School Leaders Discussing Inclusion #SLTchat

I am a great fan of #SLTchat. I applied to host and was, much to my surprise, accepted. Now things got real. For those who don’t know #SLTchat is a chat for senior school leaders or aspiring senior leaders. Recognised by the DfE and very popular amongst tweeting school leaders, managers and those who are interested in whole school issues. Inclusion is at worst a buzzword. I have visited schools that say they practice it but they really don’t. It is an issue for everyone who works in a school. Access to education for those with Special or additional education needs is a right. I would push for meaningful education where the school embraces this not sees inclusion as a tick box exercise.

I chose Inclusion as the topic. As assistant head teacher of a special school I see a range of inclusion issues, those young people for whom inclusion in a mainstream setting has not worked out. Those students who we have to adapt and employ a huge range of strategies to ensure they are included within our community. For many students our school is a last resort only available to them once current placements break down. Many have been out of school for extended periods whilst a suitable placement is found. What I don’t have huge insight into is how the ethos of inclusion is viewed and applied in mainstream settings. Often this is with fantastic results and I was interested how SLT support their teachers to achieve this. #SLTchat is quite a democratic process. A poll goes up  during the week before and tweachers choose the question and a scenario they would like to discuss. My Chat attracted 216 votes – not an earth shattering amount despite a lot of promotional tweets by myself and the #SLTchat team -despite hilarious X-Factor, Rugby and CBB imagery! But I have never received that many responses before. I don’t really have any advice for future hosts. I made most of the images using www.canva.com  which is quick and simple.  These are my initial question ideas. Q1 was by far the most popular. I am very interested in student wellbeing, and the role of lesson observations in supporting teachers. I might use these in a future #SpEdSC (my weekly Special education slow chat).

And the Scenarios, quite close here but scenario 2 was the winner. Great stuff.

As You can see a made a few different prompt tweet images to avoid the @sltchat timeline being too repetitive. Urging voting and reminding people of the time and date. Although Im sure most avid SLT-chatters do not need reminders. See what I mean about the hilarious puns. I scheduled all of these on tweetdeck. especially the questions for the chat itself. The tweetdeck moved so fast i’m sure I missed some tweets but tried to respond and RT as many as I could.

The Pressure was on as the last two #SLTchat chats had trended. As soon as 8.30 arrived I was able to blink and on my ipad it certainly seemed to be trending! I received a tweet from @Kellyscc saying #SLTchat was trending in Australia. Very exciting. I really enjoyed hosting #SLTchat and the Link to the Nurph replay is here 416 tweets in 30 minutes.

Thanks to Andy Calvert and Stephen Logan for their support.