by Rebecca Thomas A once-settled class implodes While for readers of The Sunday Times and The Post, "Where is Everybody?" was just another story, to me and my community it was our story. The impact of teacher shortages has always been there, niggling away as we use LATs to plug the seeping holes, reduce our release time, and gift days owed to each other to those teachers drowning the most. Despite that, today we resorted to a reluctant class split for the day. This dreaded flu/COVID-type...

by Rebecca Thomas Tuakana teaching Teina the feelings of the classroom Funny thing. School has become my shield. The ecosystem of a school has built a kind of natural armour around me. It protects me from the tug-of-war politics, Ministry battles and the blue glow of social media that follows me into the darkness. Facebook has become an algorithm of outrage. Racism. Bias. Power struggles. Endless declarations about who is right and who is wrong. Every day I scroll past posts that leave me...

by Rebecca Thomas It's fair to say that today I felt slightly insane. "Insane" was how I replied to my cleaner when she asked how my day had been. Admittedly, I was coaching and mentoring a beginning teacher in the moment whilst they observed my reading lesson, whilst simultaneously having a trainee teacher observing me at the same time. Amongst all of this, my students were trying to cope with their teacher having side conversations about best practice with two humans at completely different...