Joe Kirby (teacher) explained

Joe Kirby
Nationality:British
Occupation:Teacher
Notable Works:Contribution to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers (2016)
Father:Roger Kirby
Relatives:Vanessa Kirby (sister)

Joe Kirby is a British school teacher and director of education at Athena Learning Trust, known for creating and making popular the use of knowledge organisers, a template used by teachers and their students to clarify what is essential to learn.

He is a co-founder of Michaela Community School, where he was one of the 20 teaching staff that contributed to the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, published in 2016.

Early life and education

Joe Kirby is from Wimbledon, London.[1] After completing an International Baccalaureate, he attended Warwick University where he was elected president of its student's union.[1] In this role, to integrate home and international students, he persuaded Archbishop Desmond Tutu to attend an event at his university.[2] In addition, to raise funds for prostate cancer, he led a team of student volunteers on a hundred-mile walk across Britain.[2]

He has two younger sisters, Juliet and actress Vanessa Kirby.[3] Their mother is the founding editor of Country Living and their father is the prostate surgeon Roger Kirby.[3] [4]

Career

Kirby is an English teacher who writes on translating research into the classroom.[5] Prior to becoming director of education at Athena Learning Trust,[6] and vice principal at Jane Austen College, part of the Inspiration Trust, Norwich,[7] he was at Dunraven School in Streatham,[8] [9] and then was one of four deputy heads at Michaela Community School in Wembley,[10] a school he helped establish.[11]

He is an active blogger on education, which includes his blog titled "Pragmatic Education".[12] [13] Like a number of other younger British teachers including Tom Bennett[14] and Daisy Christodoulou, Kirby has been inspired by American educator E. D. Hirsch. This has been reflected in his references to Hirsch in a large number of his blogs, popular messages that resulted in promoting Hirsch's's ideas,[15] and increasing Kirby's influence on the debate on education in the UK.[16] [17] He has been mentioned and cited by the government school regulator Ofsted,[18] [16] British Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove[19] and Schools Minister Nick Gibb.[14]

Teaching methods

Kirby has written on teaching methods with maximum impact and minimum effort.[20] He has advised that hundreds of words can be taught by explaining how words are formed.[21]

At Michaela, he explained that methods were adapted to reduce teacher burnout because "common practices result in heavy workload, high burnout, and very, very high levels of teacher turnover".[22] He rewrote Year 7's study of the Odyssey, removing the parts he felt were less important to read.[23] His 2015 blog post "Marking is a Hornet", which described teachers' marking of homework as "high-effort" and "low-impact" like a hornet, and recommended saving time by asking pupils to self-assess and quiz themselves using checklists or oral feedback.[24] [25] [26] The responsibility, he explains, lies in self-improvement and a collective sense of working for better outcomes.[27] [28] He was one of the 20 members of Michaela's staff that contributed to the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, published in 2016 by John Catt Educational, edited by Michaela's head Katharine Birbalsingh[29] and endorsed by Roger Scruton.[30] In the book, Kirby explains the curriculum design[29] and how eleven-year-olds are prepared for school in boot camp prior to the beginning of the school year, how the students are taught that "silence in lessons is golden, that it helps us listen and helps us learn",[10] how teaching of factual knowledge is prioritised,[31] and how consistency and simplicity in a "centralised system" allow students to complete homework with the aim of not overloading teachers with marking, thereby reducing burnout.[32] [33] [34]

Kirby created the knowledge organiser,[35] [36] [37] a template on a single A4 sheet used by teachers and their pupils to clarify what is essential to learn.[38] [39] Usually one sided, it is occasionally two sides of one page.[40] He calls the knowledge organiser “the most powerful tool in the arsenal of the curriculum designer”.[41]

Selected publications

Books

Blog posts, opinion pieces, chapters

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Brief Encounter: Joe Kirby . https://web.archive.org/web/20230108183852/https://warwick.ac.uk/insite/news/warwickpeople/brief_encounter_joe/ . 8 January 2023 . 17 November 2019 . warwick.ac.uk.
  2. Web site: 2007 . Joe Kirby - Real World Graduate . https://web.archive.org/web/20230108184343/https://warwick.ac.uk/insite/news/warwickpeople/joe_kirby_-/ . 8 January 2023 . 20 November 2019 . warwick.ac.uk.
  3. Web site: Marriner . Cosima . 1 February 2018 . Vanessa Kirby on self-worth, Weinstein and why The Crown was a 'gift' . https://web.archive.org/web/20230108184451/https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/vanessa-kirby-on-selfworth-weinstein-and-why-the-crown-was-a-gift-20180201-h0rpq6.html . 8 January 2023 . 17 November 2019 . . en.
  4. Web site: Nicol . Patricia . 14 January 2016 . Vanessa Kirby: meet south-west London's hottest export . https://web.archive.org/web/20230108184628/https://www.standard.co.uk/esmagazine/vanessa-kirby-southwest-london-s-hottest-export-a3156416.html . 8 January 2023 . 17 November 2019 . . en.
  5. Web site: To sleep, perchance to learn – researchED. Kirby. Joe. en-GB. 16 November 2019.
  6. Web site: Athena Learning Trust . 7 October 2023.
  7. Web site: Jane Austen College: Our staff. Inspiration Trust. 17 November 2019.
  8. Web site: Dunraven School Contact Joe Kirby for questions. Rella. Cardea. 24 July 2014. SlideServe. en. 17 November 2019.
  9. Web site: Life after levels: where SLT fear to tread. Kirby. Joe. 23 November 2013. Joe Kirby's blog. en. 17 November 2019.
  10. News: Is this the strictest teacher in Britain?. Griffiths. Sian. 13 November 2016. The Sunday Times. 12 November 2019. en. 0956-1382.
  11. Web site:
    1. Michaelapodcast on Apple Podcasts
    . Apple Podcasts. en-gb. 17 November 2019.
  12. Kirby, J. The Psychology of habits. Research ED. Vol. 1, Issue 1 (June 2018), pp. 29-30.
  13. Web site: Michael Gove speaks about the future of education reform. Gove. Michael. 10 July 2014. GOV.UK. en. 16 November 2019.
  14. Web site: Michael Gove's Favourite Teachers: Where are they now?. Kidd. Deborah. 3 October 2017. Love Learning by Debra Kidd. en-US. 16 November 2019.
  15. Jonathan Simons and Natasha Porter. Knowledge and the Curriculum: A collection of essays to accompany E. D. Hirsch’s lecture at Policy Exchange.
  16. Book: Flip The System UK: A Teachers' Manifesto. Rycroft-Smith. Lucy. Dutaut. Jean-Louis. 2017. Routledge. 9781315445182. en.
  17. Web site: Michael Gove's 'anti-Mr Men' speech in full. politics.co.uk. en. 16 November 2019.
  18. Book: Kidd, Debra. Teaching: Notes From the Front Line. 2014. Crown House Publishing. 9781781351949. en.
  19. Book: Simons, Jonathan. https://books.google.com/books?id=xwm4BgAAQBAJ&q=joe+kirby+gove&pg=PT132. The Gove Legacy: Education in Britain after the Coalition. 2015. Palgrave Macmillan. 9781137491510. Finn. Mike. 124. en. The Gove Legacy and the Politics of Education after 2015 (1). 10.1057/9781137491510.
  20. Book: Quigley, Alex. Teach Now! English: Becoming a Great English Teacher. 2014. Routledge. 9781317668138. en.
  21. Book: Didau, David. The Secret of Literacy: Making the implicit explicit. 2014. Crown House Publishing. 9781781351826. en.
  22. Web site: The school that's ditched homework to help teachers get a life. Bloom. Adi. 21 June 2015. TES. en. 17 November 2019.
  23. News: One, Two, Three, Eyes on Me!. Duoblys. George. 5 October 2017. London Review of Books. 17 November 2019. 23–26. 0260-9592.
  24. Web site: Feeling positive about negative numbers. May 2016. primarytimerydotcom. en. 24 December 2019.
  25. Web site: Hornets and Butterflies: How to reduce workload. Kirby. Joe. 6 June 2015. Joe Kirby's blog. en. 24 December 2019.
  26. Web site: We created the holy grail of homework – here's how. Foster. Rebecca. 13 May 2019. Tes. en. 24 December 2019.
  27. Book: Massey, Robert. https://books.google.com/books?id=cCGwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT161. From Able to Remarkable: Help Your Students Become Expert Learners. 2019. Crown House Publishing Ltd. 9781785834585. en. 5. Collaborative Learning.
  28. Web site: "What could we do with an extra 20,000 hours a year?" Strategies to reduce marking load while still ensuring high quality feedback?. learningandresearch. en. 18 November 2019.
  29. Web site: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way. 8 January 2017. Schools Week. 16 November 2019.
  30. News: 'No excuses': inside Britain's strictest school. Adams. Richard. 30 December 2016. The Guardian. 17 November 2019. en-GB. 0261-3077.
  31. Web site: The Michaela School: Tiger teachers burning bright. Dean. Alex. en-US. 17 November 2019.
  32. Book: Fletcher-Wood, Harry. Responsive Teaching: Cognitive Science and Formative Assessment in Practice. 2018. Routledge. 9781351583862. en.
  33. Book: Lesson Planning Tweaks for Teachers: Small Changes That Make A Big Difference. Aberson. Melanie. Light. Debbie. 2015. Bloomsbury Publishing. 9781472916167. en.
  34. Web site: 'Teaching is workload-addicted. Teachers seem to believe hard work equates to love for one's pupils'. Ashford. Katie. 26 November 2016. TES. en. 16 November 2019.
  35. Book: Waters . Mick . Banks . Claire . A Curious Curriculum: Teaching foundation subjects well . 2022 . Crown House Publishing Ltd . 978-1-78583-650-3 . 79 . en.
  36. Book: Bloomsbury CPD Library: Secondary Curriculum and Assessment Design. Turner. Summer. Library. Bloomsbury CPD. 2016. Bloomsbury Publishing. 141–145. 9781472928511. en.
  37. Book: Facer, Jo. Simplicity Rules: How Simplifying What We Do in the Classroom Can Benefit Children. 2019. Routledge. 978113848863-2. en.
  38. Book: Tharby, Andy. Making every English lesson count: Six principles to support great reading and writing. 2017. Crown House Publishing Ltd. 9781785832512. en.
  39. Web site: 5 Ways To Make Knowledge Stick. Sharpe. Helen. 11 March 2018. TeacherToolkit. en-GB. 17 November 2019.
  40. Book: Lemov . Doug . Teach Like a Champion 3.0: 63 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College . 2021 . John Wiley & Sons . Hoboken . 978-1-119-71261-9 . https://books.google.com/books?id=7cU0EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA63 . en . 2. lesson preparation. 63.
  41. News: Want to make sure your students really learn? Get a long-term plan. Thom. Jamie. 4 May 2018. The Guardian. 17 November 2019. en-GB. 0261-3077.

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