EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with Georgia Hibberd, wellbeing 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 wellbeing, and supportive roles within schools. This led to her taking a lead role for wellbeing 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 wellbeing, 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 Look for opportunities to add wellbeing to other areas. Along with everything else that teachers need to cover each week, it can be difficult to find time for mental health and wellbeing in the curriculum. However, looking for opportunities to teach it alongside or as a part of other curriculum areas can mean that it doesn’t end up being missed. For example, teaching personal safety or being aware of strangers could, perhaps, be taught within units on fairy tales. Talk to each other. This is just as important for adults as it is for children and communicating with each other, especially when we might be finding circumstances challenging, can be really important. Also, as we all react differently, knowing how we each prefer to handle situations can help to make sure we can care and look after each other effectively. Transition anxieties. This year’s move to secondary school will be very different to normal. For some year 6 pupils, they might not see their primary school or meet with their class again which will add to their worries. Pre-visits to new schools will either be hugely reduced or will not be taking place at all. Strategies that might help could be to focus on self-esteem and self-confidence. For those children who are especially anxious, encouraging them to relate to times in their life when they were resilient (for example, riding a bike for the first time) could help them to reduce their pessimistic outlook. Also, looking for times where children can change their thought patterns: turning negative thoughts to positive thoughts and working together to role play as negative and positive views can be beneficial. Some children might be worried about making new friends so developing strategies ahead of time might alleviate worries. For example, having three topics to talk about ready in their minds means that they could be prepared when they first meet new people. Senses and memories. One way to help children begin to handle worries is using senses to link back to things which have positive associations for them. Having objects which relate to meaningful smells, tastes or images that they can interact with and which hold special significance (such as a photograph of a place they really enjoy) can mean that they have something to turn to if they find themselves becoming anxious.   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 The Happy Child Agency: https://www.happychildagency.co.uk/ Action for happiness: https://www.actionforhappiness.org/ 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.

The Teachers' Podcast

Georgia Hibberd (Founder of The Happy Child Agency): Mental health and wellbeing

EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire talks over the internet with Abigail Hawkins: an experienced teacher, special educational needs coordinator and, now, SEN consultant. Abigail talks about her journey to becoming a teacher including how, as a teenager, she herself found being a student challenging and how, initially, she had her heart set on becoming a research scientist rather than a teacher. Abigail also discusses how she became increasingly involved in the special educational needs (SEN) aspect of schoolwork through her experiences with helping A-Level students at college alongside completing her own studies. Following this, she spent many years as the SEN coordinator (SENCO) in a Nottingham secondary school before leaving to work as a consultant for a company which produces software to assist SENCOs. This led to her starting her own consulting business supporting schools and SEN coordinators. Now, alongside her consultancy work, Abigail has also published two books and has her own YouTube channel dedicated to SEN current issues. She also helps to lead and support three schools as a governor and she talks about the beneficial aspects of this work.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Support for parents of children with SEN can sometimes be difficult to find. Just as training and information for teachers around SEN issues can, sometimes, be difficult to source, this also applies equally for parents. While teachers have the sometimes challenging task of catering for special educational needs in the classroom among a number of children, parents can find it daunting knowing what they can do at home to help, particularly where behaviours might be extreme. Abigail created and aimed her YouTube channel, initially, towards parents having noticed that there were few good sources of information available. Being a governor can be a very rewarding and informative experience. Although occasionally time-consuming, there are huge benefits (both academic and personal) to becoming a school governor in whatever capacity. Many people who take on this role have found that is has helped with self-development in, usually, unexpected ways and it can also be useful and enlightening gaining an insight into the systems ‘above’ the headteacher. Assistive technology has huge untapped potential. While there are many apps, systems and resources teachers and parents can purchase to support children with special educational needs, the free assistive technology already built-in with common technology is very often overlooked. Nearly all laptops, smart-phones and tablets come with plenty of incredibly useful features to support children with a variety of different special educational needs, and many people don’t know these features exist. Social media can be great for support and educational professional development. Although it does have its faults in some areas, social media has, particularly over the last few years, become a really useful source for professional development for teachers, sharing and discussion of ideas, and support for those in education. Along with messaging and posting sites, many blogs and online journals can also be found which can help those looking for resources. Transitioning SEN children back into their school is an important consideration. As schools begin to return, how we transition students with special educational needs back needs to be carefully considered. How this will happen, along with when, are both aspects schools and teachers will need to think about. Communication with parents and the student is a key part of this along with making sure consistent messages are conveyed. Depending on when students return, some might find that the school they return to is not the one they left. In these cases, having virtual tours of the new school and online group chats such as virtual coffee mornings might help alleviate anxieties.   BEST MOMENTS “Now I think my education background meant I haven't had loads and loads of terminology to learn. I think as a SENCO you learn an entirely different language, anyway… all those words. But as a governor there's a whole load more to learn. My education background really helped me with that. I think being a SENCo has helped me with it, because you have to be incredibly patient with some of the governors. I don't know what most people's experience of governors is? Let's go with slightly older in age and a little slower at processing sometimes. Technology is not their friend.” “I'm not confident in front of groups people and being a governor and having to offer that challenge without being abrasive or without being overly negative with somebody when you're talking to them… so their data may be absolute rubbish, but you have to put in some kind of supportive challenge to that. And my governance has really taught me how to do that, and I can now bring that skill into my professional work, because when I now go to do an SEN review in a school, I can walk in and I'm confident enough to shake the headteacher's hand and think 'actually, I'm now on a similar level to you mate. You're not my boss anymore. I can have this conversation with you and actually I can tell you your department is not where it should be and this is what you need to do to improve it.' Whereas, before, I wouldn't have done that, I would have just gone right, OK, fine, I'll go deal with it and hideaway in a corner.” “I'm really passionate about what I do so, for me, my work life balance… if I start to not enjoy something, that is when it is going wrong. If I want to work till midnight tonight, and if I want to work all weekend, provided I am happy doing that and everybody else around me is happy and catered for, if you like, then that's okay because that is me in my happy zone.” “One thing I have noticed is that what is not taught is how to use assistive technology. So our mobile phones have the ability to zoom in on things, they have magnifiers on them. You can turn text into speech so your children who are struggling to read something they can get it read on mobile phone. We have settings within Macs and PC's and laptops and iPads and tablets that will allow them to do that and it really surprises me that children don't use them. I think parents don't necessarily know they exist, but also as teachers we're not teaching them that they exist as well. So for me it isn't about going out and buying an app or something that helps them to do something, but it's about teaching around the things that are available to them within their devices that they've already got.” “I wish that social media had been more active four years ago. I don't think it was. I think it a little bit of a novelty at the time. It was more friends and family that you used it for. Now, I think, social media is very definitely seen as a bit more of a professional forum and I think if I'd had it four years ago, I probably wouldn't have hit the pit bottom that I actually did because I could have reached out and gone this is what's happening in my school guys, give me some advice, and know that somebody would be there to do that.” “OK, well we know that PGCEs and, to be fair, the Bachelor's degrees in education don't particularly prepare individuals for being in a classroom with students who have special educational needs. It's woefully inadequate in most establishments. So, I would say, talk to your SENDCO as soon as you find out who's the SENDCO in your primary school, talk to them. If you're a primary school teacher, talk to the current class teacher and find out about the needs of the children in that class and, if you can, start talking to the parents of the children in that class because the parents are the experts on their child, or should be. They will be able to tell you even more about what that child needs to move forward.” “If you are unsure about anything, reach out and don't expect to be an expert the day that you walk through the door. I've learned over 25 years how to handle, and how to work with, the students I work with but also the adults that we work with because they can be equally as awkward. Learning those skills is not something you learn overnight.” “Make mistakes because children learn from mistakes and you tell them all of the time that it's okay to make a mistake because you're learning. It's okay for us to make a mistake as well because 'a' we are human, 'b' we are showing the children we are human, and 'c' we need to make mistakes to learn.” “I just think it would be really great to really rethink things and to rethink things for our special educational needs students. We know for so many of them attendance isn't great and exclusions are high. Why? Usually it's because the curriculum isn't meeting their needs. So how can we utilise what we've learned? The number of posts I've read where it's 'those boys I can't normally engage in something have produced this this week. It's amazing!' Can we use that? Can we build that back in so that those students don't lose out and keep losing out as they have been doing over the last few years”   VALUABLE RESOURCES Sensible SENCO on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sensiblesenco/ SENDCO solutions on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SendcoSolutions SENsible SENCO on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs65LPIrjCurcGUw01WtFkA The SENDCO: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SENDCO-Book-1a-Solutions-Support/dp/198078261X Approach it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Approach-Map-Manage-Graduated-Management/dp/1980890994/ SENCO solutions website: https://www.sendcosolutions.co.uk/ The One Thing: https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-bestselling/dp/1848549253/ 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.

Abigail Hawkins (SEN consultant and author): Special Educational Needs in schools

EPISODE NOTES 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 Work as a team Learning from her teaching experience and headship role, Katy believes it is important to aid and facilitate teachers - including newly qualified teachers - with leadership roles. She discusses how all teachers should be given the opportunity and support to undertake a leadership role irrespective of their teaching experience. The new OFSTED framework As a head, Katy has developed teams of staff-members for each subject. This allows teachers to support one another with the subject’s pedagogy and development within the school. When the teachers are inspected and questioned (from Ofsted) about their assigned subject, they can support one another within the meetings. Recruiting teaching assistants When recruiting for teaching assistant posts, Katy actively looks for and advertises for graduates that aspire to be teachers. She then supports them and provides them with classroom experience and encourages them to progress and develop their career path. Many of the staff do eventually enrol on postgraduate teacher training courses that are available through the school’s partnership programme while others pursue other education-based careers. Katy also supports those teaching assistants who do not wish to become teachers by offering other roles and responsibilities which allow for progression such as taking on cover supervisor roles. Distributed leadership Katy believes in distributed leadership whereby newly qualified teachers shadow and support experienced teachers and senior leaders with different responsibilities including course subjects. Through this approach, teachers are given the opportunity to develop and expand upon their skills when they are leading their own course subjects. Moreover, this approach can bring out a passion for progression and leadership within newly qualified staff at an early stage as they experience being involved within the team and working alongside leaders. Working in a partnership Between partnership schools there can be a lot of opportunities for professional development for all teachers and staff. Katy believes that the pace with which her school and staff have developed so far, along with the quality of the development opportunities, would not have been possible without this collaboration. Training leaders Staff are offered training including National Professional Qualification for Middle Leaders (NPQML) and National Professional Qualification for Senior Leaders (NPQSL) through the Catholic school partnership. Other opportunities include working with peer groups within the partnership school.   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/ 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.

Katy Cox (Headteacher at St. Matthew's Catholic Primary School): Support and development in partnerships

EPISODE NOTES 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 Remote recruitment can take away some of the benefits of meeting candidates face-to-face. While remote recruitment can make some elements of an interview process easier to administer, you can lose some of the benefits of meeting people face-to-face, such as being able to get to know people a little more than you might over a video-link. You can lose some of that ‘personal’ element that you gain when meeting in person. Be clear about how you will assess values and attributes remotely. Assessing values, skills and attributes over a remote interview can, in some ways, be quite tricky as some of these elements might be ones which you would pick up on and assess less formally face-to-face. One way around this can be to plan carefully in advance what you want from a successful candidate and structure the process and questions in a way which will promote or highlight these more clearly and explicitly. Build in more time than you think you’ll need for remote interviews. Whereas face-to-face interviews can usually run relatively smoothly and quickly, remote interviews will invariably take longer than you might think. Whatever time you think you’ll need, it can be advisable to double it as things like technology glitches, pauses and hand-overs to others on a panel can all add up to extra minutes. Be clear about time limits and expectations around any tasks. With on-site interviews, timings can be very tightly managed and controlled to ensure fairness for all candidates. Candidates on-site will also be on their own and you can be more certain that you are seeing them as they are. This can become more complicated with remote interviews where people could, if they wanted to, arrange to have access to other resources and help. While you can’t guarantee to be able to eliminate all of these possibilities, more tightly prescribing the amount of time each person has with tasks can go a long way to ensuring a level playing field. Remote panel interviews can bring their own unique issues. It can be easy in remote interviews involving several people to end up talking over each other or unintentionally interrupting someone and creating awkward pauses before someone takes a lead. To help with this, be clear about handing over to someone else when it is their turn to speak and have pre-determined ‘signals’ so that everyone can see when someone might want to ‘drop in’ and ask an additional question or make a point. Spreading the process out can be useful. Due to candidates’ other commitments, almost all interviews for school positions tend to be carried out in just one day. Remote interviews, though, can be structured to allow for more time to be able to delve into people’s responses and task submissions so that you can follow-up with questions in an interview on a subsequent day.   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/ Glenn Russell on Twitter #ValuedPeopleSuccessfulSchools: https://twitter.com/glennrussell84 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.

Glenn Russell (Executive Headteacher at Stalham Academy and Infant School): Remote recruitment

EPISODE NOTES 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 Moving to teach abroad is easier than you might think. While moving to another country to teach is an attractive proposition for many teachers, some people might be put off expecting the process to be complicated and full of paperwork. While there is indeed a need for forms to be completed, if you are successful in being appointed at a school in another country, in almost all cases, most of the processes will be handled by the school who will be well placed to make key arrangements on your behalf. However, there can be a perception that teaching at an international school can be ‘easier’ than teaching in England. While there can be less work to complete outside of school hours, there are different types of pressures and expectations which can make it equally challenging but in different ways. The humanistic side of teaching is important. Teaching can sometimes feel almost solely focused around academic expectations and progress and it is important that we don’t forget the people at the centre of everything we do. This is particularly important during this time of increased isolation and restrictions. Maintaining and developing social connections for the children as well as the teachers is vital. Don’t forget to dedicate time to yourself. As the coronavirus has restricted us to being at home almost all of the time, many people have found that they have more time to themselves. This can be an ideal opportunity to try and find new interests and different things to do with one unexpected positive being that many people – children included – could emerge from this experience being more aware of themselves and wellbeing. Try to maintain some normality. Even though we are in extraordinary times it can be helpful, for children as well as ourselves, to try and keep aspects of our lives as ‘normal’ as we can. This can help to reduce feelings of being overwhelmed or anxious about the ongoing situation which, as it continues, can be unsettling for everyone but particularly for children Make the most of opportunities to upskill on technology. For teachers, the current situation is ideal, for those who can, to undertake more professional development. As schools are now reliant on technology to reach their children, researching and upskilling ourselves on the possibilities afforded by computers and digital devices will almost certainly be advantageous in the future of education. 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/ WAGOLL teaching: https://www.wagollteaching.com/ Literacy WAGOLL: https://www.literacywagoll.com/ WAGOLL teaching on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wagollteaching 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.  

Ben Cooper (Founder of WAGOLL Teaching): Home-learning in Dubai

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 Inclusion is an ongoing process. Just as all children are different, all additional needs are different. While there is a wide variety of resources and training options for teachers covering different aspects of special educational needs, one size cannot fit all. Teachers cannot expect a training course to give them a solution that will work for all children. There is a need to constantly reflect on practices and approaches in order to find what does work for individual children. Children with additional needs don’t necessarily need approaches that are significantly different to other children. In many cases, the teaching for children with additional needs can be almost identical to that given to the rest of the class. Overall, good inclusive teaching is all that is needed to benefit every child, but will especially help those children who do have additional needs. Have realistic expectations. Although the term ‘special educational needs’ has become somewhat synonymous with ‘low ability’, teachers should be mindful of not assuming that additional needs will automatically hold a child back. There are many different types of need and some children with additional needs will not encounter any problems with their learning. Expectations should be set based on the individual child and, even where some children might find it more difficult to achieve at the same rate as their peers, it might not mean that expectations need to be lowered. Teachers can sometimes be defeatist about their own teaching skills. As schools have become increasingly inclusive, teachers can feel as though they need to have more and more training to deal with children with additional needs. Schools have also called more frequently for specialists to help and, while this is indeed needed in many cases, it isn’t always necessary. Over time this has had the effect of disempowering teachers and there is not always a need for additional training or specialist help. All teachers are teachers of children with special educational needs and teachers will already have a lot of skills and strategies they can use to good effect. Mental health is not the same as mental illness. The persistent stigma around mental health has, in part, been maintained by avoidance of using the term. Mental health has, over time, come to be mean ‘mentally unwell’ and people have then avoided using the term. Just as the term ‘physical health’ covers the whole range from being physically fit to suffering from ill-health and needing medical intervention, we should not shy away from using ‘mental health’ in the same way. Everyone has ‘mental health’ and the term should be used more to describe good mental health as well as when it is not so good. School-based programmes around mental wellbeing can be successful. Where schools have been most successful, there has usually been a whole-school approach championed and maintained by senior leaders and a positive and inclusive environment and curriculum. In these schools, the number of children who need referring with mental health issues has reduced. Some schools have found that using outside organisations (such as a local football club) to deliver parts of their mental health curriculum has been useful, as the children have a more informal relationship with the adults. Developing mindfulness programmes and using well-trained peer listeners has been positive for many children, as they might prefer to talk with people their own age rather than directly to an adult. Signs of mental illness are not always identifiable. Many teachers will find that the first signs of a child struggling with their mental health are physical (self-harm marks or tiredness) or through a change of behaviour. However, some children can appear outwardly fine but, inside, be quite mentally unwell. Here, good programmes and systems are key to educating children about their own mental health and knowing where they can go for help. Talk about mental health One important way to remove the stigma is to just talk more openly and regularly about mental health and feelings. This can be particularly useful for boys who can, through a sense of imposed gender expectations, feel as though they need to keep their feelings hidden or somehow ‘in check’. The curriculum needs to be more inclusive. Although there are movements in the right direction, the curriculum has, over time, become increasingly academic. Vocationally orientated children can feel marginalised and there is still work to be done here to improve. Units around race, gender identity, sexuality and disabilities need to be featured more prominently in the curriculum, in particular the history around these and how perceptions of them have changed over time. This also should not just be delivered through assemblies or only feature in PSHCE lessons. They need to be embedded and threaded throughout.   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/ Young minds: https://youngminds.org.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.

Jonathan Glazzard (Professor at Leeds Beckett University): Inclusive education

EPISODE NOTES 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 Preparation Although school closures came about very quickly, and there is still no real idea of when things will return to ‘normal’, whatever preparation can be done using the information to hand is essential for leaders. Considering what can and cannot be realistically accomplished is important – particularly with so much relying on technology and busy working parents being able to organise things at home. This is also important for the future. While there is little indication of when schools will return, there will likely be areas that can start being considered and planned for ahead of time. The importance of routine A key aspect for success with home-learning is having some sort of routine in place for children. However, it is equally important to allow for flexibility within any routine as all of this is taking place in real-life, where the unexpected occurs and things don’t always run to plan. Parents have reported that getting children started on tasks one of the most challenging parts of the day, so consider starting the daily routines earlier on, building in periods of down-time and breaks and using the afternoons for other less intensive tasks and family time. Focus on covering just the key pieces of learning Full lessons are just not possible to achieve at home in the same way they are in school, even with a teacher remotely teaching a full lesson. What can be accomplished in a classroom environment cannot be effectively replicated via video or though bringing people together virtually with conference technology. It is far more valuable to make sessions shorter – maybe around twenty minutes of quality learning time – and have smaller achievable goals. This is particularly useful for parents and teachers who will likely have their own personal circumstances at home and who could, if the goals are too ambitious, end up feeling demoralised and as though they’ve failed. Take time to consider what’s working and what’s been less successful As all of this is uncharted territory for schools, things will not always go to plan. However, do take time to consider what has worked well and where small adjustments could be made to fix issues rather than opting for wholesale revamps. This can be particularly important for schools who get complaints. While these will generally come from parents who want to do the best for their children, it is always worth keeping in mind how many complaints there might actually be versus any silent majority who will, probably, be more than happy with what is on offer. Technology While technology has been incredibly useful during this time, it is important to be mindful of problems that can arise – especially for non-technical parents and individual home circumstances. Schools make great use of computers and tablets during their usual teaching weeks, but the amount of screen-time many children are currently getting could likely be greater than they might normally have and, with this in mind, building in breaks and down-times away from screens is important. Keep a focus on essential skills In and amongst everything that schools, teachers and parents want to achieve, it’s always good to have some daily focus on maintaining essential skills wherever possible: regular reading or phonics activities, fun times-tables games and conversations during down-time are essential for all children’s development.   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/ Haylie Saunders (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/haylie-saunders-56b685186/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.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.

Haylie Saunders (Deputy Head Academic at St Swithun's Preparatory School): Leading home-learning

EPISODE NOTES 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 Learning can happen anywhere It can be easy to feel ‘lost’ sometimes with how much children are expected to cover, but don’t overthink it. A lot of learning that children do – especially at the younger ages – can be unplanned and happen anywhere at any time. There is a lot that children can learn through doing things that don’t need to be organised or planned out ahead of time. For early-years children, play is vital Play is incredibly important for nursery and reception aged children and developments at this stage are crucial to achievements later in their academic journey. Within this, it is also important to remember that children will learn at their own pace and developments will happen slightly differently between different children. Don’t worry too much if something other children can do isn’t yet evident for your child as they will, undoubtedly, catch up. The importance of routines that work for you Whatever your routine looks like, it will almost certainly be fine. While we are still unsure about when schools will be reopening, having some form of routine in place is important. However, it is also useful to have flexibility in the routine and, as long as it works for you, it will help children to thrive and will allow some form of transition back to the school day when ‘normal life’ resumes. The importance of talk One of the most important things to do with children, at any age, is just to talk with them as conversation and discussion can prompt a whole wealth of learning opportunities. As well as this, talking increases and expands children’s vocabulary, allows development of ideas and can allow you to explore and develop your child’s interests alongside them sparking more focus and willingness to work.   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 Early Learning Goals (ELG). Prime and specific areas. Phonics, including the phases of phonics, phonemes, graphemes, digraphs and trigraphs. Tricky and nonsense words. Number bonds.   34:10        Key stage 1 – Years 1 and 2 37:02        Maths 3D shapes Venn diagrams Related subtraction and exchanging Pictograms Fractions Digits Mathematical symbols Multiples Place value and place value counters 47:24        English Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs Noun phrases Conjunctions Consonants Clauses Ascenders and descenders Question marks and exclamation marks Commas and apostrophes Contractions Command words Prefixes and suffixes Extending sentences   59:56        Lower key stage 2 – Years 3 and 4 1:06:37     Maths Non-unit fractions Single-digit denominators Fractions of quantities Part-whole models 1:12:40     English Main clauses, subordinate clauses and relative clauses Pronouns Abstract nouns Prepositions Adverbials Synonyms and antonyms Subordinating and co-ordinating conjunctions Alliteration   1:29:14     Upper key stage 2 – Years 5 and 6 1:32:47     Maths Translation Decimals Ones and units Percentages Improper fractions and mixed numbers 1:36:55     English Subjects and objects Active and passive verbs Personal pronouns Subjunctive form and present perfect form Present progressive tense Idioms Acronyms   VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/ Coronavirus Home Learning Support for Teachers and Parents: https://www.facebook.com/groups/coronavirushomelearning/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.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.

Coronavirus and home learning (Classroom Secrets): Terminology in teaching

EPISODE NOTES In this episode, Claire remotely interviews Helen Woodhead, a proofreader at Classroom Secrets and now, through her videos of home-learning activity ideas, a Facebook Live star. Alongside her two children, Gabriel (4) and Noah (7), Helen regularly presents short, accessible and easy to follow videos on Classroom Secrets’ Facebook groups. These videos showcase fun and practical tips and suggestions for parents who, with the current coronavirus restrictions, will be finding themselves teaching their children at home. Helen talks about how she always wanted to be a teacher from an early age – even arranging her own ‘teaching’ sessions where she would read to her friends and other children when playing. After qualifying as a teacher, Helen moved into working as a supply teacher, which she found to be an incredibly beneficial experience. Going into many different schools, usually not knowing what to expect of each class, and teaching a wide range of year-groups gave her a huge amount of experience in a short space of time. Following this period as a supply teacher, Helen taught Year 6 at the same school for 10 years but, ultimately, found that teaching full-time with two children at home became too demanding. Realising that either work or home-life would suffer, she made the decision to leave teaching. Currently, with the coronavirus crisis, school closures and restrictions on movement have meant that parents up and down the country – Helen and Claire included – are now trying to home-educate their children. Helen shares her experiences of this, talking about some of the challenges she has faced including how her children see her as a ‘mum’ rather than a ‘teacher’, and how having two children at quite different ages has also been difficult at times in terms of differing expectations and her children’s reactions to what they need to do.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Home-schooling is very different to teaching a class Along with the different ‘feel’ of a school environment, teachers have classes of up to thirty children and will usually have their attention divided between all the children or across several groups. However, with teaching at home, the attention is much more focused and, as it is a parent doing the teaching, children can find this more difficult to become accustomed to. Even where the parent is a qualified teacher, children will still see you, primarily, as a parent. Along with this, children’s attention spans will be much more limited. Having ‘flexible’ routines can be beneficial here and not worrying if things don’t go to plan. Vary the activities and be mindful of how much you are trying to fit in Trying to fit too much into each day can, ultimately, end up with things just not working as well as they might, or a sense of disappointment where time or attention runs out. Don’t worry about having to adjust your expectations in light of how things need to work for you. Also, not everything your children do needs to be fun and practical. While practical activities are usually the most entertaining and enjoyable for children, they can sometimes be the most time-consuming activities to organise and demanding to ‘run’. There will also need to be times where children complete quiet and focused tasks, and these are just as beneficial and important as the more physical activities. Having children at different ages can bring its own challenges As well as having to find age-appropriate activities for each child, an additional challenge can be organising your routines around individual needs. On top of that, some children, depending on the age differences, can become envious of the more practical activities the younger children might need to do. While many children will try to be considerate of this, it could be harder for some to come to terms with. One takeaway here might be to encourage the older children to re-teach or revisit the activity the younger child has done alongside them later on. That way, they will get to take part in the activity, experience teaching and explaining something which could encourage communication and problem-solving skills, and the younger child will get an additional opportunity to put into practice what they’ve learned. You can find out where your children are in their education As busy parents, it can sometimes be difficult to keep fully up-to-date with where your children are in their schooling and what they can and can’t do. A positive to come out of the current situation is that, through day-to-day home-learning activities, parents can become more familiar with their school’s curriculum, the expectations for achievement and where their children are in their learning journeys. Technology can be useful for children to keep in touch Although, for a variety of reasons, not every family will be able to facilitate it, utilising technology in a safe way to allow children to socialise can be really beneficial. Along with adults, children will find being cut-off from friends and family quite difficult. Finding ways for them to keep in touch – perhaps through video chats, online platforms and e-mails – can help to alleviate anxieties and maintain links to the outside world.   BEST MOMENTS “[Homeschooling] is very different to school. Very different to having thirty children. It’s so intense because you’ve got them all the time. When you’re teaching, you’re not just with one child. You’re stopping them and sending some off to do something. And then there’s break time. You might be on break-duty but you might not, but you’re not just with the same children all the time.” “It’s compromising with them as well. So sometimes they’ll be like ‘oh we’ve done something really fun’ – especially when we’ve filmed it – ‘oh that was really fun’. Yeah, but what we do now might not be as practical. It might be where you sit down now and you do something that’s more focused.” “The thing that bothered [Noah] the most was when I said we can’t go to Grandma and Grandad’s house. That really bothered him. But we’ve video-called and spoken on the phone. Every time the phone rings, the minute I answer, one of them will run over. ‘Is it Grandma?’” “They are coping well. They have got into the routine really well.” “[In the Easter holidays,] I don’t want to do the same stuff really. I want to do different things because it is the holidays. But they still need occupying. It’s not like we can go places like we normally would.” “They don’t need to work all the time. They need to have a break and they need to have fun.” “Every child is going to remember this period of time. I want it to be enjoyable.” “I try and do as much as possible with stuff I’ve got around the house. Because we can’t just go out and buy things and get hold of things. So I am trying to do as much as possible with what I’ve got. I keep going into my garage and I’m like, ‘oh I didn’t know I had that!’” “I think testing-wise and exams… I think that’s going to have to be looked at: how children are assessed and is more faith going to be put into teachers and their teacher assessments?”   VALUABLE RESOURCES The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets Facebook Coronavirus Home Learning Support group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/coronavirushomelearning/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.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.

Helen Woodhead (Classroom Secrets): Balancing homeschooling and work

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 Leadership can unexpectedly throw you in at the deep end The current coronavirus situation is something that everybody, not just school leaders, has had no real equivalent experience of. It has meant that everyone has had to adapt quickly and, in many cases, continue adapting to daily despite having had no meaningful training which can be drawn upon to help. All establishments, but in particular schools, are having to handle the crisis in their own unique ways – and adapt and evolve to what is happening quite differently – given the very different make-ups of their communities and staff Often, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ course of action As has been made even more apparent with the coronavirus events, leaders have to make quick decisions and take courses of action which, at the time, are based on the evidence to hand and where there is no clear correct or incorrect choice. An example discussed here are the decisions senior leaders had to make around when to inform parents of what will likely happen with schools and, within that, what to say or speculate on. Just before the announcements of school closures, there was very little concrete information to go on, so contacting parents or waiting for more details to emerge was neither the right nor wrong thing to do. Trust in staff, but offer support where needed During times of major news events which can be potentially upsetting for children, deciding what information to discuss can be very tricky. Managing anxiety amongst children who are exposed to information via the news and, in some cases, disinformation on social media can be tricky. Although being on-hand with support for staff where needed, this can be a good time to trust in the class teachers who know the children best and allow them to tailor the correct information to their groups in the best way. Be realistic about remote-learning expectations The current situation has prompted a lot of very speedy possible ‘solutions’ to children learning at home. While there is a lot of useful software and online content, it can be wise to keep in mind what options you can provide for families with little or no technology at home or who have no internet access. Also what can seem as though it is easy to administer at first can turn out to be quite time consuming. Along with this, many schools have tried to make sure that there is enough for children to work on at home, but what has become increasingly apparent is that a lot of families won’t have enough time in the days and weeks to get through all of the tasks. Revisiting your plans and liaising with parents can be a good way to get feedback and find out what’s working and what isn’t and what help or support parents might be looking for. Be as consistent as you can be To try and reduce anxiety and uncertainty, wherever possible continue doing what your children are familiar with in terms of the work and tasks. A lot of things sent home for children to do will of course, in terms of the types of work, be quite different to what would normally happen in school. However, if you use particular schemes or resource banks, sending these home or using a familiar format could help the children as they will already be used to working with that. Although we have no clear ideas about what the future will hold, there are some important questions that will need to be considered There are so many uncertainties about what the future will hold and trying to be fully prepared for all eventualities will be impossible. However, when the time comes, schools will need to consider a huge range of challenges. For example, what will staffing and recruitment look like for the next academic year given that a lot of staff will already have secured new jobs for September? If schools do not reopen until September (or possibly later) what will happen with the curriculum and missed learning? Some children will have done over and above the work sent home whereas others will have done much less. Collaboration and the online educational community are both great for ideas and professional development. A notable ‘positive’ to come out of the current crisis is that it has brought together a lot of people from all aspects of education. A lot of new online groups have sprung up and existing groups such as the Dynamic Deputies own group have been much more active in sharing ideas and collaborating to try and do the best for children and their parents at home. If you’re stuck for ideas or just need to discuss a particular issue, there are a lot of places you can now turn to for support.   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 Make an impact education: https://www.facebook.com/dynamicdeps/ Dynamic Deps on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DynamicDeps The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.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.

Steve Eastes and Russell Pearson (The Dynamic Deputies): Coronavirus and school closures

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 Teaching at home is not the same as teaching in school.School is a very different environment to the home and it is not at all unusual for children to behave and react differently between the two places. While some aspects might be able to work in a similar way, the home cannot hope to replicate school.To compound this further, everything about our current situation is new for everyone. Parents, as well as the children, are having to adjust to a totally new way of life and, for the moment at least, we are all just trying to catch up and do our best in an unfamiliar landscape. Things won’t always go ‘right’, and that’s ok. Having children of different ages brings its own challenges.In terms of providing some form of education, children of different ages, and those who are different school years, will need work pitched at (sometimes significantly) different levels of challenge. This can be tricky for teachers let alone parents who don’t have as clear an understanding of the curriculums. Here it can be very useful to make use of resources the school has provided and other materials available more widely (see below).For families with siblings where one child is quite young, there could well be the additional complication of competition for attention to consider. Looking at timetabling might help for scheduling work between naps if this is possible. Don’t be afraid to adjust your expectations.Plans for how timetables might work, and how home-learning will go, may need to be changed – even on a daily basis. This happens in schools too where unexpected things occur and lessons or activities need to be reorganised. It is not unusual to find that expectations of what children might be able to do or accomplish need to be adjusted as well. Some activities are going to be over really quickly, prove too challenging or just take much longer than anticipated. On top of this, with the home environment being quite different to school, children’s attention spans and focus will likely be different. If you can, make use of what’s available online.There are a lot of resources available online for parents which many people and companies are providing for free. Online resources can be useful in many ways: they will probably be pitched reasonably accurately or will be focused on the topics your child will have covered, and some websites will give parents a quick introduction to the terminology and methods schools use which can be different to ways that were covered in the past.A number of celebrities are also providing live video lessons or putting content online for children and parents to use at home. While these celebrity resources have been met with some criticism from some quarters, they can be useful as they give your child a chance to hear from someone different, but who is still likely be a familiar face. These are unprecedented times and it’s new for everyone.It is important to remember that, at the moment, everyone is going a day at a time trying to make things work as best as they can. There has been a huge change that we have had to adapt to incredibly quickly. If things don’t go as expected, don’t be hard on yourself. Look for the positives.In and amongst the difficult circumstances we are facing, there is an opportunity to make some great memories with your children. When they are older, these times at home will be something they remember. If we can give them fun and positive experiences to remember, it will be time well spent. In the same way as schools are doing with the wider curriculum, alongside maths and English activities, this is a great time to try and boost creative work such as junk modelling for art or making music out of household items.Another positive to be mindful of is how this experience is bringing out the best in the online world through a ‘community spirit’ of individuals posting in a number of parent support groups offering help or advice and swapping of ideas and suggestions. If you need help, you don’t have to look far. Don’t worry too much about structure.Any change can be unsettling, particularly for children so adjustment to new routines at home will take time. Don’t feel bad if this doesn’t always work or feels like it never quite settles down. Parents will likely have everything else they would normally do too – including working from home – as well as looking after and educating their children, so plans will need to be ‘flexible’ anyway.   VALUABLE RESOURCES Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/ Coronavirus Home Learning Support for Teachers and Parents: https://www.facebook.com/groups/coronavirushomelearning/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ 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.

Coronavirus: Lessons from week one of home-schooling

In this episode of the Teachers’ Podcast, Claire considers the extraordinary circumstances we are all currently experiencing and shares some ideas for home-learning in the event of school closures or isolation. Over the last few weeks, everyone, not just those in education, has faced a great deal of uncertainty about what will happen. Parents will, almost certainly, face some very troubling and difficult times in the coming weeks. Along with the likelihood of jobs being affected and family members possibly becoming ill, many will find themselves in the situation of having to occupy and educate their children at home – most likely in isolation or with few, if any, options for places to go. There are many companies and organisations doing all they can to help parents, teachers and schools. Details of these can usually be found online – generally on social media forums including Classroom Secrets’ own dedicated Facebook support group: Coronavirus Home Learning Support for Teachers and Parents. In this podcast, Claire discusses a number of different ideas for supporting children at home – whether you are a parent in need of inspiration or a teacher looking for suggestions to send home – and she talks about how to make the most of what will undoubtably be very challenging circumstances. Schools and teachers could also share the link to this podcast with their parents via their website or social media channels as an alternative way to hear about activities they might want to try. Classroom Secrets, and our sister site Classroom Secrets Kids, will do our very best to support teachers and parents in the coming weeks and months. Everyone in the company sends their best wishes to all who are affected in any way and we hope you and your loved ones are able to stay safe and well.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Classroom Secrets will do what we can to support your children’s learning.We have created free home-learning packs for each year-group which can be downloaded and, if you wish, printed out for children to complete. If you are a teacher, these can be sent home to parents as suggested activities. The home learning packs cover a range of mathematics and English activities pitched at different abilities, along with practical ideas, so all children can have something they can complete.Along with this, Classroom Secrets Kids – our sister site – is packed full of interactive activities for maths, grammar, reading, phonics and other subjects. All of the content is aimed specifically at children to enable them to learn independently. At the time of recording, the site is in BETA and is totally free for the duration of its development in this stage. We are continually adding new and exciting activities and all children in a class or family can have their own individual logon. Social media is full of ideas and offers.If you are stuck for suggestions, or just don’t know where to turn for a particular problem or concept, there is always social media. A lot of forums and discussions have been set up to help parents and teachers in these challenging times. Just have a look on Facebook or Twitter using hashtags such as #education, #edchat and #teaching.You can always come along to Classroom Secrets’ own Facebook support group (Coronavirus Home Learning Support for Teachers and Parents) where we are sharing live videos of practical ways to learn. It also has a mentoring section where you can direct questions to volunteers who might be able to give you help or further suggestions. Create and stick to routines.Routines are important for maintaining stability with children – especially younger children. Although setting up new routines in the event of school closures or isolation might seem daunting, these don’t need to mirror the school day and don’t necessarily need to follow a ‘9 to 3’ pattern. However, agreeing set times for when learning activities will take place, and which are kept to, will be beneficial for making sure children maintain some form of education. Daily reading is really important.Some form of daily reading should be a key part of any routine. Making time for children to read independently or to an adult is incredibly useful. If you can, ask questions about what they are reading: recapping or summarising events, describing the characters, exploring their thoughts, opinions and predictions. Where children might be less willing to read, allowing them to follow their interests can be a way to motivate and engage them in this. Get children doing chores.While this might seem like something children might enjoy doing the least, many children – in particular young children – usually do enjoy helping parents around the house and can be keen to get involved. Even older children, where it can be built into the routines of daily life, usually become more willing to undertake jobs and become less resistant to household tasks. Not only does getting involved in daily chores develop independence, it can develop problem-solving skills and be an opportunity for some social time. As well as this, chores can work to your advantage with sorting and tidying belongings, and routines you develop around chores will hopefully continue well into the future. Involve the children in what you are doing where you can.For parents who need to work from home, or for parents whose children can be safely involved in their jobs, teaching them about what you do can be great for communication and a useful window into the world of work for them. Consider what they can learn for the future which might help them and make the most of anything you can teach them. Always build in play.Children of any age can benefit from just being able to play. While younger children learn a huge amount through play, older children still need their own time to play in different ways: for example through creative expression such as art or crafting, or though imaginative writing. While the learning might sometimes be less easy to see, it is most definitely taking place. Allow some time for daily writing.Just like reading, build in some time for children to write each day. This can, again, be something some children might be less willing to do, but keeping it a part of daily learning routines is important. To encourage them, allowing children to write about topics of their own choosing can be a way to make the most of the time and will enable them to develop their imaginations and bring in their own interests. Do make the most of home-learning packs.If you are a parent, your child’s school might send packs home and they will have looked at the content to make sure it is something your child can complete. Make the most of these resources as they will help your son or daughter to continue revising and learning about concepts they have covered. However, do be mindful of when they are completed and how much impact they might have in terms of use of time. Look for the best ‘windows’ in the day for when it might be best to bring them in considering attentiveness and mental fatigue.If you are a teacher, a lot of companies are offering a range of options for building home-learning packs including the free packs from Classroom Secrets. Your house will almost certainly be full of useful materials.Parents might not always be aware of just how many materials and items they will already have in their houses which are perfect for teaching. Talking and experimenting with capacity, sorting various objects, using money, varying your vocabulary and scientific talk are just a few areas which can be covered with things you can find in the average house. Wherever you can, make learning practical.Learning in the home will, for most children, not feel the same as being in the classroom, and the teacher-pupil dynamic rarely transfers to parents or relatives. Confronting this head-on, and looking for ways to make learning ‘feel different’ by turning it into practical activities is a good way to motivate and enthuse children.Going outdoors where possible can bring in a wealth of learning opportunities: for example using chalk on flags in the garden for spelling games or making times-table arrays with leaves or berries. Involving maths and science in baking can be fun (and bring in some skills for the future) or describing things using elaborate vocabulary can teach children new words. You can also play memory games with almost any household objects too.For children who thrive on an element of competition, looking for opportunities to turn learning into games with a light-hearted competitive edge can encourage them to be much more enthusiastic about what they are doing.   VALUABLE RESOURCES Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/ Coronavirus Home Learning Support for Teachers and Parents: https://www.facebook.com/groups/coronavirushomelearning/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ 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.

Coronavirus: Making the most of home learning

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 Being a new headteacher can be lonely.Leadership roles – particularly at the top – can be lonely jobs and, as a new headteacher, there can be very few options for support. Having a mentor or close links to other experienced headteachers can be vital giving you someone to discuss difficult situations or decisions with. Nobody, even at the top, has all of the answers all of the time. Always be looking to learn from others.This is something teachers generally do anyway, but can particularly useful for anyone aspiring to be a leader in the future. Take time to look at how the best leaders interact with others, what decisions and actions they take and why they take them. If a task isn’t beneficial, ask why it needs to be done.‘Because we’ve always done it that way’ cannot be a reason to continue doing something that serves no purpose. Tasks done for this reason alone can unnecessarily take up teachers’ valuable time. Leaders can help improve workload by periodically reviewing what staff are asked to do and question the benefits of doing them. Look for opportunities to gain more experience.Where you can, look to gain experience of teaching in different year groups, particularly if you aspire to lead a school in the future. While you don’t have to work in all phases of a school, it can really help to have experienced teaching in at least several different year groups as you will learn about the differences in approaches and structures which can be valuable in understanding how schools work and for building your own vision for a school. Always look to make use of other people’s expertise.While having first-hand experience of teaching across a school is very useful, many teachers and leaders have not done this, and it isn’t essential. Few leaders would say that they are experts in all phases of education and the best leaders actively seek out others who are experts in their phase and make the most of their knowledge and skills. Trust and communication are key to a good life/work balance for staff.Communication between leaders and staff about key events and ongoing aspects of their lives outside of school can really help. Coupled with trust and an understanding that some people, for different reasons, might need to start and end days earlier or later than others, or might work in different ways that suit personal circumstances, can really boost morale and help everyone feel more valued and settled with how they work. But different schools work in different ways and what works in one environment might not work in another.   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.

Andrew Midgley (Interim headteacher at Carlinghow Primary School): Improving schools

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 To improve teacher retention, staff should feel valued.Where a school is committed to your wellbeing, it will show in the way you are communicated with and respected. The headteacher must set the tone to have the biggest impact in school. Senior leadership teams should have a compassionate attitude towards staff. Teachers will go to the moon and back for them if they see that they are cared about. High levels of respect result in ‘buy in’ from staff. Stress can be difficult to identify.Teachers need the self-care tools to identify and manage stress. It might be shown is when marking and planning is not kept up to date or behaviour management becomes a struggle. Other indicators include having stomach ache and nausea or headaches and migraines. Remember that people are managing stress on a daily basis – both personal and in the classroom. Burnout factors.Causes of burnout include workload, a lack of control and a lack of reward. Lack of control could be both in personal life or at work. Lack of reward may be not feeling acknowledged which can dampen spirits. It may also include unfair acknowledgement of other staff members such as promotions, pay rises or other perks. Teachers may experience a conflict of values.Staff go into teaching because they love the children but are often told that the focus is achieving the data and the results. This can result in feeling conflicted with what’s important to the teachers and what’s important to the leaders. A clear understanding of wellbeing.Wellbeing is ‘feeling well consistently for the majority of your day’. It is about being able to bounce back from setback and knowing that you will be okay. It is important not to confuse kind gestures from senior leaders as ‘wellbeing’. Self-assessment is important.Asking yourself why am I doing this? What are you doing to nourish and care for yourself? Know yourself as a person and what wellbeing means to you. If you don’t have the balance, how are you going to get it? Enforce your boundaries: be firm with yourself and say ‘I’m not actually going to mark after 6pm’.   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.    

Suneta Bagri (Mindset Coach): Personal development and creating a positive mindset

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 Computing is a challenge.Teachers have the right to be worried about coding as they are being asked to teach something that they may not necessarily have experience of. However, there are free resources out there such as Barefoot Computing and the NCCE to provide support and empower teachers. Barefoot provide free workshops for staff and NCCE provide online primary pedagogy courses. Schools could dedicate staff meetings to upskilling staff in these areas. Unplugged computing is just as important.Computing doesn’t just mean using the technology. The Barefoot model involves six skills that make up computational thinking which can all be taught through unplugged activities. Computational thinking should be at the root of all IT teaching.The opening line of the new computing curriculum doesn’t mention programming or coding - it mentions computational thinking. This means developing problem solving skills: what are the steps to solve it? How can I break this problem down? These skills should be the main focus in all computing teaching. Teachers should allow for creativity in computing lessons.Jonathan mentions the importance of trying not to have lessons that are too scaffolded. Copying code that children might have seen in a resource means that the children are just recreating. In these cases, programming is not being taught: the children themselves are being programmed. Creativity in lessons encourages children to be innovative and to be designers. The pupils themselves can support you.Get pupils supporting you. Some pupils are very confident with technology. These children could be ‘Computing Ambassadors’, supporting other pupils and yourself. Invest in high quality kit and training for teachers.Jonathan suggests that the best use of funding is ensuring that new kit bought is used and used well. In addition to this, taking the top 10-20% of any budget and putting it towards staff training can see greater returns in teachers’ knowledge and confidence. He explains to look for the companies that aren’t just providing the kit, but are also providing the support. Chip’s favourite tech.Jonathan recommends the ‘Crumble Controller’ for key stage 2 as it is an inexpensive tool which allows physical computing. The company behind this technology listens to teachers and is constantly evolving so the equipment doesn’t become outdated. He also recommends Sphero for programming in key stage 2. For key stage 1, he suggests Beebots which are ideal for teaching basic programming skills.   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/ NCCE National Centre for Computing Education: https://teachcomputing.org/ Microbit Website: https://microbit.org/ Sphero Website: https://www.sphero.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.

Jonathan Chippindall (Teacher and computing specialist): Primary computing and technology

The Teachers' Podcast provides additional support to teachers. Whether it's ideas to be used in the classroom, listening to the perspective of someone else in school or just being able to relate to the challenges other educators face, each episode delves into a key topic within education with a guest. Developed in association with Classroom Secrets and hosted by Classroom Secrets’ MD, Claire Riley, the podcast is also available on YouTube.

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