Visit to SML College Brighton

FEBRUARY 25, 2020~ TUMWACO

As a teacher of formative cycles, during the last years my interest in new approaches to learning processes has grown, especially considering the contexts of my classrooms: lack of motivation, problems with time and goal management, stress, abandonment of studies, lack of social skills ... I observe all this in my students, who are over 16 years of age and who, supposedly, have voluntarily chosen studies according to their interests and which should generate motivation and desire to learn.

For this reason, when I met Dr. Ian Cunningham in 2018 and first heard about the SML College he chairs, I looked for a way to visit them in Brighton. The visit lasted 5 days and there I was able to observe his way of working with young people.

The Self Managed Learning College is attended by students between the ages of 9 and 17 , who are advised and assisted by the team to choose their own goals and challenges, using what they call Learning Groups and Learning Agreements. ).

Groups consist of a meeting where individual goals are reviewed weekly, and each student can receive advice from their peers on how to progress toward achieving them. Once outside the group, each student can decide whether to work with others or individually on these goals, or to join a group project that fits their interests.

One of the most interesting aspects is that students choose the subjects they want to learn about. And they are not afraid to choose, since there is no wrong option. Each choice will serve for learning. The only thing that is required of them is that they are part of a Learning Group and attend weekly meetings, since it is the space where they can help each other and where they can receive support and understanding, if they need it.

During that week I was able to observe students immersed in various activities: programming with SCRATCH, elaboration of art pieces to sell at an open house, preparation with an individual tutor for the GCSE exams (a kind of selectivity that in the United Kingdom is carried out to age 16), a debate on vaccination, research projects on ancient civilizations and their culture of death, exposition of findings from a search on luminescent living beings, construction of a sailboat, calculation and discussion of a loan plan and many others.

What I perceived during the observation of the Learning Groups was that the students felt totally comfortable in them to express any opinion or feeling, be it a new idea for a project or a complaint or a personal problem. This is a constant in the day to day of SML College, since the personal life of the students is not separated from their learning process. Each individual is seen as a complete being and can express himself as a whole. Students are appreciated in their individuality. Everyone counts, everyone can express their opinion, and everyone is respected and should lavish the same respect.

This is also the case with the so-called Learning Advisers . The advisors are the adults who accompany the process and moderate the Learning Groups. On a board each advisor indicates what kind of support they can offer. Beyond academic degrees or qualifications, personal skills or experience in certain “non-academic” fields are also offered that can serve as counseling for students. Each Adviser is not just a “teacher of” but a well-rounded person who can inspire young people.

The experience was very inspiring for me and I hope to be able to apply some of the learnings obtained in my day to day as a teacher.

I can only thank all the students, staff and volunteers of SML College for their welcome and patience in answering my questions. It was a pleasure meeting you.

A few days ago the Tumwaco Association offered a talk about this and other experiences, as part of a cycle. We will continue with our activities to present other ways of educating, so as not to lose our activities, follow us on

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asociaciontumwaco/

Esther russo

Adele Jarrett-Kerr Podcast with Dr Ian Cunningham ' "Feel Together, Think Separately".

https://revillaging.podbean.com/e/feel-together-think-separately-ian-cunningham/

Meridian News Feature on SML College - 9th September 2020

President’s Lecture

Last year saw the first President’s lecture given by Professor Rose Luckin of UCL Institute of Education. As a world-renowned expert on AI in education her lecture was a great success with many complimentary remarks about its value. We had hope to have a lecture again this year, but the virus pandemic beat us. We do, though, plan for one next year.

University of Brighton Collaboration

We have had a longstanding relationship with the University of Brighton. As well as eight evaluation research studies that their students have carried out with us we have recently commissioned research from a Master’s student in Community Psychology. Her research was on the local problem of NEETs (young people not in education employment or training). Her findings support the need for the College to start running programmes for the over 16s.

Achieving - what’s it really about

Saturday, 16 November 2019. There were two articles in newspapers about one of the world’s top cricketers, Ben Stokes. One was in the Times newspaper. The other was in the Guardian. It’s interesting that each focused on different aspects of what makes him successful. I’ll take each article in turn.

Intelligence matters

Michael Atherton (a former England captain) commented in the Times: “Observers often confuse academic intelligence – GCSEs, A-levels, university degrees, and the like – with cricketing intelligence, but the two are distinct. You can have both, of course, but one does not automatically confer the other. Stokes told me he has one GCSE (in PE), but he is among the most intelligent cricketers I have come across”.
Atherton makes a perceptive point – and given his wide experience in cricket it’s significant. In common with many people who are successful, they often come with a poor academic record, which is not correlated with the kind of intelligence they need to achieve in their chosen area of work. It’s common amongst sportspeople that many have had quite poor school records, yet show a great intelligence in their own sport. I can also say, in my experience of almost 50 years in consulting with entrepreneurs, that the majority have had poor school records, but show a great deal of intelligence in their own area of work. They are smart, savvy people whose success has no relation to educational performance.

We know that crude notions of one kind of intelligence that somehow sums up the person is faulty. A number of writers have shown that it makes more sense to think of different kinds of intelligence. For instance, to take one example, our President, Professor Rose Luckin, has commented, in relation to Artificial Intelligence (a field in which she is a world-renowned expert) that there are a wide range of other intelligences that humans possess which Artificial Intelligence does not, and cannot, replace. One key example is that of the notion of social intelligence and of working with others in achieving results.

Emotional maturity matters

The second article from the Guardian newspaper by Donald McRae is subtitled “Fear is natural - just embrace it” (a comment from Ben Stokes). This article was much more focused on emotional and feeling issues and how crucial they are in being successful in a whole range of activities, but especially sport. Stokes commented that he’d been to see the team psychologist and opened up about feeling nervous before a crucial England match. The psychologist suggested he share the fears with the squad. McRae comments: “Rather than adopt the line about being ready for battle he told his teammates: “I am nervous, I am anxious, I am worrying about what happens if we don’t win. Believe me, I am worried.” In showing his apprehension Stokes was able to normalise these emotions. For everyone else.”

Later in the interview Stokes comments on sharing worries with a fellow batsman and says that the latter’s success after that conversation was, as he put it, “ no coincidence that it followed, letting out those emotions to someone”. He goes on to comment about embracing the fact that fear is natural and how he has dealt with that.

Dealing with emotions is not just something that sportspeople have to attend to. Many senior business leaders that I have worked with have had to deal with strong feelings and the extent to which they have shown maturity in this has linked to their effectiveness in fulfilling their role.

In school, in general, the ability to develop emotional maturity is neglected and not even seen as relevant in the context of a curriculum based on fact learning and exam passing. We know that emotional well-being developed during teenage years, especially, but also in early adulthood, is a better predictor of future life satisfaction than, for instance, exam grades. Research on this is impeccable and conclusive from a number of studies - yet such factors are neglected in British schools.

Our students in SML College do take exams and get similar grades to their school colleagues. What is most reassuring, for instance when visitors come round, is their delight at the emotional maturity and social ability shown by our students. Independent research has shown that ex-students value these qualities as they pursue their differing careers.

Ian Cunningham November 2019

Young people - take charge of your own learning

Coco Kirkland joined Self Managed Learning (SML) College aged 13. She had been constantly in trouble in her mainstream school, because the teachers accused her of just doodling all the time. She was also diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Having been labelled naughty, just because she sees herself as a visual learner, she decided she didn’t want to stay in mainstream school.

In her first year at SML College, she did continue her doodling and cartoon drawing and other visual activities as well as chatting to fellow students. To anyone observing her, she seemed to be doing nothing else. However, she was adjusting to her new environment where she could decide totally what and how she wanted to learn and at age 15 she published her first graphic novel entitled ‘Project Immortality’. The publishing company editor was shocked that a 15-year-old girl had produced work of such quality, and the book has been selling well ever since.

Coco did not just focus on writing her graphic novel. She became an expert on herpetology, for instance, and also decided to take a number of GCSE subjects. These were freely chosen by her and she decided to take two a year early. One of these was law, and as she said after passing it; “I made a comic about solicitors and barristers to help teach myself and to remember things.” She also commented that she has not seen ADHD and dyslexia as an advantage or disadvantage, just a different type of mental state. The College is renowned for taking a similar stance. All students are different and are respected for their differences.

Coco, like other students, spent her first week in College discovering more about herself and her ideas and directions in life that she was interested in. It is only then that we were able to help her to progress. For instance, having chosen law we could then help her to think about ways in which she could learn this, given that we didn’t have a law tutor, (neither, of course, did her previous school, who could not have let her take law GCSE).

She started to learn from a book designed for law GCSE. I asked if she would like to meet a lawyer, to which she said yes, and so we arranged for a lawyer to spend the morning with her just having a dialogue about the nature of law and justice and other ideas that she wanted to explore. I also asked if she’d like to see the law in action which, again, she said yes. So we arranged for a trip to the local magistrate's court and other students joined her on the trip. Note that she personally chose the goal that she wanted, namely to pass law GCSE. She also chose the mode of learning. If she had rejected either of my suggestions, they would not have happened. Students have the complete right to reject any ideas put to them.

This is the essence of the Self Managed Learning approach. We are unique in providing this mode of learning for young people.

As well as working on ideas about herself and her directions in life, in the first week she also joined a learning group with five other students and one of the staff team as the learning group adviser. The role of the adviser is basically to support students and to help the group work effectively. The learning group provides a secure base from which students can go out into the College and the wider world to conduct their learning. Another way in which students can make decisions is through the daily community meetings. These occur both at the beginning of the morning and also at lunchtime. We have 40 students and typically three or four staff on at any one time, and the community meeting is chaired in rotation by students (who are aged 9 to 17).

We talk about our College as a learning community because everyone is treated equally and is equally valued. We have no ranking of students and genuinely love having students who bring different perspectives to the College.

I recollect a girl who had come to us on the basis that she had major learning difficulties. She found even basic maths almost impossible, and her writing, while adequate, was not sufficient to pass an English exam. However, in our community she was brilliant within meetings because she was a clear moral compass. She was the one who would raise issues of morality and ethics and to challenge others in the community.

In our learning community the diversity that exists is of great value. For instance, a couple of our autistic girls have developed a very nice PowerPoint presentation on autism, which they use occasionally in our community meetings. This helps, especially new students, understand issues of autism and how those students on the autistic spectrum can be helped within the community, whilst at the same time being valued as individuals who bring something to the community.

What is appalling is that the organisational world is starting to get interested in neurodiversity and to value employees who may be on the autistic spectrum or may have dyslexia or dyspraxia, whilst schools clearly often take the opposite stance. Schools in England that are chasing exam results in academic subjects, as encouraged by the Government, end up valuing only those who can pass exams in academic subjects. We are clear that this is a misguided role for schools and that it’s our duty to recognise that the research shows that adult life satisfaction is best predicted through developing emotional well-being during the teenage years.