Gaining Perspective
At the start of this week, I had the opportunity to travel south to London - taking a chance to zoom out and gain new perspective on a constant flurry of insights from the past few weeks. I explored the British Museum, saw many interesting artefacts and learned about British history, which in turn taught me more about where I am and my place in it. A number of recent conversations with teachers have helped me understand where some of the deep rooted disadvantage in parts of Northern England comes from. I am spending the majority of my time here working with and learning from local schools in Middlesbrough - one of the most deprived regions in the UK - caused by a devastating collapse of its iron, steel and shipbuilding industries that resulted in generational cycles of low-wage work and low educational attainment. Many of the children and families here have grown up in the same neighbourhoods for generations and never left their town.
The biggest shift I came away with from my few days in London was realizing that I have lived more varied experiences in 48 hours than many of the children I've spoken to have in the first twenty years of their lives. In two days I had the privilege of taking a train down to London, visiting the British Museum, trying four different cuisines, walking along Regent's Canal, and buying a postcard to add to a wall of memorabilia from other travels back home. I returned to my stay in York, a historic city and well-loved city, to sleep in a quiet room all my own, resting before heading back to work and visiting more schools - work that I get to do as a result of funding from the Laidlaw Foundation. Meanwhile, many youth here struggle with sleep poverty due to a lack of comfortable housing arrangements, too few beds for their family members, their free school lunch being their only hot meal of the day, and have often never left the radius of their neighbourhood - such as to visit the beach a five-minute drive down the road, having only read about it in books.
Later in the week I spent time at Pennyman Primary Academy in Middlesbrough, speaking with teachers spanning reception (three and four year olds) through to year six 'leavers', as well as their computing and e-safety lead and the headteacher. A sentiment that came up again and again was the lack of exposure many of their students have to the world just beyond them - this is something that often keeps them stuck in generational cycles of low awareness or aspirations, by keeping their sense of what's possible very small. Coming back from London to the schools here made the contrast between our circumstances, my privilege and theirs, land with me sharply and suddenly. For their graduating students' newly annual London trip, families start paying in weekly instalments one year in advance even after the school subsidizes half the cost. It's a contrast that raised new questions for my work around EdTech and their use of other digital technologies - while social media can grow their awareness and exposure, it can also reinforce the assumptions they already have about the world around them by building echo chambers, highlighted by some instances of misinformation spread that were identified.
Partnerships & Perseverance
Schools across the Tees Valley Education Trust (TVEd) have proactively tried to counter this lack of exposure by connecting students with broadened experiences and local partners. They often bring in representatives from local organizations and universities to talk to students about different pathways and industries. They take them to Middlesbrough's ports and companies to expose them to where industry is growing around them and what opportunities are open to them in the future for apprenticeships and career growth. They also frequently conduct field trips to local museums, diverse religious sites, skating rinks and beaches to help support their wellbeing and grow their holistic experience through excursions they would not otherwise have the chance to partake in.
This week also taught me something about perseverance, both in my own approach to my LiA project - staying open to new connections and patterns beyond what I expected to find in this region - and in what I learned about what perseverance means for children's lives. A lack of this trait often turns out to be the thing that keeps them from breaking out of the cycles of disadvantage they were born into. My first visits to primary schools last week illuminated that kids in these communities largely do not lack access to digital technologies, as originally assumed. This week I learned they often have over-access, more than is healthy for their age, often without any parental guardrails and without difficulty bypassing age restrictions. Anecdotally, there is a sense that families facing disadvantage tend to be more hands-off than more educated parents who set limits and rules, not out of neglect but often because they aren't as aware of the risks that technologies pose to their child's wellbeing or cognitive development.
Closely tied to exposure, I learned this week, is our belief in the value of education. Reflecting on why I place value in it, I found myself asking why some of us hold so strongly to that belief in the first place. It's because we've had role models, or exposure, that show us what a good education can lead to and serve as constant reminders of the positive outcomes it makes possible. If children don't have those role models in their parents or their neighbours, if they haven't seen education lift someone out of poverty or disadvantage, if those positive outcomes never feel within reach, they won't see value in striving for them. Many teachers I spoke to helplessly expressed observing low resilience among children here, who find it difficult to pick themselves back up after a mistake and try again - tied in part to their self-esteem, in part to their lack of drive to do hard things in pursuit of an education, and in part due to their screen exposure. This is a pattern that's worse in communities facing deprivation, but compounded by something universal: social media, scrolling and instant access to information online, which affects children everywhere. If you can scroll past anything challenging or uninteresting in an instant, that muscle for pushing through hard things never really gets built.
TVEd's field trips and efforts to broaden students' horizons through local partners are, in large part, about helping students start to care about their education and show them why it's worth persevering and doing hard things. This week reshaped how I think about the limits of education on its own. Education is a key factor in lifting people out of poverty, but it can't do that alone. The work taking place in regions like this has to take place and context into account, focusing on partnerships and communities as a whole. It must get the basics right so students can access the education in front of them. These schools maintain very high standards, but as CEO Katrina Morley of TVEd told me this week: if no one is checking that a child has eaten when they come into school in the morning, that their uniform is right, that they're regulated after what might have been a chaotic night at home, they will never be in a position to access or absorb the education in front of them. Someone has to build the bridge that lets them cross into it. That's why the teachers here wear so many hats. They're not only educators, they carry the discernment of social workers and often step into the guiding roles of parental figures.
It was an honour to see their passion and care in action, culminating a year's worth of effort at Tees Valley Education Trust's annual Diamond Standards Award ceremony, where they recognized the students and educators who best embodied the trust's values this year (such as care, commitment and courage). The ceremony closed with choir singers from across TVEd's schools in harmony, bringing goosebumps to all of us and tears to my eyes seeing some of the students from my focus groups the week before - ones who'd told me they dream of being singers - performing there. Behind it all, I saw that so much of the credit behind the polished kids receiving awards on stage - ribbons in their hair, uniforms perfectly ironed - belongs to their teachers, who spent hours making sure they felt confident and presentable for the occasion, so that anyone watching from outside would never guess at many of their hidden struggles.