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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
I recently wrote a post about why I am leaving the teaching profession, and one of the reasons I cited was that I did not feel that the structure currently in place valued older, more experienced teachers. This may be one of the reasons why the profession is being drained of experience, and we now […]
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 […]
As every teacher knows, your behaviour management starts at the moment in which your students see you. Particularly important are the routines which you set at the classroom door. It goes without saying that every lesson is a clean sheet as far as behaviour management is concerned. Whatever happened in the last lesson, however badly […]
Parents and carers read, listen to, are aware of news. They know that schools are presiding over a rising muddy tide of mental health problems caused by multiple factors. They know that also one of those factors is the relentless (does that word still appear in the OfStEd success criteria?) drive to push students up […]
I wish I could remember who it was who said, back in the day when I worked for what was at the time the biggest and most successful corporation in the world “Everyone works for the salesman.” His point was that the salesman, or account manager, as they were actually known by the time I […]
Okay, so I’ve done a lot of stuff about the edges and the background and the effects of Strictly Positive Teaching, but it all starts with Strictly Positive Behaviour Management. So it’s time for a few posts from the beginning. Strictly Positive Behaviour Management This is absolutely the heart of Strictly Positive Teaching, and […]
