The Teacher's Wellbeing Cycle

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The school I work at gave everyone the option of a day doing other activities. This was ours! Little did I realise that blowing your nose during a cycle is a bad move for the people behind you (sorry Mike - what can I say? I am an amateur and I have heavy nostrils…).

teacher Cycle final 1.jpg

A few process notes

For those of you who have been here before this should come as no surprise but here are the usual stages outline in the snapshots below.

  • Gathering raw materials (I also had a few photos but I thought I’d spare my friends the shame)

  • Some biro/sketchbook notes for initial thinking and shifting basic ideas about

  • Clip Studio Paint for first tidy pencils

  • Affinity Designer for vectors (moving back and forth between my iMac and iPad to get the best of the different input methods¹)

    • initial inking

    • shade

    • colours

    • layout

¹ Apple Pencil is the best way of drawing. The bigger iMac screen with a trackpad/mouse is a lot better for organising and arranging compositional elements - especially when it comes to the millions of layers that vectors produce).

A few screenshots


Non-fussy and frictionless: Loom as a useful teaching tool

I was delighted to be mentioned by Loom on their recent blog post not least because much of what I am about is communicating ideas efficiently using digital tools. Being recognised in this way might mean that finally my media career can take off and I can buy those gold taps that I always longed for.

Anywho… the previous blog post outlined a few initial thoughts on this useful tool which I pretty much still stand by. The big change since then is that I am using it a lot more for short topic intros and work feedback with my groups.

For posterity I thought it was worth sharing the clip that they mentioned - a quick overview of the Buddha’s life complete with a fictional hedgehog apprentice:²

As you can see it isn’t a super-polished presentation¹ - which is the point of these things - this is about fallible teachers communicating directly, quickly and sometimes roughly with their classes. The great benefit with this tool is that I can make a fast shareable upload that retains the human touch. One of the things I am often expressing on this blog is the importance of facilitating thought processes - in other words employing tools that enable idea development rather than slowing it down or getting in the way. For me, Loom has been a frictionless method to get some teaching thoughts down efficiently without being too fussy.

Non-precious is the new precious.

¹ although the material I created did take a while to put together!

² if you are offended then you haven’t taught teenagers

³ I don’t care for gold taps