How do you share best practice with colleagues beyond your school gates?
Today, we hosted an event for external colleagues to visit our school and talk about teaching and learning.
Rationale:
As a result of my blog and various social media projects, I am often asked by several colleagues to visit Quintin Kynaston. After a conversation with @FosullivanO in the autumn term, we thought it would be beneficial to organise a public and informal event, to gather 10-30 teachers together and share best practice.
Today’s event was focused solely on teaching and learning and was aimed at teachers involved in the strategic direction of teaching and learning in their school. Later in the year, we hope to extend this out to classroom teachers working within the schools we have already connected with, designed to bring ideas together in a relaxing and inspiring school environment. To share best practice.
The event was organised in our own time and offered for free. The only cost involved, was for colleagues to have permission to be out of their own school during the day.
Programme:
The informal programme looked like this;
- Arrival; tea/coffee.
- Introductions; our journey so far …
- Tour of the school by students.
- Lunch and networking.
- Mark-Plan-Teach; our Learning policy.
- BIG questions
- Networking; end …
BIG Questions:
In the afternoon session, we moved over to discuss common-challenges. I posed a series of BIG questions. The conversations and suggestions were refreshing! No matter where we work, what sector or stage, we are all sharing and working with the same challenges.
Here were the 4 questions I posed to the group:
- If grading lesson observations are unreliable … why continue grade lesson observations?
- If outcomes require improvement, then teaching and learning cannot be better. What significance does grading (or not grading) lesson observations, actually have on the outcome of an inspection?
- Mark less! Stop ticking; peer-assessment and so on … how are you reducing burden of marking for teachers?
- Workload; recruitment; retention … how are you improving the well-being of your staff?
Presentation:
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You can download the full presentation here.
Come along next time?
If you would like to visit and share best practice with us, click the ticketing link here and see if you can join us in the summer term …
*this is copyright of Quintin Kynaston.
TT.
