 Hello everyone this is Teacher Toolkit. I'm in Scotland just behind me is North Berwick just east of Edinburgh to the my right St Andrews about 10 miles away so it's half-term and I've been Scotland having a bit of relaxation time trying to get my book finished. There's a blogger wrote a couple of weeks ago which has proved very popular it was also quite personal. There's 10 ways to demotivate teachers so I just want to kind of elaborate on those 10 aspects of what I believe schools can, schools can kind of own for themselves to kind of eliminate and stop these things happening in our schools so the first one is timetabling. The nature of schools are very complex. Schools always have to adjust to timetables of staff coming and going especially if you work in a large secondary school like I do. You know having over 100 teachers is quite a difficult challenge so the time tool constantly has to change but my issue here in terms of demotivating staff is when you are a good teacher you turn up every day you do your thing but you're almost punished by being at work and doing a good job because you fill in the gaps when other people can't do that so whether there's someone on long-term absence or someone not very good and has asked to leave all those certain aspects of things could create all sorts of problems. Number two on my list of 10 things to demotivate teachers is well-being. A lot of schools do their best you know dress down Fridays, cake Fridays, pub after school there's lots of different things schools do but they don't really cut down to the issue that work-life balances a fallacy. Teachers need to redefine or not teachers schools and our education system need to redefine our version of success. It's certainly not having the best exam results it's certainly not the teachers that arrive earliest and leave the latest and have all the books marked. We need to do a huge change in our education system to improve the well-being of our teachers and our students. We know mental health is a growing issue in our system so we need to do more about that to genuinely look after our teacher well-being. Third one is data. We'll know that we can number crunch data until the cows come home and we know data is meaningless if we don't act upon it. We have all sorts of software systems that can ask us to input data half the issues. Teachers are always bombarded with so much workload that they have very little time to not just input the data also understand that then use that information so data is another reason if we keep asking teachers to input data, data, data because our accountability system requires it we're just going to keep demotivating on our teaching staff. My fourth topic is calendar and again busy school life things need to change and evolve and we might have a published calendar and believe things should be fixed and although I agree with that the nature of school life some things need to adapt and be changed. My issue in terms of school calendars is when you have two or three late evenings in one week it gives teachers very little time to do things after school to get home for childcare and then when things go a bit more pear shaped the calendar can be changed literally the day before or the week before and that's not good for anyone. So calendars really when they're badly led and organised they can really demotivate teacher staff. My fifth one is behaviour. If you work at a challenge in school like I do behaviour is a very important thing to get right it's a precursor for learning if all staff aren't putting in the effort and just one small kind of chink in the wheel students will always find the gap and so it's very important that there's a collective teacher efficacy that everyone is holding each other to account that we're consistent and we're doing the same thing as the teacher next door because we don't student behaviour especially in challenging schools where things can be very fraught and they can really impact on teacher well-being and demotivate staff it's important that we get these things right. Number six meetings I can't stand meetings I probably spend 50% of my time in meetings some are very important some not so I'm a firm believer in concise meetings with reading material before and after the actual event and meetings that are well led where they bring everyone into the discussions and with some clear action points with people that are accountable for the decisions that are being made and a clear time frame for things to be done and when meetings are badly led or there are lots of meetings there are certainly demotivating there are ways that people's time people don't want to be there and then it just makes people very demotivated. My next one I think we're on one two three four five six seven number seven deadlines when you look at the school calendar it's very important to integrate the assessment calendar within that and parents evens and everything else and deadlines can become very badly managed they can all hit you at one period if reports are staggered out which is a good thing you can feel that teachers are always writing reports throughout the entire year especially teaching a secondary school where you're teaching year seven eight nine and ten for example you could be writing reports for a good two or three months with a couple of weeks break in between. So number eight on my list ten ways to demotivate teachers and number eight is off-stead I'm not gonna say anymore I think it needs a rapid reform I think we need to get to a way where school improvement involves actually holding the spectres to account where actually they're pushed back into the school system to help the schools actually improve and not disappear whenever see them again we also need to involve more teachers I've got Freddie here here we go last two conversations it's important that every teacher has polite conversations with each other particularly in front of students and on corridors isn't that right we like nice teachers and nothing worse than bullying tactics to demotivate staff and the final one there's about 50% of school still grading teachers and individual lessons and evidence speaks for itself if I come and observe you someone else comes and observes you two or three days later the likelihood is of the grade will be quite different so get with it look at the evidence and start asking your school and school leaders to stop grading teachers and individual lessons it's certainly not going to motivate teaching staff it's not looking at their practice over time it's a snapshot and we all know these things so if you're in one of those schools then please please please share the evidence with your school leaders that lesson grading does not lead to school improvement or better teaching practice and that's me signing out this is teacher talk it this is mini teacher talk at your real name is Freddie okay and here we are in lovely fife and Scotland at half-term thanks for watching and I'll speak to you soon