admin

Teaching in the Age of Conspiracy

Posted on 14-04-202513-05-2025by admin

The Kids Are Not Alright — And We’re Pretending Everything’s Fine

The education system is not equipped to handle algorithmic influence, emotional manipulation, or online radicalisation — and yet we have never needed change more urgently.

We are failing a generation — not by accident, but arguably by choice. While students are being silently shaped, misled and manipulated by an unregulated media machine, the education system is busy patting itself on the back for hitting targets that ultimately, mean fuck all. The world outside the school is a psychological warzone of misinformation, algorithmic bias, and dopamine-driven outrage — and we respond with curriculum grids, box-ticking and ‘thought showers’. We are not preparing kids for reality. We are, unfortunately, complicit in their intellectual disarmament.

Behaviour Engagement Leadership Support

Selective Enforcement is Killing School Culture

Posted on 10-04-202509-06-2025by admin

When schools apply rules inconsistently, students stop believing in them—and social proof turns low-level defiance into the new normal

Every teacher sees it. That creeping tide of low-level defiance. Hood up. AirPods in. Pencil? Nah. Pencil Case – fuck no. Bag…as if. Homework? “Didn’t know we had any.” And what happens? Nothing. Or worse—’a smile and a shrug from some SLT douche’. You start wondering why you bother. But this isn’t about uniform policy or being a stickler for pens. It’s about something more corrosive: the slow collapse of expectations in our classrooms, aided and abetted by cowardice and convenience.

And don’t confuse this for some Daily Mail rant about trousers and haircuts. I don’t really support school uniforms as a concept (or business dress fyi). But rules are rules. If we set them, we should damn well mean them. If not, scrap them and be honest about it. Because what’s killing school culture isn’t kids being kids—it’s leadership bottling it every time a standard gets tested.

Assessment Expectations Leadership Policies Time Management Toxicity Well-Being Workload

Why Teachers Are Making It Up

Posted on 03-04-202513-05-2025by admin

Taskmasking and the Collapse of Trust

We are not okay. But we’ve been trained to act like we are (Toxic Resilience). Teachers everywhere are cracking under the pressure, papering over the cracks with a new form of quiet self-harm: taskmasking. Take your impossible workload, cut it into 50 meaningless micro-tasks, tick them off like a good little worker—and no one above notices you’re drowning.

This isn’t resilience. This is bullshit.

Schools are collapsing under the weight of BS bureaucracy, and instead of support, we get scrutiny. Instead of time, we get tasks. No wonder people are quitting. But for those of us still here? We’re keeping the lie alive. We’re breaking ourselves to keep up appearances. And the system, the MATs, the CEOs, fucking love it.

Engagement Expectations Leadership Motivation Recognition

Consistency is the Last Refuge of the Unimaginative

Posted on 24-03-202513-05-2025by admin

We’re constantly being sold the narrative that innovation will save education. New tech. New metrics. New training. The Emporer’s new fucking clothes. But what no one wants to admit is that education doesn’t need innovation—it needs some fucking humanity. The real innovation is the teacher. The character. The heavy fucking metal presence in the room. And that’s the bit academy chains are working hardest to erase. It’s paint-by-numbers, muzak, beige BS—and it’s being peddled as progress.

In the push for uniformity, teachers are being stripped of their individuality. Personality has become a ‘problem’, not a strength. It’s happening quietly, strategically, and with full corporate backing. And it’s the students who suffer—stuck in lesson after lesson delivered by unimaginative robots following identical scripts produced by “the director” in some sort of Orwellian homage.

This is not a teaching model. It’s an act of cultural vandalism, sanitising schools of the very people who make them work.

Expectations Leadership Time Management Toxicity Well-Being Workload

The Culture is Breaking Teachers

Posted on 17-02-202513-05-2025by admin

I have explored this topic before, but every year I am reminded of the mess, and every year it makes me question whether I or indeed anyone else should consider this a viable career. The mental health strain is undeniable.

Education should be about young people. Yet, in many schools, the toxic culture takes root—one where certain members of leadership dedicate every waking moment to the institution, and they expect everyone else to do the same, as Aldous Huxley said: ‘Community, Identity, Stability’. These individuals often don’t have the same responsibilities as classroom teachers, but their overcommitment becomes the standard. If you’re not staying late, taking on extra duties, or responding to emails at all hours, you’re not “dedicated enough.” The result? Guilt. Exhaustion. Burnout. This is not commitment—it’s coercion.

Leadership Resources Toxicity Workload

Propaganda Over Progress

Posted on 13-02-202513-05-2025by admin

Academy leadership are obsessed with their own image, fact! and yet they still need to take a fucking look at themselves in the mirror. Rather than addressing real issues of concern—behaviour, engagement, workload—they are funnelling resources into self-congratulatory propaganda BS. Video idents, overproduced interviews with the CEO, and large-scale events designed to sell leadership like a corporate brand are the norm. Schools are fucking struggling mate, but the priority seems to be massaging the ego of those at the top rather than fixing what actually matters. It’s not great and the optics are shocking. I would love to see the fucking PR company bill!

Expectations Toxicity Well-Being

Escaping summer

Posted on 19-08-202413-05-2025by admin

Summer—a time most teachers eagerly await: the mental break, , sleeping past 6.30am, the sunshine, beach trips, and endless social activities. But for me, summer is a fucking prison sentence. While others bask in the costa del fuck you, I’m trapped in a cycle of depression and anxiety. The longer days, the pressure to entertain my kids, and the financial burden of holiday expectations all weigh heavily on my mind. Instead of enjoying a break, I’m overwhelmed, unmotivated, and consumed by a feeling of being stuck, unable to escape the monotony, and not worthy of the good things and people in my life-I’m a fucking let down. The expectation that summer should be a time of joy only amplifies my malaise, leaving me feeling even more isolated and lost and damaging family connections amplified by the fact that my wife and kids, and seemingly everyone else in the world, lives for the summer!

Communication Expectations Leadership Policies Workload

Journey to the Centre of the Dearth

Posted on 05-08-202418-04-2025by admin

Education is eternally confusing, like Biden on mushrooms and one of the most recent brain ‘trips’ is the introduction of Learning Journeys. These overcomplicated project overviews meant to guide students through their educational ‘path’, are akin to LCD hallucinogenics, have become a ketamine, k-hole, time-fuck for teachers AND are a disservice to students (like, errrr….opiods???). Learning Journeys are supposed to show students where they have been, where they are, and where they are going, but instead, they’ve become caricatures, showing only how not to use clipart.

Expectations Leadership Toxicity Well-Being

From Silent Hill to the Classroom

Posted on 23-07-202419-04-2025by admin

Parallels in Psychological Horror

Based on a recent post I, akin to Carrie Bradshaw, ‘got to wondering’ whether the video game series, Silent Hill is an accurate analogy for working as a teacher. It’s tongue in cheek, it’s a little fun but it’s not without significance. Dare you enter the fog?

Communication Expectations Leadership Support Toxicity Well-Being

False Martyrs and Fallacies

Posted on 11-04-202418-04-2025by admin

Confronting Toxic Mindsets and the Dismissal Epidemic

It’s a dilemma that’s as insidious as it is ubiquitous, as destructive as it is dismissive. It’s a dilemma born from the lips of our own colleagues, echoing within each department and reverberating through the corridors of our schools with the unsettling frequency of the Silent Hill radio static. This dilemma, my friends, is the casual dismissal of complex issues through language rife with logical fallacies.