Welcome to this bonus episode of the Beyond Good podcast! The idea here was just to offer a little insight into what goes on behind the scenes at Beyond Good HQ in a very casual chat between Matt and Femi. They share reflections on how the podcast has evolved, a few thoughts on Edutwitter, discuss Matt's view that we don’t need any more 'maps of the territory'; and talk about teacher training, school visits and podcast guests. Nothing too deep here, we just want to say a big thank...
Jul 26, 2023•27 min•Season 2Ep. 32
In today’s podcast Femi and Matt discuss Wellbeing. After making the important distinction between wellbeing and workload they discuss - Attitudes to work - Being present – finding engagement with the task at hand - Meditation - Spiritual practice and gratitude - The effects of being asked to do meaningless or supercilious work - Socialising and social factors - Sport and the importance of physical activity - Truly meaningful relationships with colleagues and students: - Community and comradery ...
Jul 23, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 31
In today’s podcast Matt and Femi discuss two main topics which are 'setting', and 'de-escalation'. In both cases the points raised should be of interest to colleagues from all subjects. In the long-overdue chat on setting the duo touch on streaming vs mixed attainment; some reasons why different approaches might be more or less suited to different contexts; Why year 7 is not ‘the start’; sink groups; setting by ability not behaviour; tackling attitudes and historic mindsets a...
Jul 09, 2023•57 min•Season 2Ep. 30
In today’s podcast Femi and Matt dissect the recently published findings of the DFE national behaviour survey. This is another conversation which is not at all subject-specific and should be of interest to all colleagues. In this episode the duo discuss the challenges with collecting and reporting the data; the student perspective; the gap between what leaders are saying and what teachers and students are saying; walking the shop floor; wilful blindness and false praise; the importance of accept...
Jun 25, 2023•57 min•Season 2Ep. 29
Today Femi and Matt discuss teacher effectiveness vs years of service and some issues with the word ‘ experience’ which is generally used as a proxy for competence . As is increasingly the case the discussion is pertinent to all subjects and is not by any means maths-specific. There’s a lot of thinking out loud here and, unusually(!), the boys actually managed to land some insight and conclusions that both found helpful. The conversation covers: - The will-skill matrix - Possible reasons why som...
Jun 11, 2023•59 min•Season 2Ep. 28
In this episode Matt and Femi dig into the dilemma that is ‘homework’! Reflecting on their experiences over the years they ask; how effective is it (academically)?, weigh the costs and benefits, and highlight the demands on teachers. They discuss the different approaches to homework they have tried over the years, the problems each approach threw up and the strategies used to overcome them. They talk about the social pressures at play for students, setting homework for the benefit of parents, Ma...
Jun 04, 2023•48 min•Season 2Ep. 27
Today Femi and Matt discuss their approaches to handling complaints. None of this is specific to maths and so the conversation should be relevent for colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds. The pair talk about - Receiving complaints well - Prioritising responding to parents and acting promptly - The importance for people of simply being heard - The pros and cons of different approaches to investigating complaints about a colleague. - Avoiding big surprises by knowing what is going on in you...
May 21, 2023•52 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Today Femi and Matt discuss an article by Dylan Wiliam titled ‘Teacher Quality: why it matters, and how to get more of it’. In addition to this central theme the pair touch on the failures of policy initiatives to raise standards, teacher learning communities, considerations of the alignment of personal professional development with the school priorities, the learning cycle of teacher improvement, the common failings of school leaders to be strategic and to prioritise effectively, and the forces...
May 14, 2023•44 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Matt and Femi are in a pensive mood for a thought-provoking discussion on CPD. They discuss the good and bad of inset days, utilising skilled practioners to model and share expertise, team building, sequencing and differentiation in professional development, ‘hit and run’ CPD vs sustained behavioural change, coaching and culture, Jim Knight and the Impact Cycle, video, email, the tremendous importance of being able to see good practise in action, the reluctance to recognise differing levels of e...
May 07, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 24
In this episode of Beyond Good Tom Bennett joins Matt and Femi to discuss all things schools and behaviour. Tom Bennett began teaching in the East End of London, and is currently the Director and founder of researchEd and a Teacher Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. From 2008-2016 he wrote a weekly column for the TES and TES online, and is the author of four books on teacher-training, behaviour management and educational research – most recently ‘Running the Room’. In 2015 Tom was long...
Apr 30, 2023•57 min•Season 2Ep. 23
In this week’s episode, Matt and Femi discuss a comment made by Adam Boxer –that the most common issue he sees in classrooms he has visited is that students are simply not properly paying attention to the teacher. This is another conversation that will be relevent to teachers of all subjects – it is not maths-specific. The duo talk about why this is a problem and how it makes teaching harder, what ‘good’ looks like in this respect and how norms are established and broken, ways that attention get...
Apr 23, 2023•47 min•Season 2Ep. 22
In this episode Matt and Femi discuss Ofsted. What is on offer is not a position on Ofsted, it is simply a balanced discussion limited to the perspective of class teachers and middle leaders. There is no subject-specificity to this one, so hopefully educators of all stripes will find this useful. The discussion took in some of the following features of the landscape: Ofsted preparation and the body of knowledge and skills accrued through daily effort over years versus cramming ‘the night before’...
Apr 17, 2023•50 min•Season 2Ep. 21
in today’s episode Femi and Matt discuss centrally planned lessons. Their discussion extends to the various forms of lesson resources such as starters, practise materials, and mixed revision as well as teaching examples. They talk about workload, modelling, the use of different media, meeting the needs of the students sat in front of you, the effects on pedagogy and teacher development, the utility for cover and non-specialists, ECTs, worksheets, textbooks, consistency, expectations and many oth...
Apr 09, 2023•51 min•Season 2Ep. 20
In this episode of the podcast Femi and Matt discuss the broad ranging, but critical, topic of 'checking for understanding'. The discussion covers the various time-scales at which teachers might check for understanding; from moment to moment through the lesson all the way up to termly tests, and they discuss a variety of strategies that teachers use to check for understanding and debate their effectiveness.
Mar 26, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 19
In this episode Femi and Matt speak to Rachael Southern who they asked to come on the show after learning about her fascinating and inspiring story: Rachael has recently returned to teaching after nearly a decade out pursuing a successful career in corporate law in the city. Not only is Rachael’s journey a fascinating one, but she is in a fairly unique position to share her observations and insights as an informed and knowledgeable 'outsider'. Along the way Rachael’s passion, energy an...
Feb 19, 2023•1 hr 2 min
This episode begins with some further thoughts on department development plans - following on from episode 15 on that topic. Matt and Femi talk about defining what processes will be running in the department rather than trying to describe a particular endpoint and also incorporating teacher’s career ambitions into departmental development plans. They then posit that teachers are the most important resource that a school has and that results are largely determined by them, and not the systems and...
Feb 12, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 17
In this episode Femi and Matt speak to Aparna about her experience of education as a mother of two exceptional children. The conversation shines a light on some of the challenges students, their families, teachers and schools face when the children don’t fall into that broad middle 99% that we are accustomed to working with. Hopefully the conversation provides some awareness and stimulates thinking about those children who live life at the far edge of the distribution– whether that is in terms o...
Feb 05, 2023•58 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Matt and Femi turn their attention to the subject of Departmental development plans and, as you will hear, this is a topic that they come at from quite different perspectives. They discuss the issues with development plans in the way they all too often appear in schools, vision and ambition for the department, auditing the current state of affairs, and the importance of pricing in the available capacity to enact said plans. They touch on the tension between the need for differentiated individual...
Jan 29, 2023•54 min•Season 2Ep. 15
The central theme of the discussion in this episode is ‘teaching low ability students’. In a fairly wide-ranging discussion, Femi and Matt touch on expectations, setting and sink groups, profiling, behaviour, avoiding conflict, and some common pitfalls they have seen, amongst other things. Although they do cite a few maths-specific examples, on the whole this is another episode that is largely not specific to maths teaching so should be of interest to teachers of all subjects.
Jan 22, 2023•59 min•Season 2Ep. 14
In this week's episode, Femi and Matt mull over a topic which seems to get a disproportionate amount of air time on social media, which is teachers’ thoughts and feelings about their SLT. As always, the Beyond Good team would love to hear your thoughts and responses to the episode: @BeyondGoodPod
Jan 15, 2023•46 min•Season 2Ep. 13
In this episode of The Beyond Good Podcast, Matt and Femi discuss resilience. There is an old adage that students should be working harder than the teacher, and they explore this, discuss what they each think is right at the core of good teaching, talk about engineering success, what that looks like in the classroom and how it evolves over time, metacognitive understanding and touch on teacher resilience amongst other things.
Jan 08, 2023•53 min•Season 2Ep. 12
The theme of Femi and Matt's discussion in this episode is “things that schools could get rid of - or at least do less of”. While it is rarely the case that these ‘things’ are totally ineffective, more likely they are effective to some degree, but in the cost-benefit analysis do they meet the threshold of being effective enough to justify our time? Could they be culled in order to allow us to spend more time doing things that are even more effective? With no subject specific element to this...
Jan 02, 2023•53 min•Season 2Ep. 11
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss what they were each doing at the beginning of their teaching careers that they felt was very effective, and as importantly what they were not doing, and then what other aspects came in later when more bandwidth came online as they developed automaticity (unconscious competence). This is a discussion about low hanging fruit / first order effects / climbing the steepest part of the curve as quickly as possible and the law of diminishing returns. For the most p...
Dec 11, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 10
This week Femi and Matt discuss ‘making the most of your training year’ – in response to listener demand! Much of what is covered will be useful for trainees and ECTs, as well as mentors and anyone thinking of taking on a mentoring role. Indeed, some of the conversation is ever-green as they do cover areas such as planning, resources and feedback.
Dec 04, 2022•41 min•Season 2Ep. 9
In this episode the seemingly mundane topic of 'meetings' comes under Femi and Matt's scrutiny. Both have sat in meetings, like so many of us, with utter dismay at the terribly ineffective use of time and frankly sometimes callous disrespect for colleagues' time as lengthy agendas are gradually ticked off with a series of mainly one to one discussions... In this conversation Matt and Femi don't do much complaining: instead they focus on what they are currently doing diff...
Nov 27, 2022•56 min•Season 2Ep. 8
In this episode Matt and Femi speak with Sam Roberts. Sam Roberts is best known for his work in sports broadcasting - particularly as a rugby commentator. However Sam is also a teacher, and so is able to speak from the intersection of a fairly unique Venn diagram – bridging the worlds of teaching and elite-level sports performance. As you will hear, Sam speaks passionately about performance mindset and mental fitness for teaching. He discusses how he was inspired by Don McPherson and the millenn...
Nov 20, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Join Femi and Matt as they share their thoughts and experiences of running professional development for teachers in their departments. Mentioned in this episode is the EEF - the Education Endowment Foundation and if you are not familiar with their work, we highly recommend spending some time on their website, and in relation to this episode, reading their guidance report on 'Effective Professional Development'.
Nov 13, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 6
This week on the podcast Matt and Femi talk to special guest Mike Stuart about his many years of experience as a head of year. They discuss relationships, 'the first assembly', taking assemblies, tutor times - and being a visible presence amongst the year group, fierce conversations, "not just the naughties", role clarity and looking after yourself, amongst other topics.
Nov 06, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In this episode Femi and Matt discuss Robert Pondiscio's AEI Op-Ed titled 'Confronting 5 Damaging Educational Myths'. The discussion elicits some interesting and useful points with the following 6 myths coming under fire from the duo: “I don’t teach facts. I teach critical thinking.” “Reading is a skill.” “This is too hard/inappropriate/irrelevant for my students.” “Children have different learning styles.” “Teach kids to think like a scientist” (or a historian or other expert) “W...
Oct 30, 2022•47 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In this episode Femi and Matt explore high quality science teaching with Rob Newman. They discuss the importance of identifying and then observing established good teachers, having quality conversations about teaching, filtering the noise of ‘advice’ coming from all corners and crucially; ignoring the feedback that was not helpful. Rob talks about where time is wasted in lessons and what good teachers do instead, the power of relentless routines, clarity of teacher talk – concise clear explanati...
Oct 23, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 3
