A while ago, I wrote about “academic indulgence,” a teaching stance that recognizes students' intellect and accommodates their interests and ideas. At Morton Green Primary School in Bradford, I've seen many teachers adopt this stance toward their students. But first, a little context about Bradford...

Bradford is about ten miles west of Leeds and has long been overshadowed by it. It has some of the highest levels of deprivation (British terminology for low income) in the country, in part because of de-industrialization (same story in so many cities) and because of its distance from major road and rail routes to London and Manchester. Aesthetically, downtown Bradford looks much more like an American rust belt city than a British city. Commerce is clearly lagging, with a disproportionate amount of betting parlors, pound shops, and pawn shops. The amount of multi-lane roads through the center make it less pedestrian-friendly than what I've seen elsewhere in England. And bus travel within the city is difficult because of limited schedules and irregular service. That being said, Bradford has been a home to significant numbers of economic migrants from Pakistan who came for factory work in the 1950s and 1960s, many of whose children and grandchildren still live there.

Back to Morton Green. I've seen teachers listen to a student's response to a question and then ask another student to extend the first student's thought. I've seen activities in which students have to take a position on an open-ended question and then convince their peers to take the same point of view by using language in meaningful and powerful ways. I've seen teachers respond to students with genuine interest in what they're saying (more on this in the next post) and push them to extend their thinking. I've seen students learning from experience that the product of collaboration should be consensus and not dispute.

In short, lots of great things happening at Morton Park.