Last week I wrote about some of the appalling CPD I have attended and suggested that the silver lining of otherwise horrendous school budget cuts could be that these kinds of training events stop. Of course I am not suggesting that professional development should stop, so what should replace it? I have found that the…
I don’t want to get all “John Lennon” on you, but I’d like to ask you to imagine something for me. Imagine there’s no OFSTED, it isn’t hard to do. No lesson observation, and no grading too. Imagine all the teachers, teaching how they chose. If that was the case, if there was no one…
We can learn a lot by observing others can’t we? At some point over the last couple of weeks I have found myself in a few conversations about lesson observations. As someone who has often benefitted from feedback after being observed, and someone who has often benefitted from watching others teach, I was surprised at…
I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or…
Last week I wrote a post about the need to be candles in the darkness. My point was that these times are dark, both in the wider world and in education. Funding cuts are biting, micromanagement is rife and teachers are fleeing the profession. I asked that each of us try to be candles in…
I need to beg an indulgence. Before we get on to matters educational I’d like to talk to you briefly about Dungeons and Dragons. When the 4th edition of D&D came out they decided that they wanted to give the world in which their adventures’ took place a particular feel. They were set in a…
Someone said something lovely to me at the end of the week. I was talking to our trainee teacher about how he felt his placement with us was going and one thing he said was how nice it was that which ever teacher he was with we all seemed to be pulling in the same…
I have been rereading one of my all time favourite blog posts recently – a piece by Tom Sherrington called Culture + Systems – The Spirit and the Letter. It has had a dramatic impact on how I look at my role as a Head of Department and on how I look at whole school…
A recent report entitled “Lost Girls: The overlooked children struggling to understand the written word” caused some comment on Twitter. One issue was raised by @MartinDaubrey (who has recently written about boy’s education in The Times (£) ) who said
I am currently enjoying the book Self Improving Schools produced by the NET. One chapter in particular is sparking ideas; that by Rachel Macfarlane on Creating Great Schools. In it she discusses the work of the Going for Great project in London and the 9 Pillars of Greatness that this led to. These 9 pillars…
Teaching it Real 