Noticing

Teaching is a job where you need to have incredibly good noticing skills. So much of what we have to deal with isn’t given to us on a shiny plate: we have to find it and actively discover more. Noticing, in my opinion, is one of the most valuable skills in a teacher’s toolbelt and

Shadowghast

In the depths of night, you awake with a start in your dusty room at the top of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. You’re exhausted from a full day of beachcombing, yet you can’t shift an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Something’s not right… why do you feel like you’re being watched? There’s

Classroom Tours

Throughout the pandemic, one thing I have really missed in my personal professional development is visiting other classrooms and schools. Seeing how other educators do things is such a great way to learn and magpie new ideas and unfortunately this hasn’t been possible for a while now. Towards the end of the 2020-21 academic year,

#BackToSchoolBonanza

THIS COMPETITION HAS NOW CLOSED Below is the September 2021 blog launching #BackToSchoolBonanza2021. I’d love to do something similar for September 2023 to give 3 educators a stunning start to the year. Check out the details below, as I’ll run something very similar this time round! Welcome to the Back To School Bonanza 2021! This

The Five Commandments to Create a Cracking Classroom

We’re at that time of year where people start to get the dreaded back-to-school jitters. Many of us are starting to have broken sleep or extra early mornings and some will have already blown the dust off their work laptop as they mentally prepare for the new academic year. We all work very differently. I

Setting the angel free

Whilst reading recently, I stumbled back across one of my favourite quotes. Michelangelo, arguably one of the most famous sculptors in history, said this when asked about his sculpture of an angel: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” It got me thinking about how we view children

The idiot in the middle

#Edutwitter is as divisive as it is useful and you’ll see regularly that new Tweeters are cautiously advised to take the rough with the smooth. There’s always some sort of argument going on in the background, usually revealed by cryptic subtweeting and blatant screenshots, or sometimes argued out in the open. The nastiness that can

Nen and the Lonely Fisherman

So here goes: my first blogged book review and my first blog tour…and on my birthday no less – what a treat! I came across Ian and James on Twitter via the #Edutwitter and #BookTwitter circles, within which there seems to be much of an overlap. Back in April, Ian asked if I would like

Find that silver lining

I’ve been looking back over my blogs and I’ve noticed a pattern: a lot of my journey and learning that I have shared tends to have somewhat of a negative undertone. My blogs often share the challenges I have faced and what I learned throughout those incredibly tough times, however I feel I need to

Finding the right school for you

Recruitment is a two-way process: not only are schools looking for the right people to join their team, you are also looking for the school in which you can flourish. Interviews work both ways, where the candidate is interviewing the school as much as the school are interviewing them. This, in my opinion, is really