IMPLEMENTING BOTHEREDNESS 2026
Overview
A weekly source of positivity, inspiration - and tools you can use on Monday morning.
You already know about botheredness - you've seen the difference between a class that's merely compliant and one that's genuinely alive.
What's hard is the how: finding practical, sustainable ways to make that aliveness happen in real classrooms - day in, day out.
That's what this is for.
Implementing Botheredness is a six-session online programme for teachers and leaders who want to build a culture where learning feels unmissable - where students lean in, care about their work, and genuinely get stuck in.
Each session is one hour, online, after school.
There's no cover needed. No travel. No time away from school.
What you'll get is a weekly dose of inspiration, practical strategies, and the company of educators who care about the same things you do.
What we'll cover:
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The core principles: professional imagination, story, stance, and what it means to do education is done with students, not to them
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Warming up the curriculum: practical techniques for making abstract knowledge vivid, meaningful and memorable — transferable tools that will change how you think about what 'lived' curriculum really means
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From engagement to investment: how to move students beyond surface-level participation toward genuine curiosity and deepening motivation
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Making change stick: tried-and-tested implementation tools to help you identify what needs to change, design a workable plan, and actually follow through
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Leading for botheredness: how to create the conditions where staff feel confident, valued and involved — because bothered adults make bothered children
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Building the culture: how joy, warmth and connection sit naturally alongside clarity, consistency and purposeful routines
By the end of the programme, you'll have...
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A clear, practical understanding of the pedagogy of botheredness - and how to apply it in your context
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A toolkit of transferable strategies for humanising and warming up curriculum content
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Concrete ways to move students from engagement to genuine investment
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A detailed implementation plan for embedding these ideas across your classroom or school
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Renewed energy and optimism for the work
Who it's for
Teachers and school leaders at any phase - primary, secondary, post-16, special schools and alternative provisions.
Whether you're coming to 'botheredness' fresh - or if you've read the book and want to go deeper - you'll leave each session with something you can use straight away.
Details:
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Format: Six live online sessions, 4.30-5.30pm
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When:
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Tuesday Nov 3rd
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Tuesday Nov 10th
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Tuesday Nov 17th
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Wednesday Nov 25th
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Wednesday Dec 2nd
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Wednesday Dec 9th
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Price: £97 per person for all six sessions, including recordings and summaries.
We'll also send you PDFs of two key texts: Botheredness: Stories, Stance and Pedagogy by Hywel Roberts, and Making Change Stick: A Practical Guide to Implementing School Improvement by Dr James Mannion.
JOIN THE WAITLIST
MEET YOUR FACILITATORS
Hywel Roberts is a teacher, writer, storyteller, humourist and ‘world leader in enthusiasm’.
He is as at home working with children on the carpets of their classrooms as he is in front of hundreds of headteachers on the conference circuit.
Hywel contributes to the national conversation around education at school and university level. He is also a well-respected and widely published author and columnist. Hywel contributed to BBC Bitesize acting as a content provider and script doctor during the pandemic in 2020.
Hywel's books include his award-winning book Oops! Getting Children to Learn Accidentally, Uncharted Territories (written with Dr Debra Kidd) and, most recently, the best-selling Botheredness. He has also contributed fiction to a prison-based literacy reading programme developed by The Shannon Trust.
Hywel holds an MA in Education and Poverty. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching. He also part-owns a commercial cask ale brewery with some pals, but that’s another story…
Dr James Mannion is a teacher trainer, author and government advisor who specialises in implementation and improvement science, self-regulated learning and practitioner inquiry.
James is the author of Making Change Stick: A Practical Guide to Implementing School Improvement (2025) and Fear is the Mind Killer (2020, co-authored with Kate McAllister). He is the co-founder of Rethinking Education, a teacher training organisation dedicated to improving outcomes for children and young people through implementation and improvement science, self-regulated learning and practitioner inquiry. He has worked with thousands of schools, multi-academy trusts and government agencies in the UK and internationally, supporting leaders to design, implement and sustain meaningful, lasting improvements.
Formerly a teacher and school leader for 15 years, James holds an MA in person-centred education from the University of Sussex and a PhD in self-regulated learning from the University of Cambridge. He's an Associate of Oracy Cambridge, the Chair of the Education Policy Alliance, and the co-host (with "The Real" David Cameron) of the Rethinking Education podcast, which has had almost a million downloads to date.