LvC Part 4: Overarching Influence
Defining elements that shaped my future
Abstract
Did these moments shift my mindset?
Prior to this post we looked at the role of mindset in reaction to my school environment and the feedback I received.
These were presented as factors that had overarching influence on my decision-making and generally on my future.
This post delves into defining features I believe are at the root of my entire secondary school experience and have had a major impact on the trajectory I find myself today.
As the last post of the LvC series, I invite you to explore how these features tie-in with the other posts and whether they formed the backbone of my school experience.
Discussion
The classroom inequality
Given my friend had managed to get into their desired grammar school, in simple terms they had quite a different experience.
In their initial experience of secondary school, I had already seen a disparity.
From Year 7, there were no sets to divide students by ability in their school.
Everyone would learn the same thing, and given that everyone had started a clean slate, they would be brought up to class speed as a minimum standard.
In our conversations, my friend recognised this as the school keeping the class environment “competitive”.
What I find intriguing is the potential impact of having no sets as compared to my experience of having sets from day one.
You may remember from my post about how much pressure you should put on yourself, that I mention being in a cocoon, and I would like to re-draw out some important points linking to the impact of having sets.
Point 1: “Even when we say pressure makes diamonds, we are still inside a cocoon of other’s expectations, institutionalised standards, such as grades, work promotions, and quite simply at the hands of others that sculpt us to their liking.”
Point 2: “The sharper and heavier the diamond, the fewer cocoons that can handle it. Essentially, realise that the pressure of the cocoon you are in contains the right conditions for you to be held in it.”
Point 3: “If you don’t choose to take it upon yourself, you will sit in a cocoon made by others - it requires effort from an insect to form their cocoon in the first place and then emerge from it.”
Points 2 and 3 are back-to-back in the conclusion of that post and I think highlight the pitfall of having sets.
Given my school was non-selective, it may be argued that it is a prerequisite that students are ordered in terms of ability.
But how can a student know what is possible if their environment is designed to keep them where they are, especially from day one?
An uninspiring class environment would only show you the minimum standard, but by no means would encourage you to see what is possible in the sets above.
As a result, there are polarising effects that this can have.
One of them is that those in lower sets may lack the incentive to improve their attainment and move to a higher set.
What you believe is what you see, and therefore settling for their current set may not be of major concern to the student.
Some may see this lack of drive as being ‘lazy’ as a person is simply satisficing for where they are, but there is a similar effect of blending into the crowd when in the top set also.
Complacency can set in, as it may seem that you are inherently ahead of those who are in the lower sets.
This can prompt being lazy and overconfident, but this is not something I experienced overtly.
However, this was something I did witness, to which I doubt those in grammar school could afford to do the same and not pull their weight due to having no sets.
Reaffirming my initial exploration of the word ‘smart’ in part 1, where I highlighted the risk of falling into a fixed mindset, this attested to how my friend described his classroom experience.
One point I took away was that the students were brought back to class speed rather than being ‘assisted’.
That was when I recognised the disparity between our school environments as well as the one present between students in my school.
In my experience, aside from English, at no point was there a lesson on best practice in the student’s approaches to exams.
You could argue that it is only English that you can give structures to write, plan, and execute due to its subjective nature, but that promotes only binary thinking for how to improve in the other subjects.
I believe it could have been done for all essay-based subjects at least; actively collating common trends, positive or negative, in order to prompt further thought into how a student can progress.
Compared to model answers which cannot be copied, the incentive to settle at the minimum standard meant that it was on students to see that they were on their own progression.
In the other subjects, students were ‘assisted’ by getting feedback without a loop or the incentive to check whether their feedback had been appropriately applied.
Generally, the element of unifying the class in terms of their understanding I found interesting, as realistically it is the student themselves who bears their own grade, but it is also the student that would be sitting in the same exam hall as others.
Intervention and appreciation
To Year 11 now and my head of year told the year group in the most blunt way possible that we had to lock in and focus for the exams ahead.
They told us to be “selfish”.
A significant chunk of an assembly about exam preparation emphasised that it was only you going into that exam hall, only you writing that paper, and only you bearing the results.
It shook me up.
Because of how individualistic the message was; and
5 years will all come down to a set of papers.
This is where some mindset shift took place, as at the time I knew that I would have to get the best out of myself, and if I were to do that my efforts couldn’t have been based on anyone else around me.
Interestingly though, at least a year and a half before this, I had a teacher who had consistently created the opportunity to go that extra mile if I chose to.
My English teacher recognised mine and others spare capacity and had a passion for developing her students.
Prior to having them as a teacher, I saw English as a subject that just has to be done; the poems, the books, and at the end, the analysis.
Funnily enough, in a similar vain to my parents in the 11+ exams period, the subject meant more to me as time went on as I saw how much my teacher cared and put into it.
Becoming my main English teacher towards the end of Year 9, it was clear to see their enthusiasm in what was being taught.
They would go out of their way to present unique and thought-provoking material as well as later facilitate an extra group for those enroute and aiming for a Grade 9 (A*).
On top of all of this, she took on countless class markings for practice assessments as a result of giving the class the opportunity to reflect on how we can continually improve.
When comparing this to other subjects, it seemed that the work we as students would put in outside of school was already the baseline standard for the classroom, to which it was our choice whether to leverage this or not.
What I find interesting now especially, is that you could argue that this is a type of ‘intervention’.
With no specific context on the grades being achieved in Year 9 or prior, for all you know this effort could have been necessary because of the underperformance of students.
For me personally, I was steadily improving in English getting Grades 6 (B) and 7 (A) prior to my former English teacher coming in Year 10.
Of course, there is no way to tell where things may have ended up if circumstances were different and if another teacher took charge instead, but I would say that attainment would have perhaps stagnated around Grade 7 or 8 hadn’t I been shown the potential that I had in the subject.
What I took away from this in reflection was that intervention is not only for when you are struggling to meet the minimum standard.
At the time of preparing for GCSEs, it had an undesirable reputation as it would only be used in the context of students who are underperforming or not meeting the minimum standard.
Even after GCSEs, it had the connotations of a forceful wake up call.
In reflection, reframing and repurposing the meaning of intervention which is to improve the performance of students is what my teacher did seamlessly.
Despite teaching the top-set class, it was mandatory to join and attend the online meetings in the extra group each week, a group aspiring to attain the best grades.
This initiative would end up developing my understanding, articulation, and critical thinking around what had been learnt in class.
A clear demonstration of my teacher’s willingness to push us to our full potential.
Lessons to learn
What I took from this experience was the discipline in consistency; on the teacher’s side and also mine.
Even when off sick, my English teacher remained organised and ensured that the class did exam preparation through a long form question which they would mark.
These questions would take up a whole period (50 mins), and you just had to get on with it.
The question didn’t care how you felt, you just had to do it.
When faced with this task, straightforward in concept but more challenging in execution, the effects of not applying yourself are overtly counterproductive.
Each time I put pen to paper with the aim of fulfilling my plan within the time, I experienced flow state, where I’m fully engaged and slightly pushing past my limits.
Perhaps this is why I enjoy the process of writing so much.
In the context of English, it was clear that being lazy would have only been to my detriment.
This prompted greater focus on the systems I follow when I plan each long-answer question, as after becoming familiar with my style and the questions themselves, the goal was to optimise.
Optimise the length of the plan, the time spent on each paragraph, the length of the thesis statement and conclusion and so on.
English as a subject very much became about how much effort I put in, to which I knew each opportunity to display my capabilities to myself and my teacher were imperative to take.
Alongside this, due to its subjective nature, no two essays can be written the same which reaffirmed the concept of invisible competition as I approached my final exams.
It was the idea of playing your own game the way you want which I think grew my interest in the subject as a whole.
If I were to give an analogy for it, it felt like having boundless time playing in a football cage where the only confines were the marking scheme.
Sometimes it is the facility itself that shows you what is possible, especially when you have played the game without it already.
Shoutout: The Youth STEMM Award
Now if we were to apply the same analogy outside of an institutional setting, the confines fade away.
I found it quite liberating to acknowledge my ability to make things happen if I put my mind to it.
The first instance of this was after GCSEs.
Due to the unpredictable environment of lockdowns and GCSEs approaching, in Year 10 I made a vow to myself to return to this programme after it had been introduced to me.
And I’m glad I did.
The extended holiday presented an opportunity to explore, to which I partook in a programme simply out of curiosity.
Now known as the Youth STEMM Award, it offered a range of opportunities literally and passively.
Literally meaning that they offered many opportunities to learn and gain insight into the different careers out there, mainly at the time (2020-21) via webinars.
Passively in this case means the programme presented prompts and frameworks to explore various topics and skills in my own way.
For example, one of the requirements to achieve the Silver Award was to have a public presence of some sort.
Instead of saying, become a YouTuber or a keynote speaker, they allowed free range for students to define what public presence meant to them.
I fulfilled this criteria by writing blogs.
This meant leveraging the webinars I partook in, to which I did further research on the disciplines discussed and made blogs on them.
Even though I had no idea how relevant the research would be to me as they were centred on disciplines I wasn’t interested in going into, I saw it as a win-win to gain knowledge as well as share it in a form that will forever be available to someone who may be able to gain inspiration from it.
Alongside this, I’ll give another example.
Students were required to have a physical appearance in creating/facilitating an event.
The way I fulfilled this criteria was by crafting and presenting my own assembly focused on STEMM to Year 6 students in my old primary school.
Throughout the programme I thrived on feeling the urge to explore my curiosity, rather than being in confines and being pushed towards doing something just because the rules said so.
As a result, I completed a programme that would usually take a year in the space of 3-4 months.
Without the programme, I wouldn’t have been exposed to what is possible outside of academia or careers.
This was also the first time where I had produced something and had been proud of it.
The fulfilment of giving back was something I explored in my second post on The Thought Base, where it crushed me that I couldn’t achieve a high such as giving an assembly of a similar sort in the same way.
If I were lazy in staying true to my vow in Year 10, all of these opportunities would have been forgone...
Conclusion
It was a monumental reflection looking into laziness and complacency.
So much so, I asked what my mum took away from all of this as I didn’t know where to start.
The lesson she took away was to not give up on your goal, to dust yourself off and start again.
This was based on the fact that my friend had been rejected at other schools before getting into the school they did and I didn’t get into a grammar school the first time of asking but the second time.
A point my mum made that really resonated with me was: “It’s not about where you start, it is about where you end.”
This inspired me to think deeper.
I saw that having the opportunity to grow exponentially comparative to counterparts can be overlooked especially when you have fulfilled an aspiration.
Many of these were short-term aspirations, such as maintaining my position as a high performer in the top-set and for my friend it was getting into the grammar school their parents worked so hard to get them in.
It is an inability to see long-term that makes it difficult to observe the opportunities available to us.
With this, is recognising that life is a learning process and wisdom doesn’t come with age.
Without such reflection, you would make the same mistakes over and over again.
However, once coming face-to-face with these mistakes we can’t be too hard on ourselves if we were completely unaware of it.
This quote from Maya Angelou highlights exactly this:
“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learnt it.”
After all, we are not perfect and never will be.
P.S.
LvC Series Complete 🚀
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