The Strictly Positive Teacher has in mind the mental health and wellbeing of their students, and wants to ensure that they are acting in a way which works with students’ natures. They know that in order to maintain a good positive atmosphere within the classroom and thereby be in a position to be able to […]
Concentrating on something intently enough to learn is hard work, meaning that learning something requires someone to pay attention. Most teachers and psychologists would therefore agree that the ability to focus and sustain attention is crucial to student success. I remember being told years ago that the maximum attention span of an adult was 45 […]
One of the tricky but unspoken things about being a teacher is that often you’re the only adult in a room full of children. And children are not adults. Because adult members of school communities are charged with preparing the children in our care for adulthood, there is a temptation for schools to require students […]
In the classroom, what we’re aiming for is that students’ mental health and wellbeing are cared for, so that they feel good about being there and want to do their best. This in turn should positively affect our own wellbeing and mental health as teachers. To do this, we want to look for good rather […]
The Guardian hates schools with high behaviour standards, apparently, if you believe some of the furious response to this article which appeared in the paper yesterday, linking back to recent pieces on isolation booths, high rates of exclusion and the so-called “flattening the grass”. The furore whipped up by this interests me for a number […]
Rule #1: Be vigilant for positives The advice to ‘catch them getting it right’ is hardly a novel idea. But I would argue that, like the smiley face and the sad face, it is not often put into practice with enough consistency and therefore with enough impact. There is a temptation in the teaching profession […]
My mother was a teacher, and met my father when he, too, was briefly teaching. When they were both teaching they wore gowns as daily uniform, and had to shake chalk dust off them when they left their schools. They were about as calm, tolerant, middle-class and focused on education as it was possible for […]
I have concluded that there is almost no activity which doesn’t teach me something about teaching. Freed from some of the rigorous constraints on my time by leaving a school environment, I’ve taken to a daily gym session to force me out of bed, refresh my mind and body and ready me for the challenges […]
To make a seating plan or not to make a seating plan? I’ve been in schools where it was the teacher’s choice and where it was mandatory for every class. I now firmly believe that a seating plan is a vital tool in the teacher’s armoury. The paramount reason for this is the basic, essential […]
If you have to share a classroom with 30 young people, it’s an awful lot easier to get things done if there is an understanding between you, a tacit contract that you will treat one another with respect, that the students will let the teacher teach, and the teacher will help the students learn. […]
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