It is clear that one of the characteristics of a great
teacher is the ability to reflect and improve on their practice. However, the
nature of teaching does not make that easy. The slings and arrows of the job,
the planning, marking, data entry, extra curricular activities, to name but a
few, often mean that opportunities for self reflection and improvement get
pushed to the back burner, the last thing on a seemingly never ending to-do
list. Yet, when we are able to make time for improvement the benefits are huge,
not just to our schools and our pupils but to ourselves. When I reflect on when
I’m happiest and most satisfied at work, it is when I feel like I have some
autonomy on my practice and am able to take some ownership over my role within
school.
One of the best pieces of advice during my ITT year was to
join Twitter. Without a doubt Twitter as been the biggest source of
inspiration, innovation and support. As an English teacher, having access to a
network of amazing practitioners through ‘Team English’ is like being in the
biggest most innovative team meeting. There are so many, too many to mention,
fantastic teachers who have helped me immensely, particularly when I began
teaching A Level Language (having had no experience of studying let alone
teaching the subject). Being the only A Level Language teacher in my department
was very isolating, yet having access to a wealth of experienced Language
teachers on Twitter, who willingly shared resources and gave me advice, meant
that I was to cope.
Clearly there are issues with school based CPD. Often, when
done badly, it is merely a ‘tick-box’ exercise to show that it has been done.
This breeds resentment with teachers who feel that there very precious time is
being wasted. While there is a place for ‘whole-school’ CPD, there seems, in my
experience, far too much generic CPD which focuses on contexless pedagogical
ideas, rather than high quality, subject-specific CPD. Why is this? Perhaps it
is the nature of how CPD is organised, often by one lead within a school. There
also seems to be a lack of trust in teachers, that it is difficult to ‘monitor’
the effectiveness of CPD if teachers are given autonomy to direct their own
CPD. This is frustrating but understandable. Whilst some teachers within a
school would jump at the opportunity to lead their own CPD, there would be
others no doubt who would not. Yet surely there must be a balance that
can be struck?
Similarly, a lot of subject-specific CPD is often delivered
through exam board training. While this is often necessary and useful, it is
important to recognise that this does little to improve our subject knowledge. Yes
it is important to understand the specifications and exams that we teach at
GCSE and A Level, but by having such a proportion of our subject based CPD
skews our experience, leading if not careful, to a focus on teaching to the
exam, rather than reflecting more broadly on how to teach our subject
effectively across all Key Stages. The lack of focus and thought which goes
into many KS3 curriculum is a symptom of this approach.
What is the solution? In an ideal world all teachers should
have access to the wealth of experiences of other teachers in other schools as
schools and departments can be very insular. Therefore, the TeachMeet format is
an excellent way of delivering teacher-led, subject-specific CPD.
In this blog I hope to share with you some of the lessons I’ve
learned from organising my first TeachMeet and encourage more people to take
the leap and organise their own.
Organising a
TeachMeet:
Venue:
Perhaps the first consideration you need to think about it
that of a venue. Some questions to consider:
- Is your venue easy to get to via public transport?
- Is there parking onsite or nearby?
- Will it be open after school hours?
- Are there facilities for making tea/ coffee?
- Is there going to be enough space for the amount of attendees?
The first port of call would be your school. I didn’t ask my
school because I had already had the offer of hosting from Sheffield Hallam and
this was an ideal location as it was near to the train station. However, when I
told my head teacher about it in passing she was very keen to support by
hosting the event. Therefore, it is always worth asking as schools are usually
very supportive of this kind of event.
Timings:
If your event is going to be after school you need to
consider that most people will be coming straight from work, therefore you need
to get the balance between giving people enough time but not starting too late
(there is nothing worse than having to wait around if you’ve had a long day).
We decided to run the event between 6-8.30 which seemed a good balance. It may
be worth planning to start the event around 15 mins after the scheduled time to
allow for late comers.
Tickets:
For planning reasons it is important to know how many people
who are likely to attend. There are lots of ways of doing this but we used
Eventbrite. The pros were:
- Very easy to set up
- The site sends you notifications of when people sign up
- It is free to use if your ticket is free
- You can send out emails to all people who have signed up
- You can set the amount of tickets available
- It sends reminders of the event automatically
- It has features which shows you where the traffic to the page has come from (eg Twitter, website etc)
The cons:
If you do want to charge for the event it will take a percentage of the ticket price so you will need to factor this in.
Pricing:
When I set up my event, I felt very strongly that the event
should be free as I know the majority of teachers pay for such events out of
their own pocket. I was also lucky in that Sheffield Hallam were providing refreshments
and I had managed to get freebies for goody bags and raffle prizes. However, on
the night over 20 people who had signed up for a ticket failed to attend
without cancelling their ticket or notifying me. This meant that we had to
radically change the format of the evening without notice. This is
understandable, people are tired and circumstances change, however it is very
disheartening when you have put a lot of effort into organising something
voluntarily.
Therefore, if I was organising another one I would put a
nominal charge on the ticket (such as £4) so that there is a bit of a
psychological incentive to attend and people would be less likely to sign up
unless they were genuine about attending. I would use any money to put towards
raffle prizes or a small gift for those that volunteered to speak.
Speakers:
Obviously the strength of such an event comes from those
that volunteer to deliver short presentations. To support this I decided to
give the event a specific focus. I had picked three areas of practice that I
felt would be particularly relevant to English teachers:
- Strategies for Y11 revision
- Reducing the burden of marking and feedback
- Improving KS3
I felt this was a good approach as it gives people an idea
of what they could deliver a presentation on, however if someone has a great
idea then there is still scope for that too. It also gives people a flavour of
what the event would be about. I was fortunate that I had three volunteers who
all delivered fantastic presentations. If you are struggling to get speakers
then this may be the time to call in any favours from colleagues and other
teachers you know! I found that most people would love to help and sometimes
just need the nudge or a little support.
Format of the night:
You need to be flexible about your programme as things do
change and you need to see what interest you have from people wanting to
deliver presentations. If you have enough people sign up to deliver speeches
then you might just want to do a traditional programme where you have a list of
speakers deliver their presentations one after the other. If you want to break
this up or make it more interactive you could do the following as well:
Breakaway sessions:
Depending on the layout of your venue, you could build time
into your programme for breakaway sessions. Here, you get the attendees into
smaller groups and give them questions to discuss on a certain topic. Below are
some examples for a session on ‘Marking and Feedback’:
- Have you or your school trialled any strategies to reduce the marking/ feedback burden in English?
- How can we support pupils so that they do meaningful self assessment?
- Does Peer Assessment work in the English classroom?
- How do you ensure that pupils respond to feedback in a meaningful way?
Troubleshooting Panel:
Another way you could open up participation is by hosting a troubleshooting
panel. Ideally you would have a three or four different teachers (from
different contexts) sit on the panel and then allow the audience to ask questions
based on problems they may have encountered in their classroom, department or
school. This is a great way of getting different perspectives on a problem,
especially due to the insular ‘we’ve always done it this way’ nature of some
schools.
Raffle prizes/ Goody bags:
I found that if you ask you often get! It is worth
approaching educational companies and published authors on social media to see
if they might be able to support your event. The worst that can happen is they
say no.
Top Tip:
Be flexible. Whenever you organise something that relies on
people goodwill, people will drop out (usually at the last moment) and you need
to have contingency plans. Likewise, due to the ticket sales we were expecting
a much bigger crowd and had to change the programme on the night to reflect the
numbers in the room. Don’t let this faze you. If you are willing to adapt and
think on your feet you will have a much more successful event.
Would I do it again?
Don’t get me wrong, organising an event like this does
involve a fair bit of work and organising alongside your already busy life but
the answer would be a most emphatic yes!
The event, like most events of this nature, has given me a
much needed boost of inspiration. I would like to thank Jess Mason, Jennifer
Webb, Jennie Flounders and Rachel Black for helping out and delivering some
amazing thought-provoking sessions.
If you are considering organising your own #TeamEnglish
TeachMeet and want any specific advice or support, please feel free to send me
a DM on Twitter @MrsDuffyEnglish
