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...

At Christmas I left a job I’d been at for 10 years. Instead of jumping into another job, I decided to give supply teaching a go whilst I waited for the right thing to come up.  I feel like the right thing is working to improve schools, especially those in disadvantaged areas. I’d like to think that I’m quite good at behaviour management, curriculum design, team leadership and I’m particularly interested in the role of metacognition and self-regulated learning in secondary schools. I’ve started (another) new blog to try and articulate my ideas in a way that makes sense to others.  I find that writing blogs helps me clarify my own waves of thoughts and to wash out any hubris and my propensity to write haughtily. I have developed a lot of expertise over the last 10 years and I’m determined to put it to use and help reduce educational inequality.  And so I currently find myself supply teaching. Just day-today cover, though I’ve been in the same schools for extended periods. I...