Emma & Tom Talk Teaching

Emma and Tom are here to interrupt your summer holiday downtime with a public service announcement: there will definitely be a season 2 of Emma and Tom's PGCE Podcast! In the meantime, they've dusted off the microphones to bring you a quick reflection on season 1, some favourite moments from the series, and to look forward to what's coming up in season 2.We'll be back with episode 1 of the new season on Friday 6th September, so make a date to download, listen and enjoy. And if you haven't subscribed yet, don't forget we're available in all the good podcast places, so please do add us to your feed to get our episodes on your device automatically.See you again soon!

It's the end of the road for the 2018-19 PGCE cohort here at Cardiff Met, and that means it's time to put our last PGCE podcast episode out into the world. It's episode 21 and we've somehow managed to send our ramblings out into the world every fortnight since the start of September!For our final episode we're back out on the road, visiting Katy Edwards and Sarah Cason, Headteacher and Deputy Head of Palmerston Primary School in Barry. Their passion is tackling the thorny problem of teacher workload, and they've spent years building up a culture in their school where they can keep working to ensure that their staff are doing the right things with the finite amount of time they have available.The discussion ranges over three perennial trouble-spots: marking, planning and data. Katy and Sarah have a number of common-sense approaches to tell us about, and they reflect on the journey they've taken to get the school where it is now, and the mistakes they've made along the way.Our regular slots are present and correct, and by the last five minutes, the end-of-season fever has fully taken hold and the recording becomes a fairly riotous affair - we hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it!We'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who's humoured us and appeared on an episode, especially our academic colleagues, school colleagues and students - and not forgetting those unfortunate colleagues who were doorstepped in their offices to contribute to the pre-recorded packages we put out in episodes 9 and 11.We'll be back in September with more from the PGCE Podcast, and we'll try to put at least one episode out over the summer, too. If you liked our ramblings this year, please do rate, review and tell your friends. We're @ethayer_cmu and @thomasbreeze on Twitter.Thanks for listening! All the best fromEmma & Tom ----------This episode was recorded at Palmerston Primary School, Barry on 7th May 2019

We’ve reached episode 20 of the podcast with a certain amount of amazement that we’re still here! After the excitement of episode 19, we’re back in Emma’s office to chat to our friends and colleagues from Teach First Cymru. Dr Julia Jenkins and Rhian Davies-Jones (Damehood surely just a matter of time) have popped in to talk about one of the strategies that underpins the Teach First philosophy: deliberate practice. What is it? What isn’t it? And why would you want to run bits of lessons in a room with no pupils? Dame Rhian and Dr Julia explain all. Plus: why it’s nice to have five minutes of quiet time in your car, and shoutouts to @impactwales, #TeamCymru2017 and #TeamCymru2018. Join us next time for the last episode of the 2018-19 season, when we’ll be back on the road and dropping in on some colleagues from the primary sector to discuss the thorny question of teacher workload!  ----------This episode was recorded in studio B1.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 2nd May 2019

Well, this isn’t quite what we expected when we set up the podcast in summer 2018... shortly after the release of episode 16, in which our lovely students discussed a talk by the education minister, we received a message from the minister’s office suggesting that we might be able to get an interview with Kirsty Williams herself!It’s a big moment for Welsh education, as the draft curriculum has been published and opened up for feedback from the education world at large. As part of launching the new draft curriculum into the world, the minister visited Cardiff Met with some of the orchestrators of the new curriculum to present and take questions.This episode consists of Kirsty Williams’s speech, an exclusive interview by Emma and Tom with the minister, and a short reaction piece by four PGCE students who were present at the event.Those of us present at the event also heard words of wisdom from Ty Golding, Head of Curriculum Design and Development at the Welsh Government, and Cat Kucia, headteacher of Jubilee Park Primary School in Newport, and we reference one or two of their points during the discussion. We hope to be speaking to one or both of them in future episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and spread the word. We’ll be back in a fortnight, when we’ll be talking to our friends from Teach First Cymru.04:10 - Kirsty Williams Speech13:54 - Kirsty Williams Interview31:57 - Student discussion40:07 - Wellbeing, Something to Try, Shoutout ----------This episode was recorded in C2.14 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 2nd May 2019

Emma and Tom are joined by Sally Bethell, Senior Lecturer in PGCE Secondary PE, to discuss the five recommendations at the end of Lucy Crehan's book Cleverlands, in which the intrepid author gets on a plane to find out what lessons can be learned from five countries whose education systems are routinely held up as examples of excellent practice. The final chapter of the book distils everything Crehan learned on her travels into five principles that she feels underly excellent and equitable systems for the education of young people, and Emma, Tom and Sally have plenty to say about these - especially Tom, who is in particularly controversial mood and is now awaiting the arrival of his P45 in the post.The three regular slots - wellbeing, shoutout and something to try - get a whole new level of challenge when Emma and Tom decide to try recording them remotely: Tom's in Cardiff Met and Emma's at home with her dog, meaning that the whole thing takes place without the benefit of eye contact - and with slightly lower sound quality than we've become used to!Tom's got another good reason to go for tea with your colleagues: so you can make them your friends. Emma, meanwhile, combines the shoutout and something to try slots into a comprehensive explanation of live modelling as it applies to extended writing, and how Georgina Saunders, an English student teacher on the Teach First programme, used this to impressive effect in a lesson observation. ----------This episode was recorded in studio B1.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 1st April 2019

It's the middle of the Easter holidays, and Emma and Tom enjoyed recording the last holiday special for Christmas so much that they've decided to do another one!This time there's a bit more of an educational theme, but a change to the format: Emma and Tom both bring a blog post, a tweet and a story about a teacher into the studio, and neither of them is letting the other have any advance warning of the content...Emma has an uplifting blog post, a tweet that's a perfect summation of an accountability culture gone mad, and a story of pupil protest, quietly aided and abetted by subversive teachers. Tom plays true to form by starting off firmly on the rails with a blog post about dealing with work overload, and then veers off into the unexpected with a tweet about how to tell if someone is truly powerful, and a news story about an idea for a lesson that can only be described as insane. Emma hangs on for what she describes as a 'white-knuckle ride' of content, musing on whether Tom's about to get them both sacked - so a normal day at the podcast office, then!If you'd like to take a look at the content that inspired today's episode (and many thanks to all the people responsible for writing it!), please do take a look at the links below:Tom Sherrington: Overloaded? Out of Control? Press the Reset Button.Martin Robinson: Cultural MobilityEd Morrish: PowerAnnie Black: Horror StamperFake Ambitious Assistant Head: DifferentiationThe Telegraph: Crazy Lesson IdeaZapataforever: Protests Please do rate, review and tell your friends. You can find us on twitter at @ethayer_cmu and @thomasbreeze. Our department at Cardiff Met tweets at @ITECardiffMet.See you next time! ----------This episode was recorded in studio B1.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 8th April 2019

It's a cosy recording session in Emma's office this time, as we manage to squeeze four student teachers around the table with us to discuss the future of education, focusing particularly on the curriculum reforms here in Wales.After attending a talk by the Welsh Education MInister, Kirsty Williams, all four students felt they wanted to share their thoughts on the way things are moving, and the part they have to play as new members of the teaching profession.With four guests, we get plenty of material for the regular slots, and as an extra bonus we ask them what advice they might have for someone applying to join them in teaching. Their answers are honest, perceptive and inspiring!

Emma and Tom return to their roots with a podcast episode featuring just the two of them - it's been a while! Tom's also relieved to be back in the land of the living after recording the last three episodes back-to-back while suffering from terrible man-flu. With a two-weekly release cycle, that's over a month he's been missing in action on the podcast, occasionally croaking an intervention and then subsiding behind the controls and quaffing Lemsip... now he's sounding much perkier and ready to make a proper contribution!Episode 15 is another episode discussing a learning strategy that we can all try out from time to time: the flipped classroom. Emma and Tom discuss how they used it to reduce the amount of 'death by powerpoint' in their very limited teaching time with the PGCE students, how to get round concerns about technical knowhow and planning workload, and what they've found in the literature about the strategy.Tom's wellbeing tip turns into a fairly epic story, but with a useful message for us all about seeking out the people we think are better than us. Emma shouts out to the students who joined us to record episode 16 (definitely tune in for that one in a fortnight!) and also points out that most of us were never taught how to take notes in classes. Of course, she's found a handy idea to give us a much-needed system for capturing all that vital information from our teachers.Please do rate or review us, and tell your friends about the podcast - we love getting new listeners!Join us next time when we squeeze four students into Emma's cosy office to discuss the Minister for Education's vision for the future of education here in Wales. The article about PowerPoint in the Guardian that Tom mentioned is here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/23/powerpoint-thought-students-bullet-points-informationThe article about the teacher who gave up flipped learning is here: https://plpnetwork.com/2012/10/08/flip-love-affair/The pupil who thinks flipped learning is just teachers slacking off is here: https://www.thewrangleronline.com/13877/opinion/the-flipped-classroom-doesnt-work/ ----------Recorded in studio B1.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 11th March 2019

In this small but perfectly formed episode, Emma and Tom are joined by two guests: Rachel George and Rhodri Jones from Ysgol Maes y Coed, a school for pupils with additional learning needs. Fresh from delivering a session with the PGCE students, Rachel and Rhodri talk about how the expressive arts form a central part of the learning experience for their pupils, whose additional learning needs (ALN) range from autism to physical health issues requiring specialist care and equipment. Rachel and Rhodri are experts at not taking no for an answer, and have pressed industry professionals and celebrities from the world of the expressive arts into service enriching the lives of their pupils!There's plenty to think about in this track, from how we can use the arts to help pupils access a range of other subjects, to how we listen to the pupil voice to devise our lessons, and how the ALN learners were represented at the heart of the process to devise the new curriculum for Wales. ----------Recorded in studio B1.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 4th February 2019

It's time for another book review! Emma and Tom are joined again by Dr Judith Kneen to look at Tom Sherrington's 'The Learning Rainforest', a book that Judith rightly describes as 'a thing' in the education community right now. What will Emma, Tom and Judith make of this book which promises to tell us about 'great teaching in real classrooms'?After that. Judith brings her wellbeing tip, shoutout and idea to try - we hope you find them useful.If you want to read more from Tom Sherrington, his blog is teacherhead.com - and if you like our podcast, please do send us a rating, review or tweet. Emma is @ethayer_cmu and Tom is @thomasbreeze.We'll be back next time with more guests, and an episode all about how we can use the arts to enrich the learning of pupils with additional learning needs, and how everyone should give it a go. See you then! ----------Recorded in studio B1.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 29th January 2019