More on cultural capital: Show me the Monet
I read a tweet the other day that grabbed my attention – it simultaneously piqued my interest and made me bristle. It was a screenshot of the headline of an article by the Museums Association,...
View ArticleFour things I’ve learnt this year
I’ve worked in a great trust – AET – for nearly a year and a half. As we edge towards the end of this academic year, I’ve taken a bit of time to reflect, both this afternoon and at our AET Principals’...
View ArticlePoverty, shame and dignity
It’s early August and I’m already worried about the autumn. Not yet because of the other pressures on schools – results, budgets, recruitment, staffing – but because of the cold. This almost sounds...
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More on how to improve visits to schools (and why I don’t think you should...
A few years ago I wrote a blog post called ‘Why visits to schools can sometimes be a bit rubbish (and how to make them better)’. Some people agreed, some people didn’t, and that’s fine. The people who...
View ArticleSchool leadership: distraction and focus
Over the years I’ve given a few warnings about stuff. Curriculum, in the main. I also wrote a while back about ensuring that we give ourselves enough time to think. I want to return to this because I...
View ArticleSchool leadership: distraction and cruel optimism
Over the six week summer holiday, I stumbled across a term I’d never heard of before: cruel optimism. It’s been rolling around in my head ever since. Coined by the historian Lauren Berlant,...
View ArticleAttention in the classroom: looking closely and standing back
Over the past few days, two people, completely unconnected, have said they are praying for me or my school. Not because anything has happened, or that I need some sort of spiritual solace (or, who...
View ArticleSchool life by a thousand joys
The poet J.D. McClatchy tells us that “Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.” As school leaders, what is it that we pay attention to? Gnarled in front of us and clustered around us can be...
View ArticleWe’d love you to come back
I love that we’re a thoughtful profession. That we’re intellectually curious. That we’re immersed in talk and debate about our subjects and how to teach. This is undeniably a Good Thing. It’s a world...
View ArticleThe problem of conformist bias and prestige bias
I’m interested in where we locate and define excellence in teaching and school leadership. I’ve written about it for a long time, and about the ways in which definitions and claims warp and mutate....
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