Is education in England too easy?
The title for this blog comes from a discussion I had with two girls (twins) who I teach in year 11. Despite being on track to achieve brilliantly in their English GCSEs, they don’t consider themselves...
View ArticleOne Year On – Why I Still Blog.
One year ago today I published my first post. I remember it quite distinctively. Hours and hours sat slaving away in front of the laptop. I must have read that post , half a dozen times before finally...
View ArticleDwelling on the Positive
One thing I hadn’t anticipated when I trained as a teacher was quite how much of a battering my social life would take. Having spent the best part of two years working not very hard in a not very...
View ArticleBlogworms
earworm ˈɪəwəːm/ noun a catchy song or tune that runs continually through someone’s mind. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the sensation of the ‘earworm’. It’s that one song, or usually fragment of a...
View ArticleThings I wish they’d told me.
I graduated with a PGCE from The University of Bristol in 2011. Here’s five things I wish they’d told me. 1. Just because things are shiny and new, it doesn’t mean the kids learn more. OK. Maybe I’m...
View ArticleIs Matt Damon right about creativity?
On Sunday, the traffic on the M4 was horrible. I was on my way home from Wembley, having watched my team win a cup competition not important enough to dwell on. After around 2 hours of struggling out...
View ArticleGetting to know you: Why telling new teachers to ‘build relationships’ is bad...
As we move inexorably towards the start of a new school year, thousands of trainee and newly qualified teachers are waiting to embark on their careers. If they are anything like I was as, they’re...
View ArticleAre Threshold Concepts the new Growth Mindset? Thoughts on the Importance of...
I was at a training conference recently where running effective meetings was being discussed. Eventually, the discussion segued into the so-called ‘types’ of members of staff who might be at the...
View ArticleOld books, New Surprises.
I had a marvellous moment in class last week. I discovered something new about a book that I thought I knew inside out, a book that I’d taught many times and read cover to cover on many, many...
View ArticleWhat’s the Point of English?
What follows is a conversation between me and two year 11 students at school. It happened during a weekly lunchtime intervention session, where we feed the students tea, toast, and sandwiches. We also...
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