Miss Mika (English)

  Does the “aggressive” Woman of Colour trope lead to a generation of toothless lionesses? Women of colour have to navigate the western world with careful footing. Sidelined and stereotyped within the media and underrepresented at leadership tables, conducting herself in offices, classrooms and meetings is a difficult, political affair. Managing standing up for herself, being heard, demanding a seat at the table all the while not being deemed too aggressive, requires strategizing but at what cost? Surely this lack of freedom to express herself honestly and fully has detrimental effects on her confidence, self worth and identity as a whole?  Blog post for Diverse Ed

  4 outdated teaching trends we need to ditch  - tes article There are so many aspects of teaching that are time- and labour-intensive: it comes with the job. And when we’re told that these aspects are “good practice” that will lead to progress, it seems reasonable to invest hours and effort into them, no matter what. 

  An article for Teach Secondary on the benefits and pitfalls of collaborative resources and how we can best use them. Pre-made teaching resources and lesson activities – A shared blessing or collective curse?

There is no denying that for a lot of us, the last academic year was tough, possibly the toughest of many of our careers. But now we’re on the cusp of a new start, it’s worth reflecting on the lessons learned from the challenges the pandemic brought and how they can prove useful going forward. The Coronavirus pandemic has meant teachers have been running all over school sites hopping from classroom to classroom, dragging all our resources around with us, frantically logging into computers, confining our teaching to 2m distanced boxes at the front, juggling the needs of the audiences in front of us as well as the remote ones while still formatively assessing, ensuring pupil progress and keeping top of marking. And on top of all that, there was avoiding staff rooms due to limited numbers, lack of face to face contact with our teams and the horror that was TAGS. However, while much (no, most) of it was awful, through difficulty we build strength; here are my six positive takeaways from co...

My post for Diverse Educaters on the need to diversify our curricula and show students real reflections of themselves in the stories we tell: Diversification: more than an educational token

An article for tes on how to make the best of lesson observations now they're coming back post lockdown learning. How to handle the return of lesson observations - tes

This is a lesson I made on redacted poetry to get students to really think about the choices writers make about the words they use. This is based on the erasure poetry of Isobel O'Hare on the #MeToo movement. I find students struggle to explain the effects of writer's methods because they can't articulate or even consider something as simple as word choice, much less more complex techniques. This lesson was to address this and really get them thinking about what a writer is saying both overtly and in the subtext of their writing, why they are conveying it the way they are and how their words hold power. The lesson starts with a clearly forced and insincere apology and get students to think about its subtext and why it may not be sincere: Then I teach some context about the #MeToo movement. Now, because they really need to think about the word choice and the power of words, I show how the poet transformed Weinstein’s 'apology' into a redacted poem. We talk abou...