A healthy work-life balance − is it an impossible dream? For many years I would have said yes and, for many in education, it can certainly feel that way. Contacting parents, pressures from the inspectorate, deadlines to meet for your…
Hopefully the days of giving a class homework that simply states ‘Revise for your test’ are long gone. Students need explicit instruction in study skills just as much as they need it for their subject knowledge and it is something…
Teacher life is a busy life. It can be, and often is, a stressful life. It’s a life where work very rarely stays confined to the school, but spills over into evenings, weekends, and holidays. Thankfully, many, many schools are…
There are many reasons to branch out into teaching different subjects: perhaps your school is introducing a new GCSE or A Level subject, perhaps you wish to increase your career opportunities, or maybe you are just looking for your next…
When we choose to go into secondary teaching, we don’t just choose a job, we choose a livelihood. A teacher’s day is far from the boundaries of four walls, a whiteboard and typically 45 minute lessons spent standing in front…
I must admit, my main motivation to sign up for becoming an examiner was financial as I needed some extra income to pay for my wedding dress. However I soon realised I would gain much more from the experience than…
Just over twenty-five years ago, in September 1996, I embarked on my teaching career. It was a different world. The Spice Girls had just released their first album, Tamagotchis were all the rage, and social media was still many years…
The biggest mistake I have made in the Year 11 to 12 transition is to assume that the children who left my classroom at the end of Year 11 would return as adults at the start of Year 12, mysteriously…
In 1991, Collins et al. published “Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible”, and since reading this it has immeasurably impacted my practice – no more so than in terms of teaching students the thinking processes that occur at this first stage of writing…
For many teachers, the start of a new academic year is akin to the New Year: filled with expectant energy and resolutions that we promise to keep, perhaps to discover that Holy Grail of a work-life balance. Yet, when term…