Does your school encourage teachers to take risks? Are you allowed to ‘go with the flow?’

This is a blog about teaching and learning; encouraging teachers to take risks in all classrooms, so that we are all focused on the learning rather than on the activity; to have the strength and capacity in our schools to be able to allow teaching to go with the flow, rather than from a script.

Recently I asked, ‘Are You A Resilient Teacher?‘ which asked teachers to step out of their comfort zone. Last week, I wrote about A Way Forward for Teaching and Learning and how we are looking to create a whole school approach for teaching and learning in the school where I work.

The current status of this policy is now in version five or six. I hope to be in a position where I have the structure of this policy in place, so that I can then take this forward for consultation in various forums. The learning policy will essentially revolve around three simple principles; Mark-Plan-Teach which is published here.

Flow:

Each of these three core elements will feed into a one page summary which will determine what we do in every classroom across the school. Underpinning this will be a philosophy, epitomised in this statement; “Go with the learning” to encourage  teachers to have the freedom to teach and veer off from lesson planning; re-teaching areas of knowledge and skills that may not have stuck with students. Having the encouragement from observers and senior teachers in schools, to enable teachers to teach without fear of tick-box templates, stringent lesson plans or choking schemes of work.

To have self-belief.

In our school, we want our teachers to ‘Go with the learning’: ensuring ‘flow’ in delivery of teaching and of learning, so that ‘flow’ enables great progress. This freedom is far more important than following a lesson plan. Teachers must ensure that learning has stuck, through checking student work that is incisive and systematic.

Unleashing Greatness in Teachers:

I’ve recently had our view affirmed by watching Unleashing Greatness in Teachers by @informed_edu (David Weston) at TEDxGrandRapids who says that the ingredients of great teaching consists of;

• being perceptive
• having a deep knowledge and understating of their subject
• possessing a high range of skill in their subject and in the art of teaching
• being joyful about what they do.

TED talk:

How do we develop great teaching? Well, you can start off by watching David Weston speaking by at TEDxGrandRapids in the video below;

TT.