Remaining human as an educator: harnessing relationships, self-reflection and story to keep hope alive
A practical and reflective workshop which explores the human dimension that sits beneath our teaching - social connection, self-reflection and the emotional lives of teachers and students that entwine in our classrooms. Activities and questions will guide us to consider how our selves as people and our selves as teachers intersect, and what this means for the learning that goes on in our classes. We will explore the role that active listening plays, and consider why focusing on the social dimensions of our classrooms can support students and teachers to remain critically optimistic and buoyant in these turbulent times. Practical, reflective, uplifting.
Session Leader: Jonny Walker
I write and teach about writing and teaching. My interests are at the intersection between mythology, childhood, poetry, writing and nature.
I work across state schools in the UK (mostly East London primaries) and in India. My two main ventures are The Iliad Project and the Poetry Retreat. The Iliad Project is a six-session project that uses drama, text-study, history, philosophy and self-inquiry to explore Greek mythology and the events of the Trojan War.
The Poetry Retreat is an ambitious residential writing retreat that I run with a poet named Adisa, in which we take a group of children and teachers from five different urban schools, and we 'retreat' out to the New Forest each year. This project has been running annually since 2016.
I facilitate teacher CPD on the topics of relationally-rich teaching, creative writing and the benefits of harnessing mythology in the primary and middle-school classroom.
I am a qualified primary teacher, having taught at Elmhurst Primary School in East London between 2011 and 2016, and been Assistant Head at Park Primary until I went freelance in 2019. My freelance work in education is under the banner of my organisational title OtherWise Education - www.otherwiseeducation.com
I am an educational author of children's books, and am published by HarperCollins, Oxford University Press and (in press) Scholastic.
Author website - www.jonny-walker.co.uk
Twitter/x - @jonnywalker_edu
Instagram - @OtherWiseEdu
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnywalkerotherwise/
Format: Workshop | Audience: Whole School | Theme: Social learning, wellbeing, literacy, mythology