It is the start of the academic year and with it comes the yearly tidal wave of teaching and learning guidance for us to wade through. It may be well-intentioned, but so little of it takes into account the enormous workload that teachers are already facing. And even less is related to what we are immersed in day in, day out in the classroom: subject teaching.
Finding targeted, quality CPD that is subject-specific and doesn’t add to workload can be challenging. This is what led Becky Wood and Nikki Carlin to set up Team English, a free online community where English teachers can collaborate. The account has amassed over 18,000 Twitter followers in just two years.
“True collaboration is so much more than just designing a scheme of work together,” says Carlin, speaking on the first episode of the new Tes English teaching podcast.
Tackling workload to find a better balance
She and Wood believe that effective collaboration could be the solution to one of the biggest challenges that we English teachers face: navigating the demands on our time and finding a better work-life balance.
However, they also stress that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to making use of a collaborative resource like Team English.
“What works for one person might not for another,” says Wood. “Find out how you work best and avoid comparing yourself with others.”
Wood and Carlin also suggest how English teachers might prioritise their time in terms of their classroom craft, giving helpful suggestions about what we should streamline in our teaching.
Carlin explains how getting rid of PowerPoints from her lesson has saved her hours in planning time and left her free to focus on what really matters in English: the texts we teach.
“I was filling my lessons with busy work, what I call fluff; the reality is I realised is it is all about the text,” she says. “If you can cut it out, then do.”
You can listen for free by downloading the podcast from iTunes or listening below.
Jamie Thom is an English teacher at Cramlington Learning Village and the author of Slow Teaching: a guide to finding calm, organisation and impact in the classroom. He tweets @teachgratitude1
