It’s been a strange old week - what with Boris being under pressure for…well all sorts of things and now we have the lifting of Covid restrictions as we start to emerge from the last couple of years!
Hopefully things will now gradually start to get back to normal - although of course the “immediate” normal is playing catch up from the losses we have had caused by restrictions.
This is, and will continue for some time, to affect schools as all levels. The amount of disruption to childrens education has been significant and is directly felt in the classroom by teachers as you battle to regain lost ground in the overall teaching syllabus. Senior leadership teams should be taking the lead on this and taking the pressure away from staff with a well planned out programme which gradually over a set time restores curriculum levels back to where they should be. Wether this is in a refocussing of the curriculum or the use of support and intervention groups really is down to your particular team - however I would be expecting some sort of planned and documented approach that is of course shared and discussed with all staff.
This weeks articles and those of next week are focussing on the thorny subject of work / life balance. This is nothing new and has been and will be a problem for the profession. As I said at the start of the week there is no magic bullet that can be used to achieve this - however doing nothing is not an option as it will not simply just go away. ECT colleagues must be aware that things will take a lot longer for you in the 1st couple of years as you settle into both the profession and your school…but gradually the pieces of the jigsaw will start to fall into place and things do get easier.
The obvious problem for all staff, irrespective of experience, is of course workload - and it definitely is a case of looking carefully at everything involved and charting a more efficient way through things. We look at ways of doing this in my articles but as a couple of examples -
Mark to the LO / LI of the lesson
Adjust your timetable to teach subjects that DON’T require any marking on a Friday (this gives you no marking for the weekend - only planning)
Next week we also look at planning of lessons - with many hints and tips on how to save both time and effort and we start to put things all together to get a simpler and more effective way of doing things.
A quick reminder at this point that next week is the last week of free membership of this group and that in order to continue to receive daily articles, audio and videos it will be necessary for you to move to a subscription membership. At a cost of only 20p per day it gives you not only the articles as mentioned but also access to personal support and advice when needed. So dont forget the changeover date - Monday 31st January…it wouldn’t be the same without you!
That’s all for this weeks waffle - have a great weekend and let’s catch up on Monday.
Charles
Share this post