New blog, new beginning

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’ve stuck with supply for a few good reasons - teaching supply makes you a better teacher. It sharpens the pedagogical tools like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. I also want to see if there is the potential for me to work in many schools helping them improve their curriculum. Supply keeps me light on my feet. It also gives me more time to think about ways in which I might be able to do any of the above. If I’m being really honest, after 15 years teaching I needed a break from always having to do things the way I was told to do them. I want to see if its possible to be a teacher and be self-employed.

So I’ve decided to write a blog. This will hopefully hold me to account whilst improving my writing, which is something I enjoy doing more than any other creative pursuit. I’m going to try and write 30 posts in 100 days whilst investigating:

Do my ideas resonate with an audience of like minded educators and leaders?
How can the explicit teaching of self-regulated learning and study skills be integrated into schools in challenging contexts?
How can supply teaching inform the practice of regular teachers?

Please leave comments and if you would like to start a conversation or work together, please get in touch.

Comments

5 Top tips for supply teaching that can be applied straight into a regular classroom

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...

I learned to to gain control by giving it up and deliberately build rapport with students

“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...

Creating Coherent Curriculum Maps Part 1

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...

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