This month I wrote an article for Teach Secondary on a topic dear to my heart – teacher explanations. If you are interested then you can give the article a look here: Infectious Explanations Teach Secondary Article. We attribute too much of teaching to supposedly ‘natural’ qualities – like how we individually, uniquely convey an explanation and tell a compelling story. I will keep banging the drum that a great teacher is not born, but made. With a judicious analysis of core teaching skills – like giving explanations – we can chunk them down and practise them until we perform with something like expertise.