Two years ago, I moved from a department where schemes of work were taught in unison to one where individual staff had considerably more ownership of their topic choices. When I changed schools, I found the new system very frightening: each teacher taught what they wanted to teach and developed their own resources to do it.
My current department is now moving more towards a shared and unified approach but, having experienced both systems, here are the reasons that I believe sharing is, ultimately, caring.
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It is good to talk to each other
Interacting with young people all day can be deceptive, as you may think that you are communicating constantly. However, if you only talk to the students, teaching can be a very isolating experience and the more you can discuss ideas with like-minded professionals, the better. Teaching the same thing as the rest of your department encourages collaboration.
2. It helps those who lack confidence
A collective and transparent approach can also help less experienced colleagues to deliver lessons of a higher quality. Using a “plug and play” approach is useful for cover lessons, too, especially with non-subject specialists. Similarly, having a bank of shared resources to use can help develop student and newly qualified teachers’ confidence.
3. It saves us all time
Many teachers cite lack of time to plan as one of the most frustrating aspects of the job. A full teaching day, plus a two-hour CPD after school can leave precious little time to plan for the next day. Starting from scratch when you are already exhausted may make your productivity even slower. However, popping in to your colleague’s classroom for a brief chat or checking the shared area will kick start your brain into action and make you able to plan more efficiently and confidently.
4. The department has more consistency
Young people like to feel that they are getting the same experience as the rest of their peers. If everyone is learning the same topic, this is more likely to be the case. Also, for HoDs, if your department is teaching different topics to different classes, it can be an administrative nightmare. Mocks and coursework are more difficult to moderate, separate exam papers have to be written for each class and revision sessions are impossible to facilitate properly.
5. Perfecting is better than constantly starting from scratch
Perfecting and refining existing resources is a much better use of everyone’s professional time than constantly creating potentially mediocre ones from scratch. Having a wide selection of paper and digital resources means that one is able to select the ones that are the most appropriate at that time, while still following the same framework as everyone else.
Katherine Burrows is an English teacher at Abingdon School.
This is an edited version of a feature in the 5 October issue of Tes.
