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.

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

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'.

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

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.  

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.

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.

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

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.  

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.

Femi and Matt explore the idea that some people are more coachable than others...

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 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.