The end of term is about to arrive and the heady days of the start of the year drift further into the subconscious. For most of us teachers, it will have started with a least one Inset day and probably more – I don’t know of a school that goes straight into teaching after the summer holidays without one. The pace of education is such that the critical time for reflecting on what went on during those days, indeed any days, tends to get lost on the ever-increasing speed of the treadmill that characterises life in schools.
But we all know reflection is such an important component and is critical in informing what comes next. Consequently, is it too soon to be thinking about the Inset at the start of the next academic year? Probably not, but in planning it are we truly mindful of the negativity that surrounds Inset Days in general and the crucial impact they can have on refreshed and enthused colleagues as they return in September tanned from laying on loungers in sunnier climes?
Enter Inset Days into a search engine or follow the topic on social media forums and you will find they are awash with offerings that are less than complimentary. Whilst most of this dampening of enthusiasm appears to emanate from our secondary colleagues, we are not immune to this in primary. Comments tend to suggest that it usually goes something like this: head stands up, welcomes us back and announces new staff, engagements, marriages, pregnancies and births. God forbid there has been a death. There is then detailed reference to examination results – more so in secondary, as our SATs results were available in July - with a plethora of tables and graphs for us to digest at breakneck speed.
Priorities for the year will be reinforced and we move into some collective training which may or may not be a direct response to these priorities. Sometimes we will sit as a whole group. Other times we will be divided by utilising an increasing myriad of techniques and we will join a carousel around a range of activities. These have become increasingly interactive but will fail to engage a significant number of us because we are not all the same. We all have differing needs. All of this will be undertaken against a backdrop of frustration as we will already have acquired a mammoth in-tray of things to do, not least get our rooms and ourselves ready for teaching.
The fact that we are all different does not mean that there are occasions when us all doing the same is very beneficial, particularly when introducing a significant new concept into a school. This was very much the case for my school last September.
