CRACkInG THE TEACHER-TA RELATIOnSHIP: What can

from HWRK Magazine: Issue 23 - November 2022

THE CASE FOR ADAPTIVE QUIzzInG In ASSESSMEnT

I wanted you to not just have my word for it, so here is my previous TA, Danni Bryan, explaining her perspective on her role in the classroom:

What I love about being a TA is that no two days are the same. Beyond anything else, t’s taught me to be fl exible and to adapt quickly! The best part of the role is, of course, working with the children. I enjoy the moment a child works out the solution to a question they fi nd tricky and the look on their faces when I tell them I’m proud of them for the determination and resilience they have shown to get there.

To be a good TA, having a good relationship with the teacher is everything. It shows well in the classroom if the adults can interact and work well together; the children are calmer and it’s a happier environment for everyone. It also models good relationships well to children, too.

Being a TA comes with challenges just like every other job, but knowing you’re making a diff erence in a child’s life is everything and more. With this in mind, here are my top tips for working e ectively together through the year:

1. Find out what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are. If you are both aware of this through the year it is even easier to o er additional support where it is needed, and more likely to be wanted.

2. Don’t let your mood a ect your relationship. We all have up and down days - try not to let these a ect how you speak to each other. Sounds so simple, but when you spend so much time together, it can be harder than you think! Take the time to ask if they’re okay.

3. Make each other drinks. The little gestures can make such a di erence to the wellbeing of sta , and you are best placed to look out for each other. 4. Leave a note to start the morning - even if you have time to talk, it’s always useful to have the day outlined with clear instructions.

5. Keep an intervention folder - a paper one! - where short notes of children and groups which have been taken can instantly be seen. Yes, online is great but sometimes a quick look in a folder that is to hand can be invaluable. It also shows assessments made by both of you.

By doing this, you are developing a partnership that will create a happy and stimulating work environment not only for you, as adults, but for the children. This relationship goes beyond imparting academic wisdom with the children; we model how to support others, work together and compromise. Children (as we all know) pick up on everything so they’ll notice an imbalance in the classroom.

There’s a saying I am sure we all know that I am guilty of using a lot (maybe even too much!): ‘teamwork makes the dreamwork’. It’s well known because it’s true.

“To be a good TA, having a good relationship with the teacher is everything.”

LEADERSHIP

24. Top Tips For New Heads of Department

Ex-military and now Assistant Headteachers, Will and George offer the advice they wished they’d been given before they took up their previous Head of Department roles.

Top Tips For New Heads oF deparTmeNTs

Being promoted to a Head of Department role is an exciting but daunting challenge. There are aspects of the role that you can’t really understand until you’re doing them, but some tips to guide you are always useful. Will and George offer the advice they wished they’d been given before they took up their own Head of Department roles.

By Will Pope and George Vlachonikolis

Will and George met each other more than 17 years ago in the same training platoon in the British Army. They served together on operations in Afghanistan in 2010/11 and both left the Army shortly after to become teachers and then Heads of Department. In 2022, they both moved into new Assistant Headteacher roles at their respective schools.

What advice would they give to a new Head of Department?

Will:

George and I met up recently and we realised that we had spent a combined ten years as Heads of Department. So, of course, we started to compare notes.

George:

It’s always interesting to listen to someone else who has been in the same role as you. Will and I might teach different subjects but we found that there was plenty of cross-over being a HOD - both good and bad. Will:

We both enjoyed the role. But, even for us ex-military officers, there were still some difficult challenges along the way. HODs are in the firing line for a lot of things. For example, we’re accountable for results, we’re still teaching full timetables and, when Senior Leaders are dreaming up new initiatives, it will usually fall on HODs’ shoulders to execute them (the initiatives, that is). Therefore, we thought it might be useful to compile a list of the tips we wish we had been more aware of when we started in this brilliant role. So, here goes:

1. Pause, Slow Down

Will:

We all want to create a great first impression. But, it’s important not to over-promise and under-deliver. Every new initiative needs resourcing and yet resources are scarce. Take a moment to consider the capacity of the staff in your department, who are already likely to be extremely busy with their schedules of lessons, duties and other commitments. Does anyone actually have any free time after school to run your new ‘Astronomy club’? Is the benefit of the club really worth the potential burnout of a busy member of your team?

The same goes for students too. Remember, they’ve probably had a music lesson, an orchestra rehearsal and two sports practices already this week before you’ve come along and added in a lunchtime revision class. I’m not saying you shouldn’t come up with any new initiatives, but I am saying that you can’t and shouldn’t try to do it all. Pick one or two and just do them brilliantly.

George:

Time is everyone’s biggest enemy at school. As a HOD, it’s important to recognise that you are not the only demand on your teachers’ time. Meetings are an obvious example for me. If you don’t need to have a meeting then don’t have one ‘just because’. There’s nothing worse than feeling like your boss doesn’t respect your valuable time. You can lose a lot of goodwill that way.

2. Get organised. Share resources.

Will:

I spent a lot of time in my fi rst month reorganising the departmental resources. It was one of the best decisions I made. I completely restructured the shared folder and Firefl y site, scanning reams of paper resources and creating a genuinely useful lesson bank from the vortex it had previously been. I think this gave everyone in the department a greater sense of security because they always knew there was a lesson they could grab at the last minute if they had to.

But it also did something else as well: we all became a bit more proactive in sharing new resources. This was great in terms of spreading good practice and providing a great starting point for new staff joining the department.

George:

My view is that, as a HOD, you are 100% responsible for making sure every member of the department has the resources they need to teach their section of the course. Ultimately, that’s an accountability issue. If the teachers ‘under your command’ weren’t able to teach to the best of their ability because you didn’t help them create resources, share your own or you just didn’t use your budget to buy some ‘off -the-shelf’ ones then that’s on you.

3. Build culture.

Will:

My Upper 6th leavers continually tell me that their most memorable experiences in Physics have either been the experiments where I’ve nearly hurt myself, or the trips to hear people other than me speak.

Our local university and associated professional institutes have all been instrumental in helping us build and develop a culture of academic curiosity in our subjects. A minibus after school, a packed dinner and a free seat in a university lecture theatre is a cheap and easy trip to orchestrate, especially when it is a repeating series of lectures. The pupils get a huge sense of pride in regularly attending and building their knowledge beyond the curriculum.

George:

Extra-curricular stuff Is great but culture begins in the classroom and the everyday interaction between teacher and student. Everything you do either moves your students closer towards or further away from your desired endstate. One metric that I judged myself on was whether my Upper 6th leavers reported that they enjoyed Economics more than other subjects. Did they want to come to our classes? Were they interested in the things that we were teaching them? If your students like your subject more than others, a lot of what Will is talking about – students going the extra mile outside of class will happen naturally.

4. Look Forward. Forewarned is forearmed.

George:

HODs are the engine room of the school. You have a permanently full inbox and people are looking at you for direction. To that end, you must ensure your calendar admin is impeccable. Similarly, keep your staff informed and reminded because, ultimately, If your staff miss deadlines then that’s a reflection on you. My ‘comms system’ certainly isn’t perfect but I try to make sure there are effective channels for information flows.

I used to physically sit next to people in my department, we had a Whatsapp chat and, of course, email. I frequently cc’d my staff into emails that weren’t addressed to them but that I felt they should be aware of.

Will:

I would echo George’s comments here. I send out a departmental email every Friday with a breakdown of the peculiarities of the week ahead and a longer-term forecast. I found that this method of multiple, procedural reminders of an approaching deadline meant that colleagues very quickly improved their reliability and were less likely to miss deadlines.

5. Difficult conversations.

George:

I’m a big believer that your department can only ever be as good as the teachers alongside you. So, it’s important to look after them. One way to think about that is you should be a filter, not a funnel, for the hundreds of tasks that inevitably roll downhill from senior leaders.

But, once in a while, you might come to the conclusion that a particular teacher simply cannot deliver what you and the school want. That is the hardest part of the job. I could tell you a lot of things about collecting evidence, setting agreed targets (with deadlines) and being specific in your instruction – but, the truth is, if this might be you, then get some advice from HR and senior managers quickly. Work with them and get some training in having difficult conversations.

Will:

Those conversations are dreadful. That said, I have found that colleagues will usually know if they have fallen short. Therefore, a well-placed question can often get them to break the ice and identify the problem themselves. At that stage, you can both begin to look forward and plan a solution. This can turn the conversation into a much more positive experience. Whatever happens, make sure the conversation is planned so it’s in a neutral space (not your office), has time allocated, and you won’t be disturbed. If your colleague feels they are being ambushed, it immediately sets things on a bad trajectory.

6. Manage up

George:

We all hate being micro-managed so be your boss’s easiest line management meeting of the week. Anticipate her questions, have the answers ready to go. You should highlight the problems and come armed with solutions. If you do this, you’re far more likely to get what you want and you’ll start to shape the department in the way in which you want (not someone else’s vision).

Will:

Perhaps it is just physicist in me, but I think that presenting information and data to your managers is going to be much more welcome if it is clear, simple and easy to digest. Once you have spent hours compiling your data, an extra five minutes putting it into a graph and making it visually appealing is an obvious final step to present your argument. I would also say that, as well as the Senior Leadership Team, fostering strong relationships with those other teams in the school who will help you improve your department is crucial – the catering, estates, IT, transport, grounds, medical, administrative and bursary departments will all have amazing skills that will make your life much easier. Keep them onside.

Success isn’t guaranteed. Whether you inherit a well-oiled machine or what feels like a rust bucket on its last legs, we hope these pointers may help ease your transition into this new role.

Our motto when training at Sandhurst was “Serve to Lead” and both of us have found that it served us pretty well as both soldiers and teachers. If you were to use those three words as your overarching principle in the decisions you make, you won’t go far wrong. Good luck.