Detention Diaries
Exploring Education, building a community
recent posts
- Back to School: The Fear Is Real (But So Are You)
- Turn It Off. No One Is Emailing You.
- New Podcast: What Canada Gets Right About Inclusion: My Conversation with Dr. Shelley Moore
- 🎄 “Proper Training? In This Economy?” – A Festive Rant from the Staffroom
- The SALT That Isn’t Salty: A Modern SEND Tragedy
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Well. It’s happening. Netflix is giving you that “Are you sure?” look. The booze has to go back in the cupboard. You’re brushing your teeth like a Victorian chimney sweep because no child needs to smell Baileys and regret on a Tuesday morning. The fairy lights are coming down (if they’re not already a permanent…
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Merry F*ing Christmas This is your annual festive reminder that work is not your personality, and your inbox is not a Tamagotchi that will die if you stop checking it. It’s Christmas. Or at least Christmas-adjacent. The point in December where everyone pretends things are winding down while secretly scheduling emails for January like absolute…
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This week on the podcast, I had the absolute privilege of speaking with Dr. Shelley Moore — educator, researcher, consultant, inclusion specialist, and all-round force of nature in the world of SEND. I knew the conversation would be good… but I wasn’t prepared for just how eye-opening it would be. If you’ve ever felt frustrated,…
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It’s the 1st of December tomorrow, which means two things:1️⃣ Teachers everywhere are about to start pretending they love Christmas jumper day, and2️⃣ SLT are about to roll out the annual “festive CPD” — which is the same as normal CPD, but with a mince pie and a slightly more patronising PowerPoint theme. And speaking…
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This week I had the absolute pleasure (read: emotional exhaustion wrapped in admin) of attending my daughter’s EHCP meeting.As any parent of a SEND child knows, these meetings are more stressful than OFSTED, job interviews, or trying to teach Year 9 last period on a windy Friday. Enter the SALT team — “Speech and Language…
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Every Monday morning in briefing, it happens.Our deputy stands at the front, coffee in hand, PowerPoint glowing, and says the same thing: “Attendance is a whole-school target. We need to drive attendance. We all need to push attendance to bring up the numbers.” Cue the staffroom nodding. The silent agreement that yes, attendance is indeed…
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If you spend any amount of time in a school, you’ll hear phrases like “We’re a reading school,” “Reading is at the heart of everything we do,” and “Don’t forget to Drop Everything And Read.” Lovely stuff.Very wholesome.Children surrounded by books like tiny, chaotic librarians. But here’s something we don’t talk about nearly enough:How on…
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Department of Educational Survival StudiesBy: A Tired Teacher, PhD (Partially Half-Dead) Abstract This week, our long-term observational study into teacher behaviour during the Christmas term has yielded critical new data. Findings indicate a direct correlation between (a) how far we are into the term, and (b) the speed, size, and frequency of family multipack biscuit…
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So, the new curriculum reform guidance has finally been published this week — and, to be fair, there’s a lot to like.There’s talk of citizenship education, AI literacy, even understanding mortgages (which, frankly, would’ve been handy before I recently signed up for one). Finally, it feels like someone in the Department for Education has realised…
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🧑🎨 The Unsung Artists of Education There’s a certain type of hero in every school.Not the caped kind. Not even the “I’ve got a stapler that actually works” kind. I’m talking about the SENDCO. You know — the person who somehow juggles inclusion plans, legal paperwork, staff training, broken printers, and seventeen half-written emails that…
