Mrs P

Primary Teacher. Teach First Ambassador. Drinker of tea. Reader of books & research. Into teaching and learning without gimmicks. Opinions are my own.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

Every teacher should spend a term in eyfs: the thoughts behind the tweet. #edutwitter #teachertwitter
#EYFS #education https://t.co/Dfc632pES2

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@veg_plotter Such a great way to keep track of my allotment!

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

Traditional Sports Days are ruining sports and exercise for many children. It needs to change. #edutwitter #TinyVoiceTalks #earlyyears #ks1 #ks2

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

Hhmm 223 views and the likes but no answers. I'm guessing that means there's nothing. Is x dead?

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

Recommendations needed!
OK #edchat #edutwitter I miss the old slt chat events back when X was called twitter 😂 what is out there to fill the void?

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@Headteacherchat You've just described me a year ago. I left the classroom because of the 'it is what it is and can't be changed' attitude. Gave up the salary and job security to get rid of the working conditions! Don't assume it's just moaning. My story is not unique!

[Shabiz @Shalbizzle]

@DavidNautilus1 Wales allows 2 weeks discretionary allowance for in school time holidays in Primary school.

Why can’t England?

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@gublet @CrowtherSim Ditto this. The number of children attending who wear nappies on starting school or have significant toileting issues has been creeping up for years!

[©️Ruth Swailes @SwailesRuth]

It means you think carefully about the prerequisite skills the children need to develop at the stage they’re in. We’re obsessed with “readiness” but children are human beings not human becomings (Qvortrup) and we need to respect, acknowledge and meet their current needs, not

[©️Ruth Swailes @SwailesRuth]

Having high expectations and ambitions doesn’t mean you have to take stuff from the curriculum in the next key stage and do it earlier. It means you give children rich, deep meaningful and appropriate learning experiences with challenge appropriate to their stage of development.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@MrBoothY6 Haha oh the pain! 😂

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Whenever I talk about the effects that school can have on some children’s mental health, I’m told that there are many other reasons why our young people are distressed. Family problems, social media, inequality, substance misuse, trauma, poverty. It’s true, I couldn’t be a psychologist and be unaware of how difficult the lives of some young people are.

However, school is different to those things. It’s provided for young people by the state. It’s a deliberate intervention into childhood. It is designed to prepare young people for adult life. That means that it’s an opportunity for young people to experience something different. It can be something which counter balances the other stuff going on in their lives. Somewhere where they can learn to feel capable and valued, even if that isn’t what they get at home. Somewhere where they can learn that relationships can be supportive and that others care about them.

Some schools are like this for some young people. They prioritise relationships and well-being. Others are not, particularly for the young people who don’t comply with school expectations. They get into a cycle of increasingly heavy sanctions which don’t address their difficulties but make them feel worse about themselves and their capacity to do well. Those young people are seen as disruptive and non-compliant, as difficult. I’m sometimes told not to waste my sympathy on them, better to focus on the others whose education they are disrupting.

The thing is, those young people are not going anywhere. They are here with us and they have their whole lives ahead of them. They might be excluded from one school, but they’ll turn up in another.

School can make all the difference to them, either way. So when I hear about the distress which school causes some young people in the therapy room, I don’t think it’s the same as inequality, or poverty, or all the other things which go on in a teenager’s life. It’s a deliberate intervention into children’s lives, and it’s an opportunity to make a difference. Especially for those who aren’t going to be the academic successes. Those young people will always exist, the challenge is to work out how they can emerge from school without having learnt to think about themselves as failures.

For if we’re going to make them go to school, so the least we owe them is to make it somewhere that they can thrive.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@aelfrea @MichaelRosenYes Would 🙃

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@aelfrea @MichaelRosenYes Wouldn't work unless the current overburdened, pressured and rushed curriculum changes. The books wild be there, the time and culture would not.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@little_mavis @SwailesRuth @Dr_Pam_Jarvis @educationgovuk THIS! I thought this was madness.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@JTavassolyMarsh Should say 'tough' not 'tight'. Predictive got me.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@JTavassolyMarsh I suspect this might have a lot to do with the changes in education. Since covid workload is up, pay is a constant dispute, funding is dire, pupils and families want a more nurturing and supportive environment and teachers are stuck with an increasingly heavy timetable...

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@JTavassolyMarsh In short, it's been a tight few years with many of us jumping ship and this stress is reflected on #edutwitter. Happy teachers are all about L&D. Stressed teachers are all about venting!

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@naomicfisher Not saying it's right by the way 😊 but the teens are unhappy, the staff are unhappy and change requires some proper leadership at the top (which our entire country lacks). It's a pressure cooker situation and the strict rules are the lid being jammed on top.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@naomicfisher In England, we are still following a Victorian model of education & the behaviour systems you are talking about are there to make that model work. Without them, it does become difficult to teach. I suspect that that is why you get teacher backlash. The system needs to change.

[Mrs P @thinker_teacher]

@_MrLevick Been shouting this for a long time about the phonics. Lovely to hear it reported in real life 😊 I still can't believe that the training in phonics is so rudimentary in teacher training and non existent in secondary!