The Department for Education is running a series of webinars about returning to school. Details here:

Remote education webinars

Unfortunately, I missed some of the dates when I had a quick look last week, and some have already passed. However, there is one this afternoon for secondary school teachers, at 4pm, and the recordings are being uploaded to the DfE’s YouTube channel. Here’s what the DfE website says:

These webinars will explore remote teaching strategies and techniques using examples from science lessons (primary) and music and Spanish lessons (secondary).

Each webinar is limited to a capacity of 10,000 viewers. Recordings of each webinar will be available to watch after the live events through the DfE YouTube channel. I don’t think the recent ones (from the last week or so) had been uploaded at the time of writing.

I watched one of the videos in that channel, and it featured someone gushing about going back to school. I think her enthusiasm is infectious, but the video didn’t seem to have very much in the way of practical advice, apart from spraying keyboards.

One thing I disagreed with though, but then maybe the schools I taught in were much tougher, and in any case I wasn’t teaching during a pandemic. But in relation to some Year 11 behavioural problems, the teacher on the video talked about showing them love and understanding and respect. Well, in my experience, the teachers who are shown most respect are the ones who can keep the class well-behaved. I mean, by all means show them love and understanding, but do so by putting them in detention first.

No, I’m not Mr Gradgrind from Hard Times, but I don’t see why 29 kids in a class should have their education disrupted (even further) by that one person who doesn’t know how to conduct themselves in a proper manner.

You can read more about my enlightened view of class discipline by looking at Discipline In The Classroom: What, Why And How (Updated).