Teaching as a Collaborative Journey: Celebrating World Teachers’ Day

As we celebrate World Teachers' Day on Sunday 5 October, I wanted to explore this year’s theme of ‘Collaboration for Quality Teaching.” 

Collaboration has been at the very heart of my entire approach to teaching. I think the very nature of the disciplines of Philosophy and Theology lend themselves naturally to collaboration as nobody actually knows what the right answer is! I came into teaching following a career in business and I was incredibly grateful for the support of a wonderfully collaborative Religious Studies Department at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford. We would regularly observe each other’s lessons and in the discussions that followed (often in a local hostelry!) the exchange of ideas and practice would add value to what we were doing. 

In January 2025 Henry Bennett and I decided to work together and study the ‘Science of Learning’ unit from the Great Teaching Toolkit. We met every week during term time for 40 minutes to discuss our progress, and the course would set us Top Schools on top of that. It was a really useful exercise made all the richer by the fact that we were ‘in it together’. We had our final meeting this week and are already planning our next piece of collaborative learning. In a digital world that lends itself to on-line courses based upon individuals interfacing with devices the importance of shared human experiences is, in my opinion, a vital element of genuine professional development. 

Mr Mike Tonks, Head of Philosophy and Theology