Entirely my own quite confused and unclear views here… I’ve worked in private school and mainstream, maintained school and I have had awesome highs and crippling lows in both. I’m currently in a medium-sized LA maintained school in the South-West of England and I love it passionately. What I have […]
Yearly archives: 2018
18 posts
There have been a few threads this week that I’ve followed and contributed to relating to teacher’s well-being. One of the catalysts for the discussions on twitter was an article from the Daily Mail, in which a school is described as giving its staff a day off timetable to use […]
The Times Educational Supplement reported this week that primary school teachers are suffering significant levels of distress as a result of their jobs. This is at the same time that teachers are also viewed as one of the most trusted professions. There is a disjoint and it is something that […]
Are teachers respected in the UK? Would my mum be proud of me if I decided to become a teacher? Spoiler alert… my Mum would be proud of whatever I do, as long as I’m the best I can be. Barber- be the best; plumber- be the best; bank robber- […]
I am in a very privileged position, in that I genuinely love my job. I have flexibility because of the different things I do around my classroom-based time and I am eternally grateful for that. I realise that there are significant numbers of people who are not in that position. […]
This is quite a close-to-the-core kind of post, where things that tie into my professional and academic knowledge to my own experiences of learning and education meet. I grew up in Leamington Spa and went to a really blooming good comprehensive school in Warwick, where I was supported by great […]
I spend Tuesday morning each week volunteering in a lovely school near my house, where I work with young learners who find literacy tricky and who may need a bit of extra mentoring time. I’m really lucky that the school has so thoroughly embraced me and welcomed me into the […]
Despite it being Tuesday and currently not raining (although it is distinctly grim outside), today, I mainly have a face like a wet Monday morning. I have spent much of the weekend asleep and feeling horrible with nasty migraine, something I have had since I was a young one and […]
This week has been a funny old week, but in a lovely way. I’ve been running around like a airborne insect with a cobalt-posterior and that does tend to be how I navigate life. Mr Dr Ross has been away so that doglets and I have been making the most […]
This week, I have been emailing back and forth with a colleague I met at a conference recently. We are hoping to raise funding to fund a trip where we will work together to train teachers to support young learners with special needs. One of the questions I was asked […]
Usually I write on Wednesdays, as I’m not at in school. I didn’t manage it this Wednesday, as the day ended up being a little bit bonkers and I wound up running out of evening. I was slightly disappointed with myself for missing my own, self-appointed schedule. However, I am really […]
I mean REALLY see them for who and what they are? Today, I was going to write about how two thirds of secondary schools can’t find maths teachers after reading about it. Then I was going to link to another article where Professor Jo Boaler discusses primary teachers’ experiences of […]
My PhD focussed on supporting young people with dyslexia and explored how they understood themselves through their relationship with their dyslexia. On one hand, I found that young people could frame their dyslexia positively and that is didn’t need to impact their access to learning and pr ogress negatively. ON […]
One of the broad ideas I touched on in my PhD thesis (you can read it here, should you so wish!) was how individuals’ understanding of themselves internally affected how they interacted with others and ultimately, their identity in a social setting. In that context, I looked at young people’s dyslexia. […]
It’s taken me a while to work my brain through the 2018 GCSE results and their fall-out. In my last duty as Head of Learning Support, I duly attended school and, having cycled 8 miles to get there was met with some lovely families, incredibly happy students and some really […]
I’ve just come back from spending a week in Naples, somewhere that’s been on the bucket list for quite a while, and it was fantastic. I realised that I actually can speak reasonable Italian to make myself understood and also to mock my long-suffering and kind husband with hotel staff. […]
On 26th July, the Department for Education released its annual SEND statistics. The figures appear fairly unsurprising: pupils with SEN make up a slightly larger proportion of the January 2018 (14.6 %) cohort than was the case in January 2017 (14.4). While only a small proportional increase, the actual figure was 31,960. There has been […]
In the last two weeks, I have finished working at the school where I have been working for the last four years, been offered a place to undertake specialist dyslexia teacher training, presented some of my PhD work at an international conference in Wales and organised working with a local […]