All posts tagged: Teaching

75% of primary schools cut teaching assistants

75% of primary schools cut teaching assistants

Published by skeptic

More headteachers cutting staff amid warning primaries face ‘rapid deterioration’ due to funding woes More headteachers cutting staff amid warning primaries face ‘rapid deterioration’ due to funding woes More from this theme Recent articles Three-quarters of primary schools have had to cut teaching assistants numbers, despite the continued rise in pupils with special educational needs. The annual Sutton Trust school funding survey reveals a worsening picture for school finances. As well as staff cuts, activities are also being chopped. Sir Peter Lampl Sir Peter Lampl, the Sutton Trust founder, said the “erosion of schools funding coupled with rising costs is having a major impact on the ability of schools to provide the support that low-income students need”.  “It is disgraceful that increasing numbers of school leaders are having to cut essential staff and essential co-curricular activities.” The proportion of senior leaders reporting cuts in teaching staff (32 per cent), teaching assistants (69 per cent) and support staff (46 per cent) has risen this year. At primary, 74 per cent of leaders said they have reduced …

Teaching children gun safety to curb gun violence

Teaching children gun safety to curb gun violence

Published by skeptic

A father helps his son steady a firearm at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention on May 28, 2022, in Houston, Texas. Exposing children to guns comes with risks, but some firearms enthusiasts say they’d prefer to train kids to use guns responsibly. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Brandon Bell/Getty Images A father helps his son steady a firearm at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention on May 28, 2022, in Houston, Texas. Exposing children to guns comes with risks, but some firearms enthusiasts say they’d prefer to train kids to use guns responsibly. Brandon Bell/Getty Images Guns now kill more kids than car wrecks, a trend highlighting the growing concern about increased gun suicides and shootings among youth. What to do about it? Keeping guns out of children’s hands is one way. Some people take a different approach: train kids to handle guns responsibly. Jackson Beard, director of training at Securité Gun Club in Woodinville, Wash., teaches introductory classes for kids as young as eight. The class includes the standard …

Researchers taught robots to run. Now they’re teaching them to walk

Researchers taught robots to run. Now they’re teaching them to walk

Published by skeptic

In previous projects, researchers from the University of Oregon had used the same reinforcement learning technique to teach a two-legged robot named Cassie to run. The approach paid off—Cassie became the first robot to run an outdoor 5K before setting a Guinness World Record for the fastest bipedal robot to run 100 meters and mastering the ability to jump from one location to another with ease. Training robots to behave in athletic ways requires them to develop really complex skills in very narrow environments, says Ilija Radosavovic, a PhD student at Berkleley who trained Digit to carry a wide range of loads and stabilize itself when poked with a stick. “We’re sort of the opposite—focusing on fairly simple skills in broad environments.” This new wave of research in humanoid robotics is less concerned with speed and ability, and more focused on making machines robust and able to adapt—which is ultimately what’s needed to make them useful in the real world. Humanoid robots remain a relative rarity in work environments, as they often struggle to balance …

Teaching assistant loses religious discrimination claim over Christmas Grinch award | UK News

Teaching assistant loses religious discrimination claim over Christmas Grinch award | UK News

Published by Sam

A Muslim teaching assistant who claimed that being given the Christmas Grinch prize at a staff award ceremony amounted to religious discrimination has lost his employment tribunal case. Salah Toughfar said he was “upset and distressed” to have been compared to the Dr Seuss character – despite not knowing anything about the mean-tempered creature until a colleague showed him an internet description. The learning support assistant, who still works at The Grove School in north London, later complained about the audience laughing at him as he collected his trophy. His claims of direct discrimination and harassment related to his religion were dismissed by a tribunal, which said the reception he received was no different to the other winners. The Grinch is best known as the main character of the 1957 children’s book How The Grinch Stole Christmas and was also portrayed by Jim Carrey in a 2000 film. Mr Toughfar, a practising Muslim from Morocco, began working at the school in April 2020. The Search Education Trust-run school is a specialist free school for students …

DfE ends funding for teaching school hubs sector body

DfE ends funding for teaching school hubs sector body

Published by skeptic

Officials praise Teaching Schools Hub Council for ‘careful stewardship’ of hubs network as cash pulled Officials praise Teaching Schools Hub Council for ‘careful stewardship’ of hubs network as cash pulled Samantha Booth Chief reporter Lucas Cumiskey Senior reporter 15 Apr 2024, 13:36 More from this theme Recent articles The government has ended funding for the sector body set up to oversee the teaching schools hub network. In a letter to hubs today, seen by Schools Week, the Department for Education said it would be “re-purposing” the cash for the Teaching Schools Hub Council and its central team from September.  The council, made up of 13 school leaders, supports the national network of 87 hubs, including facilitating networking and collaboration to “enable the sharing of development of best practice”. A central team of four employed staff also help build capacity and growth. The teams were initially funded for three years. However the government made clear in the letter that funding for the teaching school hubs will “continue as planned”. After a reaccreditation process, DfE confirmed last …

Louise Rosager on teaching dream work to writers and actors

Louise Rosager on teaching dream work to writers and actors

Published by skeptic

Two weeks after I lost my sister, she visited me in a dream. Was it her, or was the dream a construction of my psyche, made to process this sudden loss? Either way, it shook me to my core. Since childhood, I’ve transcribed thousands of pages of dreams into bedside notebooks in the dark, but it wasn’t until I studied dream work, using techniques pioneered by Carl Jung and adapted for artists, that dreams began to change me. Dream work can be described as the process of interacting with unconscious material to generate deep, truth-charged work. Guided into a state of embodied meditation, the dreamer can “talk” with any element of the dream — characters, objects, room, weather. Shockingly, it all talks back. Rosager wears Stella McCartney shirt, jeans, and shoes, Keane necklace and rings. I first learned of dream work when I joined a theater company alongside Kim Gillingham, who founded the organization Creative Dream Work in 1999. Over the years, Gillingham has revolutionized Hollywood’s approach to artmaking through her work with Sandra Oh, …

Who Needs Teaching Assistants? Bring In the Bots, Please

Who Needs Teaching Assistants? Bring In the Bots, Please

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Peter Biles <!– –> March 29, 2024 3 Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture In defense of a human-led humanities Peter Biles <!– –> March 29, 2024 3 Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture According to Philosophy Nous, the Dean at Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences suggested that a group of teaching assistants going on strike be replaced conveniently by artificial intelligence. It would be a much cheaper option while the TAs demand higher pay and benefits, and would, apparently, accomplish the same desired ends. The dean, Stan Sclaroff, is a computer scientist. Another article from the same publication makes a list of reasons why philosophers are declining across the country, and why philosophy and humanities departments are getting cut. Justin Weinberg writes, Skills taught at universities may increasingly thought of as unnecessary to learn because we can automate them. Search engines are ways of automating research, and now we have large language models (LLMs) for automating our writing. (What these means may lack, perhaps glaringly clear to some experts, is much less visible to …

What Am I ‘Really’ Doing While Teaching Philosophy

What Am I ‘Really’ Doing While Teaching Philosophy

Published by skeptic

In my first year of teaching, a thought-provoking story prompted me to reflect on the profound meaning and value of my work as a philosophy professor: A person meets three workers at a quarry and asks, “What are you doing?” The first, hopeless, replies, “I’m hammering at stones.” The second, bored, responds, “I’m making money.” The third, fulfilling, says, “I’m shaping stones for building a school where students will learn.” Perceiving the work as merely a repetitive physical activity makes the first unhappy while working. Viewing work just as a source of income makes the second happy only on paydays, not while working. Envisioning work as a social, relational activity enables the third to feel happy while working, as she contemplates how she can produce something that better serves others’ needs. The book of the story offers further philosophical insights into the meaning of work. We are not merely transforming external objects into products of our labor while working. We are also transforming ourselves, connecting with others, and striving to better the world through our …

What we learned from teaching a course on the science of happiness

What we learned from teaching a course on the science of happiness

Published by skeptic

When you deliver a university course that makes students happier, everybody wants to know what the secret is. What are your tips? What are your top ten recommendations? These are the most asked questions, as if there is some quick, surefire path to happiness. The problem is that there are no life-transforming discoveries, because most of what works has already been talked about. Social connection, mindfulness, gratitude letters, acts of kindness, going for a walk in nature, sleep hygiene, limiting social media use. These are some of the 80 or so psychological interventions which have been shown to work to improve our wellbeing (to a lesser or greater extent). But if we already know so much about what works, then why are we still fielding requests for top happiness tips? The data tells us that students and young people today are increasingly unhappy, with national surveys finding wellbeing is lowest among the young in the UK and the US compared to other age groups. It was for this reason we began teaching the science of …

PE teacher banned from teaching for life after pressuring a 16-year-old into sex

PE teacher banned from teaching for life after pressuring a 16-year-old into sex

Published by Sam

Erin Hebblewhite, now 32, will never teach again (Metropolitan Police) A PE teacher who had a sexual relationship with a teenager has been banned from returning to the classroom for life after she was jailed for two years. Erin Hebblewhite, now 32, will never teach again after a misconduct panel banned her from returning to the profession. In 2021 Hebblewhite was sentenced to two years in prison after a court heard she had pressured a 16 year old girl into sex during an illicit relationship. Now the Teaching Regulation Agency has prohibited her from teaching anywhere in England, and she will not be able to apply for her eligibility to teach to be restored. Decisionmaker Marc Cavey wrote: “In this case, I have placed considerable weight on the very serious nature of Ms Hebblewhite’s offences which involved sexual activity with a child. I have also taken into account the lack of evidence of insight and remorse on Ms Hebblewhite’s behalf.” He added that he gave less weight in his consideration to the “contribution that Ms …