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Dear Me When you first started teaching 11 years ago, you were truly awful at it!   You were scared of everything – scared of the students, scared of LT, scared of failing, scared of not being good enough and, as a result, you really weren’t good enough.   Luckily you started teaching when education was different.   Competency must have existed but it wasn’t on your radar.   You were given lots of support – mentored by some of the best teachers in school, regular observations to help you to improve, heads of year who would sit in your classroom to support you with behaviour and other heads of year who just shouted at children who left you in tears.   Cleaners who cleaned up the mess and mopped up the tears, a reprographics department who always got your resources to you in time and a department who kept you going when you didn’t think you could.   People were kind and they were supportive and they fixed you.   Members of LT would check on you to s...

I have been toying with how best to write this.  I want the goals to be specific enough that they are achievable but I also want to limit the number I set.  Last year I set a list of 14 and some fell by the wayside.  I don’t want that to happen to this year.  So I have chosen 6, each one based around a theme.  As long I meet the theme I will feel pretty happy.  2015 is a brave new world for me.  I am living in a new house, in a new town where I know no one and I am starting new job at a new school for only the second time in my career.  My default setting is to be a bit scared of life and fear the worst so the overall theme of my nurture this year is to be brave and embrace opportunity. “Teaching is an act of hope for a better future…the reward of teaching is knowing that your life has made a difference.” (William Ayres) As I move further up the leadership ladder, I move further away from the classroom, something which makes me feel quite...

I have been thinking about writing a nurture post for a couple of days now. Part of me thinks it is a strange way to finish Christmas Day but another part of me thinks it is quite fitting.  I always feel quite reflective at Christmas and this will be reflective. This post is important to me. Last year was the first time I had written a nurture post and I found it really helpful to keep me grateful and appreciative but also to keep me focused. I am going to bend the rules by reviewing last year’s 14 and then setting 5 for 2015. I will do it in two posts – one to review and one to look ahead.  Here goes… Firstly I pledged to carry on learning abut photography and trying to master some different types of shots and ideas.  Whilst in DC I attended a workshop on landscapes with Navin Sarma which was awesome. Still journeying… But that's okay. Secondly I pledged to read and I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I have dipped into books and blogs and tweets but I let myself down on t...

Over the last year myself and my colleague @dickseeboy have been reading around a lot of the posts and research on ungraded lesson observations.  Last summer we piloted our own version of ungraded lesson observations and felt that the benefits of adopting an entirely different system far outweighed the possible obstacles to implementing it, and so over the last couple of months we have rolled out a new programme of lesson observations which we feel represents a far more healthy approach to observing lessons and supporting teacher development. We currently work in a school that Ofsted graded as 'Requires Improvement' and a number of my colleagues outside of my school have questioned our decision, quoting phrases like 'tight for good, loose for outstanding' and implied that we are taking a risk.  Perhaps. But we are not changing our approach for the sake of Ofsted or in the hope of securing a given grading.  The purpose of our mindset shift is purely staff focused.  ...

On Friday 4 th July, @dickseeboy (Ian Dicksee), @petemona (Pete Monaghan) and I held our last ever INSET day as a team of three.  We have been working on teaching and learning together for two years and wanted our final INSET of the year (and indeed of an era) to be one  that focused on celebrating the hard work and successes of the staff who have worked tirelessly to help us implement key changes over the last 24 months. One of the most important initiatives Ian introduced when he joined the school as the leader of our team was the concept of inquiry group learning.  The idea behind inquiry groups is that staff would work on a specific area of their practice across an academic year in collaboration with other members of staff from a range of curriculum areas.  This year I was in an inquiry group with teachers of science, food, business studies, sociology and art focusing on stretch and challenge, other groups focused on written feedback (and other forms of fee...

So this year was my second year at the Sunday Times Festival of Education hosted by Wellington College and it was once again, an excellent CPD event.  Last year I attended the event with one like-minded colleague, this year I attended with seven like-minded colleagues all of whom, found the day interesting and relevant (or at least they told me they did). The purpose of this blog really is to sort my thoughts out.  I attended so many sessions and to run through them all providing a blow by blow account is unhelpful - both to the reader and to me.  Also, as David Weston (@informed_edu) pointed out, bad CPD often draws the attention of the person in lots of directions for short bursts of time whereas what is needed is a smaller focus over a greater period of time.  This has lead me to think that rather than trying to take something from everyone, I shall take what I need to take for right now. The session that most impacted my mindset was @learningspy's talk on 'Th...

Last June I was extremely privileged to attend an evening with Ron Berger at Campsmount School.  Ron’s ideas regarding learning spoke volumes to me and I vowed that I would find a way to trial something based around his ideas and vision for learning.  His work is far too complicated for me to explain in a blogpost – if you are genuinely interested, read his book ‘An Ethic of Excellence’.  If you are not sure, have a look at the work of @davidfawcett27 and @pekabelo, as their summaries are far better than mine could ever be.  From Ron’s talk, and some subsequent reading around, three clear messages resonated with me: We sometimes expect too little of our students and allow them to expect too little of themselves.   We often set a task, receive an attempt, feel disappointed in it and rather than go back and give students the opportunity to improve, we settle for their first attempt, even though they may be capable of far more (if you haven’t already seen it, ...

I have had responsibility for learning and teaching for 4 years now.  Initially as a Director of Learning and now as an Assistant Headteacher.  One of my favourite parts of the job has always been observing staff because I love seeing how different people teach, I enjoy having conversations with teachers about teaching and the new ideas they want to try out.  But over the last few years (and I cannot pinpoint when it happened exactly), I began to realise that whilst I, as an observer, get a lot from the observation, for the person being observed it can be awful.  It provokes anxiety, worry and can create an increase in workload.  Teachers teach lessons that they believe will score them a 1 or a 2 because the number feels like the only thing that counts.  There is less variety in the lessons taught because people try to create a formula for success for fear of falling short of expectation and are less likely to take risks.  If you tell someone the snaps...