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MathsMA:

weebecka:

If you see I was actually teaching in the UK at that time - I did this teaching during trips to the Middle East - so it was demonstration lesson and so on rather than employment.  This teaching was part of my project brief for the British Council where I was working with the Ministry for Education in Jordan.

So now we're merely talking about demonstration lessons on ad hoc basis! That's somewhat different to what you inferring in your posts above about your "wealth of experience" in Middle Eastern schools (similarly your Little Beetles role & experiences would appear to be at odds with your earlier claims).

I'm happy to provide context for the purpose of enhancing a discussion, but clearly that's not happening here. 

I could defend myself on each point one at a time, 

for example here I was teaching Jordanian students in state schools in front of their teachers, who afterwards got to critically analyse what I was doing (and boy were they sharp).  Following this we would spend time together, getting to know each other and chatting about the realities of their teaching, their constraints and their aspirations.

I find this kind of teaching more illuminating that working for a while in an expat school.

But the negative twisting and the accusations are coming too thick and fast to be compatible with an interesting thread MathsMA.

So to abridge my need to work with them all, could I perhaps instead suggest that you celebrate Christmas by having an anal encounter with your festive tree, which I hope has a nice sharp pointy star on top.

weebecka:

 i.e. attack the argument or the topic, not the person.

In general, when you have managed to respond on a topic/argument (as opposed to waffling off on a tangent and/or posting your "facilitating", read condescending, questions), people have responded (often in horror) at some of your suggestions.

Additionally, as I have mentioned above, I'm not attempting an ad hominem attack here, instead I am merely trying to gain an understanding of where your experiences have been and how robust they are particularly when you hold them up to be a sort of panacea of teaching and learning.

I don't think it is at all unreasonable to question your experience or experiences, particualry when they relate directly to some of your more boastful claims. You continually refer to "my students" or "my classes" and I am merely trying to ascertain just where and what these classes were, because looking at your profile I have to say I'm not overly confident that you have been around anywhere long enough to be speaking with such certainty and confidence.

Your experiences form a central plank of your posts on here, its just that I have my doubts about the validity of your experiences and your refusal to expand on them speaks volumes to me. I'm particularly curious with regards your last three years of teaching and your work at MMU.

PS If Boaler blustered on to this forum in the way you have with stories about the benefits of Mixed Ability Teaching or Williams on Formative Assessment, I would probably be just as miffed at their poor communication skills and their patronising attitude, but at least they have a plethora of experience and hard edged research to back up their opinions which might placate me somewhat. Instead judging by your profile (with its incorrect lengths of tenure at various places) you have nothing to back up your bluster.

Beecka - please dont take it too personally I just think that lots of us are fed up with people - many of whom have limited (either in time or type) teaching experience telling us what to do and why we are crap at our jobs and they are so much better.

I mean anyone from Ed balls (or who ever his replacement is) to Carol Vorderman to my postman things they would be a bettre treacher than I am.

They may well be right but I dont tell them how to do their job!

Maths_Mike:

Beecka - please dont take it too personally I just think that lots of us are fed up with people - many of whom have limited (either in time or type) teaching experience telling us what to do and why we are crap at our jobs and they are so much better.

I mean anyone from Ed balls (or who ever his replacement is) to Carol Vorderman to my postman things they would be a bettre treacher than I am.

They may well be right but I dont tell them how to do their job!

Er - I do get this.

Back on the thread - when we had training on Carol Dweck, the first half of it was fine - a nice gentle interactive coverage of what she was all about. 

Then I/we wanted to talk about and share and develop how we were doing a lot of what she was talking about already, it's just we'd never expressed it in her way. 

Instead Barry Hymer just picked the pace up and up, going on with more and more fervour and conviction about how wonderful she was and that was it.  

If anyone ever catches me doing a conference session or any training in that way, please scream and shout and stop me.  I don't ever want to be like that.

On-line conversations are challenging, especially when they are talking about deep issues like philosophy.  I'm genuinely interested in listening to everyone but it takes some working at.  I think part of the problem is people assume I'm not listening so they don't bother to work at it.

The coal face bit just means people drop in and out of the deeper conversations as and when they feel like it and that's absolutely fine.  The deeper stuff is better taken on bite size chunks anyway.

 You have to come to a session first DM.......