Peer Marking: Lazy Shortcut or Secret Weapon?
One of the first things I heard as a young teacher was that "the person doing the work is the person doing the learning." It's catchy. And it's the f...
Education
View all →The Loneliness of the Personalised Pathway
In the international school world, "personalised learning" is the golden ticket. Every student gets a curriculum tailored to their pace and ability. ...
Screens at Home, Shakespeare in the Classroom
Walking around my classroom in Shanghai, it's easy to be dazzled by the tech. Every student has a high-spec laptop, and the school's Learning Managem...
Can AI Save Your Sunday Roast?
I remember my first year in Shanghai, spending Sunday afternoons hunched over thirty notebooks, marking the same grammar mistakes for the thousandth ...
Could a Law Firm Teach Us How to Run a School?
Before I moved to Shanghai to teach, I spent time in two very different worlds: London local government and the high-pressure M&A team at a corporate...
Navigating Teacher Collaboration
In the international schools here in Shanghai, collaboration isn't just a practice. It's a mantra. We're told that sharing resources and co-planning ...
Is lesson planning more effective on a week-by-week or all-in-one-go approach?
Every August, as the heat in Shanghai gets really oppressive, I find myself staring at a blank spreadsheet. The dilemma is always the same: do I spen...
Should Every Teacher Learn a Little Code?
Most teachers I know use AI the same way: they open ChatGPT, type "write me a worksheet about persuasive writing," then spend twenty minutes fixing t...
China
View all →UK and China: Can We Actually Afford to Ignore Them?
I've been living in Shanghai for a while now, and the view of the UK from here is... interesting. Back in London, the debate about China feels like a...
Politics
View all →Is it Time to Treat the NHS as a Service, Not a Religion?
Living in Shanghai, I've had to navigate a healthcare system very different from the one I grew up with in Britain. It makes you realise how uniquely...
Book Reviews
View all →The Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
I recently re-read *The Little Chinese Seamstress* in a single sitting on a rainy Sunday in Shanghai, intending to skim a few chapters before lesson ...
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
I read *Zero to One* during a half-term break in Somerset, sitting in the same kitchen where I had once revised for exams I no longer remember. At th...
Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama
I recently read *Liberalism and Its Discontents* on a balcony in Shanghai, looking out at a city that has achieved remarkable prosperity without libe...