The Super-Teachers: 1. Phil Beadle

And then I found myself in a cyberworld of Super-Teachers and Big Ideas (and lots of Capital Letters) which I pulled into emails to try to make them land so I could look at them more closely. And they did; Phil Beadle, Ros Wilson and Lynne Truss and I are all best friends now. Phil, the only one who I haven't actually met yet, even sent me an unedited Word document of his soon-to-be-book, The Little Book of Ideas which opens with a quote by Steve Albini, “Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.”

Falling instantly in love with the man who would then write, 'If we consider the Gaudi Cathedral in Barcelona, for instance, and wonder what might be the most appropriate way to investigate it? In any sane world, surely, performing a dance about it must be one of the most sensible ways of going about such an investigation', I checked him out on Youtube. And I found the glorious http://www.teachers.tv/ with programmes made by my very own chum from GLR days, Peter Curran. Who, rather handily now lives just up the road.

As my paths crossed ever more jauntily, I felt that I had finally found where I'm heading with this project. Dance was the launchpad and may be the final frontier in a new way of teaching, but for now, it was rhythm that was the key. I'd even subconsciously answered my own question in the original title, The Write Rhythm.

Phil's inspired teaching of The Blessing on Teachers TV uses movement and rhythm to get right under the very meaning of the poem and to 'embed', as those super-teachers say, the understanding for the students. I've got more to do with Phil, but I've got to go to the Ballet Rambert next. Its use of signing to help the hard of hearing understand what's going on in the dance is, I reckon, going to be another link in the chain that will lead me to the answer...