SIGS and more!!

I have been a little quiet on here lately - those of you who work with children will know what I mean when I say the half term germs are brewing!!!

Anyway I have been continuing to develop thoughts and ideas and ask questions. So I have set up a SIG group on my facebook to get thoughts and idea's on general questions and ideas that I have. The people who I have included in my group are general teachers both academic and within the arts, also people who have an interest within the arts, so that I can get a generalised of initial thoughts from others.

One question I asked in my group was: "Do you think the national curriculum allows students to be creative in all aspects of their learning?" now I found the response I had to this very interesting, the academic teachers that I had in my group all said "no" they think the curriculum is too restrictive creatively. So a question that has entered my mind from this response is: If this is the case and teachers feel like this then why is it so restrictive and why has nothing been done about it?

I don't know about anyone else, but I have found my SIG group really helpful and interesting and a great way of hearing others opinions. and ideas who may not necessarily have anything to do with the arts, but have an appreciation of how helpful they can be.

On 8/10/16 I had a facebook call with Lauren Hoskins. I think Lauren will agree with me that this was extremely helpful for both myself and her. It was really interesting how we started on one topic and the more we spoke the more questions. One idea that we discusses is the matter that we think the arts may not be purposely forgotten about and put to one side but this may however be a subconscious action that happens. This maybe for one of many reasons. One being that in the grand scheme of things the arts are relatively new in the curriculum therefore people are just not used to them being available as an option especially for things such as GCSE and A level.

Another idea we discussed is that in fact it maybe pressure from school governors etc as to why maybe students appear to be encouraged to avoid the arts as an examined subject we just don't know.

However what I do know is that our chat was really helpful and is something that we are going to try keep going on a regular basis and see where each of our ideas are developing and where they are becoming focused too.

How is everyone else finding SIG groups and talking - are you finding it helpful? please also feel free to comment and discuss ideas in this post.