The Importance of Practicality in Effective, Inclusive Teaching

Cutting through the noise and stripping back to what's crucial

I know first-hand how overwhelming it can be when leading a department, setting up a new whole-school initiative or teaching linguistically diverse classes towards aspirational outcomes. The temptation is to want to do everything (or feel like you need to do everything) all at once.

As teachers and school leaders, we have high expectations of ourselves; we strive to do the very best that we can for all of the learners in our care; and yet the overwhelm of implementing "all the things" successfully, in addition to the workload demands and time-pressures on teachers, can end up stifling us and lead us to feel like we aren’t achieving much at all - an absolute crush for our teaching self-esteem and motivation.

And we all know, that there’s so much “noise” in education: strategies you should be using; pedagogy you should know about; processes you should be following; terminology you should be using when talking about your practice.  

Often the “noise” around what teachers should be doing creates another distraction from feeling good about the impact that we are having day-in-day-out. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard a new educational buzzword and panicked over not knowing it - only to realise that it's something that’s always been a part of good teaching and learning practice and already part of my "bread and butter teaching". And when I take a moment to feel good about my practice, recognising the impact of strategies that are embedded within my curriculum which enable learners to progress; strategies that are simply there as a result of being an experienced practitioner and knowing my students and the challenges of my subject, then actually, I'm able to celebrate my strengths, feel good about my practice and am ultimately far more productive as a result.

Is this just me? I often wonder how many other people have and do feel like this in relation to the mountain of planning, assessment, strategising and implementation that lies in front of them. This type of distraction (for me) can easily derail my productivity or ability to complete an urgent task, something that can feed further into the cycle of overwhelm.

So, how can we cut through the “noise” and focus on feeling good about doing our best for our learners whilst imposing practical and realistic expectations on ourselves at the same time?

Know your students

We can know our students and keep everything focused on their needs. This doesn’t mean creating a different lesson plan for all of the different needs in our classes, it means being flexible, adaptive and incorporating “baseline inclusive strategies” that are "helpful for all" but “crucial for some”. It means evaluating how students are progressing and shifting our approach depending on our findings during the lesson.

These can be small shifts, for example with the time that we give for students to respond to a verbal question; in the key words that we write on the board as we explain a concept (with visual support like gesture and diagrams drawn as we go); or the sentence starters we scribble down on a mini whiteboard when we notice someone is struggling to write their ideas down (multi-lingual learner or not). Of course, the golden nuggets of information that we learn about our students in each of these instances and how we use this information to support their learning moving forwards, is something that I know all good teachers do, but perhaps don't always have the time to recognise our impact as flexible, adaptive practitioners here.

Reflect and Align

Teachers are reflective by nature. We can't teach effectively without reflecting on the resources, time constraints, desired outcomes and the individuals that we are working with. When working with bigger picture goals, activities and deadlines, we should remember our innate abilities to be reflective and align every action to these contexts to ensure that our actions are realistic and have the potential to create positive, sustainable impact. (If I ever meet you in person, I'll be very happy to tell you all about the unrealistic "fails" that I had early on in my middle-leadership roles by not doing this and getting completely overwhelmed as a result).

The SEND Code of Practice “Assess, Plan, Do, Review” is something that I refer back to often when feeling overwhelmed in teaching or when developing a provision for an individual or group of learners. Whilst this is part of a process followed by SENDCos when implementing a graduated approach for support, the concepts are so applicable when developing provision within mainstream or with language-focused pull-out learning. It puts the learner in the centre and helps practitioners to prioritise and what’s most important for us to put in place for that learner to thrive - “now” and “next”.

Prioritise 

Identify the most critical areas to focus in your teaching practice or the most pressing tasks related to your students’ outcomes and wellbeing. Sounds simple doesn't it? But I can hold my hands up and say that when I'm feeling overwhelmed or spinning too many plates, my ability to prioritise effectively is impacted. So this is just a friendly reminder: prioritise goals that will have the most significant impact on student learning and engagement. Going through your “to-do list” and highlighting the three most important tasks for that day or week (in alignment with knowing your students and context as above) can be a helpful way to focus on what’s really essential for you to do next week and what’s not.

Collaborate

How often has a colleague shared something valuable with you that’s shaved some time off your to-do list that week? Whilst it’s hard to get into the mindset of being collaborative when we’re feeling overwhelmed, having a conversation with a colleague, mentor or line manager can often open up more efficient ways of doing something, or reveal a resource that can help deliver an outcome or save us some time when completing the task ourselves. 

Become aware of the “noise” in teaching

Once we notice the noise around us in teaching, we can start to sift through and identify the helpful noise from the less-helpful noise. And, if we want to get really radical, we can try to replace the less-helpful noise by noticing what’s working, where there are small wins, baby steps to celebrate, and noticing the positive impact that we’re having on our learners day-by-day (including the steps that we took to be able to do this "noticing"). This enables us to amplify and do more of it.

 

Don’t feel bad to strip it back

In a past moment of overwhelm, I remember being asked by my line manager to just focus on teaching my students and supporting the staff in my team. I think about this simple but important advice often, and I wish for all teachers to have access to a line manager who can encourage them to keep it in perspective so succinctly. Whilst this isn't necessarily a long-term strategy, when we've taken on more than is realistic for us to manage (or initiated more than we can deliver on without feeling overwhelmed - hands are up again here), getting perspective and stripping it back can help to deliver on what's crucial - being there for our students and our team.

Be realistic

Let’s also remember that we’re in a teacher recruitment and workload crisis. Being practical and realistic about our goals as a teacher or school leader is not only essential for maintaining effectiveness and managing expectations, it’s a critical component of having the time and both the mental and physical resources to enable us to continue doing what we all strive for: having a positive impact on our learners’ whilst not losing our passion and zest for the day to day realities of what these outcomes require.

Remember ...

By keeping these ideas in mind, you can ensure that your goals and “never ending to-do list” as a teacher are practical, realistic and conducive to continuous improvement and outcomes for your learners. Ultimately, by being in the classroom as the best version of yourself that day, addressing your students’ needs and effectively making a clear plan of how you are going to take them further – that is everything.