Behaviour Management: Is There A Way To Practically Apply The Principles of Respect and Relationship? In writing my last blog post, I realised that respect and relationship as foundations for behaviour management might sound like some sort of impractical pixie dust solution for helping lessons to fly. I really don’t think that they are. They’re […]
Tag: #inspiration
Stop Working, Get Out and Do Something! School Will Survive…
When was the last time that you: Went out and saw a movie during the week? Took an entire evening off without staying late for a meeting or working once you’d put the kids to bed? Binge read a book in an evening? Spontaneously just went out for a meal? Went to see a play […]
Idealistic, but not Ideal.
Idealistic, yes. That I definitely am. Ideal, I am not. One of the greatest drawbacks of teaching is that we are never done. Nothing is ever done perfectly. When my family are working their nine to fives or their shifts, I am either in school or working from home. When they can measure their performance […]
How Can We Stop Students Writing About Bob, Steve and Bill?
Narrative writing 101 today involved some teaching of planning (story mountains aplenty) and some modelling of how to turn said plan into an actual narrative worthy of an AQA GCSE examiner. Then I unleashed my class of budding writers on the world, or at least on the task. Or at least, I asked them politely if […]
Round Six: ‘Educated’ (Non-Fiction)
With an entire paper on non-fiction at GCSE, it seems strange that we’re not taking more time to really explore non-fiction texts fully. I don’t mean extracts or brief chapters, I mean whole books. This might be one of the ways in which we can engage those who do not see themselves as readers because […]
If It’s Not Literature, Why Bother?
Whilst most English teachers have a passion for Literature, it is a smaller number of the fleet for whom non-fiction floats their boat. When faced with the wonder that is ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ or the challenges of ‘The Color Purple’, non-fiction can feel like a slog or feel a little dry. So why […]
Everyone Has Bad Days…
In teaching, along with any other profession, we all have our bad days. I can’t help but think that it’d be easier to get through them if we shared our experiences and were more realistic about the demanding nature of our jobs and the way in which it hits the fan. Regularly. I’ll give you […]
Enablement: Creating a Can-Do Attitude
If we’re doing our jobs right, and I’m sure that we’re trying, we should be pushing our students to do things that, put simply, they can’t do. Not that they aren’t capable of it, but that they can’t do it on their own yet. If we aren’t, we’re only repeating what they’ve already done, what […]
Round Five: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Adult not YA)
This book is phenomenal. It’s easy to step into the oh-so-real world of Eleanor Oliphant, the office politics, the mundanity of the everyday, the desire for more… The characters are consciously well observed and created – I feel like I’ve met them all in so many places before. Their roles are laid out in so many […]
Round Four: The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder (Adult, not YA)
Having been lent this yonks ago, I’ve been feeling guilty about not reading it but, I’ll be honest, I find it hard to read fiction written for adults during term time. YA or novels I’ve read before, yes. Those I let myself read because I know that I can either finish them quickly or put […]