At #TLAB13, Alastair Smith spoke about TeachMeets. He’d attended the TeachMeet held at Berkhamsted the night before the main conference. He called it “an educational bring and buy sale” or a “carboot for teachers” and praised the counter-cultural, bottom-up rather than top-down nature of the TeachMeet format.
It made me think, as much of what was said at #TLAB13 did.
I’m currently organising a TeachMeet in Liverpool.
TeachMeets, along with the weekly #ukedchat sessions and the edu-extravaganza that was #TLAB13, have been the things that have re-energised my love for teaching. It’s easy to get caught up in the pressure and the negatives, but meeting people from across the country who are engaged, motivated and brilliant at what they do makes me realise why I love this profession.
Not many of the staff at my school seem that engaged – yet. They seem somewhat reluctant to commit to an event on a Saturday. And I appreciate why: we’re horrendously busy at this time of year and the majority of us give up lots of time as it is for revision, extra-curiccular activities etc on top of a huge workload. However, I believe the chance to meet, share and learn is important.
I’ve currently 12 people signed up to present and another 35+ coming to watch, meet and network. I’m confident that figure will rise. I’m looking forward to the chance to meet educators from across the North West.
So here’s to our counter-culture bring and buy!
If you’d like to come along, then sign up here: http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/w/page/64371633/TM%20Liverpool
Alastair Smith opened the inaugural #TLAB13 with his keynote speech entitled: 50,000 chunks: how we become ‘experts’ and what it might mean for our conference today.
I’ve posted a link to the presentation which Alastair has uploaded on to his website. I’m not going to attempt to re-hash the presentation, but rather discuss what I personally took from it.
Starting with a call to arms to identify the expert schools amongst the audience, Smith was both challenging and entertaining.
Beware the Ofsted Whisperers
He cautioned us, as a profession, to beware the ‘Ofsted whisperers’ as: “Ofsted chasing will reduce us to the mean, turn our profession into a trade and make us all vulnerable to the industry of second guessers…” Having recently sat through some (no doubt expensive) training which was designed to teach me about the new Ofsted framework and yet taught me nothing I couldn’t (and indeed pretty much had already) read myself, I found myself nodding in agreement.
Citing an example of a school who had gone from special measures to outstanding under the guidance of an inspirational leader, Smith spoke eloquently about how it isn’t all about Ofsted. There is an Ofsted 1 and a ‘real’ 1 – I think I know which kind of outstanding I’d like to be a part of.
So how does a school become truly expert, truly outstanding in its day-to-day life?
The following characteristics of an ‘expert school’ were offered:
Have a School Development Plan
Seen School Development Plan
Feel you have contributed to School Development Plan
Senior Staff Member responsible for Teaching and Learning
Teaching and Learning number one priority within the School Development Plan
Within Teaching and Learning Priority there are identified strategies
CPD priorities built around these strategies
Regular whole school dialogue around these strategies
Lesson observation (including peer observation) built around these strategies
Agreed strategies revisited consistently and over time
There is shared lesson planning utilising strategies and data
Staff are accountable for students results
Involvement of students in understanding processes of learning
Given that the audience were comprised of, in my opinion, predominantly forward-thinking educators, it was surprising how few people remained standing once the entire list was read out.
So, once all of that expert practice is in place, what else is needed to make the Ofsted 1 a real 1?
Alastair Smith suggests that a school needs core purpose, clarity, coherence, consistency and community. Music to my ears. Too often I worry we suffer from initiative-itis… we’re guilty of adopting the ‘Dangerous Deputy’ approach. We say ‘I fancy giving that a go’ and jump on the latest faddy bandwagon without really considering what value or impact it will have.
If we are clear and consistent in our approach, if the whole school community knows what our core purpose is and works together to achieve it then positive and lasting change will happen.
I’m not a school leader, but I aspire to be one. I am currently leading a department and so much of what Alastair Smith said resonated with me.
Define and Enshrine What Works
I need to now think about the strengths we have as a department and how we can embed this. I also need to think about where we can improve, look at what other departments or schools are doing and make that a part of our daily routines. As Alastair said, the rhetoric of marginal gains is all well and good but the basics need to be in place first: “you still need to get the bike up the hill.”
Expertise requires dedicated practice. It requires simple, clear and coherent messages which everyone can get behind.
We owe it to our students to be expert teachers in expert schools. No matter what is going on with education at a political level, we can be agents of change.
That’s a call to arms. That’s a reason to get out of bed… even on a Saturday morning.
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