Category: Reflection
Who I am, What I do.
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 …
An Explanation: Romeo and Juliet – Fate and Interpretation
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 …
Presentation to Pedagoo London
This is the information that accompanied my two presentations to Pedagoo London on 2 March 2013. The event was a grass-roots un-conference run by teachers for our own professional development. It brought together a group …
Grant More Freedom
This journal entry was written as part of the first #blogsync, an initiative in the synchronisation of online journals by UK Educational professionals. The first shared topic was “The Universal Panacea? The number one shift …
Tangled in the Scaffolding
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 …
If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes
Albert Einstein defined insanity as: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet, inescapably, the English education system ignores this logic, and repeats the same tired strategies and the same …
Build a Brilliant Teacher
When a teacher fails, it’s “mea culpa”; when we succeed, it’s “didn’t the students do well?” Something that struck me when listening to John Hattie speak at the recent London Festival of Education was his …
Why should my students blog?
Two days ago the long-awaited installation of internet-connected devices landed in my underground classroom. The buzz was palpable. My students, unable to contain their enthusiasm, started to burble inchoate (and largely unwarranted) references to my …
Winning Hurts
Most of what I know about learning I discovered through running on mountain trails. This journal entry represents my manifesto for teaching and learning in my classroom. I want to make something perfectly clear from …
The Real World – A Meta-Letter to My Pupils
Picture this: a classroom inhabited by a class preparing for a “functional skills” English assessment. The students are clear about what was expected of them. They are working with focus and the atmosphere in the …