Learning ideas, resources & professional reflection since 2011
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To amplify the effect, the following would be recommended for consideration:
They're only ever half listening anyway
In short, for pre-stressed parents, finding a Christmas sweater for their child has the potential to festively and royally de-rail their normally stable emotional centre.
Well along with applying one or more of the above top 5 tips, it’s probably worth stepping back a bit and looking at these two graphs about why people think they were bullied in 2016. Take a look at the top reason.
Schools are so nurturing, so accommodating and probably unlike any other setting a child will ever experience, aside from their own family unit, when it comes to putting their needs first. Schools with the best intentions may quietly tell a parent;
“It doesn’t matter really – just something red would be fine!” or, “Just send them in with their usual one on and we can put some tinsel on it for them.”
In reality, most parents, having once been in primary school themselves, don’t hear these kind offers as intended. They want their child to ‘fit’ or if they’re going to stand out it’ll be for having the most awesome sweater ever made. Back in the day when primary parents were in school it is very possible that the top reason people thought they got bullied was no different to the 2016 survey. Judging by appearance in today’s society has arguably never been more shamelessly normalised by popular media and at some time probably everyone has been guilty of doing it. Even us perfect people.
The instinct to protect offspring is hard coded and seemingly trivial things like Christmas Sweater day can be a trigger for this instinct to kick in. People act out of character.
Should this kind of thing be kept out of school?
It’s a difficult question to answer but perhaps, in amongst everything else that school leaders and teachers bear in mind every second of every day for every child, by stepping back a bit and seeing where parents are journeying from and to we’ll all have an even more wonderful <insert religious festival or special event name here> time.
Wishing you all the best!
Note:
Vague descriptions of entities and individuals only used to protect identity
Photo use under: Open Government Licence v3.0
Today I was travelling back by train from a meeting in Manchester. Hot choc in hand I arrived at the platform and found that the train I was to catch had been cancelled. No worries. Trainline App to hand (I wasn’t alone – another guy also had this) I worked out what I needed in no time. No worries.
In front of me was a chap who looked confused. He asked another guy what was happening with the trains and he replied to say he had an app that said the next train was due shortly, quick change then onward no worries. Chap was pleased to help and confused guy glad of the info and he hung around phone app guy in some sort of subconscious thankyou mode.
The platform soon filled with lots of other people. One threesome couldn’t see their train on the departure board so they went off to seek a train person to ask. There was shoulder shrugging and frowning in equal measure.
Finally the train arrived, we all piled in for one stop then piled out again at the next station to change. The app people, including myself, stepped straight onto the connecting train on platform 3 quite confidently. Elsewhere other voices could be heard asking the same question.
Is this the train for Preston? Is it? You think so? Yeh I’m pretty sure it is. According to this app it is yes. Noone seems to know for sure. You’d think they’d put someone on here to ask wouldn’t you?
Complete strangers reaching out for the right information and reassurance but sadly both were in short supply. People were resigned to their fate now. Doors shut and necks continued to crane looking for signs and confirmation that they were headed in the right direction. Like a slightly smug individual I opened my laptop on a free table and got working.
Why the train story? For me it illustrates what happens when there’s an enforced change and people have to divert from their usual trajectory. Some people are in the know and can crack on. Some people are good at finding out the answers and seek either authority or peers. Passengers with access to the latest info at the point where it’s needed are able to cope with the change and even become useful to those who are less connected.
When social media is used proactively, responsively and strategically by schools to the benefit of their community it’s magical and empowering and it’s precisely why we do it; we’ve called it ‘improving the parent journey’.
The last literacy-focused app publishing lesson with Year 2 happened last week. Both during and after the lesson we learned a lot about how the writing process was affected, even in more reluctant writers, by the addition of app publishing.
Though the focus was so clearly writing improvement, when the children were asked, the prospect of Mummy or Daddy having the app on their phones was also featuring large in their minds.
You can get the Viking App Template from Blippit Academy and get The Year 2 Project app from Planet Blippit.
Listen now to part 2 with Assistant Head & Literacy Leader Mrs Emma Smallshaw, from Salesbury Primary in Lancashire, in action with her Year 2 class and reflecting afterwards with John Bidder from Blippit about the process as a whole and next steps.
We’re really excited what’s happening in literacy via our App Maker templates. We’ve a couple of case studies under way in Year 6 & Year 2 that we’ll be sharing soon so that you can find your bearings a little more quickly when you’re teaching.
Can you help?
Have you made a scaffolded app for the children to use? Would you like to to share it with a growing community of other teachers via Blippit Academy with full credit given? Visit Blippit Academy to check out what’s involved and to also try existing ready-to-go app templates which are ready to be uploaded into your Blippit account.
Yes it is. In this recent talk (30/09/16) given under our exclusively education Blippit Social brand by founder John Bidder, you can hear tips, advice and hopefully get a better understanding of why schools choose to work with us as their partner in this challenging area.
At the end of this talk John recorded a new version of the same talk in ‘full slide’ mode so people could follow the slides and audio more easily. That version is below.
The projects that we’re most keen on just now have a clear learning legacy in the form of reusable digital app & code project templates that will continue to benefit schools after a project formally comes to an end.
We see a big opportunity for willing organisations to create, amongst other things, their own collection of project app templates that would be downloaded/uploaded & remixed/developed by students from the company website, Planet Blippit or wherever works best.
Wrapped around these projects are some other nice ideas such as beaming expertise into the classroom using Blippit’s school network friendly secure video conferencing tool ‘Spotlight’. We want to put learning truly in the Spotlight and let children benefit from having a professional and critical audience from beyond their usual environment.
If your organisation would like to talk about an education project idea do get in touch with us via support@blippit.co.uk with initial ideas/questions.
If, like us, you know that it’s ‘a bit challenging’ sometimes to get parents to fill in the mid-year Parent Survey that you’ve created based upon Ofsted’s Parent View form, this may be an innovative approach that will go down well.
FREE TO BLIPPIT SOCIAL SCHOOLS!
This is very low friction from a parent point of view because school is already engaging parents via Facebook so delivering and completing the survey actually ‘in’ Facebook makes the process nice and easy.
Data collection and collation is all taken care of too. The moment a parent hit’s SEND your data is saved and automatically presented for easy interpretation by SLT & Governors.
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Prices for non-Blippit Social schools are listed below.
FAQs
This week Blippit Social met up with NW based Kidsafe for a chat about safeguarding, child exploitation and the importance of not keeping experiences inside that give a child a ‘yucky feeling’ as Kidsafe describe it.
Blippit Social’s approach & beliefs about the importance of schools having a social approach to parental engagement complement Kidsafe’s work well which is why we’ve some interesting ideas bubbling in the pipeline now that will mean good things for schools in the future.
