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By Carley Huxham; Greenwood School, Hampshire
Carley Huxham shares her experiences of teaching D&T at Greenwood School in Hampshire; a Pupil Referal Unit.
I have spent the last 10 years teaching D&T in pupil referral units. Most of the students I teach tell me that they have been banned from D&T in their previous schools. Their confidence tends to be low and often their practical experience in the D&T classroom is minimal.
In my current school I have a maximum of six students in a class, which may sound like a dream, but it has its challenges.
It is impossible to have all the students in a class working at the same stage, or on the same thing. This is due to the following elements:
sporadic attendance
students coming and going from their mainstream schools
the need to give students an element of choice in order to engage them
ensuring they are working on a project that is suited to their experience and ability
Relationships are essential to engaging students. A great way to build up trust and understanding of a student in D&T is to allow some opportunity for personalisation of a project, and to offer projects that students want to do, as otherwise they probably won’t do it.
Sometimes going off topic and giving a student free reign of what they want to make is the only way to engage them. A lot of the time, the projects that students want to make are unsuited to their ability (they always seem to want to make a full-sized bench despite not having set foot in a D&T room since year 7 and not being able to focus on a task for longer than 5 minutes.)
The amount of compromising and negotiating is extensive in a PRU; most of the time you will come to an agreed outcome, even if it takes two weeks and every bit of your patience to get there.
Planning is incredibly important. I plan a range of projects I have them prepped and ready to go to enable choice and flexibility. I select projects that have worked well in the past, and, in particular, I select projects that I believe will engage and be enjoyable.
When it comes to choosing qualifications to enter my students for, I look for courses that offer a practical focus and flexibility. Some students are not with us for or may have low attendance. This is a major factor when planning how to guide them through qualifications. Often, I will have a couple of different qualifications on offer, depending on how long a student is with us. I am fortunate that there is no pressure to offer GCSE. Our focus is on ensuring students experience and develop a range of practical skills that we can document in a portfolio that students can take with them back to their mainstream schools, or to college and job interviews. These will also give them points of discussion and show what they are capable of.
Staff numbers in PRU’s are low in comparison to a mainstream school. Rather than staff being in departments, all staff come together often and there is a strong sense of team across the whole school. In the three PRU’s where I have worked, I have been the only D&T teacher, and I value opportunities to visit other schools or meet up with other D&T teachers. I miss the everyday opportunities to bounce ideas around for projects, to share inspiration and resources, and learn from others who may be more experienced in certain areas or have specific D&T-related knowledge. I have wasted more minutes than I care to think about searching the Internet for which band saw blade to buy and trying to find the most helpful YouTube tutorial on how to replace it. Machine maintenance is not my strong point and so I definitely miss having a technician around who actually knows what they’re doing.
The flexibility and unpredictability of working in a PRU are what I love the most.
When a student tells me that it is their brother’s birthday tomorrow and they want to make them a Batman door sign then we do it. When a student tells me that they want to make a wooden shank then we don’t.
Senior leaders value the subject and the benefits that it has for our students and, despite money being short, even my most extravagant materials requests have always been approved.
Empowering students by developing their creativity, building relationships through trusting them in the workshop, and showing patience and giving support to enable them to make something they are proud of, is why we do it.
In a PRU you just have to learn to celebrate the small wins. No, I won’t lead a class of thirty to achieve GCSE success, but today all the students I was expecting to turn up did, and they all worked productively alongside each other for a full fifteen minutes before one of them left the room with a saw...
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