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For those who have lived under a rock for the past 10 years, a ‘teachmeet’ is an organised (informal) meeting of teaching staff, to share personal insight and best practice in teaching.
The meets are often described as an ‘unconference’ and are free of charge, open to all.
This month, three of us at Studley High School, booked to attend and deliver at a local TeachMeet. the format is fairly standard:
- Micro-presentations – lasting 7 minutes
- Nano-presentations – lasting 2 minutes nano presentation (3-5 one after the other)
- Round-table break-outs – lasting 15 minutes or so, allowing focussed discussion around a theme, with a volunteer facilitator
- Random selection of speakers – from a pool of willing participants
The Teach Meet opened with an introduction from keynote speaker Gary Toward @gltoward of Decisive Element http://www.decisive-element.co.uk/home. He shared anecdotes of his own teaching career and the importance of our role in supporting young people, calling us “the decisive element in the classroom”. He used a quote from Maya Angelou:
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel
Aside from the fun elements, of winning prizes in raffles (yes, Mrs Wakefield won a prize!) and networking, there are some seriously relevant topics to learn from here and we think.
Topics covered at this event included: Learning through PlayDough, Tophat questioning, Metacognition and Pupil Premium in KS3, but to name a few. We took many ideas back to school, with the intention of implementing them into our practice.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and afforded us the opportunity to hear about real practice in real classrooms. If you get the chance to go to one, go! If you want to plan one, there are some useful tips here and to attend one, try Twitter, where they are often widely advertised, using the #teachmeet hashtag.
Mrs Case (Maths), Mrs Harris (Chemistry) & Mrs Wakefield (Maths) – Studley High School
