From ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Outstanding’ in 8 weeks
Rapid improvement through video coaching
Michelle Fritche was a struggling year 6 teacher in a deprived school with challenging children. She’d only been teaching for two years when she was graded as requires improvement.
Her confidence took a huge knock and she started to question whether she was in the right job. With the help of a coach she began filming her practice, reflecting on the teaching and learning and getting contextualised feedback in key areas using the IRIS Connect platform. The results were amazing. Watch the video to hear Michelle’s story.
“I’m no longer a requires improvement teacher. I’m a good teacher, with elements of outstanding. It’s all down to the fact that I recorded myself and took that leap to change what I do and what my students do. It’s just brilliant“. – Michelle
Michelle’s original note to us… her journey from requires improvement to outstanding.
“Eight weeks ago I was observed by my head teacher, who is an ex OFSTED inspector, she graded me as requires improvement.
I am in the second year of my teaching at a school with challenging children set in a deprived area. Half of my class are FSM/ SEN and of my 10 boys, 9 are reluctant writers. My children, basically, needed to be more involved in their learning and would often wait for me to provide answers, support, guidance and anything else, which meant that they weren’t actively engaging in lessons.
Then Mike and IRIS Connect came. I had been part of video coaching during my training and found it really useful so jumped at the chance to do it again. After meeting Mike and hearing his ideas and concepts I was inspired and took the big leap to record a lesson.
I simply couldn’t believe what I had seen. I cried, got mad (at both myself and my children) and then spoke to Mike. We made a little hit list of things we were going to work on and one by one, shot them down. Last Thursday, during an HMI inspection, I was graded as OFSTED outstanding.
So what happened?
The answer, Mike and IRIS Connect. My children are now able to:
- Understand what learning is and how it feels
- Have strategies to use if they are stuck
- Set their own challenging learning targets in lessons
- Grade their progress on a scale
- Identify their own next steps in learning
- Work with each other to assess others’ learning
- Work independently to move their own learning on
- Provide their own answers to problems and challenges which means that they are now independent learners”
Mike Fleetham is an IRIS Connect enabled consultant and expert in remote coaching. He supports schools to embed a sustainable coaching culture and rapidly raise the quality of teaching and learning. Tweet him @MikeTweetham
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Teachers can take control and arrange their own professional learning experiences and resources. As well as share easily with each other to make collaboration simple, organised and effective.