose between
the lightning’s jagged teeth

Lauren in Year 13 writes: “I found writing to music and live art extremely helpful as each piece created a different atmosphere and led to me writing a range of poetry. I think I may even use music when writing poetry again in the future.”

Sky city suspended between storm clouds
Golden rain and bare feet
Feathers outlined in molten metal
Twisting as they fall
Like sycamore leaves
Laughter thrown at the sun
With the wild abandon of Icarus
In his final moments
Before reality came up to meet him.
Cradled by Zephyr as they spiral down
Either ignorant of the danger
Or too immersed in music to care.
The ground is far too restrictive for dancing
When falling allows them to fly.

Richard Bristow – the view from the musician

I still vividly remember the first time I experienced the music combined with art and spoken word. It was 1990, I was 5 years old, and Disney’s Fantasia had just been released on VHS. The whole school watched it in one afternoon and it introduced me to music that I had never heard before in such a powerful way that the memory still lives on, some thirty years later.

The film Fantasia was made in 1940, featuring Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra with animations by Disney. I still recall seeing Mickey Mouse battling against brooms in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Dukas, the strange abstract shapes to Bach’s iconic Toccata and Fugue and of course the petrifying mountain demon pictured to Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain. If you haven’t seen it, please add it to your Christmas list. It is simply brilliant viewing.

Fast forward to more recent times; it’s now the summer of 2019 and I’m busy planning the WHS Symphony Orchestra repertoire for the next Cadogan Hall concert, scheduled for March 2020. We have a large brass section this year and also a harp – a first for our orchestra – and as such Mussorgsky’s epic Symphonic Poem is something that provides challenge but is also accessible to all our players – from our new Year 7s right up to our Year 13s who will shortly be heading to University. The pupils take to it well, so much so that the simplifications I’d anticipated needing were quickly discarded in favour of the real authentic score.

Rehearsing the piece brought back memories of watching Fantasia for the first time and it is from here that we started to explore the idea of live painting to live music, essentially recreating Fantasia in Cadogan Hall in 2020. Combining these art forms, utilising some nifty camera technology, would allow us to see links between the disciplines in real time. Exciting stuff.

Sadly, the pandemic meant the concert couldn’t happen in March 2020, and obviously this was a huge disappointment to us given we had been working towards this for 7 months. However, with the opening of the new STEAM Tower, we had another opportunity to explore the combination of different art forms, showing inter-disciplinary learning in an improvisatory way and putting our previous learning to work. Current coronavirus restrictions meant the Symphony Orchestra was replaced by our wonderful socially-distanced String Quartet A and we expanded our thinking to include two Sixth Form poets to add another dimension to our exploration. Combining these art forms together facilitates wider conversations about art and creativity, and enables pupils to make connections and to think about things in more advanced ways.

Sophie in Year 11 writes: “It was really interesting to see how the poets, musicians and artists responded to each other, as all of us are artists. I loved how it allowed us to really explore our creativity and it has helped us to think of the pieces we are playing as an ensemble in new ways.”

It was fascinating to see the pupils work out how the inner bars of music evoked a sense of water with this being picked up in both the poetry and the art in various different ways. This prompted conversations about whether this was intentional by the composer or if it was more subtle in nature, perhaps influenced by our previous learning. Exploring the arts through different artistic lenses allows us to explore art in a larger, freer way, inter-connecting our learning and enhancing our understanding.

Final thoughts

Making connections between subjects, filling in the gaps and tinkering with new ideas are central to our educational provision at WHS. We relish the chance to investigate things we are expert in through lenses in which we are less accomplished, feeding into the kaleidoscope that is limitless learning in the modern day. This is STEAM+ in action.

We are all lucky to work and learn in a school where collaboration, exploration and adventure are inherent qualities that are highly valued.

Who knows what we’ll discover next…

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From Socrates to Stormzy: introducing the Experientia Scholarship

What is art?

Mr James Porter, Specialist English teacher and Experientia Scholarship lead, reflects on the first half-term of a radical bespoke curriculum project that aims to introduce the Upper Junior School girls to the concept of critical thinking and the art of Socratic discussion.

What does academic achievement look like in 2020?

 Fionnuala Kennedy, Head, began this academic term with an address to staff in which she spoke of a ‘new epoch’ in education. In this time of truly unprecedented crisis the core business of schools has very much been thrust into the public spotlight, and, with circumstances necessitating a ‘back to basics’ approach, there is now a very prescient need to look closely at the fundamentals of teaching and learning and to ask – how can we do the basics better?

Nationally and globally, the lives of children have been turned upside down and the education community has been rocked by profound and severe crises, the implications of which many observers hold will be felt for years, if not indefinitely. Take this summer’s public exam fiasco and the ongoing uncertainty around this type of assessment as just one example of the domino-like impact that the COVID crisis will continue to have on the core components of the British education system. Naturally, this is leading to a renewed impetus in the search for change.

Above: The Media

The need to explicitly address the social implications of the crisis in school planning is widely acknowledged. It is this principle that Barry Carpenter makes central in his proposal for a ‘recovery curriculum’ model for the Autumn term, which addresses the holistic development of pupils in response to a deficit that is perceived as having emerged during the period of school closure. [1]

However, there are those who propose that times of profound uncertainty be met with more divergent thinking that is far broader and deeper in scope:

In more turbulent times, a radical vision of education may emerge from cultural trauma, as it did in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy at the conclusion of the Second World War. A whole society pulled together in revulsion at the ease with which they had embraced, or tolerated, fascism, and vowed to raise young people who would not make the same mistakes. [2]

Further, a growing discourse in British education reflecting a broad spectrum of society has seen this crisis as the catalyst for their calls to end what they perceive to be an inherently problematic public assessment regime, the most eloquent of these coming from Michael Rosen in a letter to Gavin Williamson published in The Guardian. [3] Their calls to replace GCSEs with alternative models cite the established practices at Bedales School who introduced “richer, more expansive courses” that “encourage creativity, autonomy, and enjoyment of learning for its own sake” as a ground-breaking example of a successful alternative. [4]

While some have drawn equivalents, I am not comparing the gravity of our present situation with the fall of Fascism at the end of the Second World War (this weekend’s election result not withstanding). However, at no time since the Second World War has it been more important that we support the holistic development and emotional intelligence of our pupils through considerate planning that addresses emerging needs while focusing on the development of skills and maintaining disciplined academic rigour.

What is the Experientia Scholarship?

Inspired by dramatic developments in education and tasked with developing a radical new curriculum programme in the Upper Junior School, I wanted to address the challenges of 2020 and beyond by creating a programme focused on rigorous academic pursuit and the development of higher-order thinking.  The programme also needed to be responsive to the needs of pupils through engaging, thoughtful, and sensitive planning that makes the habits of effective discussion and learning explicit, building on the psychological development model proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943:

Above: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Since September, the girls in the Upper Junior School have been immersed in a bespoke curriculum programme which considers the contentious issues that affect our daily lives and introduces pupils to the concept of critical thinking and the art of Socratic discussion.

Above: The Experientia Scholarship

The Experientia Scholarship, which forms part of the weekly timetable for all girls in Years 3-6, exposes pupils to a range of learning experiences which challenge their view of the world. Comprising of a range of short courses, pupils explore elements of both classical ‘enlightenment’ and progressive ‘modernist’ units of study devised to grow cultural capital, cultivate divergent thinking and enhance preparation for success in a globalised and digital world.[5] 

 
Underpinning this are three pillars which guide the ongoing development of the programme:

  • Academia: A community concerned with the pursuit of knowledge, always seeking to find truth and assessing all available evidence to make logical conclusions that are not based on opinions or emotions;
  • Fraternity: A feeling of friendship and support within our community, being kind and supportive, understanding that we never discount the person; we challenge their conclusions based on our understanding of the evidence;
  • Culture: We learn about, respect and show tolerance towards all no matter their background, geography or beliefs. Understanding that high culture is not limited to high art, we embrace eclectic tastes across a broad range of disciplines, from Schubert to Stormzy.

    Through weekly Socratic discussions based on a thought-provoking reading, pupils engage with a cycle of themes that introduce them to a range of critical topics.

Experientia Scholarship – Autumn Term
Year 3 Has technology made life easier? Can machines replace human beings?
Year 4 Does Hollywood need to change? Who makes the news?
Year 5 What is art? Is art inclusive?
Year 6 How much influence does the media have?

The pupils reflect on their position throughout the discussion cycle and are encouraged to conduct their own research into the topics of discussion and to set their own questions for future discussions.

In the lessons, the teacher prepares discussion-based activities that ask a series of open-ended questions specifically targeting the different ways of thinking about a topic. Arguments are dismantled into their constituent parts which can then be evaluated, and the implications considered.

Above: Questioning to Promote Higher Order Thinking Skills

The benefits of the Socratic approach to learning have long been espoused by those who have studied it:

“[…]Within the context of the discussion, students listen closely to the comments of others, thinking critically for themselves, and articulate their own thoughts and their responses to the thoughts of others. They learn to work cooperatively and to question intelligently and civilly” [6]

The scholarship culminates in a formally assessed public speaking activity in which pupils explain and justify their thinking around the topic of their choice before being awarded commended, highly commended or distinction, aiming to reward metacognition and the process of learning rather than just linear attainment.

What have the lessons been like?

Above: The Experientia Scholarship

I will share one example of the impact that I have observed of the Socratic approach with a Year 4 group.

The first discussion in the Year 4 unit on ‘who makes the news?’ is an introduction to the concept of fake news and an examination of the people who could gain from spreading misinformation. In a follow-up discussion, pupils look at the idea of censorship and consider the occasions when they believe it is justified before reading a text about president Xi Jinping who, it is reported, censored Winnie the Pooh in China after memes emerging online mocking supposed similarities between them offended him.

The girls had decided that there are circumstances in which censorship is warranted. They gave the examples of internet blocking on their devices at school and people sending offensive messages as times when it would be right to censor. I was fascinated when the implications of their reasoning were applied to the example of Xi Jinping. While there was broad agreement that offensive communication should be censored, a vocal group of girls emerged who came to the conclusion that presidents, being in a unique position of influence and power, were to be treated differently than the general population, and in this case the rights for the people to criticise the president should be defended.

The ability of the girls to form critical connections when introduced to reasoning in this way was powerfully illustrated to me recently with the same group while watching Newsround coverage of Trump contesting the presidential election count. Pupils were immediately able to identify this as misinformation, and crucially were able to articulate the motivation for Trump to do so, as well as identifying the dangerous implications.

Teachers from across the Junior School have also commented on the impact they have noticed the Scholarship having in other areas of the curriculum. In an English lesson, Year 5 girls were able to articulate their thoughts around intrinsic gender bias and the etymology of words, citing the example of ‘female’ being the negative form of ‘male’, and explaining that this issue had been thrown up in discussion with Mrs Walles-Brown about whether art is inclusive.

I asked the girls to share their thoughts describing what their Experientia lessons have been like. This word cloud formed from their responses neatly summarises the general consensus felt after the first half term of the Experientia Scholarship in the Upper Junior School.

Above: Summary of The Experientia Workshop

Further Reading

Carpenter, B., A Recovery Curriculum: Loss and Life for our children and schools post pandemic, Evidence For Learning [online], 2020, https://www.evidenceforlearning.net/recoverycurriculum/

Israel, E., “Examining Multiple Perspectives in Literature.”  In Inquiry and the Literary Text: Constructing Discussions in the English Classroom, NCTE, 2002

McConville, A., Bedales: Rethinking Assessment [online], 2020, https://bigeducation.org/rethinking-blogs/bedales-rethinking-assessment-a-case-study/

Rosen, M., Dear Gavin Williamson, here’s how to avoid more exam catastrophes, The Guardian [online], 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/29/dear-gavin-williamson-heres-how-to-avoid-more-exam-catastrophes

Wells, G., and Claxton, G., Learning for Life in the 21st Century, Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education, Blackwell, London, 2002

References

[1]Carpenter, B., A Recovery Curriculum: Loss and Life for our children and schools post pandemic, Evidence For Learning [online], 2020, https://www.evidenceforlearning.net/recoverycurriculum/

[2] Wells, G., and Claxton, G., Learning for Life in the 21st Century, Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education, Blackwell, London, 2002,

[3] Rosen, M., Dear Gavin Williamson, here’s how to avoid more exam catastrophes, The Guardian [online], 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/29/dear-gavin-williamson-heres-how-to-avoid-more-exam-catastrophes

[4] McConville, A., Bedales: Rethinking Assessment [online], 2020, https://bigeducation.org/rethinking-blogs/bedales-rethinking-assessment-a-case-study/

[5] Boyd, C., Experientia Vision Statement, Wimbledon High Junior School, 2020

[6] Israel, E., “Examining Multiple Perspectives in Literature.”  In Inquiry and the Literary Text: Constructing Discussions in the English Classroom, NCTE, 2002

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Is authentic research, where young scientists have complete free rein, really possible at school?

Dr Clare Roper, Director of Science, Technology and Engineering at WHS, looks at how advances in information technology have removed the barriers that often limit the scope for school students to embark on their own innovative authentic scientific research.

I was sitting in a lecture at Oxford University about 18 months ago when it suddenly became clear to me that the factor most often restricting school students from undertaking their own authentic research had evaporated and was no longer an issue.

Classroom science experiments commonly involve replicating known scientific phenomena to backup discoveries that are well documented in the scientific literature. Unfortunately, quite often we cannot even so much as replicate the data from a science textbook in a school laboratory because the data collection is too complex. Instead, we might explore the scientific process taken by a research group as we unpack a beautiful classic experiment and marvel at their discovery and how it has shaped our understanding of scientific concepts . A personal favourite is the magically simple experiment of Meselson and Stahl which elucidated how exact copies of DNA are created each time a new cell is formed [1]. At the end of a lesson exploring their experiment, it is customary to have a look at photographs of the scientists and perhaps consider how they may have come up with their experimental design.

Meselson in lab
Above: Meselson in his lab, 1958

I often ponder whilst looking at a black and white photograph of a scientist with his unrecognisable equipment, how this person might be perceived by the students sitting in front of me in our shiny new STEAM tower. Is this what being a scientist entails? Even after removing the stereotype of the person themselves, there is the barrier of the often sophisticated machinery and the hours of patient work required to collect sufficient data to make meaningful conclusions. I have no doubt that although we can enjoy the simplicity of their experiments in class, it surely reinforces the notion that novel scientific research is something inaccessible and unattractive to many school students.

In sport, there are countless role models of young athletes competing on the world stage, with celebrated successes at their local schools. The same can be said of talented young actors, artists, musicians and even activists and politicians. But try to think of a brilliant young scientist who has gone on to become a world leader having had the opportunity to hone their skills and find their path whilst at school. The fantastic news that two leading female scientists, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, have just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on genome editing [2] will certainly go a long way to inspiring more female scientists to dream big. However, like most leading scientists, their first taste of authentic research came after entering university and most are often only recognised much later in life.

The good news is that a growing number of passionate science teachers have teamed up with academics and a variety of institutions to provide opportunities for young scientists. Most research projects require access to expensive machinery or software that is beyond the reach of a school science department budget, and even those projects that are possible often tend to focus more on one or two aspects of the scientific process and cannot give the students carte blanche to explore their own curiosities because of time or cost constraints. Nevertheless at WHS we jumped on board and our students have benefitted hugely from projects including ORBYTS, and IRIS.

While I was in that lecture at Oxford that I suddenly realised that the missing ingredient that has recently evaporated was the need for the sophisticated machinery, and along with it, the prohibitive costs, and lengthy time required to collect data. The lecture was given by Prof Stephen Roberts, who specialises in machine learning and data analysis. Talking to him after his presentation about how ‘big data’ has shifted the emphasis in many university research labs from classic experimental design and data collection, towards a notion of data mining confirmed for me that the vast array of publicly available big datasets means that this modern approach to the scientific method makes novel research a feasible venture for all school students.

Scientific research using a data mining approach is exciting in that the data already exists, replacing the need for laborious experimental testing. The phenomenal progress in the field of artificial intelligence has meant that individual lab-bench experimental datasets are being replaced with enormous datasets which bring with them greater authenticity to the results, and also the ability to explore an expansive array of research questions that were never possible before. Data is amassing quicker than tertiary-level scientists can analyse it, and so the potential for school students to pose innovative research questions of these big datasets is not only boundless, but also a welcome and untapped asset in the quest to answer the world’s most pressing scientific questions.

Scientific method graph
Above: The Scientific Method

Novel research already on the go at WHS

We have already embarked on this exciting journey. Our first venture has been a collaboration with AELTC and IBM, who have kindly provided us with access to a huge dataset from the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. Like all great research groups, and in true STEAM+ style, we bring together different skills. The creative powers of the unclouded vision of the young scientists, supported by our Director of Sport Ms Coutts-Wood’s expertise in sport science and my experience of data analysis, has meant than we are in the final stages of publishing our first scientific paper on the impact of serve speed on winning the point. How apt!

Two more groups started during lockdown. One group under the supervision of Ms McGovern (Head of Chemistry) in collaboration with the University of Bristol, has recently received a special award for their research on Air Pollution. The other group are drawing on the expertise at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Heidelberg, Germany and the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus outside Cambridge. Their research questions range from discovering the differences in proteins associated with immune function in red and grey squirrels, to determining which mammalian species do not have attachment sites for the coronavirus (SARS CoV-2) spike protein. These bioinformatics projects will be launched on the EBI website soon to allow other schools to join in as well. Watch this space!

Just as the new STEAM tower is about to open, so too are new exciting possibilities for our young imaginative scientists at WHS.

Racket Research Club
Above: Discussing exciting new findings in the STEAM tower

 

References

[1] https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/the-most-beautiful-experiment

[2] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/press-release/