Martha Boyne, Emily Clements and Ben Wright’s Thrive: In your first three years in teaching equips trainee secondary school teachers with the know-how to lay the foundations for a successful career in teaching, long after the challenging first few years are over.
Martha, Emily and Ben are thriving teachers. In Thrive they share their personal experiences and demonstrate how you too can thrive during the tricky training year, the daunting NQT year and the crucial RQT year. Using their collective insights, and plenty of evidence-informed strategies and advice, they detail how you can get to grips with the classroom basics – from behaviour management and lesson planning to differentiation and providing for SEND – and effectively continue your professional development.
This book is not just a survival manual to help teachers get through their first three years in teaching. Nor is it an academic text that has been written by authors who have only a distant memory of what it takes to stand in front of a class of teenagers for the first time. Thrive is something very different. It gives both the aspiring and the newly qualified the support and guidance to become a thriving teacher, and has been co-authored by three recently qualified teachers who in this book invest their passion and practical knowledge to inspire and inform others who want to pursue enjoyable and rewarding careers in teaching.

Thrive is divided into three parts – specifically detailing what can be expected in the training year, NQT year and RQT year respectively – with the authors’ commentary threaded throughout to demonstrate how the ideas discussed can be successfully put into practice. Their accounts are also complemented by expert advice from two people who are at the very top of their profession, Lianne Allison and Dr Simon Thompson, who provide wider perspectives drawn from a wealth of teaching experience. Forty of the book’s forty-six chapters begin with a checklist outlining what a developing teacher is expected to do, and each chapter ends with a to-do list that can be used as a quick reference point to structure the strategies implemented. These to-do lists are also followed by lists of suggested further reading so that readers can delve deeper into topics and fields of research that they find particularly interesting or relevant.
Furthermore, the book offers helpful counsel on choosing the best training route as well as an in-depth analysis of the change in priorities for busy teachers as they progress: encouraging constant reflection, outlining potential pathways and emphasising the importance of evidence-based practice and how new teachers can, and should, incorporate this into their teaching.
Rooted in practical strategies and innovative ideas, Thrive is the essential guide for trainee secondary school teachers and teacher trainers.