Micro Interactions
Matt and Femi discuss those brief interactions with students that set the tone for the lesson, or help transform the way students think about themselves.
Apr 19, 2025•43 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Beyond Good
A podcast about teaching. We discuss teaching and learning, pedagogy, lessons and classroom practise, management and leadership, teaching of mathematics, training and trainees, mentors and mentoring, behaviour management, being a head of department and running a faculty, SLT and much much more!
Episodes
'Holding To Account' & 'Won't, Can't, Forgot'
Matt and Femi dive into the phrase that you so often hear amongst senior and middle management in schools: "Holding people to account".
Apr 05, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 31
Starting A School From Scratch - Michaela Khatib
Matt and Femi speak to the executive head teacher and founder of Cobham Free School, Michaela Khatib, about the remarkable journey to plan, start and grow a school from nothing to over a thousand pupils.
Mar 29, 2025•50 min•Season 3Ep. 30
Teacher Knowledge
Matt and Femi discuss the need for teachers to have a basic understanding of how learning happens, as well as barriers and solutions to the problem.
Mar 22, 2025•46 min•Season 3Ep. 29
Private vs State Schools
Matt and Femi discuss Femi's experience of working in both state and private schools, what the major differences are for teachers and what each can learn from the other.
Mar 15, 2025•40 min•Season 3Ep. 28
Accountability Culture AND Power of Video
This episode has 2 unrelated topics... In the first half of the episode Femi and Matt discuss what it means to have a culture where you can 'hold colleagues accountable' for the benefit of the whole team. In the second part of episode (starting at 20:30), Femi and Matt turn their attention to the Power of Video - particularly with regards to modelling and feedback for teachers.
Mar 08, 2025•47 min•Season 3Ep. 27
Improving is Hard!
Femi and Matt discuss why improving our teaching (or anything) can be so difficult, and how that influences their thinking around coaching and PD.
Mar 01, 2025•40 min•Season 3Ep. 26
My team are not doing what I asked!
Femi and Matt ponder the all too common phrase "people just aren't doing it"!
Feb 15, 2025•30 min•Season 3Ep. 26
Disagree then Commit
Femi and Matt discuss the concept of 'disagree then commit' in the context of working in a school team or SLT.
Feb 08, 2025•42 min•Season 3Ep. 25
Peter Lee - Headteacher at Q3 Academy Langley
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.
Feb 01, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 24
Reflections on 6 months of Coaching
Femi shares his reflections and lessons learnt with Matt on the last 6 months of doing regular coaching - several times per week.
Jan 25, 2025•46 min•Season 3Ep. 23
Drop-in Culture
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.
Jan 18, 2025•44 min•Season 3Ep. 22
Refusal
Femi and Matt wrestle with the concept of students who refuse instructions and what schools can do about it.
Jan 11, 2025•43 min•Season 3Ep. 21
The Lost Art of Planning
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.
Jan 04, 2025•50 min•Season 3Ep. 20
Front-loading Your Explanations
Matt and Femi discuss explicit teaching (direct instruction), questioning, AfL and much more!
Dec 28, 2024•37 min•Season 3Ep. 19
Katharine Birbalsingh
Matt and Femi talk to Katharine Birbalsingh, founding member and head teacher of the Michaela Community School in Wembley Park.
Nov 30, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Season 3Ep. 18
Barry Smith on Classroom Teaching
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.
Nov 23, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Metacognition with Nathan Burns
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/
Nov 16, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 16
The Enactment Gap & Developing Teachers
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.
Nov 09, 2024•40 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Q3 Academy Langley & Participation Ratio
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.
Nov 02, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Thinking about Professional Development
Femi talks to Matt about how he is now thinking about PD - from individual all the way to whole-school.
Oct 05, 2024•32 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Duties and Interactions with Students
Matt and Femi discuss duties, handling pupils, being authentic, leadership, supporting colleagues and much more!
Sep 28, 2024•36 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Lesson Analysis: Barry Smith Teaching French
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/
Sep 21, 2024•46 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Miriam Hussain on Behaviour and Whole-School Systems
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!
Sep 14, 2024•47 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Reflections and Plans
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.
Sep 07, 2024•46 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Responsive Coaching - Josh Goodrich
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
Aug 31, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 3Ep. 9
A Student Perspective - with Lily
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 profession.
Aug 17, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Checking For Understanding
In this episode Matt and Femi discuss various means and considerations around checking for understanding.
Aug 10, 2024•38 min•Season 3Ep. 10
What Have You Seen Working Well?
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.
Aug 03, 2024•45 min•Season 3Ep. 8
'Booklets' with Matt Burnage
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, implications for department meetings and much much more.
Jul 27, 2024•59 min•Season 3Ep. 7