The Importance of Being Idle

Being a huge Noel Gallagher fan I decided to title this week's blog after one of Oasis's last singles before the band eventually split. This week's blog is all about rest. We're now four weeks into the term and it's time to look after your most valuable asset, your health. Reflecting back on a conversation I had with a member of my department a few years ago, we were discussing the impact of the school's new marking policy. He was expressing his concerns about the increase in workload. My reply was simple. Given the choice for his own children, would he prefer their teacher mark their books to the nth degree and come in to class, exhausted, demotivated and lacking any passion. Or have their books marked when necessary and teach every lesson with the same passion, enthusiasm and enery of their first ever lesson. I'd like to think it's a no brainer. So on that note, stop searching the Web looking at the plethora of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram teaching related pages and relax watch some junk TV, read a book or listen to some music, simply relax! Make yourself ready for tomorrow. Your students will thank you for it.

Stay reflective

Thedandtblog

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Survive Your First Few Weeks in a New School

This week will have seen many fellow teachers embark on a start in a new school whether this be as an NQT or like myself moving onto a new role. Having taught at my last school for seven years it was like being an NQT again. A nervous nights sleep before my first day, having to work out where to go, the names of the people in my department and most importantly where I go for a cup of coffee. Having navigated the internal politics of which mugs were fair game and which were off limits I was ready to start my first INSET day at my new school. This first thing I noticed about changing schools was the change in terminology, essentially everything is the same but everything is called something different. There were endless acronyms that had me nudging my colleague throughout asking for clarity. I found myself converting these back into the terminology of my old school In my head so I could keep up. This is all well and good until you start talking in this old foreign language which leaves
Read more

Why the Current Observation Ritual Needs to Change

So it's that time of the year again, lesson plan printed off, in full colour, seating plan, class data, copies of hand outs and PowerPoint slides all in a neat pile ready for your date with destiny. You're already on your third cup of coffee this morning due to the lack of sleep last night and the early start this morning to get yourself set up. You're on edge as the class file in and find their seats all under the watchful eye of the person whom will decide how you will be labelled for the rest of the term. It's showtime. This will be a common scene played out in schools up and down the country over the coming weeks and its one of the single most detrimental mechanisms in teacher development. Ironic to think that this system designed to attempt to improve teaching and learning often actually stints whole school improvement. So why have I got such a negative opinion on lesson observations? Well actually I don't. I genuinely welcome lesson observations and I belie
Read more