A head teacher writes...

We have had pencils in our school now for some time, and we were one of the first to adopt them, but it has been an uphill struggle. There aren't enough to go around, and often several of the children have to crowd around to use the pencils at the same time. But we are better off than many schools. We have a well equipped pencil suite where the chained desktop pencils are used in special sessions, and often, as a reward for good behaviour children are allowed to come into the suite (under teacher supervision of course) to use the pencils to draw fun things.

Pencils were resisted by some of the teachers at first, because they complained they would have to change their practice if they adopted them. And they were right, pencils are in fact a game changer. Others were worried that they would not have enough time to learn to use them properly. 


I have a wider vision than a pencil suite for our school. I'm considered a bit of a maverick and many of my staff look at me and shake their heads sadly. You see, I have a vision for pencils that I think will transform our school and enhance learning for all our students. Wait for it - I am advocating one pencil for every child in the school! And even more radical than that, I want to introduce pencils that can be used by students while they are on the move. Yes, I know it sounds absurd, but I think it will work. Needless to say, I have had many objections and lots of opposition from all quarters.

Some teachers, led by our school pencil co-ordinator, have complained that we made a considerable investment on the pencil suite, and it's being used regularly for very important teaching. OK, so there is only one pencil between every four children, but at least the pencils are being used consistently, she argues. Some occasionally break and have to be sent away to be fixed, but we also have a parent who is familiar with pencils, and has one at home. He comes in occasionally to fix them, which saves us some money. 


My idea is for the school to invest more money so that each child can walk around while using their pencils, and that they can even take them home with them! Yes, I know it's an extremely radical idea, and that's the very reason I am receiving so much opposition. Some of my teaching staff are arguing that we could better spend the money on more chalk for the blackboards. Others are warning that children will either damage the pencils or worse, lose them if they take them out of the school. Pencils are meant to be used for education, they say, not for fun.

Even the parents are complaining. Some have written a very strong letter to the governors, suggesting that if we give a pencil to each of the children to bring home, they will need to revise their home contents insurance, in case any disaster occurs, and the child damages the pencil in some way. Some of the richer families don't seem to mind, as they have better pencils at home than we could possibly buy for the school. It's a kind of pencil envy I suppose. There does seem to be a pencil divide across the local community. I am confident though that giving one pencil to each student will address this problem.

Then there are the objections from the Tax Payers Alliance, and other pressure groups who have even gone on to the local TV station to complain that we are being irresponsible, and are wasting valuable tax payers money on purchasing a pencil for every child. 'In my day', said the TPA spokeperson, 'we used slates and styluses, and shared them around, and we were happy. One pencil per child is simply a gimmick'. To be blunt, I think they are missing the point. I strongly believe that pencils are the future of learning, and the more untethered they are, the greater will be the flexibility of learning for all subjects across the curriculum.

One of the strongest arguments from some of my teaching staff though is that they claim to be pencil immigrants, while the children are pencil natives. The kids seem to have such an affinity with the pencils, whilst the staff struggle to use them and get embarrassed when they accidentally use the wrong end, or the point is blunt, and they don't know how to sharpen it. Some teacher have warned that increased use of the pencil can be addictive, and will cause all sorts of problems such as writer's cramp, eye strain, raised incidences of graffiti in the school toilets and rude cartoons of teachers passed around the room. Such dangers though, are far outweighed by the benefits of mobile, personalised pencils.

So we will forge on with my new one child, one pencil scheme, and as a school, we will make it work. We will actually purchase the new second generation (2G) pencils, which have erasers attached, and in so doing, these multi-functional tools will offer a revolutionary approach to learning. They are also much faster and last longer than the old pencils. I will close with this inspirational quote: 'Any teacher who can be replaced by a pencil... should be! - Arthur C. Chalk.

(Inspired by the Twitter #pencilchat hashtag)

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A head teacher writes... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.