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 […]
Tag: #personalitymatters
Observations: Surviving & Succeeding
I don’t know about you but observations still fill me with dread, causing those cold sweats and stomach clenches. Like most teachers, I really want to do my job well. I really do. But I do not like to be judged. With a classroom full of teenagers, no matter how difficult or stroppy, I know […]
Teacher Sick Day Guilt
While curled up in bed, headachy, full of flu and fed up, I was overwhelmed by one particular feeling. GUILT. There I was, a cold-filled lurgy monster and having to sleep for a couple of hours after popping downstairs to get a drink, but all I could think was: I should be in school. Bear […]
We All Need To Be/Have Kind Colleagues
Schools are hives of activity. From the roughest, inner city school to the most prestigious, private establishment, expectations of teachers are often crushingly high. Our expectations of ourselves are the starting point but we also experience pressure from: head teachers, management teams, department heads, other teachers, other staff, parents and our students. Teaching is an […]
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 […]
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 […]
Our Attitude Is Everything.
We’ve all faced difficult students. It was only last Friday that I dealt with one of the most difficult behaviour challenges of my career, facing a non-compliant, defiant, aggressive student. And yet, I still think that it is fair to say that it is our attitude which determines how effective our teaching is. We could […]
Teacher Mental Health Is At An All Time Low: The Current Management Focus On It Is, At Best, Patronising And, At Worst, Actively Damaging. Discuss.
At lunch today, with a group of colleagues, we were discussing the impact of teaching on our mental health. Unanimously the verdict came in: devastating. Yet, I think that, without exception, we all love teaching. With so much pressure, regular observations, extreme workloads, is it possible for us to protect ourselves and our mental health […]
Being The Teachers We Were Made To Be…
For the first few years of my teaching career I kept a keen eye on all the teachers around me and tried to be like them. I saw what they taught, I saw how they behaviour managed, I followed the way they marked. In sum, I copied them. In everything. And that’s not a bad […]