CG🐳

🌍Newbie HoD in Geography
🐋 Whale and Pangolin enthusiast

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@Mrs_G33k Happy Birthday lovely! 💜

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

The sad truth is how relatable this is for so many teachers (myself included at times)

[Tom Rogers @RogersHistory]

Please read.

It's easy for journalists to write hit-pieces on schools behaviour policies and approaches. But these schools are usually reacting to the situation in front of them. Having worked in a few where behaviour has been pretty awful, I want to try and capture how it can feel for a member of staff where behaviour is dreadul…

Insecure - you don’t know what can happen one lesson to the next, you don’t feel secure and safe travelling between classrooms or on corridors. You know you could have abuse hurled at you, have to tackle some serious misbehaviour (alone) or be confronted by groups of students whose intent is to intimidate, particularly female members of staff.

Angry - You have to take a lot. You know that on a given day, you will be routinely disrespected. I’m not talking about ‘low level disruption’ (if there is such a thing), I’m talking about entitled students feeling empowered to belittle you, as an adult and professional. The malaise spreads - ‘good kids’ start to think that doing certain things is ok. You as an individual teacher are powerless to do anything. If the sanctions system consists of a million warnings or sanctions that aren’t followed through or enforced, then often you have to walk away from disrespect with your tail between your legs, bury any feelings of frustration and lose your battles.

You can’t actually teach - each day becomes more and more about crowd control. You know this driving into work. You feel ashamed and think of yourself as a teaching let-down despite having years and years of experience in other contexts that might tell you otherwise. You feel useless, just a punching bag put there on a carousel.

Alone - teaching is a lonely job at the best of times, but when things are going wrong behaviour wise, it can be like wandering in the wilderness without a compass. I’ve worked in schools where there are no senior leaders or colleagues within radius of the classroom. To find one, you have to literally trek around the school.

Depressed - that’s right, depressed. Clinically. It’s very easy to say ‘Don’t take it personally’ (which is actually good advice) but when you are literally bombarded with insults, disrespect, abuse, intimidation, slyness every hour of every day of your working life and have no way of controlling it, goodness - its awful.

So, when a teacher feels like this, or a group of teachers feel like this, and the school tries to do something about it by introducing a new so called ‘strict’ behaviour policy, and then consultants, journalists, parents, kids etc all queue up to tell the world that the school is a fascist prison camp - please, please consider those teachers in there. Even if its just the one. One teacher - 100s of students to teach. 1000s of hours of teaching time lost into the ether of this. Education needs teachers and no one should have to live like this.

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@Mrs_G33k @staffroomcoffee Once done it's done so hopefully!

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@calucas16 @staffroomcoffee Can't say for certain! It has just felt like an extra job we were told to do, I'm just hoping the SEN team don't ask us to change it all again next year

[Geoff Barton @RealGeoffBarton]

'Last week I talked to a veteran headteacher. “Geoff,” she said, “you have no idea how different young people are these days from when you were a head” ...': this week's @ASCL_UK blog is about behaviour: https://t.co/zOELMfJjh5

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@missgeog92 We have recently gone Seneca Pro and its amazing! I've been setting some if the misconception tasks and hardest questions to challenge students

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@MrBNewborn Place is space with meaning

[Susie Dent @susie_dent]

Word of the evening is the Finnish invention ‘hyppytyynytyydytys’: the act of falling with a contented sigh onto the nearest available sofa.

Literal translation: ‘bouncy cushion satisfaction’.

[Flora @FloraSCooper]

I'm sharing this on behalf of Julia Waters, Ruth Perry's sister.

Please retweet and share.

#ShineOn
#BurnBrighter

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@hayo_luke I think it depends on the cohort. We have found for GCSE having semi-mixed sets (e.g. middle-higher and middle-lower) has been a huge success for our Y10 this year. Also gives a chance to separate any disruptive students to minimise behaviour issues has helped too

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@CampbellGeog I think it works if students are given a proper criteria to use, otherwise they just say "neat handwriting" etc as opposed to actually understanding what content is needed for a good answer. Focus it on one or two things, eg. keywords and use of case study

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@Mrs_G33k Yeah I feel they have too! I think they're taking options seriously and want to prove themselves, it's been like a breathe of fresh air!

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

These last few weeks have been draining. However, today my Year 9 groups were awesome and have reminded me why I do this job! It can be so easy to focus on the negatives but today was a good day!

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@GEOGRossN I like to use "spot the anomaly": 3 or 4 groups of 3 or 4 key words, students need to pick one and explain why its the odd one out. Bit of variation with knowledge recall and easy to scale up/down for different abilities :)

[Tom Rogers @RogersHistory]

Warning 1
Warning 2
Warning 3

Next lesson:

Warning 1
Warning 2
Warning 3

Next Lesson:

Warning 1
Warning 2
Warning 3

♻️ ♻️ ♻️ x50

♻️ again.

A great teacher can be broken by this

A great group of kids can be left behind

This isn’t inclusion, this ignores the 99%.

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@Miss_WGeog We do hazards with Year 9 before options. I like to teach examples of avalanches and locust plagues so that they get to see the other hazards that GCSE doesn't focus on. Also like to do decision making exercises on management strategies

[Dave McPartlin @dave_mcpartlin]

WHY ARE WE STRIKING? (A POETIC THREAD)

We’re striking for the child who’s in the wrong place,
Needs specialist provision, but they ain’t got the space.
For the child who’s behind and suffers with stress,
We’d offer them more, but we’re offering them less. (1/9)

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@Mrs_G33k Totally agree with you! Students only ever shout about having rights to this and that, but lack any understanding or regard of their responsibilities! The toilets are locked because they've been destroyed and students go into cubicles in groups. Abuse it, lose it. Simple.

[CG🐳 @MissGilbert16]

@EduCaiti Modelling! I do a lot of HUG the question and model how to ensure all elements are met. I also give different examples that have different strengths and have the students compare them, and then redraft their own