Being a headTEACHER - my teaching goals for 2019-2020

Tuesday 7th May 2019 was a pretty momentous day for me: my Year 11s sat their IGCSE exam.

ALL teachers feel the burn of exam season, and every (well most!) cohort is pretty special to their teachers. You can see that at the moment on Twitter with the number of thoughtful good luck cards being written. However, what sets this exam season aside from the countless previous, is that it is likely to be my LAST. As a teacher.

In September 2019, I became the Head of The Rise School - a little unexpectedly and a lot earlier than I would have planned. At interview for the post, which was originally interim, I was challenged about my teaching load (2 GCSE classes amounting to a third of a full time teachers' load at my school). I stood firm: we didn't have anyone else right now, our vision is about SEND pupils securing academic as well as social outcomes and success - I needed to teach these classes. So I did. I creatively timetabled so that I would be able to deliver their classes AND be available to go offsite without creating cover, we did the exam early in November 2018 and 5/11 of the Year 11 cohort got their desired results (A,A,B, C,C). In January, I did some re-grouping so that I could merge and focus on the pupils who were going to resit in May 2019 and that dropped my teaching load by half.

Their exam has now come and gone, and at the moment (although we have plans to address this over the next few years) - we don't do English Literature. So that's it! So now as I look ahead to September 2019, I need to review what my approach to being a headTEACHER will look like.

I've always been strongly of the view that SLT, head included, should teach. It's about walking the talk. I still believe this. But having completed two and a bit terms in my first year of headship, I have also realised that the responsibility of teaching a core subject to an exam class is not realistic for me.

But I can't let go... completely! I believe too much in walking the talk (fine, all my current staff have seen me teach and know I can do it, but in a few years time with new appointments?) and... I LOVE it too much! And I'm too INSPIRED by the great ideas and pedagogical debate that I see every day on Twitter not to teach.

So on Tuesday night, the same night that maybe I could have been "and relax, I'm done!" I scribbled this messy post-it note:

Instead of having my own class, I am planning to frequently teach a mixture of classes across the school. This might be as a result of covering for an absent colleague, team-teaching (see 2b below) or in collaboration with the teacher, looking at long term plans and identifying particular windows of time across the school year to deliver certain topics, texts, poems etc.

My Teaching Goals 2019-2020 can be further categorised into:

1. Teaching different year groups

My school is a lovely all-through school. I've got a Secondary mainstream background and although I feel like I have learnt a LOT about Primary in the last 3 years, I would love to stretch myself further by teaching some of our Primary classes.

In particular, I would love to try @Mrmclugash's beautiful sequence using The Lost Words. He blogged about it here.

@mrlockyer recently shared an immersive unit called #Flight619 that has peaked my interest too!

Equally, I want to teach my own, beloved subject (English) to KS3 classes too - for a long time I've been a real "GCSE focused" teacher. We only have 91 pupils, it would be great to have taught them all!

2a. Teaching different subjects & 2b. Team-teaching, actioning feedback

I am looking forward to the prospect of doing two things:

(i) Being able to say, after a lesson observation (always informal, never graded, always developmental): "Shall we have a go at joint-planning or delivering that?" in a range of subjects.

(ii)Being able to execute some ideas I've had for a while such as:

• designing a unit of work based on Learning Scientists' Six Most Effective Learning/Revision strategies

• designing some lessons that utilise some really inspiring podcast and Tedtalk material. For example, I think the 'Resilience' and 'Managing your Mind' episodes from BBC's Don't Tell Me the Score podcast would be a fruitful addition to our wellbeing curriculum.

• looking for literature extracts that supplement topics studied in Citizenship - I'm thinking some Beverley Naidoo and Trevor Noah for the apartheid unit; perhaps Moonrise for the law and order unit:

3. Trying out different approaches

• • Last summer, I participated in @Englishlulu's Teacher Writing challenge. Every day for a week we were set particular writing tasks, using a brilliant structured workbook that she had designed and following audio instructions that she shared on a daily basis. We shared our writing in private facebook group. I am English teacher who MUCH prefers teaching reading skills and literature than writing. This mini-course was just fab and I'm dying to use some of the same writing tasks and stimuli with pupils.

  • Sallie Stanton recently published a fascinating blog about using Direct Instruction to introduce An Inspector Calls - I am going to look at when our next cohort of Year 10 are starting AIC and try and nab the first 10 lessons to try this.

  • I don't know who to credit with this (Literacy Shed? @simonsmm?) but I would love to explore using picture books for developing inference skills - both at KS2 and KS3. I recently picked up a charity shop copy of Shaun Tan's The Arrival...

• • I am fascinated (and in awe) of @aviewaskew's work on Reciprocal Reading. I would love to find out more and consider how to embed at our school.

As the Head, I know that my primary priority is not actually my own teaching; its to create a culture and environment (through every financial, HR, recruitment, vision decision) that facilitates ALL my teachers being the very best that they can be. However, even as I relinquish having "my own (exam) class" I hope there is some mileage in my ideas above: to support colleagues, to continue to role-model and "walk the talk", to benefit the fab pupils...and heck, enjoy myself too! It might not work and I might be reviewing my approach in May 2020, but I'm looking forward to having a go!