The (Passionately) Boring Teacher

1. Mrs Sayers Mrs Sayers has now been teaching for more than thirty years. Despite telling me I shouldn’t be a teacher (turns, out she mean a primary teacher), she’s the woman who first made me think about what makes a good job. For 19 years, I watched mum clear the dining room table and sit down to work every weeknight. Every weekday afternoon, I (not so patiently) waited in her classroom for her to finish marking. Almost every shopping trip, I saw her pop a book into her basket which would be good for her classroom’s book corner. Lesson: Just because your job’s hard work, doesn’t mean you can’t love it. 2. My main PGCE mentor I was lucky enough that my PGCE mentor not only the head of PGCE course, but also a force to be reckoned with. The mannerisms which I watched with awe in my first weeks of my PGCE placement are now part of who I am as a teacher. She applied her firm but fair approach to her pupils and to me, making sure that, even though I may have briefly wallow...

Last week my first PGCE student finished his placement. He wrote me a lovely card which signed off with “stay passionately boring”. This is a mantra which I live by and I think is embodied by a recent tweet of mine which has taken off over half term. Unfortunately, some people appeared to take from this that I am against any form of fun within lessons. I absolutely believe that lessons can and should be fun. However, I want this enjoyment to be rooted within enjoyment and success within the subject itself, rather than the activities which frame the content. I began my career vehemently believing that fun activities in the classroom were the route to effective learning. Examples from my early career which I now avoid include: Writing a facebook page for Henry VIII. “Plan your own lesson” lessons (which often involved people writing “Watch a video about it.”) Empathy pieces (“Imagine you are...”) There are three reasons why my focus has moved from ac...

“With great power comes great responsibility” and the best manifestation of this in teaching is zero tolerance behaviour policies. Many recent articles about these policies appear to infer that they are discriminatory and cruel. To an extent, I agree: If used incorrectly, they can act as a sledgehammer cracking a nut. However, if used in a thoughtful and nuanced manner, they can help to create strong bonds between teachers and pupils and ensure an excellent learning environment for all. I think there are three main principles or nuances which should be applied when using zero tolerance or high expectations behaviour policies: 1. High expectations don’t just apply to the pupils: Just as ‘zero tolerance’ creates high expectations for pupils’ behaviour, I believe it creates high expectations for teachers’ teaching. It is no coincidence that I believe that my teaching has improved the most during my time at a school with a ‘zero tolerance’ behaviour policy: teaching in an e...

In my previous blog, “Weaving the Tapestry: How I Use Knowledge Organisers”, I spoke about how my school has made knowledge organisers the core of homework by asking pupils to either write questions and answers about them or to test themselves on the quizzes they have already written. In previous years, I have always found homework a bit of a struggle and, as a result, on many occasions I quietly avoided it. This year, I’ve seen a substantial change, both in terms of pupils completing homework and the quality of their work. A particularly enthusing example is seeing that many pupils are independently catching up on quizzes when they have been away. I believe that one of the key reasons why I have seen a significant increase in the perceived ‘buy in’ of students to this form of homework is because, right from the off, we emphasised the sound pedagogical basis of this homework; we explained the forgetting curve to pupils during assemblies and lessons, we demonstrated the importanc...

Every year in terms one and two, year 9 learn about the Holocaust. It would be wrong to say that this is a topic which I enjoy teaching. However, having studied World War Two during my GCSE, my A level and my degree, it is topic which I have regularly encountered and which I find interesting. Despite this interest, when I first started teaching the Holocaust, I found it incredibly difficult. I would spend hours sat at my computer at a loss of how to approach topics. More often than not my lessons would end up centred around opinion and big philosophical questions. My students either produced mediocre work or their written pieces were littered with misconceptions. I believe this discomfort and poor quality ultimately came down to two factors: my lack of in-depth knowledge (despite the hours spent in classrooms and lecture theatres) and the Holocaust’s extremely sensitive nature. I felt that this topic morally precluded two, then popular, methods of teaching history: teaching ...

I have written extensively about what knowledge organisers should be and how I write them. However, I also believe that, just as when teaching a class, it is important to look and dissect examples of strong and weak knowledge organisers. In this post, I will be looking at what I see as an example of an ambitious but poorly written knowledge organiser. This document was written for a cohort of year 7s who were being introduced to Elizabeth I for the first time. WWW: This teacher clearly has high expectations of their pupils: as well as a number of pieces of complex vocabulary, this document briefly covers a number of complex concepts, such as the tension between Protestantism and Catholicism. The use of quotations and dates demonstrates this teacher's emphasis on concrete examples. The timeline at the bottom of the page attempts to fit Elizabeth I within the narrative of other Tudor monarchs. Assuming that pupils had already studied Edward VI and Mary I, this knowledge ...

One of the best pieces of advice I was given when I started my PGCE was this: “You are not their friend.” Unfortunately, like many student teachers, I briefly fell into the “favourite teacher” trap. I like to think that I have climbed out of it. However, an article I read in the TES appears to be trying to direct teachers straight into the pit. ( https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/being-a-nice-teacher-works-my-pupils-me-and-i-them-all-them ) I have three main issues with this article: I am not a miracle worker. This blog seems to perpetuate the damaging notion that if you are good enough at managing behaviour in your classroom, the children will behave. Apparently, if your seating plan is good enough, you can achieve silence and an entire classroom of pupils who are on task. If you don’t have silence, that’s the fault of your poor seating plan, isn’t it? I like to think that I have quite a formidable reputation at my school; I have reached the point wher...