Show and Share

If I want to cheer myself up I go and watch some good teaching.
 
It’s a one of the perks of the job and I have the whole curriculum to choose from.
 
Not that teaching is easy. I still say that the hardest job anybody does in   school is teaching a good lesson. And if you’re not a teacher just imagine what it’s like to plan, prepare and deliver 22 one hour lessons a week. And here’s another thing, the next time you feel annoyed by a gang of teenagers on the bus, Metro or in the shopping centre, just spare a thought for the people who have to teach them iambic pentameter and quadratic equations.
 
And in teaching you can’t spread out the  hard work like you can in some jobs.
 
I know this because  for a few years I wasn’t a teacher. I was a local authority inspector . Now, before you get offended, I am not slagging off the great work done in other occupations. For reasons that I’ve forgotten, I chose to become an adviser for a local education authority and   I just couldn’t deal with the transition from  classroom to  office. So the fault was all mine. Even though working for the town hall  was a fascinatingly varied job, the teacher guilt was awful. I’d find myself sitting at my desk on a Monday afternoon, waiting for the rattle of the tea trolley, thinking (and I know that this is irrational), I should be teaching poetry to 9Z right now – that’s real work not like this pen pushing.
 
Anyway, it got the better of me in the end and I went back into a school  (I even took a drop in salary and, yes, my wife is a saint) because I missed the buzz of of learning.
 
And that special sense of community and teamwork you can get in a really good school.
 
Anyway, I’m leading up to telling you about Show and Share Week which has just ended. One of my ambitions has always been to work in  a school where it’s cool for the staff to talk about teaching and there’s a spirit of sharing good ideas, rather than a lot of cynical hot air like you get in some staff rooms.
 
I know I’m biased but I like to say that we’ve got that at Moorside.
 
One reason why I think that is because Rachel Harding suggested we have a Show and Share Week. She said that Moorside people do come to watch lessons but it’s always to judge them. Why can’t we have a system where you can visit a lesson to learn from someone else’s good practice?
 
Well, I thought that this was inspirational.
 
So we ear marked last week on the calendar as Show and Share Week and then brought out a prospectus of outstanding practice. We did this by asking subjects leaders to identify major strengths in their departments as well as  teachers and lessons where these would be on show. We then published the prospectus to staff who   chose lessons they’d like to visit.
 
(By the way,  I don’t know of any other school that does this and I’d love to hear from you if you do.)
 
And it did get  a bit competitive. I offered an Enrichment Drama lesson and only one punter signed up. Yet superstars like Mike Davis and Barry Marshall sold out immediately with tickets fetching a fortune on E-Bay. What have they got that I haven’t got?
 
Anyway, if you observed a lesson you had to fill in a form saying what you learnt and asking for advice from the observed teacher  – all on a neat user  friendly proforma  designed by our resident genius, Gem Horth.
 
We haven’t evaluated it properly yet, but very nearly all subjects offered access to lessons and 27 staff gave up their non-contact time to observe. So far the feedback has been good, but we’ll find out for certain in a meeting after school on Wednesday.
 
And whatever happens, I think we can say that Mary Hannon was right when she said that the concept of Show and Share Week showed the rich professional culture we have at Moorside.