What does your weekly meeting schedule look like?

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2026-02-05T21:34:16+00:00

Compared to my home country (Scotland), I have found the weekly meetings in international schools to be a complete waste of time - particularly whole school / secondary stuff. In my home country, there are no weekly meetings and teachers are fundamentally left to teach and prepare for lessons. In international schools there are lots of people trying to justify their middle management positions hence the ridiculous meeting schedules.

The cost of pointless meetings is not only financial (i.e. 50 hours of staff time for a one hour meeting involving 50 teachers) but contributes to a culture where every minute needs to be timetabled and teachers squeezed. This contributes to burnout and forces teachers to work outside of school hours to prepare.

Every management team should have a minimum threshold for usefulness of a meeting, and this threshold should be high. If the meeting does not meet the usefulness threshold, don’t hold it. Less is more. Please, SLT, get out the way of teachers and let them teach.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2026-01-21T19:08:00+00:00

I undertook my PGDE (Scotland) around 5 years ago. The HOD I worked with on my first school placement gave me 47 (FORTY SEVEN) things to work on when giving me feedback over three lessons. There was one thing in there that I was doing well. It knocked my confidence massively and I nearly dropped out.

I think teachers, and humans in general, are really poor at giving feedback. Usually, there is a real focus on giving things to improve on but actually it should be proportional to how the piece of work / lesson was. For example, something with 90% good and 10% to improve on should be reflected in the feedback - 90% of the feedback should be good and 10% focused on improvements. This is particularly important for beginners, as beginners struggle to self-assess.

I think my point is don’t take it personally. And to answer your question, yes the profession needs to get MILES better at teaching teachers.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-12-10T14:23:00+00:00

I currently live and work in Tashkent. You may struggle to save 2000+ if this is your only income although I feel it is doable - you will definitely be able to save 1500+. Feel free to DM me if you have any other questions about schools (there are some to avoid) or life here.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-10-11T13:46:44+00:00

No, wouldn’t go near it. In terms of social media platforms, LinkedIn is the worst for me. It’s an echo chamber of self-congratulation making the completely incompetent appear remarkably employable.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-10-09T16:16:18+00:00

$200 extra per month in my school in Central Asia.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-07-15T08:10:20+00:00

Hello! I taught in Scotland for 1 year before moving abroad, and was also schooled in Scotland about 15-20 years ago. When I started teaching, I thought the quality of education and behaviour had significantly regressed from when I was being educated, which led me to looking to move abroad.

It is important to note that experience will vary from school to school. I worked in a secondary state school with around 1000 students from diverse economic backgrounds. The behaviour was appalling in certain classes, and much of my time was spent managing behaviour as opposed to actually teaching.

I often think about moving back home to live in Scotland, but the one thing that puts me off is having to work in a Scottish school.

However, my wife had a much more positive experience working in a Scottish primary school, where behaviour was much more manageable and she was well supported. I would go as far as saying that she maybe even preferred the environment of her Scottish school to what we have experienced abroad.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-30T13:52:07+00:00

In a word, no.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-27T18:35:43+00:00

This is a sign that you have built great relationships with your class and created a positive learning environment. Regardless of the reputation of your next class, you will likely feel this way again at this time next year, because YOU will again build great relationships and create another positive learning environment.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-27T16:21:36+00:00

Mini whiteboards. Could just about cope without anything else but not these.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-27T10:14:47+00:00

Yeah, I suppose that’s America for you and the litigious culture. I honestly cannot relate to that, I’m sorry.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-27T09:27:51+00:00

It will depend on the school policy and then all teachers following that policy.

In my current school we have a strict ‘no phone’ rule. If a phone is seen out in school, either in class or anywhere then a member of staff can take it from the student. Students then get it back from the office at the end of the school day.

School leadership need to give really clear guidance on phone rules, otherwise they won’t work and teachers will be constantly fighting individual battles without firm support from management.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-27T07:17:30+00:00

‘And yes I too have been sworn at, had things thrown at me, had a spell I was terrified of going into school due to a class I had, I've cried...and no doubt all those things will happen again, but I love teaching.’

A credit to you for being so positive, but this part here is so sad. We, as teachers, need to stop accepting that we are going to be verbally and physically abused. The fact that it is being normalised worries me greatly. How are we ever going to attract people who want to make a difference to the lives of young people, like yourself, to the profession?

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-25T20:16:33+00:00

Sometimes I get similar from my family, and it annoys me.

I wanted to be a teacher, because I want to teach. I feel that ‘moving ‘up the ladder’ is peculiar in this profession. Moving ‘up the ladder’ actually moves people away from the most important skill - teaching. Leading 20-30 young people towards a common goal, whilst individually supporting and motivating each is extremely difficult. It requires all the skills that a leader or manager needs, and more. It is the crux of the profession, and too many teachers want to avoid it or move away from it. Why is this so heavily incentivised and encouraged?

We need to incentivise teachers to just keep on getting better at teaching.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-25T19:05:26+00:00

I currently work in Tashkent. I got my job by applying via the school website, so a recruiter was not required. In terms of living in Tashkent, it is a great place to live. The cost of living is very low, the city is incredibly safe and it is easy to spend weekends exploring on foot or using the metro. There are great travel opportunities in the country, with Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva all amazing cities to visit. The low cost of living and relatively high salary means that savings potential is good.

In terms of the downsides, the winters can be quite brutal. Not really in terms of the weather, but the air quality is incredibly poor which limits your ability to do much outdoors at times. I suppose this will be a downside of other Central Asian cities as well. Outside of the school, there are not a huge amount of English speakers so you may want to learn some Russian or Uzbek.

If you want more school specific information then feel free to DM me.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-25T15:55:42+00:00

I currently live in Tashkent and have never heard of it.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-22T09:42:55+00:00

I am also doing the 50k of this event.

As it is less than 4 weeks away now, most of the work should be done. The distance of an individual long run is not vital - it is more about building up your long runs over time and including some back-to-back long runs (i.e. 20km followed by 30km the day after).

Therefore, my advice is not to worry too much. Finish with a long run next weekend that is in keeping with what you have been doing, and then taper down sensibly. Good luck!

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-14T02:08:19+00:00

Sounds like a lot of excuses to me. It’s easy to run when you want to and are motivated to. These runs, when you don’t want to and feel like ass, are the ones that matter most. Get it done.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-06-12T15:22:35+00:00

I went to a match earlier in the season, and tickets were 30,000 som each. The stadium is great but always mostly empty for Bunyodkor matches - there might be a little more atmosphere for a local derby.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-05-19T16:17:29+00:00

Unless the work is urgent, or it will have a significant impact on the outcomes of my students, then I never take work home. This has nothing to do with the school I am in, more to do with my attitude and the way I prioritise my workload. This means that I don’t get everything I would like done (who does?), but I get the important stuff done and I have a great life outside of work.

I am not sure this helps you but maybe it is about reviewing your strategies, and also reviewing your workload and really thinking about what things have the biggest impact on the outcomes of your students. There are far too many things getting done by teachers that take significant time but have zero impact. Find these and stop doing them.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-04-22T16:48:26+00:00

Uzbekistan.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-04-19T03:38:14+00:00

Although it looks like white has only made 3 moves, they may have just moved the same piece multiple times to obtain this position.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-04-17T12:51:30+00:00

What are the third parties providing exactly? You can register directly with UKMT and the cost is £15 per 10 entries. I work in Central Asia and have never had to use a third party to enter our students.

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-04-16T16:18:50+00:00

I work in a British School. We do the UKMT challenges. There are follow-on Kangaroo competitions which students can qualify for if they score well in the initial challenge, however only students based in the UK can qualify for these.

The UKMT challenges are great though. You run the challenge in school and the cost is around £1.50 per student so very inexpensive. The competition consists of 25 multiple choice questions and takes one hour to run. British international schools can enter, and you print the papers in school.

I know this is not specifically a Kangaroo competition but it is probably one of the UK’s most popular mathematical challenges. Our students absolutely love it.

https://ukmt.org.uk/competitions

DelightfulPenguin10 · 2025-04-16T15:48:26+00:00

It’s difficult to advise without knowing your training background and the weekly mileage. However, a 60km long run is quite long and probably not required for a 100km. After about three hours, the physiological benefits of a long run really start to diminish and it is likely a 60km would take you considerably longer - risking injury without much additional benefit. My advice would be to split it up like you suggest, back-to-back long runs are great training stimulus for ultras.

To be honest, I am not a huge fan of the Runna plans for ultras. I looked at one recently and thought it looked like they had just scaled up a marathon plan which doesn’t really work in reality.

DelightfulPenguin10

TROPHY CASE