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. […]
So you’ve kept Joe, or Leah, or Sam back after a lesson where they pushed you to the point where you had to issue a detention. You didn’t engage in discussion about it in the lesson, but now is the time. This is the point at which you have an opportunity a) to confirm that […]
So you’ve kept Joe, or Leah, or Sam back after a lesson where they pushed you to the point where you had to issue a detention. You didn’t engage in discussion about it in the lesson, but now is the time. This is the point at which you have an opportunity a) to confirm that […]
On EduTwitter I read a lot of discussion about how teachers shouldn’t need to be liked by students; they should simply be able to expect obedience and compliance from their classes, and schools should have ways of dealing with the students if they don’t comply as expected. And I agree. There must be an expectation […]
It’s early 2018 as I write, and a very tough time to be a child. It’s not that easy for the rest of us, but it doesn’t take much of a stretch of imagination to see that it must be unbelievably scary and confusing through the lens of a child. We have lived through a […]
Get your classroom relationships right. Then you can… Get your behaviour management right. Then you can… Teach your lesson. And… Don’t take it personally. Teaching is a profession; it is a job. The relationships which we have in the classroom are professional relationships, not personal ones, and as such need to be managed carefully and […]
You can decide to like a class. We’ve all been there – that knot in the stomach when you have to face 8S again. The faces which swim into your head, those of the students who need somehow to be ‘managed’, to be cajoled into compliance or manoeuvred quickly through the sanction escalation ladder […]
1. Be polite: Be polite to everyone, including the most annoying student in the most annoying class, the one which you have come to dread when you see it on your timetable, the class which makes your stomach clench as you see them lining outside the room. If you have a quick wit and a […]
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