#168 How to lead a maths department with Femi Adeniran and Matt Findlay
Experienced heads of department, Femi Adeniran and Matt Findlay, join me for an epic conversation about leading a maths department. We cover everything from consistency versus autonomy, departmental meetings, handling parental complaints and allocating sets. You can access links to the resources discussed, time-stamps and videos on the podcast show-notes page here: https://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/168-how-to-lead-a-maths-department-with-femi-adeniran-and-matt-findlay/ Time-stamps: Matt's favourite failure (06:26) Femi's favourite failure (10:38) Matt's route into becoming a head of department (15:45) Femi's route into becoming a head of department (18:17) How many year's classroom teaching should you have before becoming a head of department? (21:02) How strong a teacher does the head of department need to be? (24:41) What does your timetable as a head of department look like? (28:43) Do you find you are teaching more these days than 5 years ago? (32:38) Does your teaching suffer with all the other things you have to give attention to? (40:00) How does your workload compare to a teacher with a full time-table? (46:39) How often would you be pulled out of a lesson to deal with something? (52:13) How do you balance the need for consistency across your department with a desire for teacher autonomy? (56:46) What are the non-negotiables that members of your team have to follow? (1:32:54) What do your departmental meetings look like? (1:57:13) How do you ensure good practice is shared around the department? (2:21:51) How do you support less experienced colleagues, non-specialists, those who are struggling? (2:23:16) How do you deal with directives from SLT that you don't agree with? (2:41:26) What do you do to help non-specialists (particularly SLT) understand what the characteristics of high-quality T&L in maths are? (2:48:37) How do you deal with difficult members of the department who are reluctant the make changes? (2:54:59) How do you deal with parental complaints? (3:00:48) How do you allocate teaching sets? (3:05:19) Final reflections (3:19:37) Craig's takeaways (3:32:42)