28
2021
Teaching Creative Writing on Teams
I am a strong believer in the benefits of writing in supporting mental health and wellbeing. I know how much it has helped me, particularly over the last five years. Oliver Sacks captures the immersive power of it poignantly in the final paragraph of his autobiography ‘On The Move’: “The act of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike...
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20
2021
Slow Teaching: Efficient Teacher Talk
If you are anything like me, you have been asked to repeat yourself about a thousand times in this new online teaching world, and you are talking more than ever before. I am hoping sharing this chapter from my first book ‘Slow Teaching: Finding calm, clarity and impact in the classroom,’ (which somehow came out almost three years ago) might help make this exhausting process...
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13
2021
Online English Teaching: Tone in non-fiction texts
The motivation for resurrecting this weekly blog this year is very simple: to reflect carefully on how to be a better English teacher. Is that a possible aim in our new online teaching world? Last week, as I sat with a computer wrestling with Teams and becoming more and more enraged, I would have offered a resounding no. Some teachers chuckle and modestly claim to...
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07
2021
On Teaching Reading.
“There will always be another book to read, or guiltily to reread. And that is a joy for all of us.” Stig Abell ‘Things I learned on the 6.28.’ One book. That, dear reader, was the sum total of my Christmas gift stash. One book. My status as a mid-thirties male, however, was firmly entrenched: legions of socks; more ties than I could possibly...
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20
2020
On Toxic Schools
This is a sample chapter from my new book ‘Teacher Resilience: Managing stress and anxiety to thrive in the profession’. Anxious anecdote 8.15am. Zane’s door opened without warning. Thomas, the school’s deputy headteacher (a man who had been teaching for a grand total of five years), stood with a clipboard and one of the colour-coded spreadsheets that seemed to be an extension of his extremely...
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13
2020
Teacher Resilience
I’m delighted that today is the publication of my third book ‘Teacher Resilience: Managing Stress and Anxiety to Thrive in the Classroom’. As much as a I love the process of writing, I didn’t expect to publish another book this year. To be fair: I didn’t expect much of how this year has turned out! In an attempt to maintain some sanity in between wrestling...
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19
2020
Mary Myatt interview: Fewer things, greater depth.
LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS | LISTEN ON SPOTIFY | LISTEN ON GOOGLE PODCAST If you are anything like me, I’m sure you would agree that the past half term has been a challenging one. As wonderful as it is being back doing our core purpose in classrooms with young people, we are stretched both emotionally and in the extensive new demands on our time. It...
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03
2020
The Introduction to ‘Teacher Resilience’
This is the introduction to my new book ‘Teacher Resilience: Managing stress and anxiety to thrive in the classroom’. It is available to pre-order now, and will be out via John Catt Educational at the start of November. Anxious anecdote “Bryanna, can I have some more focus from you, please?” David was aware of the note of pleading in his voice. There was certainly none...
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30
2020
The Well Teacher Festival: A collection
I have spent a great deal of the past few months reflecting and writing on teacher resilience, and how we can retain more brilliant teachers in the profession. The result of many long lockdown evenings, my new book ‘Teacher Resilience: Managing stress and anxiety‘ to thrive in the profession’ will be published by John Catt Educational in October. That stress and anxiety is at its...
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18
2020
What will improve teaching and learning in our schools?
LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS | LISTEN ON SPOTIFY | LISTEN ON GOOGLE PODCAST I’m really pleased that the final espiode of this series of the podcast is an absolute cracker. Bruce Robertson is a Deputy Headteacher and author of ‘The Teaching Delusion’. He also has an infectious enthusiasm for all things teaching and learning – believing it should be central to everything we do in...
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