Beyond Good

Matt and Femi chat about a rarely-discussed characteristic of teachers; having respect for the learners.

Femi and Matt explore the idea that some people are more coachable than others...

Matt and Femi discuss episode 2 of the Great Teaching Unpacked Documentary - which focuses on behaviour, norms, routines and merits.Watch the documentary for free at:steplab.co/watch

Matt and Femi discuss the idea of first success, and whether the copncept can inform thinking around teacher development and student learning.

Matt and Femi discuss Episode 1 of the Great Teaching, Unpacked documentary.Watch the documentary for free at:steplab.co/filmGet in touch with Matt and Femi:beyondgoodpod@gmail.com

Matt and Femi discuss the critical importance of not letting behavioural incidents go unchallenged.

Femi and Matt discuss the concept of school policies and policy documentation, and what makes them more or less effective.We're not on social media but we love to hear your thoughts, feedback, reflections and requests so please send us a message at:beyondgoodpod@gmail.com

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.

Matt and Femi dive into the phrase that you so often hear amongst senior and middle management in schools: "Holding people to account".

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.

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.

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.

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.

Femi and Matt discuss why improving our teaching (or anything) can be so difficult, and how that influences their thinking around coaching and PD.

Femi and Matt ponder the all too common phrase "people just aren't doing it"!

Femi and Matt discuss the concept of 'disagree then commit' in the context of working in a school team or SLT.

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.

Femi shares his reflections and lessons learnt with Matt on the last 6 months of doing regular coaching - several times per week.

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.

Femi and Matt wrestle with the concept of students who refuse instructions and what schools can do about it.

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.

Matt and Femi discuss explicit teaching (direct instruction), questioning, AfL and much more!

Matt and Femi talk to Katharine Birbalsingh, founding member and head teacher of the Michaela Community School in Wembley Park.

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.

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/

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.

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.

Femi talks to Matt about how he is now thinking about PD - from individual all the way to whole-school.

Matt and Femi discuss duties, handling pupils, being authentic, leadership, supporting colleagues and much more!

See the video podcast on youtube.Video Lesson Analysis: Barry Smith Teaching Frenchhttps://youtu.be/qs0S4sYvBZ0?feature=sharedBarry's Full French Lessonhttps://youtu.be/WtO1YWhwAGE?feature=sharedDoug Lemov's Field Noteshttps://teachlikeachampion.org/tag/barry-smith/

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!

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.

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/1036003213Steplabwww.steplab.co

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.

In this episode Matt and Femi discuss various means and considerations around checking for understanding.

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.

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.

Matt debriefs Femi on his visit to The Michaela Community School.  They discuss teaching and learning, students, staff, family lunch and yard time, curriculum, routines, culture and much more.

Join Matt and Femi for the second part of their interview with Barry, as they talk about his leadership style, teaching, developing teachers, SLT and much much more.Barry Smith was a founding Deputy of Michaela School, Wembley.  The kids' amazing French and his unique approach to MFL teaching created huge buzz at Michaela.  He went on to become head of Great Yarmouth Charter School - the tenth head in 10 years, at a school that was rated inadequate for a decade.  In 5 months, Ofsted declared Charter, ‘a miraculous turnaround'.  Barry went on to lead the turn around of inadequate Hackney New School.Barry now works freelance, mostly supporting headteachers with culture, behaviour, courtesy, teaching & learning, systems, and he has his own podcast: Barry Smith Education.

Join Matt and Femi as they talk to Barry Smith about his experience of taking over and turning around a failing school.Barry Smith was a founding Deputy of Michaela School, Wembley.  The kids' amazing French and his unique approach to MFL teaching created huge buzz at Michaela.  He went on to become head of Great Yarmouth Charter School - the tenth head in 10 years, at a school that was rated inadequate for a decade.  In 5 months, Ofsted declared Charter, ‘a miraculous turnaround'.  Barry went on to lead the turn around of inadequate Hackney New School.Barry now works freelance, mostly supporting headteachers with culture, behaviour, courtesy, teaching & learning, systems, and he has his own podcast: Barry Smith Education.

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss what they've learnt and are discovering about coaching: how powerful it is, and how it's harder to do really well than it looks!In particular they dive into the ideas of sequencing/structuring teacher development, giving the coachee the opportunity to own and unpack what they've done well, and the importance of rehearsal, amongst other things.They reference the fantastic 'Responsive Coaching' by Josh Goodrich:https://amzn.eu/d/0bKPFOMq

Pritesh is a science teacher, head of science and assistant head in charge of teaching and learning at Ark Soane Academy.  Known as the best science teacher in the country because of his student's outstanding results, Pritesh takes us through the what, why and how of his approach to classroom teaching, including direct instruction, rehearsal, participation, the three phases of questioning, independent work, booklets, sequencing, chunking and precision.Amongst other things, we also discuss the intentional development character, culture and behaviour – things which are evident in abundance when talking to students at Ark Soane Academy.

In this episode Matt talks to Femi about the things he has learnt from his visits to some of the highest-performing schools in the country and reflects on the ways he would change his teaching as a result.The pair talk about answering in full sentences, paired talk, choral response and rehearsal, amongst many other things.Get in touch with comments, questions and suggestions: @BeyondGoodPod on X

A short announcement from me to say that we have decided that the last published episode will be the final episode in Season 2, an announcement which simultaneously heralds the arrival of Season 3. I'm excited to say that you can expect more guests on the show in the coming series – Our interviews with star science teacher Pritesh Raichura, and eminently sensible super head Barry Smith are both in the editing pipeline, and we're aiming for something like a 1:1 ratio of episodes with guests to episodes with just me and Femi.  New series and next episode coming very soon, thank you for your patience, and have a wonderful summer term!

Today Femi and Matt discuss their career changes, both recent (in Matt's case) and forthcoming (in Femi's) and how they are thinking about teaching and learning, and education going forward.  This context should throw some light onto some of the conversations they have had recently or that are coming up.  

The discussion today was prompted by a listener question about students being late to lessons, so Matt and Femi each give their take on that.  They discuss what they think the relevant psychology is and how they each handle this situation.  They talk about whole-school policies and dealing with a culture of lateness as middle and senior leaders – and different ways that schools approach the starts and ends of lessons, as well as transitions.  Femi and Matt also muse on some of the interesting situations they've faced in which the more effective approach contradicted school policy. 

The topic of today's discussion is Matt's visit to Ark Soane Academy, and in particular the impressive whole-school culture and the remarkable impact of that on student behaviours, attitudes and learning.  Femi and Matt talk about the best science lesson Matt has ever seen, and wider discussion about starting and running schools and embedding shared routines across the school.As always, all questions or comments welcome: @beyondgoodpod on X.

The topic of discussion this week is warning systems – so very much a behaviour-based episode rather than a maths one.  Matt and Femi cover a fair bit of ground: from classrooms with names written on the board and hundreds of warnings being issued each day through to classrooms with no warnings and students absorbed in their work.  And from supporting colleagues with behaviour issues through to the prospect of creating a school-wide culture around behaviour that leaves deleterious learning behaviours at the school gates.  

This week Femi and Matt debate the pros and cons of homework - a particularly slippery beast to nail down.  They get into some general principles and challenges of setting good homework, and what they have tried and each do now, among other things.  By all means let us know if you think you have this one cracked:@beyondgoodpod on X. 

In this episode Femi and Matt talk about modelling - in all it's various forms from leading on behaviour through to explicit teaching strategies.  In particular they discuss pre-made teacher models and explanations vs modelling live, in real time, and explore some really interesting nooks and crannies of that facet.X:@BeyondGoodPod

In this episode Femi and Matt discuss setting, the term ‘bottom set', attitudes towards, and working with students who have low prior attainment.  As you'll hear both advocates of ensuring that those students get the highest possible quality education, that we meet them where they are, and that we work hard, carefully and mindfully as a community to ensure that we divorce that honest recognition of differing starting points from any judgements of value or personal worth. Contact us @BeyondGoodPod on X.