WHAT IS BOTHEREDNESS?

Botheredness® is a word Hywel Roberts coined to sum up the kind of authentic care and adult positioning that is real and deliberate and gets children and young people on board with learning. It is the holy grail of teaching and something that will both significantly improve your enjoyment of teaching and benefit your classes enormously.

Hywel uses storytelling and Drama pedagogies to offer a vision of a truly rich and experience-filled lived curriculum. The curriculum has three elements:

The should: academic (the curriculum handbook, the published curriculum which is of no interest to children)

The could: how the should is presented to the children in the room via powerful and effective approaches (Let’s Say...)

The must: how we are preparing children to be ethical citizens of the world demonstrating optimism and compassion

The book Botheredness has been a hit beyond the world of education as well as within it. Everyone loves stories. They make us human. And stories have been around since someone made a fire and then sat around with others telling them how they did it. The book is an essential guide to reclaiming your professional warmth, passion, and care – your botheredness – whether you’re in the classroom, the workplace, the boardroom, or beyond.

WHO IS HYWEL ROBERTS?

TEACHER – WRITER – STORYTELLER - HUMOURIST

Hywel has been a teacher for over thirty years. His reputation has grown hugely since he stepped out of the full-time classroom. He has found an incredible and innovative niche in the world of model teaching contributing to and advising curriculum designers and innovators from Barnsley to Brussels, from Cairo to Cleethorpes. Hywel is as at home in front of hundreds of Headteachers on the conference circuit as he is when working with EAL children on the carpets of their classrooms. Hywel contributes to the national conversation around education at school and university level. He is an experienced teacher in Special, Primary and Secondary settings, nationally and internationally. He is also a well- respected author and contributes regularly to a variety of publications.

Hywel led the PGCE programme in Drama at Huddersfield University for many years and currently contributes to the Masters programme in Drama and Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University.

Hywel still works with children, carving out a unique niche in modelling Botheredness pedagogies to observing teachers. This serves to keep his insight fresh, current and useful. His work deals with curriculum liberation, oracy, creative practice, engagement, leadership, literacy, teacher development and Imagineering – the liberation of the art of teaching.

In addition to working in schools, Hywel is a regular contributor to conferences including The Festival of Education, Education Fest Wales, Northern Rocks, Practical Pedagogies, Community Playthings’ Day of Play, and The University of Belfast Thinking Conference. He is in demand as a conference keynote speaker working alongside colleagues such as Mick Waters, Karen Ardley, The Real David Cameron and Estelle Morris as well as associates of Ian Gilbert’s Independent Thinking Ltd, an organisation he is very passionate about.

Hywel has recently worked for Barnardos, The Princes Trust, the National Galleries in Edinburgh, The Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield and the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds as a visiting teacher. Hywel has attained a distinction in his Masters from Leeds Beckett University focussing on Poverty and Achievement in City Schools. Hywel contributed to BBC Bitesize acting as a content provider and script doctor during the Pandemic in 2020.

His award-winning book ‘Oops! Getting Children to Learn Accidentally’ is published by Crown House Publishing and has proved very popular with educators around the world and now is a feature on the reading list of many university teacher training courses. His book ‘Uncharted Territories’ is written with Dr Debra Kidd and was published in 2018. He writes a regular column for the Times Educational Supplement about his encounters as a ‘travelling teacher’ and has a weekly show ‘Hywel’s Teacher Stories’ on Teacher Hug Radio. Hywel’s number one Bestseller on Amazon, ‘Botheredness’ was published in 2023. Hywel is a contributor to ‘Unfinished Business’, the book honouring the life and work of Sir Tim Brighouse.

He has also contributed fiction to a prison-based literacy reading programme developed by The Shannon Trust. Hywel is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Hywel also plays the double bass.

Oh, and part owns a commercial cask ale brewery with some pals. See www.jollyboysbrewery.co.uk

He was recently described as ‘..a world leader in enthusiasm’.