April 30, 2024 • 48 mins
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Tom Sherrington, a trailblazer in school leadership and teacher development. From his early days teaching physics and maths, Tom discusses how he became a thought leader. The episode dives into the transformative impact of his blog, TeacherHead, which has opened unexpected doors and enriched his teaching philosophy.
Tom shares insights on establishing a genuine presence in the digital education sphere, balancing personal experiences with engaging content for educators. The discussion also tackles the nuances of teacher influencer culture, the evolution of teaching observations, and the art of constructive feedback. Highlighting Tom's journey from blogger to author, the episode explores his works like 'Learning Rainforest' and 'Rosenshine's Principles in Action', culminating in his latest, 'Learning Walkthroughs'. This episode is packed with rich stories, practical advice, and inspiration for educators at all stages of their careers.
Connect with Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-sherrington-teacherhead/
Read Tom's blog: https://teacherhead.com/
Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.
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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey everyone, welcome to the Teach Middle East
podcast.
My name is Elisa Grace.
Today I have Tom Sherrington asmy guest on the podcast and
we're going to be talking abouthis career.
We're going to be talking abouthis work, his books, his love
for teaching and learning, andwe're going to dive in somewhere
around the end.
We're going to be talking aboutfeedback and walkthroughs and
(00:26):
lesson observations, which issomething I've read extensively
on his blog, so I won't blab on.
I just want to welcome Tom tothe podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast
connecting, developing andempowering educators podcast
connecting, developing andempowering educators.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
I'm really delighted to betalking to you.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Thank, you so much, tom.
Where did it begin this wholecareer in education that you
have going?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
well it's.
It's kind of the only careerI've ever had, because I started
teaching when I was straightout of university in 1987 I got
my first job.
I didn't really know I'd spendthe rest of my career teaching,
but I enjoyed it so I justthought I'd do it.
To start with and that was along time ago physics and maths
teacher and then in the 90s Igot interested in sort of school
(01:20):
leadership and working a coupleof comprehensive schools in
London.
I spent a stint in aninternational school in and work
in a couple of comprehensiveschools in london.
I spent a international schoolin in jakarta in indonesia in
2005 to 2008 and when I cameback from that I was a head a
head teacher for about 11 years,but that's around about 10.
11 years ago I was nearly 12years ago I started writing a
blog about teachingteacherheadcom just reporting on
(01:43):
everyday stuff in school, and Ifound the mate.
To my amazing, people read it.
So I started sort of finding,well, there's an audience for
people talking and exploringwhat happens in schools and in
lessons.
So I sort of developed a kindof an audience for writing and
then and since then I've writtenvarious books and last seven
years I've been trainingteachers mainly.
I think of myself as a teachertrainer.
(02:05):
I visit a lot of schools, Iwatch a lot of teachers teach
and do training, so that's mymain career now.
But that's you know, going 30,35 years or so.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I read.
I'm a reader of your blog, soI've read Teacher Head for
several years.
What would you say is one ofthe biggest things you've gained
from having started that blog?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I think the main thing I mean a lot of bloggers
would say this is it helps youclarify your own thoughts.
So knowing you have the blog towrite and a kind of audience
for it I it makes me think hardabout things because I I don't I
can think in my own head andlike everybody does, but I think
I'm gonna.
I know that this is a commonissue.
So I feel like I've learnedthat whatever I think about
teaching, lots of other peoplealso have the same challenge
(02:47):
because they're quite common.
So I feel like I think hardabout how do I communicate that,
how do I express that challengeso that it kind of relates to
other people?
And then what do I think theanswers are.
So because I know the blog isthere and people will read it, I
kind of channel that.
That's the main thing.
I've've learned that we have alot in common and I've gained a
lot just by having that kind ofaudience of people engaging with
(03:10):
it.
So I've met lots of peoplethrough it and some other fellow
writers, bloggers, teachers.
That's the main thing you'resort of thinking like when I'm
in a lesson.
I'm thinking, oh, this is aninteresting challenge as
teachers having.
I bet loads of other peoplehave this challenge and you know
, a couple of weeks later, sureenough, that appears in a blog
post.
Because I think, well, if itwas tough for them, it would be
tough for lots of people andthat often resonates and then
(03:31):
you have the audience thatyou've already sort of curated
and built up.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But what about people who are just starting out in
this whole blogging and maybeeven video?
How would you encourage them toget on that road if they're
like a little bit hesitant?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
so I get asked that a lot.
You know, I feel like sometimespeople will ask me because they
think I've got a reasonablenumber of followers and so on.
So you know, but I actuallythink that's a bit overwhelming
when I first started.
There are people I used to lookup to and think, wow, how do
you ever get to be that sort ofwell-known?
And I was thinking, well, youdon't really, you just start by
doing it.
So you have to be sort of verykind of unassuming about it to
(04:11):
begin with, just doing it.
So you have to just say, well,the blog is mine, I'm going to
write it for me, I'm going tocurate my stuff so that you feel
like the sense of pride in itand think it's, it's mainly
yours, and then promote it toothers because you think you're
pleased with it.
And I do think this issomething that sometimes people
are weirdly kind of half-heartedabout it because they're so
(04:32):
sort of anxious about comingacross as over promoting.
Now, rightly or wrongly, I'venever had a problem with that.
So I feel like this is myhonest view.
I feel like if you've writtensomething about school, it's
inherently interesting to otherteachers and people will want to
know what you thought and youshould feel confident that it's
worth sharing your perspective,as long as you couch it in that
(04:54):
terms.
This is just what I think.
You know.
I'm not telling you to believeme, I'm not selling this to you.
I'm just saying this is what Ithink and people will find that
interesting.
But you do have to keep tellingpeople it's there.
This is the thing I findsometimes people are weird.
You have to let people knowlike so I.
I adopted this attitude rightfrom the beginning, and when I'm
tweeting links to my blog, I'mnot saying, hey guys, come and
(05:16):
look at me, aren't I great?
I'm saying I've got this thinghere.
It is, have a look, because ifI don't do that, you're not
going to know it's there.
So how else would anyone knowit's there unless you tell them?
So you have to sort of it'slike a sort of information
service, and I find other peoplewho tweet links to their blogs.
So I think, thank god, thankyou, because if I did, if you
hadn't, if I hadn't seen thattweet with that link, I'd never
(05:37):
know you'd written that.
So how else could I have?
You've helped me come acrossyour work, thank you, and I
really, I really see it in thatway.
I'm quite sincere about that,like I feel like I'm sharing
access to something and but yeah, I think you have to get over
that bit.
I know people find it painful,but, um, you just have to kind
of say, well, I think it's okayto read it, have a see what you
(05:58):
think and and keep going.
And then the last thing to saykeep doing it.
I feel like if people sort ofblog and then three months later
they do another one, it's a bithard to get a rhythm.
So all the bloggers I know thatI know off the top of my head
are people who write somethingevery month at least, and when
you look on their blog there's akind of catalogue of things
(06:18):
that they've produced over timeand you can say, oh wow, look at
all this stuff they've done.
There's a frequency to it.
So I'd say keep, keep it, keepit up, be very honest, keep down
to earth and keep writing bits,and people will find it
interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, I'm going to stay on that topic for a little
bit.
How do they decide what towrite about?
Because that's another questionto get asked a lot.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I think that's so interesting.
I think it's quite useful tohave a thing that you're known
for a bit if you want to buildan audience.
So over the years I've writtenabout curriculum, about
assessment, about teaching stuff.
You know various things and Ithink there are people I know of
who are the writers aboutreading, the people who I know,
who really get into somecognitive science stuff.
I know people who are historybloggers, people who write about
(07:02):
school leadership.
So I feel like you need to finda kind of groove that you think
you've got quite a lot to sayand then keep it quite tight to
something.
So you know, you don't have tosort of write a great state of
the nation address every timeyou write a blog.
You just go well, here's alittle thing I've observed and
then I make.
What I do is I make a list ofideas every couple of months.
(07:23):
I sort of think, well, I've gotsome ideas brewing, these are
things I might write about.
I make a list and then I think,yeah, I'll do that one.
And then when I write aspecific blog, I always think,
well, what are the main thingshere?
And I make a list within thatof the things to say and then I
start writing it.
So I always sort of plan what Iwant to say and I feel like
that's always worked for me.
(07:43):
But I think it's something youhave to feel like it's something
that's a challenge that thenneeds a solution.
But that's one type of blog.
So here's the thing I founddifficult.
Here's what I tried.
Other blogs I love are onesabout a lesson.
So here's a lesson I taught.
Here's the resources I used.
Here's some outcomes I had.
I'm not sure if this worked,but I tried this or it could be
(08:06):
a kind of honesty thing.
You know, like some peoplesaying, this is how it feels to
me at the moment in my careerwith my leadership role or, you
know, wanting to be a middleleader or, if you're a senior
leader, thinking these are someof the problems we're
experiencing in our school atthe moment and this is what some
of the things we're trying.
So you're sort of reporting tothe world what's going on and
trying to make it as useful aspossible.
So that those are my lots ofsuggestions.
(08:26):
I've asked, been asked this afew times.
One of the things I find I oftensay is try to make it useful
and interesting.
So useful means it's gotpractical suggestions for things
to do.
You know, at least in some ofyour posts.
Interesting is when there's abit of personality in there and
find a voice where you sort ofyou know, say what you think,
you know, just be kind ofopinionated.
I think that's okay to say Ireally hate that or I really
(08:49):
love this.
As long as people know you'reexpressing an opinion and not
sort of telling them how tothink.
I think people will find thatinteresting.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You don't have to be sort of super balanced the whole
time yeah, here's the otherthing, though when people are
opinionated, say what they think, they might get some hate.
How do you deal with hate,especially on twitter, and I
follow you, so I know what's up.
How do you, how do you handleit?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I feel like there's kind of people who critique you
what you say and don't agreewith you, and I I'm just
mentally scanning through someof the people who I think, yeah,
I know, that person doesn'tagree with me, but we get on
fine, you know?
Because they just say, yeah,tom, no, I'm not sure about that
, I think you're too this oryou're too that or whatever, and
they just tell you and they andthat's fine.
Then there are other people Ithink are just rude, like they
(09:31):
just, and sometimes it's the waythey do it, like sometimes they
sort of quote, tweet you andsay this is the most ridiculous
advice you'll ever hear, orsomething whoa, now, as soon as
someone does that to me, I justmute them completely.
I just never hear from themever again, because I just think
I'm not interested.
I'm not interested in sort ofpeople who are going to be rude,
so I just block them out, so Ikind of delete them from the
(09:54):
twitter world, so their livescarry on and I never hear from
them.
I'm happy about that.
So that's my perspective and Ijust think, if you want to
disagree with me, just justreply to me and say oh, tom, I'm
not sure what you're sayinghere.
I've never found that to be true, or you've oversimplified this,
or yeah, interesting, you saythat in my experience it's not
that, it's like this, and youknow there's a.
(10:15):
There's a.
There's a kind of adult way ofdisagreeing with people without
it being yeah, yeah, look atthis, isn't this rubbish?
Or people saying things likeI'm so disappointed in you, tom.
You know how dare you agreewith you, know, tom Bennett,
about behavior or something youthink, oh my gosh, I can have no
time for that either.
So I've learned to be a bit sortof selective about so.
(10:39):
I follow thousands of people.
I have lots of interactions allthe time, so I feel like I get
enough discussion in my worldwithout needing these sort of
people.
But if you're listening to thisand you're thinking I'd like to
write something and that putsyou off, I'd say no, honestly,
don't.
Most of the time, 95% of thetime, people are just really
kind.
People are so supportive andkind and egg each other on and
(11:01):
reshare your stuff and welcomepeople into the world of sharing
blogs and stuff.
So I really the kind ofnegativity is as much.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It is on the edge definitely what do you think of,
like the teacher influencerswho are all about just the
content and just trying to getpopular without any depth or any
real experience.
You know like they go from pgceto ect to influencer all in
(11:33):
five seconds.
How do you rationalize that?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
because I I see that a lot oh, I don't know, I don't
believe these people exist.
I think, to be honest, I mean Ifeel like a bit of an old man
saying this, but I thinksometimes you have to sort of
think well, why, why does itbother me?
And and I do I do sometimeshave a word for myself, because
my gut feeling sometimes is oh,come on, do some time, earn your
(11:58):
spurs a little bit, you know,respect your elders.
But then, but as soon as you'resaying that, you're sort of
thinking, listen to how old Isound, you know it.
And I think I I do have tofilter out that sometimes, I
think is it takes some courageto be so strong in your opinion
so soon.
But I don't know.
I'm so glad I didn't havetwitter when I was 30.
(12:19):
I think I'd have been anabsolute nightmare and actually
in my career I did take time.
So you know, I became a deputyhead only of a small school.
It was only had year seven, soit was out of one form entry, so
it's like a sort of learningjob and there's only 10 11
teachers.
So I was deputy head of a tinyschool and it grew each year
it's.
So that was a really greatlearning curve for me, but I
(12:40):
always, you know, I didn'tbecome a head teacher till I was
40 or something, so that seemsto be like a reasonably sort of
steady time scale and Icertainly was just a mainstay
and a full classes, fulltimetable for a long time before
I would have felt I was havingto say to other people, you know
.
So I do think there is a kindof thing of like cutting your
(13:07):
teeth, teaching a few examclasses, trade, do, committing
to it, and I feel like I didthat and it does.
I do know the thing aboutinfluences, though I feel like,
you know, there's a double-edgedthing, because I also think
it's important to amplifypeople's voices.
So I always feel like whensomeone is amplifying their
voice they've done a talk atresearch ed or they've written a
book, teacher books go for it.
You know, why shouldn't you?
You should feel like I've gotsomething to say and as a
(13:28):
teacher I want to share thatwith the world.
But I guess you have to beprepared for other people to say
you know there is a bit more toit, to this and so on.
So some of the books I see andso on, I feel like they sound
like someone who's only beenteaching for five years, but
fair enough.
I mean they, they want to puttheir voice out there, yeah, so
I feel like you need to be alittle bit sort of sympathetic.
It would be much worse, forexample, if you felt like you
(13:49):
had to wait 10 years beforeyou're allowed to say anything.
That would be even.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
That would be terrible it's not that you know
what, because I see it and I'mlike, are you serious?
Like if I dropped you in myschool in Haringey you wouldn't
even last a minute.
But but but it's not thatthey're young and they're trying
to become teacher influencers.
That bothers me.
It's when they come at it notfrom a I'm learning standpoint
(14:14):
and this is what I'm learning tothe I'm the expert and I'm like
, really, in five minutes, you,you're the expert.
That's the part that gets me.
But anyway, yeah, everyone hasa space.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I think that's true.
I feel, like you know I Iprobably fall into that trap
from time to time of being sortof communicating sort of false
certainty.
I'm sure I do, and there arethings where I feel quite
strongly about them, definitelylike, and I and I sort of feel
like sometimes in teaching weget a bit too woolly.
You know, we, we can sort of besaying, oh well, you know, this
works here and that works forme, and I'm someone who you hear
(14:48):
this phrase sometimes you knowsomething works and anything
works somewhere, and I justthink that's it.
Though I think there are somethings which are just really not
good ideas and if you do themand you think it works, you're
probably not, they probablydon't work.
It's just that you get awaywith it.
You don't it doesn't, you don'tnotice the damage it's doing
because your children probablydon't need it.
And there are some situationswhere you teach, where it
(15:10):
doesn't really matter what youdo too much, because the
children will will kind of beall right, because they're
supported by the world they'rein, and you might think that
activity is working, but itprobably isn't really.
It's just not harming.
So it's sort of not visiblyharming, and I've done that
myself.
I've done some sort ofridiculous sort of experiments,
if you like, which I feel like Ienjoyed them, but I wouldn't
(15:31):
claim they worked as a sort ofgeneral thing to advocate to
other people with more difficultsituations to work in.
So I feel like you have to becareful about saying I remember
I used to teach in the selectiveschool, which has had some very
high achieving students, and Idid some really interesting
things with them, but they usedto teach a lot of the lessons
with me and so on, and they gotamazing results.
(15:51):
Though we in our gcsc you knowthey, we got something like they
all got is that when they had astars, they all got a stars,
except one for something.
It was just crazy.
I mean that was and I bloggedabout it saying like we did
these amazing lessons and theydid really well.
But somebody I think it wasGreg Ashman, who some of you
will know he replied to mesaying that's like wearing lucky
socks on exam day Just becauseyou wore your lucky socks on the
(16:14):
exam and you did well doesn'tmean that you did well because
you were wearing the lucky socks.
And I was thinking, and I'vealways remembered that as a bit
of a kind of burst my bubble abit, thinking no, he's right,
it's an effect is hard to proveand just because I did those
things doesn't mean those arethe reason why I got good
outcomes.
Necessarily, I'm sort of hopingthat's true, but I might not
know that, yeah.
So I think everyone definitelyneeds to be cautious about
(16:37):
over-asserting cause and effectin in the way what they're doing
, especially if you'resuggesting other people do it,
which is which is obviously adifferent thing altogether no,
you're so right, especially ifyou're prescribing it and you
know going.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
This is advice for this set of people and you're
going context everyone's contextespecially, you're saying
everybody now has to do it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That's even worse.
And you do come across that.
Don't you sort of start sayingI think this is a good idea.
Now, everybody in the school,you all have to do x?
You think, oh gosh, you've gotto be so careful about anything
where you make people do thesame thing because, uh, that
you've got to be very confident,that's a really good idea yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
How did you make the transition into writing books?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
well, I I, when I left teaching, I'd be a head
teacher for a whole host ofreasons.
I had some some time to startwith, because I wanted to build
up being a consultant and startworking in schools.
And I thought, well, suddenly,you know, freed from the
day-to-day, every day in school,high pressure I just thought
I'll write a book now because.
But then I thought I had allthis blog.
I had five years of bloggingbehind me by that point, so it
(17:39):
was almost like the book of theblogs and I pitched it.
I had this quite beautifulexchange with the publisher,
john Catt, who the publisher?
This is an amazing phenomenon,which is I emailed them one day
in February 2017, saying I'vegot this idea for a book based
on my blog.
It's called Learning Rainforest.
(18:00):
And then I sent the email.
And then I looked at my emailsand there was this email from
John Catt saying hey, tom, we'dreally like your blog, we think
it would be great if you wrote abook.
And I was going.
But I just emailed you and theyand they just emailed me
literally in like a tuesdaymorning, totally randomly, on
exactly the same moment.
He emailed me and I emailedthem.
(18:20):
It's like amazing.
So I was just saying I had todouble check and going this is
so bizarre, like I've literallyjust asked you and you've
literally just asked me, andthen we exchanged and like, yeah
, so that was a great thing, butthat happened because I had
already written quite a lot andthat's the thing.
The blogging was my kind ofpractice bed, you know sort of
what works, what's interesting,finding a way of doing it.
And then the LearningRainforest yeah, I wrote that
(18:41):
and that's now seven years ago.
The next one that I did quitewell was the Rosenshine
Principles in Action, and thatwas a fluky thing as well.
So I was I've got it in frontof me here.
I was doing a talk, a researchevent, so I was really
interested in rose and shine'sprinciples and I did a talk.
I said that here's, here's areally amazing document.
It's such a simple summary oflots of great ideas and I just
(19:03):
it was like a half hour talk andthe end of it this publisher
came up to me and said thatwould be really useful to
summarize what you just said ina sort of little pamphlet, like
a short book.
That how do you fancy writing ashort booklet, pamphlet almost
about the principles, to go tothat people could access with
them, and I said okay, so Itried it and then they decided
to publish it and that's wherethis book rose and shines
(19:24):
principle action came from.
They literally asked me to makeit as short as possible, so I
wrote the sort of shortest bookever written about teaching.
This we had to make, we had tostick the rose and shine
principles in it, to beef it up,so it was thick enough to sort
of stand up.
That was really amazing and Ithink because there was a kind
of time five years ago where alot of schools were finding this
set of ideas is so helpful, itkind of took off.
(19:46):
Yeah, so those, and then thewalkthrough was oliver kevigyodi
approached me.
He said this was a brilliantinsight.
He just said isn't it amazingjust how many brilliant ideas
there are out there in education?
There's so many aren't there andbut the problem is that we'll
lose them.
You know we'll.
We have to hold on to them.
So how do we?
Why don't we curate, like theideas that we know people are
talking about and and then makeit a visual guide?
(20:08):
Because that's obviously hishis thing, making things visual.
So we agreed to sort of try itand you know, the walkthroughs
took shape from there, the sortof step-by-step guides.
But that was again himsuggesting to me that to
collaborate.
So yeah, it's always.
Each of the books I've writtenhas had this sort of fluky sort
of start point which is you knowhow life goes sometimes and
what's your writing process like?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Like when you sit to put your I know the blogs help
because you said you had thatbacklog of work, but something
like Walkthroughs, which wasdone in collaboration with
somebody else.
What's your process like?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah, well, the Walkthroughs is a particular
style of writing which suits mewell because it's short chunks.
So what we do is then we sortof scope out the whole book
first.
So we just say, okay, so we,you know, you sort of talk a
little about what's the wholetheme and who is it for and
who's going to read it, and thenyou think, okay, so what are
the main areas that we want tocover?
And that's.
We came up with six areascurriculum, explaining how do we
(21:06):
learn, a kind of why section,and so on.
So we came up with some broadideas and then we just made a
list okay, so let's go to thenext level.
What would we have in each ofthose sections?
Then you just break it down soyou end up with a sort of
skeleton of almost like thecontents page of your book.
And I always find that's reallyhelpful, because then you know
you can sort of sequence theorder and say we'll start here,
then we'll go there, and whenyou're writing one bit you know
(21:29):
you don't have to stray becausethe next bit will be done, so
you can always see what's coming.
And then when I'm in one of thewalkthroughs it's just because
it's kind of mechanical.
There's five steps.
So I always think, okay, so I'mgoing to think, I focus totally
on that idea and I just think,how would that work, what do you
need to think about?
And I've got to come up withfive things.
So I write down you do that andthat, then that, then that five
(21:50):
things, and I'm happy with thefive.
I go okay.
So let me describe each stepand it's very broken down like
that and it's quite quick in away, because you just.
But then when you writesomething a bit longer, a bit
more prose, like you know, you,I feel there's a different,
slightly different style, whichis to be a bit more opinionated,
a bit more talk.
So write a little bit how youtalk and have examples.
(22:11):
Sometimes everyone has adifferent style.
I know some other bloggers, forexample, who their blogs are
sort of like semi-academicpapers.
They sound like they could bein a journal.
I could never write that way.
I'm not.
I'm far too casual andcolloquial and I'd like to sort
of not I don't know avoid beingsounding too sort of academic.
But so you have to find yourstyle of a sort of way of
(22:32):
writing that you feel is yours.
But yeah, that's what I'm doingvery the recent book, for
example, I wrote my most recentone is about leaders that I've
encountered and what they, whatI think their characteristics
are.
So I was thinking I meet allthese amazing people.
They're so buzzy and everyone'sgot this energy and but they
really know their stuff and Iwas thinking, let me write this.
I just thought one of the threefeatures of them and I wrote
down headings and described theheadings and then it kind of
(22:53):
writes itself in that way.
You just you have to be clearwhat it is you want to say in
advance and then deliver thewriting afterwards.
Other people I've met say theyjust sort of feel their way
through the whole piece and I'venever done that.
I've never felt that thatworked for me.
You end up writing way too muchwaffle and then editing it.
I'm terrible at editing.
So, yeah, people who, if youtalk to someone like peps mccray
he's like a he writes like 200000 words and then pairs it down
(23:18):
and pairs it down and pairs itdown until it's just exactly the
words he needs.
So he starts huge and then goes, shrinks it down to the bare
minimum and that's an amazingprocess, but it's totally
opposite to me.
Mine is start with the skeletonand fit it out, and then that's
it.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
So it's very lean right from the beginning yeah,
I'm like a bit of both, but Ithink I really I enjoy the
editing process.
So I do write and write andwrite, and then I go back and I
challenge myself how much can Iget rid of?
And I just try to chop, and Ichop, and chop and chop until I
get right to the heart of what Iwant to say.
But if you know, the issue isthat a lot of the writing that's
(23:59):
going on now in education seemsto be pitched at more the
classroom level and very few arebeing written, in my estimation
, at school leaders.
Who are you reading now thatyou think would be interesting
for people who are maybeaspiring for school leadership
(24:19):
or currently in schoolleadership?
Who do you find interesting now?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
oh, wow, that's.
That's depends, I think itdepends slightly what aspect of
school leadership that you'reinterested in, and I can turn
around to my shelf here and seebooks.
So there's things to do with,say, there's a great head
teacher called Matthew Evans,for example.
Matthew Evans, who's right,writes brilliantly about the
whole big challenge of running aschool and the complexity of
(24:45):
some of the challenges.
His blogs about leadership Ithink are excellent.
The challenges his blogs aboutleadership I think are excellent
.
And, more broadly, sort ofthink pieces, think pieces um,
someone like ben newmark,similarly you know, great sort
of challenging think piecesabout how how do we frame the
big challenges in education,about special needs or, you know
, teacher recruitment, so thatpeople like that I think are
very good at giving a broad viewof leadership that was a very
(25:09):
selfish question, my listeners,I do that because I want to know
who to read next and what tocheck out, and there's also a
culture.
So you know, lekha Sharma haswritten a fantastic recent book
about school culture.
It's brilliant.
It's a really clever sort ofdive into what culture means and
different strands.
(25:30):
So I mean Lekka sharma's bookon on school culture is is
really good, and so you knowthere are various people like
that.
I would say I recommend to readand there's a really really
good.
I mean some slightly morefocused books like leverage
leadership, for example, paulbanbrick santoyo, because in
there you've got all the stuffabout coaching, which is, you
know, feedback to teachers,which which is about the
(25:51):
classroom and sort of how youcreate a culture where teachers
are receptive to feedback, andso on.
So he's also excellent,brilliant.
I'll tell you what a book thathasn't come out yet well, it has
come out, but I haven'treceived my copy yet, so I'm
sort of waiting for it to comein is a book called Responsive
Coaching by Josh Goodridge.
He's been working on coachingin schools for 10 years.
(26:11):
He's one of the mostintelligent, thoughtful people
I've met in education and heruns StepLab, which some of you
have heard of.
But his book ResponsiveCoaching is probably.
A lot of people who've seen italready are really raving about
it.
So if you want it, I wouldreally recommend getting that.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
I'll see if I can find links to these that Tom's
mentioning and also Tom's bookto put in the notes.
Tom, you wrote recently aboutfeedback on your blog, so I
really want to dive into that,because it's such a hot topic
here on the international sceneand in your article you made
this really strong case aboutco-constructing feedback rather
(26:47):
than delivering it top down.
But tell me from yourexperience, right, what was that
turning point for you?
When did you begin to kind ofreally hone in on advocating
this approach?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
well, I I've been.
It's sort of been a journey.
I mean I used to do the wholeobservation, feedback and judge
lessons when I was ahead yearsago and even then I used to feel
like why do we do this?
You know what's?
It's so weird.
And I've been in sort ofmeetings with people going let's
triangulate our judgments andwe'd be saying I thought it was
good, but it was this and itfeels so, felt like we were
(27:20):
making it up like this feelslike we're making this up.
And you'd hear all these sortof you'd meet head teachers say,
oh, you just know a good lessonwhen it's good, and they had a
sort of badge of honor that Iknow, you know, and I think I
just think, but I feel like I'mguessing.
So what does everyone elsereally know?
Because it felt like it was sosubjective so I always had my
doubts about it.
And then I feel like gettingrid of graded judgments is the
(27:40):
first thing.
Now it's just about judgments.
But even then I used to findthat I would have this workload
thing of watching a lesson andthen feeling I had to write it
up because that was what you'resupposed to do, and then I'd be
typing into the night thinkingwhat was that lesson and what do
I say?
And then right fit in thisbeautiful pro forma and I, and
then I'd look at it and I'd Iremember being in my office as a
head and looking in this filingcabinet, thinking what is this
(28:01):
for?
Like I wrote this here, it isin this filing cabinet that
teacher is still doing half ofthe things that that I thought
they to change.
And it's hard to get them tochange all of that because
they've got habits, and I justthought it was the side of it.
This just doesn't work.
It's sort of who's it for,who's it?
Who's benefiting?
More recently, I just work withschools all the time, really
frenzied.
(28:22):
I sit at the back of a lot oflessons, hundreds and hundreds
of lessons and more and more.
I just see how complex it is.
I just think this isn't easyand I've worked with lots of
schools now on helping them moveteaching forward and I've come
to the conclusion from my ownpractice, as well as reading
other things, that a thing whichreally does work is when the
teacher is driving it, when theythemselves are saying, yeah, I
(28:42):
need to do this, this is whatI'm going to do, I need to.
Instead of doing that, I'mgoing to do that.
I'm going to drop that stupidthing and do this much better
thing.
And they're really the energyin their own improvement.
So how do I get that teacher tofeel that I have to involve them
?
I have to ask them.
After I have to, I can suggestthings, but they have to own it.
And if they don't own it thisis what I've learned they don't
(29:03):
change, they just don't.
It's like a brick wall, anintelligent brick wall, because
an intelligent teacher is sayinglook, mate, don't come at me
with your intelligentsuggestions.
I'm fine, I've got my agenda, Iknow what I'm doing and I don't
need you to tell me stuff.
And I've come across thatresistance so often.
So what I found is this is tosort of say I've kind of, I've
had a look at what's happeningin your lesson.
(29:24):
Boy, you're working hard, isn'tit challenging?
Here's some things that I wasthinking about what, what do you
think about this and what doyou think about that and how do
you see it?
And they're telling me theirchallenge.
And then we agree, we sawproblems on, and say, yeah, so
that's interesting.
So what might work there then?
And we have a reference pointwith of common ideas, but always
leave with them saying so.
My parting thing is always so,what are you, what are you going
(29:45):
to do, what are you going tocommit to them of all those
things?
And they say this okay, okay,so, okay, so, that's great, so
focus on that and that's what we, that's what you're going to do
great.
But they're kind of nearlyalways the driver of that, and
then and then you find thatthey're they're working on it
because they feel like it'stheir agenda.
If I wrote all that down andemailed them, it wouldn't get
anywhere close to that, nowherenear.
(30:06):
So it would be a waste of mytime as well as annoying to them
.
So why would I do it?
I mean, have you ever hadfeedback from someone who just
emailed you or sent you a formand you just went?
Well, don't come to me withthat.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So you know sometimes I don't even read the thing.
If I'm honest, if I look backat my career and I'm thinking
sometimes I got the feedback, Iscanned it and I didn't really
read it properly.
But it takes a certain kind ofleader though, tom, because,
yeah, if you're coming in from apoint of I know you all things,
what is the importance then ofbeing humble, watching out for
(30:43):
your own biases as a leader,going in to make those
observations?
Speaker 3 (30:48):
well, I always think this is that's a really good
question.
I think you have to be veryaware of your biases, and so
what you do is you, you sort ofhypothesize.
You don't judge or makeabsolute assessments.
You ask questions.
So, and, for example, you can,you can coach someone or observe
someone where they're teachingsomething you have no idea.
I'm not.
So recently I was watching, say,a hockey lesson which I thought
(31:09):
was great.
I thought it looked good to mebecause there were some features
of it I thought I could lookfor.
I don't really know if it wasgood.
So I was with the head of PEwho was watching it with me, and
I said to him so I mean, I'vegot some views, but what was
your sense?
Was that strong practice?
Were you thinking that'sexcellent?
Or were you thinking, oh youknow, there's some things there
(31:33):
which that teacher could havebeen doing?
And I listened to what they hadto say and we kind of agreed
with most of it, because I wasactually pretty strong, and so
it was like questions.
I had some questions and thatcould be about other lessons.
So recently I was in a in aschool where I was watching some
teaching.
I was thinking I had somedoubts about it.
I was thinking this teacher'ssort of I'm not sure I won't say
too much about it, but they, Iasked, I said so what are the
outcomes like in this department?
Because does that teaching leadto strong outcomes?
Because we really need to know.
Because they said no, so I justthought okay.
(31:57):
So that's interesting, becauseI'm sort of triangulating
because I'm thinking theoutcomes aren't strong and
that's what I'm seeing.
So that makes that means thatmy hunch, that there's some
issues there is, is perhapsworth exploring.
And this is what I had to say.
But I was asking, I wasn'tassuming, because if I'd said to
me, well, no, to be honest, Iget great results, and I'd be
thinking, okay, so what doesthat mean then?
And it would make me thinkslightly differently about it.
(32:19):
So, anyway, I feel like you haveto be humble, so you focus on
what you can observe, and what Iobserve is things like really
functional things like when yousaid to the class turn to your
partner and talk about.
You know why the character youknow did this thing, or why the
water freezes in this scenario,whatever they've been asked, or
why the answer is 6.2.
(32:39):
You listen to the children infront of you and hear what they
have to say and you just listenin and it's like your reality
check.
You can then feed that back tothe teacher later and say do you
know what the children saidwhen you asked them that?
This is what they said.
And sometimes it's hilarious,sometimes it's like nothing to
do with what you asked,sometimes it's mind-blowing.
They're going wow, the insightof those children is amazing.
Like you asked that questionand the discussion they had was
(33:02):
amazing.
But often it isn't amazing.
Often it's really bad.
It's like they're just sort oftalking.
They think you think they'rehaving a discussion.
They really aren't.
One of them is talking sayingnonsense.
The other one's going yeah, yeah, yeah and then and then it's
over and you're thinking, heyguys, great, we had a good
discussion, but it wasn't greatthere.
It was quite poor.
So you're not you're notcritiquing the teacher or
(33:23):
anything.
You're saying kind of bloominghard is that you, you're setting
something up which has apotential to be great, but for
those kids it wasn't so, and Inoticed that.
So we talk about that and it'sa reality.
It's, it's a thing I'veobserved.
It's not a judgment, it's athing I've observed and I think
that's more and more how I focusit.
But of course, the teachermight be well aware of it.
And I think it's so importantto say and I'm not saying I'd
(33:44):
have sorted that out if I'd beenteaching the lesson like you
would you're doing all the work.
It's so easy to observe alesson.
You just walk in, you sit itdown.
It's kind of cushy.
You just watch the teachershaving to think about everything
.
So you have to be so, so awarethat just because I could notice
something doesn't mean I wouldhave done if I was teaching at
the same time.
So we have to sort of couch itas.
So that's an interestingchallenge, isn't it?
(34:06):
The challenge that we'veidentified in your lessons is
that some of the children don'tquite have the knowledge that
you might hope to run aconversation that's that
sophisticated without somesupport.
So what sorts of supports mightbe useful then?
You know, do you have them?
What else could you have done?
And we approach it with a sortof problem solving sort of
(34:27):
mindset.
I find that teachers reallyrespond to that yeah, because
they don't feel told off.
You know, it's kind of annoying, isn't it, to have someone walk
into your lesson and kind oflike say what you could have
done differently when thelessons already happened.
It's like, yeah, but I didn'tdo that, did I?
Like I can't go back in timeand do the thing you said.
I did the thing I did, and well, all I can do is think I want
to do next and so help me planthat.
And so you have to have ideasfor different things.
(34:47):
So all these things that leadme to feel like co-constructing
feedback is.
It's essential.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It's essential, it's how schools should be yeah, yeah
, you are so right, and I was.
You know, what I was thinkingabout as you were talking is how
do we rationalize the gapbetween the lesson that is being
observed because someone'sthere and the lesson that takes
place normally when no one'sthere?
How do we rationalize that gap?
(35:13):
Because what you're seeing isprobably not even what takes
place on a normal basis, and soyou going in with a judgment,
you're not really learninganything, nor is the teacher
learning anything, becauseyou're talking to them about
what you've observed and kind ofbringing in your judgments,
your opinion, and they're justthere with a defensive wall,
(35:34):
normally invisible maybe to youor visible depending on how
forthright that teacher is, andthen they're just wishing that
you would disappear and thenthere's no help there.
So I wanted to, before we kindof wrap up the podcast, I need
to help some leaders moveforward in that journey of just
going in and handing judgment.
How would we co-construct?
(35:57):
I know you gave some clues, butjust walk me through a scenario
.
How can a leader go in andco-construct that feedback with
the teacher post observation?
What does that conversationsound like?
Speaker 3 (36:10):
simulate one for me okay, well, the way I would
frame there's a couple of thingsto stage to start with.
So the first thing is I wouldset up a system.
Before I know if I'm going todo this with a teacher and I'd
say leaders should do this is wehave a process we know is going
to run for months.
So when I'm talking to ateacher or observing them, it's
one of many interim of suchinteractions.
It's hard to achieve this withjust a one-off thing.
(36:31):
So that's the first thing.
And what we talk about is timescales of the order of, say,
three or four weeks maximum,like two weeks even sometimes,
but just say that sort of scale.
So when I let's say I was alsocoaching you and I was saying
I'd observe you first and I'dsay here's some general things
and I'd ask you what sorts ofchallenges you felt were useful,
I'd ask you, what are youworking on in your department?
(36:52):
What's the thing your agenda'saround?
So I would focus my inputaround the thing you feel is a
challenge you have and I'd checkthat against my observation and
I would.
Usually I would say yeah,that's a good idea Because
observation and I would.
I usually I would say yeah,that's a good idea, because I
think that's definitelysomething to look at.
If I thought you were pickingsomething to focus on which I
thought, having observed you,was like not really even the
main thing, I might suggestsomething else.
(37:13):
I'd say that's interesting thatyou think that my perspective
was that maybe there's quite alot of mileage to work on this
and we discussed the goalsetting in the first place.
But then the first meetingwould just be okay.
So have a let's have a thinkabout this, try this thing.
Then let's, let's see how we go.
And I would then come in to thelesson about three weeks later
and say let's see how that'sgoing.
Then, are you doing the thingsyou say you're going to do?
And that's a really importantkind of lens.
(37:35):
It's a teacher effortfullytrying to use those questioning
techniques that they said theywere going to try.
And if, at least if you see ateacher making an effort, that
you're making a start, now theway I would do it, I mean I
would, I would use mywalkthroughs, materials which
have got steps, but I I'll makethis, this, rather more generic.
Yeah, I'd say, that's what theysaid they were going to do, are
they doing it?
And then I have this frame,which I borrowed from the paul
(37:56):
banbrick sansoyo work, which isyou use precise praise, probe
and then the problem and theaction step.
So precise praise.
I'm looking for specific thingsthe teacher's doing that are
good.
It could be a change I've madesince the last time I observed
them.
It could be an exampleinteraction with a couple of
students I thought was reallyinteresting.
So you're trying to do that,that modeling, and I was with a
(38:17):
student the way you model that.
They followed it perfectly andthey did that example exactly
right, just like you showed.
It was fantastic.
So you explained it reallyclearly.
They got it exactly straightaway, you nailed it and like
I've got an example of aspecific instance where the
thing they were working on works, or you know at least partially
work, so precise praise.
Then I'd say okay, so let'sprobe now let's let's talk about
(38:37):
the challenges, because there'salways challenges.
So we don't I don't givenegative feedback, I just say so
there's good stuff happening.
What are the challenges?
And I might say to them yougood stuff happening.
What are the challenges?
And I might say to them youknow what sorts of things are
you for?
We're finding hard there, orwas there any part of that
lesson where you thought, oh no,it didn't go as well as I would
have liked.
And I asked the teacher to tellme what they thought.
And I'm doing that for tworeasons.
One of them is because it istheir lesson, as they owned it.
(38:59):
But also I'm hearing the waythey express the problem and if
they, if they say the samethings I would have said, it
tells me, hey, this teacher'sgot great self-awareness and
self-judgment and I, I canreally work with that.
If they don't see it tells mesomething else.
If a teacher says, well, Ithought it was great, no, I
didn't see any problems, or Iworked, I thought it was just
fine, and I'm thinking, oh no,well, and then I start throwing
(39:20):
in my reality check and I startsaying, okay, it's interesting,
because what I noticed was acouple of things, and do you
mind if I share that?
What actually I observed wasthis happening.
So you know, that's aninteresting challenge, isn't it?
That from your perspective, itwas all fine, which is fine,
which is, you know, no problemwith that, but what actually
happened over here was somethingelse.
So it's just really importantto be aware of.
So let's talk about that.
So we, we throw in the channel.
(39:41):
We're quite honest about thosethings.
I just but I'm usinginformation that I have had, so
I'm not using a judgmentallanguage.
It was good, bad it was.
That seemed to be effective forthese reasons, and here's some
challenges I observed.
And then we, we then turn aroundand say so, so what might you
do next time, then?
Or work on over the next threeweeks to really work on that?
And again, I'll invite theteacher to share that with me
(40:01):
and I'll say, okay, that'sinteresting, and we rehearse it
a bit.
So that would mean, instead ofdoing this, you'll do that.
So when you do the think pairshare, you're going to get
everyone to think for themselves, and then literally half the
class shares their thoughts withtheir neighbor and then they
take turns and the other halfshares that.
So it's like, really quitedeliberate, is that what you
mean?
Yeah, okay, so let's just runit through for me.
What are you going to do?
(40:21):
I'll hear the teacher then tellme.
I say, okay, have a go at thata few times.
Then I plan when I'm coming tosee them next and I tell them so
they know they're working onthat for the next couple of
weeks and so the time I comeback in next, that I've
practiced because they don'twant to just suddenly me turn up
and not do it.
So it's a.
It's a planned process.
It's very explicit.
None of that is like I thoughtyou were good or bad or anything
(40:42):
.
It's.
This is what I thought.
These are some instances whichare working.
Here's some challenges.
What's the solution and whenare you going to act it?
Without this being a super longanswer, if, when I return, say
the second or third time, andthe teacher's still doing all
the things we talked about rightat the start, I'll start having
a different conversation andsay, yeah, I still notice that's
still happening, though, isn'tit?
So why do you think that is?
Is it?
Is it?
Are you finding it hard to dothis, or is it something
(41:05):
blocking what's happening?
And how do you feel about it?
And they'll sometimes also say,well, I just didn't get around
to it and we just say, okay,well, let's talk about that.
You know, do you?
Is it something you reallythink you should do, or are you
(41:31):
resisting it, working on and we?
You kind of have to be open withpeople and talking that way,
because if you don't allow themto be honest with you and say I
don't agree with it.
I find it awkward, I've justfelt too busy and all those sort
of things.
They can't be honest about that.
They're gonna feel that wayanyway, so you might as well
hear it.
So that's that's how it works.
And then you agree a kind ofconstant set of actions, but
they you can be quite demandingof people in that process.
You can say, well, great, ready, go for it.
Now let's see if that works,really commit to it, really do
that, you know, go for it, andyou encourage them and you can
(41:52):
kind of create a kind ofmotivational drive there.
Anyway, hopefully that cancapture some of that no, it does
.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
It does you know.
You know what I I kept thinkingof in that is that maybe, maybe
some of the leaders listeningwill think there isn't room
there to correct where peopleare going wrong, because you're
co-constructing.
It sounds softer than whatpeople are used to.
A lot of people are used togoing in and just laying down
(42:18):
the law.
As they see it, you've donethis wrong, you've done this
wrong and you should fix thisimmediately.
Yada, yada, in thisco-construction process.
It might sound as if thereisn't space for difficult
conversations within that, but Ithink there is, and I think if
people can come to thatself-realization and want to
(42:39):
improve or they might come tothe realization that they don't
want to improve they want tomove on as well.
You know, there is a lot thatcan come out of that process.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I think that's true.
I mean, and also I think it'sone thing you have to.
One of the reasons for theco-construction is that and this
is like an evidence thing fromstudies of teachers is that,
just like any child-teacherfeedback relationship, adults
are the same.
So I might see a teacherteaching a certain way and in
sort of similar to someone elseand think, oh well, I'll give
them similar feedback.
(43:11):
But actually no, that teacheris going to respond better if I,
if I just sort of really quitedirect with them and say,
michael, you know that withthose things pair shares, you
know, I've noticed that you justsay, okay, guys, have a chat on
your tables.
And it really doesn't work,because have a chat on your
tables to that those kids you'llteach you just means it doesn't
mean enough to them, they don'twant to, and I've seen it
(43:32):
several times now.
So I think we really need towork on the structure, like
you've got to say.
You've got to give them aquestion with a structure, which
is they come up with threeideas, think of your own and
share them and ask them whatthey agreed.
And it has to be structuredbecause otherwise they're just
recycling ignorance, they're nottalking, they're not helping.
You're not helping them enough.
I could.
I could say to a teacher you, Ireally think you need to do
(43:53):
that because it's not working.
Another teacher if I said thatto them, they just say get out
of my room.
Who are you walking in here andtelling me that?
And you have to know thatteacher.
Another teacher I'd be saying,yeah, I love what you're doing.
I mean it's brilliant.
You're like, it's such anenergy and you're so charismatic
.
The children really love it.
Do you think that discussionformat is working?
(44:14):
What do you think?
I mean, have you ever noticedsome of the things they say?
And I might just be totallysort of around the houses about
it, because the teacher isn'tready for me to just tell them,
kind of, I really think you knowthey're not ready for that and
you have to sort of beintelligent about that.
I mean, different people reactdifferently to that kind of
directive.
So if you can support a teacherto say, yeah, maybe that's a bit
(44:36):
sloppy, isn't it?
Maybe, perhaps I should askthem to be.
Maybe I'll try thatthink-pair-share thing that you
keep banging on about.
I go well, you try that thinkpair share thing that you keep
banging, banging on like okay,well, you know, why don't you
give it a go?
You know, give it a go.
I know it's like you know you'dget some nice responses from
some of the students, but Ireally reckon if you tried that
you might find it works reallywell.
So how about that?
And I'm much more sort oftentative, another teacher I'm
(44:58):
100 saying I really need you todo this because this is not
working.
And you know, I mean I thinkthat's the joy of the work,
because teachers are human andyou have to work with the people
you've got.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
You know yeah, you're right, and and it comes down to
relationships like, if you knowthe people you're working with,
you'll know how to work thatco-construction feedback meeting
.
Yeah, this is brilliant.
Thank you so much, tom, well,thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I've.
I love talking about this stuff.
I could talk about it all day,so thank you for inviting me oh,
you're most welcome.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
I want to ask you one last question, though, as
someone who's really, reallyimmersed in the education space
what are you excited about?
What are you excited about ineducation right now?
Speaker 3 (45:40):
oh, wow, that's a really good question.
I'm excited about a kind ofmature maturation is that the
right word of the idea of a kindof knowledge rich curriculum
and things like coaching havinga sort of second wave where
they're a little bit more subtleand balanced with kind of more
organic approaches.
So we've been through thisperiod of knowledge rich
(46:01):
curriculum being sort of likedefine everything, be precise
about everything, and now Ithink people have got used to
some of these routines.
We can start being a bit moreexpansive in our view of that,
and I work with schools where Ifeel like that's where they're
at and it's the same with, say,coaching.
You need a structure, you need asystem, you need it to work
technically in a school or elseit doesn't.
But once you've got the system,I just think it's brilliant to
(46:23):
get into the exactly theconversation we've just been
having about the way youinteract with a teacher to
support them to improve.
But I I've been to a lot ofschools where they they talk
about that conversation beingthe ideal, but they haven't set
up the opportunity for it tohappen in the structures.
So I feel like there's a lot ofreally good intelligent work
around coaching.
I'm really excited that moreand more schools are dropping
all the sort of formalobservations all the time.
(46:46):
Like they're dropping them.
It's the direction of travel istowards regular cycles of
developmental feedback and so on, and we're changing the culture
in schools all the time andthat to me is very exciting and
fewer and fewer leaders feelthey need to do the top-down
judgment stuff.
So I do think that's good andI'm really excited about that.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Brilliant.
Thank you.
Where can people reach you, Tom?
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Well, I'm always on Twitter, teacherhead at
teacherhead, my blog isteacherheadcom, and I'm also
increasingly going to useLinkedIn just as myself, I think
and obviously the walkthroughs.
So walkthroughs is the wholewebsite.
We just, literally this weekend, released a book Learning
Walkthroughs that's just comeout so it just came out last
Friday and it's written forparents and for children, so
(47:32):
we're really pleased about that.
So, walkthroughscouk you canaccess stuff there.
So all these different thingshopefully will interest
different people.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Thank you for being on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Thank you for inviting me.
It's been really great.
Thank you for listening to.
It's been really great.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Teach Middle East
podcast.
My name is Elisa Grace.
Today I have Tom Sherrington asmy guest on the podcast and
we're going to be talking abouthis career.
We're going to be talking abouthis work, his books, his love
for teaching and learning, andwe're going to dive in somewhere
around the end.
We're going to be talking aboutfeedback and walkthroughs and
(00:26):
lesson observations, which issomething I've read extensively
on his blog, so I won't blab on.
I just want to welcome Tom tothe podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast
connecting, developing andempowering educators podcast
connecting, developing andempowering educators.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
I'm really delighted to betalking to you.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Thank, you so much, tom.
Where did it begin this wholecareer in education that you
have going?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
well it's.
It's kind of the only careerI've ever had, because I started
teaching when I was straightout of university in 1987 I got
my first job.
I didn't really know I'd spendthe rest of my career teaching,
but I enjoyed it so I justthought I'd do it.
To start with and that was along time ago physics and maths
teacher and then in the 90s Igot interested in sort of school
(01:20):
leadership and working a coupleof comprehensive schools in
London.
I spent a stint in aninternational school in and work
in a couple of comprehensiveschools in london.
I spent a international schoolin in jakarta in indonesia in
2005 to 2008 and when I cameback from that I was a head a
head teacher for about 11 years,but that's around about 10.
11 years ago I was nearly 12years ago I started writing a
blog about teachingteacherheadcom just reporting on
(01:43):
everyday stuff in school, and Ifound the mate.
To my amazing, people read it.
So I started sort of finding,well, there's an audience for
people talking and exploringwhat happens in schools and in
lessons.
So I sort of developed a kindof an audience for writing and
then and since then I've writtenvarious books and last seven
years I've been trainingteachers mainly.
I think of myself as a teachertrainer.
(02:05):
I visit a lot of schools, Iwatch a lot of teachers teach
and do training, so that's mymain career now.
But that's you know, going 30,35 years or so.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I read.
I'm a reader of your blog, soI've read Teacher Head for
several years.
What would you say is one ofthe biggest things you've gained
from having started that blog?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I think the main thing I mean a lot of bloggers
would say this is it helps youclarify your own thoughts.
So knowing you have the blog towrite and a kind of audience
for it I it makes me think hardabout things because I I don't I
can think in my own head andlike everybody does, but I think
I'm gonna.
I know that this is a commonissue.
So I feel like I've learnedthat whatever I think about
teaching, lots of other peoplealso have the same challenge
(02:47):
because they're quite common.
So I feel like I think hardabout how do I communicate that,
how do I express that challengeso that it kind of relates to
other people?
And then what do I think theanswers are.
So because I know the blog isthere and people will read it, I
kind of channel that.
That's the main thing.
I've've learned that we have alot in common and I've gained a
lot just by having that kind ofaudience of people engaging with
(03:10):
it.
So I've met lots of peoplethrough it and some other fellow
writers, bloggers, teachers.
That's the main thing you'resort of thinking like when I'm
in a lesson.
I'm thinking, oh, this is aninteresting challenge as
teachers having.
I bet loads of other peoplehave this challenge and you know
, a couple of weeks later, sureenough, that appears in a blog
post.
Because I think, well, if itwas tough for them, it would be
tough for lots of people andthat often resonates and then
(03:31):
you have the audience thatyou've already sort of curated
and built up.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But what about people who are just starting out in
this whole blogging and maybeeven video?
How would you encourage them toget on that road if they're
like a little bit hesitant?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
so I get asked that a lot.
You know, I feel like sometimespeople will ask me because they
think I've got a reasonablenumber of followers and so on.
So you know, but I actuallythink that's a bit overwhelming
when I first started.
There are people I used to lookup to and think, wow, how do
you ever get to be that sort ofwell-known?
And I was thinking, well, youdon't really, you just start by
doing it.
So you have to be sort of verykind of unassuming about it to
(04:11):
begin with, just doing it.
So you have to just say, well,the blog is mine, I'm going to
write it for me, I'm going tocurate my stuff so that you feel
like the sense of pride in itand think it's, it's mainly
yours, and then promote it toothers because you think you're
pleased with it.
And I do think this issomething that sometimes people
are weirdly kind of half-heartedabout it because they're so
(04:32):
sort of anxious about comingacross as over promoting.
Now, rightly or wrongly, I'venever had a problem with that.
So I feel like this is myhonest view.
I feel like if you've writtensomething about school, it's
inherently interesting to otherteachers and people will want to
know what you thought and youshould feel confident that it's
worth sharing your perspective,as long as you couch it in that
(04:54):
terms.
This is just what I think.
You know.
I'm not telling you to believeme, I'm not selling this to you.
I'm just saying this is what Ithink and people will find that
interesting.
But you do have to keep tellingpeople it's there.
This is the thing I findsometimes people are weird.
You have to let people knowlike so I.
I adopted this attitude rightfrom the beginning, and when I'm
tweeting links to my blog, I'mnot saying, hey guys, come and
(05:16):
look at me, aren't I great?
I'm saying I've got this thinghere.
It is, have a look, because ifI don't do that, you're not
going to know it's there.
So how else would anyone knowit's there unless you tell them?
So you have to sort of it'slike a sort of information
service, and I find other peoplewho tweet links to their blogs.
So I think, thank god, thankyou, because if I did, if you
hadn't, if I hadn't seen thattweet with that link, I'd never
(05:37):
know you'd written that.
So how else could I have?
You've helped me come acrossyour work, thank you, and I
really, I really see it in thatway.
I'm quite sincere about that,like I feel like I'm sharing
access to something and but yeah, I think you have to get over
that bit.
I know people find it painful,but, um, you just have to kind
of say, well, I think it's okayto read it, have a see what you
(05:58):
think and and keep going.
And then the last thing to saykeep doing it.
I feel like if people sort ofblog and then three months later
they do another one, it's a bithard to get a rhythm.
So all the bloggers I know thatI know off the top of my head
are people who write somethingevery month at least, and when
you look on their blog there's akind of catalogue of things
(06:18):
that they've produced over timeand you can say, oh wow, look at
all this stuff they've done.
There's a frequency to it.
So I'd say keep, keep it, keepit up, be very honest, keep down
to earth and keep writing bits,and people will find it
interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, I'm going to stay on that topic for a little
bit.
How do they decide what towrite about?
Because that's another questionto get asked a lot.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I think that's so interesting.
I think it's quite useful tohave a thing that you're known
for a bit if you want to buildan audience.
So over the years I've writtenabout curriculum, about
assessment, about teaching stuff.
You know various things and Ithink there are people I know of
who are the writers aboutreading, the people who I know,
who really get into somecognitive science stuff.
I know people who are historybloggers, people who write about
(07:02):
school leadership.
So I feel like you need to finda kind of groove that you think
you've got quite a lot to sayand then keep it quite tight to
something.
So you know, you don't have tosort of write a great state of
the nation address every timeyou write a blog.
You just go well, here's alittle thing I've observed and
then I make.
What I do is I make a list ofideas every couple of months.
(07:23):
I sort of think, well, I've gotsome ideas brewing, these are
things I might write about.
I make a list and then I think,yeah, I'll do that one.
And then when I write aspecific blog, I always think,
well, what are the main thingshere?
And I make a list within thatof the things to say and then I
start writing it.
So I always sort of plan what Iwant to say and I feel like
that's always worked for me.
(07:43):
But I think it's something youhave to feel like it's something
that's a challenge that thenneeds a solution.
But that's one type of blog.
So here's the thing I founddifficult.
Here's what I tried.
Other blogs I love are onesabout a lesson.
So here's a lesson I taught.
Here's the resources I used.
Here's some outcomes I had.
I'm not sure if this worked,but I tried this or it could be
(08:06):
a kind of honesty thing.
You know, like some peoplesaying, this is how it feels to
me at the moment in my careerwith my leadership role or, you
know, wanting to be a middleleader or, if you're a senior
leader, thinking these are someof the problems we're
experiencing in our school atthe moment and this is what some
of the things we're trying.
So you're sort of reporting tothe world what's going on and
trying to make it as useful aspossible.
So that those are my lots ofsuggestions.
(08:26):
I've asked, been asked this afew times.
One of the things I find I oftensay is try to make it useful
and interesting.
So useful means it's gotpractical suggestions for things
to do.
You know, at least in some ofyour posts.
Interesting is when there's abit of personality in there and
find a voice where you sort ofyou know, say what you think,
you know, just be kind ofopinionated.
I think that's okay to say Ireally hate that or I really
(08:49):
love this.
As long as people know you'reexpressing an opinion and not
sort of telling them how tothink.
I think people will find thatinteresting.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You don't have to be sort of super balanced the whole
time yeah, here's the otherthing, though when people are
opinionated, say what they think, they might get some hate.
How do you deal with hate,especially on twitter, and I
follow you, so I know what's up.
How do you, how do you handleit?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I feel like there's kind of people who critique you
what you say and don't agreewith you, and I I'm just
mentally scanning through someof the people who I think, yeah,
I know, that person doesn'tagree with me, but we get on
fine, you know?
Because they just say, yeah,tom, no, I'm not sure about that
, I think you're too this oryou're too that or whatever, and
they just tell you and they andthat's fine.
Then there are other people Ithink are just rude, like they
(09:31):
just, and sometimes it's the waythey do it, like sometimes they
sort of quote, tweet you andsay this is the most ridiculous
advice you'll ever hear, orsomething whoa, now, as soon as
someone does that to me, I justmute them completely.
I just never hear from themever again, because I just think
I'm not interested.
I'm not interested in sort ofpeople who are going to be rude,
so I just block them out, so Ikind of delete them from the
(09:54):
twitter world, so their livescarry on and I never hear from
them.
I'm happy about that.
So that's my perspective and Ijust think, if you want to
disagree with me, just justreply to me and say oh, tom, I'm
not sure what you're sayinghere.
I've never found that to be true, or you've oversimplified this,
or yeah, interesting, you saythat in my experience it's not
that, it's like this, and youknow there's a.
(10:15):
There's a.
There's a kind of adult way ofdisagreeing with people without
it being yeah, yeah, look atthis, isn't this rubbish?
Or people saying things likeI'm so disappointed in you, tom.
You know how dare you agreewith you, know, tom Bennett,
about behavior or something youthink, oh my gosh, I can have no
time for that either.
So I've learned to be a bit sortof selective about so.
(10:39):
I follow thousands of people.
I have lots of interactions allthe time, so I feel like I get
enough discussion in my worldwithout needing these sort of
people.
But if you're listening to thisand you're thinking I'd like to
write something and that putsyou off, I'd say no, honestly,
don't.
Most of the time, 95% of thetime, people are just really
kind.
People are so supportive andkind and egg each other on and
(11:01):
reshare your stuff and welcomepeople into the world of sharing
blogs and stuff.
So I really the kind ofnegativity is as much.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It is on the edge definitely what do you think of,
like the teacher influencerswho are all about just the
content and just trying to getpopular without any depth or any
real experience.
You know like they go from pgceto ect to influencer all in
(11:33):
five seconds.
How do you rationalize that?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
because I I see that a lot oh, I don't know, I don't
believe these people exist.
I think, to be honest, I mean Ifeel like a bit of an old man
saying this, but I thinksometimes you have to sort of
think well, why, why does itbother me?
And and I do I do sometimeshave a word for myself, because
my gut feeling sometimes is oh,come on, do some time, earn your
(11:58):
spurs a little bit, you know,respect your elders.
But then, but as soon as you'resaying that, you're sort of
thinking, listen to how old Isound, you know it.
And I think I I do have tofilter out that sometimes, I
think is it takes some courageto be so strong in your opinion
so soon.
But I don't know.
I'm so glad I didn't havetwitter when I was 30.
(12:19):
I think I'd have been anabsolute nightmare and actually
in my career I did take time.
So you know, I became a deputyhead only of a small school.
It was only had year seven, soit was out of one form entry, so
it's like a sort of learningjob and there's only 10 11
teachers.
So I was deputy head of a tinyschool and it grew each year
it's.
So that was a really greatlearning curve for me, but I
(12:40):
always, you know, I didn'tbecome a head teacher till I was
40 or something, so that seemsto be like a reasonably sort of
steady time scale and Icertainly was just a mainstay
and a full classes, fulltimetable for a long time before
I would have felt I was havingto say to other people, you know
.
So I do think there is a kindof thing of like cutting your
(13:07):
teeth, teaching a few examclasses, trade, do, committing
to it, and I feel like I didthat and it does.
I do know the thing aboutinfluences, though I feel like,
you know, there's a double-edgedthing, because I also think
it's important to amplifypeople's voices.
So I always feel like whensomeone is amplifying their
voice they've done a talk atresearch ed or they've written a
book, teacher books go for it.
You know, why shouldn't you?
You should feel like I've gotsomething to say and as a
(13:28):
teacher I want to share thatwith the world.
But I guess you have to beprepared for other people to say
you know there is a bit more toit, to this and so on.
So some of the books I see andso on, I feel like they sound
like someone who's only beenteaching for five years, but
fair enough.
I mean they, they want to puttheir voice out there, yeah, so
I feel like you need to be alittle bit sort of sympathetic.
It would be much worse, forexample, if you felt like you
(13:49):
had to wait 10 years beforeyou're allowed to say anything.
That would be even.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
That would be terrible it's not that you know
what, because I see it and I'mlike, are you serious?
Like if I dropped you in myschool in Haringey you wouldn't
even last a minute.
But but but it's not thatthey're young and they're trying
to become teacher influencers.
That bothers me.
It's when they come at it notfrom a I'm learning standpoint
(14:14):
and this is what I'm learning tothe I'm the expert and I'm like
, really, in five minutes, you,you're the expert.
That's the part that gets me.
But anyway, yeah, everyone hasa space.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I think that's true.
I feel, like you know I Iprobably fall into that trap
from time to time of being sortof communicating sort of false
certainty.
I'm sure I do, and there arethings where I feel quite
strongly about them, definitelylike, and I and I sort of feel
like sometimes in teaching weget a bit too woolly.
You know, we, we can sort of besaying, oh well, you know, this
works here and that works forme, and I'm someone who you hear
(14:48):
this phrase sometimes you knowsomething works and anything
works somewhere, and I justthink that's it.
Though I think there are somethings which are just really not
good ideas and if you do themand you think it works, you're
probably not, they probablydon't work.
It's just that you get awaywith it.
You don't it doesn't, you don'tnotice the damage it's doing
because your children probablydon't need it.
And there are some situationswhere you teach, where it
(15:10):
doesn't really matter what youdo too much, because the
children will will kind of beall right, because they're
supported by the world they'rein, and you might think that
activity is working, but itprobably isn't really.
It's just not harming.
So it's sort of not visiblyharming, and I've done that
myself.
I've done some sort ofridiculous sort of experiments,
if you like, which I feel like Ienjoyed them, but I wouldn't
(15:31):
claim they worked as a sort ofgeneral thing to advocate to
other people with more difficultsituations to work in.
So I feel like you have to becareful about saying I remember
I used to teach in the selectiveschool, which has had some very
high achieving students, and Idid some really interesting
things with them, but they usedto teach a lot of the lessons
with me and so on, and they gotamazing results.
(15:51):
Though we in our gcsc you knowthey, we got something like they
all got is that when they had astars, they all got a stars,
except one for something.
It was just crazy.
I mean that was and I bloggedabout it saying like we did
these amazing lessons and theydid really well.
But somebody I think it wasGreg Ashman, who some of you
will know he replied to mesaying that's like wearing lucky
socks on exam day Just becauseyou wore your lucky socks on the
(16:14):
exam and you did well doesn'tmean that you did well because
you were wearing the lucky socks.
And I was thinking, and I'vealways remembered that as a bit
of a kind of burst my bubble abit, thinking no, he's right,
it's an effect is hard to proveand just because I did those
things doesn't mean those arethe reason why I got good
outcomes.
Necessarily, I'm sort of hopingthat's true, but I might not
know that, yeah.
So I think everyone definitelyneeds to be cautious about
(16:37):
over-asserting cause and effectin in the way what they're doing
, especially if you'resuggesting other people do it,
which is which is obviously adifferent thing altogether no,
you're so right, especially ifyou're prescribing it and you
know going.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
This is advice for this set of people and you're
going context everyone's contextespecially, you're saying
everybody now has to do it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That's even worse.
And you do come across that.
Don't you sort of start sayingI think this is a good idea.
Now, everybody in the school,you all have to do x?
You think, oh gosh, you've gotto be so careful about anything
where you make people do thesame thing because, uh, that
you've got to be very confident,that's a really good idea yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
How did you make the transition into writing books?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
well, I I, when I left teaching, I'd be a head
teacher for a whole host ofreasons.
I had some some time to startwith, because I wanted to build
up being a consultant and startworking in schools.
And I thought, well, suddenly,you know, freed from the
day-to-day, every day in school,high pressure I just thought
I'll write a book now because.
But then I thought I had allthis blog.
I had five years of bloggingbehind me by that point, so it
(17:39):
was almost like the book of theblogs and I pitched it.
I had this quite beautifulexchange with the publisher,
john Catt, who the publisher?
This is an amazing phenomenon,which is I emailed them one day
in February 2017, saying I'vegot this idea for a book based
on my blog.
It's called Learning Rainforest.
(18:00):
And then I sent the email.
And then I looked at my emailsand there was this email from
John Catt saying hey, tom, we'dreally like your blog, we think
it would be great if you wrote abook.
And I was going.
But I just emailed you and theyand they just emailed me
literally in like a tuesdaymorning, totally randomly, on
exactly the same moment.
He emailed me and I emailedthem.
(18:20):
It's like amazing.
So I was just saying I had todouble check and going this is
so bizarre, like I've literallyjust asked you and you've
literally just asked me, andthen we exchanged and like, yeah
, so that was a great thing, butthat happened because I had
already written quite a lot andthat's the thing.
The blogging was my kind ofpractice bed, you know sort of
what works, what's interesting,finding a way of doing it.
And then the LearningRainforest yeah, I wrote that
(18:41):
and that's now seven years ago.
The next one that I did quitewell was the Rosenshine
Principles in Action, and thatwas a fluky thing as well.
So I was I've got it in frontof me here.
I was doing a talk, a researchevent, so I was really
interested in rose and shine'sprinciples and I did a talk.
I said that here's, here's areally amazing document.
It's such a simple summary oflots of great ideas and I just
(19:03):
it was like a half hour talk andthe end of it this publisher
came up to me and said thatwould be really useful to
summarize what you just said ina sort of little pamphlet, like
a short book.
That how do you fancy writing ashort booklet, pamphlet almost
about the principles, to go tothat people could access with
them, and I said okay, so Itried it and then they decided
to publish it and that's wherethis book rose and shines
(19:24):
principle action came from.
They literally asked me to makeit as short as possible, so I
wrote the sort of shortest bookever written about teaching.
This we had to make, we had tostick the rose and shine
principles in it, to beef it up,so it was thick enough to sort
of stand up.
That was really amazing and Ithink because there was a kind
of time five years ago where alot of schools were finding this
set of ideas is so helpful, itkind of took off.
(19:46):
Yeah, so those, and then thewalkthrough was oliver kevigyodi
approached me.
He said this was a brilliantinsight.
He just said isn't it amazingjust how many brilliant ideas
there are out there in education?
There's so many aren't there andbut the problem is that we'll
lose them.
You know we'll.
We have to hold on to them.
So how do we?
Why don't we curate, like theideas that we know people are
talking about and and then makeit a visual guide?
(20:08):
Because that's obviously hishis thing, making things visual.
So we agreed to sort of try itand you know, the walkthroughs
took shape from there, the sortof step-by-step guides.
But that was again himsuggesting to me that to
collaborate.
So yeah, it's always.
Each of the books I've writtenhas had this sort of fluky sort
of start point which is you knowhow life goes sometimes and
what's your writing process like?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Like when you sit to put your I know the blogs help
because you said you had thatbacklog of work, but something
like Walkthroughs, which wasdone in collaboration with
somebody else.
What's your process like?
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah, well, the Walkthroughs is a particular
style of writing which suits mewell because it's short chunks.
So what we do is then we sortof scope out the whole book
first.
So we just say, okay, so we,you know, you sort of talk a
little about what's the wholetheme and who is it for and
who's going to read it, and thenyou think, okay, so what are
the main areas that we want tocover?
And that's.
We came up with six areascurriculum, explaining how do we
(21:06):
learn, a kind of why section,and so on.
So we came up with some broadideas and then we just made a
list okay, so let's go to thenext level.
What would we have in each ofthose sections?
Then you just break it down soyou end up with a sort of
skeleton of almost like thecontents page of your book.
And I always find that's reallyhelpful, because then you know
you can sort of sequence theorder and say we'll start here,
then we'll go there, and whenyou're writing one bit you know
(21:29):
you don't have to stray becausethe next bit will be done, so
you can always see what's coming.
And then when I'm in one of thewalkthroughs it's just because
it's kind of mechanical.
There's five steps.
So I always think, okay, so I'mgoing to think, I focus totally
on that idea and I just think,how would that work, what do you
need to think about?
And I've got to come up withfive things.
So I write down you do that andthat, then that, then that five
(21:50):
things, and I'm happy with thefive.
I go okay.
So let me describe each stepand it's very broken down like
that and it's quite quick in away, because you just.
But then when you writesomething a bit longer, a bit
more prose, like you know, you,I feel there's a different,
slightly different style, whichis to be a bit more opinionated,
a bit more talk.
So write a little bit how youtalk and have examples.
(22:11):
Sometimes everyone has adifferent style.
I know some other bloggers, forexample, who their blogs are
sort of like semi-academicpapers.
They sound like they could bein a journal.
I could never write that way.
I'm not.
I'm far too casual andcolloquial and I'd like to sort
of not I don't know avoid beingsounding too sort of academic.
But so you have to find yourstyle of a sort of way of
(22:32):
writing that you feel is yours.
But yeah, that's what I'm doingvery the recent book, for
example, I wrote my most recentone is about leaders that I've
encountered and what they, whatI think their characteristics
are.
So I was thinking I meet allthese amazing people.
They're so buzzy and everyone'sgot this energy and but they
really know their stuff and Iwas thinking, let me write this.
I just thought one of the threefeatures of them and I wrote
down headings and described theheadings and then it kind of
(22:53):
writes itself in that way.
You just you have to be clearwhat it is you want to say in
advance and then deliver thewriting afterwards.
Other people I've met say theyjust sort of feel their way
through the whole piece and I'venever done that.
I've never felt that thatworked for me.
You end up writing way too muchwaffle and then editing it.
I'm terrible at editing.
So, yeah, people who, if youtalk to someone like peps mccray
he's like a he writes like 200000 words and then pairs it down
(23:18):
and pairs it down and pairs itdown until it's just exactly the
words he needs.
So he starts huge and then goes, shrinks it down to the bare
minimum and that's an amazingprocess, but it's totally
opposite to me.
Mine is start with the skeletonand fit it out, and then that's
it.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
So it's very lean right from the beginning yeah,
I'm like a bit of both, but Ithink I really I enjoy the
editing process.
So I do write and write andwrite, and then I go back and I
challenge myself how much can Iget rid of?
And I just try to chop, and Ichop, and chop and chop until I
get right to the heart of what Iwant to say.
But if you know, the issue isthat a lot of the writing that's
(23:59):
going on now in education seemsto be pitched at more the
classroom level and very few arebeing written, in my estimation
, at school leaders.
Who are you reading now thatyou think would be interesting
for people who are maybeaspiring for school leadership
(24:19):
or currently in schoolleadership?
Who do you find interesting now?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
oh, wow, that's.
That's depends, I think itdepends slightly what aspect of
school leadership that you'reinterested in, and I can turn
around to my shelf here and seebooks.
So there's things to do with,say, there's a great head
teacher called Matthew Evans,for example.
Matthew Evans, who's right,writes brilliantly about the
whole big challenge of running aschool and the complexity of
(24:45):
some of the challenges.
His blogs about leadership Ithink are excellent.
The challenges his blogs aboutleadership I think are excellent
.
And, more broadly, sort ofthink pieces, think pieces um,
someone like ben newmark,similarly you know, great sort
of challenging think piecesabout how how do we frame the
big challenges in education,about special needs or, you know
, teacher recruitment, so thatpeople like that I think are
very good at giving a broad viewof leadership that was a very
(25:09):
selfish question, my listeners,I do that because I want to know
who to read next and what tocheck out, and there's also a
culture.
So you know, lekha Sharma haswritten a fantastic recent book
about school culture.
It's brilliant.
It's a really clever sort ofdive into what culture means and
different strands.
(25:30):
So I mean Lekka sharma's bookon on school culture is is
really good, and so you knowthere are various people like
that.
I would say I recommend to readand there's a really really
good.
I mean some slightly morefocused books like leverage
leadership, for example, paulbanbrick santoyo, because in
there you've got all the stuffabout coaching, which is, you
know, feedback to teachers,which which is about the
(25:51):
classroom and sort of how youcreate a culture where teachers
are receptive to feedback, andso on.
So he's also excellent,brilliant.
I'll tell you what a book thathasn't come out yet well, it has
come out, but I haven'treceived my copy yet, so I'm
sort of waiting for it to comein is a book called Responsive
Coaching by Josh Goodridge.
He's been working on coachingin schools for 10 years.
(26:11):
He's one of the mostintelligent, thoughtful people
I've met in education and heruns StepLab, which some of you
have heard of.
But his book ResponsiveCoaching is probably.
A lot of people who've seen italready are really raving about
it.
So if you want it, I wouldreally recommend getting that.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
I'll see if I can find links to these that Tom's
mentioning and also Tom's bookto put in the notes.
Tom, you wrote recently aboutfeedback on your blog, so I
really want to dive into that,because it's such a hot topic
here on the international sceneand in your article you made
this really strong case aboutco-constructing feedback rather
(26:47):
than delivering it top down.
But tell me from yourexperience, right, what was that
turning point for you?
When did you begin to kind ofreally hone in on advocating
this approach?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
well, I I've been.
It's sort of been a journey.
I mean I used to do the wholeobservation, feedback and judge
lessons when I was ahead yearsago and even then I used to feel
like why do we do this?
You know what's?
It's so weird.
And I've been in sort ofmeetings with people going let's
triangulate our judgments andwe'd be saying I thought it was
good, but it was this and itfeels so, felt like we were
(27:20):
making it up like this feelslike we're making this up.
And you'd hear all these sortof you'd meet head teachers say,
oh, you just know a good lessonwhen it's good, and they had a
sort of badge of honor that Iknow, you know, and I think I
just think, but I feel like I'mguessing.
So what does everyone elsereally know?
Because it felt like it was sosubjective so I always had my
doubts about it.
And then I feel like gettingrid of graded judgments is the
(27:40):
first thing.
Now it's just about judgments.
But even then I used to findthat I would have this workload
thing of watching a lesson andthen feeling I had to write it
up because that was what you'resupposed to do, and then I'd be
typing into the night thinkingwhat was that lesson and what do
I say?
And then right fit in thisbeautiful pro forma and I, and
then I'd look at it and I'd Iremember being in my office as a
head and looking in this filingcabinet, thinking what is this
(28:01):
for?
Like I wrote this here, it isin this filing cabinet that
teacher is still doing half ofthe things that that I thought
they to change.
And it's hard to get them tochange all of that because
they've got habits, and I justthought it was the side of it.
This just doesn't work.
It's sort of who's it for,who's it?
Who's benefiting?
More recently, I just work withschools all the time, really
frenzied.
(28:22):
I sit at the back of a lot oflessons, hundreds and hundreds
of lessons and more and more.
I just see how complex it is.
I just think this isn't easyand I've worked with lots of
schools now on helping them moveteaching forward and I've come
to the conclusion from my ownpractice, as well as reading
other things, that a thing whichreally does work is when the
teacher is driving it, when theythemselves are saying, yeah, I
(28:42):
need to do this, this is whatI'm going to do, I need to.
Instead of doing that, I'mgoing to do that.
I'm going to drop that stupidthing and do this much better
thing.
And they're really the energyin their own improvement.
So how do I get that teacher tofeel that I have to involve them
?
I have to ask them.
After I have to, I can suggestthings, but they have to own it.
And if they don't own it thisis what I've learned they don't
(29:03):
change, they just don't.
It's like a brick wall, anintelligent brick wall, because
an intelligent teacher is sayinglook, mate, don't come at me
with your intelligentsuggestions.
I'm fine, I've got my agenda, Iknow what I'm doing and I don't
need you to tell me stuff.
And I've come across thatresistance so often.
So what I found is this is tosort of say I've kind of, I've
had a look at what's happeningin your lesson.
(29:24):
Boy, you're working hard, isn'tit challenging?
Here's some things that I wasthinking about what, what do you
think about this and what doyou think about that and how do
you see it?
And they're telling me theirchallenge.
And then we agree, we sawproblems on, and say, yeah, so
that's interesting.
So what might work there then?
And we have a reference pointwith of common ideas, but always
leave with them saying so.
My parting thing is always so,what are you, what are you going
(29:45):
to do, what are you going tocommit to them of all those
things?
And they say this okay, okay,so, okay, so, that's great, so
focus on that and that's what we, that's what you're going to do
great.
But they're kind of nearlyalways the driver of that, and
then and then you find thatthey're they're working on it
because they feel like it'stheir agenda.
If I wrote all that down andemailed them, it wouldn't get
anywhere close to that, nowherenear.
(30:06):
So it would be a waste of mytime as well as annoying to them
.
So why would I do it?
I mean, have you ever hadfeedback from someone who just
emailed you or sent you a formand you just went?
Well, don't come to me withthat.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So you know sometimes I don't even read the thing.
If I'm honest, if I look backat my career and I'm thinking
sometimes I got the feedback, Iscanned it and I didn't really
read it properly.
But it takes a certain kind ofleader though, tom, because,
yeah, if you're coming in from apoint of I know you all things,
what is the importance then ofbeing humble, watching out for
(30:43):
your own biases as a leader,going in to make those
observations?
Speaker 3 (30:48):
well, I always think this is that's a really good
question.
I think you have to be veryaware of your biases, and so
what you do is you, you sort ofhypothesize.
You don't judge or makeabsolute assessments.
You ask questions.
So, and, for example, you can,you can coach someone or observe
someone where they're teachingsomething you have no idea.
I'm not.
So recently I was watching, say,a hockey lesson which I thought
(31:09):
was great.
I thought it looked good to mebecause there were some features
of it I thought I could lookfor.
I don't really know if it wasgood.
So I was with the head of PEwho was watching it with me, and
I said to him so I mean, I'vegot some views, but what was
your sense?
Was that strong practice?
Were you thinking that'sexcellent?
Or were you thinking, oh youknow, there's some things there
(31:33):
which that teacher could havebeen doing?
And I listened to what they hadto say and we kind of agreed
with most of it, because I wasactually pretty strong, and so
it was like questions.
I had some questions and thatcould be about other lessons.
So recently I was in a in aschool where I was watching some
teaching.
I was thinking I had somedoubts about it.
I was thinking this teacher'ssort of I'm not sure I won't say
too much about it, but they, Iasked, I said so what are the
outcomes like in this department?
Because does that teaching leadto strong outcomes?
Because we really need to know.
Because they said no, so I justthought okay.
(31:57):
So that's interesting, becauseI'm sort of triangulating
because I'm thinking theoutcomes aren't strong and
that's what I'm seeing.
So that makes that means thatmy hunch, that there's some
issues there is, is perhapsworth exploring.
And this is what I had to say.
But I was asking, I wasn'tassuming, because if I'd said to
me, well, no, to be honest, Iget great results, and I'd be
thinking, okay, so what doesthat mean then?
And it would make me thinkslightly differently about it.
(32:19):
So, anyway, I feel like you haveto be humble, so you focus on
what you can observe, and what Iobserve is things like really
functional things like when yousaid to the class turn to your
partner and talk about.
You know why the character youknow did this thing, or why the
water freezes in this scenario,whatever they've been asked, or
why the answer is 6.2.
(32:39):
You listen to the children infront of you and hear what they
have to say and you just listenin and it's like your reality
check.
You can then feed that back tothe teacher later and say do you
know what the children saidwhen you asked them that?
This is what they said.
And sometimes it's hilarious,sometimes it's like nothing to
do with what you asked,sometimes it's mind-blowing.
They're going wow, the insightof those children is amazing.
Like you asked that questionand the discussion they had was
(33:02):
amazing.
But often it isn't amazing.
Often it's really bad.
It's like they're just sort oftalking.
They think you think they'rehaving a discussion.
They really aren't.
One of them is talking sayingnonsense.
The other one's going yeah, yeah, yeah and then and then it's
over and you're thinking, heyguys, great, we had a good
discussion, but it wasn't greatthere.
It was quite poor.
So you're not you're notcritiquing the teacher or
(33:23):
anything.
You're saying kind of bloominghard is that you, you're setting
something up which has apotential to be great, but for
those kids it wasn't so, and Inoticed that.
So we talk about that and it'sa reality.
It's, it's a thing I'veobserved.
It's not a judgment, it's athing I've observed and I think
that's more and more how I focusit.
But of course, the teachermight be well aware of it.
And I think it's so importantto say and I'm not saying I'd
(33:44):
have sorted that out if I'd beenteaching the lesson like you
would you're doing all the work.
It's so easy to observe alesson.
You just walk in, you sit itdown.
It's kind of cushy.
You just watch the teachershaving to think about everything
.
So you have to be so, so awarethat just because I could notice
something doesn't mean I wouldhave done if I was teaching at
the same time.
So we have to sort of couch itas.
So that's an interestingchallenge, isn't it?
(34:06):
The challenge that we'veidentified in your lessons is
that some of the children don'tquite have the knowledge that
you might hope to run aconversation that's that
sophisticated without somesupport.
So what sorts of supports mightbe useful then?
You know, do you have them?
What else could you have done?
And we approach it with a sortof problem solving sort of
(34:27):
mindset.
I find that teachers reallyrespond to that yeah, because
they don't feel told off.
You know, it's kind of annoying, isn't it, to have someone walk
into your lesson and kind oflike say what you could have
done differently when thelessons already happened.
It's like, yeah, but I didn'tdo that, did I?
Like I can't go back in timeand do the thing you said.
I did the thing I did, and well, all I can do is think I want
to do next and so help me planthat.
And so you have to have ideasfor different things.
(34:47):
So all these things that leadme to feel like co-constructing
feedback is.
It's essential.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It's essential, it's how schools should be yeah, yeah
, you are so right, and I was.
You know, what I was thinkingabout as you were talking is how
do we rationalize the gapbetween the lesson that is being
observed because someone'sthere and the lesson that takes
place normally when no one'sthere?
How do we rationalize that gap?
(35:13):
Because what you're seeing isprobably not even what takes
place on a normal basis, and soyou going in with a judgment,
you're not really learninganything, nor is the teacher
learning anything, becauseyou're talking to them about
what you've observed and kind ofbringing in your judgments,
your opinion, and they're justthere with a defensive wall,
(35:34):
normally invisible maybe to youor visible depending on how
forthright that teacher is, andthen they're just wishing that
you would disappear and thenthere's no help there.
So I wanted to, before we kindof wrap up the podcast, I need
to help some leaders moveforward in that journey of just
going in and handing judgment.
How would we co-construct?
(35:57):
I know you gave some clues, butjust walk me through a scenario
.
How can a leader go in andco-construct that feedback with
the teacher post observation?
What does that conversationsound like?
Speaker 3 (36:10):
simulate one for me okay, well, the way I would
frame there's a couple of thingsto stage to start with.
So the first thing is I wouldset up a system.
Before I know if I'm going todo this with a teacher and I'd
say leaders should do this is wehave a process we know is going
to run for months.
So when I'm talking to ateacher or observing them, it's
one of many interim of suchinteractions.
It's hard to achieve this withjust a one-off thing.
(36:31):
So that's the first thing.
And what we talk about is timescales of the order of, say,
three or four weeks maximum,like two weeks even sometimes,
but just say that sort of scale.
So when I let's say I was alsocoaching you and I was saying
I'd observe you first and I'dsay here's some general things
and I'd ask you what sorts ofchallenges you felt were useful,
I'd ask you, what are youworking on in your department?
(36:52):
What's the thing your agenda'saround?
So I would focus my inputaround the thing you feel is a
challenge you have and I'd checkthat against my observation and
I would.
Usually I would say yeah,that's a good idea Because
observation and I would.
I usually I would say yeah,that's a good idea, because I
think that's definitelysomething to look at.
If I thought you were pickingsomething to focus on which I
thought, having observed you,was like not really even the
main thing, I might suggestsomething else.
(37:13):
I'd say that's interesting thatyou think that my perspective
was that maybe there's quite alot of mileage to work on this
and we discussed the goalsetting in the first place.
But then the first meetingwould just be okay.
So have a let's have a thinkabout this, try this thing.
Then let's, let's see how we go.
And I would then come in to thelesson about three weeks later
and say let's see how that'sgoing.
Then, are you doing the thingsyou say you're going to do?
And that's a really importantkind of lens.
(37:35):
It's a teacher effortfullytrying to use those questioning
techniques that they said theywere going to try.
And if, at least if you see ateacher making an effort, that
you're making a start, now theway I would do it, I mean I
would, I would use mywalkthroughs, materials which
have got steps, but I I'll makethis, this, rather more generic.
Yeah, I'd say, that's what theysaid they were going to do, are
they doing it?
And then I have this frame,which I borrowed from the paul
(37:56):
banbrick sansoyo work, which isyou use precise praise, probe
and then the problem and theaction step.
So precise praise.
I'm looking for specific thingsthe teacher's doing that are
good.
It could be a change I've madesince the last time I observed
them.
It could be an exampleinteraction with a couple of
students I thought was reallyinteresting.
So you're trying to do that,that modeling, and I was with a
(38:17):
student the way you model that.
They followed it perfectly andthey did that example exactly
right, just like you showed.
It was fantastic.
So you explained it reallyclearly.
They got it exactly straightaway, you nailed it and like
I've got an example of aspecific instance where the
thing they were working on works, or you know at least partially
work, so precise praise.
Then I'd say okay, so let'sprobe now let's let's talk about
(38:37):
the challenges, because there'salways challenges.
So we don't I don't givenegative feedback, I just say so
there's good stuff happening.
What are the challenges?
And I might say to them yougood stuff happening.
What are the challenges?
And I might say to them youknow what sorts of things are
you for?
We're finding hard there, orwas there any part of that
lesson where you thought, oh no,it didn't go as well as I would
have liked.
And I asked the teacher to tellme what they thought.
And I'm doing that for tworeasons.
One of them is because it istheir lesson, as they owned it.
(38:59):
But also I'm hearing the waythey express the problem and if
they, if they say the samethings I would have said, it
tells me, hey, this teacher'sgot great self-awareness and
self-judgment and I, I canreally work with that.
If they don't see it tells mesomething else.
If a teacher says, well, Ithought it was great, no, I
didn't see any problems, or Iworked, I thought it was just
fine, and I'm thinking, oh no,well, and then I start throwing
(39:20):
in my reality check and I startsaying, okay, it's interesting,
because what I noticed was acouple of things, and do you
mind if I share that?
What actually I observed wasthis happening.
So you know, that's aninteresting challenge, isn't it?
That from your perspective, itwas all fine, which is fine,
which is, you know, no problemwith that, but what actually
happened over here was somethingelse.
So it's just really importantto be aware of.
So let's talk about that.
So we, we throw in the channel.
(39:41):
We're quite honest about thosethings.
I just but I'm usinginformation that I have had, so
I'm not using a judgmentallanguage.
It was good, bad it was.
That seemed to be effective forthese reasons, and here's some
challenges I observed.
And then we, we then turn aroundand say so, so what might you
do next time, then?
Or work on over the next threeweeks to really work on that?
And again, I'll invite theteacher to share that with me
(40:01):
and I'll say, okay, that'sinteresting, and we rehearse it
a bit.
So that would mean, instead ofdoing this, you'll do that.
So when you do the think pairshare, you're going to get
everyone to think for themselves, and then literally half the
class shares their thoughts withtheir neighbor and then they
take turns and the other halfshares that.
So it's like, really quitedeliberate, is that what you
mean?
Yeah, okay, so let's just runit through for me.
What are you going to do?
(40:21):
I'll hear the teacher then tellme.
I say, okay, have a go at thata few times.
Then I plan when I'm coming tosee them next and I tell them so
they know they're working onthat for the next couple of
weeks and so the time I comeback in next, that I've
practiced because they don'twant to just suddenly me turn up
and not do it.
So it's a.
It's a planned process.
It's very explicit.
None of that is like I thoughtyou were good or bad or anything
(40:42):
.
It's.
This is what I thought.
These are some instances whichare working.
Here's some challenges.
What's the solution and whenare you going to act it?
Without this being a super longanswer, if, when I return, say
the second or third time, andthe teacher's still doing all
the things we talked about rightat the start, I'll start having
a different conversation andsay, yeah, I still notice that's
still happening, though, isn'tit?
So why do you think that is?
Is it?
Is it?
Are you finding it hard to dothis, or is it something
(41:05):
blocking what's happening?
And how do you feel about it?
And they'll sometimes also say,well, I just didn't get around
to it and we just say, okay,well, let's talk about that.
You know, do you?
Is it something you reallythink you should do, or are you
(41:31):
resisting it, working on and we?
You kind of have to be open withpeople and talking that way,
because if you don't allow themto be honest with you and say I
don't agree with it.
I find it awkward, I've justfelt too busy and all those sort
of things.
They can't be honest about that.
They're gonna feel that wayanyway, so you might as well
hear it.
So that's that's how it works.
And then you agree a kind ofconstant set of actions, but
they you can be quite demandingof people in that process.
You can say, well, great, ready, go for it.
Now let's see if that works,really commit to it, really do
that, you know, go for it, andyou encourage them and you can
(41:52):
kind of create a kind ofmotivational drive there.
Anyway, hopefully that cancapture some of that no, it does
.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
It does you know.
You know what I I kept thinkingof in that is that maybe, maybe
some of the leaders listeningwill think there isn't room
there to correct where peopleare going wrong, because you're
co-constructing.
It sounds softer than whatpeople are used to.
A lot of people are used togoing in and just laying down
(42:18):
the law.
As they see it, you've donethis wrong, you've done this
wrong and you should fix thisimmediately.
Yada, yada, in thisco-construction process.
It might sound as if thereisn't space for difficult
conversations within that, but Ithink there is, and I think if
people can come to thatself-realization and want to
(42:39):
improve or they might come tothe realization that they don't
want to improve they want tomove on as well.
You know, there is a lot thatcan come out of that process.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
I think that's true.
I mean, and also I think it'sone thing you have to.
One of the reasons for theco-construction is that and this
is like an evidence thing fromstudies of teachers is that,
just like any child-teacherfeedback relationship, adults
are the same.
So I might see a teacherteaching a certain way and in
sort of similar to someone elseand think, oh well, I'll give
them similar feedback.
(43:11):
But actually no, that teacheris going to respond better if I,
if I just sort of really quitedirect with them and say,
michael, you know that withthose things pair shares, you
know, I've noticed that you justsay, okay, guys, have a chat on
your tables.
And it really doesn't work,because have a chat on your
tables to that those kids you'llteach you just means it doesn't
mean enough to them, they don'twant to, and I've seen it
(43:32):
several times now.
So I think we really need towork on the structure, like
you've got to say.
You've got to give them aquestion with a structure, which
is they come up with threeideas, think of your own and
share them and ask them whatthey agreed.
And it has to be structuredbecause otherwise they're just
recycling ignorance, they're nottalking, they're not helping.
You're not helping them enough.
I could.
I could say to a teacher you, Ireally think you need to do
(43:53):
that because it's not working.
Another teacher if I said thatto them, they just say get out
of my room.
Who are you walking in here andtelling me that?
And you have to know thatteacher.
Another teacher I'd be saying,yeah, I love what you're doing.
I mean it's brilliant.
You're like, it's such anenergy and you're so charismatic
.
The children really love it.
Do you think that discussionformat is working?
(44:14):
What do you think?
I mean, have you ever noticedsome of the things they say?
And I might just be totallysort of around the houses about
it, because the teacher isn'tready for me to just tell them,
kind of, I really think you knowthey're not ready for that and
you have to sort of beintelligent about that.
I mean, different people reactdifferently to that kind of
directive.
So if you can support a teacherto say, yeah, maybe that's a bit
(44:36):
sloppy, isn't it?
Maybe, perhaps I should askthem to be.
Maybe I'll try thatthink-pair-share thing that you
keep banging on about.
I go well, you try that thinkpair share thing that you keep
banging, banging on like okay,well, you know, why don't you
give it a go?
You know, give it a go.
I know it's like you know you'dget some nice responses from
some of the students, but Ireally reckon if you tried that
you might find it works reallywell.
So how about that?
And I'm much more sort oftentative, another teacher I'm
(44:58):
100 saying I really need you todo this because this is not
working.
And you know, I mean I thinkthat's the joy of the work,
because teachers are human andyou have to work with the people
you've got.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
You know yeah, you're right, and and it comes down to
relationships like, if you knowthe people you're working with,
you'll know how to work thatco-construction feedback meeting
.
Yeah, this is brilliant.
Thank you so much, tom, well,thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I've.
I love talking about this stuff.
I could talk about it all day,so thank you for inviting me oh,
you're most welcome.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
I want to ask you one last question, though, as
someone who's really, reallyimmersed in the education space
what are you excited about?
What are you excited about ineducation right now?
Speaker 3 (45:40):
oh, wow, that's a really good question.
I'm excited about a kind ofmature maturation is that the
right word of the idea of a kindof knowledge rich curriculum
and things like coaching havinga sort of second wave where
they're a little bit more subtleand balanced with kind of more
organic approaches.
So we've been through thisperiod of knowledge rich
(46:01):
curriculum being sort of likedefine everything, be precise
about everything, and now Ithink people have got used to
some of these routines.
We can start being a bit moreexpansive in our view of that,
and I work with schools where Ifeel like that's where they're
at and it's the same with, say,coaching.
You need a structure, you need asystem, you need it to work
technically in a school or elseit doesn't.
But once you've got the system,I just think it's brilliant to
(46:23):
get into the exactly theconversation we've just been
having about the way youinteract with a teacher to
support them to improve.
But I I've been to a lot ofschools where they they talk
about that conversation beingthe ideal, but they haven't set
up the opportunity for it tohappen in the structures.
So I feel like there's a lot ofreally good intelligent work
around coaching.
I'm really excited that moreand more schools are dropping
all the sort of formalobservations all the time.
(46:46):
Like they're dropping them.
It's the direction of travel istowards regular cycles of
developmental feedback and so on, and we're changing the culture
in schools all the time andthat to me is very exciting and
fewer and fewer leaders feelthey need to do the top-down
judgment stuff.
So I do think that's good andI'm really excited about that.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Brilliant.
Thank you.
Where can people reach you, Tom?
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Well, I'm always on Twitter, teacherhead at
teacherhead, my blog isteacherheadcom, and I'm also
increasingly going to useLinkedIn just as myself, I think
and obviously the walkthroughs.
So walkthroughs is the wholewebsite.
We just, literally this weekend, released a book Learning
Walkthroughs that's just comeout so it just came out last
Friday and it's written forparents and for children, so
(47:32):
we're really pleased about that.
So, walkthroughscouk you canaccess stuff there.
So all these different thingshopefully will interest
different people.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Thank you for being on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Thank you for inviting me.
It's been really great.
Thank you for listening to.
It's been really great.
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