COMMUNICATION

Google ‘teacher presence’ and you are welcomed by a sea of abstract and nebulous terms: ‘that special something,’ ‘the wow factor,’ ‘a certain vibe,’ ‘a personality that exudes confidence,’ ‘that special je ne sais quoi,’....

If a child becomes demotivated with their learning, it can become difficult for both teachers and parents to identify the cause. Children often behave differently at home than they do at school, and unfortunately this is not always understood by parents if there isn’t an easy way to see the progression trends themselves. Engaging parents with their child’s education is therefore crucial, so that they can work with teachers together to support child development. Although most will agree with this, there are a number of challenges and disagreements on how the process should be managed.

We are all different; whatever you are thinking will not be the same as others. In an academic environment where teachers work as a team, not as individuals, there needs to be consistent mindfulness and consideration to others. We will all have those bad days. Your day or mood does not belong to anybody else. We are here to serve young people. Professionalism is imperative in setting high and positive standards. In this article, I will share three examples of how this can be developed.

Teachers and pupils alike are set to be inspired by the Olympic and Paralympic Values with the launch of the Values Awards from Get Set, the official youth engagement programme of the British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association. This initiative is building on the success of Get Set for Community Action, which empowered more than 18,000 young people to make real changes within their community Students aged between seven and 19 have until 2nd February 2018 to enter.

I’m starting 2017/18 after my first year as principal at a school in challenging circumstances, which has been in and out of special measures for several Ofsted cycles. We all know what a school like this looks like on paper, but I hadn’t considered the damage that this does to the core fabric of a school. The climate at Queen Elizabeth's Academy was broken and needed urgent attention.

1. Communication: It is important to keep those involved in the loop. Not everyone needs to be involved every time, but it is important to ensure that those who need the information have something which is current and accessible. The person who raised the initial concern may not need to see actions and future communications, but they should receive closure of some kind. Perhaps a simple email or note, with ‘Thank you for raising this concern, it has been passed on to the safeguarding team and they will be in touch if any further information is required.’

I must be feeling my age to start with the cliché that “when I was a kid…”, but the modern environment for millennials has vastly evolved from a simpler time of the internet in its infancy, mobile phones the size of bricks (which appear to be back in fashion) topped with an antennae and when buying music was a ritual of sourcing enough change to walk into a store and physically buy a CD with all its glory. Notwithstanding the nostalgia, this period of time still came cloaked with issues of self-esteem, concerns over image, bullying in all its forms, and anxiety to achieve well in school threading all ages together.

It’s widely agreed that a collaborative approach to education improves the learning experience. It empowers pupils to take control of their studies and gives teachers better insight into student performance and progress.

School Spider have always provided high-quality websites designed specifically for Primary schools. The free-to-download app for parents, which accompanies their sites, is now 12 months old. This resource allows schools to communicate with all their parents through a single staff login on the school website.

Last year was generally considered a rotten year. Great Britain lost some of it's best-loved cultural icons. Society was politically divided… and Toblerone changed shape. For schools, September brought particularly challenging news: new regulations for school websites, and Ofsted updated their guidance to Inspectors.

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