Joe Kirby
NationalityBritish
OccupationTeacher
Known for
Notable workContribution to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers (2016)
Parent
RelativesVanessa 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[5] who writes on translating research into the classroom.[6] Prior to becoming director of education at Athena Learning Trust,[7] and vice principal at Jane Austen College, part of the Inspiration Trust, Norwich,[8] he was at Dunraven School in Streatham,[9][10] and then was one of four deputy heads at Michaela Community School in Wembley,[11] a school he helped establish.[12]

He is an active blogger on education, which includes his blog titled "Pragmatic Education".[13][14][15] Like a number of other younger British teachers including Tom Bennett[5] 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,[16] and increasing Kirby's influence on the debate on education in the UK.[17][13] In 2013 he was name checked by Michael Gove, British Secretary of State for Education at the time, and the education watchdog Ofsted,[18][17] and has since been frequently cited and consulted by Gove[19] and politician Nick Gibb.[5]

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",[11] 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

  • How to Start on Teach First. Amazon ebook, 2013. (Editor)

Blog posts, opinion pieces, chapters

  • "Marking is a hornet". pragmaticreform.wordpress.com 31 October 2015.
  • "Knowledge, memory and testing" in Katharine Birbalsingh (Ed.) (2016) Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way. Melton: John Catt Educational. ISBN 9781909717961
  • "The grateful ped(agogue): Why giving thanks may be a gift that gives to the giver". ResearchED. 26 September 2018
  • "To sleep, perchance to learn". ResearchED. 28 February 2019.

References

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