You are now most likely entering the time of year where everyone's favourite evening of the school calendar happens1. Yep, it's time for the first parents' evening of the year! People do though.... Parents evening should be a time for you to give feedback to parents as to how their child is getting on. Every child. It should be a space for you to be honest and truthful, which may include telling a parent how their child spent the lesson throwing glue sticks at the ceiling to see if they would stick, or doing zero work and then looking affronted when you remind them you're meeting their parents and the report won't be good.

At some point in the next couple of weeks, or possibly already, year 11 will start their first round of mocks. Before I go any further, I should say the majority of my experience was in a 11-16 school, so if you also have year 12/13 mocks then I feel for you, and particularly your marking load. Solidarity, and all the tea…

It's the holidays. What the fuck1 are you doing reading an education blog? Get outside, play with your kids, read a book, watch a film, do something else. Look! It's outside! Until next time.

It's half term! One half term down, five to go. No, wait, come back, don't go cry in the corner... Have a beverage of your choice - you've earned it. When we reached this particular half term, my overriding feeling was always relief. This one is always a monster. We go from the light evenings and reasonable temperatures of September to end up here: wet, windy and dark October.

A few years ago, there was an advertising campaign which had celebrities naming a teacher who had inspired them. I can't remember much about it1, apart from Bob Hoskins growling someone's name. There's also a video on YouTube of Ian Wright meeting his former teacher guaranteed to melt the heart of anyone except the biggest cynic. Take a look below.

Nope, not the Cameron Diaz film, which I admit I found pretty funny, although I am easily pleased1. The reason for all the lesson observations and performance management shenanigans is down to bad teachers. Nothing improves a blog like a random picture of Cameron Diaz2. In an earlier post I said that bad teachers are on the decline and I absolutely stand by that.

The first week Open evening and other shenanigans The grind starts…. Performance Management Lesson Observations It’s all over. After 31 years, I’m hanging up my chalk1 and trying …

Ten years after the wolf war begins, a London mishap changes everything in David Watkins' thrilling end to The Originals series in The Originals Rage review.

Following on from last week's musings on Perfomarmance Management, let's take a look at the other bit to PM - having a lesson observed. Lesson observations are weird. They are undoubtedly nerve wracking, but they shouldn't be. See, the problem is teachers work in isolation most of the time. Sure we have the 30 (or more!) students looking at us, but we rarely have other adults in the room.

Ah, is there any other two word phrase designed to invoke a mixture of fear, disgust and feelings of inadequacy in a teacher than ‘performance management’? The process involves looking at your performance (clues in the name!) over the past academic year. It is meant to look at the training you recieved, your job description, […] Performance Management (PM)

Ah, is there any other two word phrase designed to invoke a mixture of fear, disgust and feelings of inadequacy in a teacher than 'performance management'? The process involves looking at your performance (clues in the name!) over the past academic year. It is meant to look at the training you recieved, your job description, a lesson observation (or more), results for key stakeholders…

So I had some feedback from people1 reading this and as a result, I'll do less footnotes this week, promise. Okay, with that out of the way, let's get on with the grind. You've been back in school three weeks. What's that? No, really, you have. The summer seems a lifetime ago (and it was), your tan has gone, you don't know what it's like to have free time and your life is ruled by bells.

Ah open evening - one of the highlights of the academic year1. Children come to look around 'big school' and get excied about the range of activities teachers have cobbled together to show them. These activities are designed to get the children to be students, so they are invariably exciting and fun.2 In some cases, schools will decorate the corridors with plants to make the whole place look less like a prison.

A school year starts something like this: Day one: 9am start (earlier if you're really unlucky). You've just had the worst night of sleep you've had in the last six weeks, possibly ever. You turn up early, because you want to set a good impression1. The staff room/hall/wherever you're meant to meet is full of people with quickly fading tans chatting about their holidays and what a shit night's sleep they just had.

No, this isn't a review of the splendid Adam Nevill book... Today is my last day at a place I have worked since January 2005. I have taught for 31 years, so two thirds of my career has been in one place. To say today has be emotional would be an understatement of biblical proportions. This is the side of teaching that no-one really sees: the thanks we get at the end of term (or in my case, the end of a career).

Better late than never, right? The endless cheese fog has lifted and I'm gearing up to returning to work tomorrow - the same day my eldest leaves us to return to university. Normal life will resume, which is depressing enough, and I'm doing dry-ish January. What the hell is 'dry-ish' January? Well, I have set myself the goal of being a little fitter and losing some weight this year and the fastest way to do that is to cut out booze (for a bit).

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Better late than never, right? The endless cheese fog has lifted and I’m gearing up to returning to work tomorrow – the same day my eldest leaves us to return to university. Normal life…

Better late than never, right? The endless cheese fog has lifted and I'm gearing up to returning to work tomorrow - the same day my eldest leaves us to return to university. Normal life will resume, which is depressing enough, and I'm doing dry-ish January. What the hell is 'dry-ish' January? Well, I have set myself the goal of being a little fitter and losing some weight this year and the fastest way to do that is to cut out booze (for a bit).