Vice Principal for Oulton Academy. Views are my own.
Pontefract, England
Joined November 2012
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Great start to the day at Epic (q)Universe, not only are the queues excessive but 5 headline attractions are closed on early park entry!
@UniversalORL
Ben Barnes retweeted
It’s a horrible, long, drawn out process. Which can make you doubt your abilities and question every interaction. It can trigger safeguarding reviews on several levels, Dfe and ofsted, not forgetting the schools own internal reviews.
Ben Barnes retweeted
The complaints culture in schools is now out of control. The threshold is way too low for firing in emails or calls and expecting affirmative responses. It seems it has become the main pastime in some people’s lives. I don’t know how school leadership teams with it tbh.
Ben Barnes retweeted
The way we help students with stress is to help them to master that stress or see the trigger as less stressful, not by confirming that the source of their anxiety must be avoided at all costs.
“Academic accommodations for anxiety convey two harmful messages. First, they imply that the feared situation is truly dangerous. Public speaking, testing, or lunch with classmates are too risky for a student. Second, they suggest that the student can’t withstand the distress. Those messages increase anxiety.”
What a fantastic article!! Eliminating things that cause anxiety don’t teach students how to cope with difficult situations and can heighten anxiety in the long term!! Avoidance is a TEMPORARY solution but can be harmful in the long run!
This article is well worth the read: tc.columbia.edu/articles/202… @BostonGlobe @TeachersCollege
Ben Barnes retweeted
Let's pick 100 random students with toilet passes
£50 to a charity of your choice says that 90 of them could sit through a film in the cinema without going to the toilet
Ben Barnes retweeted
Are ADHD, ASD, SEMH, over-diagnosed leading to a SEND crisis in schools? podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcas…
Ben Barnes retweeted
Just punched the air at Gavin and Stacey, what an ending #GavinAndStacey
Absolutely love this thread and it completely resonates with me, particularly about the culture needed within schools to improve them and how working from home will impact on this.
Ben Barnes retweeted
🔑 Quickly paste without formatting: Press Ctrl + Shift + V (Cmd + Shift + V on Mac) to paste text without any of the original formatting. Ideal for clean, consistent notes or documents, saving you the hassle of reformatting! #TopTips #EdTech #MarginalGains
Ben Barnes retweeted
We should be shocked by the behaviour that many students and staff are expected to endure in their everyday lives in school. Children need and are entitled to a place that is safe, calm and dignified free from disruption and harassment.
Excluded children still deserve a full time education option. Councils are obliged to place all excluded students in AP. No excluded child is outside that system.
Which is why we need more investment in high quality post-exclusion destinations PRUs, AP etc. We also need more investment in in-school specialist units where children with chaotic behaviours can be supported to re-integrate, without threatening the well-being of others.
'Inclusion' must be understood properly- it can't just mean 'keep them in the classroom,' or everyone suffers. Sometimes, the best inclusion work is done *external* to the classroom.
We should be shocked by these figures - children need to be in school learning and some need extra support to do so.
New Ministers now have an opportunity to tackle this as part of their fresh drive to move towards a much more inclusive education system- speed up SEND assessment & identification, boost children’s mental health support, get alongside children &families who are struggling.
We cannot continue to stick our head in sand about the scale of the problem or its impact on some children’s life chances.
That means focusing on why this is happening and doubling down on support for schools and teachers, and parents and children, to reduce exclusions and suspensions.
Big believer in this, you cannot supply resources to be taught by staff in a scripted fashion. It is vital that you can adapt on the fly to enable continual progression for all. Not an easy feat and a difficult skill but imo the ability to do this trumps differentiated resources
*** Adaptive Teaching: What Is It Anyway? ***
"Adaptive teaching is the subtle, tricky, but compelling stuff of teaching. No lesson package you lift from the Internet can eliminate the necessity for adaptation and responsiveness."
alexquigley.co.uk/adaptive-t…
Ben Barnes retweeted
A *lot* of messages I get from teachers and school leaders is about the problem of families refusing to support the school when it tries to intervene in their child’s behaviour. It usually boils down to ‘everyone should follow the rules apart from my Billy, he’s the exception’ My advice is almost always: Hold. The. Line. You cannot run a school to please every parent who puts pressure on you. If you do, the culture disintegrates.
Blimey!
We don’t have pre-pandemic data on this question, so we can’t say if this has got worse, but lots of teachers asked for the question as they felt it had… (via @teachertapp)
Ben Barnes retweeted
SUSPENSIONS. Quick reminder:
1. Schools with challenging intakes need more disciplinary responses than ones without
2. Suspensions are one way to help reduce exclusions
3. Schools that need to suspend, need to suspend
4. If they don’t, the environment gets much worse for children
5. Not all behaviour issues can be resolved by a kind word
6. Criticising a school for above average rates of exclusion, demonstrates a misunderstanding of what ‘averages’ means
7. Don’t shame schools you couldn’t run
What an absolute joke the recovery process for @facebook is due to a hacked account, dead links galore, fantastic
As I enter the final week of term, this one is different, it is my last working for @OGATrust, a family I have been a part of for almost a decade and the majority of my career. The trust has provided me so many opportunities. Starting as HOD Computing at a pivotal time 1/n
A new challenge that I'm so excited about, a school close to home whose community I know well and I can't wait to get started (after some R&R over the summer of course!) Special mentions must go to @juliefslater for levelling me when I've needed it, @wilson_ld for the 12/n
healthy banter when doing the lockdown quizzes. @tristankp for being a great colleague whilst directors and @kzw22 for putting me in my place when I need it! It is an end of an era, but one with fond memories and most importantly one that has had an impact on so many young people