Thursday 26th January 2026

I was very pleased to get my Trainee Teachers back for a whole day's training today, even though yesterday had been such a great day. My core purpose at Tea Leaf has always been to have a significant impact on the quality of teaching, so spending today and tomorrow with the Trainee Teachers will certainly help me to achieve that. It's small steps, but as that famous Chinese proverb says: 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'.

I started the day by modelling a longer lesson today - still not a full lesson but longer than on Tuesday - which they then tried to replicate in small groups. Although it's small steps, they were significantly better than they were on Tuesday in terms of their level of skill, but more importantly from my point of view in terms of their confidence to stand in front of a class and teach. I know that tomorrow they will be even better, so there is great satisfaction with that.

I had been asked to run some staff training after lessons had finished today, replicating the training on 'Pair Talk' that I ran at Tea Leaf Centre Nuwara Eliya, and will almost certainly run again at Tea Leaf Centre Bogawantalawa next week. The staff were very receptive, so I enjoyed delivering the training. They say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but at least this old dog is able to make use of some of the old tricks that I developed in my teaching career!

At the end of the day, I got a lift in the school tuk-tuk to the Bus Station in Maskeliya, where a Norwood bus was just about to set off, so I got to Hatton in good time, then made my way to Daya's place. I was too tired to sort out today's photographs and complete my blog and diary, but after a short nap I rustled up enough energy to complete everything before bedtime, although I didn't get round to writing up yesterday's case studies, as that was a step too far this evening!

Today's photographs are a couple I took at the staff meeting first thing this morning, plus a few from the staff training session after school.








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