On 3rd June we had another casual meeting for Econ teachers.
On the agenda were 3 questions:
1) How can we best sequence the Economics curriculum?
And how we can achieve this under common constraints such as AS level co-teaching and multiple teachers?
2) How can we attract students to the subject at A-Level?
Including entrance requirements, communicating the nature of the subject accurately and broadening the participation for girls and students of ethnic minorities.
3) What do we wish we had known when we started teaching Economics?
Reflections on our mistakes and misconceptions, and advice for those new to teaching the subject.
I wrote about the first question here and the second here. This post focuses on the third question, but we only had about 5 minutes left by this point so we only covered it very briefly.
There is lots of general advice for new teachers around the web. This megathread from Louis Everett is a recent example. I enjoyed looking through and getting some tips on everything from saving your gluestick lids to using the snipping tool (although I prefer the 'Insert Screen Clipping' in PowerPoint route). However, sometimes it's useful to have more subject-specific advice.
Suggestions on this included taking up opportunities to teach the whole curriculum - both micro and macro, attending as much CPD training as you can and getting to know other Econ teachers in your area. I added using the Print Friendly PDF Chrome extension, which is useful for cutting out unwanted parts of news articles when copying and pasting.
When I first started teaching Econ (in a brand new sixth form...department of one...) I didn't really know where to go to look for resources or where to get support. I wrote about some of my go-tos here, but since then I've compiled this list signposting teachers towards resources, including Facebook groups to join and 250 accounts to follow on Twitter. If you'd like to be added/removed from either list please do just drop me a message.
If you're interested in attending the next Econ Ed Chat, check back for updates.