5th day in Oxford. Leadership

Time to summarize what i have learnt about leadership and change these days about leadership for change. First, about leadership.

Leaders promote change and challenges, encouraging creativity and risk taking, concentrating on goals and objectives. And they do the right thing.

The attributes of an efficient leader are:

• The guiding vision. An efficient leader knows where he want to go and how, fighting against obstacles and failures. But with the condition that te goal is achievable
• Passion. They love what they do, they put heart and soul and that shines like a guiding star for the followers
• Integrity. They know their limits, so they won't make a promise that can't be held
• Honesty. No ones wants to follow a liar or an hypocrite
• Trust. They trust in their followers and the followers trust back
• Curiosity. Leaders are learners
• Risk. They take calculated risks when needed to achieve the objective
• Dedication. They put their best into their projects.
• Charisma. Composed with love for people, sense of humour, compassion, respect and maturity
• Listen. Listen to be listened

4th Day. Oxford Union reflections

In the afternoon, i had the honor of visiting the famous Oxford Union Society. It's a almost two hundred years old institution dedicated to public debate. Founded by students in the beginnings of the XIX century (1823), its mission was to hold regular debates about polemical questions.

To be a member, you have to study at Oxford and pay a 300 pound fee. British Premier William Gladstone used to invite members of its cabinet, sky-rocketing the prestige of the Oxford Union. Since then, a lot of politicians, thinkers or artists have debated there. But, remarkably, being a member of the board, specially president, could help a student to develop a political career, like prime ministers as the mentioned Gladstone, Heath, Asquith or McMillan; even in other countries, like Pakistan former president Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to hold such a position in a muslim country.

The debates are competitive: at the end, the students vote with their feet: they go through a particular side of the exit door to reflect if they agree or not with the resolution debated

Here is a list of the last debates 

Having a tea in its exclusive cafe, i was wondering about how we are losing the art of debating. And, more specifically, if we have lost the ability the change our mind about issues. Is there a point in debating with so many people that will reject every logical point because the "feel" they are right? Why so many people think that being persuaded by solid argumentations is a kind of personal defeat that they have to avoid at all costs? I am not very optimistic about this questions... but, hey, I am in a very exclusive temple of debate, so, I am happy, as you can see in the picture

4th day in Oxford. Vocational studies and Virtual Learning Environment

In my fourth day, i have visited the City of Oxford College. These kind of institutions are focused to adult education, including in this concept early school leavers, with both vocational and university studies.

My main interest was the model they are using to introduce technology. I attended to a class by two of the the "early adopters" of the institution.The class was in a vocational course about videogames designing. Students were between 18 and 25 years old. I eventually discovered that they were very motivated and could observe some awesome project the made. The classroom was quite new and with top-notch computers, able to work with a 3D design heavily-oriented course.

They use Canvas Virtual Learning Environment. It is a very complete VLE, very agile and with full mobile support, to use as repository, communications, blog, task asignment... In my impression, it is like a vitaminated moodle: with a lot of options, but smoother and user friendly. With Canvas, everything is digital and no textbook is needed.

The course is heavily project-oriented, with no examinations. So, they have to follow a very detailed process to get evidence about the content and competences learned. It's a cumbersome task, made a little more easy thanks to the tool Promonitor, specifically designed with that in mind. Unfortunately, it's not user-friendly, but i know no other programs-apps more powerful for a complex evaluation system.

3rd Day. Visit to a Secondary School

Secondary Education in England lasts for five years: children begin being 11 years old and end with 16 years. So, they began one year before, but end at the same age. At the end they have to pass an state exam called GCSE, that allow them to continue the path to their A Levels exams that control the access to the University.

The school i visited was an Academy. Academies are state funded charities ("Fundaciones" in Spanish), but they can get additional funding and, specially, don't have to follow the National Curriculum, enjoying much more freedom in their school project design. But methodologically and at the technological level, this one was quite traditional. In each classroom there was an Interactive Whiteboard and a dedicated laptop, but the students used textbooks.

But there were some very attractive projects. All students play a PLB gamification. They belong to one house, there are four of them, like in the Harry Potter movies. Students earn points for their house and get badges of honour for great performances in categories like football, rugby, acting, punctuality, helping...

There is a teacher in charge of each house. Once a week, all the house members (25% of the school) join together in the theatre. There, they check the leaderboard of the gamification, congratulate students with merits, confirm their house motto and vision and have a lesson about ethics and moral values. Quite interesting, indeed.

3rd day in Oxford. Visit to a Primary School

One of the objectives of my course was to visit educational institutes to learn how they work and to share knowledge. This morning was the turn for a Nursery, Reception and Primary School here in Oxford.

Nursery is for 3 years old. Reception is for 4 years old, with a kind of introductory function. Primary education in England begins with 5 years old children and last through six years (1-6), the last one began when they are 10 years old. There is a final exam called SAT in the sixth year, with merely an assessment function.

Comparing with Spain, we can see that there is one year less for "kindergarten" and primary education begins and ends one year before.

The school I visited was in a neighborhood with a lot of immigration. They had 38 different languages in the school, receiving a lot of children with no knowledge of english. That is why they hire a lot of teacher assistants to help the teacher managing the class. Those teacher assistants have no special qualification and earn minimum salary. Almost every classroom had two adults inside. And sometimes, even three, when the special needs teacher help them. Teaching is heavily scheduled, with short, medium and long term programming, checked weekly.

I observed two maths lessons, one for 8-9, the other for 6-7. In both classrooms, the children were given tasks ("word problems", "problemas con enunciado" in Spanish) according to three levels: bronze, silver and gold. The problems were about addition and subtraction, only the gold needing more than one operation. In the 6-7 class were beginning with intuitive division. In this classroom, very huge, the teacher used an assembly system to expose the initial concepts, helped with an Interactive Whiteboard. The students use a whiteboard slate to work while in assembly mode. The teacher also used a kind of lamp-like camera to project her written notes and tasks. These tasks were divided in Gold, Silver and Bronze levels too. Once made, the students glue them to their evaluation notebook-folder.

About technology, there is an interactive whiteboard in every classroom with its dedicated laptop. In addition, they have two cupboards with laptops. I didn't see any kind of textbook, everything was made with photocopies. 

2nd day in Oxford. Traditions

Early this morning, walking to my classes, i have met a young man looking like this:

At first, i thought about a kind of costume. But then, i saw another young man. And another few minutes later. And a fourth one. Hey, that is something like a robe. And a white rose, well, not a rose, a carnation. And they have a strange hat, the "birrete" that we use in Spain in our graduation ceremonies. My goodness! Do they really use that outfit?!

Yes, they do. That indicates that they are in their final examinations process. The suit is known as subfusc, from latin. Men must wear a funny white bow tie, shirt, black suit and black shoes under an academic gown. Women use a black tie with the gown and either a black skirt or trousers. And there is the carnation, that reflects when are they in the process. It is white when they do the first exam, pink thereafter and red for the final exam.

Strange, isn't it? It against any modernity. It's so old fashioned! But the students voted overwhelmingly in favour of compulsory academic dress in examinations, with 75.8% supporting subfusc. Why could young people consider it was important to do something as stressful and decisive as your Oxford final exam disguised as a two century old academic?

Because traditions are important. Chesterton said tradition was "the democracy of the Dead". And he was right (as usual). These young men's ancestors built Oxford reputation. That is an immaterial treasure nowadays students are enjoying. They owe that respect to the ones who built Oxford and configured it. It's their tribute, the external sign that,  "hey, old pals, we are here, we are listening, we will continue your path and we thank you all for what you did".

Arrival and first day

A dream becoming true. Here I am, as a student in Oxford, living in a college for a course.

I arrived on Sunday. Waiting for boarding to Birmingham, i met some very young students, around eleven or twelve years old. When i saw them, scattered through the hall, my headteacher soul sprang: "My goodness! Why are these students without an adult?! Why are not grouped together?!" I couldn't resist the temptation to ask them those questions. They were living a full year course near Birmingham and were returning after having easter holidays with their families (School Easter Holidays in England are two weeks long, after Easter Sunday). I was amazed how independent, how resolute, how resourceful they appeared being so young. Today, my course manager told me that in England, everybody is surprised about how young the children we send from Spain are.

In my first day of the course, we've been talking about our schools. Another chance to be proud about ours, Colegio JABY. In this occasion, the reasons to fall into the sin of Pride was that our Erasmus+ programs are the only ones I have known about here that are not fully english learning driven. Our projects are always about innovation, about sharing experiences, about methodological and technological change. But most of the other projects are simply about english learning and teaching, led by english teachers. Of course, this is not a bad thing, on the contrary. But i feel that our projects are more holistic, more complete, more complex. They involve the whole school, not only a small part of the faculty and are more ambitious in theme and actions, i think.

A very interesting activity we made today was to visit the most famous Oxford University Press. The money-packed OUP is very important division of the University of Oxford. AND its financial heart. The OUP sells millions of books, most of them textbooks and, specially, english learning textbooks. The profits are so... (SORRY, they are a charity, they are not allowed by law to have profits, the have "surplus")... The "surplus" are so high that they provide HALF the university budget... That's why the University can afford expensive buildings and equipment and a numerous faculty. Of course, i thought about our inititative-less universities, always begging for public money instead of looking or improving their own funding sources and even with students demonstrating against "bussiness in university", as it would be an evil thing. Oxford is lucky to have a succesful brand. But they managed to get the most of it selling related products. Thinking about how Salamanca or Alcala being incapables to have a relatively similar success with spanish language teaching and learning makes me sad. Oops, another sin: envy.