The Teachers' Podcast (Claire Riley)
Explorez tous les épisodes de The Teachers' Podcast
| Date | Titre | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Jan 2022 | Teaching Climate Change in Primary Schools: Andrew Lochery, founder of Green APLEductation Ltd | 00:23:31 | |
In this episode, I talk with Andrew Lochery about the effects of global warming and climate change and how we can teach this to younger pupils. Andrew and I are both very passionate about tackling climate change and it really shows in this episode. In this episode, Andrew shares: - How we can explain global warming to young children and ensure the use of the correct terminology. - The things we can do as individuals and things teachers can do to encourage pupils to make small changes. - Why he is so passionate about tackling climate change and teaching pupils about it. If you’d like to find out more about Andrew or the resources he discusses in the episode you can visit: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 30 Nov 2021 | Diversity in History: Rosa Legeno-Bell, founder of Diverse History UK | 00:25:33 | |
In this episode I chat to Rosa Legeno-Bell, founder of Diverse History UK. A passionate historian, Rosa has worked in the education sector for 10 years, mainly in inner-city London comprehensives, as a history teacher, head of history and an assistant head. In this episode, Rosa shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Rosa and Diverse History UK, you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 26 Jul 2019 | Liz Davison (Thornton Primary School): Headship in an Academy and the Effect of Budgets | 00:53:46 | |
In this episode, Claire chats with Elizabeth Davison, Headteacher at Thornton Primary School in Bradford, about her journey through education and teaching, and the challenges of leading a large primary school in a time of austerity and financial pressure. KEY TAKEAWAYS
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 01 Feb 2022 | The Importance of Teaching Empathy Ed Kirwan, creator of Empathy Week | 00:35:59 | |
In this episode I chat with Ed Kirwan, the founder of Empathy Week. Empathy is such an important skill, but it is one even adults can struggle with, Ed shares how Empathy Week can help pupils develop empathy through learning about the experiences of others. In this episode, Ed shares: - What Empathy Week can look like in schools. - Why it is so important the children develop their ability to empathise with others. - Why he is passionate about ensuring children leave school with empathy as a skill. If you’d like to find out more about Empathy Week and how your school can get involved, you can go to: - https://www.instagram.com/empathyweek/ - https://www.facebook.com/empathyweek - https://twitter.com/TheEmpathyWeek - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-kirwan/ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcow1dii3mo See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 26 Jan 2021 | Maintaining balance in schools: Rebecca Leek, Executive Headteacher | 00:26:26 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Rebecca Leek, an executive headteacher and director of strategy for ASSET Education Trust. Rebecca discusses how, as a result of the coronavirus restrictions along with local and national lockdowns, her school has adapted including the move to more remote teaching and learning practices. Rebecca also talks about the importance of maintaining balance within schools and amongst staff – particularly in light of how much more quickly things are changing within the world of education. Claire and Rebecca share some really useful tips and ideas as to how senior leaders, teachers and everyone involved in schools and education can work towards making the most of the situation we are currently in.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “If you can have that kind of empowering, unleashing way of doing things… honestly, it's endless what you can achieve.” “I think we've got to be cautious not to underestimate the effect that [the lockdown] has had on some people. It is really tough. But, if you can look for the opportunities, it will make it easier; and reach out if you are struggling.” “We always say, don't we, in leadership, if you don't look after yourself, you can't look after everyone else. That is it: look after yourself and then you can look after everyone else.” “We are more than the sum of our parts. I do really know that that's true. If we can get through this healthily and supportively, while innovating at the same time, our schools are going to be better at the end of it.” “We must keep reminding ourselves that we're doing many new things for the first time all the time; and some of us do thrive on that. But not everyone [does].” “We are innovating at breakneck speed and, if we don't stop and reflect about how much we're doing, and actually congratulate ourselves and celebrate what we are achieving, then things will get very tough and go wrong.” “If you can make a really simple set of rules - we just must do this and then it doesn't really matter after that - that helps with everyone's anxiety.” “We're enriching childhood. We're not just preparing them for adulthood. We are at a place where children spend a lot of their childhood, so it must be fantastic.” “It’s so complex. Teaching is so complex. You're never going to just hit one button and know it's done.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Twitter: https://twitter.com/RebeccaLeek_ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-leek-702a825b/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peachandpippin/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 04 Feb 2020 | BONUS: Aaron Stevens (Classroom Secrets): Life/Work balance as an NQT | 00:59:20 | |
In this episode, Claire speaks with Aaron Stevens, a former primary school teacher and now Product Manager at Classroom Secrets. Aaron begins by explaining how he studied Law at university but decided to pursue a career as a teacher through the Teach First route: an employment-based route for top-performing graduates. Graduates are placed in challenging schools: over half of the pupils come from the poorest 30% of families according to the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index. Aaron talks about the strategies he employed during his training and, once he was qualified, how he helped maintain a healthy LIFE/work balance. Similarly, he speaks about the support he received from Teach First whilst training. He notes how he developed a great bond with his mentor within his school and how that gave Aaron confidence to confide in him when necessary. In the podcast, Aaron gives advice for prospective teachers to ensure that they are fully equipped for the world of teaching. He notes that gaining experience is crucial: candidates need to see the whole picture and gather information to have the best mindset for teaching. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “That initial link with the school was priceless for me… I already knew my mentor was not only going to be a professional mentor, but he was going to be quite a personal one too. He turned out to be a very good friend of mine.” “There’s always more things to do than there’s time to do them.” “Two thirds of teachers feel constantly or often overworked. A third of those surveyed, said that they would work over 51 hours every week.” “It’s quite frankly criminal, the amount of people leaving due to workload.” “You must invest time to get time back.” “Get experience: go out there and see what being a teacher is all about. Work experience to build a mindset is crucial.” “There is something inherently wrong with the system and change needs to happen.” “An exhausted teacher is an ineffective teacher. I didn’t want to do them a disservice.” “It’s not about working harder to get it done; it’s about working smarter and coming up with strategies for you to get it done more efficiently.” “Could I wave my magic wand and give every teacher a magic wand? Now we’ve all got wands, we can educate children through our wands and through magic!” VALUABLE RESOURCES Teach First website: http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 12 Mar 2020 | Andrew Midgley (Interim headteacher at Carlinghow Primary School): Improving schools | 01:20:42 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Andrew Midgley, headteacher at Raynville Primary School and interim headteacher at Carlinghow Primary School. Andrew talks about how, initially, he had no interest in a teaching career after seeing how much work his parents, who were both teachers, had to do as he was growing up. However, this changed after he began helping his girlfriend’s son who was falling behind at school. This motivated Andrew to pursue a PGCE at Bradford University after which he ‘never looked back’. Andrew reflects on how difficult a start he had with his first teaching appointment: a year 6 class with 35 pupils, no teaching support assistant and whose previous class teacher was off ill for a long period of time. On top of this, Ofsted visited to inspect the school and judge it as inadequate in Andrew’s first week. However, from that turbulent beginning, Andrew talks about his journey moving from a class teacher role to deputy headship to being seconded to one of the most challenging and worst-performing schools in Calderdale. Here, he turned around the school achieving good with outstanding features and even receiving an award from the Department for Education recognising the school as one of the top 50 schools in the country for sustained improvement. From there, Andrew worked in a multi-academy trust followed by supporting leaders and working as a consultant, but eventually moved back to Leeds as a headteacher. With Claire, Andrew discusses the challenges he has faced in his varied leadership roles and shares his experiences of helping to turn around schools in difficult circumstances. Within these discussions, he talks about the different strategies he has implemented and shares his thoughts on what has been successful.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “All new heads need some kind of stabilisers – like you do when you’re riding a bike – and that was vital to me because I was thirty-two and thrown into the most challenging school in the authority.” “One of the biggest helps was learning from some fantastic headteachers that I’ve worked for. I like to see myself as an amalgamation of a few different headteachers: the good points that I’ve picked up and put together.” “If I wouldn’t put my daughter in that room or with that teacher then I need to do something about it. First and foremost, what can I do to support the teacher to help the teacher to improve things?” “It’s about ‘eating the frog’. Which is, if you had to eat a frog every day for the rest of your life to survive, when would you eat it? Well the answer is first thing in the morning because otherwise it just grows and gets smellier and sweatier. You get on with it. These difficult jobs, you have to do them, just do them.” “The workload is always going to be of a particular level in a school, but it’s about making sure it’s appropriately manageable. Not having a meeting because on Thursday you always have a meeting. If there’s nothing to meet for that Thursday, do not have a meeting, because time is one of the most valuable commodities in a school.” “Sorting out that respect, attitude and behaviour is a key thing. I started as the interim head the week before we broke up for Christmas. I was kicked, punched, spat at, all sorts of things. Not because the children were like that, but because the children had been allowed to behave like that for a period of time.” “By valuing people, by acknowledging things, and by saying ‘I believe in you, what can you do for me, what can I do to help you?’ and letting them know that, hopefully helps the morale of the people there.” “I don’t want teachers spending hours marking, I want teachers being ace teachers. It’s that simple.” “Technology is great, but a lot of kids, even in my community, have got iPads, tablets, iPhones and whatever. I think real life experiences and people who can talk, getting these authors, getting these charities, getting these people into school … would give them so many wonderful experiences.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST Claire Riley Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 14 Sep 2019 | John Murray (Reading Expert and Educational Author): Reading for Comprehension and Emotional Dexterity | 01:27:13 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with John Murray, a British author for educational material and former teacher. John is a reading enthusiast and novelist. He discusses the work he has done to support schools with developing the love of reading within children. John explains the importance of reading and the pedagogy of reading for children. He describes the different techniques of how the love of reading can be promoted within children. He also explains the different opportunities children need in order to develop this. John and Claire discuss the importance of reading and why the love of reading should be developed within children. He talks about the significance of sharing the passion of reading with children. John and Claire also discuss the different strategies that can be employed to deliver this. Murray emphasises the importance of enriching children’s interest and immersing them in a variety of different texts. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “We went from rock bottom to soaring high.” “Those who communicate quicker, have a richer language and are surrounded and immersed in a rich language linguistical environment will make better progress.” “You might be able to read the but the joy you get through reading is very different.” “Everyone wants to share stories, even if they think they can’t read they will tell you stories.” “Stories are what bind us together as a community and unify us as a humanity.” “When a piece of text touches the heart as well as the head that’s when you get true understanding.” “Pass on your passion and you will never go wrong.” “It’s the memories they will take with them. You want them to remember you as a teacher that fostered love of learning and fostered those beautiful books.” “Stories that touch you and emote you, that make you passionate and show your passion - those are the conversations and engagement you want with children.” “It’s not what the text brings to you it’s also what you bring to the text. It’s that two-way connection that allows you to explore the text deeper.” “There’s no one way that’s the only way.” “Who dictates the pace? The children should.” “Vocabulary is not a skill; it is the glue that binds all your skills together.” “If a child can sing 8 nursery rhymes by the end of the age of 4, they will more or less guaranteed to be in the upper two reading capabilities by the time they are eight.” “The child is more important than curriculum.” “Curriculums come and go, governments come and go, the needs of a child don’t change.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 01 Apr 2020 | Steve Eastes and Russell Pearson (The Dynamic Deputies): Coronavirus and school closures | 01:15:25 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet to Deputy Headteachers Steve Eastes and Russell Pearson who, online on social media and with their own podcast, are known as the Dynamic Deputies. Steve and Russell talk about how, although now both deputy headteachers at different schools, they met at the same school in Kent and remained good friends after Russell moved to take up another post in Devon. Although they kept in contact, they felt that they had begun to lose some of the valuable professional dialogue they had both maintained while working together. Following this realisation, they started a Facebook group and developed an online community to promote educational discussion and collaborative working amongst teachers. Now, in their separate schools, both Steve and Russell are heavily involved with leading their staff and pupils through the current coronavirus situation. They share the approaches they have taken in their schools, how the virus outbreak has unfolded for them and how they and their staff are doing their best to work in challenging times while planning for an uncertain future. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I feel like that’s an enormous burden. You are being thrown into a position in leadership where you are having to make decisions about something you have never had training in and never had any practice in.” “I feel like I am learning every day about what I should and shouldn’t be doing.” “In terms of the staff, I’m really proud of everyone involved. I’ve really seen a coming togetherness.” “One of the decisions me made early on was that we weren’t going to get everyone into a big assembly and talk about it because that would just heighten anxiety and make it feel really big and really huge. We said have conversations in your own classes where it feels quite calm and it feels very normal. But, at the same time, we’re dealing with something that’s really not normal.” “I think we very much trusted that our staff knew the kids and knew how to tailor the message to them.” “One thing that’s really good is to be using your parents as a bit of sounding board and sending e-mails out just saying, ‘Look, can you give us a bit of feedback? What’s working, what isn’t?’” “We’ve asked an awful lot of parents to become teachers overnight.” “We’ve all got through the short term. And then it’s like we need some headspace to go, ‘Gosh, what do we want for the long-term?’” “We’ll be starting a year in September, potentially, where we have not finished the previous year.” “We’re like a cog in this giant machine right now. We need to be doing our bit for the children’s welfare.” “Children are resilient. They do adapt easily. Being safe at school and having that routine at school will be essential to making sure that we can go back to normality as quickly as possible.” “I think it’s a time more than ever to treat people with some decency and not expect crazy extras of them. Don’t ask for timesheets… Just trust people a bit because everyone’s trying their best and be aware of the emotional burden of all this.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Don’t shoot the deputies podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dont-shoot-the-deputies/id1449384975 The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 03 Nov 2020 | Lauren Barratt (Founder of Wellbeing Workshops): Happiness, health and wellbeing | 00:49:29 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Lauren Barratt: a teacher and wellbeing consultant. Lauren talks about how her own first-hand experience of going through the education system as a teenager led her to becoming a qualified teacher herself. By her own admission, Lauren was someone who struggled with her behaviour and concentration in many of her lessons and was regularly ‘kicked out’ of classes. However, she had realised that her passion lay in physical education and she would regularly help teach younger children after having to leave other lessons. This led Lauran to realise that she enjoyed teaching PE and, after leaving secondary education, she became a sports coach before undertaking a teaching degree. Lauren also shares how she came to become a wellbeing consultant. Within her role delivering health and wellbeing lessons as a teacher at her school, Lauren felt that the curriculum and content she was delivering was missing out some key elements. This led her to leave her full-time teaching role and become a consultant developing her own programmes and content. Lauren now works with schools and colleges, and alongside the charity NCS, to deliver bespoke wellbeing workshops in focusing on the impact of social media, growth mindset, physical wellbeing, sexuality and race studies, and happiness.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “It's about developing the kind of the critical thinking skills and the reflection on what [the children are] doing. We start to look at what procedures can they put in place when they realise social media is affecting them more? What procedures can they put in place when they realise that their mood is lowering? But the first step is to get them to be able to identify that.” “If you wonder why your five-year-old always wants to be on your phone, then that's because you are probably on your phone quite a lot around them and they want to model you. Sometimes it's easy entertainment to have that, but I think we just need to start educating and teaching at an earlier age.” “We all know the risks of a young child being on social media from a safeguarding perspective. As teachers and people in education, we know that. But how are we really getting that out there?” “Try to embed what you find out about happiness into your classroom and teach the children that you're teaching that happiness doesn't just happen. There's a reason that you don't wake up happy every morning. It's not an easy thing to be consistently happy. It takes hard work and it takes you embedding habits into your lifestyle.” “I think what teachers struggle with a lot is time affluence and that just refers to you having the perspective in yourself of how much time you actually have. When I was teaching, I found that teachers wished their life away a lot. They are constantly going, 'Oh, it's nearly the weekend. It's nearly half term. It's nearly the summer holidays.' Try to change your perspective so that you're not wishing your life away.” “If you're feeling something that is different or you don't want that feeling, then you need to think okay, why am I feeling this? And once you've identified that it is up to you to kind of put the strategies in there.” “If you want teachers who are constantly reflecting and adapting and changing you need teachers to have time to think because at the moment teachers are so overworked that there is absolutely no reflection time.” “Try to change your perspective on time as well because we feel that we have no time as teachers. And maybe you don't, but if you try to change your mindset around that, it might actually make you start to feel a little bit more positive about what you do have.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Wellbeing Workshops: https://wellbeing-workshops.com/ Lauren Barratt – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_adventure_diary/ Lauren Barratt – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenbarrattadventurediary/ Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hit the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 30 Jan 2020 | Mel Standbrook (Chair of Governors): Importance of Children's Wellbeing | 00:47:23 | |
In this episode, Claire talks to Mel Standbrook a Chair of Governors at a primary school in Lincolnshire. Due to the locality of the school, Mel informs Claire that the school was categorized as a category 5 school by the DfE because of the deprivation levels. The staff at the school quickly acknowledged the need to educate themselves, in order to support pupils with their mental well-being. After asking various people, researching and seeking advice they started developing interventions to support children at the school. After enrolling children on to the workshops, they quickly noticed the positive impact it had on children’s mental well-being. Furthermore, the staff noticed that when children were signposted to them from outside agencies, they did not progress as much as their in-house children did. As a Chair of Governors, Mel speaks about the techniques used within her school to support children with mental health and well-being. She talks in great detail, about the various different workshops implemented and practiced at her school. With the growing success of the different strategies, the staff at the school decided to continue raising awareness of and supporting children subject to mental health with new training and techniques. In addition to seeing a positive impact on the children, the SLT and governors quickly noticed the staggering impact it had on the staff’s well-being. Teachers and non-teaching staff were also engaging in the mental health techniques and this positively changed the culture within the school. In the podcast, Mel describes the importance of raising awareness about mental health, mental well-being and emotions amongst young children. She divulges in the various techniques used to deliver this, in addition to commenting on how it has affected children and staff within her school. Mel explains how and when the activities are conducted within the school, as well as describing the support available for parents and teachers at the school. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Our pupils were struggling with their own mental health but actually because of our lack of understanding at the time, it was how we can make that better or what it was. We needed to realise what that was and dig deep into it.” “After lots of research and actually asking for help from lots of different people, companies and just saying what is, how can we move forward with it. We initially came up with a few things that maybe some of our pupils are struggling with anxiety. We had children that had been referred on from us to different agencies but actually had got nowhere.” “How can we help them, so we didn’t have to signpost them out. How can we help them in house before signposting them to different agencies because actually what we found is when we signposted [them] into different agencies they came back lost that they haven’t got any further. Then the blame was back on to us. We reached out to different companies and they said actually we can see that you might have issues with these various types of mental health.” “Enabling children to be well.” “That child who’s been to counselling is now discussing with other children what their problems were or what they were struggling with. We are very high on pupil voice, so pupil voice is a real strength, so actually our pupils were going to other pupils and saying this is what I’m doing and the other pupils are saying ‘I don’t what it is’ or ‘I feel that as well.’” “Let’s be open and honest with everybody. Before we’d got there, we’d gone to the parents as well. We approached the parents and said this is what we’re going to do, this is the pathway we are going down. We want to open up that language about mental health. We wanted to have those open conversations at home and at school. We did that open-door policy and said to the parents just come and speak to us. If there’s anything you think that is happening come and talk to us. With specialists and people in school, we were dripping that in. It worked out to that normalising emotional language.” “We have classroom activities every week all about mental health. Yoga, mindfulness it’s embedding that language. We have assemblies every single week where we talk about different emotions.” “We started doing (subconsciously), assemblies where you learn about a different emotion every week, using props. Some week they would learn about anger, joy. Different emotions that wouldn’t normally come out in the lessons. All of a sudden, visitors were coming in and saying, ‘oh how do you feel today?’ and a child was saying or in their writing they were saying, ‘I was so excited, or I was joyous.’ Visitors were saying what was that language from a Year 1 pupil.” “Once we normalise that emotional language, we found that everything else has come along so easily. [At] all our workshops, children will speak about different types of mental health.” “The visitor challenged us and said ‘you’re a primary school; Key Stage 1 and 2 and you are learning about grief and loss, is that not quite sad? Is that quite depressing? Do you think that causes problems?’ We said, ‘no because what it does is it provides understanding.’ It was about teaching those children that actually grief and loss isn’t just when somebody dies. It could be when you lose something, it could be the loss of a relationship, it could the breakdown of a home life and it was about discussing that. When the visitor went in, one of our students shared who they were living with and they were sad about living with different people that they had been living with. They had that open and honest conversation with a visitor. “It’s knowing what those feelings are.” “It’s about rebuilding another relationship and understanding what’s happened. Instead of feeling an overwhelming sadness, which then can affect their school life, home life, friends, it’s about giving them knowledge to say, ‘actually I’m sad because this has happened and I need to talk to somebody about it.’ Rather than making the worry really, really big.” “The language just changed around school.” “Parents were coming into us or actually going to our social media and saying, ‘I know I have mental health issues’ or ‘I know I have issues with this because my child has come home and taught me about it or told me about what they’ve been learning.’” “It changed our whole ethos. It changed our whole culture in school.” “We have found that disclosures have gone up because people are coming to us and sharing what their worries are. We have a staff that is designated to pastoral welfare… it’s made our knowledge better.” “[What] we’re able to do is get in at a lower level, so as soon as we recognise it because we’ve got those recognising symptoms, skills and strategies in place we’re immediately being highlighted and this is what we need to do.” “The challenge I always get back is ‘what’s it doing for behaviour? What’s it doing for academic results?’ Since putting in mental health learning and emotional well-being learning, our behaviour data has gone down. We’re getting less incidents of what we categorically call bad behaviour in school.” “That’s not bad behaviour, that’s because that child is managing those emotions.” “The language has to change as you go up to Year 6, it’s different for little ones and the older ones.” “It’s about drip feeding it. Do something every week. You don’t have to learn a whole plethora of emotions in the first week you do it; it’s learning one and knowing what it is.” “Children might not be able to understand emotion, so you could always say how does that feel if it was a colour?” “It’s about knowing how that feels in your tummy. That’s something we really push through with the primary school children. How does that feel in your tummy? How does it make you feel?” “People get so disjointed and busy throughout the day… have you connected with somebody? Have you had a chance to sit down and eat your dinner? Have you had the time to breathe?” “Kindness… it’s embedded in the walls. We have benches where children can sit if they are feeling lonely and another children will never leave a child on that bench. They will always go in and say, ‘do you need a friend?’ ‘do you want to do something?’” “We’ve given the power to the children [through pupil voice]. They then feel that they are respected, they are wanted and their voice is heard.” “It’s that sharing culture.” “If somebody is sad in the class, the other students pick up on it immediately.” “If the child has put their peg on anger or angry, but then doesn’t facilitate those conversations, ask for help or find themselves off, we would say to the family welfare office, this child has come in today and put on the circle, they don’t want to talk about it, do you want to have a chat with them? We would put those interventions in. What we are finding is the children come and talk to you before we get to that point where you’ve got to do something about it. That definitely wouldn’t have happened four years ago.” “We find that they move them [the pegs] throughout the day.” “By putting that peg on something, it will encourage that conversation.” “What we found is they [the parents] weren’t coming to us in secret. They were putting on Facebook ‘my child has come home and expressed or shown me this. I think I’ve got these issues, or I think I’m going to go to the doctor and see if I can get help with this.’ It was out loud on Facebook. They say that mental health language and mental health is so hidden and we need to get it out there. We were finding [that] it was because of social media [that it] was so engaging and everybody was going to social media - people were referring in their children.” “They were saying on Facebook ‘because of what’s happened at school I’ve now gone to the doctors and I’ve got this sorted or I’ve got this sorted for my child. Our home life is so much better because of what they’ve been taught.’” “It’s about our own mental health as well. It’s about myself and the headteacher being able to protect ourselves so it’s very much those boundaries. We have to be careful of those boundaries. Answering messages at different times of the night, sometimes you have to think ‘not today.’ The parents do genuinely think we will approach them and we’ll contact them. Sometimes I will say, ‘pop to the office in the morning.’” “We don’t shy away from anything. We do answer everything and we just go for it really. Open-door policy is totally our thing. We do say, ‘just come in and chat to us if you’re worried.’” “I’m really happy about the upcoming RSE curriculum and how it’s asking people to step outside and learn what those emotions are.” “Around school we have tips and tricks. Every time they do a workshop every term, they might learn about sleep in term one so they will learn all about [the] tips and techniques of sleep. They will put that on a listening tree which is in the front foyer. You can, if you are struggling with sleep in a couple of months, you can go back to [the] listening tree and say ‘what did we learn in that workshop?’” VALUABLE RESOURCES Supportive minds: https://supportingminds.com/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 11 May 2021 | Safeguarding: Rezina Kelly, education consultant | 00:29:59 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Rezina Kelly: former primary school teacher, safeguarding adviser and now education consultant. Rezina discusses the importance of safeguarding and how, in her varied roles over the years, safeguarding has been at the core of all of them. From being an educational trainer to a member of the youth offending team in a prison, Rezina believes that building trust and developing positive relationships is crucial to safeguarding children and young people.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “You are sometimes the person who sees that child more than anybody else so you are more likely to be able to spot those little indicators that something is not okay.” “The last year has taught us more than ever that we need to be curious. We need to be interested in what’s going on for children and that’s how we will start to get a grasp of who they are, where they are and what’s going on for them.” “Every interaction is an intervention.” “Especially in the world of education, and the job that we do in schools, we have such a responsibility. It’s actually just common sense to say, ‘I need to be in a good place because then I can help these children be in a good place too.’” “It’s taking that time to go ‘School is a safe place. It’s the place where, actually, we’re here to make sure you learn and you’re educated but also we give you an opportunity to be happy, to be safe and feel like you can be you and that somebody’s got your back’, I think that’s a really important aspect of safeguarding.” “I think we forget sometimes that even the quietest children, or the children who present with the most challenging behaviours, they’re the ones we need to champion the most.” “If you’re an adult who isn’t emotionally regulated because you’re exhausted or you’re overwhelmed, or you’re tired and you just haven’t done that stuff that makes you feel okay, you aren’t in a position to have a positive relationship with that child who is struggling either.” “That ‘meet and greet’ - that really simple step - for those children who find school a place of anxiety, it’s reassuring them that I’ve been noticed. Somebody knows I’m here. Somebody would notice if I wasn’t here.” “Some children will be really looking forward to holidays and some children approach them with nothing but dread because school is their safe place where they feel most comfortable. They don’t want to be at home 24/7. Holidays are a really key point for safeguarding to just have an eye on your children.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Rezina Kelly Consulting: https://www.rezinakellyconsulting.co.uk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RezinaKellyConsulting/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/RezinaKelly LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rezina-kelly-7ab1a1139/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 26 Oct 2019 | Anna Lucas (Anna Lucas Training Ltd): Continuous Provision in Year 1 | 00:57:47 | |
In this episode, Claire interviews Anna Lucas at the Lead, Learn, Lancs conference. Anna is an Early Years specialist who is committed to supporting practitioners and improving outcomes for young children. She has also worked extensively as a phonics consultant with managers in local authorities, schools and settings to embed good practice. Alongside this, she is also a children’s author following the publication of her first book ‘Sir Undercracker’. Anna talks passionately about the value of continuous provision when it is utilised to its full potential. She firmly believes that teachers need to immerse themselves in the learning opportunities alongside their children to support children in making important learning connections. She shares practical tips for the classroom and encourages teachers to trial a new approach in the expectation that they will quickly notice the rapid improvement in the quality of teaching and learning. KEY TAKEAWAYS
“Play needs to be at the heart of children’s learning.” “We need to give children permission to play… Play is super food for children’s brains.” “The optimum conditions for learning are where adults play with the children.” “Albert Einstein says it, not Anna Lucas, ‘Play is the highest form of research.’” “We shouldn’t stop play just because we close the door at the age of 5.” “If you’re bored as a teacher then the children are going to be bored as well.”
Lucas Training and Consultancy: http://www.ltcl.co.uk/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 05 Apr 2022 | How to say ‘no’ without the guilt: Annabel Jeffcoate, coach and founder of Balance for Teachers | 00:38:03 | |
In this episode I am joined by Annabel Jeffcoate, the founder of Balance for Teachers. Balance for Teacher aims to reduce the amount of stress related illness in the education sector and one of their strategies for doing so is empowering their clients to say ‘no’. In this episode, Annabel shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Annabel and Balance for Teachers you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 02 Mar 2021 | The halcyon dream of teaching: Sam Strickland, author and headteacher at The Duston School | 00:31:32 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Sam Strickland: author and headteacher at The Duston School in Northamptonshire. Sam and Claire discuss some of the key themes from Sam’s book ‘Education Exposed 2: In pursuit of the halcyon dream’ in particular what the halcyon dream of teaching is and some of the practical approaches that leaders can take to work towards achieving this. Sam shares his thoughts on a range of strategies schools might use to help improve and grow including using coaching alongside performance management to hone in on just one element for professional development, eliminating distractions such as unnecessary e-mails, and more effective use of directed time and staff meetings to reduce workload. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “The halcyon dream is that: it's that ability to teach children without a lot of the nonsense and the white noise that gets in the way of it.” “It's giving staff the time to do the actual job rather than all the other stuff that we think is important but, actually, is a detraction from what we're trying to achieve with children.” “Ultimately, the person that makes the biggest difference, or the people that make the biggest difference, are the people in the classroom with the children: the teachers and the TAs. Everything else is kind of superfluous in many regards.” “Sir John Jones describes [teaching] as the 'magic-weaving business' and I completely agree with that. This is where the magic happens: in the classrooms.” “To my mind, the thing that's going to make the biggest difference to pupil outcomes, to pupil experiences, to pupil enjoyment is that interaction with the teacher in the room which is undisturbed by anything else.” “I guess it's the accumulation of marginal gains in a business sense that if every single teacher is improving one element of their practice, but doing it properly and doing it with real intent rather than giving it lip service because we've given it 30 seconds to think about, then institutionally that actually makes a huge difference.” “Our improvement plan, even in this COVID universe, was 'doing the same, but even better'. And that was the thing for the year.” “I guess it's putting your money where your mouth is. Is something a priority, or is it not? If something is, you've got to give time and, indeed, money to making it a priority. And if you don't, then it's not a priority.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Twitter: https://twitter.com/Strickomaster Education exposed 2: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1913622169 School website: https://www.thedustonschool.org/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 15 Dec 2019 | Alfresco Learning (Outdoor Learning Consultants): The Power of Outdoor Learning | 00:45:37 | |
This episode is a first for The Teachers’ Podcast, as Claire is interviewing not one, but two guests: Jenny Wood and Hollie Hindle from Alfresco Learning, a company focused on helping teachers to find ways in which to use their outdoor environments to deliver lessons across the curriculum. Having both been teachers themselves, Jenny and Hollie give useful advice for teachers still in the classroom. Jenny and Hollie had quite differing views on their futures before teaching at the same primary school: Hollie always wanted to be a teacher and even used to teach her teddies, whereas Jenny wanted to be a zookeeper, or at least something to do with animals! Holly did her degree in Primary Education, going straight into teaching from there, whereas Jenny completed a Chemistry degree, and was inspired to go into schools by another student on her course. Jenny found that she loved the environment of being in primary schools and so finished her degree, became a TA and then completed a PGCE. While Hollie was taking a break from teaching, she worked as a learning mentor at Jenny’s 3-form entry school. After her break, she took up a role teaching at the school and worked closely with Jenny in leadership roles in Key Stage 1. They soon discovered they were very similar in their teaching styles and beliefs, and after building up their own repertoire of outdoor lessons, they decided to take the leap and start their own business. In the podcast, Jenny and Hollie discuss what teachers can do to introduce more outdoor lessons into their planning and how they can find the confidence to overcome worries about behaviour and having to justify why they are going outside. They offer examples of lessons that can be done outside and ideas of how to embed outdoor learning into your school’s curriculum. KEY TAKEAWAYS
VALUABLE RESOURCES Alfresco Learning: The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 03 May 2022 | Mental Health and Children’s Activities: Jane James, founder of Little Voices | 00:19:20 | |
This week I chat with Jane James, the founder of Little Voices, about mental health, children’s activities and performing arts. In this episode, Jane shares:
If you’d like to learn more about Jane and Little Voices, you can visit: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 09 Feb 2021 | Yoga for kids: Helen Clare, founder of Class Yoga | 00:20:51 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Helen Clare, founder of ‘Class Yoga’, about the benefits of yoga and mindfulness for staff and pupils in schools. Previously a primary school teacher, Helen now teaches yoga and mindfulness to adults and children and talks with Claire about the advantages of bringing in yoga and its related techniques into schools: including how it can improve wellbeing and mindfulness. With over 10 years’ experience, both internationally and in and out of schools, Helen has some great advice on how yoga can be established as a regular tool to help children with their behaviour and health, and also shares some tips for how other aspects can be used throughout the day to help improve focus.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “By offering appropriate yoga and mindfulness tools to children, we’re really giving them a toolkit to draw upon that they can use throughout their lives to help regulate emotion; help calm themselves down; to feel more confident and more resilient.” “If we can find tools to help us become more mindful, it means that we are staying more in the present moment. It means that our thoughts aren’t constantly whirling around in our head. So the end result, the end feeling, is one of calm, peace, ease, lack of stress, lack of worry.” “There’s a lot of yoga out there. There’s a lot of kids yoga out there and I don’t think they all take quite the same approach as I do. I’m a primary school teacher by background. This method that I’ve come up with is drawn from that experience and it’s quite an authentic approach to yoga, but in a very engaging way that is fun for children, but that maximises the benefits of yoga.” “My top recommendation, for teachers, would be to start your day with a few calm, deep breaths. Yoga is just as much about breathing properly as it is about moving properly.” “Essentially, yoga is one method of reaching wellbeing. It’s the holistic approach to finding improved physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. We could also call it ‘moving mindfulness’ and it’s such a great practice for children. It can actually be a more effective way of finding a mindful state than just seated mindfulness practices.” “As we know, teachers quite commonly lose their voice and get sore throats. One of the reasons for that is breathing through the mouth which makes the throat very dry. It can take a bit of practice, and time, to start consciously breathing in and out through your nose only, so that would be something else to practise.” “I would say the majority of children enjoy it the first time because it’s usually new. It’s usually different. If it’s taught well, then it’s engaging and they feel the benefits early on. It’s a very inclusive practice. It can be very fun; very enjoyable.” “On my trainings, I teach you how to teach to the children. I teach how to respond to what the children need in terms of energy levels. Whether we need to make it more engaging, energising, or more focusing or calming it down and finding a more relaxed class to help bring more of them in. There’s almost always a way to engage all children.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Websites: https://helenclareyoga.com and https://classyoga.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/classyogakids Twitter: https://twitter.com/class_yoga Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/classyoga/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-clare-b8904a53/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 09 Jan 2020 | Simon Smith (Headteacher at East Whitby Academy): School Leadership and the Curriculum | 00:48:16 | |
In this episode, Claire talks to Simon Smith, headteacher of East Whitby Academy, at the Reading Rocks North Conference, where he was delivering a workshop about how teachers can encourage children to read. In Simon’s school, the staff stay. The culture is open and honest, and feedback is given in a constructive and supportive way. As with many of our podcast guests, Simon never wanted to go into teaching. He had numerous other career paths in mind, including becoming a vet, farmer and rockstar, but after completing a degree in psychology over 30 years ago, he had a couple of years where he didn’t know what he wanted to do; he is a self-confessed ‘if you don’t know what you want to do, teach’ person so he applied for a PGCE at Leicester University (linked with education psychology). During this time, he lost interest in psychology but gained interest in teaching. After qualifying with a PGCE, his wife got a job in Stockton, so Simon applied for a job in Middlesbrough. It was a baptism of fire – literally! – as his school was firebombed in the second week he was there as part of the Grove Hill riots. He worked there for 5 years before being seconded to a school in special measures, which he calls the ‘best decision’ he ever made. In the podcast, Simon discusses how his experiences have shaped how he is as a headteacher and have influenced what he does in school to ensure the best results for the children, while still promoting a positive LIFE/work balance. He talks about the work he has done with the curriculum and how he has tackled some of the challenges that are presented when working in a smaller school. It’s refreshing to hear him speak about the importance of experiences within the curriculum and how children can best be given them during their time at primary school. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “So I went to this school in special measures and it was the best decision I could ever have made. It had a brilliant head, who built a brilliant team and it was the best group of people I’ve ever worked with. The staffroom was amazing: it was that real team, that real camaraderie – and quite a lot of swearing, often! – but really supporting each other and the school went from Special Measures to Outstanding in 8 years, which was amazing… we were the 5th most-improved school in the country.” “It was a really good eight years. At that point, when we got the outstanding, I thought, ‘Now’s the time to leave. I need to go to another school,’ and I got a job in another school and it was the worst decision I could possibly have made. I was there for 2 years, and at the end of the 2 years, I had to leave. It was soul-destroying.” “I did my training, my NPQH… and then went on, started applying for headships. I applied for 4 or 5 and got nowhere really, then I applied for a school in Whitby. It’s that moment when I walked in the school and it felt like the right place. It was the scruffiest school I’d ever walked into, but there was something that actually really appealed to me… about the job that was needed and the job that I could offer, and [there was] something brilliant about the kids in that school… I applied for that job and I got it, and I’ve been there ever since. I became a headteacher just about 6 years ago and the school at that point was 2x RI, was sat in RI, and we had HMI visits… to take a headship that’s in that position was quite daunting.” “Behaviour wasn’t great in school; teaching wasn’t great but actually the teachers were great. They were really good teachers but actually there were a number of systems that needed to be put in place so the teachers could teach.” “I’ve got staff still there, who have been working at the school 28, 29 years. I’m quite proud that my teachers there have been there a significant while. You talk about recruitment and retention… I have that problem with getting rid of people, because they just want to stay and that’s a real positive.” “We joined an academy trust as well, but did that on our own terms because we were a good school. We joined a trust called the Enquire Learning Trust which have been absolutely brilliant. They support and they challenge but equally they allow us to get the things right for our school.” “Our trust is great in that it doesn’t impose but it does question.” “I think behaviours are key. I think the other bit is about trust. I think, having being in a school where I was completely micro-managed and a headteacher that didn’t trust anything that you did, and then being in a school that trusts you, and would pull you on it if you got it wrong but actually gave you that chance, gave you that rope to have a go and to try stuff and to do stuff, I know which kind of school is best for teachers’ wellbeing and that’s one where teachers feel trusted and teachers are able to be reflective about their practice and talk openly about their practice without it feeling like they’re being judged.” “In the school, the headteacher had only ever come from internally… Nothing new came in and I was the first person to come from outside and there was a lot of scepticism… We’re in a position now where there’s trust, and we have really good conversations about learning and there’s an openness about developing practice, and that’s the kind of culture that I want to develop.” “We’ve spent the last 3-4 years looking at our curriculum… We’ve been having those conversations around curriculum and what we want curriculum to be for the last four years. We’ve never been a school that has ‘stripped back’ curriculum: it’s firmly our belief that curriculum needs to be broad, and the reason for that is [that] you just have to look at the SATs reading papers and actually children who do well in those are the children with a broad knowledge base.” “In the school, when I came, 30% of children hadn’t been to the beach, in Whitby… our school is less than a mile from the beach.” “In school, we believe reading’s the core of our curriculum but actually we need to place experience there and the other bit we needed to do was to create a quality around the work.” “We have something called ‘pledges’ which are a set of experiences which children will have throughout their time at school, so if they’re with us for six years, they will go down [to] the beach; they will go into a forest; they will build sandcastles; they will visit a city; they will perform on a stage – all those kind of things which are really important.” “Reading and understanding: it stems from that broad range of experiences.” “The thing that probably has the most impact for us is around creating a curriculum that’s about producing quality… if you want a quality end product, you’ve got to teach them the skills to make a quality end-product.” “There’s lots of work around talk in school… Talk’s a really important bedrock of children’s understanding.” “I walk in a classroom and children are desperate to show me their work; they’re desperate to show me what they’re doing, and that’s a big change from 3-4 years ago.” “Parents come in and are looking at the quality of what the children are doing now, and I think they’re shocked really.” “It’s not my school. It’s their school, and my job, while I’m there, is to make that school better… That’s how I see my job really: it’s not mine, it’s the community’s school.” “[The 2016 Reading SATs paper] was much more about knowledge, and language and vocabulary, than it was potentially about reading, therefore those with a broader curriculum and broader experiences did better.” “I do think the [new OFSTED] framework has been written around secondaries and the subject leader bit around the deep dive seems to fit much more to a secondary model than it does a primary model.” “We’ve created a curriculum team of 3… We free them up to go and monitor and we’ve got a rolling cycle around those 3 leading on curriculum. We’ve got an English lead, a maths lead and a curriculum team, and the others just get on with their jobs.” “Last year, I taught 74 days… for a range of reasons but partly because I’m still a teacher. I do love getting in the classroom and I’m passionate about that.” “One thing I’m massively passionate about is [that] I think all teachers should read to their class every day and there’s a couple of things around that. I think firstly it’s just brilliant. If I think back to my time at school, they’re memories and we’re creating – particularly in primary – a shared culture and a shared experience.” “Marking doesn’t really happen in our books… that in-class feedback is really key.” “We’ve used a range of intervention models, but the best way of doing intervention and support is that we’ve developed a pre- and post-teach kind of model for intervention… That’s had a significant impact around children being able to work within the lesson.” “Working walls have really impacted on workload for us, really reduced the workload around displays in classrooms.” “I think we’ve got to treat staff as human… If their kid’s in a show, they’ve got one chance to see it… We’ve got to have a school that values them and their families and their lives as well as the job, because at the end of the day, it’s a job.” “If staff go on a residential, we give them days in lieu.” “That’s the key to wellbeing in schools… you’ve got emotionally intelligent leaders that are supporting their staff at the right points because we can’t all be 100% on it all the time, for a whole host of reasons… If you don’t value them, then they won’t value you.”
Simon Smith:
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 01 Sep 2019 | Heather Wright (Reading Rocks): How to make reading in your school ROCK! | 01:00:24 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Heather Wright, a former teacher and founder of Reading Rocks, a project designed to develop the love of reading in children. Heather talks about her teaching career and the opportunities she’s had, with the support of her school, to promote the love of reading. She explains the different strategies she has established within her school to assist parents and children develop this. Heather shares some advice on how teachers, schools and parents can develop the love of reading as well as explaining the importance of reading. She outlines the CPD training Reading Rocks offers and explains how reading should be approached in schools and in the classroom. Heather and Claire explore the importance of reading and why it is the foundation for every child’s educational journey. They discuss some of the challenges schools and teachers may face with developing the love of reading as well as advice on how to overcome these. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “If you cut them, they are like a stick of rock and the district runs right through them.” “It was the best year of my teaching career. I think it always will be.” “The overarching aim of the project was to drench the children in all things reading.” “We had about 400 people in the field.” “Don’t treat them as two separate groups.” “If we polarise them, by saying those books are for the boys and those books are for the girls we are doing them a disservice.” “You need to relate back to your own experience of reading.” “Reading is the key to everything in the curriculum.” “If children cannot read then they can’t access Science, Geography or other areas of the curriculum.” “You have to know your books, but you also have to know your children.” “They experience that endorphin; they experience that lovely bit of reading.” “Learning is not linear.” “It will click at different times with different children when they can access longer books.” “Reading is the film inside your head that’s why it is better than telly.” “There’s a special relationship between you and the author. Your version of that book is different to somebody else’s version of that.” “There is nothing wrong with over reading and using picture books.” “The sooner you can allow children to be choosing their own content the better quality reading you will get.” “Wherever it is, make it sacrosanct.” “We need to talk to them about what it feels like when a book is right for you.” “The list never ends. It is absolutely okay to drop one of those spinning plates.” “Prioritise your health and wellbeing.” “I would like to see the fear go.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 10 Jun 2020 | David Sherriff (Headteacher at Lowton St. Mary's CE Primary): First week of opening for EYFS, year 1 and year 6 | 01:09:49 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with David Sherriff, headteacher at Lawton St. Mary’s CE Primary School in Warrington. David talks about his journey in education and teaching including how, from a young age, he always knew that he wanted to be a teacher. Starting in year 4, David soon moved to teaching year 6 and, as well as leading maths in his school, was also given responsibility for leading all of Key Stage 2. After ten years, David decided to move to a different school where he became deputy headteacher and is now headteacher of his own school. As we are, at the time of recording, seeing schools begin to open to more pupils following the coronavirus restrictions, David discusses what his school is doing to minimise the risks while trying to make sure that children and staff are as safe as possible. He shares his thoughts on the importance of teamwork, communication and how vital it is that everyone at all levels support each other. He also talks about personalising learning for the children and the challenges of organising provision for both the children who are in school and those who are still at home. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I think the key to it all has been communication and that sort of two-way conversation. We've always prided ourselves on being an open-door policy listening school, so we use our various means of communication to make sure that the parents have got the answers that they need.” “I was self-isolating at the start… I wanted to do my bit to help with the smooth closing of school but, this is just how great my staff are, they all pulled together and they all rallied round and yes, obviously, I was involved from a distance, but I just led a great team of individuals.” “I must thank the other local heads that I work very closely with for their support. I think it is really important to have those close links right at the outset.” “I owe a lot to the staff throughout this and they continue to be amazing.”“In some of our groups we've got a range of age groups so it can be difficult to pitch to reception right through up to a year five. So there have been challenges but we've met them head on.” “There's nothing better than going out of those gates first thing Monday morning or last week on a Friday night and wishing them well for the weekend or welcoming them back. I'll go out wind, rain or shine and I think the parents appreciate that. I'll always do that no matter how busy I am or what things I've got to get done. I think that's a crucial part of leadership that you are visible.” “I've really prioritised staff wellbeing and welfare over the last three or four months; more so than anything majorly strategic or operational.” “The parents have been really positive in terms of the information we've given them and the decisions that we have made. They've understood why they've been made and they've all been made, obviously, with the best interests in the safety of their children and the staff. That’s what it's always about.” “I think that it's the million-dollar question isn't it, really, on everybody's lips. What's it going to look like in September? Are we going back to normal? In an ideal world, that's what we're all hoping: that things go back to the way that they were and we're able to bring more children back in. But obviously, if that's not the case, then I suppose this last twelve weeks has been a rehearsal for what's to come.” “Parents are absolutely doing their best but, in an ideal world, you want everybody back in the classroom because nothing replaces the impact and the motivation and the inspiration that a teacher can have on a child's life. It's important. You only get one shot at education, so we want to make it the best we possibly can.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 08 Dec 2019 | Katie Morigi-Eades (PhD Researcher in School Leadership): What Good Leadership Looks Like | 00:34:57 | |
In this episode, Claire chats with Katie Morigi-Eades (a fellow parent at her daughter’s nursery) about her new role as a PhD education researcher, specialising in school leadership. They discuss what Katie has done so far and what others in the field believe good leadership in schools looks like. After management in the school changed and Katie came into some money, she decided it was the perfect time to pursue a Masters in Teaching and Learning but was advised that, due to her talent in that area, she should look into studying Leadership and Management instead. This is the route that Katie chose to follow and she has since taken up her new role as a PHD researcher, a role in which she admits she feels like a bit of an imposter after all her years in teaching! In the podcast, Katie discusses what effective leadership looks like in schools from first-hand experience and what research says about it. Claire and Katie also explore how the two correlate, and how they fit with OFSTED’s vision of what leadership should look like in schools. Katie also gives advice on things you can do to become a better leader at whatever level you are currently working. KEY TAKEAWAYS • Leadership is about knowing your people, your profession and yourself. • Anyone can be a leader. • Be a member of a union. • Sign up for associations. • Get on Twitter. • Put yourself out there to find out how to become a better leader. • You are not alone.
“I learned that leadership isn’t just about the person at the top of the school being in charge; I’ve learned that we’re all involved in it and if you want to be a successful leader, you have to understand your people. And that was the biggest thing I ever took away.” “If you look at academies and academy trusts, especially the multiple ones, the really, really big ones, they’ve got this strong leadership team in place. They have done it before. They know how it works. Compare it to a Local Authority school who have had the same headteacher for a long time: they bear a lot of the weight for that school because they feel alone and that’s a dangerous place to be, whereas MATs have got it; they know how to work it just like a business.” “I was a middle leader and I went on an NPQML and what does that teach me? Managing people. It doesn’t teach you how to lead people. You are expected to step up to the role and just go for it with nothing.” “I had to write a research proposal for my PHD… so I’m doing (the official term is) an explanatory, sequential, mixed-methods research… so it’s not active research; I’m not going to go in there and do it. My days of classroom practice have gone… so I will speak to teachers, ask them to do a questionnaire or a small survey – that’s my initial place to be – and then after that, I build on it with observations and talking to them and having conversations with real people in the workplace.” “[OFSTED] have essentially read the manual about… effective leadership… I’ve spoken to headteachers about it and they’ve said, “Yeah – on paper it looks brilliant: it’s exactly what matches to our values as leaders… We’ll have to wait and see won’t we. It’s still a bit of an experimental phase.” “There’s lots of research on school leadership. There’re big players in there like Kenneth Leithwood who’ve come up with 4 ways to do it and then there’re other people who’ve built on that… Professor Paul Miller, who’s my professor at university, and his colleague, Disraeli Hutton, have come up with 8 characteristics… The first one is to shape a vision of success for all. The other ones [are] to create a hospitable climate in the school; cultivate leadership in others; improve instruction in learning; managing people, data and processes and modelling expected behaviours… It’s all things that they have spoken to headteachers about or they’ve researched… and that’s what THEY feel effective leadership is. In schools, when I’ve researched it, without telling them what the characteristics are, they’ve said exactly those things, rather than OFSTED’s idea, which is interesting” “I strongly feel you have to know. As a leader you have to know what goes on. You have to have some level of expertise in there, because otherwise, you are leading blind.” “Every teacher should be a member of a union and if you are not, then you should be, even as leaders. I’m a member of the NAHT Edge which is a middle leader thing and they offer CPD that’s either free or discounted for teachers and for leaders. Go for it. Sign up for everything.” “Get on Twitter because people that I work alongside are big researchers in universities and they all have Twitter. They share their own work; they share other people’s work. That’s a quick way, quick and free way, to get access to something.” “[Leaders] have got a huge amount of things to do, especially with budget cuts and everything. They have to be more entrepreneurial… so work/life balance is tricky because when you go home as a leader, even though you might have done 12 hours in the day at school, you’re still going to be working, because you have to carry everybody else with you, and that’s very, very difficult.” “Ferrari, the racing team. They had a recent interview with their big team leader and he said, “I couldn’t do it without my staff – we’re all in this together.” And that speaks volumes, doesn’t it? If you’ve got somebody who’s Ferrari saying this, in school it should be the same.” “I’ve got friends who have wanted to be teachers all their lives and [one] left teaching (or her permanent job) to be a supply teacher and she said to me, “I don’t know what else I can do. I want to be a teacher. I’ve wanted to be a teacher for so long but where do I go?” “I’d sit on the M621 and I’d be in floods of tears because of everything that had happened that day. I’d have to process it somehow… and I’d do it again in the morning. I’d cry before I went to school. Do my day. Cry on the way home and it was a repeated pattern for so long.” “If I tell you anything, anything from being a teacher, it’s that I know exactly how you feel, and that’s the gap I want to bridge as a researcher… I’ve been you. I’ve done that job for 8 years. I’ve been in a high-pressured environment in a high-pressure school in a very challenging area where behaviour is a problem. I’ve seen it, I’ve done it, I’ve got the T-shirt. I wear my mental scars – I have them – and my job, the way I see myself, is that gap between what researchers say and what you are saying because I am that person in the middle. We hear you.” Katie Morigi-Eades: ABOUT THE HOST See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 22 Sep 2019 | Tom Palmer (Children's Author): Writing for children | 01:03:47 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with the popular children’s author Tom Palmer. Currently, Tom is the author of forty-nine published books, including three Puffin football children’s series (‘Football Academy’, ‘Foul Play’ and ‘The Squad’) and a wide range of books published by Barrington Stoke. Tom Palmer’s website: https://www.tompalmer.co.uk See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 25 May 2021 | Performing arts in the curriculum: Grace Francis, founder of DramEd | 00:21:21 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Grace Francis: Founder of DramEd, a company that delivers creative educational experiences in pre-schools and primary schools. With a background in acting on both stage and television, Grace has a passion for making performing arts accessible to all children. Having experienced her own challenges with childhood poverty and taking unfulfilling work as a young mother in between acting jobs, Grace says what drives her is helping all children access high quality performing arts experiences. Grace cites her month-long stint at a famous theatre school while she was 11 years old as being a key time that inspired her, developed her imagination, and nurtured her confidence. This is something she feels still motivates her to help all children, irrespective of their background and their experience the performing arts.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “We use drama - or role-play should I say - in everyday life to prepare ourselves for certain decisions, certain challenges, a new job or a new role. Role-playing that out in our day-to-day life, even as grown-ups, and building our confidence and the public speaking and everything that performing arts brings is just necessary for children.” “I feel what I do is not separating performing arts as a stand-alone topic. Even though it’s really good for that, it’s using the elements of what performing arts can do for children - the benefits of performing arts - bringing that into the classroom and integrating it into the curriculum where possible.” “Performing arts develops a range of skills in children: it encourages their development of creative problem-solving skills; it improves their language and social skills; it fosters their decision making, their risk taking and inventiveness; it boosts their critical thinking and increases confidence. It’s a subject that has a lot of benefits for a holistic approach to living life.” “Encourage the children to stand up and role-play. But that’s only going to work if you’re confident as a teacher to do that yourselves. So, stand up, take on a role and don’t be afraid of looking silly.” “It’s literally just testing out situations. ‘What would happen if I do this?’ and playing that out. ‘What happens if it goes this way?’ and playing that out. It’s just building on that with children. That’s what I feel we do with drama and I’m really passionate about enriching children from their earliest years.” “I don’t think that performing arts is necessarily in school just for those [disadvantaged] students, but I also feel like it should be in the curriculum somewhere for all children to be able to access, regardless of their background.” “It’s not all about drama. We’re thinking about music and dance as well. Ask the children what they enjoy. Find out what they are watching and what they’re listening to.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Website: https://dramed.co.uk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Drameduk Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/dramedUK Instagram: www.instagram.com/dramed_uk LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-francis-dramedltd/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 24 Nov 2019 | Jane Considine (Education Consultant): Getting Reading and Writing Right | 00:53:54 | |
In this episode, Claire had the chance to chat to the wonderfully effervescent and inspiring education consultant, Jane Considine, about the teaching of reading and writing in schools, while they were both at the Reading Rocks North conference. Jane grew up in Birmingham, and despite having a mother who was a teacher, Jane never wanted to follow in her footsteps. In fact, she resisted it quite significantly, instead choosing to embark on a retail management scheme (although her real dream was to put her tap dancing and drama skills to good use as a West End performer!). While in her retail role, she went on to win awards in Customer Service. When she was put in the training department, she realised quite quickly that her heart was in teaching and so enrolled on a teacher training course at Newman Teacher Training College in Birmingham. Even though she got pregnant in her second year at this Catholic establishment, through sheer grit and determination, she earned a first-class honours degree. After having taught for a while, Jane was offered a job working at a Local Authority level and relocated her family from Birmingham to Northampton, where she became one of the first National Literacy Strategy trainers in the country. She decided to go freelance after feeling as though the system was too tightly-scripted for all of the things that she wanted to say regarding education, so she branched out on her own and has never looked back. With many educational resources and books to her name, Jane is widely regarded as one of the most influential education consultants in the UK. In the podcast, Jane speaks candidly with Claire about her background, as well as giving useful tips that teachers can integrate quickly and easily into their classroom practice. Jane hopes that by sharing her expertise, teachers around the country can become more confident in the teaching of reading and writing, thus benefitting the children in their classes. KEY TAKEAWAYS
“Teaching’s in my life because my mum’s a teacher, my auntie was a teacher, my grand-aunt was a teacher and there was a lot of teacher chat in the house. You’d help your mum out; you’d help with books and marking.” “I didn’t know I taught in a ‘tons of money’ era; only looking back now. This was an era when all kids had a glue stick. Every term, they had a glue stick. Now I see glue sticks with numbers on because [teachers] have got to count them back in.” “I don’t care what anybody says about the [National Literacy] Strategy…it was a structure that we had never had before in teaching. I’m not talking about content-heavy national curriculum; I’m talking about real research-led, evidence-based discussion.” “You try and come to me and tell me there’s a better document than Grammar for Writing: there isn’t…what I don’t know about what’s been written about education through history of time…I make it my business to know. I read everything. I read everyone’s books. I am research-informed, but I’m not stupid. You’ll catch me live in a classroom, saying, ‘That’s what the research says…shall we live it? Shall we feel it? Shall we breathe it, kids?’” “Kids’ imaginations are really quite disappointing because they are drenched in Fortnite and they have got guns in them and axes and lots of blood and guts…because they’re a bit disappointing, we don’t nurture them and help them flourish… “[We’ve got to] start with what they care about and then take them to new places.” “Kids’ ideas are more remarkable than adults’ and we’ve got to notice when they’re breaking into those risk-taking word choices. That’s where the magic happens.” “I knew I had things to say, and I didn’t want to be told what to say, and that was really important to me. I pride myself on being truthful and real and honest. I will tell it straight and I mean it. Those are the principles I stick by.” “It’s good to rattle at people’s thinking and when you do that, it can be a bit uncomfortable.” “The minute OFSTED say, ‘We care about knowledge-rich curriculums,’ that’s a tidal wave. That one small comment, that is a tsunami. The impact…this is what OFSTED have got to start realising…the things that seem not that important, or just a passing comment. The impact…I know a lot of teachers who lost their summer holidays building knowledge organisers, sharing knowledge organisers, because these things have such a huge impact. Enormous…a tsunami of impact back in school…it’s a flippant comment.” “Teachers are good guys; we are morally good guys… we’re not doing things for OFSTED, we’re doing things for children of course, but everything we’ve got to take on, it’s a lot of interfacing between National Curriculum, research, OFSTED messages; there’s so much to consider and that’s the toughest thing about teaching and of course, the job list never ends.” “Sometimes small schools feel like an easier option, but everything’s compounded and magnified and then you’re trying to do 4 jobs. That’s like mind-blowing, brain-explode stuff…tough.” “The heart of the matter in reading, is to read for meaning. There is nothing else that needs to be done. Once you’re over the decoding hurdle, the whole point of reading is to read for meaning. Within that, how do we show children how to read for meaning? We have to show them our reading brain, but we can’t show them, so we have to start articulating the invisible and make it visible.” “Authors are broadly writing to create positive or negative effects… If I ask kids to describe a storm, and I don’t tell them if it’s a positive or a negative storm, half of the words are not right. Half of it’s wasted. I’ve got to tell the kids: this is a positive storm; the farmer has been waiting for this storm for weeks; this is the farmer’s story; this is his plot… and so essentially, once we know it’s a positive storm, we can get words on the right side of the street.” “Kids need to be taught that it’s about driving words into sentences because that’s where meaning is yielded… it’s alright collecting words, but sentences is where it’s at!” “In the Write Stuff, you get a structural system that is going to prop you up when the stress is on… It can be applied to any picture book, any novel, any film. It’s a structural view… It talks about the teaching of sentences, the cruciality of sentences and it talks about teaching kids structures to help them with the ideas of writing.” “You’re not going to find anyone who cares about reading and writing more than me… not only do I care about it, I live it, I breathe it, I teach it.” “This is about me empowering teachers to show them a clear pathway to be better reading and writing teachers and I truly can help people with that.” “You know what teachers say? They want more time. Do you know what kids say? Do you know what kids want more of? More time. Do you know what everyone wants? More time… time is the most precious commodity of all.” “The truth it, where [education] needs to go and where it is going are aligning and where it needs to go, is to a real and honest place.” “The smallest of things can make the biggest difference.”
Jane Considine: The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/
ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 06 Oct 2019 | Jade Raynor-Poppleton (Classroom Secrets): Experiences teaching abroad | 01:02:24 | |
In this episode, Claire interviews Jade Raynor who is one of our very own proofreaders at Classroom Secrets. Before joining our team, Jade taught in primary schools in both the UK and Thailand leaving her with many interesting insights into teaching internationally. In Thailand, Jade taught all subjects across the primary phase, other than those taught by specialists in Music, PE, Swimming, MFL and Thai. Although the workload was similar in both countries, teachers were given much more non-contact time in Thailand allowing them to keep on top of tasks during the school day. She found that this gave her a significantly more positive LIFE/ work balance than she had experienced while teaching in the UK. Drawing on her experiences, Jade shares the similarities and differences between teaching in the UK and abroad, details about the preparation required before making a major move and information about the support systems and school structures in place. Claire’s interview with Jade offers a fascinating snapshot of teaching abroad and weighs up the pros and cons of embarking on the ultimate teaching adventure.
BEST MOMENTS “I didn’t get the Sunday dread. I wasn’t coming home thinking I had loads to prepare. It was done and ready.” “One thing I always say about LIFE/ work balance is that it’s alright giving teachers little tips but what they actually need is time.” “Sometimes people have the misconception that you’ll be finished at 3:30 every day but it’s not like that at all. You’re still expected to do the planning and the marking. It’s still the same job. You’re just given more time to do it.” “We’re both home-birds. We did say we would miss our friends and family but it’s a great opportunity to travel.” “Teachers out there, regardless of where they are from, are respected. Education is really valued out there.” “Moving out there is a tidal wave of emotions. When you come out, it’s going to be the best thing you’ve ever done. For the first couple of weeks, you’ll be on a high but in a few weeks you may dip massively because that’s when you’re going to start thinking about the people you miss. It’s going to come back up eventually. You get used to it and get into a routine.” VALUABLE RESOURCES TES Jobs: https://www.tes.com/jobs/
ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 17 Nov 2019 | Nicola James (Headteacher at St Andrew's Primary School): Surviving the new OFSTED Framework | 00:48:11 | |
In this episode, Claire meets Nicola James, the headteacher of St Andrew’s Primary School in Bishop Auckland. Having recently had an OFSTED inspection under the new framework, Nicola shares her experience with Claire in order to help other schools who may be facing an imminent inspection themselves. After initially wanting to work in a bank (mainly so she could wear a smart suit every day!), Nicola was inspired to teach by her secondary school tutor, Mr Wilson, who told her she needed to be working with people. This inspired Nicola to want to make a difference to the lives of others, so she studied at Northumbria University before getting a teaching job as an NQT. Having worked in schools for over 22 years, Nicola has taken on many roles: these include art lead and SLT, and, after starting St Andrew’s 6 years ago, she became deputy head after 2 terms, acting head (while her headteacher did a secondment) a year and a half later and finally became substantive head at the school a year ago. The experiences she had as a deputy encountering OFSTED and a head encountering OFSTED varied quite significantly, with Nicola calling them, “a totally different experience.” In the podcast, Nicola speaks with Claire about her experience of her recent OFSTED inspection, the format of the days themselves, including the day before and the day after the inspection, as well as the newly-introduced ‘deep dives’. They discuss the new framework and what the inspection looked like for Nicola’s school under it. By discussing her experiences, Nicola explains what schools, headteachers and staff can do to best prepare themselves for what is a stressful time in the lives of any school staff. KEY TAKEAWAYS
“Obviously you talk to other headteachers of their experiences but none of my headteacher colleagues had had the experience of this framework so I felt really vulnerable and I felt a bit like a guinea pig so it was kind of going into the unknown.” “Tuesday morning, 10:30, my secretary comes in, knocks on the door: “I’ve got OFSTED on the phone,” and you can feel your face drain. If I’d been standing up, I think my knees would have gone. You process that information…really, it’s as if you’ve been smacked in the face.” “We said to staff, ‘Let’s get together at lunchtime,’ and we just got it all out of our system, anything that we were worried about and what we needed to do. Fortunately, we already had a plan in the staffroom, for if we get the call…down to who’s ordering the pizza, who’s going round the displays putting the things that are hanging off on, so we had it military style…Everybody had a purpose.” “During that time [the phone call with the lead inspector], the deputy head’s writing down everything I’m saying so that we then had another meeting with staff…[we said] ‘This is the messages we’ve been sending to the OFSTED inspector; this is what he’s expecting to see and hear,’ just so they had the same message, because that was important. That’s what he was coming back to find out: if what I was saying is true.” “We had a Section 8…We were expecting a Section 5 but because our 2018 data wasn’t so good, they risk assessed us on that, which meant we got a 2-day. We had 2 inspectors on the first day and 1 inspector on the second…That threw us a bit, because we thought we were already Good so are they coming to make us Requires Improvement, based on that data? Our 2019 data was strong and we were worried that they weren’t going to take that into consideration…we thought we were going to have to fight for Good, but there was no fight. Everything they saw they were happy with.” “During that day [the first day], as headteacher, I was twiddling my thumbs; I didn’t know what to do with myself…I felt really useless to be honest…It was a strange feeling.” “We did flowers, chocolate biscuits, tea, coffee, juice… it was like a hotel room for them… I don’t know if the flowers helped, but it made us feel better.” “He came and gave the deputy and I our feedback and told us what our rating was going to be… he gave feedback to governors, which was very similar to what he’d given us, and then he went, and he was gone by half 4. The staff all filtered in and we repeated it again to them and had a big sigh of relief and it was all over!” “It’s important to say that the timetable isn’t set in stone because every school is different, every school has a different amount of staff. He absolutely didn’t want us to change anything from the norm. We agreed that he would look at history, but because we block our subjects, there wasn’t going to be any history taught that week, but we said we would put some history lessons on…he said, ‘Absolutely not. Do not change your timetable; it’s not fair on the children; it wouldn’t be part of their progression of skills, so don’t change anything.’” “The staff were amazing - they were amazing. I fill up about it still because they were just… they just smashed it. I couldn’t be happier. They just all took on their roles, they didn’t flap, they just got on with it… They got on with their jobs; they knew what they had to do; they knew what the message was that we had to get across; they were so passionate and some of the feedback that was given was how infectious their enthusiasm was and that sums up who we are.” “Last year, I was beginning to feel the anxiety towards it [the inspection]. I know, if I’m being honest, hand on heart, that it affected my health, because I felt that pressure, coming down, and I can’t tell you the difference, now they’ve been… It’s unbelievable, the pressure. When you’re going through it, you don’t notice it – or you try to deny it, really – but when it’s gone, you realise how heavy it was.” “Just the week before they came…I’d had a conversation with staff, kind of thanking them, because I know they were working ridiculously hard because we were thinking they’re coming November, let’s put everything in this term, but I’d said to them, ‘We can’t maintain this. We can’t go on this hard, and working these hours: what if they don’t come November? What if it’s another term? We’re going to kill ourselves. We have to stop. We can’t do this.’” “[Our OFSTED inspectors] were human. They were lovely, approachable people. I don’t know if we were lucky, because I have heard some stories, and there’s certain ones where you think, ‘I hope we don’t get them!’ but we got two really approachable, human inspectors.” “For me, and for our school, I can’t say with anything different but positive. I was blown away by how positive it was. I wasn’t expecting to feel like that… It was a partnership, we worked together, and we hadn’t been ‘done to’; it wasn’t a negative experience.” “I fed them [the staff] and made sure they were ok. I made sure they weren’t here until a ridiculous time; sent them home to their families. Asked them if they needed some time… but I didn’t feel like I needed to hold their hand. They were ready.” “It’s about feeling prepared, and feeling confident, that if you get asked that question, you’re going to have an answer for it.” “Have those notes for that phone call… Calm yourself down, and it’s all on the screen. I would say take some time, you and your deputy, to sit down… having that aide memoire will save you… I just kept going back to it. I was so pleased I did it. It was a lifesaver.” “That plan that I had for OFSTED…have that ready… have that up…it becomes wallpaper but my God everybody knows where it is on the day, and they go to it, and it just ran like clockwork.” “I did a really long assembly in the morning so staff could go and have biscuits and tea and just relax, and I asked the deputy head to speak to staff and let them know that I was going to give them a day off during the year, which they gratefully received so they can choose a day, during this year to take, when it suits them.” “I would like to give my staff more time to do the things that they need to do, so I would need some more money, to employ another member of staff to take their children… That would be the answer to all of our problems.” “I just would like schools to be that place that I remember as a child: a fun, happy place to be but for everyone. Not just the children, but for the staff as well. I just think if you’re enjoying teaching, the children will enjoy learning.” “It really is a time to celebrate your school, and there’s so many opportunities to do that.”
Nicola James: OFSTED Transition Arrangements: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/830378/School_Inspection_Report_Sept2019.pdf ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 29 Apr 2020 | Jonathan Glazzard (Professor at Leeds Beckett University): Inclusive education | 01:28:14 | |
In this episode, which was recorded just before the coronavirus restrictions were put in place, Claire meets with Jonathan Glazzard, professor of Inclusive Education at the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University. Although Jonathan initially wanted to work in secondary education, he taught for ten years at two primary schools, eventually being promoted to assistant headteacher. Earlier in his teaching career, Jonathan took on the role of being the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) for his school. It was through this aspect of his work that he developed a passion for inclusive education and which, in turn, led to him pursuing and gaining a master’s degree in Special Educational Needs (SEN). Jonathan then moved into initial teacher education having become interested in helping to develop student teachers. Within this role, Jonathan took on modules related to special educational needs and inclusion which became the focus of his teaching and, eventually, his doctorate. Jonathan and Claire talk about how, when they were training to be teachers, there was little, if any, preparation for encountering children with special educational needs much less becoming a school coordinator for this area. Despite improvements in this area, Jonathan talks about how there is still work to be done for further progress to be made. Within this episode, Jonathan also talks about mental health and wellbeing – in particular how, despite a lot of progress, there is still a stigma around mental health. Jonathan highlights that further work still needs to be done around understanding the causes of poor mental health in children, such as social factors and the increasing difficulty of the curriculum and exam stresses. Jonathan also shares some advice for teachers and leadership teams and suggests some possible approaches. He discusses the importance of whole-school strategies and an inclusive curriculum, and shares details of some online resources and thoughts on more specific issues which schools could face. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “A year into my teaching career, I became a special educational needs coordinator and I had no underpinning knowledge. And that’s when I started to think actually this is not good enough. Trainee teachers need input and that’s really what motivated me to focus on special educational needs in the university sector because I felt that I wanted them to have that input.” “I think that new teachers are going into teaching and there is pressure on them to feel that they are getting things right, right from the beginning, and there is pressure on them to deliver outstanding teaching right from the beginning. And, actually, learning to be a teacher is an ongoing process.” “One of the problems is that we’ve had this stigmatisation of mental health for many, many years and what we’re now trying to do is destigmatise mental health. But the reason for that stigmatisation is that we’ve automatically assumed that mental health is the same as mental illness. Mental illness is only one facet of mental health.” “We know that the majority of children with poor mental health will benefit from things like physical activity, social connectivity … they will benefit from a sense of belonging in the school, they’ll benefit from good self-esteem, they’ll benefit from an assessment process that actually boosts their self-esteem rather than tells them they’re failures. They’ll benefit from a curriculum that’s rich and exciting and broad.” “I feel that the government’s emphasis on placing mental health into schools is actually absolving the government of addressing the real systemic factors that create poor mental health.” “A good mental health curriculum should be giving children strategies to manage their own mental health: teaching them how to manage stress and anxiety and depression.” “The problem is that there’s so much information for teachers [about mental health]. Teachers are really, really busy and they haven’t got time to do all that searching. We need to pull it together.” “It's very, very important that parents understand that we are not trying to impose a particular identity or viewpoint on your child. This is about preparing children for life within a socially inclusive, modern, contemporary society in which they will interact with people who are different and, therefore, it is really important that we treat everybody with respect.” “Some of these issues with parents are very challenging for schools to deal with. And ultimately, if you are a school within specific cultural communities, you might be worried about the parental backlash. That’s not about weak leadership, because schools legally have to teach this. That’s about, in those situations, when that happens, somebody coming into the school from the DfE and Ofsted and actually addressing those issues and supporting them.” “When do we actually, in the curriculum, educate children about disability? We don’t, basically … All children need to be educated about different types of disabilities and they also need to be educated about the fact that people with disabled identities can achieve brilliant things such as the Paralympics. They need to not see disability as a tragic thing.” “We have to teach the Equality Act, and the Equality Act says that we have to foster good relations between different groups. So we can’t foster good relationships if we’re not actually talking and highlighting to children the fact that there are different views and beliefs.” “We need to make sure the curriculum’s giving children the skills they need for the future, not just an academic curriculum. I think that we need an assessment system that recognises that broader range of skills and recognises a broader range of strengths and talents; not just recognising maths and English.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The mentally healthy schools website: https://www.mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 27 Jul 2019 | Becky Lambton (Itchy Robot): School Websites are a Window for the World | 00:25:35 | |
In this Teachers’ Podcast episode, Claire meets with Becky Lambton, the present Commercial Director at iTCHYROBOT. Becky’s background and experience lies within strategic marketing; having graduated in marketing and spending several years in the commercial world honing her skills, she later joined iTCHYROBOT in 2014 where she was tasked with helping grow and develop the business. iTCHYROBOT’s main goal at this point was to help businesses improve their processes or efficiencies by utilising their websites to their fullest potential. Becky notes that it was during this same year (2014) when iTCHYROBOT ended up working with their first school, subsequently creating their first school’s website. It was at this point where she experienced ‘a lightbulb moment’ and concluded that the benefits that businesses gained from improving their communications for commercial usage would also prove to be extremely beneficial to the educational sector. Since iTCHYROBOT’s website, the company has grown massively and have gone on to develop a web platform on top of school websites in order to help improve overall efficiency in the school environment. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “In 2014, we worked with our first school and did our first school website, and something sort of, I don’t know, a light bulb sort of turned on and thought ‘well, we’re doing all of this to improve efficiencies and adding value and improving communications for commercials, this is really what the education sector and schools need to start doing as well.” “Since our first website, we work now, grown massively and we have developed a web platform on top of the school website so schools can do the parents’ evening online, there’s lots of integration with management information systems, to improve efficiency in the school environment.” “…for me, it’s all about making the school website reflective of your school. I think a lot of the school websites that we do see tend to be more template based, they’ve got the same things on the home page. I think a school website is a really good opportunity for you to celebrate why your school is unite, the difference in your school and it should be a celebration of everything inside the school...” “…back when schools first started with school websites, it was purely for that purpose – to publish statutory information on the website… a checklist of regulations that have been given to schools by the DfE that they’ve got to publish on their websites…” “…you do go onto a school website and it looks exactly like that statutory content, where for me, don’t just publish your OFSTED report, identify key quotes from your OFTSED report and say what OFSTED found unique about your school, again, to fit with your school values and that celebration of your school that you’re trying to portray on your school website…” “…what we’re trying to achieve from our product is to enable people to enable something once and automatically output that information to where it needs to either be published or to be shown, to stop you from suffering.” “…run a competition to see who can get the most hits on the school website, integrate curriculum within it, your maths curriculum, anything to look at statistics and analyse the usage of the website! Encourage them to sort of run little campaigns to try and encourage use and visits to the website.” “…there’s a lot of talk about people leaving education, but education is still a fanatic industry… but there’s never anything on the school website either about how they support their staff. If you go on any business sites, there’s a careers section and it’s got… investors in people and the benefits and I never see anything like that. One of the key visitors that will come to your school website are potential new recruits…” “A school website is more than just compliance for one market. You’ve got lots of different people looking at the website and you’ve got to have something that is going to be useful to them.” “I always ask the question, well, ‘Do they know that it exists?’, ‘How do you communicate with them?’, ‘Do you tell them that you’re putting your newsletters on the website?’, ‘Is it easy to find?’, ‘Is your website easy to navigate?’.” “If you’re going to use you’re website as a communication tool, first and foremost, is it on every single letter than your sending out to your parents?” “To me, it’s all about those unsung heroes… I go into schools and obviously speak to them about their vision and values and thing like that, and they always a have a really nice story to tell… the teachers will take time off out of their own school holiday time to go into the school because some of the children still need that place to go and that support… inspiration wise, it’s those people who are making that difference.” VALUABLE RESOURCES iTCHYROBOT: https://www.itchyrobot.co.uk/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 01 Sep 2020 | BONUS: Steve Bladon (Head at Horncastle Primary School): September with the DfE Guidance | 01:46:20 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with Steve Bladon, headteacher at Horncastle Primary School, a large 3-form entry school in Lincolnshire. Steve talks about his background in education and his route into teaching from undertaking an NVQ after leaving school and, at the same time, working as a teaching assistant before moving into teacher training at what is now the University of Cumbria. After gaining his degree, Steve worked as a reception teacher before becoming Early Years and Foundation Stage leader, then assistant headteacher and headteacher during his time at several schools in Lancashire. He relocated over to Lincolnshire and took over the headship at Horncastle Primary School. Throughout the episode, Steve discusses the challenges that he and all school leaders have faced over the last two terms with schools closing to most pupils and, more recently, the seemingly ever-changing and sometimes contradictory government guidance on returning to full-time schooling for all children. As a part of this, Steve talks about his recent open letter to Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary at the time of recording and how his school is preparing for the start of the new academic year in a time of significant educational upheaval. Steve shares his thoughts on the many complications and concerns around reopening schools in a time of a global pandemic and what steps he and his staff are taking to keep everyone as safe as possible.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I'm thinking rationally, by the end of September and early October, we'll be in a situation where some children are ill and we've got to make a decision. Are they ill with something which is a potential risk which is too serious to ignore? Or are their symptoms something else which, actually, we've got to live with going forward? Because to stop school for every cough, temperature and potential case of COVID-19 could be really problematic.” “That's where we've got to with schools because on the one hand schools have been tasked with reopening. But on the other hand, it's not really business as usual. It's everybody in, but there's this whole load of 'what if' questions.” “It's about being dynamic. You can have protocols and plans and theories and you can have opinions. But what you've got to do is be able to adapt and change and see what happens and then see what's workable.” “I believe that education is the most important profession in a civilised society. Things like dropping guidance on a Friday night, or in the middle of the night, or on a Bank Holiday Monday. That's not the way to treat a profession.” “Our profession has been saying for months, 'Please can we have the guidance. What's plan B?'… I can't think of an excuse for things not being done more timely.” “Part of my job this year has been to try and reassure parents. Even when sometimes that's been an impossible job because we're trying to reassure people about things that we're not always certain about ourselves.” “I think communication has been really important in my school in lockdown.” “I can't use the term ‘COVID secure’ because I think that's a misnomer.” “Things will keep changing, and goodness knows how long we're in this for. I think we reserve the right to change what we're doing, and to change our minds and to change our schools to keep them as safe as possible.” “In twenty-one years in schools, whether I've been an NQT or an experienced teacher or a key stage leader or a head, it doesn't matter whether you work in a town, or a city or a rural place, it's a hard job and it's a time consuming job. I don't think we should ever pretend we can make it really easy or a lot less time consuming. I think it just could be different.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Steve Bladon’s open letter to Gavin Williamson: https://stevebheadteacher.wordpress.com/2020/08/29/a-letter-to-gavin-williamson/ Steve Bladon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bladon_steve Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST Claire Riley Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 20 May 2020 | Katy Cox (Headteacher at St. Matthew's Catholic Primary School): Support and development in partnerships | 00:37:59 | |
In this episode, which was recorded just before the coronavirus restrictions were brought in, Claire talks to Katy Cox who is the headteacher at St Matthew’s Catholic Primary School, Bradford. Katy began her headship at the age of 33 and, 15 years in, she continues to seek ways of improving and supporting her staff. She talks about her keen interest in supporting her staff and newly qualified teachers with leadership roles. Katy talks in detail about the benefits of working in a Catholic partnership and how the support has developed her school and staff. She draws upon her own experience and the opportunities she was provided in her own teaching career and expresses the need to provide the same support to staff now with the on-going changes in education. In this podcast, Katy summarises her journey through leadership to being a head and a Local Leader of Education. She talks about the advantages and disadvantages of leadership and the various factors that contribute towards it. Furthermore, she discusses how she supports her staff and the opportunities available for all staff to progress within their careers. Drawing upon her experience and practice, Katy expresses the benefits of working in a partnership school and how this has rapidly improved the progression of her school and staff. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I think it’s really made me think about the teachers that are coming into the career as newly qualified teachers, thinking about what was in place when I was a newly qualified teacher and then the development I had. Which I suppose was a little bit ad hoc for when I was a class teacher and I suppose it shaped my philosophy and from those very first few years in early careers that, as leaders, we need to support those teachers and give them the opportunities to develop leadership skills alongside developing the classroom skills as well.” “They used to say you’ve got to have five to seven years of classroom experience before you can try to have a go at leadership. Whereas, for me, that’s not how it should be at all. You should be learning and developing those skills right from the start.” “The new framework makes me a little bit concerned for middle leaders and class teachers because I think the emphasis has moved. Certainly, how it used to be, you, as a head, you were the only one involved in Ofsted. You have all the meetings and maybe with your senior leadership team. Now, the focus really is on those middle leaders and leaders of the subject. They’re not even core subjects, they are the foundation subjects that they’re doing deep dives on.” “What I’ve really thought about at [my] school is how to support the leaders of those subjects. We’ve put a team around those leaders. Now, they’re working together looking at the curriculum planning and evidence, so that when we come to an Ofsted, if the inspectors will allow us, it won’t just be one middle leader having to go through that process. Two or three will be able to submit to go together.” “We’ve got teaching assistants who haven’t got degrees and who don’t want to go into teaching, but they are also offered opportunities within school.” “For me, a big part for my staff is being a part of the Catholic schools partnership. Over the last nine [to] ten years, as headteachers from all 18 primary schools and two secondary schools, we’ve come together and formed a really powerful collaboration that’s formalised. It’s renowned throughout the diocese but it’s also renowned throughout the country. The work that we’ve done collectively is really powerful for people to come and join.” “When you join our partnership or join my school, then you are guaranteed that you are going to have a bespoke training package every year. We are already ahead of the game, thinking about the early career framework.” “My inspiration would be that I was encouraged to develop when I was a class teacher. I had the opportunity quite young [and] early on in my career to put myself forward for what was [the] National Numeracy Project. I got involved with that, worked alongside the maths leader who was due to retire. When she did retire the year after, then I took that on with another colleague.” “I think, as a leader in the profession, it’s really important that we invest right from day one because these teachers who are new to the profession… they are our future leaders.” “Our whole ethos is based on our motto ‘I tried to live like Jesus; I love; I forgive; I pray. Come follow me, be the best that I can be.’” VALUABLE RESOURCES St. Matthew’s Catholic Primary School: https://stmatthewscatholic.co.uk/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 23 Feb 2021 | Making remote learning work: Mungo Sheppard, headteacher at Ash Green Primary | 00:35:01 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Mungo Sheppard, headteacher at Ash Green Primary School in Halifax, about how remote teaching is currently working and how it has changed over the last year for his school. Reflecting on his school’s experience with the move to remote teaching during the lockdowns, and what they have done to overcome the varied challenges these raised, Mungo discusses what has worked for his school and staff. Mungo also shares his thoughts on the future of education and what the legacies of the lockdown might be following our increased use of technology as a means of facilitating home learning.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I think, at the moment, where you've got a lot of children and families who you're not seeing each day, you've got to try and come up with interesting ways to still connect and make sure that those relationships are maintained.” “I don't think that actually teaching live all day is that useful. You lose feedback. You lose the work for the children who are not accessing it. You lose the work for the children who are in school. You'll lose some of the other things as well.” “Virtually every child is motivated by praise and reward. Not all, but virtually every child. What are the little things that you can do?” “Morale is still very high amongst the teaching staff, remarkably, and I think that the way we're doing is enabling that to happen. And I have got to give a massive shout out to the support staff at this school because they are phenomenal.” “The things that come my way... people reporting things that are going on in the community? Where does your remit begin and end? It’s a very, very far-reaching job at the moment. It’s very, very challenging.” “Don't get carried away so that this is going to take loads of teachers’ time as well. I've heard some really sad stories. You've got to look very carefully at your staff deployment. Look at work-life balance.” “Be flexible and be individual and personal and all those things you'd do in the classroom. Because you'd never teach the same learning style in the classroom for all of your children so you can't do that through remote learning either.” “I think the big difference this time is every member of staff has got a really defined clear role. Class teachers are being used much better.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshGreenHead Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshGreenPrimary Website: https://www.ashgreen.info/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 27 Feb 2020 | Jonathan Chippindall (Teacher and computing specialist): Primary computing and technology | 00:49:32 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Jonathan Chippindall: a part-time teacher and computing specialist. During the episode, Jonathan talks about his passion for computing and technology as well as giving teachers tips and advice on how to deliver the computing curriculum. He explains how the new curriculum opened doors in terms of his interest in coding and engineering allowing him to get involved in developing resources for Barefoot Computing and pursuing his specialism. Jonathan reassures teachers that it is okay to have concerns and worries about the computing curriculum; it is a challenge. However, he explains that help and support is out there noting Barefoot and the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) as starting points. He suggests that schools should be committed to staff development to ensure they are skilled and confident in teaching this subject area. He also offers advice on how computing should be taught with a focus on computational thinking and creativity. Jonathan reinforces the idea that these skills can be taught through unplugged computing and can be delivered with limited technology and a small budget. The conversation also covers Jonathan’s favoured kit and tech where he explains that the best companies also offer resources to teachers as well as listening to the primary community. The most valuable companies are ones which evolve over time so that the technology doesn’t become irrelevant or redundant. Jonathan also suggests creative ways of getting technology into school such as teaming up with schools to create a ‘kit loan library’, researching computing hubs and empowering the strongest pupils to upskill other children and staff. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “It is a fairly significant ask. We are asking teachers to teach something they haven’t had experience of themselves in their own education although that is going to change through time as people come up through the system. And then I think that it is then realising that there is a lot of support out there. “ “Computing and computer science is not all about going straight to the coding. There’s a lot of work you can do with unplugged activities where you’re teaching these concepts without technology.” “For people that are worrying, you’re not on your own. It is acknowledged that this is an area we need to offer support and there is support out there” “In my school, I use Sphero, Crumble for key stage 2 and Beebots in key stage 1 and that’s our main focus.” “I just think hobbies are really important. Particularly for teachers as well, we’re working with kids and the idea is we are inspiring them because we like doing stuff and learning stuff. So it’s nice to have hobbies that you can talk to them about” “I think sometimes we fall into the trap of trying to do a one-size-fits-all. If you are working longer hours but you are loving it and you are happy, you’re going to be less happy if I tell you ‘you can’t’. It’s about just empowering people to know what they are comfortable with and helping them to work towards that.” “It’s these problem-solving skills which are really valuable that we want to develop in pupils because technology changes … What we want to do is make great problem solvers. So computational thinking needs to be at the heart of what we’re doing.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Barefoot Computing: https://www.barefootcomputing.org/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 16 Nov 2021 | Supporting Military Children in Schools: Louise Fetigan, founder of Little Troopers | 00:33:55 | |
In this episode I chat to Louise Fetigan, founder of the charity Little Troopers. The Little Troopers ‘At School’ project aims to support to the 70,000 military children in England by providing schools with information and resources. In this episode, Louise shares: - The reality of being a military family. - The pros and cons some older children feel coming from a military background. - What we can provide military children in schools. - Why she is so passionate about helping children from military families. If you’d like to find out more about Louise and Little Troopers, you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 01 Mar 2022 | Using Sensory Input in Speech Development: Karen Massey, All About Speech Therapy | 00:20:40 | |
This week, I chat with Karen Massey, who is a child speech therapist with over 14 years of experience working with children. She is also an author with books on Autism and Apraxia of Speech as well as communication in Down Syndrome at Primary School. In this episode, Karen shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Karen and where you can get in touch with her, you can go to:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 02 Nov 2021 | Getting to know your teacher pension and your finances: Eileen Adamson, host of Your Money Sorted Teachers’ Podcast | 00:24:00 | |
In this episode I talk with Eileen Adamson. Eileen is one busy woman! As well as being a part-time PE teacher, she hosts her own podcast, co-hosts the BBC podcast Clever About Cash and runs her own business which offers teachers help and advice when it comes to money. In this episode, Eileen shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Eileen and what she does, or visit the sites she mentions, you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 23 Mar 2021 | Therapeutic teaching: Shahana Knight, director of TPC Therapy | 00:31:38 | |
Shahana Knight - EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Shahana Knight: founder and director of Therapeutic Teaching. Shahana is at the heart of this mental health and wellbeing service supporting children all over the UK with both complex and lower-level needs. Shahana discusses the importance of helping children to recognise their emotions and shares some tips and advice for teachers and school staff on how they can support this by making conscious yet subtle changes in their approaches with all of their pupils.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “We’re seeing a rise in difficult behaviour, or a rise in anxiety in children, or hyperactivity in children, or really emotional children and we’re not skilled enough yet to really be able to approach that and guide them through that.” “We’re still in a society, we’re still in a pattern, where we often don’t give children the skills and awareness about their own mental health and wellbeing and insight into their feelings and why some of their experiences might be affecting their behaviour and their thoughts.” “When children have been through any type of trauma, low-level or high-level, or they’re struggling with anything emotionally, they cannot actually physically learn. It shuts down the learning part of the brain and it fires up the survival part of the brain.” “Let’s try and stop rejecting children for having difficult feelings. I think we’re so stuck in this pattern where we send them out, or we give them time out, or we ask them to write down what’s happened, or they get told they’ve got to go the headteacher’s room, or whatever our strategies are. That’s all about rejection and what children need is connection.” “We have to start teaching children that we’re there to guide them through what’s hard for them. Not punish them for having difficult feelings because that’s part of being human.” “Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes and I think we cannot forget the impact of children’s experiences as they’re growing and how much they need to be guided through those.” “I just think we’re getting it wrong in education. I really do. And I think we are so lucky. We’re in such a wonderful position. We have children coming to the classroom every single day for most of the year. Those children find solace in that classroom because a lot of them are struggling at home and we’re not giving them the experiences that we could be. We are so diverted because of the outcomes and because of what Ofsted asks us to do [that] we’re missing real opportunities just to teach.” “We don’t want kids to swallow down their feelings because they think they’re going to get told off for them. Because then we’re just creating a culture where people hide what’s really going on for them.” “You know you’ve done something wrong. So if you get that validation, at least you know that person is going to guide you through it rather than tell you off for it. Similarly, we all have feelings and the reasons we behave in a certain way is because of that. Let’s inform the children and teach the children so they’ve got that awareness.” “Look at your environments. Often we have children coming into school who are overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed with technology. They’re overwhelmed with experiences that have gone on outside of school. Often, they’re tired because they’ve been gaming all night [or] watching TV all night.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES TPC Therapy: https://www.tpctherapy.co.uk Shahana Knight – Twitter: https://twitter.com/Shahana_tpc Shahana Knight – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shahana-knight2020/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 19 Oct 2021 | Creating boundaries to protect teacher wellbeing: Gemma Drinkall, founder of HeadSphere | 00:22:35 | |
This week I chat with Gemma Drinkall, an education wellbeing coach. Gemma talks to me about the importance of creating and protecting boundaries as a teacher. We also discuss tokenistic wellbeing practices and attitudes towards teachers and their wellbeing. In this episode, Gemma shares: - What an education wellbeing coach is and what they do. - Why she is so passionate about the wellbeing of teachers. - Tips for creating those boundaries and sticking to your non-negotiables.
If you’d like to learn more about Gemma and HeadSphere, you can visit: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 25 Jan 2022 | Healthy Eating in Schools Dan Parker, Chief Executive at Veg Power | 00:30:03 | |
In this episode I chat with Dan Parker, the chief executive at Veg Power, about the upcoming Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign. Veg Power aim to get more children eating vegetables as a staggering 80% of children are not getting enough vegetables in their diets. In this episode, Dan shares: - What Veg Power and Eat Them to Defeat Them is. - How the programme works in schools and the results he has seen from it. - How schools can get involved. If you’d like to find out more about Veg Power or the Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign, you can go to: - https://eatthemtodefeatthem.com/ - https://eatthemtodefeatthem.com/schools
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 22 Apr 2020 | Haylie Saunders (Deputy Head Academic at St Swithun's Preparatory School): Leading home-learning | 01:06:56 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet to Haylie Saunders, deputy head academic at St Swithun’s Preparatory School in Hampshire. Haylie shares with Claire how, after leaving school herself, she had little interest in being a teacher. However, this changed following a conversation with an honest member of her family who pointed out how much she enjoyed teaching dance as a part of a local group. This prompted Haylie to enrol on a Bachelor of Education degree course and, having some experience of teaching through her dance class, Haylie excelled and qualified after only three years via the accelerated route the course offered. After gaining her degree, Haylie taught in several different settings including spending several years in a small New Forest school and becoming the head of games in a very sport-focused top preparatory school in Hampshire. This role, in particular, was invaluable in gaining leadership skills which led to a deputy headship in an all-girls school in Surrey. Following this, Haylie moved to St Swithun’s Preparatory School where she is now deputy head academic leading curriculum development and assessment. In this episode, Haylie and Claire discuss the challenges Haylie’s school has faced preparing and organising home-learning for their pupils, some of the issues that have arisen, and what might be around the corner for all schools and the education sector in general. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “If you allow for the fact that the parents and children have had to up-skill to a degree on these new platforms, or they’ve had to adjust to this way of reading plans that are designed for educators, really, and then you’re sat down with your daughter or son trying to get through this, you can very quickly, as a parent, end up feeling like a failure.” “Remote learning is not twenty-four hours a day. Teachers have still got to have their PPA time, their administration time and also breaks from the screen so they don’t get screen fatigue. So we had to make sure it was manageable for them as well.” “So far we’ve been well-staffed. In fact, probably, over-staffed. So, another problem for leaderships is actually assessing how many children you have in and what is a safe ratio of teachers to be in. Is it absolutely necessary?” “You’ve got to be flexible in all areas. Look after your teachers. Look after your parents. It’s a highly stressful situation.” “What you don’t want is parents to be panicking that [they] haven’t got the ingredients for a recipe or they haven’t got this, because again it just makes them feel that they’re inadequate.” “It’s okay for kids to be bored, and I think we’ve forgotten that sometimes and they actually have to occupy themselves. It’s a really valuable life-skill as well… to be able to occupy yourself and be independent.” “It’s about not being too hard on yourself when you’re in school and demanding too much of teachers.” “It was quite alarming how long I spent on the screen last week. And I think everybody’s feeling that… we talk about wellbeing but are we actually encouraging our staff to get out for the afternoon. It can be easy as a leader to just expect them always to be there answering those e-mails straight away, and yet that’s not the case in school.” “What’s really difficult is, if you are in school managing stressful situations - and there’s plenty of them - you’re not doing that in front of an audience. Now we are opening our teaching up, and that’s nothing to be scared of because they do a really, really good job, but I think it’s quite intimidating for teachers to suddenly be in a room of 18/20 children and their parents.” “There’s going to be gaps in the learning. The children will have experienced different things at home so I think we’re going to have to be really mindful of that and, again, make sure that we can identify those gaps in learning pretty quickly and bridge them as quickly as possible so those families don’t feel as though they’ve done anything wrong.” “I always love a brave teacher. One thing that makes a class exciting is those risk-takers that will do that science experiment that could result in slime everywhere all over the laboratory but that’s what kind of makes school fun.” VALUABLE RESOURCES St Swithun’s independent preparatory and boarding school: https://www.stswithuns.com/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 13 May 2020 | Glenn Russell (Executive Headteacher at Stalham Academy and Infant School): Remote recruitment | 00:40:09 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet to Glenn Russell, executive headteacher of Stalham Academy and Stalham Infant & Pre-School in Norfolk. Glenn talks about his background in education including about how he initially trained as a secondary teacher. He took on roles in middle schools in Norfolk before the county closed these to become a primary and secondary only system. Glenn decided to move into leadership roles in primary schools and became a deputy headteacher in a federation of four schools, eventually becoming headteacher of Stalham Junior School which, at the time, had been judged as inadequate by Ofsted. Glenn helped to turn the school around and became executive headteacher overseeing both the junior school and the infant school. Glenn discusses how, despite the coronavirus restrictions currently in place, his school has still managed to recruit new staff and he shares some tips and advice about what has worked best and what his school have learned from this process. He also talks about the importance of care and respect within his team, how his schools support, encourage and value all staff at all levels and how this was a crucial part of improving the school from inadequate to good. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “When you're running interviews normally on site, you're able to get away with a number of the same types of activity or the same types of processes because actually you get to meet people. You get to kind of read them, you get to use your emotional intelligence, you get to find out about them. But without all of those advantages of being able to sit opposite someone and really get to meet them face to face, we had to sit and really rethink what does each position actually need. So the thing that we did first was be really, really clear on what we were looking for for the positions.” “In terms of how long you think something is going to take, I would clearly double the process time, because actually, speaking to somebody on Zoom, you have that pause, you have that wait, you have that shifting over to somebody else if you're doing the panel interview with several of you. If you are watching a lesson, then you've got the lesson, you've got the conversation remotely afterwards with a colleague about what you've seen or what you haven't seen. Whereas normally you'd both sit down and watch it together, so a lot of the activities take a lot more time.” “Being really, really specific about when things are being sent out and when you expect them back in gives you that kind of tight time limit that's really, really essential for clarity and fairness with all candidates.” “It really was good. It showed the candidates in such a different light and you got to have conversations with them in such a different way than you probably would do in the normal formal process.” “I don't see [some of this way of working] going away any time soon and actually there's plenty of things from the process that I think I'd replicate in the future.” “When you are doing panel interviews… be really, really clear about who is asking what and then, once you've asked the question, be explicit about handing over so it makes it easier on the number of voices happening at the same time. Also planning things like if [someone has] a follow-up question, what's the signal? What's the sign?” “Make sure that technology works. Definitely do some practices. Do some dry runs. My wife was good enough to sit and us interview her a couple of times and to make sure that it worked.” “One thing was actually having the process over more days rather than in the normal process when, in education, we tend to get it all done in one day. Having the different stages to this interview spread out over the week allowed us to really delve into candidates and what they did in different kinds of activities and how they responded to different time limits.” “That normal visit when the participant or candidate comes to your school to look around… because of this situation, I rang every single candidate that put in an application before we shortlisted to try and find out about them, but also to let them find out about me and the school. And those phone calls were going on for, like, forty-five minutes to hour long conversations and you've got such a good feel. And I think I probably gained more about the candidates in that way that I ever do when I give them a tour of the school.” “I say to my staff that I look after them so they're then able to look after the children. As far as I'm concerned the job is hard enough as it is without putting extra pressure and extra strain on.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Stalham Academy: https://www.stalhamacademy.co.uk/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 12 Jul 2019 | Introduction | 00:04:47 | |
In this introduction, Claire explains that the podcast is for all educators and that there will be elements of CPD, elements of entertainment and also elements of relatable experiences so that you are not alone. ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 19 Oct 2019 | Karl Duke (Headteacher at Blyton cum Lawton Church of England School): A reading inspired curriculum | 00:41:22 | |
In this episode, Claire interviews Karl Duke at the One Education Literacy Conference. Growing up in Barnsley in a working-class family, a wealth of books were not readily available to Karl as a child but he credits his parents for always encouraging him to read. After initially training as an illustrator in the early 90s, Karl has worked in primary education for almost 20 years. In his first position at a rural school in Lincolnshire, he became the Literacy lead then successfully applied for a Literacy Consultant post which he worked in for six years. In this role, Karl delivered national strategy courses in the region including Talk for Writing. He developed materials for visual literacy incorporating film and picture books before returning to school life as an Assistant Head on the Lincolnshire coast. He has now been the Headteacher at Blyton cum Laughton Church of England Primary School for three years. Since being appointed, he and his team have developed a reading-inspired curriculum which he and Claire discuss in detail. KEY TAKEAWAYS · Picture Books · Sharing the Love · Ofsted and Curriculum Scrutiny · Detail Detectives · CPD · Recommendations BEST MOMENTS “It’s important to us that we can incorporate texts that our relevant to our children.” “As a Headteacher, it is a difficult position to be in. You want the school to move forward quickly for the benefit of all the children within it and there are times where you have to make decisions that are difficult. They might be difficult for the staff but we’re creating a culture of trust and freedom so that teachers have freedom to do their job successfully without the need to monitor, monitor, monitor to death.” “There are children that will always struggle with reading and perhaps not enjoy it but there are things that I don’t like doing and I never will like doing so it’s not about forcing it. It’s from head of leadership down, ensuring that we show reading as a pleasurable experience and if we do that there is more chance of children also picking up on that.” “I have a library in my office where the children can come and select books. We have a few children who do that now. I’d love them all to come and look and choose a book, but it’s going to take time to build that culture. It’s not something that just happens overnight.” “There are many teachers out there who really influence me. I’m a Headteacher and there shouldn’t be any differentiation within that. We’re here for the same reason.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Karl Duke Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarlDuke8 ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 04 May 2021 | Revolutionising access to books: Arnav Rawat, founder of Books2All | 00:25:25 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Arnav Rawat: Founder of the Books2All charity. After graduating from the University of Cambridge and returning home, Arnav came across a vast collection of books from his childhood. His fond memories of being transported to worlds that exist only in books, along with the appreciation that books helped him on his path to achieving his academic goals, prompted Arnav to donate his books to schools and to children who needed them. However, due to the pandemic and lockdown restrictions, this was challenging; so Arnav founded Books2All and created an app-based scheme where book donors and schools are linked and then set about further developing this modern, more efficient process.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “A child from a disadvantaged background is typically 18 months behind their peers when they sit their GCSEs. So, at the age of 15, you’re already one and a half years behind. That’s 10% of your life.” “Books2All is a very new charity. We were founded in June last year and our aim is to reduce educational inequality in the UK through the provision of books. The way we want to do this is to revolutionise the book donation process to schools.” “For us, we don’t see our app as a way for a school to get hundreds of books. We see it as getting 10, 15 or 20 books that actually really matter and will really be used heavily at that school.” “Because 1 in 8 schools don’t have a library, those students at those schools don’t get that opportunity to either read for pleasure or research and find things they’re interested in.” “I remember when I was growing up, it wasn’t necessarily the first book I opened and suddenly fell in love with reading. It took me a while. Then, all of a sudden, I found the genre, the style of writing, that really suited me.” “I’d go onto the app, I’d log in, I’d say where I am and how far I’m willing to travel… And then I’d scan in the barcode of each book and those books would automatically be uploaded onto our database. On top of that, I’d also send in a photo just of the front cover so that the school gets a bit of an idea about the condition as well before they receive it.” “Some schools have libraries with a certain amount of books that are plentiful, but other sorts of genres and other writing styles that aren’t so plentiful. Essentially, what the librarian can do is go through the app and select exactly which books they want.” “On our blog we also have authors doing some Q and As and giving their insights into how they got into writing and reading and how you can use their ideas in the classroom.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Website: https://books2all.co.uk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Books2All Twitter: https://twitter.com/Books2All Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/books2all/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/books2all/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnav-rawat-853aba149/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 10 Aug 2019 | Alison Philipson (AP Literacy): Reading, writing and spelling in schools | 00:39:52 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Alison Philipson, an independent literacy consultant who works predominantly in Yorkshire and the North West of England. Claire talks with Alison about how she moved from working in a wide variety of different jobs - such as telephone sales, finance and advertising – to enjoying a volunteer role in her local school which ignited her interest in teaching. Alison discusses how becoming a Leading Literacy teacher led to her working for the Local Education Authority’s English department supporting schools and then, ultimately, leaving to create her own consultancy company. Alison also reflects on aspects of other educational roles she has held such as being a moderator and assessment lead for the Local Authority. She shares her thoughts on these roles and gives some tips for schools and teachers based on her experiences. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I don’t ever consider myself as having left teaching because that’s why I’m here today: because of my love and passion for it.” “It is awful having to say to a teacher, ‘Yes, they’ve got great ideas, the punctuation is there, the grammar – fantastic – but the spelling’s not there.” “Teachers get reading more because most teachers are readers – we read for pleasure, so we get it. Whereas we write lists, we plan, we might write WAGOLLS, but we don’t write for pleasure. We don’t practise. We don’t do it day in day out.” “I often ask on my courses ‘who writes for pleasure’? Very, very, very few people put their hands up.” “It’s all about the pace of learning, not the pace of teaching.” “I would never say, ‘Throw all that out and just do it my way.’ Keep what works and adapt it to work even better.” “I have really missed working with children… but I do love what I’m doing. I try to think of the all the teachers I work with, all of their children as my children.” “I do fervently believe that [the work/life balance] comes from within a school: the philosophy and the trust of the leadership team with the teachers.” “I go into schools where [staff well-being] really is a top priority and that’s absolutely brilliant, especially for new teachers who haven’t got the experience to know what’s important and prioritise.” “If you feel valued, and that you are important, you are going to learn and get to where you need to be.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Alison Philipson - AP Literacy: https://apliteracy.com/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 18 Jul 2019 | Lee Peckover (Classroom Secrets): Finding a love of education in EYFS away from classroom | 00:46:22 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Lee Peckover, a former primary school teacher and now Proofreading Manager at Classroom Secrets. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I still have more free time than I did when I was teaching and I'm still healthier and having fewer seizures. It's a little bit of a worry for teachers I suppose” “I think there's a maybe, maybe I'm completely wrong about this, but it's, in my own experience, the minute you start at a school, they kind of have an anticipation that male teachers are not necessarily going to be that keen to be in year one and reception.” “I don't know how much you get that end of the year groups compared to early years, how much you get that just kind of unbridled joy where a child comes in and feels that they're playing, they almost don't even realise that they are learning.” “There's no structure and yet they're still learning everything.” “Working with a child who's three years old, that year they spend with you, taking them up to the age of four is a quarter of their life.” “It's a quarter of that entire experience of the world. 25% of everything they know, has been potentially learned in that one year spell.” “So you can teach children to tell the time by just having a constant focus on what time of the day is at that point. Knowing for themselves, what time they go for break and knowing sort of when the end of the day. So they constantly are aware of the time and telling time. You never then have to do lessons on it, but EYFS is kind of all that.” “But you, often times you can remove the adult from the situation and the learning doesn't stop.” “Giving them a reason to want to learn to read.” “Not one of the resources that we've made so far has looked at just one outcome.” “Confucius said that, 'real wisdom is knowing your own ignorance'” “China starts formal education at age seven as well and it seems to just be completely overlooked.’” “The board, are the ones where children's start their formal education at age six or at age seven.” “Being open to finding new things and being really open minded to changing things and trying out different things I think is really important.” “There's almost a pressure of people feeling that if it's not on paper or if it's not evidenced, then it didn't happen.” “'How would you evidence that?', and I think the evidence is that the child now has learned something.”
The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Other sources for further reading either referenced or recommended - Neaum, Sally. What Comes Before Phonics Exeter: Learning Matters, 2017. ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 09 Mar 2021 | The SUMO approach: Paul McGee, founder of the SUMO principles | 00:28:55 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Paul McGee, founder of the SUMO principles about what the SUMO approach is and how anyone can use it as a tool to achieve better results in life. Paul talks about how his background in behavioural and social psychology led him to running training seminars and coaching courses. It was an audience heckle during one of these sessions that introduced him to the acronym SUMO which he has since adapted and developed into a way of helping to get the best out of ourselves, the best from others and the best from life. Paul shares and discusses some great ideas linked to the SUMO principles including ‘checking your chatter’, being aware of avoiding ‘passive moaning’ to improve your mental diet, and always looking to invest in yourself.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “In 2007 we banned smoking in public places because of the effects of passive smoking. Well I think we need to be mindful of the effects of passive moaning.” “This phrase I use, 'to be at your best, you need to rest'; that doesn't mean work yourself crazy until the next half-term. It's building in a little bit of rest time even during the day or in the evenings. Rest is not the opposite of work; it's work's partner.” “A metaphor I use in life is, 'sometimes life is like a game of snakes and ladders'. If you want to win the game, the likelihood is you might land on a snake. But that's not a time to quit. It's a time to roll the dice, go again and keep looking for the ladders.” “Who's the most important person you can talk to? It's actually yourself.” “Sumo is a word in Latin. So, not as an acronym, but as a word, means 'to choose'. Drew Povey, a leadership speaker and former headteacher, says 'every day is a choose-day'.” “That phrase 'manage your mental diet'. We think about the word 'diet' and we think about food, but I just think it's really important what we feed our minds with.” “If you want to help the kids, you've got to help yourself. “Teachers are obviously in the world of education; in the world of learning. But I think it's really important that we don't just think, 'well we're trying to teach kids'. We're also trying to teach ourselves.” “For me, the number one priority is actually about investing in yourself.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Website: https://www.thesumoguy.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSumoGuy YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUn8r9hCk8ewTXHapv1-Ngg Books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-McGee/e/B001JOWPYU/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesumoguy Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 30 Mar 2021 | Mental health and movement: Darryl Walsh and Dr Martin Yelling, founders of Stormbreak | 00:39:58 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Darryl Walsh and Dr Martin Yelling, founders of Stormbreak: a registered charity promoting movement and physical activity to improve mental health in primary schools. Despite their quite different backgrounds, Martin and Darryl came together with a shared interest in using movement to equip children with sustainable, transferable skills and coping strategies that can be drawn upon to promote good mental health into adult life. The result was Stormbreak which works with schools, children and staff to deliver training and coaching programmes to up-skill teachers and equip children with a variety of useful strategies and inclusive approaches. Martin and Darryl discuss how important movement and physical activity within schools is and how useful it can be for the development of good mental health for both children and adults. They share some great tips and advice including addressing some of the misconceptions around movement in education and how some activities in school might be adapted or further developed.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS "It was really clear to me that that teachers get very little or no training on mental health at all in their in their training. Yet the prevalence of need for children within schools was quite high." "For me, there needed to be something different. Something sustainable. Something that looked at prevention at scale. Something that looked at supporting children and giving them a toolkit: skills and knowledge to be able to support themselves with their mental health as they work their way through childhood to adulthood." "We work with five different mental health concepts: Self-worth, self-care, resilience, relationships, and hope and optimism. And you can't work with those concepts with the children, talking about those things with the children, without reflecting on them for yourself." "What we see when we do our programmes with teachers is they say to us, 'I need this so much for my own wellbeing.'" "Why do we wait until we are grownups to realise that [movement] is a benefit? If we see movement through the right lenses, and we're helped to understand how it can support us in so many different ways, then we can build it in to our life." "As adults, we often rediscover that movement is something that is helpful to support our mental health. But why should we have to wait until we're adults to be able to know that?" "What we see is that when you place wellbeing at the heart of the life of the school, other things really flow as well." "A really important thing about moving is there's no need to be good. What is good? There shouldn't be an elitism around movement. You don't need to be 'good'. You just need to do it." "I don't care how fast you run a mile. I don't care if you keep going or not. What we care about is 'what's the quality of the conversation you're able to have with your friends around you?'" "Teachers are under intense pressure at the moment. Teachers' lives are busy and children are coming full of uncertainty and anxiety. The emotional feeling in the classroom is charged in a way it's not been charged before. One thing a teacher can do is just allow themselves the opportunity in that day to have a small window of time to listen."
VALUABLE RESOURCES Stormbreak website: https://stormbreak.org.uk/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/hellostormbreak Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellostormbreak LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/darryl-walsh-5a29b32b Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 07 Sep 2019 | Sian Stebbings (Merlin Top Primary School): Being chair of governors under 30 | 00:23:51 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Sian Stebbings, a former teacher and now Production Manager at Classroom Secrets as well as a Chair of Governors for a local academy school that is part of a multi-academy trust (MAT). Sian explains how she started her teaching journey, to becoming a Production Manager, a school governor and now Chair of Governor for a MAT. She discusses the challenges she faced and explains her vision moving forward. Sian also explains how her current and previous experience has helped her as a school governor. Sian and Claire explore the roles and responsibilities of a school governor in education today. They discuss the difference between the types of governors and the importance of school governors. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Being a part of something that big, that shapes so many children’s lives would just be such an amazing thing to do.” “At the time I was 25 and it was a real novelty for them (the governors) to have someone so young in the room.” “Over the last couple of years, they have really focussed on putting in support from the MAT, they have directors of learning who come down, visit and support and take good ideas from the various schools and share them.” “We absolutely worked together as a MAT. We are not an individual school.” “You don’t have to have five pieces of work in the English book every single week to show that you have done five English lessons across the week.” “Looking at ways to reduce workload that aren’t needed in order to evidence a child’s progress.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 03 Aug 2019 | James Holmes (Mark Mate/Dragon’s Den): The impact of marking on teacher workload | 00:56:40 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with James Holmes, owner and developer of MarkMate: a software-based marking system that enables teachers to significantly reduce the time they spend marking by enabling them to quickly give high-quality feedback on their pupils’ work. Claire talks with James about his journey from starting out as a Year 1 teacher, through to working in Key Stages 2 and 3, and how the excessive demands on time for marking prompted James to develop his new system. James discusses how, without an I.T. background, he self-taught the programming skills he now has, and how his revolutionary new software featured on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den show. James also discusses the wider implications of the current drive within schools to improve workloads by changing marking processes – including schools that are looking at removing it entirely. In addition, James shares his thoughts on other ways he feels schools could improve workloads and work/life balance, the biggest changes he has seen in his time in education, and what the school system could look at to improve for the future. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “The students felt like their teacher was talking to them when they were reading [the marking comments] because it was almost conversational.” “When I was marking books, I knew what I wanted to say, but I would condense it as much as possible to fit it onto that piece of paper.” “Schools work in different ways and you don’t want to up-heave everything and change everyone’s systems. One personal bugbear… from when I was a teacher was the frustration with schools and higher-level bodies to allow change in policies if there’s something that has a positive impact.” “From personal experience, I’m hearing a lot at the moment from schools about going down the ‘no marking’ policies. On the surface of it it’s a fantastic approach for work/life balance and teacher retention and it’s a real positive step that people are listening. But for me there was always huge value in the marking I was doing because of the way I delivered it and the way I allowed the students to respond to that marking.” “[MarkMate] helps with that evidence… Anyone can pick that book up - supply teacher, TA, LSA can pick that book up - and see exactly what’s happened in the last week, in the last month… If you’re going away from written feedback, how is that going to be passed on to other adults? You don’t want to be going in an repeating the same things.” “There’s a huge emphasis at the moment on teacher retention and work/life balance and well-being which should have been there from day one. It’s not a new concept.” “I wouldn’t be here doing this if I didn’t honestly know that it makes marking quicker… I had that light-bulb moment when I marked my first set of books. A set of English books would have normally would have taken me 2 or 3 hours, and even my feedback then would not have been not that great quality if I’m being honest with myself. And then when I marked with [MarkMate] it was 41 minutes.” “You love teaching for being in the classroom and for working with those students and having that impact however big or however small. What I don’t love is all the other stuff that goes along with it. There was a real turning point when my daughter was born and I was spending more time on other people’s children than I was on my child.” VALUABLE RESOURCES MarkMate: https://www.markmate.co.uk/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 02 Feb 2021 | Realities of remote teaching: Koren Sanderson, Year 6 teacher | 00:15:38 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Koren Sanderson about the realities of remote teaching. Koren is a Year 6 teacher in a school in Staffordshire. She is a member of the middle leadership team, has a shared subject responsibility for English and is the reading coordinator for the whole of her school. Koren discusses her experiences of the move to remote teaching and learning and shares some tips and advice based on what has worked and been successful for her and her school.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “The main thing that we wanted to get across is that this is a new thing for everybody. It’s a scary process for a lot of people and there [are] so many challenges that people face with technology, with delivering the lessons.” “Be flexible. Be adaptable. Take a relaxed approach and listen to what the families are saying to us because it’s not easy – especially if you’ve got more than one child at home or you’ve got poor internet access.” “Because we’ve got really good communication with our school community, [parents] know they can get in touch with us on Dojo, they can e-mail our ‘corona support e-mail’, there’s a member of staff available at all times during the working day, so the feedback has been really, really positive.” “If parents are struggling, we want them to be okay. We don’t want them to feel under pressure.” “If systems are in place and you’re communicating effectively with each other, sharing good practice, talking about what’s working well but also just giving each other a punch on the shoulder and just saying, ‘You’re doing a wicked job. It’s not easy and you’re doing a fantastic job.’” “It’s really important to be kind to yourself. We’re not superheroes. We’re not infallible. It’s possible to be an absolutely fantastic remote teacher without having to run yourself into the ground. It’s just about that organisation and communication and making sure that those systems are in place.” “[It’s] having the confidence to say, ‘This doesn’t quite work for me. Is there a way that we can adapt it?’ Having those professional conversations with your colleagues and asking, ‘Is there anything that you’re doing that I might do?’” “My life is really busy and I want to enjoy my family as well as work. I love my job, I’m passionate about it, but it is my job. I want to give 100% to that, but I also want to give 100% to my family and if I’m feeling down and miserable, and pre-occupied with what I’m not able to do, it doesn’t benefit anybody.” “Accept that [parents are in] working families and the pressures that they’re under are enormous as well. We’ve got to come together and support one another. I do think they really appreciate that.” “For grammar, punctuation and spelling, and sometimes for the maths, I use the Classroom Secrets resources. They’re fantastic, they’re differentiated, they come with answers, they come with PowerPoints and I can upload those with the teaching slides as an assignment on Teams. It means the kids can go back through it if they’ve not quite got anything.” “Especially now, it’s so crucial to get that work-life balance and if you want to cut down on your workload, don’t re-invent the wheel. It’s out there. It’s okay to use it. Of course, adapt for your own class and to the needs of your children but don’t start from scratch when you’ve got such a good basis to use that someone else has done already.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Twitter: https://twitter.com/sanderson_koren HRTV – YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChCltEbCeBGr2l5ZdG215Hw Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 12 Oct 2021 | Supporting ECTs in their teaching journey: Andy Taylor (Mr T’s NQTs) | 00:27:42 | |
In this episode I talk with Andy Taylor. Andy is a teacher himself, who has worked with the DfE, Chartered College and TES to support NQTs/ECTs. His Twitter page (Mr Ts NQTs) is full of advice for teachers starting their career. Andy talks with me about when he took on the role of NQT mentor and how he came across a lot of NQTs and RQTs who had experienced a patchy induction. He also shares his thoughts on the Early Careers Framework and the role out of training for ECT mentors and induction tutors. In this episode, Andy shares: - Why it’s important for ECTs to have access the Early Careers Framework. - The distinction between an ECT mentor and ECT induction tutors. - Why he is so passionate about helping ECTs. - Why building relationships with other colleagues can be so beneficial. If you’d like to find out more about Andy, how he supports ECTs, or find the documents Andy mentioned in the podcast, you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 24 Aug 2019 | Simon Hunt (Mr Hunt from the Front): Taking learning bigger than the classroom | 01:09:11 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Simon Hunt, a Year 4 teacher at Tottington Primary School in Bury.
BEST MOMENTS Mr Hunt from the front: https://www.mrhuntfromthefront.com/ ABOUT THE HOST See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 10 Nov 2019 | Nathan Ashman (St Wilfrid's C of E Academy): iPads in the Classroom | 00:36:28 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Nathan Ashman, who is a Lead Teacher for New Technologies at St Wilfrid’s Church of England Academy in Blackburn. Despite having a secondary background, Nathan was delivering a session aimed at the primary-age range at the Lead Learn Lancs 2019 conference, which was where Claire met with him. Nathan didn’t originally plan to go into teaching (an action hero was his dream occupation as a child!). After studying Theatre, Film and TV at university, and coaching rugby, Nathan discovered he was natural when it came to working with children and so made the decision to go into teaching. His initial plan was to go into primary teaching but his old school offered him a post teaching English and media while he was trained on the job. After completing his employment-based training in Kent in 2005, training in both English and media, Nathan’s career progressed until eventually, he ended up becoming a head of a film and media school in Oldham. Through his teaching of media, Nathan experimented with different ways of using technology effectively in the classroom. He talks with Claire about using technology, specifically iPads, effectively in the classroom to lessen the workload of teachers and improve learning experiences. He talks about technology and the ways it should be embedded into teaching, rather than just being an add-on or a gimmick. By sharing examples of what he has seen to work in his own school, Nathan gives lots of practical advice on how technology can be used by both primary and secondary teachers to not only help promote a healthy LIFE/work balance (by reducing overall workload), but to further enhance and cement learning that is already happening in their classrooms.
BEST MOMENTS "There’s no point in using it [technology] if it doesn’t actually improve what you’re doing.” “Students are already making videos at home... if you go into a class full of year 6 students and say to them ‘What do you want to be?’, the most popular job will probably be a Youtuber.” “It’s about giving the kids the opportunity to show their creativity. Having a multimedia device in front of them, which has got a camera, it’s got a voice recorder, you can take a photo, and you can combine all those elements as well in interactive books; why not use that? Why not harness that technology?” “Not only is that making them think about a variety of skills in terms of the metacognition.... but also preparing them for life after work as well.” “Our students don’t have paper planners: they organise all their work on their iPad.” “We compliment traditional learning methods with technology.” “There’s a difference... what you find in secondary schools is that the use of technology is geared around how the students can be independent in their academic studies... in terms of primary schools, it’s more to do with the creative application of their understanding.” “Now yes there is an expense there (iPads). Our parents pay a certain price per month and then after 3 years, the device is theirs to take home.” “Very, very true, that’s why we have like a 3-year scheme and then after that year, we then offer a buy back scheme where if the IPad is in really good condition, they can then trade that iPad in and then they can get the value of that against the cost of a new device because like you said, it (technology) does change very quickly.” “...I’ve worked in 2 schools now over the sort of past 6 years running these iPad schemes and never had a device stolen.” “[Using audio feedback,] I can explain theories, I can explain concepts, I can rephrase sentences for them…Not only does it save me time, but the feedback becomes much more useful.” “It’s finding that one thing with each individual teacher that’s going to spark their interest, and make them think,’ Actually that’s a problem I had and that’s the solution for it’.” “I do find it really useful to work with other teachers in all sorts of different contexts and also to learn from other teachers as well as them learning from me.” “The staff around me do inspire me; I hope I inspire them…we do learn from each other on a regular basis.” “...we have the technology, which is advancing at a very, very fast pace and I don’t think that our exam system is sort of responding to that very well at the moment.” “I think there needs to be some other way of assessing students on more of a fluid basis, using the technology which they have in their hands.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Nathan Ashman:
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 24 Jul 2019 | Laura Lodge (One Education): Reading in Schools | 00:38:12 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Laura Lodge, a former teacher and now a Literacy/English Consultant for One Education. She explains her experience with leading Literacy and supporting schools within her cluster. As a consultant, Laura continues to support schools predominantly around the North West as well as other areas of the country. Laura discusses her passion for reading and helping schools with English and Reading. Laura and Claire discuss the importance of understanding the different methods and strategies schools use and how diverse yet effective they are. They share their experiences of observing the different strategies employed within schools and how they work towards the success of the respective schools. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Definitely! I really miss the kids.” “I learn so much from going into all different schools every day of the week.” “You pick up so much from each school no matter whether they’re good, outstanding or requires improvement or inadequate.” “In one school the things you do might not work the same way.” “It is good to see how other people do it.” “Our motto is – putting children first.” “Every single school I go into is completely different to another.” “We pride ourselves in being bespoke.” “We need to understand how it is for a teacher to be able to give them advice that they can actually run with.” “We believe that Guided Reading teaching it has to be about giving children the skills to read.” “Reading is such a fundamental skill. It is a key skill for life.” “Inference is not reading between the lines.” “Which is why it is so important to constantly model going back to the text.” “You are always spinning plates as a teacher. You try your hardest to do everything as equally well, but you can never keep all those plates spinning at the same time.” “I wish I had known how I wasn’t just going to be a teacher.” “It is so much more than teaching.” “I don’t think at the moment, our curriculum necessarily spends time on those social aspects as it could, for example money.” VALUABLE RESOURCES ABOUT THE HOST Claire Riley Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 12 Jan 2021 | Online safety: Caroline Allams, founder of Natterhub | 01:20:34 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Caroline Allams: founder of Natterhub, a gated, child-orientated social-media platform where children can interact safely while learning about online safety. Caroline talks about how she always knew that she wanted to be a teacher recalling how, as a child, she enjoyed ‘bossing people around in the garden with a whistle’. Having always enjoyed going to school and feeling as though there was something ‘magical’ about teachers, she felt that going into education herself was a natural step. Caroline also talks about how her brother’s chronic ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) made her mother feel like a failing parent. As a teacher, this drove Caroline to vow to herself that no parent or child in her class would feel that way about themselves. Along with this, Caroline’s experiences in international schools – both as a child and, later, as a teacher – helped give her broader and more diverse perspectives on the world. Caroline discusses how, during the initial coronavirus lockdown, ‘Natterhub’ was created to enable children to communicate and interact in a way that would seem familiar to those children who were already aware of social media, but in a safer and more secure environment. While still incorporating this primary functionality, Natterhub has since expanded offering interactive and educational content to enable children to learn more about the benefits and risks associated with social media and the wider online world.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I always loved having the opportunity to create moments for my children, for them to really love coming to school. I quickly realised that learning through ‘doing’ rather than learning through hearing about it was definitely the direction that it was going to take with my teaching style.” “Building that digital resilience and promoting digital empathy are two key magic ingredients for keeping children safe online.” “I think what's great about growing up now and about social media is this ability for children to find other people. Whether it's through Minecraft, whether it's through another digital channel, that they can find other people like them so that the world becomes a little bit smaller and it's easier for them to connect.” “We have this metaphor, this analogy of you wouldn't put your children in a pool without teaching them how to swim. Water's a great analogy really because, if you go on holiday, you can't wait to get in the pool, can't wait to get the sea. But, if you can't swim, it's potentially fatal. The internet's a bit the same. You can thrive online. You can have a great time. This is a great time to be growing up. You've got all of this content, this information at your fingertips, but you've got to have the skills to know how to navigate it. Otherwise you run the risk of going down a very dark path and drowning.” “What we want children to recognise, in teaching them to be safe and savvy, you want them to use it creatively. You want them to use digital media purposefully. So we're trying to get away from the sort of mindless scrolling of just time-wasting which we can all be guilty of.” “We've got to nurture creativity. We've got to allow people to learn in the way that they need to learn and bring what they bring because we all benefit from that. Children benefit from that in the classroom environment.” “Children are so resilient. With all the things that they're faced with, we don't know what's gone on before they get to school. And then, they get into school and we suddenly expect them to think about fronted adverbials or get inside a poem that we've spent four hours planning the night before. It's a lot. It's a big ask. So when they when they do it, and they do it independently, I just think let's tell them how great that is.” “For children, as soon as they see the first answer to their question [on the internet] they think that it’s true. It's just teaching the skills to think no, it might not be true. It might be completely fake, and you just jumped on it.” “There's a lot of guilt around screens. Children feel guilty sometimes because they're permanently told you shouldn't be on a screen. Get off the screen. It's bad for you. Actually, they might have been doing something really amazing or had a great sense of achievement. Or it it's really contributing to their wellbeing being on a screen. And then we take that away from them by presuming that all screen time is bad. And it's not the case. It's just about putting the right education around it.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Natterhub: https://natterhub.com Natterhub on Twitter: https://twitter.com/natterhub Natterhub on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/natterhub Caroline Allams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-allams-46351547/ Pedagogs: https://thepedagogs.com Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hit that charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 03 Nov 2019 | Gemma Sanchez (Grow Your Mindset): Growth Mindset | 00:35:12 | |
In this Teachers’ Podcast episode, Claire meets with Gemma Sanchez a former teacher, SENDCO and now co-founder of Grow Your Mindset. Gemma discusses the importance of growth mindset for teachers, pupils and schools. She explains her teaching journey as well as how she developed her passion of learning about growth mindset with her colleague Liz. Gemma suggests some strategies that teachers can implement within the classroom. Furthermore, she explains the importance of teachers reflecting upon their growth mindset. She also explains the characteristics of a fixed and growth mindset, in addition to providing advice on how to overcome certain obstacles in relation to growth mindset in children. Gemma and Claire discuss why growth mindset should be implemented within schools for all staff including non-teaching staff and children. She also suggests how Grow Your Mindset has created a curriculum to support growth mindset. They discuss how to promote a growth mindset culture and how this can be achieved. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “A few posters going up and just adding ‘yet’ on to the end of ‘I can’t do it’, But it’s a lot more than that.” “All the theory is out there but what we couldn’t find what it should feel like in the classroom, what it should look like, what we should hear when we are in the classroom or going around the school.” “Whatever is going on in our head is being controlled by our mind.” “If you think that your brain controls your body, well your mind controls your brain.” “The element of growth is to do with thriving, being resilient, being a risk-taker, open to continuous learning you are not afraid of making mistakes.” “Is it your response to a challenge? Is it your response to feedback? Do you home in on the negative parts? Is it your response to effort? Is it your self believe? Or are you worried about making mistakes?” “It is really important that your classroom is a safe space. If someone does make a mistake or someone is feeling like they can’t be bothered, that’s okay but how can we change that.” “The important thing about growth mindset is that we keep sending those messages over and over again because eventually we are nudging in to becoming growth orientated.” “The most important thing for a teacher to do is reflect upon their mindset.” “Growth mindset is scientifically proven to reduce the symptoms of mental illness. If started early with primary children, it can prevent it in later life.” “Schools have got to make a decision for themselves.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 20 Apr 2021 | Understanding trauma in the classroom: Noureen Lakhani, trainee Educational Psychologist | 00:22:38 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Noureen Lakhani, a trainee Educational Psychologist to discuss the impact of trauma on children’s learning. For over three years, Noureen has explored her interest in child psychology: in particular looking at how children’s brains develop and investigating the barriers which might impact on learning and education. Noureen discusses the effects of trauma on children and young people’s lives and how professionals can better understand these experiences.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “At the tip of the iceberg you might see someone whose behaviour is confusing or someone who is not progressing at the expected rate of learning. However, when you get underneath the surface of the iceberg, you will see there might be a whole range of unmet needs or gaps in the foundations as a result of the early experiences of trauma.” “Every behaviour that a child is using is a form of communication to us as the adults, as the teachers; and it’s really our ‘in’ to see if we can find out what they are trying to communicate to us.” “Be aware of your own thoughts, your own views, your own biases towards trauma, towards systems, your own beliefs, your own privileges, your own responses to things. All of these are incredibly important.” “It’s so important to know that you cannot pour from an empty cup. As teachers, we need to be reflective and introspective and look after our own needs especially if we’re working with children who have experienced trauma.” “[Trauma is] a very emotional wound. It comes from a very shocking event, repeated life threats, or frightening experiences that might cause very negative, long-lasting effects. It can start from childhood and it can have such huge impacts on your academic functioning, your emotional relationships and the way you respond to everyday situations.” “What’s important to realise is that not everyone who experiences adversity or a difficult situation will experience trauma. The reason why something is traumatic is whether you are supported by an attuned or caring other [person] through the adversity and the experiences that you’ve had.” “What’s important to remember is that traumatic events can lead to difficulties with our education and with our learning. It’s really important that our teachers, our educators and our education professionals have an awareness of trauma so that they can adopt strategies to support children in the classroom.” “Make time to talk in the classroom. Whether it’s small conversations when walking in the corridors or longer times such as having a dedicated space in the day. Maybe just after registration in the morning or in the afternoon where you can have these emotional conversations and make it really well known to your pupils and to your children that there is a safe and brave environment in the classroom for discussing things that might be worrying.” “Trauma is not something that’s going to go away overnight. It’s something that so many young people have. It’s such an important part of the government’s work at the moment to really make sure mental health is at the forefront of so much of our work. If we can make sure our teachers are part of the solution then we’ve really done our bit.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Noureen Lakhani – Twitter: https://twitter.com/noureen_lakhani Noureen Lakhani – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noureenlakhani/ Children’s trauma research: opinio.ucl.ac.uk/s?s=70548 Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 18 Jul 2019 | Heather McAvan (Mrs Mactivity and Former Marketing Expert at Twinkl): Resources and their impact on LIFE/work balance | 00:42:39 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Heather McAvan, a former teacher and now founder and director of Mrs Mactivity, a website full of creative, original and uniquely designed learning resources. Heather talks about her journey to becoming a teacher and, beyond that, the events in her life which led her to enter the field of business culminating in her building her own educational resource company. Having worked in schools both in England and abroad, Heather discusses how attitudes and approaches to education in the UK compare to those internationally, and shares her thoughts on what could be done to improve both the perceptions of education by the wider public and the work/life balance for teachers.
BEST MOMENTS See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 19 Oct 2020 | Stuart Tiffany (Founder of Mr T Does History): Primary history | 00:57:47 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Stuart Tiffany: teacher, history consultant and founder of the ‘Mr T does history’ website. Stuart talks about his journey through education from being fascinated by history as a child – even declaring to his grandfather during a tour of a castle that history was his passion in life – through to training to be a teacher and working in primary schools himself. Stuart shares how, following some difficult struggles with anxiety, he left full-time teaching to work part-time as a teacher whilst also promoting history through his website ‘Mr T does history’, and working alongside other schools as a consultant and training provider. Throughout this episode, Stuart talks about how the organisation and planning of history teaching can be improved, shares a range of tips and strategies for promoting history in school, and discusses a number of options for teachers to turn to for further support – including his own website.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “The main thing to consider when you think about curriculum is ‘clarity of thought’. If you say, 'Right, we're learning about the Romans.' The list of what you could teach is endless.” “Do we see history with that sense of narrative – that’s crucial – or do we have it in that isolated, episodic understanding of ‘we know lots about this block, this block, this block’, but we don't fit them together?” “My biggest tip is spend more time on chronology. It's not just 'I'm going to sequence some pictures from a well-known resource website.' We have to actually unpick what it represents. We have to look and examine those contrasts and those trends.” “It's that sense of narrative [with history]. If I'm talking to people, I usually say, 'Look, it's got the word story in it, so teach it with that sense of story.'” “There's nothing wrong with teaching topics. You just have to teach children what the subjects are. A few high-school teachers have said to me that when the children join us in year 7, they've no idea they've actually learned history because they just call everything topic.” “If you're only going to do [history] twice, once in key stage one, once in key stage two that's the minimum requirement, which are the most fundamental parts for the children to appreciate to understand their locality?” “Are we giving children the opportunity to see themselves reflected in what they're learning?” “It's sharing the achievements that the world has brought to us. We use the Hindu-Arabic number system. Think of the medical advances, the scientific and astronomy advances. It's 'A' fascinating and 'B' it's really relevant because if we don't teach about heritage accurately, where are they going to learn it from?” “We can see the curriculum two ways: is it a benchmark or is it a minimum standard? I would like to think of it as a minimum standard of, 'that's not what we should be aiming to teach, that's what we should be teaching and going beyond.'”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Mr T does history: https://www.mrtdoeshistory.com/ Stuart Tiffany – Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mr_S_Tiffany Stuart Tiffany – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MrTdoesPrimaryHistory Stuart Tiffany – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-tiffany-266930168/ Historic England Heritage Schools: https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/heritage-schools/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hit that charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 15 Apr 2020 | Coronavirus and home learning (Classroom Secrets): Terminology in teaching | 01:52:55 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet to four members of the Classroom Secrets team about the varied (and sometimes quite confusing) terminology that schools and teachers use or need to know. As a result of the coronavirus ‘lockdown’, many parents are trying to provide some form of education for their children at home. Many schools have provided wonderful ranges of resources to help with this, but, sometimes, these materials do contain words or phrases which class teachers would regularly use or would quickly explain in class. In this week’s podcast, each of our guests is an experienced practitioner in a particular age-range of primary education, and, with Claire, they talk about the vocabulary and potentially confusing terms which appear most often in their phase of school. First, Claire talks to Victoria Clay – the early years team manager – about the first phase of education that children experience. Victoria initially trained as teacher for the general primary age-range rather than specifically on the early years phase but, after covering a maternity leave in a reception class for several weeks, she knew that this particular area of school was where she wanted to work. In her teaching career, Victoria worked in three very different settings, including in a nursery, but made the difficult decision to leave teaching after having her own children. Claire then talks with Katie Cockroft, a key stage one proofreader, about the terms children will hear and use in years 1 and 2 at primary school. Although her degree specialism was in the early years, Katie has worked mainly in key stage 1 and has been a leader of English in the school where she worked. Lindsay Grix – our year 3 team manager – discusses some of the key learning children in lower key stage 2 will experience. Lindsay has 12 years’ experience of working across all primary ages from early years to year 6. Lindsay talks about the changes and challenges that children in years 3 and 4 experience as they quickly build on their learning in key stage 1. Lastly, Claire talks with Betty Powdrill – the year 6 team manager – about upper key stage 2, where children, in normal circumstances, would be working towards the statutory assessments. Betty shares how, apart from a brief desire to become a dentist, she knew that she always wanted to be a teacher from a young age. After volunteering in schools and completing the Graduate Teacher Programme, she realised that she felt most comfortable teaching in year 6 and spent the majority of her career teaching in this year-group. Betty has also moderated writing for the local authority and co-ordinated maths across the school where she worked. KEY TAKEAWAYS
PODCAST CHAPTERS Within this podcast, you can find out about the following aspects of teaching terminology that is used within primary education. 0:30 Introduction 1:48 Early years education – Nursery and reception
34:10 Key stage 1 – Years 1 and 2 37:02 Maths
47:24 English
59:56 Lower key stage 2 – Years 3 and 4 1:06:37 Maths
1:12:40 English
1:29:14 Upper key stage 2 – Years 5 and 6 1:32:47 Maths
1:36:55 English
VALUABLE RESOURCES Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 13 Feb 2020 | Kelly Ashley (Author and English specialist): Embedding vocabulary | 01:38:57 | |
In this episode, Claire talks to Kelly Ashley a former teacher and current Primary English Specialist and author. Kelly starts by explaining how she moved from America to the UK. She explains her experience of the American schooling system as a teenager and young adult. She also talks about her university journey and what options were available to her. After choosing various subjects including anthropology, sociology and child psychology, Kelly decided to choose teaching as her career. She completed a two-year teaching course in America and, after meeting her husband, made moved countries. After qualifying and moving to North Carolina, Kelly visited different schools to secure a teaching job. She successfully found work in a large 5-form entry school as a Grade 3 (Year 2) class teacher. As she gained experience within the school, Kelly didn’t shy away from leadership roles and climbed up the ladder relatively swiftly. However, she explains how she left the school, and America, after meeting her future husband and moved to the UK. After teaching for 6 years in America and halfway to completing her master’s degree, Kelly’s transition to the UK as a teacher was not as straight forward as she would have wished for. She was informed that she needed to requalify as a teacher to teach in the UK and she later requalified through the Graduate Teaching Programme. In this podcast, Kelly talks about her journey as a teacher in the US and UK. She talks about the transition from the different countries as a teacher and how she became an English specialist. Throughout the podcast, Kelly compares the different schooling systems and the cultures in America and the UK. She shares the various strategies she has established and refined over the years to support children with closing the vocabulary gap, as well as aiding them to ensure they are exposed to a well-rich and well-versed environment. She talks about her book and how it can support teachers in the classroom. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “The American [schooling] system is really different from the UK system.” “As soon as a I got into [teaching] I was absolutely hooked.” “I just drove around to different primary schools with my resume and I just went into the office and said, ‘Are you looking for any teachers?’ This was literally two weeks before schools started.” “It was a massive culture shock, educational culture shock, personal culture shock, everything.” “I was seconded to support the North Yorkshire English team. That eventually landed to a position coming opened. I applied and then I was working as a National Strategy Consultant.” “At the heart of it, whether you have a single age class or a mixed age class you need to be catering for the needs of all of your leaners. I think the biggest challenge for me was getting to grips with the change in curriculum and the curriculum expectations. Whilst I was in America, I was very familiar with what children needed to know and when they needed to know it. That was the challenge: more getting to grips with the expectations and what they should be achieving when. But the basic principles of understanding what are children doing and what do they need to do next, it was still applicable even though I had a mixed age class. It was thinking about, ‘how can we ensure that that offer really challenges the children in the most appropriate way?’” “The approaches to teaching back then [in America], especially in terms of literacy were a lot more holistic. You saw a lot of things like readers’ and writers’ workshop which, really interestingly, are coming back now.” “Education swings in roundabouts. There are some core principles, we have this great way in education of renaming the same thing.” “I had to almost relearn how to spell certain things.” “You could, theoretically, walk into a classroom in the US and still feel quite at home. Even though the curriculum is still quite different to how we shape the curriculum in the UK.” “Sharing stories to try and heighten that interest. The more that you can do to help children to connect what they are reading to their personal interests and their personal understanding. It is all about that motivation and understanding. What reading materials are they having access to? Giving them a choice.” “As an adult it means, you need to have a good knowledge and understanding of what’s out there. Who are the new authors? Who are the authors that have been out there?” “It’s about going and exploring books… help the child to see the connections that we can make.” “If you hook onto an author or style that the child’s is really into, it’s really exploiting that and thinking is there something I can do here to engage the talk, engage the love of language, get them to explore that technical vocabulary… that will just open up their interest a bit more. It is about finding books that match their interest but also finding books that broaden their interest.” “If we want to make that dialogic, we might say, ‘Oh blueberries, I really like blueberries. What’s your favourite part of your breakfast meal?’ We might ask them a follow up question or ask them to clarify or we might link them into to a personal experience. It’s that dialogue - back and forth conversation - that will help children to find themselves within language, but also to better articulate themselves.” “Repeating that word in a sentence is called recasting, helping them to get the structure of the language.” “Limiting vocabulary in any way is never really a good idea.” “The speaking and repetition are really key.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Kelly Ashley: https://kellyashleyconsultancy.wordpress.com/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 18 Jul 2019 | Mitch Hudson (Grammarsaurus): Saving Teachers from Grammar in the 2014 Curriculum and becoming a School Leader | 01:15:30 | |
In our first ‘live’ Teachers’ Podcast episode, Claire meets with Mitch Hudson, Assistant Headteacher, Head of English, and founder of ‘Grammarsaurus’, an online resource-bank offering a wide range of learning materials for teachers and schools. Mitch talks about how early in his career, he was able to utilise his grammatical skills and knowledge at a time of increased government focus on this aspect of English. Mitch shares his reflections on how his expertise came to be in demand and how this helped him rise swiftly through leadership roles along with supporting other schools, teachers and delivering professional development courses. Throughout his career, Mitch has visited a wide range of schools and has shared his skills and knowledge at numerous training events. He has met, worked alongside and coached many teachers and leaders, and this has given him some unique perspectives into the similarities between the lives and working conditions of teachers which he talks about with Claire. Mitch also discusses his thoughts on the future, his aspirations, where he feels education needs to go next, and how the life of Britney Spears can be an inspiration for all of us.
BEST MOMENTS ABOUT THE HOST See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 06 Feb 2020 | Christina Gabbitas (Author): Safeguarding with stories | 00:48:05 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Christina Gabbitas: an author, publisher and honorary member of the NSPCC council. Throughout the episode, Christina talks about how she uses her writing as an opportunity to open up conversations about hard-hitting concepts such as abuse and knife crime. She discusses her shyness as a child and how she overcame this, channelling those childhood fears into her writing. Christina talks in detail about the research she carried out in preparation for writing her book ‘Share Some Secrets’ which involves speaking up about abuse. She discusses the impact this book has had in making children feel comfortable and able to share troublesome secrets: having calls from Norway, Singapore, Australia and Switzerland to thank her for providing this resource. The conversation also covers knife crime and how she was approached by the Police and Crime Commissioner’s office to write a story to explore the effects of this issue. Talking openly, Christina describes real-life stories of victims of knife crime, as well as discussing the choices and consequences children face. Christina offers advice and reassurance on developing teachers’ knowledge of safeguarding, concentrating on how research through conversations can broaden perspectives on what is such a difficult part of the job. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Writing for me is therapy, but is helping other children.” “If you never try, you never know. Better to try and fail than not try at all.” “Sometimes we don’t know what we want to do. We take opportunities, we take those opportunities, we make the best of them and learn from them.” “It’s the power of media; the online media is quite amazing. But the most important thing to me is actually it is helping. I know now that it is helping children to speak out. So that’s one of my greatest achievements in life I would say.” “I think if you can educate children from a young age without it being too scary but just kind of giving them the idea. Prevention is always better than trying to pick up the pieces afterwards, isn’t it?” “Children are carrying knives because they think it’s going to protect them, but statistics are if they are carrying a knife, they are more likely to get stabbed with a knife or harmed with a knife.” “Again it’s educating children and the wider society about what’s happening.” “You’ve got to be everything: you’ve got to be a teacher, you’ve got to be a social worker, you know, you’ve got to be a counsellor. And it’s really hard and I do think that teachers should get more help within schools, I really do.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Christina’s Website: https://www.christinagabbitas.com/ Ineqe Safeguarding Group: https://ineqe.com/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 19 Jul 2019 | Mungo Sheppard (Headteacher): What Budget cuts really means for teachers and their pupils | 00:59:34 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Mungo Sheppard, Headteacher at Ash Green Primary School in Halifax and a National Leader of Education.
BEST MOMENTS See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 27 Oct 2020 | Juliet Adloune (School mental health expert): Mental health and wellbeing | 01:15:43 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Juliet Adloune: a school improvement adviser and mental health expert. Juliet had always wanted to be a teacher and, from a young age, had planned ahead mapping out her own journey through education by working out what she needed to achieve at each stage in order to be able to train as a teacher. Juliet talks about how, having been born and brought up in Manchester, she had experienced many positive influences on her life through being exposed to a wide range of backgrounds, religions and cultures as a part of her upbringing. After training to be a teacher at Cambridge’s Homerton College, Juliet found that she loved the area and has stayed ever since working in and with schools within Cambridgeshire Education Authority. Eventually moving into leadership, Juliet became a deputy headteacher and then a headteacher before taking on the role of a local authority school improvement adviser. Juliet discusses her belief in the importance of mental health within schools. After becoming a qualified mental health first aider herself, Juliet realised how important this was to her and she became a trainer for the programme and an advocate for raising the profile of wellbeing. Throughout this episode, Juliet shares her thoughts, experiences and advice around this key aspect of school life.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “The world around us has many limitations and lots of pushes and pulls on resources. However, there is a lot of support out there. You are not alone. It's about opening the door for yourself to seek support.” “I think the ethos in a school, that feeling you get when you go into a school and it feels like it's caring and compassionate, it does come from the top. And that's because the person at the top is being looked after and looks after themselves. And we do sometimes have to ask for that. We have to say 'this is what I would like' or 'this is what I need'.” “I say this with my sense of humour popping out already: we don't solve wellbeing with donuts on a Friday.” “Giving people time and space and the feeling that you are not going to be judged is a much, much more impactful wellbeing strategy.” “I think that makes a big difference to anybody's life: you still have pressures, you still have stresses, but if you love the jobs you are in or the job you have, it makes a big impact and a big difference on your outlook on that and how you feel about yourself and how you fit into that society of work.” “We don't always appreciate what we don't know what and what we're not involved in. And as we said about mental health, if you don't have the knowledge, then that sometimes can skew how you think about things.” “Because I was working with schools, often in difficulty, I was finding that, as time went on, the things that I noticed most about what made my work impactful was because I built relationships with people and because I didn't employ a one-size-fits-all [approach].” “My advisory role has always been, in school, what I call a 'hands-on approach'. So my work in school improvement has been not just saying what needs to be done, but showing people how it could be done and working alongside them to do it.” “[People] might say, 'I've got a bad back' or 'I'm not feeling great' or 'I'm under the weather' because they don't feel able always to be open about their mental health. Unfortunately, stigma and discrimination around mental health does remain.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Juliet Adloune – Facebook: www.facebook.com/mhfa.julietadloune Juliet Adloune – LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/juliet-adloune-318b9656 Samaritans 24-hour telephone support: 116 123 Samaritans online: https://www.samaritans.org/ Shout 24-hour text support: 85258 Shout online: https://giveusashout.org/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hit that charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 24 Nov 2020 | Hollie Hindle and Jenny Wood (Alfresco Learning): Learning outdoors | 00:40:00 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, following their hugely popular season 1 podcast episode, Claire talks again with Hollie Hindle and Jenny Wood from Alfresco Learning. Hollie and Jenny, both from teaching backgrounds, share a passion for learning outdoors. In this episode they discuss the challenges and benefits associated with providing activities in outdoor environments. As a result of the coronavirus restrictions currently preventing school visits, Alfresco Learning now provide training videos, online CPD and have developed their Key Stage 1 planning hub to maximise their impact on even more teachers and practitioners.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “[The challenge of time is] the one we’ve heard the most… purely down to people’s understanding of what outdoor learning is. Outdoor learning, really, should be taking your everyday indoor lessons outside. So taking your phonics outside, your maths, your English, your topic, science experiments, and people think it’s going to be an addition on their workload but, actually, what you find is, it reduces workload.” “[Some settings have timetables, allocated time slots, for taking children outside but] outdoor learning doesn’t work like that and actually, especially with the British weather, it’s not always going to fit into your slot. It might be that it just doesn’t quite fit in with what they’re learning that week. It might be that it doesn’t fit in with what the weather’s doing that week. So giving teachers a bit more freedom with when they can take their class outside really opens it up for teachers that maybe aren’t as confident in doing so because they can then choose which lesson it is that they take out…” “The outdoors demands that the activities are practical and hands-on, otherwise there’s no point… the children won’t reap the same benefits.” “[Studies] show that children develop more strongly, cognitively, when they’re outside and surrounded by nature. It has all these wonderful effects on the brain with concentration and attentiveness which obviously then increases learning… there [are] a lot of benefits for teachers and education around taking lessons outside.” “[We had children in our classes] who were maybe struggling to engage in the classroom, we went outside and they were suddenly engaged and they were suddenly starting to pick things up.” “Taking my class outside gave me that little bit of relief. It was good for the children as well and all these benefits were happening and all this learning. But, for me, when I had spent an hour outdoors with the class and I came back in, I felt so much better than I would’ve done if I’d have delivered that maths lesson, say, indoors.” “Children that I had in the class, that might have been a little bit shy to come forward and share with the group actually, outside, would share things that they had experienced outdoors, share things that they’d seen during play time, really connecting with the nature. Then, as well, children that were a little bit more of a ‘handful’ inside, outside just connected with other children and engaged with the tasks because it was a different way of learning that just worked.” “My passion for [learning] outdoors really came when my connection to those children changed after taking them outside. My teacher-pupil relationship was greatly improved by taking those children outside because I just saw such a different side to them that I hadn’t seen inside before, and it just worked.” “[Outdoor learning] takes off so much pressure from the children and you, as a teacher. Going outside you’re still covering learning objectives, they’re still learning, you’re still doing what you need to do, but everyone just has such a better time doing it because there’s no pressure of ‘it needs to be in the book exactly like this all the time’ or ‘it needs to be set out in a certain way all the time’. It’s just that freedom that it gives children, and you, to really enjoy learning again.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Website: https://alfrescolearning.co.uk Alfresco Learning – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alfrescolearning Alfresco Learning – Twitter: https://twitter.com/alfrescolearn Alfresco Learning – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alfresco_learning/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 22 Mar 2022 | Sensory Processing: Kim Griffin, occupational therapist | 00:24:50 | |
This week, I chat with Kim Griffin, an occupational therapist who is currently based in Australia. Kim has been working with pupils with SEN for almost 20 years and is on a mission to help teachers and educators understand the ‘why’ behind the way children behave when they have sensory processing difficulties. In this episode, Kim shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Kim and her work, you can visit:
Kim also shared some texts that anyone who wishes to learn more about sensory processing may be interested in reading:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 08 Mar 2022 | Career Education in Primary School: Samantha Hornsby, co-founder of ERIC | 00:20:54 | |
This week, I chat to Samantha Hornsby, who is the co-founder of the new careers app ERIC. Along with her best friend, Sam created this app after receiving poor careers advice in her formative years and landing job after job she disliked. In this episode, Sam shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Samantha or ERIC, you can go to:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 16 Feb 2021 | Overcoming barriers to remote teaching: Emma Handisides, deputy headteacher | 00:28:43 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks about overcoming the barriers to remote teaching with Emma Handisides, deputy headteacher at St Joseph's Catholic and Church of England Primary School. Emma talks about how her school has approached remote teaching over the last year including how they have maintained a positive determination in both preparing for, and working to overcome, the varied challenges that have emerged. From her school’s experiences, Emma shares some tips and advice and she and Claire discuss how other schools can continue to improve and develop their remote teaching provision.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Being able to see those children in school who you are face-to-face teaching and those children at home on the big board who you are remote teaching, learning together, as one class, is the most immense feeling.” “It's the most amazing feeling to actually be able to overcome those barriers of school closure and to say, ‘we're still all together. We're still learning the same things. We're still learning all together.’” “We've booked in some museum sessions where the children are on tours. We've booked in some art workshops where it's been streamed out to the children. We're just really, really trying to continue to enhance the curriculum as much as possible because there are things out there that are accessible.” “You could see it coming: lockdown two, school closures. Obviously, you hoped it wouldn't come. You hoped there'd be a change of path. But we just anticipated it throughout. I think the key there was that anticipation that this will happen again and that we want it to look very, very different next time.” “We still have barriers. But whatever it is that comes at us, [we're] just trying to find a solution so that all children can be engaged.” “It’s having that determination, that resilience, that positivity, that 'why are we doing this?' Well we're doing this to give the best for those children, and keeping that at the forefront of your mind.” “It's not always easy. You are remote teaching. You are face-to-face teaching. Technical glitches happen all the time. But, actually, having that positivity and that determination is so key.” “We just wanted to make sure that the provision can be the best it can be. And that is something, again, that we're working, continuing even, to work at.” “If there is a non-attendance at the remote teaching sessions, we are straight on the phone. I did say to the children right from the start, ‘we will be on the phone. We will be knocking at your doors. We will be. Because it's not an option. We need you to be there. We need you to be engaged.’”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Emma Handisides - Twitter: https://twitter.com/handisides_emma Saint Joseph's Primary School - Twitter: https://twitter.com/stjs_staveley Emma Handisides - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emma.shore.754 Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 05 Mar 2020 | Suneta Bagri (Mindset Coach): Personal development and creating a positive mindset | 01:24:18 | |
In this episode, Claire interviews Suneta Bagri: a mindset coach. Suneta has over 20 years’ worth of experience in education including being in a headteacher role for four years. Together, they discuss how Suneta always felt that she was a spiritual person knowing that she wanted to be a teacher from a very early age. She gained an interest in personal development aged 18 and this is something that she carried with her throughout her career. She talks of overcoming adversity and regaining a passion for education at University through the support of her siblings. Suneta defines personal development as a commitment for self-improvement and states she has a solution-focused approach when she wants to achieve something. Her current work centres around developing a mindset towards what you want. What do I want? How do I get it? How am I going to make it happen? They discuss the signs and symptoms of burnout explaining that senior leadership teams must be aware of this to help the teacher retention crisis. She explains that many people are talking about the crisis but not doing anything about it. In 2018 she decided that the wellbeing of teachers had to be first and foremost and wanted to create a movement that puts a focus on the wellbeing of teachers. Claire and Suneta explore how mentalities and opinions towards stress and wellbeing have improved over time. Teachers are becoming more open-minded towards innovative approaches to improving wellbeing. Suneta’s workshops focus on self-care, burn out and indicators of stress: all key steps to developing mindset and improving wellbeing. She explains that senior leadership teams must see the value of coaching so that the whole staff make an investment into the concept. This opens a framework of discussion which will help to make a larger positive impact.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Commitment to self-improvement. That’s really what it is. It’s about having an evolving mindset which is going to make you better as a person.” “We’re people first and professionals second.” “There’s lots of different areas of personal development, but your starting point would be your health because your physical health and your mental health is really your sustenance. So everything that you eat, everything you drink, the way that you move, the way you look after your body – that is all personal development” “You need to have a very open and transparent nature in a school.” “What can be one of the most difficult things for even colleagues to realise is that people are managing stress on a daily basis and we all do and sometimes that stress can be adrenaline: it’s a healthy stress. Where it’s healthy, we can kind of feel nervous… maybe we’re delivering CPD or maybe we’re seeing parents.” “Hierarchy exists. We can’t shy away from it. But that hierarchy shouldn’t be felt. And I think that’s where you get the most success in schools from my experience.” “On a plane you put your own oxygen mask on first and, when you do that, you can look after your own children if you’ve got children. But, it’s no different for teachers.” “Outstanding teaching is when you let the teachers be the leaders of their own learning. And if you’re not in a position to do that, you’re constantly feeling a lack of control.” “Wellbeing is also different for different people. So I can’t tell you what wellbeing should look like for you. All I can say to you is that wellbeing is going to be that you feel good about your life the majority of the time.” “You are your most important responsibility. The most important relationship you have is with yourself.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Suneta’s Website: https://sunetabagri.com/ The Every Teacher Matters Network: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/every-teacher-matters-network-tickets-76824765943 Christina Maslach Burnout Inventory: https://maslach.socialpsychology.org/ Author of ‘You Can Heal Your Life’: https://www.louisehay.com/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST Claire Riley Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 08 Feb 2022 | Personal Development and the Power of Choice Emma Cann, personal development coach | 00:27:26 | |
This week, I chat with Emma Cann, who is a personal development coach specialising in supporting teachers, about my favourite topic - personal development! In this episode, Emma shares: - What coaching is in her own view and the benefits of coaching. - Why teachers can benefit from engaging with personal development. - The journey personal development can take you on. If you’d like to find out more about Emma and where you can get in touch with her, you can go to: - https://www.facebook.com/groups/choiceclubwithemmacann/ - https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmacanncoach/ - https://www.facebook.com/emmacanncoach - https://www.instagram.com/emmacanncoach/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 15 Jul 2020 | Alistair Bryce-Clegg (Founder of ABC Does): Play-based learning in schools | 01:50:47 | |
In this episode, Claire talks to Alistair Bryce-Clegg, a former headteacher and now founder of 'ABC Does', a consultancy company that delivers training promoting the importance and power of play-based learning. Alistair talks about the significance of play-based learning in Early Years settings and Year 1, as well as how it helps children develop cognitively, academically and socially. He starts by explaining his teaching journey and how his family of teachers inspired him to take the same career path. He offers advice and guidance from his experience of working with Early Years practitioners in a range of settings including child-minders, day nurseries, schools, academies and home educators from around the world. Over the past eleven years he has developed his consultancy by offering training and conferences, in addition to support in the classroom setting. Alistair also speaks about how teachers should support children in the upcoming academic year after such a long period of time away from school due to the pandemic. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “[The placement teacher] single-handedly made me love early years in the period of a nine-week placement.” “She just worked magic with [the early years children] to the point where she had them literally eating out the palm of her hands, because she understood them, and they loved her.” “By the end of that placement, I got to a point where I thought, ‘no this is where I want to be’, because when I began to see the skill that was involved in it, and also appreciate that, actually, it’s not the end of the primary learning journey where the important learning happens, it’s the beginning bit. If you get that wrong, you are making it harder for every teacher that comes after you.” “So you have a responsibility to get it right in Early Years because you are creating these curious, critical thinkers who want to investigate and explore and be resilient and have an opinion and be independent. All of those things are in our power in Early years.” “All of that huge independence and creativity is not utilised and, because they don’t utilise it, they forget it and stop doing it. So how this really powerful play-based transition from Reception to Year 1, for me, if it’s done well, the attainment that those children achieve or the progress they achieve is always significantly better.” “High level engagement has got a direct correlation to high level achievement and attainment. So, if you can keep their engagement high, then you have the potential to get a really good achievement. If anything is going to keep their engagement high, play and investigative learning as opposed to a very last-century chalk-and-talk activity.” “One of the reasons why I love Early Years is because you get to teach a lot. You’re not just delivering, you are teaching.” “We really evaluated practice, trying to discuss and really drill what we meant by child-based learning. We kept saying we have fostered a child-led learning approach, but if you said to the team, me included, can you actually articulate what do you mean by child-led learning it was a really difficult thing for us to explain.” “The internet makes the world so much of a small place. You get to share with an eclectic range of people who have different views and ideas and opinions. You can take all that in and that, ultimately, improves your practice.” “Just have twenty minutes in a reception or nursery class and you’ll feel great.” “Play is an effective vehicle for learning. It’s not something you do before the learning starts or after the learning has finished. It’s not a holding space waiting for an adult coming to teach you something and it’s not what you go on to to keep you busy while I’m teaching somebody else. It’s acknowledging that ‘A’, developmentally children learn way better through play-based approach if there is rigour in your play. And ‘B’, play brings a high-level of engagement which links directly to high level of attainment. “This environment that I have created based on observation and assessment is going to engage these children in discovery-based learning. It’s going to keep them inquisitive. It’s going to keep them in the moment.” “If your provision is rigorous enough, if you’ve got challenge in play, that 5-year-old who’s progressed well down their learning journey should flourish even better because play is encouraging creative critical thinking, resilience, independence, social interaction, plan, execute. All of those things you don’t get to do with a worksheet.” “Behaviour is never the child. Behaviour is always a symptom of something a child is trying to process or articulate but can’t.” “Wellbeing has to be at the very top of everyone’s list always.” “Children don’t articulate in an obvious way. A lot of the time they will articulate in a very abstract way.” “The pedagogy for play-based learning has to stay because it’s developmentally appropriate.” VALUABLE RESOURCES ABC Does: https://abcdoes.com/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 11 Feb 2020 | BONUS: Martin Cutting (Classroom Secrets): Life/Work balance as SLT | 00:59:37 | |
In this episode, Claire speaks with Martin Cutting, a former primary Deputy Headteacher and now Product Manager at Classroom Secrets. Martin begins by explaining his teaching journey, how he progressed from a class teacher to key stage leader, then assistant headteacher and finally deputy headteacher. Martin had a keen interest in computing and coding but always aspired to become a teacher. Martin talks about the changes he witnessed whilst working as a senior leader in a primary school and how funding cuts led to redundancies; including his own voluntary redundancy. Martin speaks about how the education system has changed and the impact this has had on teachers’ LIFE/work balance. He also mentions the strategies his team implemented to help tackle teachers’ workload and how this had a positive impact on productivity. In the podcast, Martin talks in detail about the role of Ofsted and how increased accountability and high-stakes environments can put extra strain on all teachers, especially SLT. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “If I’d carried on in education, I would have become even more jaded by it.” “There’s a very quick jump to blame SLT in schools because they are the visible face for why teachers are doing the jobs they’ve been asked to do.” “A massive problem in education is the accountability culture or the blame culture and Ofsted. They are a huge reason behind why SLT do what they do.” “I was almost terrified of being asked a question that I didn’t know the answer to straightaway because I would be the one who lets the school down and we’re going to get special measures because of me.” “Teachers generally are people who will keep going as long as they can. The overwhelming personality type amongst teachers is to not want to [ask for help]. They are so committed to their jobs and see that as a weakness and it’s not.” “Looking back, I probably missed out on time with my children that I will never get back.” “I was looking for little wins for teachers... If teachers were willing to run after-school clubs, they were paid back through a day for themselves and that was quite well received.” “Ofsted serves a valuable purpose but it’s almost gone too far now where it has made it high-stakes for SLT and headteachers. That influences the decisions that headteachers and MATs make that then impacts on teachers’ workload and the demands on teachers in school.” “Technology has been a huge change in education. If you have a bit of technical understanding, you become a go-to person in school.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 18 May 2021 | Making writing meaningful: Tim Eagling, founder of Time Capsule Education | 00:49:20 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Tim Ealing: Founder of Time Capsule Education. During his time as a primary teacher, Tim was a subject leader for English. In 2016, he set up his own business: Time Capsule Education. Tim refers to himself and his business partner as ‘historical interpreters’ working in the heritage industry for clients such as English Heritage. Tim also works as a creative writing consultant in schools across the country.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I worry greatly that all the joy and fun in writing has been sucked out of it because we still have an awful lot of people who are bothered about whether they are using the dreaded ‘fronted adverbials’.” “I would certainly like to see more emphasis on drama activities, storytelling and building stories with older kids. I’m a key stage two specialist more than anything else and I think, over the years, because of time constraints and the pressures of curriculum and all sorts of other things, that we’ve ended up not letting big kids play.” “At the end of the day, my first love in school and outside of school is teaching history. As a historian I could extol the virtues of teaching history and why we should teach history but, actually, what it boils down to is that schools are judged mostly on the teaching of English and of mathematics and writing.” “You can’t write a historical story, you can’t write a story set in Tudor times, unless you understand a little bit about Tudor times. You need the language, you need to know what people wore and ate, what they did and various other things.” “I want to be able to facilitate and help teachers make their writing experience that bit more interesting, engaging and relevant to the kids. And it should be fun.” “We’re always going to be needing to have our kids improving their writing; and the one thing that is really important about this is that you get terrible writing if there’s no experience. You get pretty awful, ordinary writing if you focus on just the technical things.” “I like primary school to be the place where kids get lots and lots of different experiences to find that ‘thing’ that really gets them going. Whether it’s sport or music or dance or drama or art or history or whatever.” “As a primary teacher, it’s impossible to keep up that level of excitement and passion in every single subject you teach. I fell into English teaching… and I just have so much fun doing it. I’m a frustrated writer. My hook to most kids when we give them stories to start is, ‘I started writing this story and I don’t know how to finish it, so I need you to finish it for me.’”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Website: https://timecapsule.education/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timecapsuleed Twitter: https://twitter.com/TimeCapsuleEd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timecapsuleed/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 06 May 2020 | Ben Cooper (Founder of WAGOLL Teaching): Home-learning in Dubai | 00:52:50 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet to Ben Cooper, vice-principal of GEMS Wellington Academy in Dubai and founder of the WAGOLL teaching and Literacy WAGOLL websites. Ben talks about how he began developing his Literacy WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) website ten years ago in England just after the key stage two writing assessments were adapted to use moderated evidence. After creating a range of example texts for his class and publishing them online, other teachers began contacting him to share their example texts and his site grew. After moving to Dubai about six years ago, Ben soon became the head of teaching and learning in the primary school at his academy and is now vice-principal for the primary phase. During this time, Ben blogged about his experiences of everyday teaching beyond the subject-specific skills, focusing on elements such as the humanistic side of educating children. Although this blog started out as a part of his Literacy WAGOLL site, Ben felt that as it was more about teaching in general, it didn’t gel with the site’s literacy focus so he created a new WAGOLL Teaching site to share his ideas and observations. Ben also talks about the approaches his school has taken as a result of the impact of the coronavirus including how, ahead of local school closures, they liaised with other international schools to share ideas and discuss successful or innovative approaches being taken in places where restrictions were already in place. Ben also discusses his school’s arrangements for home-learning including how they are currently delivering four live online lessons a day for maths, English, science and story-time. Along with this, Ben also discusses the benefits of technology, the importance of social connections now more than ever, and shares some tips for parents trying to balance home-learning alongside work. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Story time is fifteen minutes where the teachers just sit and read a novel as they would do in school and we see some lovely pictures from the kids sat on their beds or sat on the sofa curled up with a cuddly toy just listening to the teacher read a story. And it’s those types of moments, really, that I think are the most important about remote learning because it’s that humanistic element. Learning is really portable. The children still need to develop that understanding of connection and make connections with people. It’s really lovely to see.” “It’s really important we allow for flexibilities. We offer support in terms of making sure they have time off from live sessions. We’ve introduced things like wellbeing-Wednesdays where there is no screen-time. We set the children wellbeing activities like yoga or mindfulness or treasure hunts. The idea is that they turn off their iPad and they spend the afternoon off doing things. That’s the same for teachers. We want them to enjoy wellbeing-Wednesdays with their families as well.” “We adopted a mentality of saying just take every day for what it is, just accept it and then move on and try not to plan too far ahead.” “This new way of living… we’re getting used to it. So it’s just being patient, going along with it [and] taking every day as it comes.” “To start off with, parents were fearing that the children were going to fall behind, they were going to find it difficult. What happens if they just can’t access it? They’re just not going to learn for 12 weeks until the end of term. And we did say ‘no they will start to learn, they will pick up, and they will start to access the learning and be more effective because they will get into those routines.’” “Just be patient and just see how it goes. Do what you can. Your child is not going to not go to university because they’ve missed three or four weeks of year 3.” “We were speaking to parents on the phone, just reassuring them because they were getting worked up that their child was missing subjects. We just said, ‘look, at the end of the day you do what you can for your family in this time and we’ll support you though that. As soon as your child is back in school, we’ll make sure that they are catching up and back to where they need to be.’” “There is a reason why we have classrooms in schools. If remote learning was as effective as it is school, we wouldn’t have school buildings. But we do because we know that that’s the best place for our children to learn.” VALUABLE RESOURCES GEMS Wellington Academy, Dubai: https://www.gemswellingtonacademy-alkhail.com/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 12 Oct 2019 | Vashti Hardy (Children's Author): Inspiring books | 00:40:29 | |
In this episode, Claire interviews Vashti Hardy at the One Education Literacy Conference. Vashti is a children’s author from Sussex who is well-known for her novels ‘Brightstorm’ and ‘WildSpark’. Before becoming a writer, Vashti worked as a primary school teacher for several years specialising in English. Vashti has always been passionate about reading and writing. During her BA at Chichester University, her dissertation research project investigated how free-writing sessions impact children’s enjoyment of writing and their self-belief as writers. One of Vashti’s secondary school teachers gave her a free-writing journal and she credits him for inspiring her to become an author, along with another teacher who read the book ‘Rebecca’s World’ to her as this opened her mind to the idea of imagination as a super power. During Vashti’s time as a teacher, she regularly used free-writing journals with her class and ran creative writing clubs. She went on to study for an MA in Creative Writing whilst teaching. Eventually she decided to leave teaching and become a copywriter and digital marketing executive as this gave her more time to focus on her writing career. Vashti’s debut novel ‘Brightstorm’ was published in March 2018 and the sequel to this will be released in February 2020. Her second novel ‘WildSpark’ was published in May 2019. Vashti discusses the importance of reading for pleasure and shares practical tips and advice to spark a love of writing in children. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Story time was always the most important time of the day for me.” “Ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things. Knowing that is really important for children.” “It’s really important for children to know that everyone makes mistakes. No-one gets it perfect. It’s a team that works on a book. It’s not all about one person. It’s OK to have other people look at your writing.” “Teaching is a hard job. It’s an amazingly satisfying job but hard.” “For teachers, I wish that the box ticking could just disappear and there would be more space for some blue-sky thought.” “Wanting to do something and believing you can do something are two different things... It can be quite a journey learning how to overcome that and have self-belief and have tenacity and positivity and bash down the barriers and find a way. It’s knowing that with enough hard work you can do it.” “With writing, I always thought at the end of my life I would regret not trying. Failing is a different thing. If you’ve given it everything and you fail, at least you’ve tried your best. So I thought I’m going to really try.”
Vashti Hardy’s website: https://www.vashtihardy.com/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 12 Oct 2020 | Helene Cohen (Special Educational Needs expert): Dyslexia and inclusive teaching | 01:40:39 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Helene Cohen: an experienced teacher and special educational needs expert. Helene talks about how her own first-hand experience of special educational needs – growing up with dyslexia without realising it – has given her unique perspectives on ways to make education and teaching as inclusive as possible. For a significant period of her life Helene labelled herself as ‘stupid’ seeing her classmates and others around her seemingly reading and understanding things much more quickly. While her dyslexia created (and continues to create) additional challenges, Helene qualified as a teacher, became a Special Educational Needs coordinator, and eventually undertook a doctorate. Helene discusses how, as a part of her own journey becoming a teacher and gaining her doctorate, she discovered her own dyslexia and moved into working as a tutor, consultant and INSET speaker for special educational needs. Throughout the podcast, Helene shares a wide range of ideas for including those with additional needs: involving children in activities or discussions where they cannot verbalise their thoughts, how to include children with dyslexia in English lessons where there can be anxieties around being involved, and ideas for how to make resources more accessible.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “That's something I'm getting really fed up with at the moment: the pressure to catch up because children have missed a few months of schooling. As though that's the only thing that matters. I would say their mental health matters an awful lot more.” “They're learning that, actually, we learn from our mistakes. That is such an important part of resilience and a part of life. It doesn't matter if you get it wrong. What matters is what you do about that.” “Another piece of advice for working with anybody with any special needs: if you can make something multi-sensory, you're more likely to remember it. When I do work on adjectives, I bring in something lovely to eat and something awful to eat and let them taste it and describe it. They never forget that lesson because they tasted it.” “We need to give people a chance to succeed. Some people succeed academically. Some people succeed in other ways.” “We need to listen. Listening is such an important part of our jobs as teachers.” “We need time. My biggest problem with school at the moment is they're trying to cram so much in and they're forgetting that they're actually people we're trying to teach. If we don't know those people, we won't teach them properly.” “We need our creative thinkers. We need our problem solvers. We need our people who are resilient, who can work out how to make something better because they got it wrong.” “We need creative thinkers and logical thinkers. A spoon-fed curriculum that focuses on data is not going to give us that. [That is] going to give us people who can regurgitate facts.” “Let [children with special educational needs] have a laptop in class or a notebook or, you know, something. Use our technology. That is so important. I can't stress that enough.” “Every child I've ever taught knows that I care more about their vocabulary than their spelling. The spelling we can work on afterwards.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Helene Cohen online: https://www.pleasemissplease.co.uk/ Helene Cohen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/edpleasemiss Helene Cohen’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helene.edpleasemiss.9 Helene Cohen’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-helene-cohen-39870848/ Real group: https://www.realgroup.co.uk/ Selective mutism: In our own words: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selective-Mutism-Our-Own-Words/dp/1849056366 The Teachers' Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/Claire_Riley_TP The Teachers' Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theteacherspodcast/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hit that charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 26 Apr 2022 | Bringing Coaching Tools into the Classroom: Alice Westbury, education coach | 00:25:45 | |
In this episode, I talk with Alice Westbury about bringing coaching tools and strategies into the classroom. Alice is an education coach who works primarily with young people but a lot of what she shares in this episode is so valuable to those who teach in primary settings. In this episode, Alice shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Alice, you can visit: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 21 Jan 2020 | BONUS: Jack Watson (Classroom Secrets): Talking about Teaching Anxiety | 00:54:35 | |
In this episode, Claire speaks with Jack Watson, a former primary school teacher and now Resource Creator at Classroom Secrets. Jack joined Classroom Secrets in October 2018 and started his journey as a Customer Service Administrator, then Sales Representative and currently works as a Resource Creator. Growing up, Jack always knew he wanted to be a teacher. He studied, attended university and graduated with a teaching qualification. After his graduation, Jack got his first job in Halifax and was ready to enter the teaching world with his passion, motivation and zeal. Due to the workload of the job, Jack’s love of teaching started to decrease. He started to develop work-related stress and anxiety. For a long time, he suppressed his feelings and was unable to speak to any friends, family or colleagues about his well-being and work-related stress. In the podcast, Jack talks about his teaching journey and why he decided to quit. He talks about the challenges he faced as a teacher, as well as, what happened after he resigned. He speaks about a heart-breaking decision he made after quitting and explains how he got to where he is today. Jack speaks about the support and services available for people suffering from work-related stress. He emphasises the importance of seeking advice from professionals, colleagues and family. *If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this podcast, you can contact the Samaritans, who provide confidential, emotional support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair. Helpline: 08457 90 90 90 (24 hours a day, seven days a week) Website: https://www.samaritans.org/ KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “[I] was eager, enthusiastic and ready to go, let’s do it. [It] didn’t quite live up to the expectations I that I had built up in my head, despite going on all the placements.” “I think there's a massive step between a final year student and this is your responsibility. It's one of the biggest professions where within five years, newly qualified people leave the profession, it's one of the highest percentages. I think that says a lot in itself in terms of that jump. It's almost like the NQT year is designed to be that stepping stone, but there needs to be a stepping stone before that stepping stone.” 1:39 -2:05 “The more you do, the more you need to do. Eventually I was doing as much as I physically could but still needed to do more. That was just a natural progression, it just happened.” 2:15 - 2:30 “Eventually I became rather panicky, anxious [and] worried about someone coming in to do an observation.” “It [got] to the point, where in my head, anytime a teacher or an SLT came to speak to me it meant that they were going to come ask me to do something that I felt physically felt like I didn’t have time or capacity to do.” “It got to a point where I couldn’t into the building.” “Went to see the doctor and the doctor signed me off for work-related stress and anxiety. That brings its own stress of money, [thinking] what am I going to do next, I’ve failed. I did all this training for nothing…that takes your self-esteem down.” “I decided that teaching is no longer where I want to be. I left and would just sit home. Sometimes I couldn’t get out of bed, felt so ashamed that I let myself down, my mum, dad, partner, everybody that supported me during that journey of training. I’ve taken it away from them and it does eat you up.” “Some places would say you are overly qualified, you’d be bored. Some people would say we are looking for someone more long-term and we can tell after looking at your qualifications that it is just going to a filler.” “The day I finished my 12 weeks probation [at B&Q] is the day I left.” “The private sector is very different from the public sector and it just didn’t quite work for me.” “You’re that focused on what you have to do and you are that focused on the time, the energy you are investing on other things that when someone tells you that you need to do this instead of that or tells you to do this, as well as, that you beat yourself up that you’re not good enough and that you are not doing it right, you are letting the children down that are in front of you. It started off with just being nervous about someone coming in or doing a book scrutiny. From there it just snowballs that you start to panic about someone coming to watch you.” “Towards the end of my teaching, I would set off in my car and drive past three or four times before plucking up the courage to actually get in and do a day’s work. Then take home another day’s worth of work home to do in the evening.” “The amount that it requires to do it to the level that it’s needed, there isn’t enough hours in a day. I would beat myself up that I couldn’t do more. I couldn’t do everything plus the three things that someone asked me to do that day. I became so scared that someone was going to say that I wasn’t good enough because I already felt it so if someone else said it, it was confirming how I felt. It made it worse again and it you just sort of spiral from there.” 7:47 – 8:24 “Teaching [for me] is standing in front of children and imparting new knowledge on them, allowing them the opportunity to practise it and looking at whether they need more practise or whether they have got it to move onto the next piece of learning. Teaching in reality, is that between the hours of 9am to 3:30pm but then you’ve got three hours to go on books, then you might have a vulnerable child that needs this report writing, then you might have this SEND child that needs you to do this separately for them which is absolutely fine because that’s part of the job and that’s what they need for you to impart that knowledge on to them. Then you have data, tracking progress this big long second job which takes the same if not more amount of time then the actually teaching. It’s like two 37.5-hour jobs rather than a job.” 10:26-11:27 “I had a panic attack on day 1 [at B&Q]. It was new and I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t told anybody of me having anxiety and panic attacks, so I am trying to concentrate on [not having one]. The more you talk about it (in your head) of don’t do it, the more it’s inevitable going to happen. Came around, told them about it and one of the managers said, ‘come with me’, [he] picked a chair around from behind one of the desks, sat me down and said this is your safe space. He said ‘if at any point you need a little bolt hole, you need to just get away you come and sit on this chair and if you are sat on that chair people know to just leave you alone for five minutes’.” “I could do everything exactly the same as everybody else just because I had that understanding that if I needed five minutes to go sit down and talk to myself, I could have five minutes to talk to myself. You don’t have that in the classroom. You cannot leave for five minutes to just compose yourself.” “I know how hard it is to talk to anybody, never mind talking to the person that’s doing the judging. It’s like saying here is my weak card, use this against me if you want. But they [SLT] need to know. If they don’t know they can’t do anything about.” 17:58 – 18:15 “It’s expecting something to change that can beat you up because 9 times out of 10 nothing can be done about it. If there is, they need know in order to try and do that.” “Have as much time away from it as you are comfortable in allowing yourself. Make sure your Saturday and Friday nights are yours. Your Sunday evenings can be the day to catch up.” 18:37 – 18:54 “Work is there to facilitate your life, not life there to facilitate your work. If you get that balance the wrong way around all you are doing is working, you never switch off. In order to do any job to the best of your ability, you need to be in that position (mentally and physically) to do it.” “It’s knowing when you have got the time and energy to do it.” “If you add up all those clicks, before you know it you have a big bang. The big bang makes a big difference rather than a click.” “If anybody told me to do something, I would try it. If it didn’t work, it’d stop doing it and if it did work, I’d keep doing it.” “I’d take someone’s advice and twist it so it would work for me.” “I felt that inadequate, ashamed, down and it’s not just teaching that takes you there, but teaching takes you [a] certain way and then life adds on. I don’t want to be an education banisher. It started the ball rolling and things progressed. I’d been taken to hospital after taking an overdose and written letter to family members because I felt that low that I couldn’t put people through looking after me anymore. I could put through ‘I’m alright, no I’m not again, I’m alright, no I’m not again’. The rollercoaster of mental health, I couldn’t put up with that any longer. I convinced myself that it was the right thing to do…[I] waited for something to happen but nothing did so I started to panic. [I] rang my partner and told her what happened… my friends were making sure I was awake. I was taken to hospital to check that the tablets I had taken had not done any damage. I was assessed by the Mental Health Crisis Team and was given advise not to be left on my own and that can be suffocating in itself you need to be left alone.” “In order to prove you are getting better you need to be given opportunities to prove that show that you are getting better. It was a long journey.” “Everybody wants to know everything once your cry for help was that loud.” “You’ve got no option other than to talk.” “You have to show them [your family] you are alright before they understand.” “You think ‘I can’t give anymore’. Don’t tell me that I have to do this because I can’t do it. I’m here as long as possible.” “When you stop, you drop.” “You know that you are giving it your all, you are giving it all that you have got, so when you are told that everything you have got is not good enough, it can hurt.” “You don’t want to be treated any differently.” “You just want to be able to do it.” “Children don’t have to respond to every piece of feedback. Having a group not going to assembly and saying ‘you all made this mistake in your [task]. I’ve not written in your books because I’ve seen it and we are going to look at it now. That’s enough. It’s means you are not spending 20 minutes writing a paragraph in 10 books.” “Look out for ‘I’m fine.’ People will say ‘yeah, I’m alright’ when really they are drowning.” “I would just strongly advise anybody that is struggling to just say ‘listen I need some help’.” “Just because you are struggling mentally doesn’t mean you can’t go to the doctors and say, ‘this is what’s going on here’ and you will get some help. That’s where the stigma arises because it’s invisible people think ‘yeah I’m alright’.” “You become a really good actor… it depends on that person if they are a good actor or not.” “Everybody in a school environment, any office environment or any workplace should be responsible for their colleagues and [have] a pastoral care or role with each other. Just asking that extra question.” “When you are working in any environment with the same people every day, you do begin to know what their normal is.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Andy’s Many Club: http://andysmanclub.co.uk/
ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 21 Sep 2021 | Maths for Life – a differentiated approach: Karen McGuigan, founder of The Maths Mum and creator of Maths for Life | 00:24:04 | |
In the opening episode of the season, I chat with Karen McGuigan, founder of The Maths Mum and creator of Maths for Life. Karen is incredibly passionate about maths and her ambition is to ensure all children, regardless of their ability or any additional needs they may have, leave school armed with the mathematical life skills they will need in the future. In this episode, Karen shares: - Why she is so passionate about maths and ensuring all children can pick up those life skills. - Her journey to becoming The Maths Mum and where the inspiration for Maths for Life came from. - Ideas for breaking down the objectives for those pupils who need extra support to get true understanding. If you’d like to learn more about The Maths Mum and Maths for Life, you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 29 Mar 2022 | Creating Cognitively Challenging Classrooms: Dr Keith Watson, consultant and coach | 00:27:11 | |
In this episode, I talk with Dr Keith Watson, an educational consultant and personal development coach who has over 30 years of experience working in education. Keith chats about creating cognitively challenging classrooms and how teachers can provide a challenge for all pupils. In this episode, Keith shares:
If you’d like to find out more about Keith and his work, you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 08 Jul 2020 | Bryn Llewellyn (Founder of Tagtiv8): The benefits of active learning in schools | 01:15:43 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with Bryn Llewellyn, founder of Tagtiv8, a company which specialises in creating resources to enable pupils to learn through physical activity. Bryn talks with Claire about his background in education: from growing up in South Shields close to the coast and developing an interest in environmental issues, to gaining a degree and working in an urban studies centre in Newcastle, to then becoming a teacher and deputy headteacher in Bradford. Bryn discusses how his work in school led him, eventually, to develop his company Tagtiv8 after he found that what he was being asked to do as a teacher was conflicting with his core values. Bryn talks about how Tagtiv8 aims to promote the benefits of physical and active learning and how this way of teaching can be useful for developing and enhancing pupils' learning across the curriculum. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “When I was a teacher and a deputy headteacher, I loved it, but I was aware of the fact that a lot of the things I was being asked to do were against my core values.” “With the education system in the way it was at that particular time, I thought 'it's not going to change', so let's think of a way of changing it; not necessarily from within, but maybe chipping away from the outside.” “I think, sometimes, when you take the learning out of the classroom, beyond the classroom walls, learning takes place in a different way completely.” “My big concern is that many schools will look toward the daily mile. But if you force the children to do a daily distance... it's happened with the daily mile in terms of it becomes the once-in-a-while mile or the-occasional-mile. If I had to run every day, at certain time, come rain or shine, I'd get well hacked off with that.” “I think that the young lady that's doing everything so well at the moment is Greta Thunberg. I think you've got more and more children looking towards her. In primary too, not just older children, but primary as well. And the amount of times I go into schools and you see displays on the wall to do with oceans and plastic and things like that, I think there's a naturalness in a lot of children that we need to start thinking and doing more for the environment.” “I think teachers need to realise that it's okay to make mistakes. You'll try something and it doesn't work so then, so what? It didn't work. At least you've tried.” “If you have chances for the children to give you feedback on 'what is it like to learn' and then, sometimes, in terms of 'can you see your own teaching through the eyes of the learner that you're trying to teach', then that gives you a genuine chance to reflect.” “If teachers and school leaders were allowed to get on with the job, if they were trusted in the way that the Finnish government ministers trust their teachers, and other countries trust their teachers, and don't use education as a political pawn, we'd have a far better workforce and we'd have far happier children.” “It would be gorgeous to think if certain people within the powers-that-be could just sit back and reflect and think, 'is everything we've done the past 10 to 12 years the right thing?'” VALUABLE RESOURCES Tagtiv8 website: https://tagtiv8.com/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 01 Dec 2020 | Clem Studholme (Creative manager at One Day Creative): Creativity in education | 01:00:07 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Clem Studholme: National Creative Manager at One Day Creative Education. Clem comes from a performing arts background and, after spending some time teaching English in Italy, he developed his appreciation of using performance to provide a purpose for learning. Clem went on to work for a charity involved in youth work and explored social inclusion and bringing different communities together. Further work involved social action projects and outdoor education, whilst a period in recruitment enabled Clem to gain an insight into how social enterprises and larger businesses can support creative education. Clem talks about his firm belief that creativity in education is important for children’s wellbeing and academic abilities. Now, as national creative manager, he delivers drama, music and movement workshops in schools, supports teachers in their CPD and, in more recent times, has been developing the company’s digital learning platform.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I really believe that creativity in schools and performing arts and the way we teach, not just at One Day but across the sector, is immensely important and I feel strongly about that. It’s what I love to do.” “If we look at education systems in [other countries] where the focus, especially in the early years up until the age of seven, is how to get along with each other and how to work together… where their education system is focused on the human being. We need to be focusing on what can we do to support our children and ourselves and the wider community to become happier.” “This idea of performing isn’t just about a performance at the end of high-quality art, drama, dance [and] music. It weaves its way into our life. We are becoming a society where a lot of things are becoming mechanised and computerised and a lot of the facts can be regurgitated. But, actually, how we get along with each other, how we empathise with each other, how we solve problems and morals, spiritual, creative problems, how we innovate… this is becoming much more important not just in work but in our lives, in our personal development. So I think that performing and creativity, and learning how to do that… is immensely important, especially as the world changes.” “That idea of being able to make mistakes and it being okay; it’s alright. Sometimes we do need facts and we do need figures and we do need to learn what has happened. We need to learn context. But making mistakes is alright and, in drama, we’re allowed to make mistakes and that’s quite fun!” “On a wider level you see some schools who really embed the performing arts in their learning: performances and presentations and longer term creative projects. Creative education isn’t just performance. [It’s also] longer term creative projects. If they embed that in their curriculum, you see children who are willing to get on with each other, who are willing to own their learning and enjoy their learning.” “[Creative education facilitators] talk to children on a very real and honest level. Sometimes [adults] do need to let loose a little bit. Let them see us as human beings as well, having fun and making mistakes because, if we can make mistakes, they’re alright to make mistakes sometimes and they can build themselves up to be better next time.” “You can do so much with something really small and you can do whole programmes of work on a single page of a book, especially with drama. Not just for a performance but how we’re going to perform, how we’re going to create that freeze frame, get into the character a bit more, and allowing that time.” “We have to think about what education is for. Some people might say it’s for the world of work, so preparing children for the world of work. Whereas others say there’s a hidden curriculum where we’re building up children, how to get along and helping children, supporting children, do that.” “We need a different kind of work and a different way of living. So we need to learn how to get along and we need to learn how to innovate, problem-solve, rather than retain facts and just regurgitate them. So I hope education goes towards a more holistic, a more caring, and a better funded, model.” “It’s incredible to see how vast this set of skills that we learn in performance, and learn through creativity, can be applied. And, actually, you can have the best idea in the world, you could be the most intelligent scientist in the history of the world but, if you can’t communicate that, then there’s only so far it will go. We need a combination of maths, science, we need all these subjects, but they need to be on an equal footing… if we lose one, we lose the whole child.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES One Day Creative – Website: https://www.onedaycreative.com One Day Creative – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onedaycreative One Day Creative – Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/onedaycreative One Day Creative – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/one_day_creative_ed/ One Day Creative – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/one-day-creative-ltd Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 05 Oct 2021 | Education on Fire Mark Taylor - presenter of Education on Fire podcast | 00:26:13 | |
Education on Fire: Mark Taylor, presenter of Education on Fire podcast This week, I chat with Mark Taylor, presenter of Education on Fire podcast. Mark has taught music in multiple schools and has seen for himself the wonderful things teachers for their pupils. Realising that the teaching profession needed a lift in the media, he launched his podcast in order to allow educators to share their knowledge far and wide. In this episode, Mark shares: - What he believes the foundations for learning are (FIRE) and why. - Why these foundations apply to both teachers and pupils, and why it’s important for teachers to put themselves first. - Reasons why educators might feel isolated but also how they can learn from each other and create teaching communities.
If you’d like to learn more about Mark and Education on Fire, you can visit: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 23 Jan 2020 | Chloe Daykin (Children's Author): The Journey of an Author | 00:26:27 | |
In this episode, Claire speaks with Chloe Daykin a teacher, award-winning writer and children’s author. Chloe begins by explaining her journey of attending art school, becoming an artist and creating pop-up books. After becoming a mother, Chloe decided she wanted to follow her childhood dream of becoming a writer and set out to do just that. Chloe began writing and sending out short stories and playscripts in order to help her receive a bursary for a MA at Newcastle University. She was successful in attaining the bursary and completed her qualification. After receiving her postgraduate, Chloe began writing a children’s book, a young adult’s book and an adult’s book to help understand her target market and the text type she would like to explore further. She decided to complete the children’s book and shortly after writing the story, she met with her agent and began receiving offers from various publishers. In the podcast, Chloe speaks about her journey as a writer and author. She openly speaks about her three published books and how she generated the ideas for each story. Similarly, she talks about the concepts and experiences that inspire her to write, as well as, the risks she takes when writing. Chloe touches upon the editing process and how this is incorporated when publishing a book. Moreover, she makes direct links of how her books can be used within the classroom, in addition to why they should be used. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I love reading children’s books, so children’s and young adults books was kind of my thing.” “They are all so different…the latest ones is quite fast-paced, quirky, original and quite unusual but quite beautifully written that’s a very important part of it. They can be quite a lyrical, poetic quality to the writing. In terms of content, somebody described it as magic meets modernity.” “With the poetry ethic it comes quite naturally. It has to flow and if I think too hard about it, it doesn’t flow through. It has to come quite instantly.” “Reading other people’s book, meeting people, travelling and imaging. Being an artist first, I always have an image in my head before I start writing a book. I come up with that and the words come from there. I know if it’s gone off slightly, if I come back to the image and it doesn’t quite fit.” “I just wanted to really show people the world really and go ‘do you know what, come with me, read a book.” You don’t get to chose when you are a kid but you can through reading.” “Not yet, that’s next on my list. I would love to do a children’s play with some really cool songs in it and [it] just [be] really fun.” “[Schools] invite me down, I travel down and do the school assembly in the afternoon. Then the next day, I do a few workshops, working in different classes, particularly because ‘Fire Girl, Forest Boy’ really fits in with a lot of themes in the curriculum. We do really cool workshops, where we make pop-up books and we pretend we go on this big journey of discover to the rainforest and then we create museums of discovery books, where we invent magical objects that we find. Then we do writing where we unleash the power of the magical objects.” “I like getting ways of people writing where they don’t really notice that they are doing it. So they are so wrapped up and excited it about that it just flows and we are not thinking about spelling or different words and we are living it in the minute and do some really exciting, powerful work.” “I don’t think anyone uses the word ‘fun’. It’s not a fun period… it’s hard, it’s challenging. Sometimes it’s exciting challenging because you get to write new bits that go in and generally that’s what it is for me. I generally react quite shocked…so it’s often extra going in rather than cutting bits out.” “It’s about who it’s important to be important to. It’s really about search for identity, so in the times of YouTube and kids thinking it’s important to be popular with millions of people, this is about who it’s important to be important to. In it [the book] he’s kind of thinking do I want millions of fans on this or actually is it more important to be really close to my dad. Discovering who your family is and that can you be people who are outside of your immediate family and building your own families up. “We are all a mixed bag.” “A lot of my chapters are broken down into short little chunks to make it kind of accessible and fun.” “They’re [her children] very good, really good critics and very helpful. They don’t hold back on telling you what they think, which is great because you need to know. I like read it aloud to them and we axe loads bits.” “Michael Rosen; funny, poetic, great he’s a really lovely guy.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Faber and Faber: https://www.faber.co.uk/author/chloe-daykin/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 16 Jan 2020 | Dan Storey (SEMH Teacher): Behavioural Issues and SEMH Schools | 00:49:34 | |
In this episode, Claire talks to Dan Storey, a teacher currently working at a Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) school. He begins by explaining how he started his teaching career in mainstream schools in Manchester and moved to America to work as a football coach. Dan decided to move back to the UK and continued working in mainstream schools on long term supply. He briefly explains how the American schooling culture and ethos is different to the UK but states that this experience helped him when he returned to the UK to continue his teaching career. Dan explains what an SEMH school is and outlines some of the disorder’s children face at his school. He speaks about the support provided at his schools for young boys with various learning difficulties and explains how they cater for their individual needs. After receiving many questions about behavioural issues from staff, friends and colleagues in mainstream schools, Dan decided to share his experience, tips and strategies to support children with behavioural difficulties. He then moved onto writing a blog on Nexus Education where he shares some strategies and tips to help staff with managing behaviour. In the podcast, Dan talks about his experience of working at a SEMH school, the training he was offered and the bank of knowledge he has gained working with children with behavioural issues. He talks, in detail, about the strategies and approaches used within his school to support children with ADHD, ASD and other disorders. He discusses the importance of undertaking the relevant training to understand and support children with these disorders, as well as gaining first-hand experience of working with and/or observing these children. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I enjoyed it [teaching as a football coach] but I missed the classroom.” “We do teach the Primary Curriculum. I think sometimes people seem to have a thing that if you work at an SEMH school you are just playing and you’re not teaching, but we recently had an OFSTED and we got Outstanding in our OFSTED. Four, five years ago, we got the same result. OFSTED were happy with what we teach, and we do teach the Primary English, Maths and Science curriculum. We do teach the core subjects, but we try to teach them in a fun way.” 2:53-3:11” “We are getting an influx of children coming in mainstream primary age, so that’s where are school is focussed on this year.” “I’ve got friends that work in PRU schools, independent SEMH schools and Behavioural schools. They say it’s a lot different than our school. They feel like it’s just about managing the child. My school, I feel like we are like a mainstream school; we teach, we asses, everything that a mainstream school does.” “When we have cluster meetings with the LA and have book scrutinises, they were very impressed. I think a lot of people are shocked, I do think they is a stigma with a school like mine where there’s not as much learning going on but there is.” “Attachment disorder – when you are child and the primary care gives you the love and security that you need then that child is going to have a good life and it is going to have the right emotions, is going to be able to deal with those emotions in the right way. When that child has not got that secure attachment from the primary care giver, for example, they have gone through trauma, they have not been given attention or abuse then that has a knock-on effect on that child, with their mental state. When they come into schools, they can’t sit down and they won’t, they can get quite angry and aggressive because they aren’t used to regulating their emotions like we can so the brain develops differently as a result of the non-secure attachment.” “It [Attachment] can be helped and you can support children with Attachment, by giving them that security, by giving them that love in schools and giving them the chance to vent. In our school we have a therapist/counsellor and they work with the boys in school who have gone through trauma and abuse. Due to them having attachment, we use the sessions to support them. You do start to see the difference, it’s about giving them the clear boundaries as well, giving them structure and giving them the support that they need.” “Mainstream teachers had more time going into special schools. Recently, all the teachers in my schools went to different mainstream schools because sometimes you feel like when you are in an SEMH school you are a bit deskilled so by you going to a mainstream school you can pick up ideas.” “School SENCO’s or teachers during their PPA sessions or on days come into [special] school do some training and share good practice.” “When I first started at my school, I didn’t know much about SEMH I was quite new to it. I’d worked in a nice mainstream school with lovely, quiet kids and I went into this type of setting and it was a culture shock.” “I went on and did a diploma in Education, a PGCE in SEN and then a Masters in SEN.” “When together with the school [and children], instead of the school saying this is what is happening, if the children are taking some ownership over I think that does really help. Every year, we sit down with each teacher and each child we they go through the behaviour policy and we come up with a new policy each year.” “You have got to be consistent with all children.” “You need to know a child’s background.” “It’s about getting down to their level, finding out what they like… if they like something it’s about using that to your advantage. Make the lessons about that, make their work about something like that, something that interests them.” “I try to make lessons interactive and fun. I know if my lesson’s boring and I’m bored that they [the children] are going to be bored. What I try to do, with the curriculum, is look at what’s going to interest the children in the class. Having a positive relationship with the boy is the most important thing.” “Everyday is a behaviour intervention in school. We have Lego therapy in school. Small groups do Lego therapy, a school councillor who comes in once a week and takes certain boys out.” “Boys with ADHD need immediate rewards, that is what helps them.” “They know that you know, they are doing something wrong.” “It’s about finding things that work.” “If staff are not gaining their PPA time there should be something in place. Even though it’s a government thing, it’s law that you should be getting your PPA time. I don’t get all mine, so the times when I don’t get all mine there should be something in place in schools where they should be able to speak to the union.” “It’s about getting the right training and having student’s teacher when they are in university and having more time in special schools. It should be for longer time. What we are finding is a lot of mainstream schools are excluding these “problematic” children and they are coming to our school. A lot of the time they are angels. I understand there are smaller class sizes and we’ve had more training but it’s about getting the right training early.” VALUABLE RESOURCES ADHD Foundation: https://www.adhdfoundation.org.uk/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 16 Mar 2021 | Remote Ofsted inspections: Dr Victoria Carr, Headteacher at Woodlands Primary School | 00:52:04 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with returning guest Dr Victoria Carr: Headteacher of Woodlands Primary School. Victoria’s school was recently inspected remotely by Ofsted and she talks about how their preparations stood the school in good stead for their monitoring visit. The school had previously focused on improving attainment in maths and English so, when Victoria became headteacher, she led the staff in creating a whole new foundation curriculum. A lot of time and effort was invested in planning a thematic approach which provided enjoyable experiences for children and ensured they were happy and engaged in their learning. This overhaul of the curriculum, which began in 2019, ensured coverage and progress in all subjects. Leaders created progressive statements of expectation within the theme-based provision and these were transferred onto the school’s tracking system to assess pupil attainment. Once she had received ‘The Call’, Victoria briefed her staff over Zoom and provided an opportunity for everyone to remind themselves what they had done, as a school, since the last inspection. This realisation of how much work had already been completed allowed staff to feel more prepared for the inspection.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “You can’t buy a real Ofsted experience. People can come and do ‘mock-steds’ until the cows come home but it’s not relevant until you feel that level of pressure and manage that really in a sensible way.” “The inspector explained to me they wouldn’t be in in person unless they had any specific safeguarding concerns, which thankfully they didn’t. Everything was conducted remotely.” “It wasn’t a deep dive where Ofsted dictated to us who they wanted to talk to; they were very pragmatic and very understanding of some of the constraints that we had.” “These remote inspections are limited, naturally, because they’re not able to just pick things up in a classroom or wander around school.” “It was quite hectic, that first bubble closure, because it was quite a shock to everybody. But we managed it, which then informed us for how we would do it in January when we actually locked down as a whole school.” “Our art teacher was actually off school with Covid and not teaching at all. I thought a nice way of involving her in the process was to submit to the inspectors her overview of the subject, the progression statements that were on our tracking system for art and some of the exemplar of the work that had been created as a result of her curriculum plan.” “I wanted to show our school off in the best possible light. I wanted to give people a chance to talk [to the inspectors] and go through that experience as a coaching experience.” “We were already quite far on in our journey, despite Covid [and] despite the lockdown.” “The staff said they’ve never felt more ready. Which is great because they’ve said that in the last two inspections I’ve done with them.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES School website: http://www.woodlands.cheshire.sch.uk Dr Victoria Carr – Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappyHead74 Dr Victoria Carr – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-victoria-carr-0190157b/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 01 Jul 2020 | Dr Victoria Carr (Headteacher at Woodlands Primary School): How one headteacher is coping with partial reopening. | 01:07:21 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with Dr Victoria Carr, headteacher at Woodlands Primary School in Ellesmere Port. Victoria discusses how her difficult and sometimes distressing childhood meant that she would spend a lot of time reading and learning on her own before she even started at school. This head-start gave her a good grounding and the words of her reception teacher, ‘this girl is university material’, stuck with her and motivated her throughout her educational journey. Although she had (and still has) a keen interest in the military – in particular a desire to fly Chinook helicopters – Victoria moved into teaching and leadership with an ambition to motivate and inspire children and her staff to seek and fulfil their dreams. Victoria discusses the challenges of leadership in this period of disruption within education, how she supports the pupils and staff in her school, and how the coronavirus has led to her having to be more creative with the latest round of recruitment. She also shares how she strives to help, support and motivate others to be the best they can having learned from her own experiences and seen through her own life what the power of words can achieve. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I became a teacher and I've been teaching now 23 years and it is a job that I absolutely love. All of the amazing people I've met through that journey and the things I've done, I don't regret any of that now. I do wonder how my life would have been if I'd been a pilot...” “I have this philosophy… that when I'm an old lady - hopefully I'll live to become a really, really old lady when I'm 90 - that I'll be able to look back and think that I was lucky enough to seize every opportunity that came my way, that I've got no regrets and that I can truly say I've lived my life and that I've touched lives as I've gone through in a positive way.” “I know that the teacher who said to my mum and my nan when I was five that I was ‘university material’ did change the direction of my life because, before that, nobody in my family had ever thought about university. It was just never a thing.” “Back in the 70s, everybody respected the teaching profession. They were well respected. So my grandparents were of an era that teachers were utterly respected.” “Now that I'm a head, I try to make sure that everything I say to the children in our school is personalised and positive and in some way transformational both to their parents and their children.” “I wouldn't want to lead ninety-odd people who are just doing my bidding. I want them to actively challenge me because I want to be the best I can be and I want to model that. It can be a really collaborative thing that everybody does and that way we get the best out of everyone.” “I don't just invest time in teachers. I think you should invest time in people because they are my team and I really want them to feel fulfilled and challenged. I think it just empowers your team.” “If you can help someone, even in a small way, to realise their dreams then is there anything better? I don't know if there's any better thing than helping people to effect their dreams or their passions in life.” “We'll just be adaptable. Because one thing's for certain: in my leadership journey of eight years, I do know and, in fact, in my life if I'm honest with you, you just have to adapt. If you want to survive with your marbles, you just need to adapt.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The Power of Language – TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/victoria_carr_the_power_of_language_everyday_heroes
Claire Riley Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 17 Aug 2019 | Lee Parkinson (ICT with Mr P): Technology in the classroom | 01:36:26 | |
In this episode, Claire meets with Lee Parkinson also known as Mr P, a part-time teacher, entrepreneur, technology guru and trainer. Mr P starts by explaining how he started his teaching journey as well as juggling his home life with triplets and a stepson! Mr P and Claire explore the importance of technology within education today. He discusses how schools can embed and incorporate technology within their curriculum and how this can support to reduce teacher’s workload. They discuss the challenges schools face with funding, society, accountability, workload, curriculum, social media and pressures of delivering technology lessons. He explains the various CPD and INSET training he provides to teachers and schools with technology and computing as well as support on how this can be integrated into the curriculum on a day to day basis. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I am so grateful for the support both him (Alan Peat) and Julian gave me in those early days. It was just incredible.” “No matter wherever you are teaching in the world, there’s that universal life as a teacher that we can appreciate and have a laugh at. If we didn’t laugh, we would cry.” “I am contracted to work to one day a week but if I am free, I’ll go in and help out wherever I can.” “As teachers we only see the problem within our own school, we can lose sight and not appreciate how could we have got it in certain ways.” “The curriculum is so unique to your school in lots of ways. One school’s curriculum is going to very different from your school.” “Funding is the biggest reason why schools don’t make as much out of technology at the minute.” “The Great Hack on Netflix is a must watch.” “Data now is more expensive than oil.” “You cannot be creative without knowledge.” “If we don’t give children the opportunity to create and apply that knowledge creatively, what’s the point?” “SATS isn’t assessment.” “My must haves would be a TA.” “Education is a political ball game.” “Technology is not an overnight thing.” “Don’t call them book looks because that winds me up, how you have got to make everything rhyme in education.” “If it doesn’t have a direct impact on the kid’s learning, stop doing it.” “Vlogging is such a powerful tool, we don’t utilise it enough.” “Writing is the starting point to absolutely everything.” “Writing is so incredibly important, but we can now use the technology to go a step further with the writing.” “The only universal way to in which we can improve teachers’ wellbeing is to give them time.” “Stop the faff, stop the nonsense.” “OFSTED don’t raise standards. OFSTED check standards to their own subjective views.” “Social media has an impact on teaching.” “Technology is all about balance and making the right choices with it.” VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 05 Jan 2021 | Supervision in education: Lisa Lea-Weston, founder of Oak Practice | 00:52:54 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Lisa Lea-Weston: a drama therapist and the founder of Talking Heads. As a child, Lisa wanted to be an actor and went on to study drama in London. It was during her time at university that she decided she would go on to study to be a drama teacher. However, during a holiday job where Lisa supported children to access mainstream play schemes, she changed her mind and, instead, turned to working with children and young people with learning disabilities. This helped her learn more about inclusion and welcoming differences. At that time, Lisa’s manager saw how she interacted and engaged with young people who, for example, had severe autism. Lisa supported them, facilitated their play and engagement with others, and it was here where Lisa decided on a different career. Finishing her drama degree, Lisa then trained to become a drama therapist. Reflecting on the holidays where she had spent time supporting children in the play-schemes, Lisa says it shaped and informed a lot of what she does now in her current role.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “If you think of psychology or counselling, then [drama therapy] is that – you go because something inside of you is in distress, but the language that is available to you isn’t just talking, [it’s also] the creative language, which we all have, and that absolutely includes people with a profound and multiple learning disability…” “When people get freaked out about drama therapy, which they do and [say] ‘I can’t act’, in 20 years I can still recall the times I’ve used role-play. I don’t use it very often. That’s partly because of the people that I work with because it’s not accessible to them as a language of creativity, but there’s an entire other world of projective play, stories, music, movement, mirroring, connection, achievement, attachment that is available to us and, really, if you unpick any therapeutic relationship, those are the key components and the talking aspect is only another 30% maybe, of what happens in a therapy room. The rest, anyway, is a non-verbal kind of relationship.” “Mirroring is absolutely the first thing that happens when a baby is born, the first thing that mother and child do is to look at each other. It’s so entirely natural. A lot of us don’t realise we do it. The baby makes a noise and the mum’s eyes widen with delight. Then [the baby’s] eyes widen and mum will mirror back whatever sounds the baby makes, and that’s mirroring. A baby is so rewarded by that, what the mum does, that they gradually go on to do it again and again and it will wave its arm and the mum will catch its thumb and then you’ve got that touch attachment. The mum will stroke and soothe the baby when it’s crying, so all of that is about mirroring and it’s absolutely vital to healthy development, absolutely healthy.” “The beginning of ‘mirroring’, as adults, is being aware what’s happening with ‘the other.’ It’s really important for a teacher to be able to immediately pick up on the mood of her class in the morning and then, if they’re very heightened, knowing what you need to be [doing], somehow acknowledging that, but not joining it. So, wondering how you get alongside it, it might be doing some kind of movement at the beginning of class that gets their attention without using their voice but you’ve got to get alongside it, so you need to be conscious and then find a way to mirror back an understanding to your class. Then you’re going to have their attention.” “Supervision is where you bring all of who you are at work to your supervisor to talk about your practice, to talk about your work for the purpose, ultimately, of being ethical and accountable but not in the way that schools are used to. So we’re not talking Ofsted, we’re not talking a 1:1 supervision in the corridor where someone’s judging you and there’s a hierarchical element, it’s none of that. It’s absolutely a confidential shared space.” “The important thing about supervision is that it’s a process of regularly checking in with someone who knows you or gets to know you really, really well for the purpose of being safe, for children and young people. That’s it, fundamentally, but without any tick-boxing or ‘Ofsted-y’ outcomes needed other than checking in deeply and processing and having time to think about ‘How am I at work, and if I am or aren’t OK, what does that mean for the school and it’s culture?” “[Ideally there would be] an expectation that if you work in safeguarding that you have ‘supervision’ and yet it’s not really. It’s increasing, but it’s not commonplace in education. The emotional weight of work - in order for it to be tolerated - you need to have that space where you can clear the build-up to keep on working, otherwise you become too full really quickly.” “In twenty years, there’s probably barely been a month, or even two weeks, of my life that I haven’t also been a ‘supervisee’. I go to supervision regularly. And I don’t go to supervision because I’m not any good at my job or I don’t know what I’m doing. I go because ‘A’ I don’t want to get really full and then ‘B’, in order to remain absolutely available and able to listen and be with whatever someone brings me, I need to have done my own processing, growing and reflecting and clearing because I also sometimes get overwhelmed and stressed and I need my own supervision.” “Recognise the load that you’re carrying. Take it outside. Go walking with it. Get it moving. Something that is overwhelming needs energy and the actual physical movement of the body helps to process something and if you’re on your own then that’s a very good start. Make that commitment to yourself to realise that you are overloaded and to do something about it, even if it’s ‘diary-ing’, three times a week, to go for a walk with yourself, that would be huge.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Oak Practice: https://oakpractice.co.uk/ Lisa Lea-Weston – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TalkingHeadsOak Lisa Lea-Weston – Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkingHeadsOak Lisa Lea-Weston – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/talkingheadsoak/ Lisa Lea-Weston – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oakpractice/ Leeds-Beckett university hub for supervision: https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/carnegie-school-of-education/national-hub-for-supervision-in-education/ Co-authored book ‘Trauma in the Creative and Embodied Therapies’: https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-in-the-Creative-and-Embodied-Therapies-When-Words-are-Not-Enough/Chesner-lykou/p/book/9781138479210 Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 26 Mar 2020 | Coronavirus: Lessons from week one of home-schooling | 00:26:49 | |
In this episode of the Teachers’ Podcast, Claire reflects on her initial experiences educating her children in the early days of the national lockdown. Despite the huge changes to our way of life, many parents are looking to keep their children entertained while still getting some form of education. Claire talks about how she has tried to make a start with this for her own children. Claire discusses how her expectations of what home-schooling would look like contrasted with the reality and how, even with a teaching background, the challenges of educating at home are notably different to those within a school. For parents up and down the country, providing some form of education for their children will be a concern. As every family is different, there will likely be a variety of unique challenges and issues parents will be facing such as sourcing activities for children of different ages while trying to build in routines to also allow working from home. Claire considers the challenges she has already encountered, what has been successful and what has not gone to plan, and shares some helpful tips and advice which could be of use to others. KEY TAKEAWAYS
VALUABLE RESOURCES Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 17 Nov 2020 | Sue Atkins (Parenting expert): Raising confident and resilient children | 00:36:22 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Sue Atkins: a parenting expert, author, speaker, coach and broadcaster. Sue previously worked as a teacher and deputy headteacher for over twenty years; however, a period of reflection and re-evaluation whilst walking her dogs lead Sue on to a different path to becoming an author, parental coach and broadcaster. Sue is passionate about supporting, nurturing and helping parents to raise happy, confident and resilient children. As a practitioner and trainer in ‘Neuro-Linguistic Programming’ (NLP) she offers friendly advice that has resulted in the publication of her books ‘Raising Happy Children for Dummies’ and ‘Parenting Made Easy: How to Raise Happy Children’. Sue makes regular appearances on TV and radio to offer her advice and support: ‘This Morning’ and ‘BBC Radio’ to name but a few. She is also Disney’s parenting expert for their Facebook ‘lives’, Ladybird Books’ parenting expert, a counsellor for India’s Parents World magazine, and has established an online Parenting Club.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “With good parental relationships, we are breaking down barriers and building bridges, not walls, between parents and children so that we all nurture them and give them the best start we can in life.” “Don’t always rush to rescue a child. Help them sometimes stick with something... We can help children by leaving them to struggle a little bit. Don’t leave them there struggling for ages - that demoralises them - but allow them to feel capable and confident. That builds their self-confidence and builds their self-esteem.” “He couldn’t make that connection [transitioning to Year 7]. He couldn’t get used to the changes; he couldn’t make good friends… That always sat in my mind as a surprise – there was this very self-confident young man in his primary school who struggled to belong, to connect, to feel he was part of the new school for a little while so that triggered something in me to make sure all children should be nurtured, just as good practice. I’m very keen on seeing primaries and secondaries talking a bit more.” “Parents and teachers think [children] are worried about certain things but sometimes it’s actually worth listening to what the children themselves say… what their anxieties or worries are. We mustn’t presume.” “It’s looking at the lines of communication… small ways to make big differences that will make sure that parents, teachers and kids are connected and communicating effectively.” “[Building and maintaining resilience is important] to help a young person feel connected, that they belong, that they’re important, they count, they’re significant, you see them, you hear them, you’re listening to them.” “I think you have to make peace with the fact that you never get it all right. You never juggle it so that everything is in balance all the time… don’t let time dominate you.” “As a former teacher and deputy head, I’ve got many, many friends who are still teaching and I just watch them in awe... Teachers are absolutely outstanding and need a real pat on the back and a medal. They are doing their very, very best.” “If you follow your passion, believe in yourself, and keep doing small things regularly every day, it’s amazing where you can turn out and where you can go and you just take your life into a different direction. We’ve got to adapt, we’ve got to be flexible, but we’ve got to realise what’s important to us and then take off from there.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Website: https://sueatkinsparentingcoach.com/ Sue Atkins – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sueatkinstheparentingexpert Sue Atkins - Books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B00DVOOXAK Sue Atkins – Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/sueatkins Sue Atkins – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sueatkins18 Sue Atkins – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sueatkins Sue Atkins - Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/thesueatkins Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 28 Sep 2019 | Beth Southern (EAL Expert): Supporting children with English as an additional language | 01:02:59 | |
In this episode, Claire meets Beth Southern, an experienced EAL Consultant and a Specialist Leader of Education for EAL. Beth has taught extensively in both primary and secondary schools, and she is the creator of EAL HUB which provides a range of resources to support EAL learners in the mainstream classroom. Many teachers also use her resources for non-EAL children with limited vocabulary. During her discussion with Claire, Beth shares a huge range of practical advice and tips to support EAL children and their parents. She stresses the importance of ensuring that EAL pupils are given the opportunity to work with ‘more able’ children in the class who can model good vocabulary and grammar. It is important to steer away from the assumption that they need to work in lower ability groups as this can drastically hinder their progress. Every EAL child is unique along with their circumstances and background, so there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Beth created the EAL HUB for this very reason – to offer a versatile and holistic EAL hub that is a go-to place for teachers in need of support, resources and training for students learning English. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “If I got uprooted and got plonked into a classroom in Russia or China, I might not want to speak for a while either!” “Using their first language is fine. Teachers are afraid of that sometimes and feel they need to stop that… but it is absolutely fine for them to use their first language. We should celebrate that language and they need to keep using it.” “It’s really important to remember that children that have EAL do not have special needs.” “Try and get a buddy system in place… It’s always better to have two buddies than one because it’s quite a big ask for a child to be a buddy for somebody who doesn’t speak very much English. It’s frustrating sometimes and it’s tiring.” “For very vulnerable children, the last thing they’re thinking about is learning English, so for those children it’s literally about nurturing. It’s about making them feel that they’re ok, they’re here and they’re safe.” “We really need to focus on workload and life/ work balance. How can we make teachers want to teach? How can we allow them to have that creativity? Can we be more creative and can the government have less of a say in education? There’s too much control. It used to be that headteachers had a lot more discretion and were able to do different things.” EAL HUB: https://www.ealhub.co.uk/
Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 05 Oct 2020 | Greg Bottrill (Early Years specialist): Finding joy | 01:22:39 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Greg Bottrill: a specialist in early years education, consultant, author, and strong advocate for play in teaching. Greg begins by talking about how he had always wanted to be a teacher and, initially, was more drawn to working in key stage 2. However, after working in early years, he quickly realised that this was where he belonged. For just over a year, Greg has travelled around schools offering consultancy services and training and development sessions promoting the importance of play as a part of our education system and children being at the centre of their own learning. Alongside working with schools and teachers, Greg is also an author of ‘School and the magic of children’ and ‘Can I go and play now?’ which explores the imaginative world children live in and how to bring joy and adventure into learning. Greg discusses his passion for bringing excitement and wonder into learning, and how he believes that every child has magic within them which can be shared with us all.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “I wanted to be key stage two teacher originally. And I ended up in early years. And it's just a really beautiful place to work. We played very, very hard. We kind of created like a pedagogy that came from the soul. I'm a great believer in teaching from the soul, teaching what you believe in rather than a scheme.” “That's what it's about. It's almost trying to show schools that there is this magic world. And it's the magic world of childhood. When you go adventuring in it, then just amazing things can happen.” “My belief is that your childhood is your identity. So play is not anything frivolous. It's not something you do after work. It's not what you do at playtime. It is you. It's in your DNA.” “There are many, many, many wonderful teachers doing amazing things with children working within a system; and it's the system that's at fault.” “I think if you ask any teacher they would say to you 'the education system needs to change'. And it does. What we need to do is embrace childhood because you only have it once. And you have this magic about you. And unfortunately, it goes.” “I'm a real believer in the soul: the soul of teaching. It is about 'soulifying' children. That is what we should be doing. And, unfortunately, we have a system that 'tells' children. What it doesn't do is 'show' them. If we show children the world, learning pops out.” “The world is full of learning. Chock full. But what happens is we have curriculums that say you've got to know a fronted adverbial by the time you're seven. That, to me, is a claustrophobic curriculum. Yes children need to have skills, but they also need to have - one word - joy.” “One of the things that I'm really passionate about is playing with language. In this country, the adult world is obsessed with trying to prove itself, so it came up with the idea of the phonics screening test in year 1. And it's got nothing to do with children. Nothing. It's got everything to do with profit and someone selling a scheme and proving that somehow the adult world has done something with children.” “The Achilles heel of play is that the adult world wants to have understanding of what it sees. Play is the unknown. You have no idea what's going to happen when children play. None. You can't plan play. But the adult world wants to have a plan. It wants to be able to walk in and know what's happening. But you can't.” “With play, there is no curriculum. You don't need one. You can take learning anywhere.” “One thing that humans need is choice. Often, our education systems don't give children choice, the choice is made for them. We don't like it as adults... but our educational policy makers think it's ok for children. There's just a question mark there.” “When you go back to your childhood, most of the time, an adult is not present in those real golden moments of your childhood. Most of the time you're with other children and, strangely enough, most of the time, you're outside. We have this thing where the classroom, the four walls, is 'the learning', but it's not. It's everywhere.” “The beauty of play, because it's so open ended, any child from any culture can come into a room and play. It's a universal language.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Can I go and play now: http://www.canigoandplaynow.com/ Greg Bottrill's books: http://www.bookseducation.co.uk/bbooks-greg-bottrill-c-59.html Greg Bottrill's Twitter: https://twitter.com/canigoandplay Greg Bottrill's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canigoandplaynow Greg Bottrill's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/can_i_go_and_play_now/ The Teachers' Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/Claire_Riley_TP The Teachers' Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theteacherspodcast/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 28 Sep 2021 | The 5 Steps to Wellbeing and How to Implement Them: Karen Gibb, director of Mind Marvels | 00:20:19 | |
The 5 Steps to Wellbeing and How to Implement Them: Karen Gibb, director of Mind Marvels This week I chat with Karen Gibb, founder and director of Mind Marvels, a company that supports young people with their mental health in schools, nurseries and online. Karen talks to me about the NHS 5 Steps to Wellbeing, what they mean to her, and how they can be implemented within the classroom. In this episode, Karen shares: - What the NHS 5 Steps to Wellbeing are. - Why she is so passionate about giving people the tools they need to manage their wellbeing. - Some tips on implementing the 5 steps in the classroom but also how you can implement these steps into your life.
If you’d like to learn more about Mind Marvels, you can visit:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 03 Jun 2020 | Georgia Hibberd (Founder of The Happy Child Agency): Mental health and wellbeing | 01:41:10 | |
In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with Georgia Hibberd, well-being consultant and founder of The Happy Child Agency. Georgia talks about how she began her teaching career a little later than usual following work in science, marketing and sales. Having been involved in the Brownies organisation and then seeking work experience in a school, Georgia found that she loved working with children and went on to gain her teaching qualification at Manchester University. After working at several schools, and following some upsetting experiences in her life, Georgia discusses how she became increasingly involved and interested in mental health and well-being, and supportive roles within schools. This led to her taking a lead role for well-being within her cluster of schools and then working for a local authority. Following a move back into teaching in schools, Georgia felt she still wanted to work in a more supportive role for children and their families, so she founded The Happy Child Agency which offers a range of supportive services for both children, families and schools. Along with discussing her journey through education and founding her own company, Georgia also shares ideas and approaches for supporting mental health and well-being, considerations around supporting year 6 pupils as they transition to secondary schools in the midst of the coronavirus restrictions, and how schools could prepare for children returning after losing family members. KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “Sadly, we go through all sorts of different things that affect our feelings and affect our mental health. Had I not had the various networks and various things in place, I don't know where I would be. But I did and I was really lucky.” “I want to be that person… I want to be a teacher that helps that child get through the tough times.” “Ultimately it's about what you do for yourself, isn't it? It's about how you are able to actually say, ‘Do you know what? I really need to look after my mental health at the moment because I know I'm struggling.'” “I think teachers, from what I can see, from what I've read, are doing a brilliant job at the moment. Massive round of applause and standing ovation for those school staff. I think we have to trust the fact that they know the children.” “Who have you made smile today? I say that every week, I think who have I made smile today?” “Try to do things that make you happy as well and actually say to yourself, look I can't do it all. I can do my best, but that list never does get completed. Put on your list 'have a break'.” “If you're not in a good place, who's going to look after those children in school? You need to look after you so then you are in a good place to look after your children.” “If a child is happy then they're more likely to learn, and a happy teacher is more likely to do a better job. Somebody who feels valued puts in so much more than they would do. So I would say it's about being kind to each other to get most out of everybody.” “You know what I really hope as well? I hope that parents really value teachers again. I think it's got a little bit lost. I think sometimes we're kind of mud on their shoe. I don't know why. They have some conversations with us… they probably would never question their doctor or their dentist, and yet they question teachers.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Classroom Secrets Kids website: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/ ABOUT THE HOST Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 07 Dec 2021 | The Impact of Stress on the Body: Jessica Nash, wellbeing coach | 00:36:59 | |
This episode is our 100th episode! This week I chat with Jessica Nash, an education wellbeing coach. In this episode, we chat about stress and the impact it can have on your body. Jess is someone who knows all too well the physical effects and the consequences stress can have on your health, so now she works to help teachers recognise the signs and act before it’s too late. In this episode, Jessica shares: - Her own personal story of burnout. -What SLT and other leaders can do to help teachers in their schools. - How to recognise what is causing stress and feelings of overwhelm. If you’d like to learn more about Jessica and her coaching services, you can visit: - https://urlgeni.us/instagram/jessicajoancoach - https://urlgeni.us/facebook/jessicajoan - https://www.jessicajoan.co.uk/service - Join her Facebook group here: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 14 Dec 2021 | Building Resilience and Avoiding Burnout: Jenny Mills, cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist | 00:29:17 | |
In this episode, I chat with Jenny Mills, a qualified cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist and teacher. Jenny has worked in schools for 18 years now and knows the common symptoms teachers experience due to stress all too well. After experiencing burnout herself, Jenny now works to help teachers build their resilience and avoid burning out. In this episode, Jenny shares: - What cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy is and how it can help teachers. - Where SLT can start in helping their staff look after their wellbeing. - Activities teachers can implement now to help them build resilience now. If you’d like to learn more about Jenny and her services, you can visit: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||
| 27 Apr 2021 | Executive functions in education: Victoria Bagnall, director of Connections in Mind | 00:19:44 | |
EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks with Victoria Bagnall who is a director and one of three founders of Connections in Mind: a company that provides coaching in executive functions. Victoria left teaching in 2011 and, after tutoring students who had additional needs, she turned her focus to neuro-education and executive functions. Victoria discusses the importance of executive functions are and how they are the skills of self-management that allow people to live a healthy and fulfilling life. She also talks about how Connections in Mind works with and supports students, adults and teaching professionals and shares some thoughts and advice about how to develop confidence and encourage sustainable success not only in education but also as a part of our professional and daily lives.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
BEST MOMENTS “What a wonderful set of skills to leave school with: to know how we best get started on tasks; what to do if we’re struggling because the task is not particularly motivating or interesting for us.” “Executive functions play into so many different areas of life.” “The executive functions are the brain processes that enable self-regulated learning to take place. When we understand these brain functions as teachers, we can help young people to develop the skills that sit alongside these executive functions so that they can become self-regulated learners.” “Often we’re asking children to do quite cognitively advanced tasks at school and we need to scaffold those for young people.” “If children are struggling to get started on tasks, or if they’re really struggling to answer the question that’s set, what’s going on for them? What’s getting in the way of their learning? What’s the bottleneck?” “Remember that working memory, being able to hold information in our head, is something that we, as adults, take for granted.” “Often, I feel like the school system is set up to reward those people who are abnormally strong in their executive functions and, actually, neurotypical or average brains really struggle because of the developmental process of this.” “The things we often examine in assessments – you need to be able to sit still and concentrate; you need to be able to do your revision; you need to be able to memorise what the question was – all these things are executive functions. But we don’t spend that much time working on those specific skills.”
VALUABLE RESOURCES Connections in Mind: https://cimlearning.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/connectionsinmind/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/@ConninMind Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connectionsinmind/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/connections-in-mind-ltd Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/
ABOUT THE HOST 'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide. In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance. Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion. In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hits the charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks. The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | |||