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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By The Disgruntled Teacher It’s Sunday night. Your stomach has begun its weekly interpretive dance routine. The mysterious rock you swallowed sometime around 4pm has now settled just under your ribcage. Your bowels are whispering, “Monday is coming…” Tomorrow… school. But breathe. You’re not alone. And more importantly — you’ve survived every other Sunday before…
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Are we asleep at the wheel? Right, colleagues. Gather round the metaphorical staffroom table. Because I’ve just read something that makes me wonder if we’ve all gone completely numb. The Department for Education has announced a recommended 6.5% pay increase over the next three years for teachers. Lovely headline. Almost warm and fuzzy. Except —…
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It’s half term. We’ve made it. Just about. Eight long weeks of teaching, marking, data drops, detentions, and detangling headphone wires from confiscated phones. We’ve crawled to the finish line, our souls held together by caffeine and passive aggression, and now… here we are. Half term. The calm between storms. The briefest of respites before…
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CPD: The Endless Cycle of “Learning to Learn” I’ve lost count of how many CPD articles I’ve seen lately.Apparently, teachers must now learn how to learn, learn what to learn, and occasionally learn why we’re learning what we’re learning — all while learning to reflect on the learning we’ve just learned. Don’t get me wrong…
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No Surprises, Really? This week, TES ran with Ofsted’s latest claim that their new inspection model will mean schools face “no surprises.” “No surprises.”From Ofsted. That’s like Greggs announcing a fine-dining restaurant — technically true, but it still feels like a practical joke.(Although, to be fair, there is one in Newcastle — the Greggs Champagne…
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Really slowly… then all at once! Every few months something happens that makes you think. Something that opens your eyes to something you perhaps knew was there but didn’t really pay attention to. Perhaps there was a little wet patch above the lounge “It’ll be alright, we’re coming up to winter, perhaps its just condensation”.…
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“It’s Not a SEND Crisis – It’s an Everything Crisis” At this point, I think we can all agree that “crisis” has lost its meaning in education.We’ve had funding crises, recruitment crises, behaviour crises, and now, the big one — the SEND crisis. Except it’s not really a SEND crisis, is it?It’s an everything crisis.…
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Somewhere between exhaustion and end-of-year formality… we find our why. I’m struggling to get back into the swing of things. Here I am in my 10th year of teaching and I STILL feel like I’m wading through treacle in September. Surely by now it should all feel seamless—like breathing, or making tea, or muttering “why…
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I’ve been reading Range by David Epstein. It’s about how some of the world’s greatest talents didn’t specialise early, but instead dabbled about before eventually finding their thing. Take Tiger Woods: golf club in hand practically from birth, the poster child of early specialisation. And then Roger Federer: the lad who tried everything – football,…
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Meet Mr Holloway My name is Gareth Holloway, I’m a secondary school teacher in the UK. I am starting this vlog to share what it is really like to be a teacher. Join me on Instagram and Youtube via the links below The Disgruntled Teacher VLOG #1: Meet Mr Holloway Follow us on Instagram here:…
