Beyond Good

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.