Craig Barton interviews guests from the wonderful world of education about their approaches to teaching, educational research and more. All show notes, resources and videos here: https://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/
Experienced heads of department, Femi Adeniran and Matt Findlay, join me for an epic conversation about leading a maths department. We cover everything from consistency versus autonomy, departmental meetings, handling parental complaints and allocating sets. You can access links to the resources discussed, time-stamps and videos on the podcast show-notes page here: https://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/168-how-to-lead-a-maths-department-with-femi-adeniran-and-matt-findlay/
Time-stamps:
- Matt's favourite failure (06:26)
- Femi's favourite failure (10:38)
- Matt's route into becoming a head of department (15:45)
- Femi's route into becoming a head of department (18:17)
- How many year's classroom teaching should you have before becoming a head of department? (21:02)
- How strong a teacher does the head of department need to be? (24:41)
- What does your timetable as a head of department look like? (28:43)
- Do you find you are teaching more these days than 5 years ago? (32:38)
- Does your teaching suffer with all the other things you have to give attention to? (40:00)
- How does your workload compare to a teacher with a full time-table? (46:39)
- How often would you be pulled out of a lesson to deal with something? (52:13)
- How do you balance the need for consistency across your department with a desire for teacher autonomy? (56:46)
- What are the non-negotiables that members of your team have to follow? (1:32:54)
- What do your departmental meetings look like? (1:57:13)
- How do you ensure good practice is shared around the department? (2:21:51)
- How do you support less experienced colleagues, non-specialists, those who are struggling? (2:23:16)
- How do you deal with directives from SLT that you don't agree with? (2:41:26)
- What do you do to help non-specialists (particularly SLT) understand what the characteristics of high-quality T&L in maths are? (2:48:37)
- How do you deal with difficult members of the department who are reluctant the make changes? (2:54:59)
- How do you deal with parental complaints? (3:00:48)
- How do you allocate teaching sets? (3:05:19)
- Final reflections (3:19:37)
- Craig's takeaways (3:32:42)
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Episode details
Experienced heads of department, Femi Adeniran and Matt Findlay, join me for an epic conversation about leading a maths department. We cover everything from consistency versus autonomy, departmental meetings, handling parental complaints and allocating sets.
Whether you are a current head of department, an aspiring one, or a teacher who is interested in the challenges a head of department faces, then this is the episode for you. I also have a feeling that the issues discussed are relevant outside of our maths bubble, but I will let you be the judge of that,
Whatever your style of teaching, experience or subject, I think you will get a lot out of this conversation.
Useful time-stamps:
- Matt’s favourite failure (06:26)
- Femi’s favourite failure (10:38)
- Matt’s route into becoming a head of department (15:45)
- Femi’s route into becoming a head of department (18:17)
- How many year’s classroom teaching should you have before becoming a head of department? (21:02)
- How strong a teacher does the head of department need to be? (24:41)
- What does your timetable as a head of department look like? (28:43)
- Do you find you are teaching more these days than 5 years ago? (32:38)
- Does your teaching suffer with all the other things you have to give attention to? (40:00)
- How does your workload compare to a teacher with a full time-table? (46:39)
- How often would you be pulled out of a lesson to deal with something? (52:13)
- How do you balance the need for consistency across your department with a desire for teacher autonomy? (56:46)
- What are the non-negotiables that members of your team have to follow? (1:32:54)
- What do your departmental meetings look like? (1:57:13)
- How do you ensure good practice is shared around the department? (2:21:51)
- How do you support less experienced colleagues, non-specialists, those who are struggling? (2:23:16)
- How do you deal with directives from SLT that you don’t agree with? (2:41:26)
- What do you do to help non-specialists (particularly SLT) understand what the characteristics of high-quality T&L in maths are? (2:48:37)
- How do you deal with difficult members of the department who are reluctant the make changes? (2:54:59)
- How do you deal with parental complaints? (3:00:48)
- How do you allocate teaching sets? (3:05:19)
- Final reflections (3:19:37)
- Craig’s takeaways (3:32:42)
Videos from our conversation:
Coming soon (hopefully!)
For hundreds of other video tips, check out Tips for Teachers
About the guests
On Twitter Femi and Matt are: @BeyondGoodPod
Their excellent Beyond Good podcast can be found here
Matt’s Big 3
Femi’s Big 3
- The Behaviour Manual
- Corbett Maths
- Visit other schools!
My usual plugs:
- You can help support the podcast (and get an interactive transcript of this episode) via my Patreon page at patreon.com/mrbartonmaths
- If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the show, then please visit this page
- You can sign up for my free Tips for Teachers newsletter and my free Eedi newsletter
- My online courses are here: craigbarton.podia.com
- My books are “Tips for Teachers“, “Reflect, Expect, Check, Explain” and “How I wish I’d taught maths”