The great theatre director, Peter Brook, wrote that: I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. This is the art of theatre pared … More The Empty Classroom
“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” GK Chesterton We need to summon up the spirit of, the albeit fictional, Ned Ludd and Captain Swing. We need to smash up the 21st century equivalents of the threshing machines and power looms! O Teachers! Click on this … More Teachers! A Call to Arms!
Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible; and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. Henry Higgins to Eliza Doolittle. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. It is also the language of … More Voices Joined, Not Silenced.
Crap means something of extremely poor quality. I think a school can be of extremely poor quality. That does not mean all the constituent parts of a school are of extremely poor quality, I worked in a school I would describe as being extremely poor but the drama department was the diamond in a crown of … More Is There Such a Thing as a Crap School?
It seems yesterday, October 13th was the ‘International Day for Failure‘. I mean, is this a hoax? A joke? I failed to notice, which, I suppose is apt. I did attend a Parents Evening and would not have celebrated if I’d heard tale upon tale of failure from the teachers, which would not be the … More Hashtag Fail
Checklists can be useful and they can be a curse… In a recent blogpost David Didau looks at how checklists can be useful and also about how there is life beyond them, here I want to question, in the context of lesson observations, whether they are useful at all. Checklists can be useful for routine yes/no answers, the … More The Madness of Lesson Observation Checklists
Picasso How many edu crimes are committed in the name of creativity or, for that matter in a negative reaction to the idea of creativity? For some it is a word that conjures up all that is wrong with a progressive classroom and for others it sums up all that is missing from a traditional one. … More Teaching to Enable Creativity
Trivium 21c 