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The game’s always changing, so keep playing it: keeping a focus on professional learning
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Elaine Long
Welcome to the ECF Staffroom. I'm Elaine Long.
Mark Quinn
And I am Mark Quinn.
Elaine Long
We are programme leaders for the UCL Early Career Teacher Development programme. Why are we in the staffroom? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems can be aired bluntly and where solutions can be explored.
Mark Quinn
Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come into the ECF staffroom. We will hear from early career teachers themselves and from the mentors and induction tutors who support them. We will talk about all things ECF, the challenges and the joys. So why don't you enjoy a coffee with us?
Mark Quinn
Perhaps even grab a biscuit and sit down to half an hour of ECF staffroom chat.
Mark Quinn
OK, so welcome James. James Stubbs to our ECF staffroom You're very welcome. I see you are sitting comfortably.
James Stubbs
Yeah.
Mark Quinn
I hope you're not sitting on the special chair. Every staffroom has one. So if you're comfortable and you're ready to chat. First of all, just interested in a little bit about yourself. But what you do, what your actual role is in your school.
Mark Quinn
Tell us a little bit about that.
James Stubbs
It's two jobs, I guess, that I do in the college it's mostly I teach history. I am a full-time teacher of history. That's my bread and butter, if you like. But I'm also a teacher learning leader. That's practitioner by any other name. So that includes mentors and ECTs, which I do happily. So I have to a subject quality reviews, internal check ins, that kind of thing.
James Stubbs
Lesson observations. And that's about it really. That's my 2 major jobs in the college.
Mark Quinn
Excellent. Speaking as an old history teacher myself, I'm very happy to sit down and chew the fat with you on that one. And what's your day been like today so far?
James Stubbs
Oh, well, Mondays, mostly prep day. I do teach mostly afternoon. Monday afternoon. I have three lessons. That's quite nice. Actually. Works out quite nice. Come in at 9:00 on a Monday and I don't teach until 10 to 12. So I do the prep for the following week and we have two courses actually. We do modern history and Tudor history, so a bit of each and we do a bit of team prep, that kind of thing.
James Stubbs
So got a nice day really. Yeah, I love my job but it's probably could be quite obvious in this, in this interview. Honestly, I love my job and I look forward to seeing my classes, especially I mean I had Covid before Easter as well. So I'm seeing my students for like three weeks now, so it's quite nice to be back.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. Oh dear. Well, I'm glad you are back. And I bet you're like me that you're happiest moments are when you're actually in front of the class with the young people in front of you. That's always the best, isn't it?
James Stubbs
Yeah.
Mark Quinn
This this being our staffroom that we've welcomed you into, that you, we found you in, we have to ask you the question, what is your coffee routine or are you, are you a tea person or a coffee person? Are you with or without milk? What are you.
James Stubbs
I don't drink tea. Definitely not a tea person. Definitely a coffee person. Strong. No milk, no cold water, nothing too strong. Coffee or. Well, that's that always just first thing in the morning to the point I even, like, put the coffee mug out on my way. I paid it out. That's not the worst job in the morning. We drink coffee, so talk to people about that.
Mark Quinn
That that's good. You're a man after my own heart, James. Excellent. Yeah. Black, black coffee once a day. That's enough.
James Stubbs
Same.
Elaine Long
Well, I'm totally aligned with you on two things, James. One is your passion for teaching, and the second is your passion for development. I'm sorry to say, I'm not aligned with strong better coffee as a tea drinker myself, but I can. I can take two out of three. I can forgive you. The strong, bitter coffee. You mentioned a bit about the fact that being a history teacher is your bread and butter.
Elaine Long
But you've also got that that's sort of lead practitioner role in a school. And I just wanted to hear a bit more about how you came into that role. Was it through mentoring in the first place?
James Stubbs
Oh, no, we do in a few years now, actually, but it's a set role. And in the college there was it's morphed over a few years. We used to have like a lead practitioner for teaching, and assessment and a lead practitioner for employability and the curriculum design that type of thing. But the new and current principal assistant, the assistant principal, sorry for that.
James Stubbs
That role kind of merged them all into one so it's become a more broad role now. Um, initially it was about finding and research and best practice in teaching and then going away and trial that myself like mad scientist in my classroom and, trying different techniques that that had just been pioneered, that kind of thing and feeding that back to the college or just doing all staff training on whatever pilot techniques there are out there.
James Stubbs
So that that was what it was originally. And that's still very much this, this other stuff on to get quality reviews and presentation and that kind of thing that's fairly new. That's for the year or two, two or three. I've been doing that.
Elaine Long
Oh, it's interesting. And then is mentoring a part of that role or is that separate to that, the fact that you're an ECF mentor this year?
James Stubbs
Yeah, sorry. I should have clarified that.
Elaine Long
That's alright.
James Stubbs
Again before before you merged this role into one. I mean, there's a number of is like three of me, if you like, in the college. I'm the only one who's who's a mentor at the minute, partly because of my proximity to my ECT who also teaches history, but partly because the principal asked me to do it even looking forward to do it because happy to do it as I would be.
James Stubbs
But we used to have staff mentors as well and that was a secondary role which has been merged into into my role since I've done both before mentoring course leaders as well and individual teachers where they've asked just up on teaching assessment techniques, that kind of thing, or whether we've got a project going on in the college if they're not really sitting right with it, how to steer them into it, that kind of thing.
James Stubbs
So it's sort of evolved as everything goes in education really. It's just evolved into it.
Elaine Long
So it's kind of a natural fit with the role you were doing anyway to be a mentor?
James Stubbs
Yeah, yeah, sure. I think that's probably true and to be honest about my ECT came to the college as a maternity cover, liked them so much we tried to that was to keep them. So I've been working with them for maybe a year and a half but mostly in Covid time lockdown. You know, the first teaching experience that they had was like this, you know, talk, talk on, on headsets a lot, that kind of thing.
James Stubbs
So what we needed was to actually be welcomed into the classroom, and that's another set of skills on top of that. That kind of thing. So it was very organic how it happened.
Mark Quinn
James, it sounds like your college takes the development of teaching and learning really seriously. Otherwise it wouldn't have three of you working in that working there. And and you mentioned different sort of mentoring type roles you've had in the college as well. So, so obvious that the college takes that seriously. The whole idea of mentoring, clearly that's a big part of this programme.
Mark Quinn
And, you know, the ECF is is new to everyone across the country. It's a big programme. It's very complex, really involved. You know, Elaine and I run the programme and, you know, even we get confused with it sometimes. So the question really is I have interested in is how you you know, working in the busy job that you have managed to get your head around the size of the programme so that you can help interpret that for your ECT.
James Stubbs
I mean, chunk is the way to do it. If you if you tried to see the whole thing like you suggested, like you might go bit crazy, try to digest the whole thing in once. I just do it in weekly segments to be honest, and we take it week by week. You wrote, If I decide to call back at the point you said that the college does take it seriously.
James Stubbs
I'm hugely grateful for that for my own development as well as a mentor, as a practitioner really took me on in that role, developed me hugely. I think in that role so we've got the ethos in the college to make it work and we've got the ethos in the college where it's not. The absolute worst that someone could do with the programme like this is feel like it's something that's done to them and to feel like it's something that they have to do.
James Stubbs
It's a hoop to jump through because they want this QTS. It's not about that. For me, it is difficult. I'm not going to say it's not. You've got to keep on top of it. That's the job. That's the nature of the job. And if you can't do that, are you in the right job, you know so yeah, we just chunk it.
James Stubbs
We take it week by week and very keen to get something out of it for us. And that's also selfish. Sorry, I don't mean it to, but we're trying to think this is a wonderful programme. It's wonderfully well, well researched. This is clearly the way forward. What do we want from it? Let's get something from it. Let's sit and work out how this is going to fit into history at Queen Elizabeth 6th form college.
James Stubbs
How it might fit into other departments and turn it around the place and that's where I go with it. And every week I'm thinking, where does this fit with what we're doing and what do I want from this? What do I want my ECT to get from this as well?
Mark Quinn
That's really important is that to allow your ECT to see the value in it. And it's not at all selfish. You're yeah, that that that's really important. Any any sort of episode of professional learning. You have to say how is this going to make a difference to my classroom or to my subject knowledge or my, my skill in the classroom, all of that, that that's, that is really important.
Mark Quinn
I absolutely get that. And yeah and you chunk it week by week you more or less you follow you follow the schedule as it as it as it's presented to you James or have you altered that in any way.
James Stubbs
Only ever once. I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but it became apparent that because of something, we would do it in a skills focus in history. It was about because element of sequence and we were looking at I merge two of the weeks into one, what dealt with it over two weeks, but because it fit what we were doing.
James Stubbs
So I kind of read ahead. I knew what was coming in the programme I knew what we planned it our team prep packs for the following two weeks. I thought, hang on a minute. There's something that works there as a whole. Ordinarily I do just follow it, you know, week by week. It's interesting you said something there about kind of selling it to the ECT.
James Stubbs
I do think that's hugely important. I think there's a sense, you know, people come out digitally and they think, OK, I've got it now. I've done this. I've done my training and I've got my certificate. I've made it. And I'm like, No, you haven't if you ever think you've made it in this job, you might be stagnating. You might actually be start to lose it because the game is changing all the time.
James Stubbs
And if you can't recognise that the game is changing all the time, you're not playing anymore. You know? So suddenly it's something that's continuous and something that's you get something out of every different journey that you teach, you know? So someone once said to me, I forget who it was and I forget when it was, but do you have ten years of teaching experience or do you have one year that's repeated nine times?
James Stubbs
I don't I don't ever want to be that guy and I don't want my ECT to ever be that guy. I'm the guy with ten years, whatever it is, the teaching experience that I want it my ECT to be, actually, every day is different. And that's the beauty of this job. Who wants to do the same thing over and over?
James Stubbs
What's the point?
Mark Quinn
Absolutely. Brilliant.
Elaine Long
Yeah. There's so much in there that I want to pick up on that you've said, and I think that the first was just to take you back to your motivation for being a mentor. And you mentioned that it's part of the ethos and culture of your school anyway. So there was a sense of sort of wanting to pay back because you'd had excellent mentoring and it helped you develop into the teacher that you wanted to be.
Elaine Long
Do you think that's really important actually.
James Stubbs
Like you wouldn't believe it's a long story that I actually was a student in years ago, and how I've ended up back here is it's still a bit of a mystery. But even as a student, I could feel it, and I vividly remember my time as a six month student and I loved the class and I still love the place now, but for a different reason.
James Stubbs
And it's also a career change for me. Fresh out of uni, I always want to be a teacher. I was knocked back a couple of times actually, and people said to me, you didn't have enough life experience to do the job yet, so that's fine. I'll go out and do that. I'll get my life experience. I went into various management roles and they weren't very nice so the mentor mentors, you know, not really.
James Stubbs
But when I came back into teaching, I met some incredible people and then my current head of department. I mean, the man is a saint he's an angel and his drive, everything's we can do better. We can always do better. That's brilliant. Be even more brilliant. That's great. That's be greater. And it hugely fits into the ethos of the college and like, it fits what I want to do with it.
James Stubbs
Like I said at the start of the chat with you, I always want to champion the profession. I always want to let people see teaching kind of for what it is and teachers for who they are and what they are. You know, there's some outstanding practitioners who bring a whole lot of themselves into that job, but it's a huge part of my identity and it's a huge part of theirs as well.
James Stubbs
So that you tend to seize on opportunities like this. Really, all of us do is well.
Elaine Long
Well, it's interesting actually that you talk about that culture because I know some of the challenges with the ECF framework or how schools can create that that mentoring culture in their schools. And one of the big barriers to it is workloads. And, you know, again, having been a busy teacher in a school myself, I know that workload can feel can be a big burden.
Elaine Long
It can feel like a big addition when you're a mentor and you mentioned earlier in the podcast, it's really important to you that the ECF framework is something that fits with your school and that it's not an add-on it's not a burden, but it's actually something that's helping you to achieve the culture and the student outcomes that you want to in your school.
Elaine Long
And I just wondered if you could talk to that a little bit more, because I find that really interesting in terms of your approach to the ECF, that it's not it's not a burden, it's not an add-on, but it's something that you make fit for your school and your context. And I just wondered if you could tell us what your secret is.
James Stubbs
Oh, there's no secret there's no secret. Like I said, I just keep on top of it personally. I read ahead and I think, OK, what's coming up on the next week or what's on the next module? And I'm thinking, OK, where will we be at with teaching history? My ECT teaches another the subject as well. Citizenship, I think.
James Stubbs
Look at where are they going to be in citizenship and then how do I how do I make it fit? How do I sell that that week from this ECF to get something out of that. You know, it's interesting, a lot of people talk about workload and I get that and I wouldn't sort of belittle anyone who is thinking it is hugely busy it's a hugely busy environment and no one's denied it but if you have a better tool, can you do the job better?
James Stubbs
So do you spend a little bit of time invested in a better tool? To be able to be better and faster and stronger and fitter at the job that you do? I mean, a clumsy metaphor, but if you if you've got a long distance to travel, well, it's huge. If you're going to walk, the workload is going to be less if you go on a bike, less still, if you get in a car or a plane, you know, I'm sorry, it's a clumsy analogy, but.
Elaine Long
I think it's a good analogy. Yeah.
James Stubbs
You know, so I think if we take this as getting better tools or putting more tools in the toolbox, and I've got stuff from it. And no way was kind of walking into this thing and I'm the master. I'm not I'm getting experience all the time as well. And it's a long time since I did my training and the game has changed.
James Stubbs
Things moved on and it's nice for me to get new things and to try new things as well and to constantly refresh or even renew or even redo elements of my training. So yeah, in terms of the workload, it's I see it as an investment, but also if you want it, if you don't, if you look at it the night before, you got to think, well, goodness, this is a huge thing that I've got to do how I'm going to do this.
James Stubbs
But if you if you make it fit your processes and make it fit, then it becomes helpful.
Elaine Long
It starts really interesting. So it sounds like there are three things that one is the fact that you've got to value it yourself and you've got to show ECTs that you value it. So it's almost like your mindset and your approach. And the second thing, this is almost a sense of you've got to speculate to accumulate. So you do have to put that investment in in the beginning to understand the big picture and pick the areas that are going to be useful to you.
Elaine Long
And then the third thing is I think what I think is very admirable is your openness to learning yourself. So there's already that sense that you're learning alongside your mentee, which can make it much more enjoyable because I think you alluded to that message at the beginning, like the beauty of teaching is you never get to master it.
Elaine Long
You never, ever master it. Not that's the fun of it. I think that there's always going to be things you can talk about. So it sounds like those those three ingredients have worked really well for you.
James Stubbs
Yeah, I would agree with that. Particularly that that love of constantly learning, that kind of thing. I mean, that that ultimately. Sure. Remarkable, the test of this this is this is why I do history as well, because there's always something new and it is always, you know, it's never stagnant. It never stops. You reinterpret the past of you every time we look at it and I see that and teach it as well.
James Stubbs
And what worked ten years ago, it won't work now. My principal had another clumsy analogy. Would you trust a doctor today to heal you if they've never read a medical textbook since their training? You wouldn't you would. So if we're going to be on the same level of professionalism as as our friends who are doctors we go do certain thing and accept that the game changes that I've said that phrase a lot sorry and it moves on and we've got to move with it and roll with it and that's something that even when I finished my teacher training, I always vowed I was going to do that so happy that I lived
James Stubbs
that vow. Is that make sense?
Elaine Long
Yeah.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. And I'm it's one of the things I'm really happy about the whole ECF programme across the country, James, is that it's not invitation isn't it, to new teachers to continue learning. It's it's absolutely explicitly saying you didn't stop learning when you did your initial teacher education year. You shouldn't know how to do it all. Now, there's a lot for you to learn, a lot for you to get better at a lot you to trial to to maybe muck up every now and then and work out where it went wrong and with a mentor somebody at your side, somebody learning alongside you hopefully to continue to learn.
Mark Quinn
And I think that's it's long overdue really in our profession and I'm and I think I think we're all glad to be part of it. Now I'm interested that your ECT James teaches two subject he teaches history and he teaches citizenship and of course that's really quite common isn't it. I know there's kind of a myth about secondary school teachers that we're, only ever trained to teach one subject and that's it.
Mark Quinn
And that's what that's that would be the furrow that you plow for the next 20 years is as if you never change. And, and of course it's one of the reasons why actually the framework is written in that generic way. You know, it's, a preparation for teaching rather than simply, you know, rather than a preparation to be a math teacher or a preparation to be a year two teacher.
Mark Quinn
It's a preparation for teaching and that is one of its strengths probably. But obviously, you know, your ECT does have history classes that he wants to teach and he does have citizenship classes that he wants to teach. And he sits down with you on a weekly basis and he looks at they he looks at his own self-study materials and he looks at the mentoring materials with you.
Mark Quinn
And we've got all these little case studies and vignettes and exemplification of a different teacher in a different setting. I'm curious as to how you help your ECT to contextualise the materials for to make them really relevant for his own classroom. What skills if you picked up along the way, James, that help with that re-contextualisation?
James Stubbs
Yeah. I mean, we do read the you know, the examples of kind of what a teacher might do, the little case studies that you put in. We do we do read them all in one of them so far has explicitly been of an A-level history teacher. And, you know, that same point not every one a history teacher we've got with other teachers training, that kind of thing.
James Stubbs
But we call teach a number of groups actually. And my ECT, as I say, in the pandemic as well. We used to call teach online as well. So obviously they were the less experienced teacher I was the more experienced teacher we find our footing with the technology. So we kind of call taught eventually every session. So more often than not with those little case studies teachers, we've got good memories.
James Stubbs
We can remember something or we can contextualise it in in our practice I mean it's something that's out of this room. That's happened in that particular group that we maybe shared last year, a group that we share this year, we split the teaching, you see. So like with the other main teacher and supplementary teacher. So for example, one group this year I am the main teacher the coursework teacher last year they were the main teacher.
James Stubbs
I was the teacher for the first two years so we can talk about the groups endlessly and we could always find a way of sort of saying that same thing has happened in a different setting but there is is personal.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. So, so you kind of just have to distill the case studies down to their essence, don't you know? So actually this is a case study about classroom management. Actually, it's not it's not really a case study about a year three science class. It's a case study about classroom management or it's a case study about, about asking questions and and so and it's interesting.
Mark Quinn
I didn't realise that you did that. You do so much co-teaching with your ECT that must really help, actually, because you have the same set of students you can call about call upon the same. You got lots of shared experience. You can remark upon when you're when you're looking at some of the exemplification of that that that's really interesting.
Mark Quinn
That's really good. James, thanks for that. I know that there's a lot of mentors out there who who would you know keenly listen to you on this one because it's an issue that we know comes up a lot in feedback to us about how a programme is assisting or not assisting people in different contexts. But anything else you want to say about that, but about the range of case studies?
James Stubbs
No, I mean, it's kind of a necessary evil, isn't it? You've got to cater to all these different people. I mean, again, isn't that the joy of the profession? Isn't that the fact that we've got professionals working in primary, we've got them working in middle schools, high school, secondary schools, myself at an A level setting. And yourselves at a university setting, you know, it's you've got to apply it to to your own setting.
James Stubbs
But if you flip it around, you've also got the learners' experience. It is big in this experience in primary and in secondary. Then they're going to come to us kind of knowing that we deploy various strategies that they would actually share to be in you know, middle leaders, that kind of thing in the area. And we talk about issues across from primary to secondary to us.
James Stubbs
But often we're talking about students who will eventually come to us, but obviously not their individual students. But we'll talk about strategies that our friends in the private sector are deploying now based on metacognition and how we do it at A level, which is very different. But it's the same stuff, you know.
Mark Quinn
It's the same stuff. And it's always relevant, isn't it?
James Stubbs
Yeah.
Mark Quinn
Regardless of the context yeah. Great.
Elaine Long
I think you've kind of answered the question I'm about to ask sort of in earlier, earlier answers. But it be interesting to talk through it all together. And it wouldn't have escaped your notice that one of the challenges of the framework is that ECTs say it's lots of hard work and that often comes through in our feedback. And how do you how do you make sure your ECT sees the value in it?
James Stubbs
Yeah. I mean, I know my ECTs say that as well. And so you said it's a lot of a lot of hard work. But again, kind of looking back to what I said before, I'm trying to convince and I do this to other colleagues as well who might have a bit more informal sort of mentoring capacity with us of course.
James Stubbs
What are you going to get out of it? If you're not in it to get something out of it, then it's always going to feel like something's been done to you. If you approach this thinking, OK, it positively, and then just saying, OK, well, what do I want to get? What do I, ECT, want to get out of this?
James Stubbs
This particular week that me as a mentor, I'm thinking, OK, what do I want to get out of this this particular week? I mean, I know in the materials, you know, this there's all this challenge for mentors in there as well, which I like. And it didn't go amiss with me. I was kind of I could see that I was supporting too much in the early affairs.
James Stubbs
And actually that was a scaffold for me. And when that scaffold had to come off is quite recently, I'm thinking, well, should there be more challenge? Should I be doing more challenge? And exploration for me in that sense, in that my role is not static as a mentor, I'm learning more about mentoring the ONSIDE model. I didn't know that existed until this programme, but that really makes sense.
James Stubbs
And I think that's how I am as a person. I suppose anywhere it sticks with me. I don't have to adopt any different thought process well, yeah, it works, and it's all about what you want to get out of it. And then what do you want to bring to the table? Everything that motivates me. Like, like it said before, it's the people in front of me, my students in front of me.
James Stubbs
When I'm in front of my class, that's me at my happiest. And everything I do, I want them to do well and I want them to look back on their time at college and think it was all right. Him. I liked him. And he said, I like History. He was a good, good lad there but it was jobs. And if I can bring something from the programme to them, we've all won.
Elaine Long
Yeah, yeah. I'm sure they have and I'm sure your students do say he was a good lad as well. I think that there's something in there in terms of pitch as well, which is quite interesting because you talked about level that level of challenge, and I think that links to something you said earlier about there can be a tendency with ECTs to think, Well, I've done this, I've done the standards in the training yeah, I made this big folder for you and now you're making me do it all again.
Elaine Long
And I think there's something in there about pitch and making sure that you're constantly challenging them to see things in different ways or even be reflective about their own behaviours to say, Well, really, you know, I think you nailed it because I've been doing this 20 years, and I know I wouldn't say I'm perfect. And I think that own way of is really interesting.
Elaine Long
So making sure ECTs are aware that this ultimately is going to be what you make it in. You know, it doesn't matter how many great people you have around you and you know, your actors are really lucky to work in a school where they work. But ultimately, this is this opportunity is going to be what you make it and you need to take advantage really of the learning opportunity you've been given.
Elaine Long
On that note, I'm just going to pass you a Post-it note over through the screen and it's a blank Post-it note. And on that Post-it note, I'd like you to write some advice on it, and I'd like you to tell me what advice you've written on it and who you would give it to.
James Stubbs
Is this advice to another mentor or to another ECT. you OK?
Elaine Long
It could be to anyone you want. It could even be to us at the university or delivery partners. It could be to anybody. So it's an imaginary Post-it note that you can put some advice on and you can give it to anybody.
James Stubbs
They can have a given advice in case it goes wrong down the line. Erm I would, I would write advice to just a new or recently qualified teachers and it's probably not going to be a surprise because I've said it a lot again to the game is always changing and just, just keep learning the second you stop, you're no longer a teacher.
Elaine Long
Really like that. Yeah, I really like that and I think that's great advice for any teacher really to put on any staffroom anywhere.
Mark Quinn
I think you've earned your biscuit James. And, and since we're in this virtual staffroom basically you can have a virtual biscuit do you have a biscuit? Do you have a biscuit of choice or.
James Stubbs
Oh, Border's are like, yeah, biscuit.
Mark Quinn
Can't go wrong.
James Stubbs
Like more.
Elaine Long
Great choice.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. James, it's been great talking to you. Great listening to you. And I know that you say you don't like giving advice, and I understand why. Because, you know, as soon as you advise someone, you own the words you've given them, don't you? And then if anything goes wrong, it's your fault. But but it sounds like you're doing a wonderful job.
Mark Quinn
Your ECTs are very lucky to have we have you we're very lucky that you're mentoring on our programme. We're delighted that you've joined us in the staffroom today. I can hear a bell ringing distantly in the background. That probably means that the caretaker wants to check us out, but you're the rest of your evening, James, and and we'll see you again soon.
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