I’d like to start my response to The Fielder’s post about safeguarding in a positive way!
I know I’ve been surprised and a little afraid by the answers to even the most child protection basic from current Heads of Department looking to move to our school.
Let’s get some model answers out there and (re-)educate the go ……
What’s a good answer to this question (one that I used last year):
Define an appropriate pupil-teacher relationship and how do you go about forming one?
Okay – as part of my interview preparation I like to try and use study/memory techniques to remember my planned answers so that I’m not left tongue-tied in a tricky situation.
Therefore first step for me would be to break this down into parts:
Pupil-teacher relationships
- Approachable
- Trusting
- Boundaries
I’d probably turn that into the mnemonic BAT
Forming them:
a) be approachable, fair – show them that they can trust you
b) show good subject knowledge so that they want to trust and approach you
c) work with them in clubs etc. to show that you are available to approach
I think I’d just have a reminder like WORK IT to remind me to talk about each part in turn.
On point c above– this is the only way that I can think of tackling being approachable – you definitely don’t want to repeat the answer that I was given about giving pupils your email address so that they could contact you whenever they needed to.
