Beyond Good: Recent Episodes
Matt Findlay and Femi Adeniran
A podcast about teaching. We discuss teaching and learning, pedagogy, lessons and classroom practise, management and leadership, teaching of mathematics, training and trainees, mentors and mentoring, behaviour management, being a head of department and running a faculty, SLT and much much more!
Femi reflects on the last year with one particular class in mind and asks: "Are my lessons challenging enough?"
Femi has been teaching a Science class and shares his approach and reflections with Matt. They discuss 'learning to learn', booklets, AI, rounds of teaching and CFU, shed loads of practise, feedback and self-checking answers, precision and rigour and much more!
Amongst other things, Femi and Matt talk about how hard it can be as a middle leader to lead on change without strong models to refer to.
Matt and Femi discuss the subtle ways students can often make life difficult for teachers, and why this happens in some classrooms but not in others.
Matt and Femi have a chat about teachers using seating plan resets as a strategy, debate breaking down intangible aspects like 'feel' into granular concrete components when coaching, and the role and possible negative effects of prior information when it comes to planning seating plans and thinking about a new class.
Matt and Femi talk about coaching, and how teachers working on their craft will often need to stick with a particular focus and practice it with reflection and feedback to master it.
Matt discusses with Femi a recent conversation he had with a teacher that he supports regarding resetting a challenging class in which norms had severely slipped from previous high standards. The conversation will be of particular interest to heads of department supporting colleagues in their team.
Matt and Femi discuss economy of language during explanations and the advantages of keeping teacher talk lean.
Contact us at:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss a couple of really common issues that undermine teachers' ability to deliver powerful, clear and memorable explanations.
Matt and Femi discuss what to do with a comment often heard by the coffee machine... "This class doesn't retain things!"
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi talk to James Gisby about the challenges and intricacies of teaching History, and what good History lessons could look like.
Matt and Femi discuss why effective learning can often look somewhat boring from the outside, and why that can sometimes be problematic in schools.
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss the importance of very prompt transition moments in lessons.
Reach out by emailing beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss the pros and cons of group / whole staff PD vs the somewhat more time-consuming approach of coaching, considering how to leverage each one for it's strengths and the symbiosis between the two different approaches.
Get in touch!
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss two topics in this episode - the first is whether there is any merit in having students copy things down into exercise books, or even cutting them out and sticking them in. The second is the complaint one occasionally hears that there is too much to get through / not enough curriculum time and therefore we don't have the 'luxury' of doing any retrieval practice.
Share your thoughts with us:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss the common situation of encouraging students to go back and check their work once they've done all they can on an exam or test paper.
Join Femi and Matt to hear about how and why Femi has finally decided to start to use mini-whiteboards in his lessons.
In this episode Femi and Matt talk about how incredibly useful it is to base coaching around video footage from the lesson, and go through the practicalities of doing it (what equipment, how to set up, etc.)
Questions or comments? Emails us: BeyondGoodPod@gmail.com
Femi relays some very concrete pedagogical observations from his daughter's drum lessons which apply equally well to teaching students in every day subject lessons in school.
Matt and Femi will be taking a little break over the Christmas period and wish all listeners a restful break over the holidays. The next episode will be released mid-January.
Femi tells Matt about his visit to The Totteridge Academy, which he was thoroughly impressed by.
Following their visit to Copleston High School, Matt and Femi discuss how they would each approach a hypothetical situation of being a newly appointed VP in charge of teaching and learning: How would they get started and what would they be trying to achieve in the first few months.
Matt and Femi reflect on what they would say if asked the question "What's the single most important thing teachers should know?", and in the end come up with 3 things between them.
Matt and Femi respond to a listener question about steps to improve the quality of teaching in their department as a new KS3 lead or second in department.
Matt was in a reflective mood recently and shared a few of the things he has been working on and thinking about with Femi.
Prompted by listener feedback, Femi and Matt explore the idea that when it comes to teaching we are making something simple more complicated than it needs to be.
Get in touch by emailing us:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss what comes to mind when one hears a teacher say "We had a great discussion today about ...".
Contact us by emailing beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Femi and Matt discuss the utility, pros, and cons of looking at lessons through a simple 'attention, participation, thought' lens, discuss other approaches to diagnosis, ask if we are over-complicating things, and consider an alternative lens focussed on creating conditions for independent practice.
Contact us at:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss the importance of quiet independent practice for students, and get into the challenges and preconditions for getting this happening in lessons.
Matt and Femi catch up with Rachael Southern two years after her first appearance on the pod and she shares her knowledge around improving reading and thoughts about leading on it whole-school.
Author, teacher, trainer, and expert coach Sarah Cottinghatt joins Matt and Femi to discuss her book 'Ausubel's Meaningful Learning in Action', and coaching!
Follow Sarah's Coaching Cuts on Substack:
https://cognitivecoaching.substack.com/
Contact the pod:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
In this double episode Matt and Femi explore the arguments for students sitting in rows facing the front vs sitting around tables in groups, and then turn their attention to the issues around the effectiveness of issuing detentions vs a prompt and stern conversation with the student.
As always please send your thoughts to beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
We've all experienced it! Matt and Femi lay out some of the most important characteristics of poor leadership in schools as they see it.
Sometimes it really is a struggle to get through all the content. But there's also possibly room for improvement when that claim is used to justify not giving students adequate time for independent practice in lessons, or building in regular mixed revision consolidation lessons to the scheme of work.
Matt and Femi discuss!
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss episode 3 of the great Teaching: Unpacked documentary series.
Watch the documentary at steplab.co/watch
Get in touch:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss some of the most common problems they've noticed over the course of many years of lesson visits and drop-ins.
Contact us by email:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi chat about a rarely-discussed characteristic of teachers; having respect for the learners.
Matt and Femi discuss episode 2 of the Great Teaching Unpacked Documentary - which focuses on behaviour, norms, routines and merits.
Watch the documentary for free at:
steplab.co/watch
Matt and Femi discuss the idea of first success, and whether the copncept can inform thinking around teacher development and student learning.
Matt and Femi discuss Episode 1 of the Great Teaching, Unpacked documentary.
Watch the documentary for free at:
steplab.co/film
Get in touch with Matt and Femi:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss the critical importance of not letting behavioural incidents go unchallenged.
Femi and Matt discuss the concept of school policies and policy documentation, and what makes them more or less effective.
We're not on social media but we love to hear your thoughts, feedback, reflections and requests so please send us a message at:
beyondgoodpod@gmail.com
Matt and Femi discuss those brief interactions with students that set the tone for the lesson, or help transform the way students think about themselves.
Matt and Femi dive into the phrase that you so often hear amongst senior and middle management in schools: "Holding people to account".
Matt and Femi speak to the executive head teacher and founder of Cobham Free School, Michaela Khatib, about the remarkable journey to plan, start and grow a school from nothing to over a thousand pupils.
Matt and Femi discuss the need for teachers to have a basic understanding of how learning happens, as well as barriers and solutions to the problem.
Matt and Femi discuss Femi's experience of working in both state and private schools, what the major differences are for teachers and what each can learn from the other.
This episode has 2 unrelated topics...
In the first half of the episode Femi and Matt discuss what it means to have a culture where you can 'hold colleagues accountable' for the benefit of the whole team.
In the second part of episode (starting at 20:30), Femi and Matt turn their attention to the Power of Video - particularly with regards to modelling and feedback for teachers.
Femi and Matt discuss why improving our teaching (or anything) can be so difficult, and how that influences their thinking around coaching and PD.
Femi and Matt discuss the concept of 'disagree then commit' in the context of working in a school team or SLT.
Matt and Femi talk to Peter Lee about how he has managed to found and maintain a school which not only achieves outstanding results, but also has not had any supply bought in for over 8 years! Among many other things they discuss workload, behaviour, timetabling and lesson structures.
Femi shares his reflections and lessons learnt with Matt on the last 6 months of doing regular coaching - several times per week.
Prompted by Pritesh's tweet regarding the number of observations completed and feedback given in the autumn term, Femi and Matt discuss attitudes and culture around drop-ins.
Femi and Matt wrestle with the concept of students who refuse instructions and what schools can do about it.
Femi and Matt's discussion is prompted by an article of the same name:
https://thinkingflexibly.com/2024/10/18/the-lost-art-of-planning/
They discuss the pros and cons of planning lessons, designing lesson sequences and preparing resources from scratch vs having off-the-shelf schemes of work, resources and teaching powerpoints.
Matt and Femi discuss explicit teaching (direct instruction), questioning, AfL and much more!
Matt and Femi talk to Katharine Birbalsingh, founding member and head teacher of the Michaela Community School in Wembley Park.
Following on from their video analysis of his lesson, Matt and Femi talk to Barry Smith about some of his principles for classroom teaching. Starting from a lense of MFL teaching, we extract the general pedagogical principles that Barry believes lead to exceptional outcomes in the classroom.
Matt and Femi chat to metacognition enthusiast Nathan Burns about metacognition, knowledge, knowledge organisers and much much more.
Check out Nathan's resources on his website:
https://www.mrmetacognition.com/
Femi and Matt discuss the enactment gap - teasing apart what it is exactly, diagnosing solutions to the problem and then get into the pragmatism of supporting teachers to improve elements of their practice - trying to figure out when and how to intervene if a colleague is struggling with students during unstructured time.
Femi tells Matt about his recent visit to another high performing school - this time Q3 Academy Langley in the West Midlands.
This brings up the topics of participation and thinking ratio - leading to a spirited discussion about 'pair talk', 'everybody writes' and other approaches to increasing thinking and participation.
Femi talks to Matt about how he is now thinking about PD - from individual all the way to whole-school.
Matt and Femi discuss duties, handling pupils, being authentic, leadership, supporting colleagues and much more!
See the video podcast on youtube.
Video Lesson Analysis: Barry Smith Teaching French
https://youtu.be/qs0S4sYvBZ0?feature=shared
Barry's Full French Lesson
https://youtu.be/WtO1YWhwAGE?feature=shared
Doug Lemov's Field Notes
https://teachlikeachampion.org/tag/barry-smith/
Matt and Femi talk to Miriam Hussain about whole-school systems for behaviour, for teaching and learning, about SLT, the vision of the head teacher and much more!
Matt and Femi reflect on leading departments, the evolving process of implementing coaching and department meetings as colleagues' needs change over time, and turn their thoughts forward to leading culture change, teaching and learning and implementing coaching whole school.
Matt and Femi are joined by Josh Goodrich, author of 'Responsive Coaching', former teacher and senior leader and CEO of steplab.
Responsive Coaching
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Responsive-Coaching-Evidence-informed-instructional-coaching/dp/1036003213
Steplab
www.steplab.co
Matt and Femi speak to former student Lily about school and learning from the other side of the desk. Their discussion ranges from the impact that a great teacher can have on a student's choices and life, through to accounting for students who are struggling with pastoral issues and even to the teacher recruitment crisis and questions of how to get intelligent people like Lily into the profession.
In this episode Matt and Femi discuss various means and considerations around checking for understanding.
Femi and I have been visiting a lot of schools over the last few months - some are incredible and get some of the best results in the country and others are not so good! In this episode we share things we've each seen that we thought were effective, and things that we noticed that were not.
Matt Burnage is one of the founding senior leaders of Ark Soane Academy, History teacher, and assistant principal leading on curriculum and assessment. In this episode we do a deep dive into the subject of booklets - what they are, how they encapsulate the curriculum, impact on learning, the ways they are used in lessons, implications for whole school routines, how they are made and developed, implications for department meetings and much much more.
Matt debriefs Femi on his visit to The Michaela Community School. They discuss teaching and learning, students, staff, family lunch and yard time, curriculum, routines, culture and much more.
Join Matt and Femi for the second part of their interview with Barry, as they talk about his leadership style, teaching, developing teachers, SLT and much much more.
Barry Smith was a founding Deputy of Michaela School, Wembley. The kids’ amazing French and his unique approach to MFL teaching created huge buzz at Michaela. He went on to become head of Great Yarmouth Charter School - the tenth head in 10 years, at a school that was rated inadequate for a decade. In 5 months, Ofsted declared Charter, ‘a miraculous turnaround’. Barry went on to lead the turn around of inadequate Hackney New School.
Barry now works freelance, mostly supporting headteachers with culture, behaviour, courtesy, teaching & learning, systems, and he has his own podcast: Barry Smith Education.
Join Matt and Femi as they talk to Barry Smith about his experience of taking over and turning around a failing school.
Barry Smith was a founding Deputy of Michaela School, Wembley. The kids’ amazing French and his unique approach to MFL teaching created huge buzz at Michaela. He went on to become head of Great Yarmouth Charter School - the tenth head in 10 years, at a school that was rated inadequate for a decade. In 5 months, Ofsted declared Charter, ‘a miraculous turnaround’. Barry went on to lead the turn around of inadequate Hackney New School.
Barry now works freelance, mostly supporting headteachers with culture, behaviour, courtesy, teaching & learning, systems, and he has his own podcast: Barry Smith Education.
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss what they've learnt and are discovering about coaching: how powerful it is, and how it's harder to do really well than it looks!
In particular they dive into the ideas of sequencing/structuring teacher development, giving the coachee the opportunity to own and unpack what they've done well, and the importance of rehearsal, amongst other things.
They reference the fantastic 'Responsive Coaching' by Josh Goodrich:
https://amzn.eu/d/0bKPFOMq
Pritesh is a science teacher, head of science and assistant head in charge of teaching and learning at Ark Soane Academy. Known as the best science teacher in the country because of his student’s outstanding results, Pritesh takes us through the what, why and how of his approach to classroom teaching, including direct instruction, rehearsal, participation, the three phases of questioning, independent work, booklets, sequencing, chunking and precision.
Amongst other things, we also discuss the intentional development character, culture and behaviour – things which are evident in abundance when talking to students at Ark Soane Academy.
In this episode Matt talks to Femi about the things he has learnt from his visits to some of the highest-performing schools in the country and reflects on the ways he would change his teaching as a result.
The pair talk about answering in full sentences, paired talk, choral response and rehearsal, amongst many other things.
Get in touch with comments, questions and suggestions: @BeyondGoodPod on X
A short announcement from me to say that we have decided that the last published episode will be the final episode in Season 2, an announcement which simultaneously heralds the arrival of Season 3.
I’m excited to say that you can expect more guests on the show in the coming series – Our interviews with star science teacher Pritesh Raichura, and eminently sensible super head Barry Smith are both in the editing pipeline, and we’re aiming for something like a 1:1 ratio of episodes with guests to episodes with just me and Femi.
New series and next episode coming very soon, thank you for your patience, and have a wonderful summer term!
Today Femi and Matt discuss their career changes, both recent (in Matt's case) and forthcoming (in Femi's) and how they are thinking about teaching and learning, and education going forward. This context should throw some light onto some of the conversations they have had recently or that are coming up.
The discussion today was prompted by a listener question about students being late to lessons, so Matt and Femi each give their take on that. They discuss what they think the relevant psychology is and how they each handle this situation. They talk about whole-school policies and dealing with a culture of lateness as middle and senior leaders – and different ways that schools approach the starts and ends of lessons, as well as transitions. Femi and Matt also muse on some of the interesting situations they’ve faced in which the more effective approach contradicted school policy.
The topic of today’s discussion is Matt's visit to Ark Soane Academy, and in particular the impressive whole-school culture and the remarkable impact of that on student behaviours, attitudes and learning. Femi and Matt talk about the best science lesson Matt has ever seen, and wider discussion about starting and running schools and embedding shared routines across the school.
As always, all questions or comments welcome: @beyondgoodpod on X.
The topic of discussion this week is warning systems – so very much a behaviour-based episode rather than a maths one.
Matt and Femi cover a fair bit of ground: from classrooms with names written on the board and hundreds of warnings being issued each day through to classrooms with no warnings and students absorbed in their work. And from supporting colleagues with behaviour issues through to the prospect of creating a school-wide culture around behaviour that leaves deleterious learning behaviours at the school gates.
This week Femi and Matt debate the pros and cons of homework - a particularly slippery beast to nail down. They get into some general principles and challenges of setting good homework, and what they have tried and each do now, among other things.
By all means let us know if you think you have this one cracked:
@beyondgoodpod on X.
In this episode Femi and Matt talk about modelling - in all it’s various forms from leading on behaviour through to explicit teaching strategies. In particular they discuss pre-made teacher models and explanations vs modelling live, in real time, and explore some really interesting nooks and crannies of that facet.
X:
@BeyondGoodPod
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss setting, the term ‘bottom set’, attitudes towards, and working with students who have low prior attainment.
As you’ll hear both advocates of ensuring that those students get the highest possible quality education, that we meet them where they are, and that we work hard, carefully and mindfully as a community to ensure that we divorce that honest recognition of differing starting points from any judgements of value or personal worth.
Contact us @BeyondGoodPod on X.
In this episode Matt and Femi talk about Adam Boxer’s Book: How to Teach Secondary Science.
In particular, they discuss Adam’s concept of ‘Directions of travel’, which provides a nice framework for characterising the way that we move through explanations. Both feel that many teachers could spend more time thinking about and planning explanations than they tend to, so Adam's conceptualisation is useful because it enables us to expand our vocabulary and add nuance to our discussions and reflections on explanations.
Today’s topic is Year 11 mock examinations. Matt and Femi discuss:
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Holding 2 or 3 sets of mocks vs just 1.
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That mocks should not be the main means by which we discover what students can and cannot do.
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Conditions for students to learn and improve on knowledge gaps exposed by tests, the implications for ‘going through’ the test in lessons, and why that is rarely effective
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Best practice for giving feedback from mocks, and some examples of poor practice.
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Issues with question level analysis
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How Mocks can crystallise classroom culture, and setting up and capitalising on their success
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What happens when mock results are not so good or students are not prepared for them
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Giving scores back
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Turning around the marking of papers
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Postcards, emails or letters home praising effort
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Running mocks well
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Lending equipment
As always you can get in touch with Matt or Femi through @BeyondGoodPod on X.
Femi and Matt speak to Dave Taylor on the topic of the maths curriculum. Dave is a maths specialist and lead practioner, well known in maths circles for his ‘increasingly difficult questions’ and ‘backward faded maths’. Dave has thought long and hard about curriculum issues such as sequencing and mastery, and has experience of creating maths curricula, so the trio go deep on the considerations, nuances and complexities of developing and implementing an effective maths curriculum.
Topics covered include:
-The value of having schemes of work
-The fact that students don’t come into Y7 all at the same starting point, and the implications of this
-Streaming and Pathways
-Mastering material that is prerequisite to moving on
-Setting, setting philosophy and setting conversations
-Resources, and issues with centrally prepared lessons
-Space and flexibility in the scheme work to do retrieval work, fill gaps, or push ahead
-Designing a scheme of work that maximises students’ opportunity to succeed by accounting for their starting points
-Importance of testing students on what they have been taught and the stupidity and cruelty of giving students summative assessments that contain topics that they have not yet covered.
-The domain-specificity of teacher expertise, why it is hard to develop and some possibilities for doing that better
-And Increasingly difficult questions, amongst other topics
You can follow Dave on X @taylorda01, and listen to his own podcast here:
https://taylorda01.weebly.com/podcast.html
Today’s discussion is prompted by the Bill Rogers interview that recently appeared in the TES titled: ‘Bill Rogers: Where we are going wrong on behaviour’.
Matt and Femi discuss:
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The problem of COVID and re-victimising students
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Teacher’s being inclined to appease students rather than lead on behaviour.
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If you’re not in control it’s not a safe environment
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Relationships and how to respond and relate to students
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How do things change when you know the causative pathology for the a student’s antisocial behaviour
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Curriculum for behaviour, and the problem of differing conceptions of what teachers mean by poor behaviour
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Restorative conversations
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The power of behaviour routines (and the risk that they become performative)
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And the unhelpful contributions of commentators who do not understand schools and classrooms
‘Passive passengers!’ - students who are not especially engaged in lessons.
Matt and Femi discuss some of the indicators and consequences of passive behaviours, how we might think about that as teachers in terms of tackling it vs accepting it, some causes of passivity, and how we might tackle it.
Today's guest is American Educator, Coach and Podcast host Dr Zach Groshell for a fascinating discussion about his work in US government funded schools and his drive for an increasingly evidence-based pedagogy.
Matt and Femi talk to Zach about his role as an instructional coach, more and less directive coaching methodologies, the configuration of coaching within US public schools, characteristics of more effective teachers, implementing whole-school changes, high expectations, and structural impediments to raising standards in US schools.
They discuss professional development, and some common misconceptions that are still being promoted, the adoption of pedagogical advances in the science of reading in contrast to more regressive approaches in mathematics. Accountability, ideologues, ego-protection, the consequences of confusing ‘means with ends’ when designing teaching approaches, and Zach’s hopes and optimism for the future.
Zach is active on X under the handle @MrZachG, has his own blog: www.EducationRickshaw.com and hosts the The Progressively Incorrect podcast.
Today’s episode is prompted by a recent post on X which posed the following question: “What do you do with your mathematics teachers while you do your whole school professional learning on literacy, reading or writing?”
Femi and Matt discuss the two main failure modes for students on ‘worded’ maths questions – noting that the more common and critical failure mode is one that won’t be addressed in a whole-school context. They talk about the rarely considered element of ‘opportunity cost’, optimum ways of developing student ability on worded maths questions, what the maths department could actually be doing on literacy PD, the role of subject leaders in setting the tone to make this PD a success, and the implications for taking ‘literacy is everyone’s responsibility’ forward seriously.
Also discussed are the EEF guide to improving literacy in secondary schools, how we have to view the use of training time through the lens of impact, alternative and possibly more effective approaches to professional learning, the importance of identifying needs within a department and prioritising training to address those needs, and leaders having the strength and courage to take a differentiated and subject-specific approach to professional development.
Finally the conversation moves on to the importance of airing conflict, different ways of handling conflict, learning from our mistakes, getting feedback on how well our approaches have worked, the importance carefully of defining success criteria and afterwards evaluating the impact of training.
Please do join in and further the conversation - @beyondgoodpod on X
In today’s episode, Femi and Matt discuss differentiation! They talk about adaptive learning, differentiation as an advanced teaching skill that relies on solid foundations of strong learning behaviour and pedagogical subject knowledge and the botheredness to actually go and do it (especially when classes are compliant.)
They talk about prioritising differentiating to support weaker students first, priority learners, and really knowing who needs your help. The amount of one to one interactions in lessons as a marker of teacher skill. Some of the mistakes we can make when trying to ‘extend’ more able students, share some examples of approaches to differentiation that are not especially effective.
In this episode Matt and Femi discuss culture - particularly from the perspective of heads of department trying to shape the culture of teaching staff in their corner of the school. This one is not maths-specific – the discussion is relevent to colleagues from any subject area or team.
They consider the fact that culture exists – whether you actively seek to shape it, or not, the characteristics of good culture, shaping and maintaining culture, so called toxic environments: and how incongruence, unfairness and wilful blindness from leaders can play a role there.
They talk about failing to listen for fear of endorsing the other person’s view, some challenges of open lines of communication, establishing and reinforcing norms, Tuckman’s stages of group development, being visible, engineering and celebrating success, and delegating and giving responsibility (while guiding and supporting appropriately), amongst other things.
Today Femi and Matt are speaking about lesson observations and related activities such as lesson visits, coaching and feedback.
They talk about being clear on why the observation is happening; good and less good reasons for doing lesson observations and some of the issues around lesson observations as part of the performance management process.
On lesson visits i.e. ‘walking the shop floor’, they discuss culture, feedback and follow up and then get into coaching observations and feedback: 3 common mistakes, models for structuring feedback, initial identification of the big ticket items and subsequent follow up staying with that focus. Jim Knight’s ‘Impact cycle’, teaching strategies, modelling and feedback.
The attitude of the person being observed. Trust. How potential typically outweighs competence and the implications for ‘attitude’ when recruiting teachers.
What makes for effective teams.
What Matt has been working on to be trust-worthy on his end of the relationship, and how one’s behaviour can reveal underlying motivations and insecurities.
What is a necessary professional conversation, and what isn’t, and what can be learnt from those encounters, and lesson observation etiquette, among other things!
Today's episode is about mistakes, disappointment and failure – with the discussion ranging from 'recognising that my last lesson didn’t go as well as I wanted', through to acknowledging and responding to under-performance at the level of the whole school.
Matt and Femi discuss the importance of recognising and admitting when things aren’t good enough and taking responsibility for the outcomes, how to identify when outcomes haven’t been good enough, and also reflecting on when and why things went well.
The pair share examples from their own experiences of failure; what it means to be able to hold your head up high, look the kids in the eye at the end of the year and say “Hand on heart, I did my best”; Using evidence to identify what it is that you need to work on to improve outcomes – and trying to focus in on a small number of things that will have the biggest impact; and the common trap of focussing on 'what I should have done in that situation' rather than 'how to avoid getting into the situation in the first place'.
They debate some of the problems with having performance management linked to class results; A developmental paradigm vs judgemental paradigm; focussing on outcomes vs focussing on culture; and the value of having the space to make mistakes.
Today’s episode is about 'hit and run' CPD, which Femi and Matt approach with an attitude of constructive criticism and attempting to offer a vision of positive alternatives.
'Hit and run' CPD is really just any so called ‘training’ which is a singular, stand-alone event, with no follow up. All too often these sessions will involve all staff in the hall, with no attempt to evaluate prior knowledge, and no differentiation for the widely varying contexts and levels of expertise.
The duo discuss what is meant by the term; what the problems are with singular standalone training sessions; what would constitute valid goals for the inset presentation and what does it look like when it’s being done well.
They talk about the importance of follow-up to any training , get into the challenges for heads and SLTs around narrowing priorities enough to give them the time through the year to achieve and sustain real change and the importance of approaching inset and training strategically and with long and medium term plans.
They also discuss cultivating a developmental culture vs a judgemental one, and how the behaviour of leaders is crucial to shape that; The challenges of utilising expertise within school; The proper way to reflect on training sessions and the importance of reflecting and evaluating the impact of training and inset; How energising it can be to be involved in the long term project of improvement – especially with a skilled facilitator and a clear path forward; and The economics of professional development and false economy of the hit and run CPD, amongst other things.
This episode should be of interest to teachers of all subjects, and as always we'd love to hear your thoughts - @BeyondGoodPod on X.
Today's episode starts with Matt and Femi chatting about Femi’s observations of coaches at his 6 year old's summer tennis camp, which turns out to be a fascinating lens through which to discuss the characteristics of great teachers as it is all about the ‘how’ of what is being done, and not the ‘what’ – which is so often the focus of discussions in teaching.
They discuss the critical importance of enthusiasm and passion; Steven Kotler’s model of motivation for flow; the ability to differentiate; flexibility to deviate from the plan; use of names, and subject knowledge.
The conversation gets into teachers identifying other experts, learning from them and actively seeking coaching and feedback; Coaching and the inner game of tennis; and the ways in which motivation and engagement are a precursor to skill development.
They discuss the power of the word ‘differently’ in coaching; how achieving mastery in teaching makes the job a pleasure and not a drag; How much 1:1 interaction each child gets with the teacher during the session or lesson, and the power and beauty of curiosity, among other topics.
Lots to enjoy today and truly none of it is maths-specific, so we hope this is of interest once again to all colleagues.
In this episode of the podcast Femi and Matt share their thoughts on four different topics selected from X (formerly twitter): 'textbooks', 'locking the toilets', 'group work' and 'moving schools'.
They discuss what the ideal textbook looks like, mixed revision, and workbooks. The pros and cons of locking the toilets during lesson time, mobile phones, and managing students asking to go to the toilet during your lessons. Group work, independent practise, collaboration, variety in activities around the school, and noise levels in the classroom, and finally some thoughts both for colleagues starting in a new school in September, and for leaders in schools receiving new colleagues in September.
If you like this format for the podcast please do let us know @BeyondGoodPod on X.
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss Line management! The duo get into what good practise might look like; things line managers should do and should avoid, regularity of meetings, line management as a partnership – so a collaborative process, and approaching line management outside of your specialism with genuine humility and curiosity.
They discuss the importance of looking at material in advance of the meeting (when applicable), minimising admin, getting to know the subject and department that you line manage, putting aside your own comfort zone and seeking to understand what is effective in this subject, line managers going to department meetings, centring line management around a vision for the department, setting and reviewing goals and providing support.
Finally, the importance of finding out the career aspirations of the people you line management, and looking for opportunities to dovetail their progression with the needs of the school.
As always Beyond Good welcome and invite opposing views and questions: @beyondgoodpod on X / twitter.
In this episode of the podcast Femi and Matt discuss the ideas of Mastery and 'Conceptual Understanding' in teaching and learning. The conversation covers:
- Mastery
- Layers of understanding
- A pragmatic definition of understanding
- Common issues in the classroom
- ‘rich’ activities vs repetition
- Chunking and isolating skills
- aha moments
- Knowledge is power
- Mastery takes time
- Traps for enthusiastic teachers
- Split classes
- Extending top end students in the classroom
- The optics of maths lessons (and skill acquisition in general) – which can look ‘boring’ from the outside
- Progression over time vs observing one-off lessons
- And Student voice, amongst other topics
We hope you enjoy the discussion, and find it useful!
Welcome to this bonus episode of the Beyond Good podcast! The idea here was just to offer a little insight into what goes on behind the scenes at Beyond Good HQ in a very casual chat between Matt and Femi. They share reflections on how the podcast has evolved, a few thoughts on Edutwitter, discuss Matt's view that we don’t need any more 'maps of the territory'; and talk about teacher training, school visits and podcast guests.
Nothing too deep here, we just want to say a big thank you to all our listeners and open up our world to you.
In today’s podcast Femi and Matt discuss Wellbeing.
After making the important distinction between wellbeing and workload they discuss
- Attitudes to work
- Being present – finding engagement with the task at hand
- Meditation
- Spiritual practice and gratitude
- The effects of being asked to do meaningless or supercilious work
- Socialising and social factors
- Sport and the importance of physical activity
- Truly meaningful relationships with colleagues and students:
- Community and comradery
- Perfunctory token efforts to improve wellbeing vs substantial approaches by schools such as centralising behaviour systems.
- Workload and sustainable practice including typical working patterns for each.
- The importance of healthy, happy teachers for inspiring children’s flourishing.
- Understanding the purposes of marking (AfL and feedback) and finding efficient ways to achieve those goals as opposed to just marking for the sake of it.
- How poor behaviour impacts wellbeing, motivation, etc and the onus on schools to deliver better training on behaviour management
- Challenging things that aren’t very good, having the courage to say what you feel – and coming up with alternatives.
- And Inset days, and how to kill any kind of enthusiasm for being back in school. Femi’s penchant for Team building activities, and other topics!
It was by no means an exhaustive conversation, and the issue of teacher wellbeing remains a serious and widely unresolved problem, however it's good to talk, and we hope you enjoy the discussion.
In today’s podcast Matt and Femi discuss two main topics which are 'setting', and 'de-escalation'.
In both cases the points raised should be of interest to colleagues from all subjects.
In the long-overdue chat on setting the duo touch on streaming vs mixed attainment; some reasons why different approaches might be more or less suited to different contexts; Why year 7 is not ‘the start’; sink groups; setting by ability not behaviour; tackling attitudes and historic mindsets around streaming; set changes; managing setting as a HOD and supporting teachers with issues around set changes.
On de-escalation they share some of the skilful and less skilful approaches that they have seen, discern attributes of skilful de-escalation; avoiding conflict; being clear in your mind about what outcome you actually want and how that influences your response; and how we can learn from the masters, amongst other topics.
In today’s podcast Femi and Matt dissect the recently published findings of the DFE national behaviour survey. This is another conversation which is not at all subject-specific and should be of interest to all colleagues.
In this episode the duo discuss the challenges with collecting and reporting the data; the student perspective; the gap between what leaders are saying and what teachers and students are saying; walking the shop floor; wilful blindness and false praise; the importance of accepting reality as a precursor to improvement; variation within the data; variation within school compared to variation between schools; individual teachers skilful management of behaviour vs whole school culture; training and the challenges of providing truly effective training; how does Femi support teachers who are struggling with behaviour management?; coaching as a long term process for sustained improvements; what barriers teachers typically face when it comes to improving behaviour management; how strong relationships can be when built on the solid foundations of ‘strict’ (as in ‘warm-strict’); the opportunity for far more efficient curriculum coverage by tightening up lessons; staff wellbeing; why isn't behaviour management central to initial teacher training?; Why do so many schools have behaviour policies that are ineffective and poorly designed? ; Discipline as a key to flourishing, and other topics.
Today Femi and Matt discuss teacher effectiveness vs years of service and some issues with the word ‘experience’ which is generally used as a proxy for competence. As is increasingly the case the discussion is pertinent to all subjects and is not by any means maths-specific. There’s a lot of thinking out loud here and, unusually(!), the boys actually managed to land some insight and conclusions that both found helpful.
The conversation covers:
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The will-skill matrix
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Possible reasons why some people move sideways whereas others move up
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Role models, and the power of colleagues to either inspire, or depress
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The ability to receive and act on critical feedback,
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Self-reflection and taking responsibility for continuing development
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Insecurity and the tying self-worth to the role of teacher
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The possibility of having grades of teacher based on competence
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The importance of success, praise, encouragement and recognition
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Scaffolding support for less skillful teachers
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Natural ability
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Sporting backgrounds
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Direct instruction and the support of a mentor, and the idea that our actions should be designed to move people to the right on the will-skill matrix (that is the increasing will dimension), so that they can drive their own movement up the increasing skill dimension .
In this episode Matt and Femi dig into the dilemma that is ‘homework’! Reflecting on their experiences over the years they ask; how effective is it (academically)?, weigh the costs and benefits, and highlight the demands on teachers. They discuss the different approaches to homework they have tried over the years, the problems each approach threw up and the strategies used to overcome them. They talk about the social pressures at play for students, setting homework for the benefit of parents, Matt's ABCDE of homework and other issues.
This is not at all a maths–specific discussion so hopefully teachers of all subjects will find it interesting to hear them lay out why, with 3 decades of teaching experience between them, they still seem unable to pin down this slippery beast.
Today Femi and Matt discuss their approaches to handling complaints. None of this is specific to maths and so the conversation should be relevent for colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds.
The pair talk about
- Receiving complaints well
- Prioritising responding to parents and acting promptly
- The importance for people of simply being heard
- The pros and cons of different approaches to investigating complaints about a colleague.
- Avoiding big surprises by knowing what is going on in your department - by walking the shop floor
- Relationships with parents and reputation in the community,
- Some common ways in which schools frustrate parents.
- The balance of representing colleagues and representing children, taking an approach which seeks truth rather than rebuking the complaint – being neutral and not making any assumptions.
- Recognising a view point vs condoning it.
- Whether things change when parents are paying a lot of money for their child’s education – i.e. in private school.
- Reframing the complaint or query and looking at it from the parent’s perspective.
- Setting out your protocol with the team
- Using your line manager for guidance vs gossiping.
- Chain of command.
- Accepting fault when appropriate and being proactive to make first contact when we’ve clearly got it wrong.
Today Femi and Matt discuss an article by Dylan Wiliam titled ‘Teacher Quality: why it matters, and how to get more of it’. In addition to this central theme the pair touch on the failures of policy initiatives to raise standards, teacher learning communities, considerations of the alignment of personal professional development with the school priorities, the learning cycle of teacher improvement, the common failings of school leaders to be strategic and to prioritise effectively, and the forces that incline us all towards initiative central. They also talk about alternative approaches to professional development (including coaching), the need for initial teacher training to deliver both high quality training and to instil attitudes of a career long commitment to professional learning, creating a culture of improvement as a leader and what it means to ‘fail better’, amongst other things.
Matt and Femi are in a pensive mood for a thought-provoking discussion on CPD. They discuss the good and bad of inset days, utilising skilled practioners to model and share expertise, team building, sequencing and differentiation in professional development, ‘hit and run’ CPD vs sustained behavioural change, coaching and culture, Jim Knight and the Impact Cycle, video, email, the tremendous importance of being able to see good practise in action, the reluctance to recognise differing levels of expertise in this profession; and other topics.
In this episode of Beyond Good Tom Bennett joins Matt and Femi to discuss all things schools and behaviour.
Tom Bennett began teaching in the East End of London, and is currently the Director and founder of researchEd and a Teacher Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. From 2008-2016 he wrote a weekly column for the TES and TES online, and is the author of four books on teacher-training, behaviour management and educational research – most recently ‘Running the Room’.
In 2015 Tom was long listed for the GEMS Global Teacher Prize, and was also listed as one of the Huffington Post’s ‘Top Ten Global Educational Bloggers’. In 2017, Tom published an independent review of behaviour in schools. He recently chaired the Behaviour Management Group for the DfE and is currently their Independent Behaviour Advisor. He coaches teachers and schools in all aspects of behaviour management and research integration and he currently leads the Department for Education’s Behaviour Hubs project.
In this discussion we talk about the need for education to be evidence-informed and to move away from the legacy of junk pedagogy, the state of behaviour in schools and what Tom typically does and sees on school visits. We discuss the case for good behaviour and approaching behaviour as a curriculum. We talk about experienced vs effective teachers, the importance of detail and clarity around all the micro-behaviours in schools, creating school culture and how that has to come from leadership. We talk about school priorities, managing and modifying the behaviour of staff – by teaching them(!), leadership and accountability, issues with leadership training and 'non-competent' leaders, teaching behavioural habits as an end in itself in addition to being a means to the end of knowledge acquisition, experiencing the education system as a parent, and other topics.
In this week’s episode, Matt and Femi discuss a comment made by Adam Boxer –that the most common issue he sees in classrooms he has visited is that students are simply not properly paying attention to the teacher.
This is another conversation that will be relevent to teachers of all subjects – it is not maths-specific.
The duo talk about why this is a problem and how it makes teaching harder, what ‘good’ looks like in this respect and how norms are established and broken, ways that attention gets diverted from the core principle the teacher is trying to teach, having a broad awareness and keeping plenty of capacity in working memory in order to take in and use the information in front of you – i.e. what students are up to. They cover cues and signals that students may not be fully attentive, learning from other teachers by seeing it done expertly, the importance of explanations and high quality questioning, not rushing in to help students in the initial period of independent practise, and the difference between rules that describe what you don’t want to happen such as no calling out, versus providing students with proactive routines for what you do want to see, such as Doug Lemov’s SLANT.
In this episode Matt and Femi discuss Ofsted. What is on offer is not a position on Ofsted, it is simply a balanced discussion limited to the perspective of class teachers and middle leaders. There is no subject-specificity to this one, so hopefully educators of all stripes will find this useful.
The discussion took in some of the following features of the landscape:
Ofsted preparation and the body of knowledge and skills accrued through daily effort over years versus cramming ‘the night before’. The incremental improvements on paper to the school inspection framework and Ofsted attempts to make that less onerous and to judge whether what you are doing is effective as opposed to telling you what we want to see. The Legacy of snake-oil salesmen cashing in on fear of Ofsted and trying to sell ‘the answers’. Business as normal vs putting on a show and advice for a teacher who was anxious about their classes during the inspection.
Differing stakes and impacts on teachers, middle leaders, senior leaders and heads. Key features of the current inspection framework, the balance of weighting that inspectors give between ‘having your finger on the pulse’ versus the actual quality of outcomes for children.
Pre-inspection planning and workload, and paperwork for inspections such as lesson context sheets. Being honest with inspectors about strengths and weaknesses. Strategies schools use to prepare staff: what’s good and what’s not. Interacting with inspectors – the importance of details like the reception area, staff and the state of the toilets. Briefing students about the inspection, or not. Typicality, and other topics.
in today’s episode Femi and Matt discuss centrally planned lessons. Their discussion extends to the various forms of lesson resources such as starters, practise materials, and mixed revision as well as teaching examples. They talk about workload, modelling, the use of different media, meeting the needs of the students sat in front of you, the effects on pedagogy and teacher development, the utility for cover and non-specialists, ECTs, worksheets, textbooks, consistency, expectations and many other issues.
In this episode of the podcast Femi and Matt discuss the broad ranging, but critical, topic of 'checking for understanding'. The discussion covers the various time-scales at which teachers might check for understanding; from moment to moment through the lesson all the way up to termly tests, and they discuss a variety of strategies that teachers use to check for understanding and debate their effectiveness.
In this episode Femi and Matt speak to Rachael Southern who they asked to come on the show after learning about her fascinating and inspiring story: Rachael has recently returned to teaching after nearly a decade out pursuing a successful career in corporate law in the city.
Not only is Rachael’s journey a fascinating one, but she is in a fairly unique position to share her observations and insights as an informed and knowledgeable 'outsider'. Along the way Rachael’s passion, energy and enthusiasm for teaching is palpable, which Femi and Matt both found refreshing, invigorating and inspiring - and we hope you do too!
This episode begins with some further thoughts on department development plans - following on from episode 15 on that topic. Matt and Femi talk about defining what processes will be running in the department rather than trying to describe a particular endpoint and also incorporating teacher’s career ambitions into departmental development plans.
They then posit that teachers are the most important resource that a school has and that results are largely determined by them, and not the systems and structures in a school. Matt and Femi recognise that you do need systems and structures but conclude that the ambition should be to create systems that support less effective teachers while simultaneously not clipping the wings of more effective teachers.
They talk about the implication of this which is that the lion’s share of non-teaching time in schools should be spent discussing pedagogy and developing teachers rather than on the development and implementation of ever more systems and structures.
This is yet another episode which is not subject-specific and should be of interest to teachers from all backgrounds.
In this episode Femi and Matt speak to Aparna about her experience of education as a mother of two exceptional children. The conversation shines a light on some of the challenges students, their families, teachers and schools face when the children don’t fall into that broad middle 99% that we are accustomed to working with. Hopefully the conversation provides some awareness and stimulates thinking about those children who live life at the far edge of the distribution– whether that is in terms of physical or emotional needs, natural ability, cognitive approaches, or any other dimension of relevance to a successful schooling.
The trio discuss the dangers of schools placing these children in boxes simply because those categories are the familiar ones, and the challenges and frustration of trying to unpick that, the importance of making an accurate assessment of what students can actually do – which might not be revealed when the analysis is at the level of a single number summarising the score on a standardised test. They debate whether cognitive science implemented in schools does or does not cater for the exceptional, or whether this is a failure of quality first teaching and it raises the interesting question of how deep we should reasonably expect teacher’s pedagogical skill and subject knowledge to run to truly qualify as quality first teaching.
The conversation touches on the idea of cognitive underload and the need to frame learning within a wider context, how students fundamentally need to feel they have something interesting and challenging to do in lessons, opportunities to ask their bizarre questions and feel included, possible classroom strategies, the importance of having a centralised plan and it not being left to each individual teacher, and the possibility of teachers even just acting in more of a coaching role – equipping these students with material and then checking in and following up with them.
Matt and Femi turn their attention to the subject of Departmental development plans and, as you will hear, this is a topic that they come at from quite different perspectives. They discuss the issues with development plans in the way they all too often appear in schools, vision and ambition for the department, auditing the current state of affairs, and the importance of pricing in the available capacity to enact said plans.
They touch on the tension between the need for differentiated individual development vs commonalties across the whole team. Line management, the relationship with a line manager and what line management should really be about feature heavily and there is also some discussion about the culture of teacher development in schools, or lack of it.
This is yet another episode which runs across all subjects so hopefully all colleagues will enjoy and find value in it.
The central theme of the discussion in this episode is ‘teaching low ability students’. In a fairly wide-ranging discussion, Femi and Matt touch on expectations, setting and sink groups, profiling, behaviour, avoiding conflict, and some common pitfalls they have seen, amongst other things. Although they do cite a few maths-specific examples, on the whole this is another episode that is largely not specific to maths teaching so should be of interest to teachers of all subjects.
In this week's episode, Femi and Matt mull over a topic which seems to get a disproportionate amount of air time on social media, which is teachers’ thoughts and feelings about their SLT.
As always, the Beyond Good team would love to hear your thoughts and responses to the episode: @BeyondGoodPod
In this episode of The Beyond Good Podcast, Matt and Femi discuss resilience. There is an old adage that students should be working harder than the teacher, and they explore this, discuss what they each think is right at the core of good teaching, talk about engineering success, what that looks like in the classroom and how it evolves over time, metacognitive understanding and touch on teacher resilience amongst other things.
The theme of Femi and Matt's discussion in this episode is “things that schools could get rid of - or at least do less of”. While it is rarely the case that these ‘things’ are totally ineffective, more likely they are effective to some degree, but in the cost-benefit analysis do they meet the threshold of being effective enough to justify our time? Could they be culled in order to allow us to spend more time doing things that are even more effective?
With no subject specific element to this topic, and colleagues from all walks will hopefully enjoy the discussion.
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss what they were each doing at the beginning of their teaching careers that they felt was very effective, and as importantly what they were not doing, and then what other aspects came in later when more bandwidth came online as they developed automaticity (unconscious competence).
This is a discussion about low hanging fruit / first order effects / climbing the steepest part of the curve as quickly as possible and the law of diminishing returns.
For the most part this episode is not maths-specific and there is value here to teachers from all specialisms. The duo also talk about how important it is to be constantly striving to improve teaching and share what they are each working on at the moment. They elucidate the 'soft' metrics that they were using to test their own competence while developing skills in these core areas. Alongside this is the emphasis on sticking with an approach, reflecting and refining the ability to make it work effectively, and not giving up and looking for the next silver bullet.
This week Femi and Matt discuss ‘making the most of your training year’ – in response to listener demand! Much of what is covered will be useful for trainees and ECTs, as well as mentors and anyone thinking of taking on a mentoring role. Indeed, some of the conversation is ever-green as they do cover areas such as planning, resources and feedback.
In this episode the seemingly mundane topic of 'meetings' comes under Femi and Matt's scrutiny. Both have sat in meetings, like so many of us, with utter dismay at the terribly ineffective use of time and frankly sometimes callous disrespect for colleagues' time as lengthy agendas are gradually ticked off with a series of mainly one to one discussions...
In this conversation Matt and Femi don't do much complaining: instead they focus on what they are currently doing differently now that they are in charge of how their meeting times are used.
This has a huge effect on the culture and morale of colleagues so really is worth thinking about... and as always, the boys do not shy away from getting into the fine details that are the differences that make the difference.
In this episode Matt and Femi speak with Sam Roberts. Sam Roberts is best known for his work in sports broadcasting - particularly as a rugby commentator. However Sam is also a teacher, and so is able to speak from the intersection of a fairly unique Venn diagram – bridging the worlds of teaching and elite-level sports performance.
As you will hear, Sam speaks passionately about performance mindset and mental fitness for teaching. He discusses how he was inspired by Don McPherson and the millennias-old concept of ‘monkey mind’, thinking about teachers as elite performers and how they can benefit from mental fitness and mindset coaching. The trrio cover some of the barriers to do this effectively in schools, the effects of self-talk and your inner voice, the importance of belief, imposter syndrome, the concept of the accidental mind-coach, coaching vs giving advice, the role of HR in supporting teachers, and other topics.
Join Femi and Matt as they share their thoughts and experiences of running professional development for teachers in their departments. Mentioned in this episode is the EEF - the Education Endowment Foundation and if you are not familiar with their work, we highly recommend spending some time on their website, and in relation to this episode, reading their guidance report on 'Effective Professional Development'.
This week on the podcast Matt and Femi talk to special guest Mike Stuart about his many years of experience as a head of year. They discuss relationships, 'the first assembly', taking assemblies, tutor times - and being a visible presence amongst the year group, fierce conversations, "not just the naughties", role clarity and looking after yourself, amongst other topics.
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss Robert Pondiscio's AEI Op-Ed titled 'Confronting 5 Damaging Educational Myths'. The discussion elicits some interesting and useful points with the following 6 myths coming under fire from the duo:
“I don’t teach facts. I teach critical thinking.”
“Reading is a skill.”
“This is too hard/inappropriate/irrelevant for my students.”
“Children have different learning styles.”
“Teach kids to think like a scientist” (or a historian or other expert)
“Who needs rote learning? You can just Google facts.”
In this episode Femi and Matt explore high quality science teaching with Rob Newman. They discuss the importance of identifying and then observing established good teachers, having quality conversations about teaching, filtering the noise of ‘advice’ coming from all corners and crucially; ignoring the feedback that was not helpful. Rob talks about where time is wasted in lessons and what good teachers do instead, the power of relentless routines, clarity of teacher talk – concise clear explanations / modelling, lots of practise time and time on task for students. They discuss the ever present tension between time spent practising vs covering the curriculum and how good science departments develop their curriculum and lessons to best manage this, the features of a good science lesson – retrieval, practise, teacher circulating and supporting students and silent independent work. Rob explains the difference between checking for listening and checking for understanding, and highlights key features of practicals and demonstrations - emphasising the need for teachers to be absolutely clear on what the purpose is for that practical. The trio discuss text books, their utility, their lack of prevalence in English science departments, and the need for texts with a good volume of high quality questions for students to work through.
In this episode Matt and Femi discuss how they approach cover lessons. They cover etiquette for leaving cover, running cover lessons in your own subject and running cover lessons outside of your specialism. What emerges are a wide variety of useful tips and tricks that teachers can use to take the pain out of cover lessons and achieve better outcomes for all involved!
Femi and Matt are excited to be back after the summer break and kicking off season 2 with an interview with Phil Naylor.
Phil was the long-standing host of the most excellent Naylor’s Natter podcast and he has recently relinquished his seat behind the microphone in order to make time to pursue his writing and his work – he is a full time deputy head in blackpool. His first book, also called Naylor’s natter, brings this wisdom to the page using a cleverly blended format whereby QR codes throughout the book can be scanned to go directly to related podcast episodes, thus allowing the listener in on the original interview.
In this episode we discuss professional development: spending more time in subjects with subject leads leading training, utilising the expertise that is already in schools, building CPD time into the school day, performance management and the appraisal process, behaviour and relationships, behaviour as a curriculum, fake SLT, and having a vision as you move into leadership. We discuss rules and routines – and what it means to live them as opposed to laminating them, Phil’s plans for his next book and much much more.
As always we welcome your comments and questions: you can contact us through twitter - @beyondgoodpod.
In the final episode of season 1 of the podcast, Femi and Matt interview Patrick Ottley-O’Connor. At the time of recording Patrick was just a few days into his retirement from a fascinating and diverse career in education spanning over 35 years, and including roles from classroom teacher all the way to head and CEO. His experience encompasses primary, secondary and special educational settings as well as a whopping 21 Ofsted inspections! Patrick was kind enough to share his experience of education starting in an era that predates the national curriculum, Ofsted and league tables right through to the current day. In this conversation he also shares his wisdom around leadership, tackling underperformance, professional development, work life balance and well-being.
This is part 2 of Matt and Femi's interview with Amelia, in which she gives a student perspective on school. If you haven’t yet listened to the previous episode it is recommended that you start there. In this episode the trio discuss meta-cognitive strategies, the nature of revision as an individualised process, resilience, fear of failure, making mistakes, paired work and partnering, how teachers help students when they are stuck (and how they sometimes don’t!) Verbal and written feedback, the starts of lessons, PSHE lessons, the importance of passion from teachers, learning objectives, setting vs mixed ability, relationships and other topics.
In this episode Matt and Femi speak to former pupil Amelia. Although Amelia has just finished her A-levels, they mainly discuss secondary school, and are broadly inclusive of all subjects and not just maths. As you will hear, Amelia is extremely qualified for this role – in addition to being incredibly intelligent, both her parents are in education and so she enjoys, and is well versed in, discussing school matters. The discussion is presented in two parts, with the second featuring in Episode 21.
In this episode they discuss the student view of attending an inner city school with some challenging student behaviours and a high rate of teacher turnover, some characteristics of good teachers, how the differing nature of various subjects lends them to be more or less engaging and more or less easily disrupted by poor behaviour, immediate feedback and the motivating effect of that, the emotional consequences of describing topics in terms of their GCSE grade or level of difficulty, and Amelia's experience of the More Able programme and how that was managed in lessons.
With thoughts inevitably turning to September and planning the return to the classroom, Femi and Matt discuss some of the key aims for the first few lessons of a new academic year and delve into the approaches one might use in order to achieve them.
In particular, thinking of the first week or two with a new group as being all about creating the classroom culture that you want for the rest of the year, and about training students to become very effective learners. I.e. this period is about ‘learning to learn’ and the actual material, topics and concepts that are covered are less important than the lessons we are teaching students about learning behaviour, making a prompt and silent start to work, being engaged, being fully attentive, producing work of very high quality presentation, checking answers, and so on.
Good teachers create effective learners through very deliberate actions, and most of that work takes place very early on in the year. This is a subtle business because everything hinges on what you place the emphasis on in your classroom but the best teachers do not start the year with the emphasis on students getting the right answers, for example. So at the heart of today's discussion is really 'what do you place the emphasis on?' and it may well pay to listen through that lens.
In this episode of the podcast Matt and Femi speak with Sam Strickland. Sam has had a long and interesting teaching career – he is currently the principal of Duston school where GCSE results have gone from the bottom 20% nationally to the top 20% under his tenure. Sam is also the author of 3 fantastic books: education exposed, education exposed 2 and his latest work “The behaviour manual”.
In this interview Sam discusses visible leadership, data, teacher workload, centralised behaviour systems, the importance of a school’s mission, vision and values to drive the school improvement plan, implementing new initiatives in schools, staff training, CPD, pathways and performance management. The trio also talk about big lectures, line-ups, SLT meetings, staff briefings, devolved directed time and much much more.
On this episode of Beyond Good Matt and Femi talk to Sonia Gill - author of the books ‘Journey to outstanding’ and ‘successful difficult conversations in school’, the latter of which is the primary focus of this episode.
Topics covered in this episode include attitudes towards difficult conversations, why we should have them and who loses out when we don’t, structuring the conversation, scripting the opening sentence, reframing, the two worlds technique, outcome vs solution and some other common mistakes along with other advice from Sonia for anyone who would like to have more effective difficult conversations.
In this episode Femi and Matt pick up where they left off last week with the theme of taking on a new leadership role. In a more discursive conversation than last time they cover the importance of getting out and about, introducing yourself to students and contacting parents, carefully planning initial team meetings, understanding SLT and working with and not against your line manager. Femi gives some sound advice regarding talking about your previous achievements, colleague’s loyalty and inertia under a change of leadership and we discuss what superpowers both senior and middle leaders ought to cultivate for success.
With the summer nearly upon us, many colleagues will be turning their attention from teaching students towards planning and organising for the next academic year. That will especially be the case for anyone who has taken on a role with increased responsibility for next year, whether within their current school, or pastures new, and so in this episode Femi and Matt reflect on what that process is like and each give their top tips for those new to middle leadership. Some of this advice has been hard won, and both would agree that their younger selves would have found these pointers valuable! Whether or not you are taking on a new role in September, you should find something of value and interest here, and remember that you can send any questions or comments to @BeyondGoodPod.
In this episode Femi and Matt dive into assessment – specifically how they use short but frequent class tests to inform planning and teaching, and to maximally support student progress. They compare their different approaches and see how these arise from having slightly different objectives. They discuss some guiding principles of testing – what they consider to be good and bad practise, including a few words on question level analysis, debate the pros and cons of teacher marking vs self-checking, and deliberate on the extent to which students making corrections or copying down the correct method actually translates into sustained improvement in the absence of further extended practise. Finally they also touch on summative assessments and share their views on set changes.
In this episode Matt and Femi chat to pastoral legend Helen Sydenham. Helen is head of year at an inner city school and is known for her skill, tenacity and passion for working with students who often have particularly challenging circumstances and behaviours. They talk about how Helen tackled an out of control year group that she took on, how she works with parents, managing parental meetings, dealing with teachers who don’t always get it right, and what she thinks are the most important characteristics that teachers need if they are going to have a big positive impact on student’s lives. Above all Helen is a champion for the young people she works with and her warmth and no-nonsense approach comes across from the outset and makes for an inspiring conversation.
In this episode of the podcast Femi and Matt explore the topic of ‘discussion in the classroom’. They try to tease apart nuances such as the difference between pupils having to explain the work to each other because the teacher’s explanation was not good enough versus pupils engaged in a rich discussion that extends thinking from an existing strong foundation of knowledge. They examine the pros and cons of classroom discussion along with possible traps and pitfalls, teachers asking for silence versus ‘silence just happens naturally’, and ‘casual classrooms’ and what this suggests about the level of challenge and the quality of learning.
Towards the end Matt and Femi shift gears slightly to talk about the importance of students ‘learning to learn’ and discuss some ways to create the learning environment that you want in your classroom early on in September.
In this episode of the podcast Femi and Matt are joined by Amy Green - an English teacher and head of English who has honed her craft in tough inner-city schools.
Amy talks about using ‘silent and solo’ with knowledge recall questions to create powerful starts to English lessons, giving students more concrete structures for answering questions than the traditional PEE paragraphs, and how effective English teachers use pause points throughout lessons. The trio discuss the importance of ‘reading the room’ and putting ‘concrete’ before ‘abstract’, touch on the use technology to help students read, the folly of trying to show progress in lessons, and the importance of having a school-wide culture for behaviour, as well as much more.
In this episode Femi and Matt are again joined by guest Simon King as they explore the claim that the very best A-level teachers are also, in fact, the teachers achieving the best outcomes with bottom set Year 9, or middle-ability Year 7 students, for example. Simon provides valuable insight into the differences and similarities between sixth-form teaching and the teaching of younger and less able students, and the trio try to articulate why the elements of teaching that make lessons go well lower down the school (expectations, explanations, differentiation, relationships and routines, for example) only serve to strengthen teaching as students move into Years 12 and 13.
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss lesson observations and lesson visits - the process Femi calls 'walking the shop floor'. They touch on the bizarre phenomenon of teachers doing something other than 'business as usual' when being observed, the questionable practice of once-per-year observations or departmental reviews, feeding back after lesson visits and the importance of triangulation: looking at books and talking to students.
They talk about 'the 3 Bs' and other heuristics (such as 'angle of lean' and 'speed of pen'), about 'closing the loop' (what leaders actually do with all the information they gather in order to improve outcomes for students), problems with whole-school approaches to CPD, alternatives to that model and ways to use departmental time more effectively. They discuss why oversight for teaching and learning should lie with heads of department and the benefits of 'walking the shop floor' in other departments and other schools.
Femi and Matt are joined by special guest Simon King to discuss teaching strategies and differentiation for those very top end students that we all occasionally come across. While the conversation is focussed on extending the top end students, the principles for teaching and differentiation that Simon describes are applicable to all classes.
The themes of Matt and Femi's discussion for this episode are 'starters' and 'the starts of lessons'. The conversation is equal parts philosophical and pragmatic, and many aspects of starters are covered in great depth. The conversation covers the importance of starters, their utility for orientating students towards this subject as they arrive from elsewhere around the school, as a device for recap, building confidence, to facilitate a calm and effective start to the lesson, to guide thinking towards today's topic and many more elements.
In this episode of Beyond Good, Femi and Matt return to the Blue Memo to discuss the final three points. The central themes of these points are 'challenge', 'practise' and 'sequencing'. If you haven't already listened to the Blue Memo parts 1 and 2, it may be worth listening to episodes 3 and 4, in which the Blue Memo is introduced and the first 7 points are discussed.
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss the characteristics of a good department, visions and values, and achieving consensus within a team about what matters and why we are here. They discuss the impact of formal 'meetings' vs informal interactions between teachers and the value of rich discussions around teaching and learning. The conversation then pivots to the skills and attributes they each wanted to have in place before taking on head of department roles, as well as the opportunity cost of teachers spending too much time talking about resources, and the importance of being aware of your own biases and comfort zones.
This is the second of the three-part series on ‘The Blue Memo’ in which Femi and Matt cover points 4-7. They discuss the importance of engaging all students, ensuring that no one student takes up a disproportionate amount of time at the expense of others, explanations and feedback. Part 3 can be heard in episode 6, and you can download your own copy of the blue memo from our twitter account, or from our website.
This is the first of a three-part series on 'The Blue Memo'. In this episode Femi introduces the blue memo, explains what it is and where it came from and then we dive deep into the first three points. These cover the starts of lessons, the importance of revisiting taught material and what he means by 'getting out into the classroom and experiencing the learning'. The discussion of the blue memo continues in Episode 4 and then again in Episode 6. Download your own copy of the blue memo from the website, or from our twitter account.
In this episode of the podcast Matt and Femi discuss mentors and some of the key things they took from their mentors that have shaped them as teachers. They discuss the idea of 'golden rules' and 'non-essential essentials', the tremendous importance of the first lesson of the year with a new group and laying the foundations for strong relationships with students for the rest of the year.
In this (inaugural) episode of the podcast, Matt and Femi set out what the podcast is and isn’t about, how they each came to teaching and why they’re so passionate about it. They discuss what makes for good ‘raw materials’ in teaching, and how their own natural dispositions may have shaped their areas of interest, and what they each look for in new teachers. They discuss the fundamental importance of liking and being able to engage with teenagers, the degree to which experience gained as a private tutor can be translated into classroom practise and they speculate on possible variations in the underlying passion for teaching between teachers of different age ranges and subjects.