The TF 5th Anniversary Conference and Celebration. Biggest and best ever, thoroughly enjoyed myself :) Held at the ExCel Centre in the Docklands, there were over 600 delegates, from the fresh-faced '07s to the old-school '03s, and this year from the Midlands, Manchester AND London. Big things happening in TF at the moment, was a joy to see...just when things get tough there's always a TF event to make you realise everyone's in the same boat, and to remind us of the amazing things we're trying to achieve.
So the day itself was excellently organised, clearly a lot of hard work and planning had gone into the day. We began with an introductory address from our CEO Brett Wigdortz. He's hilarious, such a lovely and amiable chap, you really want to do your best for him you know? He won Ernst & Young's Social Entrepreneur of the Year this year, and also went and pitched for a new project called "Teach For All" in the States recently...some great pictures of him rubbing shoulders with old Tony and Bill. Anyway, I digress. The theme around this year's conference was "Collaboration", which seemed apt given the huge numbers of us there now are. Since its initiation in 2002 TF has placed over 1000 participants in over 118 schools. They estimated that we've had 14.4 million opportunities to make a difference in the last 5 years. No idea where the figure came from, but impressive!
After the address we had our first workshop. Wanted to go to one on youth culture, but it was booked out, so chose one on debating instead. Lots of great ideas, resources and support on setting up debating clubs in school. They had some kids along to demonstrate a mini-debate, was excellent, really impressed with the level of argument and the presentation skills of the kids. That workshop left me with some inspiration to try out a mini-debate with my tutor group in PSHE.
Then we had the school project semi-final pitches. Hadn't submitted a school project, have enough on my plate(!), but there were some great ideas out there. In our room I voted for the guy who wanted money to set up an "outdoor classroom" so that kids could get first-hand interactive learning experience of the world outside. A lovely idea, supported by the school, students already keen, easily sustainable, useful across the curriculum and across the year groups. Lots of other good ideas made it through to the next round too.
Lunch time, glorious sandwiches, yum yum. Great chance to catch up with lots of TFers! A cynic would say I was a networker, but I'm not really, I just love lots of the TF people and so spend a lot of time chatting, heehee. Running at the same time as lunch was a Third Sector fair and also a corporate careers fair too, busy busy.
After lunch the keynote address from Ralph Tabberer, the Director General of Schools within the DCSF. A reasonable speech, some good points in there, but too much emphasis on the role of the teacher and how amazing we are at making a difference. I can see why non-TFers get annoyed at us, it makes it look like all it takes to be a good teacher is brains and six weeks of summer training, forgetting all about pedagogy and the importance of commitment, support and experience.
Two more workshops after lunch, one on organisational politics, HILARIOUS, the man from Politics at Work taught us all about the slimy tricks people play to manipulate and get what they want, can't believe I do so many of them myself, and have had so many done to me! Will do a whole post on this some other time. Then went to a great workshop on educational policy reform and current neoliberal thinking on educational disadvantage. Again, this topic could do with its own post, and more, but the basic conclusion I came to was that education can solve a lot, but really it is a reactive and temporary solution - social disadvantage is the real problem, which if correctly addressed would mean educational disadvantage would be far more limited.
At about 17:00 all of this wrapped up and we went back to the main room to watch the celebrations. Lots of lovely speeches, participant diaries (a participant from every year talked about their experiences through TF), songs, videos, dhol drummers, positive messages etc. TF really know how to make you feel like a winner, was properly proud and inspired and just all good inside after that. Obviously the glasses of wine and the gorgeous cake helped too :)
Whistle-stop tour of the Conference then. All in all I loved it, I love learning more about schools and teaching and theories and leadership and skills and basically all of the things connected with what we do now and what we could do in the future. I love "feeling the TF vibe" - I get completely filled with positivity and inspiration. Its an immense project with such huge goals, and Brett was saying that when he first had his idea, everyone thought it would never make it through. Look where we are now eh? The next five years will only be better. Keep it up TF!
So the day itself was excellently organised, clearly a lot of hard work and planning had gone into the day. We began with an introductory address from our CEO Brett Wigdortz. He's hilarious, such a lovely and amiable chap, you really want to do your best for him you know? He won Ernst & Young's Social Entrepreneur of the Year this year, and also went and pitched for a new project called "Teach For All" in the States recently...some great pictures of him rubbing shoulders with old Tony and Bill. Anyway, I digress. The theme around this year's conference was "Collaboration", which seemed apt given the huge numbers of us there now are. Since its initiation in 2002 TF has placed over 1000 participants in over 118 schools. They estimated that we've had 14.4 million opportunities to make a difference in the last 5 years. No idea where the figure came from, but impressive!
After the address we had our first workshop. Wanted to go to one on youth culture, but it was booked out, so chose one on debating instead. Lots of great ideas, resources and support on setting up debating clubs in school. They had some kids along to demonstrate a mini-debate, was excellent, really impressed with the level of argument and the presentation skills of the kids. That workshop left me with some inspiration to try out a mini-debate with my tutor group in PSHE.
Then we had the school project semi-final pitches. Hadn't submitted a school project, have enough on my plate(!), but there were some great ideas out there. In our room I voted for the guy who wanted money to set up an "outdoor classroom" so that kids could get first-hand interactive learning experience of the world outside. A lovely idea, supported by the school, students already keen, easily sustainable, useful across the curriculum and across the year groups. Lots of other good ideas made it through to the next round too.
Lunch time, glorious sandwiches, yum yum. Great chance to catch up with lots of TFers! A cynic would say I was a networker, but I'm not really, I just love lots of the TF people and so spend a lot of time chatting, heehee. Running at the same time as lunch was a Third Sector fair and also a corporate careers fair too, busy busy.
After lunch the keynote address from Ralph Tabberer, the Director General of Schools within the DCSF. A reasonable speech, some good points in there, but too much emphasis on the role of the teacher and how amazing we are at making a difference. I can see why non-TFers get annoyed at us, it makes it look like all it takes to be a good teacher is brains and six weeks of summer training, forgetting all about pedagogy and the importance of commitment, support and experience.
Two more workshops after lunch, one on organisational politics, HILARIOUS, the man from Politics at Work taught us all about the slimy tricks people play to manipulate and get what they want, can't believe I do so many of them myself, and have had so many done to me! Will do a whole post on this some other time. Then went to a great workshop on educational policy reform and current neoliberal thinking on educational disadvantage. Again, this topic could do with its own post, and more, but the basic conclusion I came to was that education can solve a lot, but really it is a reactive and temporary solution - social disadvantage is the real problem, which if correctly addressed would mean educational disadvantage would be far more limited.
At about 17:00 all of this wrapped up and we went back to the main room to watch the celebrations. Lots of lovely speeches, participant diaries (a participant from every year talked about their experiences through TF), songs, videos, dhol drummers, positive messages etc. TF really know how to make you feel like a winner, was properly proud and inspired and just all good inside after that. Obviously the glasses of wine and the gorgeous cake helped too :)
Whistle-stop tour of the Conference then. All in all I loved it, I love learning more about schools and teaching and theories and leadership and skills and basically all of the things connected with what we do now and what we could do in the future. I love "feeling the TF vibe" - I get completely filled with positivity and inspiration. Its an immense project with such huge goals, and Brett was saying that when he first had his idea, everyone thought it would never make it through. Look where we are now eh? The next five years will only be better. Keep it up TF!
