Improving Teaching Programme – working with John Tomsett:

John and I have devised a programme where we’ve been into schools together on three days a few weeks apart, observing lessons with leaders and exploring how their CPD and/or coaching systems work to support teachers, linked to the Walkthrus materials. Each day ends with a training session with teachers. It’s been absolutely brilliant and we’ve met some fabulous people – always hugely inspiring. Hopefully we’ve been able to offer useful support to schools working hard on this important work.

In January we were in Southport… we’ve also been to Manchester, Sheffield, Rutland, Hastings, Dover, Milton Keynes, Hyde.. with more to come.

The Walkthrus-John Catt Partnership

Walkthrus wouldn’t exist without the amazing work and support of Alex, Jonathan and the team at John Catt Ltd. In February we met on roof of the Hodder offices by the river in London for a two-day planning session setting out our long-term partnership. Here’s our ‘boy band reunion album’ photo.

The highlight this month was the publication of Walkthrus Volume 3. The culmination of our two and half-year process, involving a host of amazing contributors. Such a joyful process and wonderful to see the books finally come real after all the hours of talking and writing.

Below, are images from another new departure: our first training session with Walkthrus Trainers, hosted in partnership with Haringey Education Partnership. 40 schools have now had training via one of these trainers – brilliant enthusiastic people. HEP, through the utterly brilliant Fran Hargrove and Nat Hussein, are now formal partners with Walkthrus to deliver our training and various other elements of our membership support offer.

Another highlight – March was busy! – was having the opportunity to record the audiobook for The Learning Rainforest. It was a strangely enjoyable intense three days reading my words in a tiny booth. So far about 500 people have bought a copy which is way more than I expected.

A big feature of my work has been delivering training days – I must have done over 25 days like this this year plus lots of shorter sessions and zoom days. I love the whole energy of it – a big room full of people talking about teaching. This day was lovely – a couple of primary schools in the LETTA MAT in East London with teachers and TAs all in together. A classic Rosenshine day.

Here I’m pre-recording one of many zoom sessions as part of an ongoing project with the fabulous people in the Primary section of Bangkok Patana – a huge primary school by any standards. Under the leadership of the fabulous Mark Verde, they’ve been doing superb work on instructional coaching and it’s been great fun supporting them from afar.

I now never do any work at all in August – so the only thing to report was a lovely summer planning day with Oliver. He got his post-its out and we started planning an over-haul of our website which we’re still working on. Days with Oliver are my very favourite days. It’s soul-food.

It’s always a brilliant start to the year, going to the ResearchEd National Conference. This time it was at Parliament Hill School in Camden. A fabulous event – every session I attended was gold.

In October we launched a large Walkthrus system project with Brighter Futures for Children involving over 40 schools in the Reading area. This is one of several ongoing projects where groups of schools in an area share the journey of implementing CPD and coaching programmes built using Walkthrus. The techniques, shared language and common purpose are a powerful set of drivers.

Below are images from a brilliant trip to Frederick in Maryland. First was the superb ResearchFRED event hosted and organised by Meg Lee and her colleagues. Then I had two days with the awesome FCPS team talking Rosenshine, Walkthrus and evidence-informed PD. A wonderful trip .

The final blogpost represents hours of work by the great people at Chiltern Learning Trust. We made a set of videos using Walkthrus – it was a great idea by Sufian Sadiq and Nadine Cotton, executed superbly.