Congratulations, fellow education specialists - we've made it to October half term! We're doing our bit for the Welsh lockdown and have fired up the remote recording gear to bring you our latest offering from our houses (so please accept our apologies for the odd glitch in the sound quality). Since we're at the half-time break in a very long and very strange term, we thought this would be another good time to model excellent practice by letting our hair down and putting something out that's a little lighter and looser than usual. As ever, Emma brings the substance, with a couple of book extracts and a tweet thread that muse on the nature of being a teacher. Tom brings us a blog, a heartwarming tweet about his previous life in the classroom, and the usual random news story with only the most tenuous link to education.

EPISODE NOTES UPDATE: We brought you Kate Clanchy's book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me before the huge argument blew up in which Clanchy was accused of racism, a number of her pupils defended her, the whole thing was picked apart in the press and, eventually, in 2025, her publisher apologised for the way it handled the situation. At the time of recording, none of this had happened yet! We may revisit this in a future episode...

If you want to read any of the material from this episode, here are the links, in order of appearance:

Myatt, M. (2020) Should it stay or should it go? Available at: https://www.marymyatt.com/blog/should-it-stay-or-should-it-go (Accessed: 27/10/20)

Clanchy, K. (2019) Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. London: Picador

Saunders, G. (2020) This year I have a lively Y9 class... [Twitter] 2 October. Available at https://twitter.com/Saunders__G/status/1312164724209938432 (Accessed: 27/10/20)

Saunders, G. (2020) ...late night musings continued... [Twitter] 3 October. Available at https://twitter.com/Saunders__G/status/1312165642166960128 (Accessed: 27/10/20)

Garrigan, M (2020) This memory popped up on Facebook... [Twitter] 16 October. Available at https://twitter.com/mandiegarrigan/status/1317027878358425603 (Accessed: 27/10/20)

Franklin, A (2020) Swearing parrots removed from public view at popular Lincolnshire attraction. Available at https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/lincolnshire-wildlife-park-swearing-parrots-4554933 (Accessed: 27/10/20)

Mackesy, C. (2019) The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. London: Ebury

----------

Recorded remotely on 21st October 2020