LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS | LISTEN ON SPOTIFY | LISTEN ON GOOGLE PODCAST The country, as we all know far too well, is now in lockdown. We have, however, one glimmer of hope – once a day we can escape the confines of our homes and exercise. One of the most efficient and effective ways we can do that, is to go for...
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LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS | LISTEN ON SPOTIFY | LISTEN ON GOOGLE PODCAST Like everyone else, just over a week ago I was teaching like normal in school. There was some sense of unease, some growing concern – but everything was going along as usual. I had a sore throat and had been coughing for a couple of days, but hadn’t thought much about it....
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Challenging the narrative of teacher wellbeing. Kat Howard @SayMiss is a woman on a mission: to stop the patronising wellbeing advice often offered to teachers, and instead have a real intellectual dialogue about what we can about teachers being driven out of the profession. Kat, a deputy headteacher and an English teacher is the first guest on ‘The Well Teacher podcast.’ She is the author of...
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Five years ago I had a complete breakdown, which left me with bed bound for weeks and emotionally and physically drained. I was living life at a relentless pace, working ridiculous hours and juggling lots of early responsibility in management in a school in central London. I did eventually return to that employment, but at the end of that school year I moved schools, back...
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Schools are anything but quiet. Their walls reverberate with noise, with a hubbub of activity that begins long before the bell loudly dictates the start of the day. The interpersonal demands are huge: talk and communication dominate every space. For those of us who are more inclined to quiet, it can be an exhausting experience. To the untrained eye it may not appear...
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For the past two months I have had a social media and, for the most part, educational break. I haven’t read anything on education, I haven’t seen a single Twitter feed and I have, as far as possible, tried to live a mobile phone free existence. I won’t bore you too much with the rationale for this, and fear not – this is not another...
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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...
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“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...
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“We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep” William Shakespeare ‘The Tempest’ In our relentlessly fast modern culture, there is one thing that is left tragically ignored. It is a spurred outsider, certainly not embracing our twenty four hour ‘always on’ lifestyle. Carl Honore in ‘In praise of Slow’ describes this incessant need for activity, pace...
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Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all. — Nathan W. Morris It is an image familiar in educational environments throughout the land: the red faced, exhausted and agitated teacher, surrounded by streams of student books, paper strewn haphazardly around their desk. The walls are covered in faded, yellowing posters – with the obligatory superfluous rules of the classroom dog-eared and tragically ignored...
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