Teachers need to see what other teachers are up to.

This is the third in a series of post reflecting upon the International Education Forum in Berlin last week. This time, I am going to reflect upon the opportunity to meet the best resource there: other teachers.

I have been to similar events to the IEF and one feature stood out: a lack of teachers. This wasn’t the case in Berlin and Microsoft and the organising team need to be applauded for that. When working with trainee and newly qualified teachers I always emphasise the observation of other teachers. I have also tried to encourage peer observation and team teaching (to varying degrees of success). My team are encouraged to watch me use a bit of kit, lesson idea before they jump in, or I’ll give them a hand. The point is that some areas of teaching have become fossilised. This has been caused by two linked items. The first is the culture of staying within the classroom – teachers are often isolated for most of the day from other adults and school structures often do not allow he flexibility for teachers to meet. Secondly, in my view, teachers are given too much independence in the CPD options and not enough of the ‘right’ investment in staff development is given.

At the IEF, there were almost 80 stands like the one above. Everyone manned by a teacher. Each of them enthusiastic about their project. Each of them innovators. Plus, as they were in the classroom, the could identify with the challenges faced. Don't get me wrong, I learnt a great deal from the keynote speakers and random conversations with people like Ollie Bray and Jim Wynn, but I learned the most from the other teachers there.

Teachers need to speak to other teachers from different contexts and personalise their CPD.

For example, I spoke first of all to the other projects that had used social media, then those that had successfully embedded technology….

This highlights one of the strengths of online communities: teacher-to-teacher networks are easily set up. I’ve thought for a while now that grand, keynote driven, workshop led face-to-face conferences are not working. This if for a number of reasons including budget, cover restraints, quality of the learning (e.g. keynote or workshop delivery). However, the main reason is that they usually have little impact when people get back to school. Also, as we are all a mixed ability group of learners, why aren’t we personalising our own learning? A Twitter network allows this to happen.

For example, to day I spotted a tweet from Tom Mclean:

Which led to me this post:

And this blog:

And so on……..

This personalised choice has helped me prepare a number of workshops for next week’s Geographical Association Annual Conference.

So, school leaders need to encourage and, more importantly, facilitate the opportunity for this continuous form of professional development. This should include internet cafe style places in schools where staff can access and get support (plus a lush cup of coffee;) I suppose it’s the ‘YouTube’ style delivery where everything is in a chunk of 10 minutes or less and where you are given recommendations of connected shows. You can also stop YouTube whenever you like if it’s not meeting your learning needs.

So, teacher to teacher sessions work, although I still do think that you need the odd, inspirational keynote ;-)

High Impact, Low effort

This month is the start of the #29daysofwriting challenge. I enjoyed this last year and will be using my Staffrm account to post. I'll also be reporting here, both to give a little more detail and to keep a log of what I have written. The challenge developed a great sense of community last year, which is why I'm choosing to write on Staffrm. What I would say to those who are new to writing or don't want to run out of ideas is: Write for yourself. Clarify an idea, write something out loud. The process of distilling thoughts into writing is immensely beneficial to your practice. If other read, comment and respond, that's a bonus. Ignore the muppets who know nothing of your context, style or students. Mix it up - I like to read about real stuff from real classrooms and schools and also about other stuff. If we always write about school, how does that work for workload? If you've nothing nice to say, don't say it. So, the following has been ...

What makes a learning experience profound? Personal reflections and possible implications for classroom practice.

I have recently begun a Leadership Pathways journey. As part of the first core day, we were asked to reflect on a profound learning experience. This got me thinking about how many profound learning experiences I have both been involved in, and how many I have been able to give to others. Our group came up with a huge long list, but these are my five. Emotional Connected Demanding Reflective Collaborative As always, these are personal thoughts and quite mixed up. I put them here so that I can look back on them (plus they’d get lost inside my world-cup-free brain) 1. Emotional I can’t think of a time where deep learning hasn’t engaged my emotions. From being awe inspired to that tingle feeling when a student gets a light bulb moment. From this-is-the-happiest-day-ever, to I-think-I’m-about-to die. How often do we engage the emotions of those we teach? Here, I would argue that having a safe learning environment i...

Banned Word Board

Today I want to share some simple ideas that I have found to be very effective in the classroom. I can't say that they are my own original ideas, although I have played around with them. The first is the Banned word Board. This is a simple display in the classroom that lists a number of words that are not allowed to be used by pupils in their written or oral answers. The effect has been an increase in the quality of written work, and I have almost made comments such as 'Sir it's simple, the stuff just affects the thing and causes people problems'. Pupils are now more able to use specific language, something that is vital especially at GCSE. I have had to make a few modifications, such as the introduction of 'Heavenly Words' This is an additional display placed on the ceiling. I found this necessary as pupils needed some stimulus in finding replacement words. After advice received after posting the idea on the SLN forum , I have also introduced semi-banned words...

David Rogers

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