Day 2. She studied sculpture at Saint Martin’s College, that’s where I caught her eye..

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Today my cohort and I had the pleasure of meeting Mo Laycock OBE. Mo did not study sculpture at Saint Martin’s College, however she did have the pleasure of being Jarvis Cocker’s teacher (bravo to those who understand my geeky reference). Mo’s CV, however, certainly doesn’t stop there. As a former head of an incredibly challenging school in Sheffield she really has  already made the difference we all aim to make. In changing schools she has changed lives.

Mo talked to us about education and its developments, good and bad. Her ideas and opinions really made me realise that being a teacher is much more than leading learning in a classroom. She made me realise that being a member of a school really does mean making a commitment to the families within that school’s community.

I will not bore you to death with an in depth summary of her opinions or her advice I will however list a few key ‘survival tips’ which I think are worth sharing.

  1. Have passion. Embrace your subject and believe in its ability to change lives.
  2. Build teams, collaborate. These ‘teams’ or ‘networks’ are crucial to our success both in school and at home. These teams can, of course, overlap – however she did warn about the dangers of having a entirely school centred life. Consequently, a fellow participant and I joked about having a ‘school jar’ – modelled on the ‘swear -jar’, a £ for wine & cake fund every time someone uses the ‘S’ word after a certain time!!
  3. This brings me to her next key piece of advice – maintain a good Work-Life-Balance.
  4. Adhere to policy at all times – consistency is essential if you want to create a fair but firm approach to Behaviour for Learning.
  5. Outreach. Work with the local primary schools (and I might add Universities too). Making the school part of a bigger body of schools makes transition much less problematic for both students and teachers!

Again I will not apologise for any bad grammar/spelling or punctuation in this post, I am still running on a ridiculous amount of sleep and have spent my day trying to grasp the first concepts of lesson planning, exploring the begins of pedagogy and even started to ‘train my voice’ for the classroom, which (FYI) included humming for extended periods of time, who knew?

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