It has been a very quiet few months on this blog. The TES English teacher podcast has been keeping me very busy (this latest episode with Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts on helping boys achieve is a cracker) and I have been trying to finish off my Masters in Practitioner Enquiry. This post is a brief summary of some of the key findings of the...
Read More
I have spent this week obsessing and fretting about delivering this at the wonderful Teaching and Learning Leeds Conference. This was the initial ‘script’, and while I gave learning it a good bash, what I spluttered through in fifty minutes might not have sounded exactly like this! “The best laid schemes” and all that… I appreciate that this is a slightly terrifying list for...
Read More
“If we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because we can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve” Dylan William. What keeps us energised, motivated and enthusiastic in our classrooms? When faced with a new academic year, what inspires us to become better versions of ourselves for...
Read More
After reading ‘In Praise of Slow’ by Carl Honore in February of last year I set off on a mission: an examination of applying slowness to the world of education. Over a year later the book is published by John Catt Educational today and and available to buy from Amazon here. It certainly doesn’t advocate a “tortoise teaching” approach, rather it encourages teachers to take more control...
Read More
In this age, which believes there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. Henry Miller. Rather terrifyingly, after almost a year of writing, ‘Slow Teaching: on finding calm, clarity and impact in the classroom’ will be published next week by John Catt Educational (Friday 2nd March). The...
Read More
“The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow.” Robert Tew. Outside of the every daily variety of life in the classroom, one of the things I have particularly enjoyed about this academic year is setting up a CPD group called ‘Teacher Advocates’ with Zoe Taylor (who runs this excellent blog for English teachers) in our school. The idea is that...
Read More
“We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” Epictetus A short journey through the remarkable life of the philosopher Epictetus can begin to justify why his words open a chapter on the mystery that is effective behaviour management. Born around 50 A.D he arrived in Rome without family as the property of the rich and powerful Epaphroditus, a man...
Read More
“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.” Claude Levi-Strauss Einstein would be rather chuffed: I have spent the last two weeks questioning everything about my approach to questioning in the classroom. Having written about the questioning traps that I kept finding myself stumbling into with new groups, I have made developing questioning in the classroom my pedagogical mission for this year....
Read More
“A prudent question is one half of wisdom” Frances Bacon. There is always something slightly tentative about the first two weeks of term: students are eying us up carefully, deciding exactly how they are going to respond to our magnificent lessons (rather Machievalian I know!) I have had an interesting week with a Year 9 group who at the moment are heroically quiet, eerily...
Read More
Over-reliance: Excessive dependence on or trust in someone or something. “They just don’t pay any attention”. “Yet again they haven’t understood.” “Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?” These teacher miseries can be heard in every staffroom across the land: how often do we castigate classes for what appears to be their glaring inability to translate lesson time into a quality final output in their books? How...
Read More