• Pedagogy
  • Open Classroom
  • Presentations
  • Opinion
  • Resources
  • Assessment
  • Sexuality
  • Publications
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Documentary
  • Projects
    • Podcast: Is This for Credits – Season 1
    • Podcast: See Me After Class
    • Dystopian Openings
    • Microcredentials
  • Classes
    • 2020 Classes
      • Thoughtcrime
      • Magical Realism
      • Dire Ambition
      • Iron House
    • 2019 Classes
      • Newspeak
      • Magical Realism
      • Dire Ambition
      • Paradox
    • 2018 Classes
      • Future Dystopia
      • Dire Ambition
      • Say It Straight
      • DoubleThink
    • 2017 Classes
      • Doublethink
      • Alternative Facts
      • Pathways
      • Dire Ambition
    • 2016 Classes
      • Antihero
      • Ambition
      • Politics and Corruption
      • Ambition
      • The Individual in You
    • 2015 Classes
      • Year 10
      • Year 9
      • Year 8
    • 2014 Classes
      • GCSE Support
      • Year 11
      • Year 10
      • Year 7
    • 2013 Classes
      • Year 7
      • Year 8
      • Year 8
      • Year 9
      • Year 10
      • Year 11
    • 2012 Classes
      • Year 7
      • Year 8
      • Year 9
      • Year 10
      • Year 11
    • London Nautical Department of English
    • 2011 Classes
      • Year 7F
      • Year 7
      • Year 8
      • Year 9
      • Year 10
      • Year 11
    • 2009 Classes
  • Résumé
Christopher Waugh

Anecdotes

Return Home
Just Do Your Job

Just Do Your Job

May 24, 2024 | Advice, Anecdotes, Open Classroom, Opinion, Podcast

This week we get to hear what advice Bags gave the delegates during her conference presentation and we reflect on how to get the culture right in the teaching of boys. There are some new boys' voices too.

Deus ex Machina

Deus ex Machina

Jun 20, 2014 | Anecdotes, Open Classroom, Opinion, Pedagogy

Presentation to the Sunday Times Festival of Education, exploring the "God in the Machine". The notion that it is through setting up a class environment that concentrates on the imperatives of authenticity and agency, the aspects of learning that we care about...

Who I am, What I do.

Who I am, What I do.

May 31, 2014 | Anecdotes, Reflection, Sexuality

This piece was written as a contribution to Rory Gallagher's "Who I am, What I do" teachers' personal testimony blog. My path to the classroom started for me on the impossibly isolated South Island of New Zealand. It’s a story of how I was saved by literature and...

Build a New English Department: Step One – The People

Build a New English Department: Step One – The People

Aug 29, 2013 | Anecdotes, Featured, Open Classroom, Pedagogy

He aha te mea nui? He tangata. He tangata. He tangata. (What is the most important thing?  It is people, it is people, it is people.) I start a new year in a new role, Head of Department for English. As part of my application process for the position, I was asked to...

An Explanation: Romeo and Juliet – Fate and Interpretation

Jun 22, 2013 | Anecdotes, Open Classroom, Pedagogy, Reflection, Resources

This month's #blogsync calls for "an example of a great classroom explanation". I must admit that I have thought twice about the following contribution as there's a sense that it really does put me in the firing line - and with a recent damning judgement by an...

Tangled in the Scaffolding

Tangled in the Scaffolding

Jan 20, 2013 | Anecdotes, Open Classroom, Opinion, Pedagogy, Reflection

Teaching writing is one of the greatest joys and challenges of the English domain. Along the way, you encounter, acquire and discard many approaches and strategies - but there are always some that stick. Unlike the teaching of reading, for which I entered the teaching...

“Except when they don’t, because sometimes they won’t”

Sep 4, 2012 | Advice, Anecdotes, Students

Sometimes things just don't go the way you'd hoped in a new school. Here is some advice for students and their parents about how to turn a bad situation around. It will not escape your notice that secondary schools run an elaborate scheme of rewards and sanctions that...

Why I’m an Openly Gay Teacher

Aug 27, 2012 | Anecdotes, Opinion, Pedagogy, Publications, Sexuality

The Importance of Being ... Out Why Sexuality Matters in English Chris Waugh reflects on his experiences as a gay English teacher, arguing that openness about sexuality is a crucial element of the work of the English classroom. If I were given the opportunity to speak...

Next Entries »

ADVICE

Four Successful Homework Strategies

Four Successful Homework Strategies

Advice, Homework, Open Classroom, Pedagogy, Resources, Students

Homework is one of the most fraught areas of secondary teaching. We know it's important, its impact is visible and its routines don't offend common sense. Yet in the daily reality of the classroom homework is so often reduced to an after-thought, a misery and a...

PODCAST

Lava Lamps and Scholarships

Lava Lamps and Scholarships

Advice, Anecdotes, Assessment, Opinion, Pedagogy, Podcast, Students

In the third week of the school year, Chris and Gena explored the new year as a fresh start, including Chris' newly 'upgraded' classroom (complete with LEDs and a lava lamp). The conversation shifted to celebrating Gena's outstanding achievement of three English...

RESOURCES

Four Successful Homework Strategies

Four Successful Homework Strategies

Advice, Homework, Open Classroom, Pedagogy, Resources, Students

Homework is one of the most fraught areas of secondary teaching. We know it's important, its impact is visible and its routines don't offend common sense. Yet in the daily reality of the classroom homework is so often reduced to an after-thought, a misery and a...

SEXUALITY

Why I’m an Openly Gay Teacher

Anecdotes, Opinion, Pedagogy, Publications, Sexuality

The Importance of Being ... Out Why Sexuality Matters in English Chris Waugh reflects on his experiences as a gay English teacher, arguing that openness about sexuality is a crucial element of the work of the English classroom. If I were given the opportunity to speak...

Email me