Of Triffids and Two Gentlemen

In my first years of teaching, I was spoiled. Naïvely, I believed that Sylvia Bisset was the norm. Since Crieff High School, I have met and worked with many Learning Support teachers: there’s never been another like her. I learned so much from her about young people, about how they learn, about interventions (when to make them and when not) , about cognition, about processing, about handwriting, about the acquisition of language. . .

There was a boy in S1 who hated writing. He wasn’t good at it. He struggled. His frustration spilled over into challenging behaviours. He was dark-haired, sharp featured, and possessed of a ‘death glare’ without equal. We tried lots of things. Nothing helped. In class, he was engaged, enthusiastic, articulate, often insightful, until he was asked to write. Hmmm.

One day he said he wished he could write like me. (Just to be clear, I have several types of handwriting: crazy scrawl - for my eyes only ; quick notes - mix of cursive and printing, which I will share, reluctantly; neatish writing- probably the norm [Miss McKenzie in primary 5 I still have serious ‘n’ envy]; careful, as near to beautiful writing as I can manage, but not with so many flourishes as to become ornate.) Anyway, he liked the way I wrote in his jotter (translates as neatish writing done for learners who need very clear writing - the closest I get to Miss McKenzie’s). He asked about my pen. Fountain pen. Ah. Could he try? Ah.

Encouraged by Sylvia, and pushing aside my father’s words that using the fountain pen of another ruined it for both, he had a shot. If the sky had been split with a beam of light accompanied by the angelic host in full chorus, the effect would have been no greater. It was astounding. Yes, he took more time and care but his writing was exponentially better. It felt completely different he told me. It wasn’t like a pencil or a biro. It was different. It worked. For him.

I bought him a fountain pen. He used to “borrow” ink from me when it needed refilled. And his whole attitude to writing changed. He felt, for the first time, in control of his writing. It didn’t just happen anymore. The letters no longer did their own thing. He was in charge.

Not everything was perfect from then on, but a sea change had occurred.

It was Sylvia who showed me that if you don’t like the results that come from what you are doing, you need to examine what you are doing and see where you can change what you are doing to see more of the results you need. An aphorism which pops up regularly is “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” – Alexander Den Heijer

it’s the same thing. I think of my S4 class of disengaged and largely disenfranchised learners. They would have much to say - and none of it complimentary- were I to call them “flower”. But. And it’s a massive one. But. It is what they are. For many and diverse reasons the school environment- learning- does not work for them. Orally, their understanding of the world, of complex emotions, of what’s in the media, of what writers say, is comprehensive and often articulate. The education system doesn’t measure their knowledge and understanding that way. They have to write answers. Even when writing is a huge barrier. When they hate writing. When their hatred is deep-rooted. Every teacher who has tried- as kindly and gently as humanly possible - to improve their writing, has reinforced that their writing is not good. Not good enough. By the time you’re sixteen, that’s a lot of baggage to carry around.

If you are not familiar with Brian Patten’s wonderful poem “The Minister for Exams,” I urge you to read it. It could be articulated by one of my S4.

Sylvia encouraged me to dig down, to turn the soil, let some air in. What is it about writing - the thinking, the physicality, the memory, the ‘feel’ - what exactly is hard for you?

I.T. helps. Of course it does. But, aside from not solving every problem, its use doesn’t actually address the underlying issues.

I was pleased today when a learner used ReadAloud in Word to check his discursive writing on zoos. He said he made some changes to things that didn’t sound right. I celebrate that. I know that working together with me or a support teacher the writing will get better. I celebrate that too.

The dyslexia is there. But so is a processing difficulty. So is a trait that lets the learner hold one idea in his mind to focus on. Those are also issues. Fish and bicycles, elephants climbing trees: these are not simply idioms; they are a learning environment.

Sylvia, your handwriting is beautiful, lovely to look at. I loved discussing with you the “how” of learning to write. I loved working with young people and making a difference. Sadly, since those days, the number of learners with conditions and needs has increased beyond the bounds of what even the most cynical of minds could imagine then.

Recently, with my S2 Lit Group, we looked at the mechanics. I was horrified. We looked only at capital letters. The plan had been to look at upper and lower case letters; however, when I realised the minefield we were in, we stuck with capitals. We didn’t even get through the whole alphabet.

I do not claim to have done scientific research. But in my wee lesson, with my wee group of learners, the findings were core-shattering. In the first fifteen letters of the alphabet, thirteen of them were made differently by all of them. All. Their pencils began in different places. They took different routes to make the strokes and curves. There was some overlap, true. But I could hardly get my head round what I was seeing.

The letter B. I’d do down stroke first then top curve bottom curve. I like a serif, but that’s a matter of taste not basic design. No one else did it like that. We had upstrokes; we had curves first (both from the top and from the bottom); we had downstroke bottom curve top curve without lifting the pencil, as one continuous movement . Why? How?

Let’s skip over pen grip.

I’m not going to get into quality here. I’m not going to make decisions about “good”, “recognisable”, “barely discernible” and “is that really?” Capital B.

For some of them it’s the joining that makes the

These are young people who struggle in reading and in writing. But, somewhere and somehow we have made it harder for them now by not getting something right earlier on.

Research is being done. Jane Medwell and David Wray from the University of Warwick published a paper in 2007 which makes clear how important handwriting is to learning. There are loads and loads of “handwriting policy” documents for hundreds and hundreds of schools. There is not a “joined-up” approach. (Irony acknowledged)

So, where does that leave us? It leaves us in a dark place.

When I began teaching, I was that teacher who practiced writing on the blackboard. I learned to break a fresh stick of chalk in half. It was going to snap anyway. Half a stick was easier to control, too. I’d write instructions up. Then I’d rub out each line in turn and write it better, sometimes more than once. Sometimes I stayed late after school to practice. Sometimes I showed them me rubbing things out and having another go. It was important to me. I was modelling. (I also felt I was being judged. Particularly in lessons where Sylvia was in supporting my class. )

Wee sidetrack here. “Really?” you ask. Yes. Bear with me.

Judgement.

Here was me, working class upbringing, been to decent schools (because, by luck both the local primary and secondary schools were good schools) , [blip - which we don’t talk about], met my soulmate, went to a decent university, achieved a joint degree and a teaching qualification, and the rest is history (some of which I carry daily) but that’s not the point. So, get to the tmesising point! I can never quite shake the imposter syndrome. Can’t quite unsee the ‘adequate’ on the school report. So, neat board writing was a visible proof that I deserved to be standing in front of a class.

Since, this is neither a self-help group nor a visit to a psychiatrist, I will not address why I have a moustache. I just do, ok?

I went to decent schools and did ok. But I know that I did not excel. If I had worked really hard, I might have been better than ok. But what if I wasn’t? Wasn’t ‘good enough’ sufficient? To the young me, it was infinitely less problematic than the imagined alternative. There’s a deeply buried part of me would have loved to do a PHD . But what if I wasn’t good enough?

But the point (aha!) is this. There are times when I look at some of my handwriting and feel, if not proud then at least satisfied. However, I know that it looks like that because I made it like that. It’s my handwriting. I’m in charge.

More and more learners come in to my classroom not owning that their writing is theirs, not understanding that they are personally responsible for what they create, for what it looks like. And, here’s the bit that makes me weep, not seeming to care.

Somewhere there is a disjoint. My S4 triffids expect not to do well. They arrived in secondary school believing they were failing. Four years of high school hasn’t changed that. As flowers, is that their fault?

One of the things I admired about Sylvia’s writing was the beautifully proportioned and executed descending loops. Over time - and while making resources for the The Silver Sword and dictionary work and writing frames - my loops were analysed. They were perfectly adequate, did the job, but were neither pretty nor consistent. During handwriting lessons with a particular class, loops came up. We both wrote on the board. They wrote in their jotters. Sylvia and I took turns in writing on the board and saying our thinking out loud. Talking later with David about his loops showed me how to make mine better. They’re still imperfect, largely because of the extra effort I have to make for them to be pleasing. I know that. It’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make, for practical reasons. I’m content with less than beautiful writing. But the learners in that class made strides forward, ones that they took with them as they moved through the school, and hopefully on into the world.

If I am a reflective practitioner, do I understand what I need to do to help the learners in front of me improve their skill? Yes. Scrutiny of the results over the years would back me up. Can I see where my task is made much harder because of failings in the system before they reach my classroom? Also yes. Remediation is a dirty word. But its removal from the educational lexicon doesn’t mean the problem has gone away. Higher order thinking cannot be measured in the abstract. Write your answer . . .

Sylvia was wonderful to work with. I thought all learning support teachers were as focused and interactive as she was. Those were simpler times. Was there more money? There certainly wasn’t more time. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, is it?

When John Duttine played Bill Masen in the 1981 TV serial and removed his bandages, he faced a world ravaged by killer plants. (I’m too young to remember the 1963 film.) Local lad, Dougray Scott reprised the role for TV in 2009. 2021 marked the 70th anniversary of the publication of the novel. The glorious musical movie of “Little Shop of Horrors” couldn’t exist without Wyndham. But nod must also be made to H G Wells’s “The Flowering of The Strange Orchid.” Plants are a living organism. Mess with them at your peril, at least in post-apocalyptic science fiction. Plants thrive or not on where they grow and how they are treated. Plants are sensitive. They grow better if they are given care and attention. They grow better when they are spoken to kindly. It doesn’t stretch the analogy too far to consider how much better some of our young people would thrive if their conditions and their treatment were different. A stake can help a sunflower but a courgette needs different help to be its best self.

The first stage of school is called nursery. I’d like to think it’s more than serendipitous. There has been talk recently of raising the start age of formal schooling to 6. Or, according to some research, 7. (University of Cambridge) There are good arguments on both sides. Most children, for example, have decided by then which is their dominant hand. But, if it’s left until then, many youngsters would have to unlearn things. When is the proper time to intervene? Proper pen grip isn’t an instantly learned thing. Nor is it exactly the same for everyone. (Oh, the dangers of words like “proper”.)

Pen licensing has never been a thing in Scotland, for which I am extremely grateful.

I love writing in pencil. The tiny sound. The feel of it. The look of it. I love writing with a biro. (Not so much as pencil.) I love it particularly when it’s a good biro. Subjectivity acknowledged. I love writing in fountain pen. It feels more like pencil than biro, but is definitely different. I love, love, love writing with an italic nibbed fountain pen. Even mediocre handwriting looks better. Typing is expedient. Faster. Saved electronically. So much easier and tidier to revise. But significantly less satisfying. Where did this love spring from? Probably primary 5, probably Miss McKenzie. That’s the first awareness, I think, of it mattering to me. Why then, does it matter so little to so many of our learners today?

In Crieff High School many years ago, Sylvia blushed when I said I was a swain. I meant a country youth. I meant not a young lover or suitor. I blush now thinking about it. And all the dictionary work about numbers of meanings and context that we did together doesn’t help. I admired her. She was fair and kind. I hadn’t meant to flirt.

The issues we addressed in classes then are still issues. In fact, in my experience, they are greater issues now.

I don’t think that it is too late; but it is getting later. We need to change.

I have focused on writing, here, but the same is true of reading. The “Sold a Story” podcasts by Emily Hanford are well worth seeking out because they beautifully articulate the problems with reading. Although they deal with the American Education System, all of the issues we have in Scotland are covered.

I am hopeful that enough of us are aware of the issues, and enough of us are prepared to raise our voices for change to be effected.

Sylvia, thank you for the inspiration.