Practical Teaching
LatestThe Purpose of Keeping a Blog: Reflections on 15 Years of Blogging
As someone who has curated blog for over fifteen years, without a shred of advertising to keep it going, I have reflected on the purpose of keeping my blog and why I continue to write. I wanted to share my thoughts on the...
Conceptual Teaching
LatestLimitations in Education
For a fair while I have not typed a message on blog. I barely read blogs myself, consuming mostly...
- How to Plan and Mark
- How to Teach Writing
- How to Teach Literature
- How to Teach Debate
Planning a lesson for interview – revealing a philosophy of teaching and learning
These past few years I have both seen and delivered a number of interview lessons. I believe these lessons reflect the philosophy of the observer as much as they do the capability of the teacher. The stakes for an interview lesson are high: will you be given a job? Or as an observer, can you judge that that teacher's wider operation? These outcomes are pragmatically important but also reflect more profound approaches to the profession. So with this tension in mind, here are some of the ways I think about interview lessons:
Focusing on Writing Composition for MA: why is this under-related to what the profession does?
The past few days I have been reading about writing composition with some interest as a synthesis...
Guiding a literary commentary with a thematic or conceptual focus
My classroom has a strong presentation element with students seeing and responding to the...
Our Focus for the Advanced Debaters This Year
Our club now boasts about twenty advanced debaters. That is, debaters who are at least 16 and...