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Always best by the book
By David Drever, Convenor, GTC Scotland
Did you read any good books this summer? Books can give us a reassuring common currency with the foreign folk who share our holiday spaces. We might not be able to speak the language of fellow holidaymakers, but we recognise the titles and the big-name authors of the paperbacks they are reading. They look uncannily like the books we are reading, except, of course, they are in a foreign language.
Maybe you don't go in for 'holiday reading' - I don't. I read the same sort of books during the holidays that I read during term time, except that there's more of them. I'm a compulsive book buyer, hoovering up more in the holidays than in school time, and constantly revising my personal reading list.
So far, so pleasurable. But what about those other 'reading lists' that chronicle our working lives? The reading that demands our professional attention rarely comes in attractive book form. It is often to be found as an email 'attachment' - seldom does a word so mock its original meaning - neutrally concealing what lies within. Or maybe it is in hard copy, a published format, bearing the signature of HMIE, CfE, HMSO, perhaps even GTC Scotland, and commanding our scrutiny. Some of this reading is tedious and humdrum, necessary for keeping schools and colleges in working order; but some of it is radical and pleasurable, grist for the professional mill. The trick, as always, is knowing the difference.
Then there are the thousands, tens of thousands, of words written by our pupils and students that claim daily consideration and response, in one form or another. Some of what we read here is inchoate and tentative, much of it is downright mixed up and inaccurate. However, in this case, we need to invest the young people's efforts with meaning and help shape the thought that lies behind their words.
For most of us, holiday reading will now be a distant memory, something to be recounted briefly in the staffroom, but relegated by the daily demands of teaching. I hope in this new session you will cope adroitly with the tedious and relish the pleasurable in the challenges - reading and otherwise - ahead.