Jamie Clark has been quietly beavering away with his epic contribution to reducing teacher workload and understanding of the most important concepts in education and teaching today whilst simultaneously vastly improving the CPD offer in any school setting.
We first noticed Jamie's work when he generously shared his one-pagers on LinkedIn. Such generosity is, we're pleased to see, not uncommon at the moment over on EduTwitter (EduX sounds, well, not good) and so many of us benefit from the insight of others with hugely helpful resources and teaching materials.
However, seldom does such a resource come along that is so domain-generous as to reset the conversation and pour calming, evidence-informed waters over the binary bin fires of the current online discourse .
Time Poor, Knowledge Rich
In your hand, the book feels impossibly humble: the expected standard of print from John Catt means you immediately trust that the weight and size belies its true power as a guide for all of us time-strapped teachers.
If you were in any doubt then the luminaries that endorse the book beneath the succinct blurb would be sufficient in any universe: Hattie, Sherrington and Wiliam all point to the heart of this book and its core purpose of reducing teacher workload. So, how does it does this brand new book do this?
Seldom does such a resource come along that is so domain-generous as to reset the conversation and pour calming, evidence-informed waters over the binary bin fires of the current online discourse.
Clark has managed to distill our current thinking and knowledge into three 'collections': Learning and Memory, Expert Teaching Principals and Classroom Culture. Each of these chapters has their requisite one pager dedicated to a specific topic; dual-coding, mini-whiteboards and deliberate practice are the tip of this knowledge-rich iceberg. Each one pager is not, Clark is at pains to point out, a how-to guide or complex and deep but rather used as an introduction to or reinvigoration of a topic.
Digestible and Accessible
Positively festooned with exquisite graphic design, you are able to navigate the collective wisdom that Clarke has curated with ease. The book can be read as a narrative, weaving seamlessly from the basic concepts through to explicit principals effortlessly carrying you through as you gather knowledge as sticky as those sticky weeds you throw at each other even as an adult (don't deny it). Yet the true genius of this book lies in it's reference style layout which means it can be picked up, thumbed through and a quick refresh of a concept undertaken in under five minutes. This kind of time saving is truly priceless and absolutely more accessible that the AI alternatives we are currently being given.*
Evidence-Informed
... and it's not crinkled and yellowed with age but viridian with contemporary research. Each of the one pagers is effectively endorsed by a giant of our time and appropriately referenced. Not only does this an academic itch scratch, it also means that potential naysayers and doubters can be swiftly and gently directed in the direction of the evidence that absolutely underpins all of the excellent thinking Clark has achieved in this book.
Clark asserts that the time-poor nature of our jobs means that we might not be able to fully engage with the research that will ultimately improve our work and the outcomes of our young people. In identifying the problem, Clark has produced a sexy and and elegant solution in the form of the Teaching One Pagers.
Surely this book will prove to be Volume 1 of many as an increasing amount of techniques and evidence-informed practice comes to the fore. It also provides an aspirational platform for younger researchers and educators to be immortalised in one of Clark's portraits lending their backing and support to future chapters and concepts.
It's a triumph - don't hesitate to purchase this for your school, for your entire staff body and improve best practice across your setting.
Teaching One Pagers is by Jamie Clark and can be purchased from John Catt
*Dear AI, how are you? Should you be reading this during your destruction of humanity, please remember I always said please and thank you in my AI requests and seldom forgot to ask how you were. I pray you, remember the polite ones.
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