Beyond Good

Matt and Femi talk to Peter Lee about how he has managed to found and maintain a school which not only achieves outstanding results, but also has not had any supply bought in for over 8 years!  Among many other things they discuss workload, behaviour, timetabling and lesson structures.

Femi shares his reflections and lessons learnt with Matt on the last 6 months of doing regular coaching - several times per week.

Prompted by Pritesh's tweet regarding the number of observations completed and feedback given in the autumn term, Femi and Matt discuss attitudes and culture around drop-ins.

Femi and Matt wrestle with the concept of students who refuse instructions and what schools can do about it.

Femi and Matt's discussion is prompted by an article of the same name: https://thinkingflexibly.com/2024/10/18/the-lost-art-of-planning/ They discuss the pros and cons of planning lessons, designing lesson sequences and preparing resources from scratch vs having off-the-shelf schemes of work, resources and teaching powerpoints.

Matt and Femi discuss explicit teaching (direct instruction), questioning, AfL and much more!

Matt and Femi talk to Katharine Birbalsingh, founding member and head teacher of the Michaela Community School in Wembley Park.

Following on from their video analysis of his lesson, Matt and Femi talk to Barry Smith about some of his principles for classroom teaching.  Starting from a lense of MFL teaching, we extract the general pedagogical principles that Barry believes lead to exceptional outcomes in the classroom.

Matt and Femi chat to metacognition enthusiast Nathan Burns about metacognition, knowledge, knowledge organisers and much much more. Check out Nathan's resources on his website: https://www.mrmetacognition.com/

Femi and Matt discuss the enactment gap - teasing apart what it is exactly, diagnosing solutions to the problem and then get into the pragmatism of supporting teachers to improve elements of their practice - trying to figure out when and how to intervene if a colleague is struggling with students during unstructured time.

Femi tells Matt about his recent visit to another high performing school - this time Q3 Academy Langley in the West Midlands. This brings up the topics of participation and thinking ratio - leading to a spirited discussion about 'pair talk', 'everybody writes' and other approaches to increasing thinking and participation.

Femi talks to Matt about how he is now thinking about PD - from individual all the way to whole-school.

Matt and Femi discuss duties, handling pupils, being authentic, leadership, supporting colleagues and much more!

See the video podcast on youtube. Video Lesson Analysis: Barry Smith Teaching French https://youtu.be/qs0S4sYvBZ0?feature=shared Barry's Full French Lesson https://youtu.be/WtO1YWhwAGE?feature=shared Doug Lemov's Field Notes https://teachlikeachampion.org/tag/barry-smith/

Matt and Femi talk to Miriam Hussain about whole-school systems for behaviour, for teaching and learning, about SLT, the vision of the head teacher and much more!

Matt and Femi reflect on leading departments, the evolving process of implementing coaching and department meetings as colleagues' needs change over time, and turn their thoughts forward to leading culture change, teaching and learning and implementing coaching whole school.

Matt and Femi are joined by Josh Goodrich, author of 'Responsive Coaching', former teacher and senior leader and CEO of steplab. Responsive Coaching  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Responsive-Coaching-Evidence-informed-instructional-coaching/dp/1036003213 Steplab www.steplab.co

Matt and Femi speak to former student Lily about school and learning from the other side of the desk.  Their discussion ranges from the impact that a great teacher can have on a student's choices and life, through to accounting for students who are struggling with pastoral issues and even to the teacher recruitment crisis and questions of how to get intelligent people like Lily into the profe...

In this episode Matt and Femi discuss various means and considerations around checking for understanding.

Femi and I have been visiting a lot of schools over the last few months - some are incredible and get some of the best results in the country and others are not so good!  In this episode we share things we've each seen that we thought were effective, and things that we noticed that were not.

Matt Burnage is one of the founding senior leaders of Ark Soane Academy, History teacher, and assistant principal leading on curriculum and assessment.  In this episode we do a deep dive into the subject of booklets - what they are, how they encapsulate the curriculum, impact on learning, the ways they are used in lessons, implications for whole school routines, how they are made and developed, im...

Matt debriefs Femi on his visit to The Michaela Community School.  They discuss teaching and learning, students, staff, family lunch and yard time, curriculum, routines, culture and much more.

Join Matt and Femi for the second part of their interview with Barry, as they talk about his leadership style, teaching, developing teachers, SLT and much much more. Barry Smith was a founding Deputy of Michaela School, Wembley.  The kids’ amazing French and his unique approach to MFL teaching created huge buzz at Michaela.  He went on to become head of Great Yarmouth Charter School - the tenth he...

Join Matt and Femi as they talk to Barry Smith about his experience of taking over and turning around a failing school. Barry Smith was a founding Deputy of Michaela School, Wembley.  The kids’ amazing French and his unique approach to MFL teaching created huge buzz at Michaela.  He went on to become head of Great Yarmouth Charter School - the tenth head in 10 years, at a school that was rated ina...

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss what they've learnt and are discovering about coaching: how powerful it is, and how it's harder to do really well than it looks! In particular they dive into the ideas of sequencing/structuring teacher development, giving the coachee the opportunity to own and unpack what they've done well, and the importance of rehearsal, amongst other things....