Seleena Creedon – You Teach Me

BETTing on a tech future

Posted on 30 March 202230 March 2022 by Seleena Creedon

Did you go to the first BETT show put on since COVID hit our shores?

With COVID still reported as an issue in many schools with high infection rates and staff shortages your answer might be NO… so allow us to give you a taster of what was on show.

The razzmatazz was in full flow with whizzy demonstrations of touchscreens, quiet moments of deep engagement with high quality audio for the classroom and of course, the usual array of robots, apps, assessment solutions, curriculum resources and the things that we know children will LOVE to have in their classrooms.

With 400+ solution providers exhibiting at BETT you can image the array of tech and tools developed specifically for the education section was fairly mesmerising.

There was also an impressive 300+ speakers at the exhibition sharing their own experiences and challenges. Nothing unusual there but the range of topics and the desire to provide hybrid access to the speeches shows the progress.

Talking of which there was also something new. Something you couldn’t see or touch like those impressive CleverTouch screens YouTeachMe were located by but something tangible if you looked carefully enough.

It was the sense that education is fully embracing technology. The pandemic has shifted education towards the benefits of deploying technology into classrooms properly forever and at Excel last week it was fully apparent.

Teachers visiting exhibitors were looking for technologies that build on what they’ve been using over the last two years. They were wanting to talk teaching and learning technologies. Exhibitors had quality conversations with every stand visitor.

In the arenas, discussions focused on ways to build on what’s been gained during the pandemic. Like ‘How do we move from EdTech to PedTech?’ (i.e. from ‘technology that can be used by teachers in a lesson’ to ‘pedagogy underpinned by technology’) was one fabulous question that really hit the nail on the head.

This change opens up the door to better education for our children. Children in any school. Technology really does help any child learn anything anywhere.

Is your day disrupted?

Posted on 28 February 202228 February 2022 by Seleena Creedon

Over on Reddit a post from a UK secondary school teacher caught our eye, as did the comments.

In-school truancy.

Disrupted classes.

Year 7 and 8 not settling into secondary life, so going rogue.

Are your staff constantly saying “year 7s don’t know how to behave”?

Let’s take a birds eye view of this; kids who’ve been in and out of their primary school over the last 2 years. Home schooling that might have not met the mark or even been completed. Children who are already anxious becoming even more so after moving schools.

What’s our solution?

Nothing new. Just the adaption of personalised and differentiated learning that has long been at the heart of YouTeachMe.

If you’ve got internal truancy going on how can YouTeachMe help?

With a child’s account on their phone you can send messages and videos to those kids. What type? Well that’s up to you. But you could send them mindfulness videos, messages to help with anxiety, activities for them to do that are not academic. That’s all whilst they are in school, helping them to manage the daily routines. The nurturing stuff that’s perhaps not possible if they’ve not made a connection with pastoral staff or their form tutor. You can communicate with them without being face to face. Words of encouragement and support.

Then let’s think about the kids who are so behind; you knew this from primary school handover reports. Tackling this is easy with YouTeachMe. You can use our secondary maths taught in a primary style from our library. Or you can create catch up videos yourself. This can be done at home, or they can be in the usual classroom or an alternative setting to help them settle down to work.

Then those who are anxious; ones who can’t be in a classroom so that’s why they are ‘skiving’. That’s easy because you can have your curriculum on video, and they can ‘keep up’ whilst being in a safe space.

When a secondary teacher talks about safety for everyone concerned, using technology to help improve everyone’s school day could be just the ticket to help children be the best version of themselves. Without the trauma of confrontation.

All YouTeachMe requires is WiFi and a device; be it a phone, tablet or laptop. It might not solve the issue of truancy to full effect, but it can certainly help with some of the issues being faced in secondary schools today.

Book a demo to see if this is the tool you need to help with your secondary school.

Get sporty!

Posted on 4 February 20224 February 2022 by Seleena Creedon

Are you wondering what more than new PE equipment you can spend your PE premium on?

Did you carry over your underspend for your PE premium?

Have you got outsourced PE provision but want to elevate your staff’s sporting knowledge?

Do you find your pupils are more settled and ready to learn the more physical activity your school day contains?

And more to the point why all the questions!?!

YouTeachMe is approved for use on PE premium expenditure; that’s right we are AfPE accredited. That means UK schools can spend some of the £320million PE premium on bringing in YouTeachMe to their school.

But why would you do that? Here our top 10 reasons:

You can send home videos for children to watch BEFORE the new round of PE topic begins. This means learning starts before the first PE lesson.
Staff without specialist knowledge can run after-school sports club at your school using video resources from our library.
You can make PE accessible to all abilities in your class with personalised teaching when they need is, as often as they need it.
There’s professional coaches providing lessons for your teachers to use.
Lawn Tennis Association coaches have worked with YouTeachMe to produce a wide range of videos from introductory skills to advanced techniques.
Primary PE leads have produced videos teaching key knowledge and skills across a wide range of sports, helping your teachers to deliver quality teaching and learning.
Save workload for your teachers; the PE Lead can create videos for your team to use in lessons, or they can select and share the ones we’ve already made.
Create excitement for activity by producing short 2 minute inspirational videos to help all children remain active.
Find the sport you want to understand how to teach, like hockey, watch the videos as a class OR share them with your children to help them progress in the lesson.
YouTeachMe can be used in the classroom as well as remotely or at home. Wherever there is WiFi you can press play.

Want to learn more about PE and YouTeachMe? Book a demo or drop us an email (paul@youteachme.co.uk)

Managing absence

Posted on 28 January 202228 January 2022 by Seleena Creedon

Yesterday was the big ‘masks off’ day meaning no more masks required in classrooms and corridors (although some schools have overridden this). This week healthcare professionals have highlighted children are currently the biggest group in the country infected with Omicron.

So where does that leave schools?

We ran a poll on Twitter (we have a reasonably good following from school leaders and teachers across the UK) and the outcome was 53% of schools are running a staff absence rate between 10 to 30%, scarily 6% have a rate of over 50%!

Then we asked a local infant school leader to tell us what’s going on in her school

“It is difficult to hear the media celebrating the ‘return to normality’ when Covid continues to have a huge impact on school, not just with staff positive cases, but with absence for those staff who are not vaccinated and are required to self isolate.

Huge pressures on budgets paying for agency cover while staff are positive and/or isolating due to vaccine status just adds to the months/years of inconsistency of provision for children and uncertainty for leaders. It does not feel like we’re anywhere close to normal, yet nobody is talking about it.” Tamara Dale, Headteacher of Ridgeway Infant School, Derby.

There’s been lots of stories of child in the hall from 3 classes being taught by one teacher. Not ideal for anyone.

Ofsted have been out and about conducting inspections on schools across the country. Not ideal either.

Pupil progress is still expected.

Ensuring your pupils are meeting the ‘secure’ or ‘mastery’ grading is still a pressure on teachers across the country.

How is that achievable?

Schools are adept at navigating oceans with big waves in boats with holes. That’s before the pandemic.

Our belief at YouTeachMe is that technology should make your life easier AND achieve things thought impossible.

If we said it’s POSSIBLE for every child in that hall from three classrooms to still have personalised teaching delivered to them each day, would you believe us?

Ask Paul Rose how YouTeachMe makes the impossible possible via paul@youteachme.co.uk

Leadership change

Posted on 21 January 202221 January 2022 by Seleena Creedon

In our current climate of Covid-19 ravaged schools Trust leaders have an opportunity to demonstrate strategic leadership.

Leadership is about change. Setting the direction of change is fundamental to leadership.

If you are focussed on keeping the systems and structures running for normal routines and behaviours to continue, you are simply managing the situation.

Strategically you need to be changing something about the situation so that similar circumstances do not affect your normal routines as adversely in the future.

The difficult balance for leaders is between the urgent and the important. Making sure there are sufficient teachers in school is an urgent task. The important task is making sure that in a similar situation, at some time in the future, others know what to do to make sure there are sufficient teachers.

Of course, it is not just about teachers in school. The number of consequences of this pandemic are many and conflicting. It is a very tough time for schools.

Over the last 2 years schools have seen enormous change thrust upon them, the greatest being the move to online teaching. Technology designed for business has been adapted for school. Quickly and to a satisfactory level, teachers have coped and carried on. Sometimes the results have been disappointing, sometimes amazing.

Leaders now need to learn from the successes and the mistakes, their own and those of others, and begin to plan. Ask what good should look like, what needs to be done? Ask what is right for your organisation, and ask what exists and what is new to help us progress?

When the pandemic struck our business we were about to launch our tool into the market. During the pandemic we made attempts but we also noticed how the schools who had worked with us to develop the tool began to use it differently. We asked what was needed and spent time during the pandemic working with these schools to add functionality they needed to succeed.

What we now have is a tool designed with schools that delivers for schools, teachers, pupils and parents. It enables teaching to continue, and be both personalised and differentiated as required, during any interruption to school life. It is a comprehensive response for supporting in-school teaching (it’s initial function) and out of school teaching. It shares resources, CPD, and is a communication and engagement tool with parents.

Most importantly it is so easy to use. If you can access a web browser you can use the system. Many teachers have been using it, without training, in under 15 minutes.

With everyone so stretched it is counter-intuitive to talk about introducing a new system. Strategically it is the right time. The benefits will be seen quickly and will grow.

Hybrid Schooling

Posted on 13 January 2022 by Seleena Creedon

When your teachers are ill then having them ‘work from home’ is far from ideal. So don’t do it.

Live lessons with a teacher suffering from COVID won’t be good enough for pupil progression, student engagement or embedding learning.

Hybrid schooling is set to be the norm though.

Sometimes a teacher might NOT be ill, they simply must isolate to stop the spread.

Sometimes a student will be in the same situation.

So when it’s OK for the teacher to be teaching and the learner to be learning how can you make that happen?

With YouTeachMe.

It reduces workload, it facilitates personalisation, it’s able to track what work has been completed, it’s easy for management to see what lessons are online, it’s easy to access for a student at a time that suits them, it’s easy for a teacher to bulk upload or do one video at a time.

All of the features offered by YouTeachMe have been designed with schools.

It’s not a system we think will work. It’s a tool that’s been developed into a way of teaching and learning with professionals working in a range of school settings today.

Hybrid schooling doesn’t need to be tricky for anyone.

Book a system demonstration TODAY to see who to make hybrid schooling work in your setting.

A letter to school and college leaders

Posted on 17 December 202117 December 2021 by Seleena Creedon

“Take the time to make some sense of what you want to say

And cast your words away upon the waves”

The Masterplan

When reading Nadhim Zahawi’s recent letter to school and college leaders, the opening lines of this classic Oasis song sprang to mind. You too can have a read by CLICKING HERE

Noel Gallagher knows, as does every teacher, that writing is a skill. Meaning can easily become lost, so words must be chosen carefully.

So, it made me ponder; if I was the Education Secretary, what letter would I have written?

I think it would have been this…

Dear everyone who works in education,

The work you have done to support your school communities during this pandemic has inspired our nation.

Your heroic bravery and selfless devotion will be forever remembered by those you have supported, and respected by those, such as I, who have watched from afar.

Some people think teaching is just a job, but you have shown that it’s much more than that.

It’s a lifeline for so many and a route to a brighter future for all. Everyone at the DfE understands that this is why you’ve responded to this crisis in the way you have.

We’ve now reached the end of the most difficult term our schools have ever faced, so I write to you today to offer my sincere thanks for everything you’ve done.

It’s clear that we will face more challenges in the January, and so I will write to you early next year to share any revisions to the guidance.

In the meantime, please make sure that you spend precious time with your loved ones.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

Paul

A nod to maths week

Posted on 9 November 20219 November 2021 by Seleena Creedon

How do you drive school improvement by using YouTeachMe to support progress in maths?

That very much depends on your school!

If you’re an Early Years setting, you might choose to do it by sharing number songs and rhymes with your parents and carers, so they can sing them at home with their child too.

If you’re a primary school, you might choose to do it by using the wide range of teaching videos already made by primary teachers, to personalise teaching for every child.

If you’re a secondary school, you might choose to use the maths teaching of primary teachers to help your Y7’s and Y8’s to catch up with their peers.

If you’re a special school, you might choose to use the teaching of both primary and secondary teachers to stretch those individual students who’s inclusion needs don’t extend to maths.

If you’re a deaf school, you might choose to use the specialist knowledge and expertise shared by the UK’s learning deaf maths teacher, or to focus on helping your parents and carers engage with BSL delivered teaching translated into spoken English.

If you’re a hospital school, you might choose to video practical maths activities that would normally be impossible in a hospital setting and bring them to the bedside to support learning.

If you’re an Alternative Provision, you might choose to embed mainstream maths teaching into personalised teaching and learning experiences during practical activities.

Or you might choose to use YouTeachMe in other, equally powerful ways.

Every school is unique just like every child is, and the ways in which you can use YouTeachMe to drive school improvement for maths will be as unique as you are.

10 years on…

Posted on 4 November 20214 November 2021 by Seleena Creedon

10 years ago a struggling headteacher had an idea and so our story began.

That (now ex) headteacher is our founder Paul Rose.

His idea emerged as a result of him leading a failing infant school that rapidly improved.

He left headship and ever since has worked to turn that idea into reality.

For years he wasn’t sure whether he was building a tool, a system or a platform.

The tool he wanted to build would help every child reach their potential and thrive in life.

The system he wanted to build would help teachers become more effective and better supported, whether newly qualified or very experienced.

The platform he wanted to build would help parents become fully engaged with their child’s learning.

With the kind support of mainstream, special, deaf and hospital schools, and AP, peripatetic and ITE/ITT providers, it’s now built.

And to our surprise it’s not a tool, system or platform. It’s turned out to be an approach; a new approach to education.

We call this approach YouTeachMe.

YouTeachMe helps schools deliver more than any other tool, system, platform, software or EdTech that’s on the market today.

We say this because YouTeachMe helps school leaders to rapidly and sustainably deliver real school improvement; whatever their unique circumstances.

It’s inclusive and accessible, so anyone (including adults!) can be taught anything, anywhere, anytime.

That might be a parent seeing how long division is taught, a child in secondary setting needing to learn maths from primary teachers, an ECT needing to access wide ranging CPD, a SEND child needing to access their lesson in a safe space, a governor gaining deep understanding of how their school is workings or a deaf child in mainstream setting learning from BSL signed GCSE maths teaching created in specialist deaf schools….the list is endless.

Have a tour of our features; have a listen to our founder (YouTube link)

YouTeachMe is ready to help you improve your education setting TODAY.

If you’d like to talk to Paul about the YouTeachMe approach book here

Transporting Teachers?

Posted on 10 October 2021 by Seleena Creedon

Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party suggestion to pay teachers up to £3,000 more in a ‘levelling up premium’ specifically for talented maths, physics and chemistry teachers to be parachuted into parts of the country where they’re most needed got us pondering.

Is this simply the rehashing of ideas that failed over the past 10 years ago when there was the teacher Task Force?

Everybody acknowledges teachers are worth the salary he also indicated at the conference of £30,000 but that’s not what’s at play here.

There’s great swathes of the country where provision is inadequate and it’s simply impossible to recruit teachers, take some coastal towns that are well known areas of educational cold spots.

If you’re a great (talented!) maths, chemistry or physics teacher you can get a job anywhere. So the question is why would a teacher choose to work in an area far away from home or known to be a tough place to teach?

Ofsted, for a number of years, have been identifying areas where they can’t get high quality teachers. That was part of the reason for the creation of the opportunity areas we have in existence today.

We’d say obviously the idea of getting a teacher to go and work in a place that don’t want to live is fundamentally flawed Even if it became a requirement for teachers.

Or like the talk of changing teachers from professionals to civil servants because civil servants can be deployed anywhere. That never happened and could be argued shouldn’t!

The problem with all of these plans is they are short termist. Send a teacher to a deprived coastal town for two years and then they can go back to their own locality and what happens? You’re back to square one!

From our perspective quite clearly the way forwards is to build technology that enables teachers to learn from the best or to use outstanding teaching within their school to support their learners.

Just like YouTeachMe does. It’s really easy, it’s not rocket science it just needs a different way of thinking about it.

Want to see what the YouTeachMe features are? Click here to take a tour.