Let's Move On From Here...

Phoning home is an expectation that many schools have of teachers, and if I had a quid for every time a line manager had asked me to make a "quick" call, I'd be rolling in it. Phone calls can be many things, but they are seldom quick! Parents and carers are (with very few exceptions) lovely, caring people who want what's best for their child and I am glad to give them my time - I just wish I had more of it to give! The "behaviour for learning" call. Probably the most common type of call I make is the one where the child's behaviours are affecting his progress. What is really important here is that I am not phoning to complain about the child. Complaining is for when Parcels2U fails to deliver my vital monthly supply of Gin. I am making this call for two reasons - firstly, I have a duty of care to ensure that parents know what is going on with their child. Secondly, I want information: what's going on in this child's life that might explain hi...

I was asked a question by a colleague the other day - how come you are still sane after twenty years of teaching? Sadly, it is a good question. If you look at the TES teaching forums you will find plenty of colleagues who have thrown, or are about to throw, in the towel. After five, ten, fifteen years, they have given all they can and are either  stressed, anxious, exhausted or all of the above. Not long ago, I was one of them. Knackered and fed up. I still loved being in the classroom, but the constant marking and that nagging feeling that I did not have time to do any part of my job to my satisfaction had taken its toll. And I worked in a fantastic, supportive school! I was lucky. I applied for, and got, a different job in a different environment and for 9 months I taught children and young people with mental health problems. It gave me a space and time to rethink some things, and to reconnect with teaching as both an art and a science. I went from being a teacher who s...

My first team leader (we called them department heads then) was a very wise woman indeed. She was old school in the best way - firm, fair, supportive and brooked no nonsense from anybody. She had the perfect response for anybody who said that teachers were lucky to have such long holidays - she agreed with them. "You are so right - it's fantastic to have six weeks in the summer." She would pause just for a beat before saying,  "Why don't you join the profession? We need good people like you!" Without fail, she got the same response. "Oooh no - I wouldn't have the patience!" This has been my stock response too for many a long year. I still get that response. Thank God for the holidays - they make doing the job possible.

There's generally at least one in every school. They are the colleague who sees something that they think is wrong and promptly takes to email to "put things straight". They usually have a valid point and they mean well. The problem is that they have a tendency to go straight to the top with their communications without realising the damage that they are doing. Damage? I hear you ask. How can communicating clearly when something is wrong cause damage? Surely it is the responsibility of all staff to do so? Well yes. And also no. Think about it for a minute. If every member of staff did this, SLT would be swamped by the personal opinions of staff who would then feel slighted if they were not responded to in the way they were expecting. How much time do we want SLT to spend on individual gripes? Or responding several times to the same opinion? And even if the keyboard warrior believes that they are expressing the views of a group, what do they think gives t...

Great teaching is a lot like great cooking. It is done with love and care by people who really know what they are doing and who understand the ingredients. Just like cooking, however,  it is often overcomplicated by the people who write and talk about it. They often surround it with unneccesary jargon; suggest that there is one right way to teach - which is nonsense - and tell us all about the latest theories in way more depth than we need. Don't misunderstand - it's important to understand the psychology of teaching and a grasp of cognitive load can really help in designing effective lessons, but some blogs and posts are badly in need of a TLDR. Sometimes the experts promote unhealthy habits - like too much salt and butter or fancy schmancy bells and whistles lessons. What is presented as "every day" practice  is seldom sustainable - we don't have that sort of time and energy and neither do the kids. For new colleagues it can all be a bit overwhelming, so her...

If there is one thing I have learned in my loooong career as a classroom teacher, it is that my voice matters but to paraphrase the divine Bananarama: "It ain't what I say, it's the way that I say it, That's what gets results." Earlier this week I got stressy with a Year 7 class. God love them, they would drive a saint crackers. They are like a hellish pick and mix bag of SEND, SLCN, EBD and ASD with a slice of CBA* thrown in for good measure. I need a TA in the classroom - and for some types of activity two would be nice - but there is only me. I am an experienced teacher with a wide range of strategies but they are a really good workout for me three times a week and generally speaking I just get the heck on with it. We have made progress as a class and I have just one rule for myself - STAY POSITIVE! In my defence, it was 30 degrees in the classroom, they came to me from MFL where a lot of them struggle and it had been a long day already for them as ...

I was interested to read an article by David Didau: Reframing The Debate . In it, he proposes different continuums on which teachers' practice might be placed. I have already said quite plainly that I find the polarisation of teachers as either Traditional or Progressive unhelpful. I tend to take a Pragmatic view - if it works, I do it and I'm really not concerned with someone else's labels. Didau offered a new perpsective however, by proposing a continuum that focuses not so much on WHAT teachers do, but WHY they do it. That seems much more helpful. This is a continuum that interests me greatly. For most of my career I have taught in a school (I call it Hogwarts) where the academic ideology prevailed. Certainly the aim of the school is to make children cleverer (at passing exams anyway) and which absolutely prioritises academic knowledge. I am still cogitating on whether I think that we are primarly concerned with the impersonal and the abstract, but I will pr...