Motivating students to work hard and do well when it matters is an essential part of the job. Here is a method for creating the conditions for internally motivated students. A seemingly perpetual struggle in education is motivating students to enjoy school. This issue is magnified in schools in challenging contexts, where I have worked for 15 years. Some schools can easily have 700 pupil premium students on-roll. Just on Dunbar’s number alone, constructing a motivating narrative is an extreme challenge for leaders.  It is of course true that exam results are important but it perhaps truer to say that it is one important aspect of their education. It does not acknowledge their emotional literacy, their practical intelligence and their emerging purpose in life. Nor does it instil in them the courage and resilience to fail repeatedly, nor to wonder, self-direct nor to create. If we are serious about reducing educational inequality, we need to be serious about motivating PP students to...

“It’s not the hearing that improves life but the listening” Mihaly Csikzentmihaly In 15 years of teaching my classroom management has improved significantly because I have learned to gain control by giving it up. Building a classroom ethos that optimises learning requires complex interventions.  Here are things that work for me. I’ve been reflecting this week on the aspects of the teaching job that I might claim to be genuinely good at whilst battling my own set of imposter syndrome demons.  We are all on this journey from Novice to master, from unconscious incompetence towards unconscious competence - its one of the many facets of the job that unite and sometimes divide us. Just when the bubble of your own school tricks you into thinking you are an ‘expert’, Twitter shoots you down, back into place.  At least that’s how it feels to me sometimes.  How often do you look back at your early career years and cringe? One of my most embarrassing traits was to position myse...

In the 15 years that I have been teaching, curriculum creation has never been so prominent. I think that represents real progress as a profession.  Quick shout out to my PGCE tutors who were prioritising curriculum before I was professionally mature enough to understand. I’ve been lucky enough to to work with four departments in three subjects and two phases recently on their curriculum maps and I’ve got a few observations that I think might be useful to people embarking on their own design processes. Curriculum map documents are complex artefacts, mirroring the complexity of the school ecosystem they aim to enrich.  They shouldn’t be reduced down to a series of ‘pick up and teach’ powerpoints, despite what some senior leaders say. In a significant number of schools, a good curriculum is despite, not because of senior leaders.  I’d love to call on colleagues to co-construct rather than micro-manage their highly trained, skilled and experienced staff. I just hope they lis...

I’ve got to admit it - I really like doing supply work.  It’s such a rich learning experience every day - for me and the students.  I’ve been doing supply for about 7 weeks now, deliberately sticking to day-to-day cover type work rather than my original discipline of geography.  I’ve re-learned much of the ks3 biology that had completely vanished from my brain.  After a while I got the hang of simultaneous equations again. In a previous life I would have hated teaching drama but now I love it. I even know what a fronted adverbial is. Staff absence is really high at the moment and many schools are struggling to find good staff to cover all the teachers not in.  I read recently that half of all teachers had COVID last term which is a mad statistic. Students need to have the best teachers in front of them if they are going to catch up on lost learning. Having good quality supply teachers is good for the students, good for the school and good for the teachers the st...