All posts by Neil

Creating a good work-life balance in all industries

Having a balanced life is the ultimate goal for most people – everyone wants to have their dream job, dream family and dream lifestyle. It is difficult but it can be done! Here are some ideas for getting your own life back into a better balance.

If you find yourself working much more than you should be – and are experiencing the negative side effects of stress and burnout, you may want to reconsider how much time you are spending on work related activities. One way of doing this is to give yourself a cut off time at home when you stop doing any work things and focus on your family or yourself. You could set an actual time, or set a specified number of hours in which you allow yourself time off. If this is tricky to begin with, try scheduling it into your diary as you would a meeting or appointment. Stick to it!

Another way to reduce the work is to turn your phone off when you get home – admittedly this is hard seeing as we live in a world ruled by technology, but if you find yourself answering phone calls and checking emails well after work has finished for the day, then this could work for you.

Supply Teachers: how to get called for time and time again

Supply teachers are often called to the same schools over and over again. What do you need to do in order to be requested for repeat supply cover?

One of the main reasons supply staff are called back is because they use their initiative. Whether it is asking for a school map, or asking if you need to take on a duty cover, schools notice when you take the initiative and ask them things. If you come into school and don’t ask, or keep yourself to yourself, the school will not see what an interesting and thoughtful person you are!

Next, being cheerful goes a very long way – by smiling and saying hello to other teachers and students, you instantly come across as a nice, friendly person who they will want to see again.

Finally, think about the teacher you are covering for – it might be a nice idea to leave a short note for when they return to let them know how the classes went and if there were any other interesting things to note.

Ways of reducing the paper trail for busy teachers

Teachers are renowned for having organisational skills with no parallel – however, there is always room for improvement! Have a read through these tips for some ideas on streamlining your time management for a busy teaching day.

Firstly, the dreaded paperwork mountain. One way to really refine your time spent on paperwork is to have a rule of touching a piece of paper only once. As soon as it hits your hand, decide whether it is important enough to keep (and file away straight away!) or read and recycle. If you get into the habit of dealing with paperwork quickly, you will find that it piles up less.

Another key idea is to attempt to go paperless as much as possible. There are myriad apps available for organisational purposes, including several designed with teachers in mind. Lots of schools use iPads, so why not see if there is an app to help you out. There are apps which double up as diaries and markbooks, can take simple registers and be used to record planning and assessment data. All of this can easily reduce the pile of papers on a desk!

Formative or Summative Assessment – What’s the Difference?

When it comes to assessment, we all think of tests and exams. But this is just scratching the surface of the assessment glacier. There are more than type of assessment!

Summative assessment is the type we all think of – end of unit tests, national exams and other formal written tests. The idea here is that summative assessments are assessment OF learning. It checks that students have learnt what you intended them to learn, and can be compared against one another to assess general progress. This data can also be reported to parents and other relevant bodies.

Formative assessment on the other hand, is all about assessment FOR learning. This involves all the dialogue had with a class, when you the teacher checks the progress during the lesson. Think carefully about the way you phrase questions in order to allow students time to think and respond. This assessment helps the teacher to plan further lessons and assess immediate progress.

Writing a good CV

The CV or resume is one of the few documents that could make or break your chance at getting an interview for that new job. Alongside the cover letter, the CV is the window into your skills, personality and background which a prospective employer can use to see if you could be a good fit for them.

One major thing to remember with a good CV is to make sure it is no more than 2 pages long, and certainly no less than 1 and a half! Any longer than 2 pages will make your interviewer lose interest, or think that they have been exaggerated.

Employment history should be kept to the last 5 RELEVANT years. If this is the first job since studying, you can list any part time work as “variety of part time jobs through university” or similar. The relevance of past employment will help the new employer see why you would be a useful addition.