"Watch an exciting lesson on the topics of sustainability and climate change within the newly built Gen-Zero classroom, and find out how teachers and young people can help to tackle the ..."
I watched the Teach the Teacher session at COP26. It was introduced by the head civil servant at the DfE although she didn't actually bother to say who she was. I guess we were supposed to know. She stressed the importance of resources which makes me think that these will feature in the new DfE strategy. The bulk of the time was a presentation by Jodie and Phoebe, two young climate activists.
At the end of about 40 minutes, the audience got a chance to respond. It was a bit of a love-in. "fantastic" seemed to be the consensual evaluation. Even a guy from the US embassy was positive and a woman from Education International said that 32 million teachers agreed; with what, it wasn't clear. There were no hard questions, just soft lobs that could be returned with little effort. Solidarity, I guess.
But it was all a bit of a puzzle to me as I had expected some actual teaching. But what we got was lecturing. Actually, it might be best described as a scripted conversation (with the aid of iPads) between Phoebe and Jodie which everyone else listened to, patiently and politely (as far as I could tell).
So, if the medium is still the message, there was something awry here. The session did not model effective teaching practice. There was no sense of audience. It was slick enough, but utterly didactic. It wearied me.
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