An interview with… Ross McGill – Just Great Teaching!

Recently, I was very lucky to spend some time with the passionate educator and the most followed teacher on Twitter: Ross McGill or @TeacherToolKit, where he shared some of his musings about education and some of thoughts about his new book: Just Great Teaching.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug/27/britain-most-influential-teaching-expert

1) What was your aim in writing this book?

I became frustrated after visiting loads of schools around the world and the UK, and with the negative narrative that I saw on Twitter, my own included, and also with the reducing budgets and crowded curriculum. On the other hand, the standards were rising and some school’s teachers were doing amazing work, but very little thanks was given for it and so I wanted to write a book to celebrate how we are coping with these challenges.

2) How might education look in 20 years time? Will you recognise it?

I think in 20 years with all the revolution of social media the concept of teaching in a school building is going to change.

I think that’s going to be a challenge on the next generation of teachers, because when I first started blogging, I was an early adopter and now lots of teachers can see what has been done before. There are more templates so a lot of people can do it. I would argue that to write a blog successfully you do need a degree of teaching experience, some wisdom, some entrepreneurship and organisation; all sorts of interesting skills, so although we will always have teachers in the classroom per se, I think the way technology will evolve will really challenge our notion of having physical teachers in the school settings. The challenge for us as a country will be well where are we going to put these 8 million kids. So you would have to be in a physical building while parents go of to work.

But I think it will also affect lots of other industries. A lot of people work from home now or through a WiFi connections to a laptop. The challenge will be, can I keep my child at home, while they log in to do school work while I’m at home in my office doing my work too. So, it will be an interesting challenge for our society full-stop. I see that as being the biggest shift – how our definition of a physical school versus the technology revolution.

3) Thinking about how your career has changed over the years: do you regret not becoming a Head Teacher?

What I found out in my life was that, as I was blogging as a deputy head, I was acting as a virtual head teacher through my website for a decade anyway, dealing with request from head teachers, conferences, teachers, NQTs and parents. So, I was dealing with lots of those issues already. I used to come home and have the freedom to do my own thing.

I also found the demands from the blog to write and visit schools around the world was something that I used to do it in my own spare time, so I would go and visit other schools or speak at events at half term so my workload was just becoming non stop. I also found myself saying no to loads of opportunities, so although I regret maybe not being a head teacher at my own school I would argue that I was a headteacher of my own school for many many years anyway. I guess my digital presence had outweighed the impact I could have on one school community compared to the impact I was having on thousands of other teachers around the world, so I guess swings and roundabouts there.

4) Out of all your many, many, many projects (teaching, writing, blogging, tutoring, researching, tweeting) which do you find the most rewarding?

It has to be without doubt the website, the blog, writing thoughts, sharing resources, connecting with teachers on Twitter. I’m enjoying my research: my doctorate. I love visiting schools and working with staff, but I think that is my best without a doubt.

5) Can you sum up your new book in a fun sentence?

Its not plan teach 2.0 – it’s lesson’s learnt in the last two years since I published it and what I’ve done with work on the road. The good ideas in there, they work in any setting I’ve since discovered.

I finished the book at a time when I had resigned and my school had just been put in special measures – a challenging school. You can see all the narrative online about teachers challenging OFSTED methodology and punishing challenging schools.

It’s a rewrite of things I’ve seen on my travels, so I’m going to update the book significantly, but I’m going to put in more honesty, but probably less emotion, as I was writing quite emotively at the time.

Thank you so much to Ross for spending some of his valuable time answering these questions for me. I very much enjoyed listening to his thoughts and look forward to his next book.