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One week to go until my Project Perfect PE teaching CPD event... Honestly? I'm nervous.
James Simms
Jun 17, 2026 4:45:01 PM
As I write this, it is Monday, the 15th of June. Nine days from today, something happens in Gloucestershire that I have been thinking about, planning for, and – I won't pretend otherwise – quietly dreading, for quite some time.
On Wednesday, the 24th of June, I will walk into a classroom at Churchdown School Academy and teach a full lesson on energy systems (you can register here to be part of the event). The students in that room will be PE teachers. Colleagues from across the country who have given up a morning of their summer term to come, sit down, and experience the lesson for real. Not as observers watching from a distance, but as learners in seats, doing the activities, answering the questions, working through the tasks exactly as students would.
No safety net. No script. Just the lesson, the room, and whatever happens next.
I want to be clear: I am not nervous because I don't believe in what I'm doing. I am nervous because I do. And that, colleagues, is a very different feeling.
The model is broken, and we've all been living with it
Here is the thing. I want to talk honestly about something that I think sits at the root of a great deal of difficulty in classroom PE teaching, and in teaching more broadly.How do PE teachers actually learn to teach in a classroom?
Think about it for a moment. Really think about it. We qualify, often after a year of predominantly teaching practical PE and maybe having been dropped into classrooms and left to find our feet. From that point forward, our professional development model is essentially this: try something, see if it works, try something else if it doesn't. Trial and error. Occasionally, once or twice a year if we're lucky, a colleague will come and sit at the back of the room, watch us teach for 60 minutes, and write some notes. If we're in a supportive department and school, we get useful feedback. If we're not, we get something that falls well short of being useful.
That is not a model of professional mastery. That is, to use an uncomfortable word, amateurism dressed up in formal language.
Let's be candid about what a genuine master-apprentice relationship actually looks like. In every field where mastery genuinely transfers, such as surgery, craft, elite sport and music, the apprentice begins by watching. Repeatedly. They observe the master at work. They see what high-quality performance looks like before they attempt it themselves. They build a mental model of excellence, and only then do they begin to approximate it under guidance. The master performs. The apprentice watches, asks questions, and gradually attempts. That is how skill transfers.
In education, we have flipped this model entirely. The “apprentice” (such as the trainee teacher, the early-career colleague or often even the experienced teacher who has never quite cracked a particular aspect of their practice) is asked to perform first. The supposed master sits at the back and watches. And then they leave.
I held a version of this backwards model for the first several years of my career. I thought lesson observations were the best possibility of development. I thought being watched and receiving feedback was how I would grow. And I did grow. But slowly, and largely in spite of the model rather than because of it. What I was missing, what I think most of us are missing for most of our careers, is something deceptively simple.
We need to see great teaching, not read about it or hear it described. See it.
What the 24th June actually is
Project 'Perfect' PE Teaching is, at its heart, an attempt to restore the right model.On the 24th of June, I will teach a full lesson on energy systems for the new WJEC GCSE PE course, which is due for first teaching this September. Meanwhile, PE colleagues experience it as my students. Not to evaluate me or grade me, but to feel what a carefully planned, pedagogically considered, skill-first PE theory lesson actually looks and feels like from the inside, from the seat.
Let me be equally clear about what I am not claiming. I am not claiming this will be a perfect lesson. The title of the event uses the word 'Perfect' deliberately and provocatively because I think perfect is the wrong goal. What I am aiming for is honest, considered and open to scrutiny. If something doesn't work on the day, we talk about it. If a moment surprises me, we learn from it together. That is the point.
The lesson is deliberately built around the five domains of The PE Teacher Academy framework, because I want colleagues to be able to watch what's happening and know exactly which domain they're in at any given moment or which domains are overlapping in a particular moment:
- PE Curriculum: the knowledge and skills of this particular examination course. In this case, WJEC GCSE PE for first teaching 2026.
- PE Subject Knowledge: energy systems taught for understanding and to unlock the core intuition of the concepts.
- PE Cognitive Science: retrieval practice, spacing, and cognitive load management embedded into the lesson sequence, not bolted on afterwards.
- PE Pedagogy: the moment-to-moment craft of the room: questioning, pacing, response to students, the stuff that's hardest to read about and easiest to see.
- PE Course Design and Assessment: exam technique as a teachable craft, specifically the evaluate command word, modelled explicitly through “I do. We do. You do” with a six-mark question.
These aren't labels applied after the fact. They are the architecture. Every activity in the lesson from the “Stand and Stare” retrieval warm-up, through the energy continuum group task, into the ‘Analyse’ and ‘Evaluate’ tables for each energy system, and out through the structured exam scaffold, was planned with at least one of these domains consciously in view.
After the lesson, we debrief. Honestly. Colleagues ask me whatever they want to ask. We look at what worked, what I would change, and what any of us can take back into our own classrooms on Wednesday afternoon, when many of the delegates will be back at the coalface teaching PE in their setting.
That is the model. The master performs. The colleagues experience it. Then we talk.
The practical details, and how to be part of it
The event takes place on Wednesday 24th June at Churchdown School Academy, Gloucestershire.It is completely free to attend, and we still have a small number of places available.
If you want to be in that room and sit in the seat, do the activities, and take part in the debrief, please register now using the link. Places are limited by the size of the classroom and the integrity of the experience. This is a real lesson format, not a lecture theatre. When the places are gone, they are gone.
Can't make it to Gloucestershire? The lesson will be streamed live to YouTube on the day. You won't get the full in-room experience, but you will be able to watch the lesson unfold in real time and follow along as a remote observer. Details of the stream will be shared on the day (make sure you're following TheEverLearner on YouTube so you don't miss it).
And if you want to revisit the day in full, including the preparation, the lesson, the debrief, the honest reflection, etc., I will be making a vlog and documentary about the 24th, which will be posted to this blog sometime after the event. I want to capture not just what happened, but what it felt like to do this. The nerves, the decisions, the moments I'd change. All of it.
So, however you engage with the 24th, such as in the room, watching live, or catching the documentary afterwards, there will be a way in for you.
Why this matters beyond one day
Colleagues, I think we owe it to each other and, more importantly, to our students to take PE teacher classroom teaching development seriously. Not the box-ticking version. Not the one-observation-per-year version. The real thing.The PE teaching community is full of talented, committed, thoughtful practitioners who have learned almost everything they know through sheer persistence and goodwill. Imagine what we could become if we actually built a proper model. If we created regular, structured opportunities for teachers to see and feel excellent practice, not just hear about it, not just read a blog post about it, but genuinely experience it, discuss it, and carry it back into their classrooms.
That is what the 24th of June is the beginning of. One lesson. One room. One honest attempt to show what's possible and to invite the conversation that follows. We are taking this model to Asia in September, and we are building toward a larger UK conference in 2027. Watch this space.
I hope you'll be there, in whatever form that takes for you.
Conclusion
Teaching is always a public act, even when we forget that. On the 24th of June, I'm just making it a little more literally true.When I write posts like this, posts that involve announcing I will stand up and teach in front of my peers, I am aware that I am either setting myself up for something genuinely useful, or something genuinely humbling. Perhaps both. I think that's probably right.
Thank you for reading. I would genuinely love to see you in Gloucestershire next Wednesday, on the stream or in the documentary. However you join us, you are welcome to be part of this experience.
Have a wonderful week.
James