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Fostering strong professional relationships: Find your staffroom friends
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Elaine Long
Welcome to the ECF Staffroom. I'm Elaine Long.
Mark Quinn
And I am Mark Quinn.
Elaine Long
We are programme leaders for the UCL Early Career Teacher Development Programme. Why are we in the staffroom? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems can be aired bluntly and where solutions can be explored.
Mark Quinn
Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come in the ECF Staffroom. We will hear from early career teachers themselves and from the mentors and induction tutors who support them. We will talk about all things ECF, the challenges and the joys. So, why don't you enjoy a coffee with us, perhaps even grab a biscuit and sit down to half an hour of ECF Staffroom chat.
Mark Quinn
Okay, so welcome to the ECF Staffroom, Nancy Kamali-Belmonti and Farzana Akthar. So you are very, very welcome. We've got more space in the staffroom today. We've got an extra seat. So, please take the weight off your feet. Have a seat. My job is to fix a coffee and a biscuit or any other drink that you might wish at this point of the afternoon.
So, Farzana, what can I get you?
Farzana Akthar
Can I have a caramel latte? No sugar, almond milk and with some digestive biscuits. If you have some please.
Mark Quinn
You don't ask for much do you? Caramel latte, digestive biscuits. I believe I missed most of that.
Mark Quinn
And Nancy?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
It’s a flat white with a little bit of sugar for me, a little bit more straightforward. And biscuit wise, I'm partial to either a ginger nut or a chocolate hob nob. Either of those.
Mark Quinn
It seems you'll have to break open the Christmas biscuits, Elaine, because I'm not sure we can, our normal catering won't cover all of this, but we'll do our best. I'll go away now and see what I can rustle up and leave it to you Elaine, that's all.
Elaine Long
It sounds like we might have to break open the dog biscuits as well. It sounds like we've got a dog in the staffroom as well, which is a nice addition for our Christmas edition. Hopefully help us to relax us while we answer these questions. And we've certainly got some special Christmas biscuits to keep going. So, in this podcast we're going to be doing something a bit different.
As you know, we invite all our listeners to submit questions and issues that they would like the answer to, and we want to devote this episode to answering some of those questions that our listeners have submitted. So, we have assembled an expert panel to do this in the form of Nancy and Farzana. So, could you introduce yourselves for our listeners and tell them a bit about your role, Farzana could you go first?
Farzana Akthar
Yes, sure, Elaine I can. So, I am the lead trainee teacher and early career development teacher in my school, so I support trainees and ECTs. I am also part of the teaching and learning team, so I do host all CPDs in my school to support staff. And I'm also a chemistry teacher and this is my 10th year in teaching.
Elaine Long
Sounds like you wear a lot of hats in your school, but also that you know a lot about early career teacher induction. So, it would be great to answer some of those questions.
Nancy, could you introduce yourself as well, please?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
Yep. Hi, everyone. So, my situation is a little bit complicated. I'm an assistant principal at a secondary school in London and also a Spanish teacher. And as part of that role, I oversee teaching and learning across the school. And I'm the induction tutor. But I'm actually on secondment at the moment, and I'm working at UCL as a programme leader.
As part of that work, one of my main areas of responsibility is looking into how we can support induction tutors and enhance their experience of the programme.
Elaine Long
Thank you, Nancy. So, I've got a bag of questions here. I'm going to pass it over to you, Mark, and could you dive into the bag, give it a good shake and pick out the first question, please?
Mark Quinn
Right. Our first question actually comes from an ECT In their first year and the first year of the programme, I should say, we are recording this in mid-December. It's our final week of the term, we’re all gearing up for the Christmas holidays. So, this is an ECT who perhaps has had a bit of a tough time in the first term and they want to know when does it get easier?
Farzana Akthar
I think that's a great question. I think with experience it definitely gets easier, but there's no particular year when it gets easier. So, with experience, what I mean is your lesson plan, you become more efficient at it, you get to know your classes better, you know what works for particular groups of students, what does not work. And it's all about experimenting and understanding what works and what doesn't work and making sure that you embrace that.
With behaviour management, you get better at managing behaviour, you understand the systems better. You form a relationship with your students and again, it's about, if something does go wrong, embrace that, learn from it. It's all a learning experience. Your subject knowledge. It builds, it gets stronger. So, there's no particular year when it gets better.
But I think definitely with experience you become much more stronger. You are able to reflect more, you're able to embrace those challenges and they don't seem as overwhelming or as intimidating as they might in the beginning, especially when you're dealing with a behaviour issue. You might think, my God, you know, it seems really challenging, I don't want to go into that class, I’m set for a nightmare, but definitely with experience and talking to other people in the room experiences in your department that will really support you and help you, but definitely with experienced, it gets better.
For me personally, I still find September to December, that first term really hard and I've been teaching for years, but I think with experience I've become better at managing that.
Mark Quinn
That that's interesting, isn't it, that even a very experienced teacher like yourself can still experience a challenge, particularly at the beginning of the year, as you were saying, or as you move schools? I think that's a common experience, isn't it? But embracing the challenge, Nancy, is that good advice?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I think it's vital advice if you're if you're going to work in an organisation with hundreds of children and young people, then there are going to be challenges of course there are. And you do need to embrace that. And what work with colleagues to find those solutions. Like Farzana was saying, I think it's a gradual process and different people will reach a point of comfort at different stages.
But I do think the second year does bring a lot of routine. If you stay in the same school, at least. You can reteach the same scheme of learning. If you put in a request to your head of department or phase lead to stay with a year group, or you can move up with a class and you might request to do that, if you've really worked hard to build relationships with a particular group of students and you want to continue building on that.
So, in my experience, I do think the second year does offer opportunities to make life a little bit easier and to build on your own prior knowledge and experience if you stay in the same school. But like you said, I think moving schools is always difficult because you just have so, so much to learn.
I think you just need to remember that you're not alone. That's the key thing, and if you are finding it tough at this stage or any other state you need, you need to talk to people because it's really, really common to have difficult periods in any profession and seeking solutions. Working collaboratively with others is really important. Don't just shut yourself away because there will be an answer.
Mark Quinn
And you say you both talk about experience. It occurs to me, just as you were giving your answer, Nancy, that when you come back into your second year, you said you might put a request into the timetable so that you get a chance to repeat some of the experiences you've had in that first year.
And, of course, that's not always the case. It's not always possible, is it? So, for example, you might be in a primary setting, and you might be moving up with your with your class, very likely will be moving up with your class. You'll have the repeat experience of the same pupils or substantially the same pupils, but the curriculum will have moved on. Whereas in a secondary you might get a whole bunch of whole new students to get to know that. But I guess as a job, there's the chance at least that you'll be reteaching some of the same content. So, is that what we're talking about? Experience is actually about having the opportunity to revisit either the relationships or the curriculum that you've had the opportunity to experience in the first year.
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I think that's one element of it. But also, with experience comes the ability to apply judgement and new contexts more effectively. So, a difficult situation you might have dealt with, I don't know, a year eight class where you've really struggled to teach a particular concept and they've really struggled to learn it. It might not be that same thing that you're revisiting the following year, but you can take that learning, you can reflect on it and you can apply that learning into a new context, So, I think it's both.
Mark Quinn
Mmmm. Farzana, on that.
Farzana Akthar
I definitely agree with Nancy. I think if you have experienced something in the first year, you know, might be a challenge, might be something difficult or something new that you have learnt, you can definitely take that onto your second year and apply it and doesn't necessarily mean that you're, you know, teaching the same class again, but you can apply what you have learnt to a different context.
I think that's really important being able to, you know, use your experience and everything that you have learnt and apply it.
Mark Quinn
Elaine, I wonder if this word easier, we could use a different word as well. You know, it's not just when does it get easier, but when does it get, I don't know, when do I get better at it or when does it become more, when does the fun start? I was promised a fun time when I joined the teaching profession. It doesn't feel like a lot of fun wow.
Are those other questions that you think that ECTs are keen to have answered?
Elaine Long
I think, yeah. I think finding the joy in it and it's hugely important for teaching to be a sustainable career. So, I was actually reflecting on two things, and I was reflecting, as you said, Farzana, that it never really gets easier and you never actually nail it. But in a sense that is part of the joy of teaching.
And I would also say, having been a teacher for 20 years, I never felt like I nailed it, but that's what I loved about it. It was like a puzzle you could never solve. And just reflecting on the importance of routines that that sort of automaticity that teachers need to develop to survive is also a bit of a double edged sword because teachers need to constantly reinvent themselves to survive because as Nancy talked about, you can think you've nailed how to handle a student shouting out something rude in your class, but then it will happen in another classroom and you'll use the same strategy and it won't have the same effect.
But I think some of this perhaps, my reflections are it's about mindset and it's about being able to deal with complexity and ambiguity and almost learning how to fail well, because we do constantly fail as a teacher all the time. But that's part and parcel of it because you can never be perfect. So, I think, you know, perhaps the difference I notice between developing your expertise is recognition of that as well.
But I guess as you go along, you’re constantly developing and getting a range of strategies in your toolbox to pull out and know what to use. But I think also maybe, you know, camaraderie in developing relationships with staff are hugely important and they develop as you move along as well. Farzana, I don't know whether you want to come in here.
Farzana Akthar
Yes, I think, I have been teaching for ten years and I have been at the same school, and I think it's a good thing, and I think there's all these positives and negatives to that. But I think when you're in a school, building that community, building your advocates, people that are going to advocate for you, people that you can go to for support, ask for advice, not just within your department, is so much experience in a school.
And we also need to remember schools are like communities, we need to work together, we to collaborate together. Mark, I also want to touch on what you just said about “Is there another word for easier?” I think growing as a person like, I think that is definitely something that I would apply to it.
You definitely grow. You definitely build your confidence, you find your advocates, you find your support system and you become like a family in the school. I definitely feel like that in the school that I have worked in.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, I think if you're lucky enough to have a kind of stable staff around you that you really do feel part of a teaching and a learning community, then you can get that joy that you're talking about Elaine. I'm trying to think about what this person who sent that question might have had in mind. I do wonder, because we do have early career teachers who really do struggle, we have teachers who really struggle, particularly in the first term. And maybe if we can imagine this might be an early career teacher who's actually suffering a bit, you know, and wants to know that there is light at the end of that tunnel.
I wonder if either of you, Farzana or Nancy, can, thinking about your own experiences as an induction tutor, think about the examples you've had of NQTs or ECTs or in that kind of position where they actually did find their way out of that sort of dark place.
Nancy?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
This is an example that came to mind quite quickly, actually, of somebody I worked with, and they were well, they were really struggling in their first year of ECT. They were finding it hard to motivate themselves and things just weren't clicking into place for them. However, once they realised where their passions lied, and that was in pastoral support and care for the students, they absolutely blossomed and they're really thriving in their career now and that's the route that they've gone down. So, I think it's about finding, it's finding the joy that works for you, and everyone's joy is going to look a little bit different and making sure that you're not forcing yourself, you know, you’re not trying to be a square peg in a round hole. So, you're in the right kind of role, you're in the right kind of school and can really support you to enjoy the profession and stay in it for a long time.
Mark Quinn
I think you have given us our strapline for the for the podcast, the right kind of peg in the right kind of hole. Farzana did you want to come back into that?
Farzana Akthar
Someone does come to mind, and I think this person was really struggling with the timetable and the loading, even though, you know, NQTs and ECTs before, they do get a reduced timetable, I think it is a big jump. You know, having your own classes, you have different types of sets, different students, a different school experience, different atmosphere.
I think they were really struggling, and I remember them coming to me and then sitting down with the head of department and we were fortunate enough to be able to work something out for them in regards to the timetable, giving them more support or taking a class of them, and that really did help them because the timetable allowed it.
I know that in other schools sometimes timetables don't allow that because they there might not be other teachers. But another thing that we did put in support for them was having a learning support assistant in there to help them with the students, the groups of students that they were struggling with, and getting them to speak to the SEN coordinator.
I think sometimes when you're overwhelmed by a big timetable or you're feeling just overwhelmed in general because it is a big job, it's a big responsibility as well, and it's not easy at times, making sure that there are people in the school that will help you and that if you go to them for support, you can use that support to guide you and to help you.
And then I think by Easter term, they found their feet, which was quite nice, and now they're really thriving, I would say not surviving, but thriving.
Elaine Long
I think is a very good point. And I think one of the difficulties in your first few years of teaching and probably indeed the whole career of teaching, it's being able to seek out that support when you need to, but also being able to take feedback and constructive criticism on board. I found that really tough. I remember my first observation as an NQT, as it was known back then, which is the equivalent of an ECT, and I've been getting some really tough feedback, some really hard feedback, you know, of a lesson that I'd spent hours was working on.
And I look back and now I think that feedback was really valid, and I'm pleased I got that tough feedback because it forced me to get better and I did get a lot better. But that experience can be really tough because you can put so much effort and so much time into something and still know not achieve what you want to achieve.
And I think that's one of the really hard things about teaching to get your head around that you can part, you know, just a disproportionate amount of effort into something. I'm really, really trying but still not make it at first because it is tough and getting your head around that and being able to sort of pick yourself up from that knock back and seek out support.
I think that's tough psychologically, Nancy. I don't know whether you think similarly.
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I do. And I think it's it comes down to school culture and that's where the induction tutors are in a really strong position because if you are establishing a culture where every single person in the school can get better with Dylan William in the back of your mind, then that sends a message to every ECT that you will get challenging feedback, you will be challenged on your professional views on things perhaps, and in department meetings, you might have some critical friends that cast over your work or support you to shape a new policy or lesson plan or scheme of learning, or who knows what.
So, it really is up to the induction tutors, I think, to set the culture so that those more challenging feedback conversations are couched in a framework of support and everyone moving forward and growing.
Elaine Long
Yeah, I think that's good advice. Farzana, does that that resonate with you as well in terms of how you engage early career teachers in dialogue about how well they're doing?
Farzana Akthar
Yes, definitely. I think that's really important that we have that culture where we're open and we're willing to share advice and listen. I think listening to ECTs and knowing what they need and understanding where they're coming from also, another piece of advice I would like to add is don't compare yourself. When you're an ECT, don't compare yourself to other people's journey on their career path because sometimes you won't be like, but that person's in their first year of ECT and they're doing much better than me. They're coping, how come I'm not there yet? I think it's really important. Do not compare yourself. And also, don't compare yourself to other teachers as well, because you might have a teacher who's got six years of experience and a particular year 9 student that is an angel in their lesson, but they're a nightmare. In your lesson, you know, it all comes down to experience. Go to that teacher, ask for advice, but don't compare yourself because everyone's on their own journey and everyone thrives in their own time.
I think that's really important because sometimes I get ECTs or even, you know, trainees, but that person's doing better, but that person's, you know, is ahead of me, how are they doing it? Don't compare yourself as long as you're getting that help and you know what you're doing, then you're on that path and everyone's the destination is different to get to that point.
Elaine Long
Thank you. Yeah, I think that that's really good advice about not comparing yourself. So, I think we're ready to delve into our second question. I've got a bag here of questions from year 2 ECTs, so I'm going to delve into that bag. And the question that I've picked out is, as a year 2 ECT, how do I decide the focus of my practitioner inquiry? So how do I know what to pick?
Farzana Akthar
The practitioner inquiry is my favourite part for the ECTs to do because last year they really got their teeth into it. We had some really great presentations and a lot of great research that was done around the inquiry that they chose. So, the way that I give my advice to my ECTs is when you are picking a practitioner inquiry-based topic or a particular topic that you want to look into, what is there particular research in education that you are interested in?
So, for example, Barack Rosenshein, he has principal of instruction, so he's got ten principles of instruction. Maybe you might want to focus on one principle from his research and apply that to your year 9, year 10 class and then measure the impact. So, maybe if there's particular research that you're interested in, but we know that everything gets linked back to research when they do their practitioner inquiry.
The second thing is what is your whole school CPD focus on? So, is on retrieval. So, you might want one to focus on retrieval, for example, long term memory, short term memory. So, something linked with whole school CPD or you might be getting a particular target that keeps coming up often in your observations or you need to improve questioning and there's so many different ways to question.
So, you might want to focus your practitioner inquiry on questioning, Socratic questioning, cold calling, hinge questioning. Those are the ways that I kind of direct the conversation when it comes to practitioner inquiry and what they should choose. So, is there a particular research you're interested in and what is the whole school CPD focus? Is there a particular target that keeps coming up in your observations or your drop-ins?
Elaine Long
Thanks. What about you, Nancy? How do you encourage ECTs to approach it?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I think for me, there are two things. And that's not to say that what Farzana has said isn't something I agree with. I completely, completely get why she would promote, for example, how school CPD focuses is it makes sense to double up that and sort of reduce that workload, doesn't it? But the thing that came to mind when I first saw this question was 1, choose something that's bothering you and 2, choose something you really care about because it's going to be you is an ECT spending time on this enquiry, so you've got to feel invested, you've got to feel interested in it.
Don't be too influenced by what other ECTs might be doing. Again, goes back to that not comparing thing. It sounds almost little bit like what I would say to year 9’s, the options events. Do what matters to you do, what you are interested in? I think reading through all the guidance is really important that you actually know what you're going to be doing and what the expectations are. So, everything's on Extend.
Having a look at previous questions as well, just to get a bit of inspiration, because I know that for some ECTs it might they might be a bit stuck and they might be quite unsure, especially if there aren't other ECTs in your setting to bounce ideas off of at all. If you've got no idea what anyone else is doing.
So, yeah, there's lots of different things that that might be bothering you might be interested in you, It might be that there's something in year one that you really wanted to cover and you felt that you didn't quite get enough time on it or that you didn't get time on it at all because of the other areas of the programme that you were focussed on.
So, this is a really good opportunity to take something really personal to you, your classroom, your students, and really make the most of it and shape the programme for your needs. So, that's what I would do. The other thing I think it's important to flag is don't be too shy about sharing your findings. Your colleagues will be super interested in hearing what's been going on in your classroom, what you found out.
So, make sure you do step forward and you know, find your professional voice and share that learning widely. Because the more you share it, the more valuable that knowledge will become.
Elaine Long
Yeah. Thank you, Nancy. It's a tough one, isn't it? Because there’s so much freedom and then sometimes when you get so much freedom, it can be hard to make a decision. I suppose I would add that another way of looking at it as well, which is to think of a problem of practices coming out your own classroom.
So, another way of looking at it is rather to think about the research and how you can apply it is to actually think about, first of all, okay, what are the problems in my classroom that I've got to solve? You know, if it was me, I’ll always be thinking about those, you know, those 2 unmotivated students that I want to motivate and then thinking about, okay, how do I solve that problem? And what research from the framework might help me to do that.
Or you might think about okay, I've had some feedback from my recent observations that I need to improve the quality of my explanations, What research might help me to do. That is another way round of looking at it. Going from your own classroom outwards. I think that can be helpful.
Nancy?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
Yeah, that's kind of what I meant by choose something that's bothering you, something that's right there under your nose. I heard someone refer to it as the thing that's keeping you up at night, and hopefully your classroom practice isn't keeping you up at night. But the thing that keeps coming back to you, that keeps bothering you, this is that this is an opportunity to look into it and dedicate a little bit more time.
Elaine Long
Or even those questions like Farzana, you were talking about like don’t compare yourself to other people, but you could be stood there thinking, well, how does that teacher always get their students to start so beautifully well in class? You know, that could be your question. You know, how do I establish effective routines at the start of the lesson? And the part of your inquiry can be going to observe that of a teacher, interviewing that of a teacher.
So, you know that the research, but it can also come from the expertise within your own school and the colleagues within it. Because I know one thing that ECTs are always keen to do is go and observe and talk to other colleagues. And this is the perfect opportunity to do it, I think, it's a huge opportunity to develop such subject specific expertise as well. That's certainly there with practitioner inquiry.
So, you know, you talked about Rosenshein principles of instruction Farzan. They're quite generic. But you know, what's quite interesting is to think about, okay, well, what do high quality explanations look like in maths or as an English teacher? How do I read aloud in a way that enables all students to follow and comprehend the text?
So, thinking more specifically about the lens of your classroom, your students, your subjects helps you then to take perhaps generalised principles from research, because at the end of the day they can only be generalised principles from research and they come as generalised principles of research, have the impact on your classroom that you want. But free practitioner inquiry, you can bridge that gap between those generalised principles and the impact that you're having on your students because it forces you to really think about what strategies you’re using and the impact you're having on your students or just to find out more.
It is such a huge opportunity, but maybe the wealth of choice is what people find difficult. Mark In your experience, what have you found about practitioner inquiry?
Mark Quinn
Yeah, that thing about the subject knowledge really rings true. In fact, where do we pick it up in some of the feedback we get from primary ECTs because of course they are teaching right across the curriculum and sadly there's no one in the staffroom today with a primary background but I think it's true to say that we do expect primary teachers to know a great deal about a great deal, and that's really scary, if you are an early career teacher or, you know, moving into the second year of your teaching and beyond actually, and the curriculum doesn't, you know, the subject that you have to subject to, you have to cover doesn’t remain static either. You know, somebody keeps changing it on you. So, I do think that there's a huge opportunity, I would say actually within module six or module seven, the first two short inquiries that ECTs do at the beginning of the second year to really focus in on a subject knowledge aspect.
Something that bothers them about some absence perhaps in their own subject knowledge and to use their colleagues first of all. You know, look at the materials which are already being created within the setting, within the school, within your year group, for example, you know, do a study of those and discuss those with your mentor and think about those materials in relation to your own class.
I really would recommend that. It's quite difficult otherwise within the programme to find those places where it can be a subject focus for your development. So, I’d say that one, definitely take advantage of that opportunity.
The second thing which, I’m going to bat it back as a question both for you, Nancy, and Farzana, which is something that some secondary based ECT often say to us, that they have a real challenge with the practitioner inquiry because they want to focus on a particular need. Maybe those two students you mentioned the Elaine, who are difficult to motivate, but we only see them once or twice a week, you know, because I teach eight different classes and so I don't see a class frequently enough to be able to gather the evidence that I need from them for the purposes of my enquiry.
So, I was just wondering what workarounds would you have for that when you're advising early career teachers in your schools because you are both secondary based, Farzana?
Farzana Akthar
I think if you're seeing a class once or twice a week, I think we'll think about that. Are you saying e-learning? So, you know, if you've got a focus on a practitioner inquiry and let's say it's to do with retrieval practice, maybe you can set some pre learning, you can set homework. How are you using those opportunities to gather information?
So, I think definitely, thinking about what they're doing outside of school, like with homework and pre learning. That’s the main thing that I can think when you are seeing a class once or twice a week.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, I mean you're a chemistry teacher, so presumably you see your own classes more frequently and maybe same for you as well being a Spanish teacher. But there's plenty people out there who, I don't know. I'm making an assumption actually, about Spanish teachers. Perhaps not. Do you have advice for that from an induction tutor perspective?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I think what I would advise is that if you've identified these hypothetical two students that you really want to focus on, I would then say, well, okay, they're in year 7. Do you have another year seven class? Are there another couple of students in that group that you feel you could motivate better so that there can be more data being collected from more than one class?
That's probably how I would suggest someone approaching that kind of challenge, because it's really difficult if you're, I don't know, in my school, for example, an RS teacher and you see lots of different KS3 classes once a week. But that in some ways is an opportunity because you can keep it small scale. You can still focus on a very small number of students, but it can actually be across a large proportion of a year group in some ways.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, especially if the problem, if you like, that you've identified it's a problem in your own practice rather than the need that the individual student might have. So, you can focus on yourself across many classes, so you can pick up, you're generating the data from yourself, perhaps and I think that is what a lot of our secondary based ECTs to do.
In fact, when we look at their questions, yeah, that's good advice. I think you're passing the bag back to me, Elaine, that I need to rummage in.
Elaine Long
I’m passing you the year one bag now.
Mark Quinn
Okay. What do we find? Yes. So, this might be similar to something we discussed in the first question, but I think there's some, it's really worth spending time on this one, which is how can I protect my own wellbeing and still be a good teacher?
Farzana?
Farzana Akthar
I think definitely having boundaries between your personal life and your professional life. I think that is really important. Don't let your work life overshadow your personal life. It's so important to have boundaries in place. So for example, if you come in early, you might want to leave, work on time or you might want to stay back like Monday to Wednesday by five and I'm going to finish off all my work, my planning, by that time. I'm not going to do things at home.
I think definitely having boundaries and timing yourself on certain things, like I want to spend 3 hours on this and I’m going to spend 2 hours on that or I'm going to stay back after school and do this, but I'm not going to take any work home. Using the weekend to rest, to do things that you enjoy spending time with, friends and family.
Also, you know, if you feel like that you need to do some work during the weekend to prepare for Monday, setting maybe 2 hours aside or 3 hours but I think professional boundaries need to be in place to to manage your wellbeing and to make sure that you're looking after yourself and you are putting yourself first. I think those practical things really work well with me and those are the things that I advise ECTs.
Mark Quinn
And Nancy?
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I got a lot of thoughts on this, so bear with me. First of all, I thought the question was really interesting in the way that it was written, because, well, the ECT says, how can I protect my own well-being and still be a good teacher, which is suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive, when of course, they are not.
We all know that teachers need to look after their wellbeing because if they don't, they're not going to be as effective in the classroom if they're struggling with wellbeing or workload. So, kind of like what Farzana was saying, I think the first thing is to make sure that you’re in tune with your own wellbeing and your needs and that you dedicate time to it yourself.
I think a good starting point is actually asking yourself what does wellbeing mean to me? Because it means something slightly different to everyone. And just like what Farzana was saying, people have very different routines, very different personal lives. So, saying do this or do that isn't going to work for everyone. So, you need to think to yourself, what does what does wellbeing mean to me?
Does it mean that I have the weekends off? Does it mean that I do really long days, Monday to Friday? Does it mean that I do a little bit of work at the weekends or in the holidays? It totally depends and it doesn't really matter as long as you're getting your work done. But I think defining wellbeing can be helpful because then you can judge more easily when things are starting to become a bit unbalanced and then a lot alongside that, I think it's really important that with your mentor, you carve out a bit of time at the start of your meeting to have sort of informal check in, and if you don't do that now, then as an ECT you can you can set the meeting agenda. You can say, I want to spend 5 minutes at the start just talking through how I'm feeling about things at the moment and that's a really good habit for anyone to get into at the start of mentor meetings or also management meetings as you go further in your career.
The other thing that came to mind when I was thinking about this, I think it's quite clichéd, but it's a really important, a really important piece of advice. Don't reinvent the wheel for the sake of it.
If you're working with a team of experienced professionals, which you probably are, use their ideas, use their lesson plans, use their resources as much as you can, because that's going to free you up to think more about the pupils in your classroom and what they need and how you need to adapt the lesson for them. That's going to have a much, much bigger impact than you worrying about how to format a PowerPoint or redesigning a worksheet when there's actually a perfectly good one that already exists.
So, yeah, clichéd but important. Don't reinvent the wheel. And with all of this in mind, I think it's really important to see this as the start. It's the first year of many and you don't have to do everything in the first year. You don't have to achieve everything in the first year. You might really want to do loads and loads of stuff with your career, but it doesn't all have to happen right at the start.
So, I'm thinking of as a Spanish teacher. I've worked over the years with lots of ECTs and MFL and often they're so, so excited to run an international trip abroad, which is great and it's brilliant and it's one of the most rewarding parts of the job, but it's also hugely time consuming and in the run up to it, in the organisation and in actually carrying the trip out and some things like that, although they are brilliant, they don't have to happen right at the beginning.
You can, you know, focus on getting the basics first and then you can look forward to those things in year 2, year 3, year 4, year 5 and beyond.
Mark Quinn
I’m just going to interrupted for a moment, I know, you might have more things to say, but I think that's a really, really great example because, and I think you've passed the question as I read it as well, which is you might be a MFL teacher who defines being a good MFL teacher, by being able to run an international trip. But you've also worked out that I'm not sure I can do this right now because I haven't got the time, I've got the energy, I've got the mental space for all of this and so you've kind of cast yourself as a bad teacher because you're protecting yourself. I think it's so important to realise that this is not a trade off.
It's not one or the other of these two things. The good teachers aren't the ones who have to work, you know, have to burn the candle at both ends. Good teachers might be doing that and, you know, might be working long hours and as you say, everyone is different, but that's not the only way of being a good teacher.
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
It really makes me think of some advice I was given in my NQT year, as it was called then. It was a very experienced teacher who said to me something like, Nancy, it's much better to put 90% effort into a teaching career for 20 years than it is to put 110% effort in for three years and burnout.
And it reminds me, is that what you're saying, that you do need to pace yourself and you need people around you to support you with that as well and yeah, you've got a long time in the classroom.
Mark Quinn
You've got a long is a long time in this career. That's right, and I think it's so important what you said about everyone being different. Not only are we teaching different children in different schools and we're teaching them different things, we are different people. We bring our own diversity, if you like, into the classroom and therefore kind of generic advice that we've invited you to give in this podcast comes with its own dangers, right?
You know, so boundaries is a very clear piece of advice that seems like great advice for everybody and it's good advice, but actually boundaries will be different for different people and actually perhaps the most important thing to say about this is that and you were saying it, Nancy, is ECT, speak to your mentor because that's the best opportunity you've got for much more specific, much more personalised guidance than can ever be got on a programme or can ever be got from reading a book.
You know, really build that relationship within, you know, your mentor and other close colleagues and listen to them actually, listen to what they say.
Farzana, did you want to come back there?
Farzana Akhtar
Yes. I think also, you know, with managing your wellbeing, teaching, it can be mentally and physically draining. So also think about, you know, what are you doing for your mental wellbeing? You know, what are you doing for your physical wellbeing? When you think about those things and you greet them and you think, okay, this is what I'm going to do for mental wellbeing, this is what I'm going to do for my physical wellbeing.
I might do it once every two weeks or, you know, I might after work, instead of taking the bus, I might walk home, you know, things like that. I think those are really important to factor in.
Elaine Long
It is difficult, though, isn't it? Because I think back to being an assistant principal and I would walk past NQTs who were still working at 6.30 when I was leaving. And, you know, I would sort of say to them, go home, and they'd give me this look as if to say, well, that’s so very well telling me to go home Elaine, but I can't go home because I haven't done this and I haven't done that.
I think we have to acknowledge the difficulty of that, that teaching is an incredible demanding career, time is finite. There are trades to be made and it's hugely difficult sometimes. It does require perhaps staying late at school but at the same time, I think that the question that I always ask to those ECTs is tell me a bit about what you are doing, you know, and then sometimes they’d say I'm filling in the reports and the deadlines tomorrow and it's like, well, that's got to be done right?
But sometimes they would say, well, I'm cutting up this worksheet into this neat thing here and then I would take the opportunity to say, okay, tell me what difference that's going to make to your lesson. That would be a really interesting conversation because personally, I was perhaps a terrible teacher. I never got my worksheets into neat margins.
I made the students do it themselves in class, and I know if I reflect back, sometimes I felt things were essential that weren't essential, and sometimes I thought that I was investing my time in things that would have a huge impact on student learning, only to be sort of picking up the remnants of those things from the floor and realising that it wasn't worth the investment and the time and effort.
I think, like Mark said, having the conversation with your mentor sometimes about the way you invest your time can help you to see it through a different lens because it helps you to work how you know what the high impact, low workload strategies are. You know, for example, it might be a great idea to do exit tickets for all your classes, but maybe there's a there's a lower workload way of doing that just through asking verbal questions.
I think you have to make the marginal gains where you can, and I think that's a good example of where you can make the marginal gains. You know, you can't take the intrinsic workload away. That's there, it's tough. You got to meet the deadlines for a reports, people rely on you and so on and so on.
But there's a lot of room for manoeuvre in terms of resource preparation and the time you're putting into that. Like Nancy said, lesson planning, all those things, where you might really enjoy lesson planning. I know for me that was certainly the most enjoyable part of the role, but I think that conversation is so important because often we can think that it's a valuable use of our time and it's not.
Nancy, I don't know whether you want to come in there.
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I was thinking of myself when you said that you would say to ECTs or NQTs, go home. And you'd be glared at. I had that exact experience and I forced myself to stop telling them that and instead would say, what have you got left to do? And I found that was a much more helpful way into the conversation that I would urge other induction tutors to use as well, because then you are opening up a discussion about what really matters right now.
Actually sometimes, someone with a bit more experience and seniority need to be the one to say, No, stop doing that. That's not worth it, because we're the ones with more, we can make judgement more easily on what's going to be impactful in a lesson because we've been there and we've done it lots and lots of times, and for an ECT that could be much harder.
Farzana, don’t know if you want to come in here.
Farzana Akhtar
This just started to make me reflect on when I was a NQT and I remember doing a lot of hours, staying back after school. And for me, I don't know, I think I saw it a little bit differently. I was thinking the more hours I put in and that's going to prove to, you know, SLT, my head of department that I'm a really good teacher, that's the mentality I kept thinking and I kept pushing myself to the point where I know personally at that point I was going to burn out as well.
So, I think also remembering that it's okay to put in the hours, but you shouldn't be burning yourself out to do that. Doing those things does not necessarily mean that you're a good teacher. A good teacher is how effective you are in the classroom as a practitioner and how are you utilising that time. It doesn't mean just because you're staying back long hours, you know, you're trying to prove to other people that you're a good teacher.
I felt like that mentality I had at that time was wrong. I'm happy to admit that because I needed to make sure that, you know, I am a good teacher, I know what I'm doing and I'm open to feedback and I'm open to being a reflective practitioner. It's so important that you're utilising that time to be an effective practitioner and not trying to continuously prove yourself with the amount of hours that you're putting in.
Mark Quinn
Elaine and I interviewed Siobhan Goffee in the second season of this podcast, and we did a whole podcast just on this theme and I remember one of the things that Siobhan said was, you got to listen to yourself. You got to listen to your body when it's telling you to stop on its head, when it's telling you to slow down and you've got to do that, be your own best friend, if you like.
She also talked about how she talked about the concept of toxic productivity. This is the idea that teachers just generally as a species have to overproduce, to think that we've got you know, we've got to make every resource perfect, every lesson has to be just so and we're always performing, performing because we think, because we are being watched.
We're being watched by those students, of course. But as you were suggesting there Farzana, we also, I think early teachers really feel the weight of expectation, you know, for induction, statutory induction that they're passing standards for ECF, they're all going through all of these different statements that we generated for them. So, to you know to demonstrate that they're getting better at teaching and all of this just feeds the kind of productivity monster, doesn't it? I think we've got to be really careful about that.
I think as induction tutors in particular based in schools have got a massive opportunity to kind of unburden ECTs from this toxic productivity conveyor belts. I think it's really, really important that the induction tutors listening to this realise that they've got a very important position here, very important responsibility to just to allow ECTs to get off that treadmill if it's becoming problematic for them.
Elaine Long
Yeah. And I think also the importance of leaders modelling that culture themselves, right? There are no prizes for leaving the school last and I think we as leaders shouldn't model that mindset either and I think it's good for us. Almost to be metacognitive about it and model to other people how we've decided to go home early or not to put effort into that because we don't think it's you know; we don't think it's a high impact strategy. So yeah, I think that hugely important.
Sadly, in terms of wellbeing though, we will be guilty of not supporting Farzana and Nancy's wellbeing if we keep them much longer. But of course, before they go, we will need to gather their post-it notes. So, Farzana and Nancy, we give every guest a post-it note on which to write some advice on. You can write whatever advice you want on your post-it note, and you can choose to stick your post-it anywhere.
So, Farzana, what advice would you write on your post-it note and where would you to stick it?
Farzana Akhtar
Embrace changes and know that not every day is going to be perfect and it's okay, If things go wrong, use that as a learning experience. Continue to reflect, you know, after your ECT year because we're all growing, we're all learning on the job. Be a reflective practitioner, have two targets in mind every year; I want to improve this, I want to do that. And have big goals that one day I want to be head of year, I want to be head of department. You know, I have those goals in mind, I want to be an assistant head, deputy head, have my own school one day, be a head teacher.
So, I think continuously reflect, continuously embrace the changes and know that not every day is going to be the same, and it's fine and it's fine if things go wrong as well. Just use it to learn and grow.
Elaine Long
You're going to need a big post-it note, I think.
Farzana Akhtar
I’ve got tiny writing.
Elaine Long
I've given you on a nice those giant ones. Nancy, what goes on yours.
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
I really enjoyed this question. I was having a think about this, and I was reading an article the other day called “What motivates people to teach and why do they leave? One of the things that really struck me is actually something you alluded to earlier, Elaine, very briefly, and it's that many of the people who stayed in teaching in this report, they cited their colleagues as one of the most enjoyable factors in their job.
But on the other hand, building and maintaining relationship with colleagues was not a common factor cited by the people coming into the profession of reasons why they wanted to be teachers. So, it made me wonder if we're kind of missing a trick a little bit here in fostering really strong professional relationships between teachers and using that to help people to stay in the profession.
I've certainly found from both a professional and personal perspective, the people that I started my teaching career with have become well, they were instrumental, and they've become really good friends and I go to them for endless guidance. So, with all that in mind, my Post-it is for the ECTs, it would go on their desks and it would say something like; Find your friends in the staffroom and invest in those relationships.
They can bring so much joy to your every day and will help you to navigate the tougher times with an invaluable perspective of you, your students and your school.
Elaine Long
Nice.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to break up this wonderful friendship that we just forged, Nancy, because I can hear the bell ringing. I have managed to find all those biscuits you asked me for, but we didn't give you enough break to eat them during that last hour. So, I'm afraid, you're going to have to take these biscuits away with you as you shut the door of the staffroom.
We've really enjoyed listening to you both. Thank you for your words of wisdom. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Managing mentors and induction tutors, sorry and ECTs on the ECF programmes that you work on, and we'll see you around.
Nancy Kamali-Belmonti
Thank you both.
Farzana Akhtar
Thank you both. Thank you. Bye.
Mark Quinn
Our thanks go to Nancy Kamali-Belmonti and Farzana Akhtar for sharing coffee and a range of biscuits with us this week in the ECF staffroom.
Elaine Long
Please do get in touch with us if you think you would like to chat with us about your ECF experience. In the meantime, do join us soon for a biscuit and a chat with another colleague in the ECF Staffroom.
Mark Quinn
If you've enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from. Search IOE podcast from wherever you get your podcasts to find episodes of the ECF Staffroom as well as more podcasts from the IOE.
Elaine Long
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