Imagine teaching and learning on the Costa Blanca, Spain?
In February 2020, I was invited to work with El Limonar International Schools, near Alicante in Spain, to be part of their teaching and learning professional development conference.
What I learned about teaching and learning in Spain?
ELIS is a small, yet wonderful group of schools on the East coast of Spain, on a journey to develop and refine their work with written feedback, research and cognitive science in the classroom. After months of planning, ELIS had recently worked on a written feedback research project with UCL and was keen to align this research with my own on verbal feedback with UCL, including my research and insights into teacher workload and wellbeing to help teachers meet the needs of pupils in their community. The challenge as ever working overseas is to present ideas in a bi-lingual format. I take no credit here. ELIS worked really hard to get my content translated so that all teachers on the day could access the materials. I also know I could have worked harder to truly model cognitive overload, dual coding and make ideas more accessible for those with English as an additional language.
Tackling teacher workload, research and cognitive science…
Our first session of the day provided me with the opportunity to share my latest observation-insights with ~50 middle leaders, supporting them to become better at observing teachers to help move them forwards toward a position of reliability and development, rather than bias and fear – which I know slights hundreds of thousands of teachers across the world. In my second session, I worked with all staff to share the headlines from my travels to schools around the UK, plus the methodology behind the verbal feedback project, offering key concepts and time to practise one or two of the core ideas. You will see from my workload survey below, marking is a workload burden for teachers in this part of the world. I find this issue in every school setting…
Teacher wellbeing: Do less, not more
In my final session, I shared the headline concepts from Mark Plan Teach, offering all teaching staff one or two critical ideas to reduce the workload burden and in return, improve teacher effectiveness and impact on pupils. My mantra has always been: Do less, not more, and in return, you can do the smaller things better. As a result, teachers can become more immersed in their teaching practice with cognitive science, behaviour management, the psychology of teaching and more. What we tend to find from this is, that all of our teachers are reminded of the basics once again, and empowered to strip back much of the bad habits we can all pick up throughout our careers in the classroom. There is nothing wrong with doing the same things, just do them better!
Treating work-related psychological difficulties…
I was lucky enough to stay on after my session to hear clinical psychologist, Dr. Bill Mitchell share his insights from working with people (working in high-stakes professions) who work with him when they are starting to find work and life overwhelming. Bill discussed some of the reoccurring issues in terms of managing our wellbeing, asking everyone attending to reconsider their ‘good zones’ and ‘red flags’. You can watch this short video of my experiences…
The school said…
By the time we had reached the end of the day, the school had already published a website newsletter to parents and prospective teachers: “The teaching staff were fortunate to attend talks from Ross McGill, undoubtedly one of the most influential teaching gurus in the world, who led different sessions on… feedback [to] reduce workload; [the] validity of feedback practices and ‘Just Great Teaching.”
If teachers were asked to give advice to another teacher struggling with their workload and mental health, why do we find it so difficult to take our own advice? Teaching and learning in Spain may offer you a fresh start in the Costa Blanca sunshine…
Thank you to ELIS schools – I’ll be watching your journey – a location for British teachers to consider working…