LESSONS LEARNED ON LOCKDOWN

When the coronavirus lockdown was announced, I wrote a long list of things to do in order to fill my time. I have always loved writing and planned to use this time to purse my goal of writing a travel book. I spent a week self-isolating prior to the official lockdown due to having symptoms of CV. As I approach my 7^th week in lockdown, I have ticked off a grand total of two things from my ‘to do’ list. This includes completing a 1000 piece jigsaw and painting my fence panels. Unfortunately, all good intentions went out of the window as soon as the sun came out to play. However, I have done lots of reflecting on life and lockdown has certainly taught me some valuable lessons. 

Here are a few:

    I could never work from home! One of the things that I love about being a teacher is the day to day social interactions with colleagues and students. I count past and present colleagues as some of my closest friends. I feel blessed to have a job where I am guaranteed to find something to smile or laugh about every single day. Thanks to modern technology, we are still able to connect with colleagues whether that be via Whatsapp groups, video or phone calls. My colleagues continue to provide a daily dose of humour which has really helped to keep my spirits up. On the days that I have a wobble, I know that I can pick up the phone and there is always someone to talk to. Talking about how we feel  is really important at a time like this. We talk about ‘resilience’ a lot in schools. As Senior Leaders, it is a prerequisite on most job specifications. This epidemic is certainly testing even the most resilient of people and one thing that I find myself repeating to lots of people is that ‘it is OK to not be OK’.

Putting things into perspective is certainly a good coping strategy and one that I use on a daily basis. I am thankful that my family are well, that I still have a job and that I have a home and food to eat. As we start to hear of people we know being affected by this horrible virus, it brings home that we should never take anything for granted. However, it is perfectly OK to admit that we are finding these times difficult no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in. We are, after all, separated from friends and family and wouldn’t be human if we didn’t find that challenging. It is also easy to think that the grass is greener at a time like this and compare our lockdown experience to that of others. Whilst some people are struggling with loneliness, others would gladly welcome some time and space on their own.

This period has allowed me to get to know my colleagues far better than I would under normal working circumstances. I have had conversations with staff that I may not otherwise have had and really got to know people on a new level. I don’t think I have laughed so much as I have on my rota days in school, especially learning Tik Tok dance moves! This has bought some normality into my ‘lockdown life’ and it has been lovely having an opportunity to get to know people better. 

Working hours don't work for me! I have always been quite driven with a strong work ethic. I have often thought how lovely it would be to be able to lock myself away and do some planning or research without any interruptions. Now that I find myself in that situation, I am really struggling to motivate myself. I have realised that I thrive in a high pressure environment. Over the past few years, I have worked really hard to ensure that I get the right work/life balance. Where possible, I try to avoid taking work home so that I can separate my work life from my home life. This has made working from home very difficult to adapt to. The beautiful weather certainly hasn’t help with my motivation but it has done wonders for my well-being!

I have had conversations with several students who are feeling the same. They simply can’t motivate themselves to work from home. I would be a hypocrite if I started preaching at them. Instead, I have shared the approach that I have adopted to home working. I have accepted that normal working hours don’t work for me in this situation. I am far more productive first thing in the morning. I still seem to be programmed to waking up at 6.30am so I get up and do a couple of hours work then. This allows me time later in the day to go for a walk or a run or to simply relax in the garden with my book. I refer to this time as ‘working on my well-being’. Whilst I think it is very important to have routine and structure at a time like this, I also think that we need to be kind to ourselves and go with the flow if need be.

The days of the week have become blurred during lockdown and my moods vary from day today. For this reason, I don’t separate weekdays from the weekend in terms of work. On the days that I wake up feeling low, I know that the best thing for me to do is to get out and have a walk or do some gardening. I am also far more productive when the sun has gone down or when it is cloudy or rainy. I have stopped putting pressure on myself to work school hours and instead work when I am likely to be at my most productive. That may mean working at the weekend instead of a week day. It wouldn't work for everyone but it does for me. Those with children to occupy will certainly be having to snatch hours to work as and when they can. 

The power of exercise. I have always been a bit of an exercise junkie. I do a military bootcamp several times a week and run with a community running group. For me, it is not just about the health benefits but the social benefits that come with being part of a club. Exercising alone has been hard to adapt to. I am missing my BMF (Be Military Fit) buddies and the beautiful park that we train in so much. Having dragged myself to train in the park in the dark, cold and rain, I was so looking forward to spring and the lighter nights.

I have to confess that I spent the first few weeks of lockdown getting frustrated by all of the things that I was missing out on. However, I have switched my mindset and now try to see the positives of this experience. I exercise every day whether that be an online Zoom workout, a run or a walk. It sets me up for the day and releases those all-important endorphins. If I am feeling low, I put on my running gear and head to the park. I find listening to some feel good music or the birds singing brightens my mood straight away. No matter how I feel at the start of my run, I always come back in a positive mindset. During lockdown, I have ran two half marathons. I hadn’t planned on covering such a distance but the feeling of escapism whilst taking in the stunning views in my local park spurred me on. It has also given me a sense of achievement. 

My bootcamp also do daily, Zoom workout classes which I try and do a few times a week.     Interacting with the instructor and seeing everyone exercising in their gardens helps me to feel more connected. I’m also far less likely to give up when my legs start to burn. I have always wanted to try yoga but never seemed to find the time before lockdown. I found an online yoga course on YouTube and now build this into my exercise routine. I no longer have daily aches and pains from old injuries and will definitely continue to practise yoga post lockdown.

Thanks to lockdown, I am probably the fittest that I have been in a long time and my mental well-being is in a much better place for it. This time has allowed me to slow down, take stock and work on my health and well-being.

 Beauty on your doorstep! Thanks to the website https://footpathmap.co.uk/ I have discovered the most beautiful walks in my local area. For years, I have done the same old walking routes not knowing what was on my doorstep. The geography geek in me has gone into overdrive discovering new routes that have taken me through magical bluebell woods and across rolling fields. I love taking photographs of nature and already have hundreds of photographs on my camera roll taken during lockdown. I am a bit of a travel addict and seeing picture memories come up of beaches, rainforests and volcanoes on my Facebook has been bittersweet. This time next year however, I will have picture memories that will remind me of a time when I was able to appreciate the smaller things in life. I have loved seeing wildflowers and blossom come into bloom and immersing myself in nature. 

   Reconnecting  Not only have I reconnected with old friends during this time, I have also taken up old hobbies again. I played the piano when I was younger but when I sold my last house, I left my piano behind. My music books have been gathering dust in the garage for years. I often thought I should take them into work and practise on the school piano but, like many things, I never made it a priority. Our Music and ADT departments have kindly let staff borrow musical instruments and equipment during the school closure period. One of my close colleagues offered to drop off a keyboard at my house as I was unable to collect it. At the time, I was self-isolating on my own and was at a bit of a low point. Learning how to play again was such a nice distraction and has bought back lots of fond memories of playing for my late nan. 

And finally….

Perhaps the best part of lockdown for me is the friendship that I have made with an elderly lady called Margaret who I met whilst doing my food shopping. Concerned at her vulnerability, I gave her my phone number and said that I would do her shopping from now on. We now speak on the phone every couple of days and she has bought me so much joy. She has such a positive outlook on life and a cheeky sense of humour that has made me laugh so much during these challenging times. And if there is one thing that is guaranteed to help get us all through lockdown, it’s to keep laughing!

LESSONS LEARNED ON CHALLENGING ALL STUDENTS

Challenge is a concept that has different meanings to different people, not least in an educational setting.  As Deputy Headteacher, I lead on the provision for more able students. Historically, I have tended to narrow my focus to the top 3% of the school cohort. I would analyse data to produce the annual ‘gifted and talented’ register and deliver staff training with a focus on challenging the more able.

I teach geography to mixed ability GCSE groups. This presents a differentiation headache! Teach to the top and you risk losing your lower ability students or simplify and fail your more able students. Finding a middle ground is no easy task and possibly one that risks failing all.

I have piloted lots of different strategies with my classes. Like many experienced teachers, I have become jaded by teaching fads and jargon. During my NQT days, Bloom’s Taxonomy was the bible of planning tools. I applied the terminology religiously to compose success criteria using an all, most, some approach. My lessons became very formulaic and predictable. I found myself repeating the same command words – describe / identify (all), explain (most) and prioritise / evaluate (some).

This approach was flawed in several ways:

1) The less motivated students were quite content in just completing the ‘all’ tasks. In trying to support the very weakest of students, I was also putting them at a disadvantage when it came to exam questions that did require them to explain etc.

2) I was structuring lessons in a way that meant students had to work through all activities in order to reach the more challenging tasks. Whilst I had thought carefully about differentiation, students rarely got onto the tasks that required them to really think hard and to apply their knowledge.

3) I had trained students into thinking that to access the higher grades, you had to include an element of evaluation. When faced with an exam question asking them to simply explain, they would include an evaluation in the hope it would get them more marks.

On the odd occasion that I dig out an old lesson resource, I can’t help but cringe a little. Worst still, I presented the merits of such approaches to my colleagues and to national audiences at various teaching conferences.  

So what changed for me?  

It took a lesson observation several years back for me to rethink my approach to teaching. Whilst students were complimentary of me as a teacher, some of the higher ability students hesitated when asked if they felt challenged. They could appreciate that I had built challenge into each activity but were frustrated at having to listen to my explanations. Quite simply, they just wanted to get on with it!

I won’t lie, I was a little bit on the defensive when being given feedback as I knew I had built in opportunities for independent learning in previous lessons. As we all know, lesson observations are only a snapshot and not a reflection of every lesson that we teach. However, it did make me reflect on my assumptions as a teacher and prompted me to conduct some student voice with the more able students in my GCSE geography group. Whilst I wholeheartedly recommend this as a process, it comes with a bit of a health warning. You can’t be too precious as they certainly don’t hold back! The very brightest students have high expectations of their teachers and can be a very hard audience to please. They know what works for them and if a teacher fails to deliver, their frustrations will quickly turn into resentment. On the other hand, it gave me an opportunity to explain the thought process behind my teaching. For instance, I could have given them A Level reading material to offer further challenge.  However, I knew that they would then struggle to condense all of the information into an exam answer and risked going off the point.

Off the back of my own student voice, I decided to ask the top 3% of students in Year 11 what their challenge wish list would be to teachers. Here’s what they said:

• In lessons, it’s hard to see how certain topics can actually apply to your life so maybe if they gave you information on what it could actually be to do with, that might help
• Having tasks to do after the challenge so once you’ve completed it, you’re not sitting around for ages
• Having more structured revision activities, rather than just go and revise
• Application questions with problem solving
• Having the opportunity to do hard work from the start of the lesson and not just having to do it at the end of the lesson after all of the easy stuff
• Being able to start work straight away without having to listen to the teacher for too long
• In mixed ability classes, I think they should focus more on hard work if you’re going for the higher grade boundaries
• Have a wider variety of homework so that there’s homework for everyone of different abilities
• Being able to start work straight away without having to listen to the teacher for too long
• Spending less time copying out work and doing more tasks about what you’ve actually learnt
• More exam questions and model answers

This brings me back to the notion that challenge has different meanings for different people and what works for some, won’t work for others. Their feedback made me consider where I was going wrong and the importance of communicating with students and other colleagues. I have recently had the privilege of team teaching an A Level class with a fellow colleague. This has been a valuable professional development opportunity as I am able to observe how he challenges our brightest students. I have also come to realise that I rely too heavily on my preferred learning style when planning lessons.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learnt is that we must challenge all students and not simply the brightest. Every child is able to demonstrate higher order thinking, they just might need a helping hand in doing so. Ask any young person to evaluate mobile phones on the market and I am quite sure that even the lowest ability student would be able to present the various pros and cons.

Delivering the new GCSE geography curriculum has made me rethink my approach to teaching, not least because there is no longer a higher and foundation tier. This has forced me to consider how students can access the paper. Again, I come back to feedback I was given during a lesson observation. This time, I was asked if I thought the work was pitched too high for a student targeted a grade 2. This was on the grounds of the academic language that I was using with the class. Whilst I fully appreciate where the observer was coming from, I also know that by avoiding using the language in the specification, my lower ability students will simply skip questions in the exam. Take for example the following question:

The vocabularly gap has never been so significant. A failure to understand what the terms processes, formation and landforms mean could result in zero marks for what is essentially quite a straightforward task – explain how waterfalls are created. For that reason, I have gone back to basics with my teaching with a less is more approach. The challenge comes through the understanding and application of academic language rather than an overload of content. I have moved away from providing more able students with lots of extra reading and placed more emphasis on how they can apply their knowledge in a condensed format. It is easy for a more able student to write a three paged answer demonstrating everything they know. Instead, the challenge lies in writing a precise answer that covers everything in the question. It is something that I struggle with myself when writing model answers for my students.

I have also moved away from signposting tasks according to their level of challenge. Instead I share a list of activities that I expect all students to complete. I provide ‘helping hand’ sheets for students needing extra support in the form of scaffolding templates and writing frames.   I expect every student to challenge themselves and hold no prisoners when it comes to my expectations. I refuse to mark substandard work. That is not to say I expect every student to produce a grade 9 piece of work. Instead, I talk to students about individual expectations. I am trying to build their resilience and confidence so that they want to challenge themselves. I am firm believer in the power of praise and try to acknowledge the efforts of all students, not simply those that achieve the highest marks. 

On the occasions that I want to signpost challenge, I refer to it as a ‘further challenge’ task or as a ‘take it further’ task. This supports the view that all of the work offers a degree of challenge and not simply extension tasks.

Despite a pleasing set of GCSE results, I won’t claim that I have differentiation or challenge ‘nailed on’. However, I am a lot more reflective as a teacher and quite happy to advocate that old school teaching has its merits. Gone are the days that I spend hours producing creative resources to ‘edutain’ my classes. When I think back to my school days, I was quite happy being given a textbook and doing comprehension activities or being given a tricky exam question to have a go at.

As a more able student myself, I had a pretty good deal at my school. That said, I do feel that there was a lack of advice and support when it came to university courses and careers. Neither of my parents had been to university so it wasn’t a path that they expected my sister or I to go down. My sister was encouraged to apply to university by her art teacher during a parents’ evening appointment. Until this point, it wasn’t something she had considered and it came as quite a shock to my parents. Visiting her made me want to experience university for myself. Had I not experienced this, I may never had thought to aspire to it myself. On the day of my A  Level results, a teacher asked why I had not applied to Oxbridge. The answer was simple – no one had suggested it to me. For that reason, I firmly believe that as many students as possible should have the opportunity to visit a university or college and not just the more able. In addition to an annual visit to Oxford University, we offer students a range of opportunities to visit further education establishments or invite speakers into school. Our aim as a school is to adopt a challenge for all approach that will raise the aspirations of all of our students.

LESSONS LEARNED ON LISTENING TO YOUR OWN ADVICE!

How many times have you given someone a great piece of advice but failed to act upon it yourself? This seems to be a common flaw amongst teachers, including myself.

Take for instance, if you’re not well. One of my responsibilities as Deputy Headteacher is staff welfare.  I have conversations with staff on a regular basis about their well-being and often find myself saying 'your health comes first'. When it comes to sending staff home who are not well enough to be in work, the conversation tends to go ‘but I need to teach my exam groups’. Whilst it’s admirable that we put the needs of our students first, we sometimes need to be kinder to ourselves. I found that out myself last week when I tried to force myself to work through a nasty migraine only to be sent home after a rather embarrassing turn in the canteen.

A big buzz word in education at the moment is resilience. As leaders and teachers, we often have to put on a brave face and just get on with things. However, I do wonder if that sometimes sends out the wrong message, especially when it comes to illness. If I force myself into school when I am clearly not well enough, am I sending a message to other staff that they should do the same?

Mental health is a big talking point in the profession at the moment and rightly so, but we should not lose sight of physical health. I wonder how many teachers have put off going to the doctors because they can’t get an after school appointment or simply can’t fit it into a busy week? Moreover, how many teachers have put their physical symptoms down to the job? Or indeed doctors? 

I have great admiration for those working in the medical profession. However, I would urge anyone who has any long term symptoms to follow them up. For years, I put agonising headaches down to stress. I repeatedly went to the doctors only to be told that my headaches were due to tension and that I should try and find ways to relax. Even when I pointed out a small lump on my forehead, I was told that it was the shape of my skull. I put off going back to the doctors for fear of being labeled a hypochondriac. It took a visit to a sports masseur to convince me to go back. She took one look at the lump on my head and said I needed to insist on having a scan. Turns out I had a tumor growing in my skull and needed surgery to have it removed. Fortunately, it was benign but it was certainly a reality check for me. As part of my surgery, I had a section of my skull removed and a metal plate inserted. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we had the Ofsted call three days before my op. If ever there was a time to say you need Ofsted like a hole in the head, it was then!

Back to not listening to my own advice. Three weeks after my surgery, I went back to work. Looking back, I really wasn’t ready. My school certainly didn’t put any pressure on me to go back but once again, the guilt at missing lessons with my exam groups kicked in. Even though I had a genuine reason for being off work, I found it hard not to worry about my growing workload and the extra pressure I was putting on my colleagues.

So what lessons have I learned?

Health has to come first. My sister who is also a teacher was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 32. She too was told that her tiredness was most likely down to work and nearly didn’t go back for a second checkup.

    Listen to your body.

    Don’t put off medical appointments and   that includes the embarrassing ones!
   
      Don’t try to be a hero!

Lessons learned teaching the new spec Geography GCSE

Faced with a new specification and grading system, I really had no clue how my students would fare in their Geography GCSE last summer.  If their faces were anything to go by after the exam, I wasn’t feeling too hopeful. That is until I logged onto Twitter and read some of the student comments! If all else fails, we have a future generation of comedians in the making. Here are a few of my favourite post exam tweets:

In true geography teacher style, I happened to be in China last summer when the results came out. ‘Lesson planning on location’ as I like to call it! I nervously logged onto e-AQA at Shanghai airport. Having just spent a couple of weeks in geography heaven, I did fear my geography high was about to come crashing down. As Deputy Headteacher, I inherited some of the more ‘challenging’ students in my group. I don’t mind admitting that I frequently had flashbacks to my NQT days. Teaching global atmospheric circulation for the first time was a particularly low moment in my teaching career to date!

All of the leadership team at my school teach exam groups, including the Headteacher. Your credibility as a leader hangs very much in the balance when it comes to your own results. You can hardly hold others to account if your own results don’t stack up. Thankfully, I was pretty happy with my results overall. There’s always one or two students who, despite working their socks off, don’t quite pull off the grade you hoped for in the exam. However, my predictions were fairly accurate and I had a positive value added so I couldn't complain.  The enhanced results analysis on e-AQA showed a very positive picture for our department too.  We have a fantastic team of geographers but, like many schools, we simply ran out of time trying to teach the new specification. Pretty much the whole of the Economic Activity unit had been self-taught via a work booklet. I think I broke a teaching world record covering the whole topic in sub two hours. If I achieve nothing else in life, I have found an instant cure for insomnia!

So what lessons have I learned along the way?

Less is more When I first started teaching the specification, I was completely overwhelmed by the volume of content in the affiliated textbooks. Teaching mixed ability groups has proven especially challenging. No amount of differentiation can fully accommodate for students whose predicted grades range from a 2 to a 9. I have always ‘taught to the top’ but with increasing A level content in the new spec, I felt that I was losing my weaker students. Moreover, sticking to the recommended teaching hours was like running against a category 5 tropical storm!

I decided to start planning my lessons following the content in the CPG revision guide. To challenge my high ability students, I encouraged them to work independently using the textbooks. However, I quickly realised that this was not necessarily doing them any favours. How can you possibly condense a 4-page case study in a textbook into a one-page answer in an exam booklet? I found that my higher ability students were really struggling to answer 9 mark questions. Typically, they wanted to write everything they knew about the case study. I decided to focus less on content and more on how to structure answers. Now all students use the CPG guide as a foundation but I challenge the top end by encouraging them to use more complex terminology and place specific information. I still dip into textbooks and find them a great source of information for my own planning. I tend to mix and match rather than rely on one textbook to teach from.

I have always created my own model answers which I type up and photocopy. Increasingly, I found myself saying ‘you won’t be able to write this much in the exam’. I therefore decided to start handwriting model answers at the same time as my students. Not only is this time saving as a teacher but it also gives students a realistic idea of what is possible in the given time. If I can’t condense the content into a Level 3 answer, how can my students? I use a camera app on my laptop to display my answer which I later photocopy for them. Students are expected make notes from my verbal feedback and improve their answers in red pen. I make it pretty clear that I won’t be writing detailed feedback on their answers and issue sanctions to students who don’t red pen their work with improvements.

It’s all about the spec! I’m going to confess that in my first few years of teaching, I didn’t really pay much attention to the exam specifications. I rather naively relied on the schemes of work provided by the department and the textbooks. Now, I make reference to the specification in every lesson. All students are provided with a copy of the specification for each unit of work. I drill it into them that they have to know the meaning of every single word in the specification. I have moved away from using exercise books and instead produce work booklets that have headings from the specification alongside exam questions from the specimen papers. Initially, I gave them a separate booklet of sample questions but I now interleave questions so students can see the link between the wording in the spec and the exam questions. This way, there are no nasty shocks when words like agribusiness or physical processes come up in the exam. As a teacher, I can easily spot work that students need to catch up on. It also helps to reduce planning in the long term as all of the worksheets and exam questions are pre-printed in the booklet. 

Initially, the work booklets went down like marmite with my students. For the 'lovers', it has really helped them to organise their notes especially since there are no loose worksheets. Even the initial ‘haters’ now see the benefit of having everything in one booklet to revise from. I appreciate that this approach wouldn't appeal to all teachers but it works for me. Whist they initially take quite a lot of time to produce, it pays off in the long term. I tend to set notes as homework and concentrate on exam questions in the lessons. 

I start all of my lessons with literacy activities using the words from the spec e.g. bingo, A-Z, heads and tails. When deconstructing exam questions, I make students look at the wording in the specification to see the correlation. I have found that the biggest barrier to students is the wording of exam questions rather than a lack of knowledge. The 'less is more approach' to delivering content allows me to dedicate more time to covering academic language. Repetition is key here. You want students to become as familiar with words like formation and landforms, as they are with the everyday language that they use. 

Teach from the mark schemes I have confessed to ditching the textbooks and teaching from the CPG guides which may horrify some geography teachers. However, I also base my planning on sample papers and mark schemes. How often have you gone through mark schemes and discovered content that you have never come across in a textbook? The indicative content in last summer’s exam papers is sometimes far better than the content in the textbooks. If you want to do exam practice but haven’t time to mark 30+ answers, try some simple tasks like:

Give students the mark scheme. Use the AQA command word list and specification to write an exam question. I have done this as a competition to see which students can get the closest to the actual question

Blank out some of the words in the indicative content and provide a word grid at the bottom. Students to guess the missing word

Use the indicative content to write the answer. It’s a skill in itself condensing the indicative content into a one-page answer

I have also put the sample questions and mark schemes from each topic into a PPT that I share with students via our online homework platform. The PPT has an exam question on one slide followed by the mark  scheme on the next slide. I encourage students to work their way through the PPT as part of their revision by tackling a few questions at a time. Whilst I see the benefit of flashcards and mind-maps, I firmly believe that the key to success is practising exam questions under timed conditions. I dedicate a lot of my lesson time to breaking down exam questions by looking at each individual word and planning how to answer it using a variety of templates and structure strips.

Don’t reinvent the wheel…unless it’s quicker There are some amazing online resources to dip into, not least the AQA Geography Facebook group and Schoology resources. However, it comes with a warning. If it takes you longer to find the resource than to make your own, is it really time saving? That said, the community of geographers that contribute to online forums should be commended. Quite possibly some of the best CPD you will get is from other teachers sharing their ideas on social media.

Be a teacher on tour! Geek is chic in my lessons! I make no apology for being a complete geography geek and play up to the reputation of being a bit crazy. My travel partners are well used to filming me ‘on location’. Whilst my students take the mickey out of me for it, I think when they look back in years to come they will remember my ‘Miss Thom in her geography heaven’ moments.

When the going gets tough, get creative! I will be the first to admit that my lessons have started to become like an exam factory. Fortunately, our school took the move to deliver GSCEs over three years. This has enabled me to be creative again and to have some rest bite from teaching the heavy content. My favourite activity is to put out paper, glue and scissors and simply get students to summarise the topic by making a model that they have to label with key terms. Not only is this a great way to consolidate learning but you have some pretty impressive models to display during open evenings. Moreover, there are times when you simply don’t have the capacity to mark more written work but don’t want to compromise student progress.

If doubt, turn to You Tube! I can't imagine teaching now without using video clips to bring the topic alive. There are so many fantastic clips and documentaries to enrich lessons. Online forums are a great way to spread the work about a useful clip. More recently, I discovered the 'Time for Geography' website. I love the fact that the clips are delivered by students and have used these to generate discussions about studying geography at university.

If I don't feel very confident on a particular aspect of the specification, I show a video clip rather than try to blag my way through it. I certainly had to do this with global atmospheric circulation. After the third time of teaching it, I think I have finally grasped it!

Finally, I would like to thank all of the geography teachers who share their ideas and resources on Facebook and Twitter. Not only have you reassured me but you have also inspired me along the way.

LESSONS LEARNED ON STAFF WELFARE

LESSONS LEARNED ON STAFF WELFARE

Talk to anyone who works in education, regardless of their role or position and it won’t take long for workload or well-being to come up in the conversation. Increasing levels of accountability mean that leaders and teachers are under more and more pressure to get results. When I have dared to bring up the issue of workload to some of my non teacher friends, I have been instantly reminded how we ‘have it lucky’ and ‘don’t know we’re born’. I have long stopped trying to defend my profession. To the outside eye, we have on average 13 weeks paid holiday a year, relative job security and a decent pension so why are we moaning? Having worked in the public sector myself, I am fully aware of the pressures that come with other professions and I do appreciate that I am very fortunate to have a job that allows me to travel the world during my holidays. Yes, I have been reminded of that many a time! However, with more and more teachers leaving the profession and a recruitment crisis, we can’t afford to dismiss the fact that teaching is a bloody tough job!

One of my responsibilities as Deputy Headteacher is staff welfare. When I first joined my school over five years ago, I wouldn’t say that this accounted for much of my working week. Increasingly, it is becoming a significant part of my role. 

It is little wonder that staff are feeling the strain in light of changes to exam specifications, increasing accountability and, for us as a school, a less than favorable Ofsted inspection. As a Senior Leader, I am well aware that we have a responsibility to ensure that staff workload is manageable. We have taken measures to hold termly staff welfare meetings and to conduct staff surveys in order to identify and address some of the issues that our staff are facing. I strongly believe in staff having a voice and that we all need a platform to vent out our frustrations.  Whilst getting things off your chest is cathartic, we also need to be realistic that often it is the education system at fault rather than the school. 

Take for instance, monitoring and evaluation. I am fortunate to network with lots of senior leaders from local schools, all of whom carry out regular learning walks and book trawls. Indeed, if you were to rank the frequency of M&E in local schools, we would come out pretty rosy on the staff welfare front. That’s not to say it’s not a contentious issue in our school. No doubt, monitoring and evaluation would be shelved in Room 101 by most teachers…and being slightly controversial here, by some leaders too. Done properly, it’s a time consuming process for all parties involved.

That said, I do think M&E has its place when conducted in the right way. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with students have been during student voice meetings. Young people can be very perceptive when it comes to their learning and we can all take something from their feedback. But the nicest moments are when you try to unpick why it is they love a particular subject. More often than not, their response is simply because of the teacher. We always aim to give staff feedback from M&E and there’s nothing nicer than telling a member of staff that a student really values what they’re doing.

So, back to lessons learned for teachers and leaders.

I saw a great quote recently. It read ‘Stop trying to make everyone happy, you’re not tequila’. This is certainly the case in a school context! We will never please all students, all parents and all staff. There has to come a point when simply doing our best is good enough. In terms of staff welfare, we have revised our school marking policy, streamlined our reporting and performance management system and allocated more CPD time to departments. Will this make everyone happy? No because marking, reporting and performance management still have to be done. I was fortunate to sit on the DfE’s Marking Review Group so I’m a big advocate of cutting down unnecessary marking. That said, could I rely solely on verbal, self and peer marking? No, because I still believe students deserve some form of personalised feedback for their efforts. I’ve tried marking codes, pre-printed marking sheets and the use of model answers to speed up the process. In terms of marking assessments such as mocks, I have yet to find a quick fix.

What we can try and do as a leadership team is to look at our school calendar and take into consideration pressure points. And that’s another contentious issues – the calendar! We have consulted staff on the calendar and taken on board their feedback. No matter how much you try and factor in the lessons learned and make the necessary changes, you can’t be tequila! One change in the calendar invariably opens up a whole new set of issues.

So, what steps can be done to manage workload? Here’s a few that we have tried at Plantsbrook:

School marking policy – we have a red pen policy whereby students self and peer check their work and respond to any teacher feedback. We do not expect to see extended written comments by the teacher and have moved away from the What Worked Well / Even Better If approach. We encourage the use of question codes and live marking where applicable. 

Performance Management – We have moved away from three commensurate targets to two targets that are commensurate and one target that is personal. Historically, staff had to come up with a list of actions for each target that they would evidence throughout the year. To streamline the process, we produced a list of sample actions linked to job specifications and Teacher Standards. We have advised staff to choose up to three that they feel are their areas of development. We do not expect staff to upload any evidence or write lengthy comments justifying how they have met their objectives. As well as saving time, the hope is that this will result in more professional dialogue during review meetings and a feeling of professional trust.

  Reporting – we have streamlined our reporting process using drop down judgements for classwork, behaviour and homework etc. Written comments take the form of two targets selected from a pre populated comment bank. This has significantly reduced the amount of time writing and proof reading reports.

  

  CPD – after each training session, staff complete an online evaluation. Feedback suggested that staff would like more time to work with their departments on curriculum planning. However, a shift from whole school training to subject training risked putting extra pressure on Subject Leaders. To limit this, a menu of suggested CPD activities was shared, along with sample resources that Subject Leaders could select from. 

In terms of well-being, staff have been proactive in arranging events that bring everyone together. This has included a staff curling competition, yoga and bake offs. More recently, one of our Academic Coaches organised a Secret Saint activity. Staff who volunteered to take part were allocated someone to do random acts of kindness for. The response was overwhelmingly positive and a real morale booster. Gestures such as a chocolate treat for breaktime and pamper kits for the weekend were truly well received. Lots of staff took to Twitter to share their secret surprises.

When it comes to my own wellbeing, I have learned to accept that I cannot be a perfectionist. Here are a few tips that have helped restore my work life balance.

Go back to basics – don’t be afraid to use textbooks, teach students how to make notes effectively and devote lesson time to deconstructing exam questions – the best lessons don’t have to be all singing, all dancing. Quite often, it’s your personality that makes lessons memorable. Smile, laugh or refer to your own experiences. My A Level geography teacher didn’t ‘edutain us’ but his passion for the subject certainly inspired me!

  Less is more - As a geography teacher, I have realised that the volume of content that I was teaching was overwhelming my students and giving me grey hairs trying to cram it into two years. When I looked through the sample papers, I realised that I was teaching in way too much depth. I now restrict content and focus more on the academic language that students need to know in order to understand what the question is asking of them.

 Hand write model answers at the same time as the students. Not only is this time saving but it gives students a realistic idea of what can be produced in the given time. Make use of a visualiser or photocopy your answer for the next lesson. Get students to improve their work prior to handing it in and you immediately cut down on marking.

   

  Be a radiator not a drainer! We all need to offload but remember the importance of having a laugh too! And this applies to out of school. Cut down the teacher chat and simply switch off.

    Have a night / day off. Give yourself one night when you don’t take any work home and don’t feel guilty for it. Go to the pub for dinner, spend quality time with your family or simply have a soak in the bath. Doing a ‘feel good’ activity works wonders. For me, it’s a military bootcamp though I accept that this would be some people’s idea of hell after a day at work.

I have come to accept that there is no magic wand when it comes to addressing staff wellbeing. Quite often external factors are at play and sometimes it’s just offering an ear or a shoulder to cry on. What we can do is to look out for each other and take good care of ourselves. Sometimes that means shifting our own mindsets and practices and not letting guilt overcome us.