With the warmer weather approaching - and the prospect of enjoying the great outdoors becoming more of a reality - schools need to be helping children prepare for the season ahead. Thankfully, Boots are once again bringing their Soltan Sun Ready Schools programme to UK classrooms - minimising workload and budget concerns, while maximising pupil health. This year, the leading pharmacy chain are even going so far as help fund school trips!

Is the answer to community reinvention sitting at a school desk? In the year that the UK has appointed the first ‘minister for loneliness’, it seems that perhaps we - as members of a community - need to take some responsibility for anyone struggling within our own locality. Let’s use retirement as an example: it is often seen as a time of happiness, ‘me time’, starting new hobbies, however many issues can hamper the enjoyment - poor health, lack of money, bereavement, distant families, inadequate support and, subsequently, loneliness.

The library should be the beating heart of your school, and the most valuable resource in it is - of course - the librarian! Sadly, however, sometimes children need more encouragement to come into the library. They may be reluctant or struggling readers, or reading may not be seen as ‘cool’ by their friends. Here are five steps to change this.

A few years ago, I began to use Twitter to develop my pedagogy. Looking back, I believe it was one of most significant decisions I have made as an educator. We should not feel confined in our classrooms or institutes. Once I started using Twitter, it proved to be a big game-changer.

I ask my friends “How are you feeling?” almost everyday. Not because I have to, but because I need to! Our lives are busy, complex and difficult, and to pass our friends by without a simple question would be unfriendly!

A typically time-pressed Secondary school teacher, Rob spends most evenings planning lessons, marking work, grappling with new specifications, deciphering mark schemes and pondering issues of behaviour management. In his third year of teaching English, he enjoys his work, but increasingly feels there’s just not enough hours in the day. Oh, and he’s just learnt he’ll be picking up a GCSE Drama class in September…

School leaders don’t come much more passionate than Leeds’ Chris Dyson. This Northern Powerhouse of a man - our words, not his - has been headteacher at Parklands Primary School for four years now. Chris is all about championing pupils and teachers, “selling the dream with a carrot, not a stick”.

It was just over a year ago that Innovate My School published an article about a school in Brighton that had brought in some goats to support their pastoral provision. That was us. Two weeks after Innovate My School made us famous, we were getting up at 4am for our first live TV appearance, on Good Morning Britain, after the TES ran a story on us which was picked up by the national media. Since then it's all gone a bit bonkers, and our hairy resources are now superstars in their own right.

In a recent assembly at Felsted School here in Essex, I spoke to pupils about the significance of ‘active good behaviour’. It felt like an idea that must have belonged to someone else, an initiative that I was borrowing from elsewhere, but something that was obvious and really important at the same time.

Former BESA chair of edtech Maria Brosnan is on a mission to boost teacher wellbeing. Here, she shares her inspiration, her concerns about one SLT role in particular, and her three-step method for wellbeing success.