This week sees the addition of Nimish Lad to the Naylor’s Natter team. Nimish is Vice Principal for Curriculum and Assessment at Wrenn school in Wellingborough. He is also a teacher of science and enjoys engaging with educational research. Nimish is interviewing Dr Flavia Belham. Flavia is chief scientific officer for Seneca Learn, a social enterprise that provides free online learning resources for students created with the aid of cognitive science. As part of her role, Flavia has attended schools to present of how cognitive science can be applied within the classroom. She has also presented at researchED on why students don’t use effective learning strategies, which is the focus of this podcast.

researchED is an educator-led organisation with the goal of bridging the gap between research and practice.

This accessible and punchy series, overseen by founder Tom Bennett, tackles the most important topics in education, with a range of experienced contributors exploring the latest evidence and research and how it can apply in a variety of classroom settings.

In this edition, Clare Sealy explores how schools can get the most out of a rich curriculum, editing contributions from a wide range of writers, including: Neil Almond; Andrew Percival; Doug Lemov and Emily Badillo; Sonia Thompson; Christine Counsell; Michael Young; Ruth Ashbee; and Aurora Reid.

This week sees the addition of Jo Jukes to the Naylor's Natter team . Jo is the Trust Curriculum Research Lead @TEAL_Trust and @ResearchWolds. Jo is a Teacher of Business and will be contributing interviews regularly to the podcast.

Jo is interviewing Nimish Lad

Nimish is a highly motivated, enthusiastic and experienced senior leader in the education sector. A passionate education leader, Nimish had a high level of experience and expertise gained from nearly a decade in educational leadership roles. Nimish is delighted to now be focusing his energy in leading Curriculum, Sixth form, Data, Reporting and Intervention at a high performing secondary school in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

As a key member of the senior leadership team, Nimish champions the values of the school in which he works – Working hard, Respecting others, Enjoy learning, Never give up, Nothing is impossible. Instilling these values in the lessons he delivers and the teams he leads, Nimish has ensured that all stakeholders have the information they need to drive the rapid improvement that has taken place over the last few years. During his time on the senior leadership team, the school has moved from an Ofsted grading of a 4, to a Ofsted grade of a 2 within 18 months.

Nimish had driven the school to improve the use of data to plan lessons, and ensure that leaders at all level have access to the information they require to drive rapid progress and transformational change. Over his first two years on the senior leadership team the progress 8 score of the school improved by +0.5 with the percentage of students achieving English and maths at a grade 4 increasing by 22%.

Keen to share his expertise, Nimish has presented for ResearchED, Educating Northants NEDTalks and PiXL in the past, as well as hosting a global teachmeet for Its Learning. He is also completing his NPQH this year, conducting his 2nd placement in a local junior school.

Next week Phil interviews Joe Nutt 

This week Simon Cox is in the presenting chair interviewing my hero , the godfather of podcasting Mr Craig Barton . In the podcast pedagogy, Rachel Ball joins me to have a look at the rise of the education podcasts . We navigate the best podcasts in other genres and signpost you to Rachel's picks.

Next week we have another new podcasting dream team , Nimish Lad and Joanna Jukes who will be interviewing each other.

Aziza Ajak is a Science teacher and a Vice Principal 

 @durham_uni BSc |@imperialcollege MSc |@UCL MA |@teachfirst2014 | NPQSL | Science teacher & Vice Principal @GoresbrookSc @teachfirst trustee

1)Could you start by telling listeners about your career journey to this point including your 10% braver more like 100% braver on your journey to assistant headship ? 

 2) Your March 2018 blog ‘is it as simple as just saying thank you - how to value and develop individuals in resource limited schools . How can slt particularly now genuinely demonstrate valuing staff?  

3) How do we get recruitment and new staff induction right ? What is a Friyay trolley ? 

 4) Could you give listeners a senior leadership perspective on implementing while class feedback 

 5) From a look in the mirror , how do you juggle the competing responsibilities of teaching and learning and behaviour?  

6) From your blog , new young or inexperienced. Could you share the context for your discussion?  

7) Could you tell listeners about  authentic leadership ? 

 8) Why is it important to talk about authentic leadership   

Could you signpost listeners to your blog, website and your crowdcast with Niall Alcock ?

https://www.weareinbeta.community/feed

This week I am joined by Michael Zwaagstra to discuss his John Catt book - A Sage on the Stage

Our discussion

Could you start by giving us a brief history of your career to this point?

 Chapter one-  foolish educational fads is a fantastic read and one which will chime with many of our listeners , Could you outline some of those educational fads and gimmicks and tell us why education fads do teachers and kids no favours ? 

• A big question in chapter 2 raising academic standards- why should schools focus on the essentials and what are the essentials?

 •In chapter 3 you outlined that tests are good for students could you tell us more? 

•Could you tell us why content knowledge is important ? (perhaps taking in the explanation of Lord of the rings from the start of the chapter and how Tolkien showed a tremendous amount of creativity and even more importantly content knowledge in his Lord of the rings trilogy) 

•Why does discovery maths not add up? 

•My favourite chapter of the book is Chapter 7- improving life for teachers and students.  There is some fantastic common-sense advice in this chapter, firstly why is it time to call time on cell phones in school? 

•Will longer school days make students smarter? 

•Does every student deserve a personalised learning experience that matches his or her unique learning style?

 •Are distractions sometimes good for learning?

 •Is it valuable sometimes instead of bringing in a new initiative to simply stop doing things that aren't working as you put it improve teacher working conditions by dumping bad ideas?

 •Are gadgets in classrooms just gimmicks and should technology drive education reform?

  •Could you tell us where listeners could find out more about you and A Sage on the stage? 

 In podcast pedagogy , I am currently reading the rED guide to the curriculum edited by Claire Sealey who will be a guest in a few weeks.

Welcome to this weeks Naylor’s Natter . This week is a special episode that I have been sitting on for some time. As you will all know , I was due to help host with my colleague Mr Simon Cox the behemoth that is rED Blackpool. At this conference , I was due to speak about behaviour , not because I am some kind of expert but because I am a student of behaviour . I would like to think that after years of honing my own behaviour management that I am stronger in this area than at any stage of my career. I attribute this to learning from and listening to many of the big voices in behaviour over 20 years .

I started by learning from Lee Canter’s assertive discipline and this was a book I re-read each and every August before returning to school. I also discovered the behavior guru Bill Rogers and read many of Bill’s books and devoured his videos. The talk I referred to earlier was entitled ‘Behaviour- Ideology, evidence and pragmatism’ . Behaviour more than any other issue in school is highly controversial and teachers and leaders have many and varied styles and rationales for the behaviour policy they adopt . Teachers and leaders seem to have a strong position on their preferred behaviour approach and some seem to favour a particular camp or approach . This is very much teacher’s own choice and I fully understand that teachers are attached to their own particular style or strategy . The strap line for this podcast is talking to teacher and this is very much a philosophy that we at Naylor’s natter want to promote. On the podcast we have spoken to Sam Strickland, Tom Bennett , Kiran Gill , Jules Daulby and many other on their philosophy of behaviour . What hopefully listeners will find is that whatever your preferred style  , there is something to be gained from listening to everyone in the debate on behaviour .

This week’s guest is Paul Dix. Paul has written the hugely successful ‘When the adults change, everything changes’ and is an experienced teacher and a leading voice in education . What struck me in our pre-lockdown February half-term conversation is how much great advice for teachers there is within this book and how practical its application can be . Paul speaks humbly about his own practice in the classroom , his rationale for writing the book to help teachers like himself and how reading this book many change your view of how you approach behaviour but also of his approach . Lot’s of the debate on social media is quite binary , this approach is good that one isn’t . This behaviour expert is right , this one is wrong and the levels of praise or vitriol can be off putting particularly with new teachers.

This is a podcast to approach with an open mind , there will be something for you here whatever your current view on behaviour . You will hopefully see as I did , the common themes coming through from all the podcasts we have done on behaviour . I found Paul utterly charming and giving of his time and whilst I wont adopt everything we discussed , he really made me think about how to refine my own practice and that of the school . Thank you Paul

We have our regular TDT section which this week is anything but regular as we have leadership legend and friend of the show Jill Berry back to talk about leadership. In podcast pedagogy this week I am reading the researched guide to the curriculum – an evidence informed guide for teachers edited by Claire Sealey who I will be speaking to soon about this new John Catt book . I am also revisiting retrieval practice – research and resources for every classroom from the wonderful Kate Jones .