Smoothing the troughs of academic downtime in secondary education with creative learning approaches.

It’s the last week of school and fatigue is beginning to set in. The weariness of my students has begun to manifest in a heady blend of restlessness and cynicism. Students have completed their coursework and the next teaching module isn’t due to start until after summer break. I have a challenging period five lesson at the end of the day and a flash incident occurs in which I have to consider escalating a student to an exclusion status.

Partly due to this incident, I decide to show my next group of students a slightly dated DVD. At first they seem to passively accept as the norm for this period in the school year. Half of the teaching group have seen the film and get bored. Boredom leads to another flash incident… Ad infinitum.

In accumulated personal experience of secondary education, I believe there is a tendency for student output and engagement to diminish according to the proximity of key time periods throughout the school calendar. Depending on the time of year (and current positioning in their academic career) I have observed students losing motivation through their own fatigue and the fatigue of their teachers. Many students receive a passive experience that fails to enrich development or foster intrinsic growth due to this ‘trough’ of disengagement.

In this action research project I attempt to identify and tackle academic downtime at Kingswood School in Corby. I explore potential reasons for the downturn, from end of term “burnout” to student disengagement. From the research, I then test a number of creative learning events that serve to motivate and engage students and teachers alike. This study considers the current structure at Kingswood school in Corby but I believe has facets of research and practice that are significant and adaptable to UK based secondary schools nationwide.