2nd in Faculty Interview

Before I go any further in this blog post, I should say that I have never been successful in a second in faculty interview. I have had many though, and of those I have come close.

I think that the second in faculty is a difficult position. You are trying to forge your own path with respect to the area you are responsible for, yet you have to stick closely to the vision set by the head of faculty and stay loyal for the sake of the cohesion of the faculty.

That begs the question "what would you do if you disagreed with the head of faculty?" I have had this experience twice now. Once I had a major and very public strop (I got into trouble but I got my own way, and it was for the best of the students). The second time I supported what was decided and just had to be there to pick up the pieces when it did fall apart. I think I made the wrong choice, I should have fought more. Any other decisions I have either gone along with and things have been fine or gone along with and what was decided has been forgotten about anyway. So my answer: You have to pick your battles. Knowing what I know now, I would always fight for what I believe is right and I promise to never let something happen again that will have a detrimental affect on the students and school. But this approach in interview is honest, yet would it get me employed?

I believe that the role of the second in faculty is to be supportive of the other members of the faculty. Mentoring people and supporting those who are struggling with certain students or topics. "How would you support a colleague that is struggling?" In most of the schools I have been to interview in this question is about showing you have empathy and can be sensitive. The most important thing is that colleagues want to go to you for support. How do you build up that kind of relationship? Not be being a know-it-all, not by making out you are superior to others.

The job of the second in faculty is often to bring enthusiasm to the faculty. Bring in and lead on innovative and new ideas, organise trip and clubs. Do the things that the head of department struggles to do as they are bogged down in paper work and the demands of senior management. So a question may involve enrichment activities.

Every department I have worked in has had issues with a member of staff. Someone seems to be the "worst". What do you do if it is you that the parents/students/LSAs/other staff complain to? In these situations I don't like to work alone, but seek support. You need to see a the any issue from all angles and an alternative voice helps that. But how do you phrase that in an interview without looking weak and indecisive?

Other questions I have been asked involve my role as a form tutor; why I want to be a teacher; describe yourself in 3 words; describe your strengths and weaknesses; give an example of something you have lead on; how do you use afl in your teaching; how does ICT impact on your work as a teacher; how can you best utilise a VLE; how do you get over your passion for science to your students; should science be compulsory at key stage 4?

A classic question is describe an outstanding lesson you have taught. But a less familiar question is describe a less that didn't go well and what you would do about it.

The big question though is why do you want to work at this school? Can you engage with the staff and students enough to show you would fit in?

Remember that being a second in faculty is about fitting in, and it is probably for the best if you get the job if you wouldn't fit in.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Creating Your Own CPD Opportunities.

During the past four years I have worked in a school where there have been very limited CPD opportunities for me up until a few weeks ago. This has very disappointing in the light of there being three different management courses run by the school at different levels and there were and now are again opportunities to do courses with the National College for School Leadership, but only for favourites of the management.

It was most distressing when I came to fill in a job application form and all of my training is from four years ago. I decided to put things right for myself. CPD is available if you look for it and are prepared to use your own time.

Science teachers have/should have good access to training through the science learning centres. Unfortunately, despite the courses being paid for by bursaries this was still blocked for me.

I joined the ASE, which gives me access to School Science Review. Although not all the articles are of use to me on a day-to-day basis, I have found something in each addition that is of use or interest. Membership of the ASE has also given me access to two local events. The West of England Science Teacher Conference and a visit to Slimbridge on one summers evening. (I really enjoyed seeing a water vole, the Otters and a Spoonbill). Both of these events were outside school hours so I could go along.

I started using twitter for connecting with other teachers. Reading other blog posts and asking for ideas has been very useful. But more useful has been the positive community; I have connected with people who want to be better practitioners, who want to build a strong education system and have pride in their classrooms. For the first time in a long time I am more satisfied with my teaching and happier inside the classroom.

I have read books and continue to add to my library. The two I have really engaged with are called "Thinking for Learning" and "How Science Works". Both have made me reappraise my practice and what education is for. Whenever I visit London I go to Foyles as their education section is the best I have found.




In the South West the science learning centre and @Bristol hold free twilight events about 3 times per year to encourage teachers to come and use the facilities. There is always something to learn from these events.

I am on various mailing lists: STEMNET, National Science and Engineering Week, Edexcel, OCR, @Bristol and more. They send useful information so I don't need to search for it.

I have attended one teachmeet and contributed to another via video. Even taking part in distant teachmeets via watching the twitter hashtag gives something to reflect upon.

The National Big Bang Science fair occurs each March. I took my partner and step-daughter (you have to take a child) to the family day on Saturday. This was great CPD as almost all the companies related to science education were there, but not those trying to sell textbooks or online assessment packages. I am going again with a group of students and two members of staff. I really hope that they get something out of the day, I am sure they will.

I am planning to take part in an online training trial for the Yorkshire and Humber Science Learning Centre, although I haven't committed yet.

I am registered with the Schools Network and with TEEP, so get emails from them and can access their resources while I work at an affiliated school. I am also registered with the National College for School Leadership; there are a lot of good resources on their site and enough discussions to pose some questions and raise issues.

Lastly, as described in another blog post I too matters into my own hands and asked to be released by school to attend the ASE conference in Liverpool. I asked as early as possible in the year so there would be money available and I was granted permission. It was worth every penny and what I discovered will impact on my teaching for a long time to come.

Making your own opportunities does require a time commitment, but it has been worth the effort for me.

An Educational Philosophy?

On Tuesday 1st November I was set the challenge by @jwputt of writing my educational philosophy during the #addcym discussion on twitter.

In the past, when writing job applications I have split the personal statement/supporting letter into sections with sub-titles. One of those sections was entitled "philosophy". I would write:

I believe that learning is an invaluable skill for anyone to have. I actively encourage students to enquire about their subject matter; striving to make my classroom to be an atmosphere of “how?” and “why?”
I have worked tirelessly to promote a learning environment where students take responsibility for their own learning. This improved attitude has shown itself in the respect students' show to their class work and homework. I have used high expectations so that the students in my classes have a strong impression of what is expected of them both academically and behaviourally.
A major challenge obstructing achievement at the school I currently work at is low-self esteem. In order to combat this I make the students in my class feel valued and positively encouraged through the use of praise and impressing my unwavering belief in what the children can achieve.
In order to effectively learn, students require a solid foundation in numeracy, literacy and ICT. I plan lessons to involve opportunities to develop and build on these skills. The learning of key words is a main focus my teaching. I use ICT regularly within my teaching to help the students appreciate the applications of ICT beyond playing games.

I don't think that I ever considered why I taught science specifically, or the particular importance of my subject when I chose to become a teacher; I wanted to work with young people and not work in a profit motivated organisation. However, my main motivators have changed during my career: most recently I read James Williams' book called "How Science Works" and it changed my slant on teaching from seeing it only about helping young people but also recognising the importance of learning about science specifically. In between I have been inspired by learning to learn and teaching thinking skills and they skill colour what I do.

My current educational philosophy is to help young people understand the world around them. To do that I believe they should find things out for themselves, and experience the nature of scientific exploration. Teaching young people about the nature of what science is seem to me to be vital in an increasingly technological world. Solving the problems that humans have created for themselves is going to take people who can understand the science behind claims being made and their validity as well as people who have thinking skills necessary to solve problems in creative ways.

At the back of my mind when planning my lessons is how what I am doing helps my students understand the nature of science a little bit more. By doing this I hope I can build into them a natural curiosity that will help in more contexts than purely science.

What I learn from this reflection is that as I continue to teach my ideas and opinions grow and evolve. My next practical task is to understand STEM: how can maths, science and technology really work together to effectively, and more to the point, do they need to?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Rudgleigh Ave,,United Kingdom

Twitter and the PLN...

I come to blogging because of twitter. Many teachers on twitter have blogs and it is a very good way to share practice that cannot be described through 140 characters.

I had a twitter account for a long time before I started tweeting, but quickly got into it once I started following the right people. Now I follow anyone who is a teacher or trainee teacher and a lot of people who are related to education. Mostly I like to follow those in the UK, but there are a few very inspiring North American teachers who have twitter accounts too.

I have become good at filtering through the thousands of tweets in my twitter stream per day, usually only looking back over the past hundred or so. I can spot the avatar of the people and organisations that I am most interested in and tune into their tweets, gradually building up the people I follow has helped with this.

I believe that it took me a while to get into using twitter because I didn't know who to follow. I was trying to use the twitter recommendations and only found NASA and BBC news. Finding real people is much better.

So if I could only follow 10s of people instead of 1000, who would I follow?

@Bio_Joe
@Lethandrel
@cleverfiend
@Mr_D_Cheng
@NeedhamL56
@teachingofsci
@ViciaScience
@morphosaurus
@agittner
@asober
@57mason
@niamhirl
@maz_blaze90
@damianainscough
@DrDav
@Biolady99
@AnthHard
@deejbee
@cardiffscience
@Mallrat_uk
@123anatomy
@doc_gnome
@racheleppy

Would be my list of real people. They are all scientists and contribute to #asechat on Monday evenings.


There are another group who are ICT based and very much into blogging with their students. @ICTEvangelist, @ianaddison and @fraserspeirs would be a starting point.


There are also organisations on twitter. This is the part that I find the most useful: following what their latest ideas are and keeping up to date with the data being pushed to me rather than me having to look for it.

@STEMclubs
@Future_Morph
@RSC_EiC
@imascientist
@ScienceWeekUK
@TESScience
@GCSE_Science
@SAPS_News
@ScienceVoice
@ThePhySoc
@SciTeachJC
@scicast
@SexEdUKation
@planetscience
@OxfordEdScience
@ARKive

There are others, such as the department for education and the schools network. One can even follow Toby Young.

However, any science teacher new to twitter who starts with these lists should be able to build their "personal learning network" up quite easily from these starting points, and have no trouble in learning or re-learning something related to science education.