Ep 156: Daily Struggles of a Teacher & How To Overcome Them: Imposter Syndrome, Constant Judgement & Toxic Comparisons

0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Teach Steep Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name's Hayden. And in this episode, we're going to be taking a look at the daily struggles of a teacher and how to overcome them. We'll be taking a look at imposter syndrome, which is widespread in the profession. The toxic nature of judgement in schools. And how comparing yourself to other professionals can actually lead you down the road of thinking you're not good enough. And don't forget to share this with a colleague and leave us a review. Dylan, let's dive in. Right over to you then. You managed to actually plan and and get stuff sorted for an episode. So you're you're it big man. How, how many times can you say that in the podcast before people start to realise hang on? Dylan said. Oh you can plan this yourself and it's been 7 times. No one, no one remembers more than three episodes ago. Do they? He's insulting. He's insulting you and me.

0:41 So there we go. Let's get started. What a great way to start. So yeah, we're going to talk about the daily struggles of a teacher and how to overcome them. Yeah, I know that. I heard the intro. Come on, chop chop. This is why you need to start, Dylan, because you're too judgy. All right, the first thing we're going to talk about is imposter syndrome. I got this idea from someone in our WhatsApp community who said, please can you talk about imposter syndrome? And like, does everyone suffer from it? Firstly, yes. And how do we overcome it? So, Dylan, why do even brilliant teachers doubt themselves still? I think imposter syndrome is so common in teaching for a very clear reason. The the bar's too high. The it's it, it is genuinely almost impossible to fulfil what is seen as the requirements to be a good teacher. Yeah, it's just so hard.

1:25 So I think by definition, no one actually exists, especially if you're early in your career who starts being a teacher, who is hitting the mark all the time and everything. So it's so easy to slip into thinking that that's because of you personally rather than because it's just an unattainable goal. So I think a huge part of imposter syndrome is firstly understanding that you probably feel that way because it's rigged against you in the 1st place. You yeah, sure, you're not going to hit hit that target of being the best at everything you could possibly be. You're not going to be able to have any kind of work life balance and also plan things individually down to every single child's individual needs all the time for every single minute of every single day. You can't do it. So when you start, you think, I'm a brand new teacher. I'm so I'm so invigorated.

2:08 I'm going to spend all my time doing this and I still just can't do it. I must be awful. Aren't I the worst teacher in the world? No, you're learning. Firstly, you will get better, so that will happen. And secondly, even experienced teachers still feel imposter syndrome because they'll think I'm 10 years into this, how am I still not on top of everything because it's impossible to be. So it's two, it's 2 prongs. In my opinion, if you're inexperienced, you absolutely will feel imposter syndrome in almost anything you do because you're building your experience up and your ability to do something and you will get there. So my advice for that is fake it till you make it. Just keep trying, work at it. No, you're not going to be there straight away. Doesn't mean you're in imposter. It means you're learning. And the second part of this is understand what you're working towards.

2:49 If you're working towards something that is attainable, then ride the imposter syndrome and you'll eventually get there. I think in teaching we're working towards something which is completely unattainable. You cannot get there. It's impossible to do this job perfectly all the time because of the lack of funding, because there's so much pressure on teachers to do things. The expectations gone through the roof, the budget has gone through the floor, so you will never get there. So unless you just learn to deal with that imposter syndrome and actually realise it's not imposter syndrome, you're doing the best you can do and you're really good at it, you will be 25 years into teaching and still have that feeling. Yeah, for sure. I think alongside fake it so you make it, there's a few sort of core things you can do in your own mind as well in terms of developing your ability to reflect rather than just be self critical. I think that's a big one, not just beating yourself up. I certainly did it and I know you certainly did. We definitely had imposter syndrome at the start of our career, maybe even later on as well, where if I did one thing wrong, I would just beat myself up over it rather than just being reflective and being like, actually I did 9 good things. And yeah, there's these two things that I can work on and being reflective.

3:49 And that's just an important distinction to make it to train yourself to actually highlight your own positives and not just constantly aiming for perfectionism. Because I think that's the problem, that that bar is so high that I honestly attribute it with perfectionism. It's like our teachers, perfectionists by nature. If you're getting impostors. In a way, yeah, because we just want to be absolutely at the top of our game in 19 different areas of teaching whilst the system beats us down. You just have to let it go, I think. Yeah, completely. It's just it's so tricky. I think that's that's why it exists. That's my two cents on that and that will always be my advice. I think fake it to you make it's the easy one to say, but what you said is really important. How often did you listen to feedback and an observation or or get something told to you?

4:32 And it doesn't matter if 95% of what was said was lovely and how amazing you were. The only thing that sticks in your mind is someone at the end said you didn't ask many questions of the class. Could you do that a bit more? You're the worst teacher in. The world suddenly so bad. I'm so bad at this job. Why am I so bad? Despite there being a list of 10 things that they said you did really well. And despite the literal rules of most schools being you have to give someone a point for for feedback to develop, you have to, it's like you're never even going to get, I tell you what is unattainable, getting completely positive feedback in a lot of schools because they literally have a rule of where we have to give them something to develop. So in that sense, take it with a pinch of salt. They're always going to give you some to develop. And you know what? Sometimes it might be a really good thing for you to reflect on and actually try to develop. Work on one thing at a time. Don't get yourself overwhelmed and just think, I'm just so bad because I can't do 7 things at once. OK, that's fine.

5:17 Maybe you can't do those seven things yet. Work on one of them. Next year, work on the next one, work on the next one. And over time you'll realise you're not an imposter at all. You're actually very, very good at this job. Definitely, definitely redefine what success is. Yeah. So it's a new goal. Cool. Next one you've got here. And I think this was this was kind of linked to anything was about this myth of there being the superhero teacher, you know, feeling like you have to do everything. It's it's very much linked to what you just said. I don't think we need to spend long on this, but there are definitely teachers out there who feel like they simply have to do everything all of the time. Why is this a barrier? Why do people feel this way? And how can we get over? It, I think because teaching, the reason I've kind of kept this as a separate point is because I wanted to widen up a little bit. Like just outside of the, the physical act of teaching what you're qualified to do, you're also expected to, to be able to be incredibly creative and put up amazing displays. I'm like, you don't, you didn't really go to university to learn that.

6:10 In all honesty, that is just kind of like, oh, have you got this skill set as well? You didn't really go to university, even though I would say this is much, much closer to the job of teaching. But to be like a really good counsellor in particular situations for children's emotional health where it's like you're not really that trained in that you're you're trained in how to deliver a curriculum really well and optimise like pedagogy in the classroom. So being that the superhero teacher to me is can you be an amazing teacher? Everything we just talked about in number one with the imposter syndrome. And also you need to do these other seven jobs that people literally have full time jobs in in other sectors of work. Like you just got to be really good at them as well. And I think like, yeah, well, how do you manage that? What do you do? You can't. You can't you be? There's that running joke that you see, I know all the time of teachers and nurses. There's therapists, yeah, they're psychologists, they're behaviour coaches, they're teachers.

6:53 You know, they're everything they possibly can be. It is exactly that. You can't be everything. I was naff at displays. It wasn't my Forte. I also didn't want to do them like I. You have to just prioritise. And I think this comes in with the top thing is just know who you are, know who you are, know what your strengths are. Do what you can, but except that it might be, in the eyes of some people, never enough. You're not that lovely consoling person who the kids run up to all of the time and want to be with you all of the time. It's like, oh look, it's Sarah or it's miss out on the playground. Always knows what to say. I'm going to be their shadow. They just always know what to do. Sometimes that's not you and that's fine. And I think that expectation can be external sometimes. And I think a lot of what I'm going to say today based on the things you've written down, I think they're absolutely vital. But I think you have to control the controllables. That's my big thing.

7:44 You can say it until you're red in your face. For example, we did a a video the other day about emails being sent right until you're red in the face. You can sit there and say, well, they shouldn't be bloody sending emails on a Saturday morning. What are they doing? Well, they shouldn't do it on outside of school time. OK, you can think that, but you can't control that people are going to send you emails at the weekend. You can control when you check it, you can control if it's on your phone. So my, my scene here so far is you can't control the idea that people externally might look in and say you should be all of these things, but you can control what you literally do and what you do well. Do what you do well. Prioritise. If we have the idea of planning and behaviour alongside being a therapist essentially for a child and counselling them, we have to understand what our strengths are as teachers.

8:31 And despite external funding being cut left right and centre for these people who are professionals to come in and help with it, it can't be put on you personally to then pick up that slack. It's not your job. I agree. Controller controllables. I like that phrase. Controller controllables don't control the uncontrollables because they're uncontrollable. You can't control them. I should get that on your wall. There's a clip right there, quote, someone put that on their wall in your classroom. So next one I want to talk about regarding teacher barriers and and struggles is that fear of being judged. I feel like it's such a big thing in teaching, right? Like I'm sure everyone has a bit of fear of being judged, but I feel like it's so amplified in teaching. I want to get your thoughts on why. Why is there such a negative culture in the profession of teaching with this idea of being observed? Like what comes to mind?

9:19 But the first thing that comes to mind is this. This definitely this culture of nothing's ever good enough. And I get that. And like even in the private sector, a lot of like cut throat businesses will be like, no, no, we worked and there's always something we can improve on. There's always something we can do better. And I think in schools, it's about this is the children's future. Everything is so important. There's always something else you can possibly do. And like you said about the observations built in for many schools, you have to put something in the feedback box. I've heard it so much from teachers where it's been like, yeah, they said they're going to have to go away and think of something and make it up. It happened to me. It happened to probably someone, you know, you're listening to this. I think it comes from that a lot of the time. But we can we look further than Ofsted, and can we look further than the very way the literal government decide to judge and base schools and Ofsted pretend to be this collaborative machine that raises standards?

10:05 No, it doesn't. It's a judgement machine. It comes into schools. It wields its acts of judgement. You can come down on one side or the other based on literally what inspector comes into your school and what they decide to look into and what they personally think is more or less important or let you get away with or not. You could have one inspector go to the same school and be judged different to a different inspector. They went to the same school. It's arbitrary. Yeah, and it is. It is inherently judgmental and I think from the top down, systemically, judgement is built into teaching at every level that feeds its way down to leadership and management who want to get ready for Ofsted. So they run things like mock steps that runs its way down to middle leadership like subject leads, head of departments, etcetera, who want to appease their leaders.

10:45 And then they end up doing hours and hours of scrutiny and checking books and looking for bits and bobs so that they can say on paper, yeah, we've done this and we've told the staff they've got to improve here or there. It moves away from collaborative help and more to ticking a box to say I've done this judgement, to say that I've done my job so that I'm OK when someone else comes in systemically from the top to take a look. I. Think it's a really good point, but I want to challenge it a little bit with Ofsted because I know something we've said in the past in this podcast. And a lot of people share the same idea that we've said Ofsted would be better served if they stopped coming in and just giving judgements and telling schools what they can and can't do. And actually just became the collaborative force that they're supposed to be, which is going into schools to to help rise them up. You know what I mean?

11:25 Going to schools that are struggling, sending genuine professionals in who maybe head teachers from other schools or similar schools or whatever, someone that can come in and actually work with the school and just help them get better rather than just going in and saying you're rubbish everything. I was having a conversation with some people about this not too long ago and they were saying overwhelmingly negative things about the idea of that happening as well. About the idea of like a head teacher from a local school coming in and helping a school by getting involved with their curriculum planning or working alongside the head teacher, whatever it is they need to do to get the school up and going in and obviously include observing around the school. And people are still really against that idea. When I'm in this conversation I was having. Maybe it's not, you know, widespread and it just, it just made me think, do you think there's a deeper rooted issue here or am I just making this up with people just don't want to be judged and observed no matter what. Like it doesn't even matter if it's collaborative. They just don't want to be looked at. Certainly we, we've, we've literally addressed it before. It's not nice to get that kind of feedback, is it? I think it's really important and and vital. This is about being judged, like the fear of being judged in general.

12:29 I think it's easier to help people get over that fear, which needs to happen. Also, I think it's easier to do that if you're not just simply judging. If you're going in and saying this is bad, I'm going to come in and I'm going to say this is a required improvement school. This history curriculum is not as chronological as I would like. This maths work, you're not supporting them. OK, what we're going to do about it. So either way, I'm, I'm absolutely with you and that there's no way to really raise standards without judging in a way because I'm judging where you're at to see what you need to raise standards in. My issue is when it's solely judging. That's my point. And I think you're absolutely right. There will always be pushed back to people not being like to be being judged, etcetera.

13:11 But I think you can foster that. We talked about a million times. I love the fact my previous SLT were just always in my classroom. It became low stakes. Yeah, I knew they were obviously, obviously a part of them. What they did. I understood that if they walked in and I was doing the Macarena at the front without a lesson halfway through the day, they'd have a problem with that and they'd pull me up on it, right. But it was low stakes. OK. I was doing the Congress instead. My point is, I think being judged, you make it. You make a good point. I think there is a slight problem with sometimes teachers can be a bit precious and my way or the highway, I know what I'm doing, I'm professional. I think we need to move towards that way more, but there has to be scope for support, help. John, my biggest problem, this is a slight tangent, but my biggest issue with this, it's too often people who came into my classroom and observed me, I knew were not as good at teaching as I was.

14:08 Wow. I, I, I knew that I didn't respect them in the profession. I didn't think, wow, you're an amazing teacher. I thought that of a lot of my colleagues, I'd go and go into my colleagues room, especially when I was a newly qualified teacher, I'd go into my colleagues room and see some amazing practise and I couldn't wait to get back to my room and improve my practise in that way. And no point was I judged necessarily. Maybe I had an observation. They said we can try and improve your behaviour management. Go and watch these three teachers. I wanted to, oh, I couldn't wait. But when someone walked into my classroom who I knew was not a very good teacher, but I'd done the right things to get promoted within a school, and we're in a situation where they needed to look busy maybe. And they were involved in these learning walks and they'd come in and give me feedback and I knew what I was doing was better practise than what they were saying was good practise in the feedback. That's when the judgement became pointless. That's when I didn't like the judgement when it was from someone I didn't respect who I knew wasn't as good at the job. How many, how many people in leadership who come in and judge you as a teacher are less effective at teaching than the teachers themselves?

15:09 That's a broken system. So it has to be a whole picture. It has to be quality people who you've identified a weakness in your school, maybe through some form of judgement. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, but then you get people who are quality at what they do. They do it day in, day out, and they're collaborative and they help and you can go and see them do it rather than it just be someone in the suit coming into a room on a piece of paper saying this, this and this. Not good enough, Go and sort it out. There's a way to do it, I mean. There's a lot, there's a lot of solutions in there to that. Just to sort of summarise, I think if you just have that overarching fear of being judged, try and break it down, breakdown firstly, who it is that's coming in, what you think their motives are, what they're looking for. Pack yourself a little bit in terms of what you know you're good at and what you know you struggle with. And then look for the reflective stuff to be like the first one, isn't it?

15:50 Try to not just be scared of all judgement at all. Try to think to yourself, do you know what actually this person coming in is really good at X? And if they give me feedback on that, I'm going to take it seriously and I'm really going to try and work on it and, and try not to take it as a you failed. But it's more of a, we're lifting you up together And just having a bit more of a positive approach just might help you mentally yourself when you, when you're just overwhelmed with the fear of anyone coming in to look at your room, you know, look at what you do at any time, you know, just try and break it down a bit more. Certainly absolutely. Next one boundaries the Ashes are on cricket. We're talking about the boundaries in the cricket field exactly that yeah yeah, yeah. Not enough of them in teacher. Go on. Well, we got a big. Cricket fan, aren't you? Yeah, boundaries I've put in brackets, all lack of them. So it's it's the idea that in teaching this is such a huge thing that we all struggle with that is just it seems like there's no boundaries to your time whatsoever.

16:34 But we've talked about this a lot. Like what? We're just limitless, are we? It's just limitless. So you need to span these lessons when I just got to get them done. OK, it's Friday and it's for Monday. We've actually got them done. I've also got 4 hours of marking there. Yeah, you just got to get it done. It's 5:00 PM. You've got to get it done. There's no boundaries whatsoever as like a default. And that's something you have to learn. When I was, when I started as a teacher, I had absolutely 0 concept of boundaries. I just expected like most jobs, there'd be there to be like built in boundaries. If you get most jobs, it's like you work between these hours and actual boundaries and and you don't do anything else. Otherwise it's over time we have to pay you. Please don't do that unless we've agreed it. I expected that in teaching it doesn't exist. So you've got to set your own boundaries. The overarching point here is you've got to work on and find the boundaries that actually work for you. Otherwise you will get taken advantage of completely. You see it happening all the time, like it's a, it's a steep learning curve.

17:27 And for me, that learning curve happened later in my career because a lot of ECTS, newly qualified teachers get into the job and they want to throw themselves into it, of course. And then a few years down the line, they're like, whoa, this is unsustainable. And then someone says to you a few years down the line, oh, yeah. But a good teacher gives everything to this job as a vocation, and they remind you of the commitment you gave two years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As if that's relevant. Like as if that wasn't extra. And that's where you have to have the backbone. And I come back to the same for this episode. Control the controllables. If you don't erect these boundaries yourself and put them up and be clear why you're doing it and be fair with them and understand that you're probably already doing more. You're already doing extra to your directed time. You're already planning and you're already marking in your own time, but have clear boundaries about it. I'm going to give you this, but I'm not giving you any more. Be strong, be clear, be fair, build them. It helps with longevity.

18:20 I lasted longer as a teacher because I had these strict boundaries that sometimes, of course, I did extra, of course I did, because sometimes it was manageable even when I did that. But for the vast majority of the time, I did X because I set it as X. That's my goal, That's what I'm doing. It's a job. You're allowed to like your job. You're allowed to enjoy your job. Your job can be very rewarding and give you lots back, but it's a job. Yeah, and it needs to boundary, needs to have boundaries. Seems like a simple tip, but you know, but it is important because those people don't do it. So I felt like I had to mention it. The next one is, is, is comparison culture. I know this seems in on the surface a bit like the things we've talked about before, but I do think within teaching, there is a huge, huge issue of comparison culture.

19:06 We're on Instagram a lot and I know we see and have seen over the years a lot of things where it's like this is like the perfect world, classic Instagram versus reality. It's very easy to go on Instagram or literally not even using social media, just looking at the teachers in your school and, and compare yourself with them at every minute detail of their skill set. And we've already established that teachers have to put on 19 different hats and do 55 different jobs. Do you know what I mean? And so it is, it is very understandable that people then go, right, I'm going to compare myself with every single aspect of that teacher, their ability not just to teach and be in the classroom, but also all of these other little jobs and hats that we put on. I'm going to compare myself against those as well. And I feel like it's a huge negative driving force in the world of teaching.

19:49 Can I ask you a question about this then? Because I mentioned earlier about one of the biggest, I think the biggest accelerators of me becoming a better teacher was me going into other classrooms and watching people teach. Yeah. And I was directly comparing. I was going, well, I don't do that at this point, and this is great. I'm going to go away and do it. So where's the line for you? You know what, what, what do you think it's OK to compare yourself with? And what do you think maybe it's, it's a negative like it, it's bad to compare. Where would that be for? You, that's a good question. I think it boils down to one of the first things we said in this episode, which is you need to kind of boils down to boundaries as well. You need to have clear goals in terms of what you're working on. You can't scatter gun the approach when you just look at everything at once and say, oh, they're just better than me. You go down to the imposter syndrome level and you just start thinking I'm terrible when you have a clear goal of like, I want to improve this thing.

20:36 I've set this as my target. I'm aware there's other things I could be working on, but I'm not thinking about them. I'm going to go and watch this teacher. I'm going to compare myself to this teacher for this one thing because with the active goal of I'm going to take something away and improve my practise over time. That's a positive, reflective approach. When you're being self critical and it falls into that camp is when you're just looking at everything at once and say I can't do these things. That's not helpful. Do you think the size of the comparison comes into play as well? Because in terms of there's little things before where you know, if, if we're talking about literal behaviour management of a class that's huge, that absolutely I think needs your approach of let's just focus on behaviour management. I could go in and think this teaches better than me in 5 different ways, but let's just think about behaviour management and what can I magpie and try in my classroom? I think that's key.

21:22 However, I do also think there are some things that are much smaller that you can magpie at any point. Like I, I remember walking through classrooms and seeing literally just the station, This was so arbitrary, a station where it had a box of pencils that needed sharpening, A sharpener and a box for the sharpened pencils afterwards. And all it was was the teacher just said, yeah, it's there. Have we got a spec up in the minutes or a child, you know, doesn't necessarily want to go outside for 5 minutes or it's cold or they're in, they can do that job if they want to do it. And it's like a self-sustaining job and, and a big part of my practise of trying to a classroom become more self-sustaining in terms of children doing jobs and things. That's the kind of thing that I think comparison is fantastic to do definitely all of the time because it's so low stakes and you're never gonna take that personally, are you really?

22:09 All I'm gonna think at that level is just that's a cool little thing. I'll take it. So does the size come into play, or what is it that actually matters? Yeah, I think those are really good examples, genuinely of comparisons where it matters. They're small efficiency tips of ways you can be more efficient in your job. And that's all great. The toxic cycle of comparison culture, to me is when people, and this happens a lot, are trying to match the strengths of everybody else. Yeah. And forgetting that not every single one of them has all of their strength. It's not like they're all this one homogeneous BLOB of teachers that all have all of the strengths, all of them. Like, it's like you kind of ironically have to accept if you're going to that teacher because they're really good at this one thing.

22:54 Yeah, you're going to this other teacher because they're really good at this one thing. It's like, well, just comparing them to you're saying that teacher isn't as good as that. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like yeah, no one has all of the thanks, yet we hold ourselves accountable to that. That's the toxicity of comparison culture. I need to be as good as that teacher. ABCD and E are all of their respective best. Things. Yeah, that's such. So you're saying, what is your bar that high that you're saying I'm going to be better than all five of those teachers combined because I'm going to take their their individual strengths and I'm going to have all of them? Yeah, it's not going to happen. You can see how these are kind of links of imposter syndromes. Exactly. Yeah, it's all linked. That's kind of why I wanted to start there, because realistically all of this links to Imposter, the idea that all of these barriers and struggles of teachers and lead you down the route of thinking I'm not good enough. So, so to summarise the the point here being is accept that you can have shrimps and weaknesses and still work on your weaknesses, but understand that it's important not, not everyone's the same.

23:45 It's never ever going to happen. There will always be someone out there who's better at behaviour management than you. There will always be someone out there who's better at pedagogy. Maybe I understand different ways of teaching. There's always someone who's better at planning, but it's not the same person. Yeah. And you're going to be better than them at something. Exactly. And it's OK. And you should lean into that. My final point this is lean into the things you're good at. Everyone has their own teaching style and it's there's not necessarily one size of fits all. You might really admire a teacher because they're very, very good at doing something. It doesn't actually mean that is the only and best way of doing it. Genuinely. You might have your own teaching style that you now shun because it's not the same as them, but you're getting the same output. It's just a different way of doing it. Like you've just got to lean into yourself a bit more, give yourself a bit more credit where it's deserved and one thing at a time. Maybe you can look at a strength of a teacher, accept that that's their strength and get some tips, some efficiency tips. You said some little things, doesn't have to be the high stakes things all the time.

24:35 No, certainly fantastic. So next one, this was interesting. I want you to expand on this a bit. Fear of parent confrontation. How's this like a barrier? What's this to do with imposter? When I was thinking about the struggles of a teacher, I was like, I can't not mention this because I know from my experience and the experience of loads of people I've talked to, it's just a common thing that like you think about how many people joke about they hate doing phone calls, they don't want to do phone calls. And just generally speaking to parents in the day, people can get really anxious about it and really scared. Scared than a meme or two about that. Situation absolutely right And I just think I don't know I just think we should talk about like what? So how is it a barrier? How does it affect your teaching then? Like does it affect, is it just, I don't like this thing or can it seep into your classroom practise?

25:20 Like what is the power of a annoying parent that that really is kind of in your head? What is it? How does it manifest? They have a lot of power and, and I can give you my own personal experiences here of, of how a, how a parent interaction can genuinely affect how, how because I have had parents in the past that I am genuinely scared off in terms of I don't want them to be annoyed at me. I don't want them to because I think they're gonna complain. I think gonna make my life hell or whatever. Was it was it a T Rex it? Was it T Rex and their son was yours? It's. Quite scary. That would scare me. It's very scary, you know, sort of breathing fire and everything you know wasn't, you know. All that you could get away from doing homework. Yeah. You leave me. Yours don't have to do homework. Yeah, but. Sure, standard classroom.

26:01 Sorry. Yeah, but genuinely, like I, I have, I, I, I feel bad admitting this, but it's true. And I think we should just be reflective and be real. But we know. You're bad at teaching. Thank you. I'm not an impostor. No, I'm joking. There's there's definitely been situations where I have considered the way I talk to or interact with a child based on what I think that parent will do or parent react. And there's definitely situations where a child has got away with something maybe more than another child would have done in the classroom because I was too scared more, more scared of the what would happen when the parents find out. Because I know, not because I agree with them, because I didn't want the hassle of the parent. And I look back and I think that's terrible. That should never, that should never be a deciding factor as to what is simply right or wrong.

26:41 So what you would have done was the right thing to do. You weren't going overboard, but you just thought it's not worth. It exactly that or I or I tailor my words differently because I didn't want that because I know that kid goes home and and manufacture. Right. So what would be your advice then? Someone listening to this in a similar situation, tricky parents in the class noticing that it's affecting what they're doing in the classroom. Is your advice to tailor what you do in the classroom for an easy life? Or is your advice to, yeah, ignore it, just do it, take the Flack, and then maybe potentially actually your well-being gets worse and you get more, more Flack from the parent. How'd you go about that? Certainly not the first one. Not the one I did because I tell you what, it came back and bit me around the bum in the long run, because Jaws did. Jaws came around bit Miller bum Godzilla was there, but ultimately that parent then just saw me as a bit of a pushover right.

27:23 And and and ended up just being annoying anyway any kind of parents even though they were still pulling out things. I didn't even do these things. You find yourself just completely succumbing to them. It's it was ridiculous. Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way and then I stopped doing and I started doing the second thing, which was just give yourself an like you're the professional. Yeah, I think we need to remind ourselves of that sometimes and you're surrounded by the professionals, including your leaders who are supposed to have your back. That's huge, isn't it right. Get get them involved as quick as possible. That's one thing I'd say don't you don't have to check bat everything yourself. Yeah. You know, get them involved, they might be able to help you when it comes to those tricky parent conversations. And you've just got to stand your ground. I'm sorry, but This is why I've made that decision. And this is the rule in our school. And your son, your daughter was doing this. I sort of my own eyes. I'm not having this discussion anymore.

28:03 Sorry. Yeah. I think that's good advice. It's hard to do. It is hard. It is really hard. It's a tricky thing. It's a big part of the start of your career, I think is becoming confident anyway, even with nice parents. So yeah, definitely getting leadership involved. You're a team, so that's huge. I would agree. This next one's really interesting to me is we're essentially calling you you. We're talking about martyrdom here. And and we when we did our first reels about martyrdom ever, there was a lot of people who were like, oh God, yeah, guys, you're on the mark. These people exist. And there were quite a few people who were a bit pissed off, like as if to say, well, it's just doing the best for the kids. Why would you have a go at those kind of people, blah, blah, blah. Why is burnout identity and the idea of wearing it as a badge of honour and people in school kind of walking around as if to say yeah I was up till 9 on the market last night, wasn't that annoying but also loving the fact they can say that.

28:57 Why is this a barrier? What's the problem? Because it's normalising exhaustion, we're normalising Bernard. The the keyword there is normalising. It's not normal. I don't. If you want to wear it as a badge of honour, call, I'll give you whatever, walk away. But if you start normalising it for your score, making people judge themselves, doing all of the other things we've talked about based on this now baseline of, Oh yeah, you need to burn yourself out and be completely exhausted. And, you know, surviving this job for three years, that is the most toxic thing I think that teachers face nowadays is yeah, burnout's normal and that's your goal. Strive for it. It is the worst thing that's happened to education. My, my issue always was, it's, it's so hard to articulate because you've hit the nail on the head. And I feel like I'm going after people who are trying to almost do the best for the kids sometimes, right? But I'm going to go after them anyway because I think it's a problem.

29:51 If you have personally decided to make teaching your entire personality and life and getting up at half five in the morning to get in early and, and staying late every night and being on the Board of Governors and doing 4 clubs a week and spending your weekends doing trips or booking them or doing some enrichment for the children, fine. If you find solace in that and you find meaning in that, that is actually really good and there's a lot of children getting the benefit out of it. The second, the very second that you therefore think other people aren't doing enough, or you think that that should be the bar, or you put it on someone else or even let leadership put on someone else. You, as an example, you are part of a huge problem and it's OK for both to exist.

30:39 But if you're that person who does all that and you hear your leadership team saying what's up though, there's lots of people out there. They get in at six and they this kind of dedication we need and they're going to be there. Don't sit there proud and smug, which I've seen happen. Yeah, well, I do all that. I mark really well. So maybe we should all be marking more. No, we shouldn't. Maybe the issue is that we're expected to mark too much. And just because you want to do it and you think it's OK doesn't mean it's acceptable. Everyone else should do it. Wind your neck in and understand that because you have made it your identity doesn't mean it's not just a job for me still. And I love teaching with all my heart. I miss it a lot. We're going to do an episode, I think in the future about things we miss about teaching, even just being out for a couple of months. But it is a job. And yeah, that martyrdom really, really in the last last few years of my career really wound me up.

31:23 Yeah, one thing you have to recognise is that people's lines are different as well, lines for burnout based on mostly their circumstances outside of the job. Some people's line for burnout is way higher purely because their life circumstances are different, right? Some people's life are burnout is higher just because of the way they are, their personality. There's lots of reasons as to why someone might get burned out at a different point. So the worst thing that happens exactly what you said, when that toxic person comes in with a really high threshold for burnout and expects everyone else to do it. It's like not only is what you're saying ridiculous and unattainable anyway, people's burnout thresholds are already lower than yours anyway. Like they just can't even physically do that. And chronic burnout is ultimately the reason this is so bad is because it affects you and how you perform in your job. A burnt out teacher is not delivering anywhere near as good lessons or feedback to children or being that support being that emotional person in the classroom. Like you can't be that when you're chronically burned out. It just it isn't compatible.

32:22 The job itself at the baseline is already hugely, it takes a huge emotional toll on you, like it's already massive and you can get burnt out in this job honestly just when just from doing it at a standard level with your fresh OPS a bit lower. It's a hard job anyway. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Something needs to be addressed. So advice with that is just realise that and and and call it out and and don't let that be your bar for sure. Next one is a is a good one. Decision fatigue. Now this reminds me of a stat I see a lot and it I'm not going to like really cringes me out when I see this. So teachers making 1500 micro decisions a day. I know you can say it really, really winds me up and I really find it cringe worthy. And I don't like it when teachers say we make more decisions than a brain surgeon in a single day. What is the point?

33:08 You try like, OK, I OK, I know the point you're trying to make, but but don't don't do that. It's not brain surgery I'm afraid. When the micro decisions are which colour pencil should I get the kids to colour that in with or there's levels to it. Don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong, making 1500 micro decisions a day is tiring, it's exhausting, it is never ending, it is leading to burnout. It is a thing that we should talk about. Don't compare it to a brain surgery. That's the ick, isn't it? It's the fact that that could have they could have really picked any job ever. And then some of thought. I'll do this analogy. I'll pick a brain surgeon because that's the hardest. Job, we'll just talk about the amount of decisions. You have to make exactly. You don't have to go. We make more decisions than a brain, OK? And and you know what, a lot of those decisions will just come naturally where, where I found it tricky and I I very much got decision fatigue. Yeah.

33:54 Where's this a problem? Yeah, that's really interesting. It was more like, do you know what a better term is? Option paralysis I. Think it's a very similarly. A decision fatigue option paralysis. It's like the idea that there are 5 things you could do, right? And you just, you don't know which one to pick. Or there's, there's six things you have to do and you don't know where to start, right? Like those kinds of situations, What I mean like making decisions. Slightly different, do you know? What? Yeah, it's fine. I make decisions all the time, which everyone does. You are still deciding the order to do stuff and then put priority. Exactly. But when, when at the end of the day and you think, right, I've got five hours of admin tasks to do and I want to go home in two hours, where do I start? That feeling is honestly was like one of my least favourite feelings because I hated the idea that I already know I can't get the jobs done that I need to get done. Like from the get go, it's like I physically have two hours and there's five hours of stuff to do. So I'm already accepting that I'm going to be not even doing three of these things.

34:44 Like what do I do? That's where I really struggled. And I know you struggle with this as well because I remember one of the big things you did to overcome this and it helped me as well. And it sounds so stupidly simple. You got A to do list. Oh, it's right here and you. Just right here, literally in my everyday life. Just tick box list. So simple, but yeah. You prioritise, right? You're prioritising these things so that you can make you can make those choices. Option paralysis is a thing when you just don't know where to start or you don't really know what the priority is. And then you and then you, ironically, you get less done because you spend so much time thinking about should I do this? Then you flick back to the one actually do this for a bit. No, I'm doing, I've got that display. I forgot about the display. I've got to do Write it all down.

35:24 As you feel and think these things, write them down. And then you can just go to your list, like, right, come on, let's have a look at this, what he's doing. Oh yeah, I must do that first. Yeah, go and do it. It becomes more obvious. And you know, I always say to people, there'll be stuff on my list that's there for two months and that's, that's fine because I know that's how it works. And I would have forgotten about that job otherwise. Yeah, so hopefully this sums up the daily struggles for teaching. I really wanted to do an episode where we just acknowledge mostly that these are things that we all do so we can people listen to this thing. Yeah, okay, I'm not alone. I'm not the only person who's scared of being judged and worried about what parents might say and also has imposter syndrome. I feel like everything we sort of established as we went and we, it all kind of links back to this idea of imposter syndrome, the idea that we're not doing a good enough job or someone else is doing a better job than us and why can't we possibly do it?

36:09 And a lot of solutions along the way. I think if we acknowledge all these things, it can just make us feel a lot better about ourselves. And maybe there's some actionable things. You can walk away and be like, right, I'm going to work on this one particular tip that Dylan said. And then I'm going to think about something else. Rather than getting that decision fatigue of or option paralysis of, I need to work on all of the eight things that they said. In this area of ending an option. So when you're working on tip number 123456 and seven at the same time, you can think about tip #8, which was optional. Paralysis. No, I think that's really useful and like we always say with this podcast, we strive to be able to give actionable points and ideas of what you can do, and hopefully we've done that as well for you. If you've made it this far, why don't leave us a review? It really helps us out. Share it with someone you think might find it useful.

36:51 And I'm not going to do it, Hayden. Don't worry, I'll just I'll say it for next time instead, so we'll just sign off about me asking A. Question. Can I say something at the end? Nope. See ya.