‘Theirs not to make reply/ Theirs not to reason why…’

I inwardly wince when I hear the phrase ‘it is what it is’. Its unquestioning use in schools is the reason I dislike it so intensely. Let me give you an example…

I last taught in a school in the 2021 – 2022 academic year, when I enjoyed the pleasure of the company of a class of 31 four and five year olds. From the autumn term until July, the two reception classes were divided into ability groups for their daily twenty-minute phonics session. I worked with the beginners’ group.

I had extensive training and experience in Early Literacy Intervention, but my wings were clipped through enforced obedience to the Read Write Inc (RWI) phonics scheme. I supported the rationale and research evidence behind the teaching of Systematic Synthetic Phonics and the RWI scheme had its strengths. The majority of children were making good progress through the phases.

My ongoing concern, however, was the significant minority of children whose needs were not being met and who were not making good progress. They were in my beginners’ group and a core of them remained with me for the entire year.

As an experienced teacher, I could read their needs. They needed to be able to get up and MOVE. They needed more out-of-the-box, multi-sensory activities that brought meaning and relevance to these strange squiggles and sounds. They needed more experience of the closeness and connection of Shared Reading.

In the autumn term, I was observed teaching a phonics session to my group of beginners. I followed the framework of the RWI plan during my lesson observation, but I also taught responsively and, when I observed a collective need for little bodies to get up from sitting on the carpet and move, I encouraged the children to go and explore the classroom environment in search of the letter they were learning. We discovered the letter popping up everywhere around us and, from my observation, this activity breathed life into our learning and brought a clearer focus when we returned to the carpet. My feedback, however, instructed me to keep the group on the carpet and “stick to the script”. There was no allowance for any thinking outside the box. This scripted straightjacket restricted me as the teacher and my children as learners.

When I voiced my concerns to colleagues, I was silenced with a raising of eyebrows, a shrug of the shoulders, and an

“It is what it is.”

Government directives were to be obeyed. An Ofsted inspection was looming…

Like a good girl, I complied and did as I was told with as much energy and enthusiasm as I could muster.

It was a mammoth task, but I did what I could to be positive in each of the daily phonics sessions, while my beginners sat through the same letters and the same sounds being presented in the same way with the same worksheets at the same time, day after day, week after week, month after month. Their more advantaged peers, however, moved up through the phonics groups, experiencing new letters and sounds, a variety of teachers, different worksheets and fresh resource materials.

At the end of the year, I wondered what my group would have to look forward to in their daily phonics sessions when they reached Year 1… and Year 2…?

My cognitive dissonance, my lack of teacher agency and my silenced voice were driving forces in my decision to stop teaching in schools at the end of the 2022 summer term.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

_{‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson}

I’m Julia. I’m a qualified and experienced Every Child a Reader teacher, who is passionate about bringing families and communities together through Shared Reading. This website is all about my ongoing quest for clarity of direction. I’m seeking a future where young and old bond through books, where relationships are strengthened through Shared Reading, where obstacles to literacy are removed, and where reading becomes irresistible.

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