Ep 170: Q&A: David Walliams Controversy, Free Childcare Traps & Gameshows In The Classroom!

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Teach Seat Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name's Hayden. Did you enjoy your wee? What do I just now I had a fantastic. Wee Do you know how I know you enjoyed your wee? I was downstairs and I heard you not we I did hear your wee as well. You do wee loudly, but I heard the the exhale of of of relief. You're really doing me like this, aren't? You. Well, that's really doing. Me like this? Yeah, well, sometimes wee's are just really enjoyable, aren't? They downstairs to go getting a trick. No, you know, No, you do No, because you didn't just go, you went. Oh yeah. Did you you? Don't listen. Listen. I wanted you, my bro, to know how nice my Wii was in your house. I was thanking you for providing me with the toilet from your house. And that was great.

0:42 And also you had no choice because you have no door. Oh, isn't this? Isn't this the most Dylan thing I've ever heard? You know how he's got no door handle on his front door? He has no door to his toilet. He has no door. Context. It's not my only toilet context. Context is key because you don't have to use that. It's been recently renovated. Recently. You know this is rubbish, right? If you've been listening, just have a quick scroll. How long have you been watching the podcasts where we've been in this setup? Because that's when it was renovated. Put your door back. Your door's there. I can see you. The door, the door is there leaning against that wall. It's been there for months and months and. Months. It's an open household, so very modern. Do you?

1:22 Know what I wish I did? I was thinking about it. It made me laugh afterwards in my head. That was enough because you've got no door. I thought, wouldn't it be funny if I did do something a bit abnormal and I just like had my trousers down to my ankles whilst weighing. And he walked up and was like, oh, you've just caught, caught a glimpse of of my bare bottom as I'm weighing with my pants at my ankles. Did I ever tell you the story of my, of my I was a child. Something happened in the in my doorless toilet when I was a child. I I just moved down. So is she anyone who's moved as a child, Like a big move? Yeah. To a brand new place, going to a brand new school, obviously, like in the first few days, you either want to blend in and not stand out too much and you certainly don't want to be like the butt of jokes or anything like that. And I remember going to the toilet in my first few days and they had a urinal there, right?

2:08 So obviously I went to the urinal and I pulled all of my, my garments down from my right waist. So my trousers, instead of just opening my zip, I put my trousers down and my pants down around my, my feet. And then three of the lads from my class walked in and that was it for the next few weeks. It's Bumboy. How did you say how old you were then? I was, yes. Yes, Right. Oh yeah, yes, right. That's not too bad. I was imagine in secondary school. No, sorry. No, it was so. Funny, I was like, oh, I just just, it's just a blended and not be a thing. I was the the lad who got his bum out in the toilet. That is so funny when your parents just do dirty because they're like, no, we won't tell him. Yeah. Anyway, should we get to the actual questions?

2:49 That's what we're here for, Q&A. How lovely was your piss? That's the first one. What are the chances? That's so strange, so nice. The the whole street heard Hayden, OH. God the one right? Should I do the first? 1. Yeah, let's see what you can do. With teaching being a female dominated profession, do you ever feel like you were treated differently or had a different experience of teaching as males? Yeah, whenever I went to the toilet with my trousers around, they're like, why did you do that, you silly male? This was this. What is this bloke? Oh God, we've talked about this before. Yeah, definitely 100% in loads of ways. Not just positive, not just negative, in loads of ways. Obviously we're treated differently. Like I think the big thing that jumped out for me in my career was always it felt as if it was pushed upon me more as a male, that I would be more of a role model for the kids, Mainly because that father, father type figure, right?

3:42 You hear it a lot. You don't hear it as much people saying, oh, it's great, they've got you as a female teacher, should you be a mum like figure to them? Yeah, of course that that obviously doesn't happen as much because mums are more present in general in children's lives than men are. So as a as a man, I remember being set for parents evenings, even with my colleagues, etcetera. They'd say things like, oh, and it's really nice then to have this, you know, male figure in their life. I never resented it. I thought it was quite a nice thing really, to be able to do for the kids. But it did feel like I was put on that pedestal a lot. It's a difference at the end of that, isn't it? Yeah. Like you said, you wouldn't be getting that as much as if you're a woman. So yeah, I also felt like the pressure to climb the ladder was very expected. I remember in my NQT, yeah, being told multiple times of like, Oh yeah, you're going to be a great head because people just trying to pick me up because I'm just learning how to teach. And people just say in general, you've got a great head. Maybe that's what they're saying. You've got a great head, you've got a great head. Shaved off that too.

4:34 Yeah, but I did definitely felt like that and I was sort of like, OK, so the expectation is I very much have to work up leadership. Is that the thing? And and you know, we've spoke about teachers that data in the past, how there is an imbalance there like, you know, in terms of the proportion of the workforce that are men, it's disproportionate when you get to sort of senior leadership and head teacher. Yeah, there's loads of reasons for that. You know, the whole, the whole, you know how women get penalised during, you know, childbirth in terms of they have a child who's the parent who goes back more often? Yeah, specifically during childbirth. I think, I think it's actually quite, it's not very balanced in childbirth. I stood there on the subway, in a subway, yeah, whilst my partner gave birth. They're very penalised about the same lives. But I mean, you haven't.

5:15 Fired. OK, thanks. Brilliant, man, Brilliant. I know what you mean. But yeah, like in terms of they talked a million times about it and I wanted, I'll just push on what you said a bit there because again, I'm trying to avoid the whole positive, negative thing because you'll get people who straight away will say, yeah, it's always good to be a male in the primary classroom. And you get other people say no, no, I've always been looked on differently and it's bad. Do you would you say it to, on the whole, being treated differently as a male? On the whole, was it a good or a bad thing? That is really tough because I genuinely, I'm, I'm thinking about 5050 in my head of good things and bad things. I think on the whole, probably in terms of like purely selfishly, from experience, it probably was better. I think I got away with more things. I think you can you play into like really deep stereotypes of, oh, he's just a man.

6:02 He's not listening. He can't do two things at once. It's like, well, actually, I'm actually, you're actually just giving me more leeway for doing something that if I was a female, I wouldn't even get this much leeway. Like it shouldn't be like that. But selfishly, it did make my life easier. Do you know what I mean? So I don't, I don't know. I think, yeah, overall probably it was a benefit being a man 100, but there were there were some drawbacks. Yeah, I felt like I maybe it's just personal. I don't know how much of it is just down to the personality of the individual, but like I felt like I was able to voice my opinion a lot more. Yeah. And maybe be taken seriously a lot more. And it's hard to compare like otherwise. But because I am me, I'm not in someone else's shoes. I don't know. But I felt like that that was I was taken seriously. I think a lot way easy. But, but no, but like I always say to people because they'll also say like if I really got on with my class or did something really good, there would also be some people that say, well, of course you're a male teacher.

6:51 Of course, of course it's going to be better. Of course the kids are going to like you more. Of course you're going to get better data, of course. And it like, although I'm, I'm winning personally to look at things and say, yeah, I was lucky to get that leg up. I felt like sometimes other people were really reluctant to say, Oh yeah, it's because of you. It's because of your choices or what you did rather. Sometimes it was brushed aside. It's just like, well, you're a bloke, of course it's easier. It's like, well, can we just like look at this and know it can be both sometimes. Not on merit, right? I imagine some people get the same in leadership. I'm sure there are plenty of just genuinely unbelievably good leaders who are men who will probably at least once in their career have been said, oh, you're only there because you're a man.

7:32 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the same sort of thing. And, you know, does it happen? Yeah, probably does. But is it, does it happen to everyone? It's not always the case, so. Yeah, and it's really important to say that looking at the split of female teachers to male teachers and then female leaders to male leaders, that is intrinsically wrong. Like because some people try to say something like, well, it's just the best person for the job who gets it. It's like you cannot convince me that the best person means that excuse massively towards men. That is not true. That's just not true. So they they got inherent biases and that's completely wrong. Like if the best person just got for the job, it would probably stay the same ratio, wouldn't it? Like realistic what you're saying there is women aren't best at the job, men are.

8:13 Yeah, that's that's ridiculous. Isn't crazy. That is basically what it means. Yeah, I agree that statistical, that proportion, it would be exactly the same, it just would be. That's just because there is no inherent. That's not true. Or because our listeners are mostly female, There should be more females. Wow. There should be more 90 percent, 95%? Who needs men? Yeah, we don't even need them. Naturally. Do you know what? New hosts? No. Did you know why we quit teaching Dylan for these guys? Because we don't need men in. Class exactly. We're bringing that actually we'll make Yeah, well, I was going to say we're bringing it back to equality. Who needs equality when we're pro? The other thing that you like? Whatever you guys want to hear is what we think right now. Next question before we get cancelled. This is from Oliver and this is a question for you Hayden. I'll put a picture in here for you. Have you realised in the last few weeks that Dylan looks like Matthew from The Traitors?

9:06 I mean, yeah, I've not been watching the Traitors this time. I've watched one episode so I don't recognise he'll. Flash up a little picture on the edit he. Does. Yeah, You. Well, does he look like you? Go on. You look like him. You know what? I'm going. To say right, right, right. What? Why is it important to switch that? I think it's, it's, I don't know, I just think you give the person who's sort of better looking like, like the other person looks like them. OK, I mean. It's an insult to him, isn't it? Yeah, he looks like you. Are you saying I'm teaming Matthew? You're yeah. Like teaming. Yeah. That's probably a really good way to turn it. You're teaming him, Yeah. It's good to know, I think. A bit like you, yeah, A. Little bit, I think. I think sometimes simply the fact that someone's got dark hair and a slight beard. Yeah, Dylan. Yeah, you do. You do get compared to people.

9:47 I might get a jumper like that. Yeah. But anyway, traitors, you've not been watching them. No, I, I didn't even know why. I think maybe I think I just watched a bit too much Traitors because I didn't get into it straight away. It was you that got me into it probably. I think when the third season came out. So then I binge watched up to that point and then and then we watched Celebrity Celebrity Traitors and then I just couldn't be bothered. I was a bit done in with the whole like, because ultimately I actually find quite a lot of the show pouring. Like when they do the games and stuff, I'm just like, I don't care. Yeah, I don't really want. I just want to see him in the in the circle the round table. If you throw the ball of flame into the graving mass mess that we've done next to the next to the the Hut that's in the middle of the forest and Masked Man will come out and give you £50.

10:32 Yeah, I know. And then someone misses, genuinely, they go, you must be a traitor. Like what do you mean the traitors want the money? Everyone wants the money and no one's dumb enough to for some reason sabotage, even if there was an incentive. He stole a shield. He doesn't want to be murdered, but he's doing it because it doesn't matter if he's murdered or not. No, you're just making. Stuff that's rubbish and I think I will watch it at some point because I've heard it's actually quite a good series, but. I've got to say this, this season is, I think one of the best seasons. And if you're listening to this on release day, this episode, it's it's actually finished already. So we know who's won. Matthew might have won. Matthew. Congratulations, Matthew. And if you didn't win, see, you never look like me. Really cool, thanks for the spoilers. I guess Matthew's still in it late in the season so cheers for that one. You haven't watched it either. Now you know Matthew doesn't get voted. Out early on.

11:14 Cheers, Dylan. But he looks like me. He looks so good. Go on. Next another. Question. I'll see you give me the long one to read. Yeah, I I really like seeing how you do with these because you consistently mess up. Guys, watch out for a cut. We'll know if he's messed up because it'll cut harshly if you're watching. There's no way, because what I always do is I put a bit of your video over the cut so no one can ever know. It's funny. It's funny. You didn't do that last time. Well we'll see. Whatever. I think you mentioned your partners still, that's your fault. I think you mentioned your partners still teach. Could I ask how they have found the balance of parenting and teaching? I know you have both been honest and vocal on your own journey with teaching and not wanting to miss your children growing up. I would like to start a family but I'm scared I won't be able to balance it. And no other female teachers who have really struggled after maternity leave.

11:57 Yeah, this is sad. I, I, I like as in, in general, the, the, the point that so many women feel this way. And I just find it so like we're in a profession. I've always said this, we're in such a serving profession to, to the community and to young people in particular. And it just seems so often at odds to having your own family and doing it yourself in the most important way. It's, it's kind of sad. What, what I would just very firstly say is please don't let that worry or anxiety stop you from having a family because you'll make it work. You'll make it. You just won't do certain things. You, you, it will become the most important part of your life and it is the best thing ever. And if you have the opportunity to do it and you want to do it, you should absolutely just do it because you're you just won't regret it. It's the best thing ever.

12:42 And then everything else can fall into place and you will make it work. Like that has to come first is what I'd say to be. 100% And like you said, there are so many situations. I'm not going to have a 10 diamond expert on all these situations. What I can do is literally just answer your question and talk about what our partners do. So for context, there's slightly different situations. Obviously me and Dylan are no longer in the classroom. Both of our both of our Laurens. I have called Lauren still teach. Now my partner Lauren works two days a week. She wanted three days a week, but it wasn't available and she took the two day option. And she and I know she won't mind me saying this generally finds that even though she thought, is this going to be rubbish? Should I just be with River all day? Should I just like should we quit if we could? We weren't really in the financial position to be able to do that. She now reflects on it and thinks, I'm actually really glad I've got this two days because it breaks up a week a bit. So for her, the two day balance is absolutely perfect because she still gets three days in the sort of working week where she gets to be a mom and do what she wants to do with River. And a lot of that time she can spend with just River, like, you know, we'll be around but working. So it's not quite the same.

13:40 And in those two days, she says to me, oh, that's my weekend now, my two days in school and my days off. And she always likes to make the point, you know, I'm sure she's listening right now. She's rolling her eyes at me and she likes to make the point that parenting unbelievably knackering and actually going into school and doing the teaching job is a nice break from that. But everyone's different. Like, I know that early on we had conversations and Lauren's quite sensitive with this thing and I know she would sometimes compare herself to other mums in other situations and be like, should I be doing it this way? Because that seems to be, you know, the way people are happy. And, or is it bad that I, I'm not having these two days with, with our daughter. And actually we have come to the realisation as a family, you just have to do literally what makes your family unit happy and work and function.

14:24 And this just happens to be a really, really nice middle ground of a couple of days a week at school. I think she would go to three days if she could. Full time wouldn't work for us. But I think equally not going back to work at all wouldn't work for us either, which is something we definitely wouldn't have realised pre, you know, this situation and. Like, you know, you'd be taking such a hit on your finances as well. And this is something, having heard what you said there, I think a resonate of a lot of people. But there'll be another group of people who listen to what you say and like that. Great. It's not even an option. I've got to go back full time and like, like, we've got another question in a minute actually about someone returning. And I think it's important, like you said, to work within your parameters as well. And if you're listening to what Hayden just said there, because similar situation with us where going back to work was a good thing.

15:07 In terms of we're lucky though, we have to look at ourselves and say we're lucky. 1, Financially, we can get by Still there are some people who can't, they physically can't. Also we're lucky. Both of our families are now with support from family members as well. And with the introduction of childcare, again, we'll go into more detail a minute about funded childcare and how that can help. I know River uses nursery as well. So, you know, we're in a situation where we can pull on different levers to make this work for us and we can experiment with what works and what doesn't work and what's best for our family, etcetera. But if we're thinking about someone who's worried about doing it, maybe they're worried because they think I won't be able to afford to go part time. I just want to say to them that you will make it work and even what you think of in the moment as the most stressful way of going about it.

15:53 Or my child's got to go to nursery early for a long time. Lots of children do. That's the world we live in. We can sit and get annoyed about that until the cows come home, but don't let it stop you having your family. Don't let it stop you doing it. And that's what I'd say to you. I think it's normal to be anxious. It's normal to be nervous. It's normal to seek out what other people do. But just remember when you seek out and hear what other people do, it's not necessarily reflective of your situation as well. So although it's good you don't fall into the hole like Lauren did of thinking, oh, should I be with my daughter for this time? Should I go part time even though I can't afford it? Don't have those thoughts. You know your situation you can't afford. That's fine. Let's make it work and let's see what we can do from there. It's so sad. We're in a society now where having a child isn't just. Am I emotionally ready?

16:36 Is my household ready? Do I want to do that yet? It's also but I can't because of financial. Restraints or because of my job, because I think a part of this question or the second part here was could I ask how they found the balance of parenting teaching? I imagine a part of that question is very much just how did they manage doing the the job of teaching, which is so ridiculously like overbearing and to be a parent and to be completely honest, it made Lauren strip back to this is what the job is like. Everything we say on this podcast, Lauren lives and breathes that now she's like, this is my job. I do my job well, but I don't do my job in these times because these Times Now take away time with my own child and I'm literally not going to do that. It's made it so black and white in her head of no.

17:17 So when I'm with when I'm with Lauren, like in the house in general, I don't really see her sat there with a laptop. Oh, used to she would always be sat on a laptop planning lesson doing this. She doesn't do that anymore. Get the odd time, maybe the weekend for an hour, do you know what I mean? Or I'm leaving for 10 minutes. She'll just look ahead, but she'll get into work, do everything she can at work, strip back the rubbish, pointless tasks, say no to things. I feel so proud of her at the moment because she'll be like, no, I'm not doing this thing that I've been asked to do, that's completely unreasonable. Or I just say no. And that is how she's found her balance. It's changed her as a teacher. Yeah, it crystallises it, doesn't it? Yeah, it's such a good point. Everything we say always, I'm always grateful we started that journey early. I certainly did. People always say, how did having a child change you? For me personally, I was making those changes before.

17:58 I was already stripping it back because I just knew that I needed to do that. We had the business to run. We had the potential of family in the future. So yeah, I think it's such a good point that actually this might be what for a lot of people kicks you into. It's a job. Definitely you can do a good job. Definitely what take out of your life. It leads really nicely into the next question, which I'm going to let you read this time. Dylan, thank you. Listen to this expected standard on the cusp of greater depth. I'm currently on maternity leave and my baby girl turns 23 weeks this week. Congratulations by the way. Best thing ever. I've now hit SMP payments. Sad times. So statutory pay for maternity, I've how mental is that by the way, like when you look at other jobs and I saw a real recently Mr P mentioned it about how you know, supermarkets are getting full pay for a year. Yeah of other public services get full pay for teaching is 2 and four weeks.

18:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you it's in. Oh yeah. Two weeks for pay, 4 weeks, 90%, yeah. Then it drops down to 50% with statutory. Yeah, I can't remember how long. I think it might be 60. About, about, about this this long. Yeah. And then it's just that, yeah, it's just insane. It's just statutory. It's in one of the lowest. Comparable in the job which is about the next generation. It just that's. The irony isn't it? It's like this serving job to children has the worst maternity pay when compared with most. Other and we all know how vital those early days are. Sorry, sorry. Let's carry on. I've enrolled her into nursery so that she starts in September alongside me starting back at work. What's the deal with funding and leaking timing to it and my return date? Love to you, wreck it Ralph and Voldemort.

19:29 This is an old school listener. Vicki, thank you very much. I feel like I'm going to chat this back to you in a second. I feel like you know a bit more about this. Obviously the only thing I can say is with in our experience right now, River is getting her nursery funded. So she goes to nursery just two afternoons a week and we're not using it all up. And I believe there are 30 hours free childcare, free nursery you can use. But I'm pretty sure there are some caveats to it that I feel like you know more about. Let's see. So here's the official line. This is from the government website. If your child is aged 9 months to four years old, you can get 30 hours of free childcare per week for. 38 weeks of the year, first thing to know, it's not 52. It is aligned with what they provide in school for term time. This is why there's always that debate and we talked about this before.

20:11 Is school childcare? No. Is nursery childcare? Yes. No, kind of. Where's the line? The point is the government are subsidising 38 weeks of care for your child, whether they're in school or they're nine months old. You may be able to get free childcare for more than 38 weeks a year if you take fewer hours over more weeks. Now, this is a point more for people who aren't teachers. If you're a teacher, this is irrelevant to you. You might not necessarily need that nursery time in those stand dates, but if you're an average Joe, you might actually drop that down and get less hours per week but across the whole year. My, my friend, just jumping in real quick is not a teacher. And in a situation where their little one, they obviously need more than 38 weeks.

20:51 And what they've done is they've prearranged with their nursery. They said these are the weeks for the whole year that we'll need it. And it works out at like 40 something weeks. And then what they do is they say rather than getting to the summer holidays because that's basically what it is and and you have a whole four week block of where you have to pay full price, what they've done is basically just spread it out across the year. So there are situations where you can at least spread the cost out if you're in that sort. Of we'll come on to that in a second. Absolutely. So that's the official line. But what the point is again, Vicky was saying here about timing it right and going back because this was raised in Parliament again this week. I saw it mentioned about how you can get stung as a teacher. So it's actually you get from the full next term after the child turns 9 months and you return to work.

21:35 So what the point here is, if you think about when women normally return to work, it's at the start of a term, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can end up waiting two, 3-4 months until the start of the next term before that funding kicks in, which means you get stung by having to pay for childcare in that whole time that you're returning back to work. So you have to time it properly. And what I'd say to people is go and go onto websites, go and find people who are experts and see when actually will this kick in. And it's small things like imagine you start back at work on September the first. OK, so you're, that's when it'll kick in. Call your baby's nine months old, right? Your funding's going to start in January. Yeah. Yeah, you've got, you've got to have from September, October, November, December of paying for their childcare, right, Because you would have secured their space before actually funding kicks in after.

22:25 So I always feel weird moaning about this because it is free. Childcare overall, it's a great. Thing OK, of course it's good but the reason it's so important is because people can't afford it so why are we going to turn a blind eye to when this happens and for four months you've got to pay for it's just. It does seem a bit odd, doesn't it? It's. Absolutely mental. And this is the point you were making there about your your friend talked about how they spread out over time. They've managed to come to an arrangement. Yeah, some nurseries don't offer that. Some nurseries are are not flexible at all. And that's their prerogative. And different nurseries will have different rules. So they don't offer only term time. So for example, 30 hours a week for 38 weeks is equivalent to 22 hours a week across every single week if you dropped it down, yeah, I got you.

23:06 That only really covers you for two full days a week, right? Or fully funded if you did a full day. So if someone maybe was dropped off at let's say half seven in the morning until 6, doing that two days a week, that gets you up to 22 hours pretty much, right. So although it's 30 hours a week of funded childcare is what the headline would say, actually for a lot of people who are working full time, it only covers 2 days in nursery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also sometimes you still have to pay, you know, because it's not necessarily. I know you mentioned something about how a nursery said only from 10 AM. Does it kick in the free funded? Yeah, that didn't feel that was a nursery local to us that we were looking at hoping to send rivety when we were looking ages ago. And yeah, they, they said it was something along the lines of, yeah, she can come from, you know, 8:00 AM until whenever she's staying.

23:54 But the free funding is only applicable between the times of like 10 and two each day. And I was like it did it might be slightly different. It maybe added up to 22 hours. And it was every single week. It might have been that, yeah. And I'm sure there was some mass behind it, but I was a bit like, OK, well, that's not really convenient for us. It's like because she doesn't, we're not even going to be using the full 30 hours. We need her to come to nursery realistically for like 16 hours a week. Yeah, and it's going to overlap and it'll turn out that you're actually paying for. Half. Yeah, exactly. I'm like. Because it's only when. I'm using half the 30 hours and I'm paying for half of it still. I was like, it doesn't really make any sense. I went to another nursery. They were like, not no, they would. They literally said to us, I was like, what? But no, just whatever hours you do here, we'll just apply for the funding. And I was like, OK, this to me. And my answer, I guess, to this person is it made me think I need to go away and look this up a bit more and speak to people who know what they're talking about.

24:38 Yeah, when it comes to this, because it just seemed quite confusing. That's The thing is do your research on the nursery and what they allow. Shop around nurseries in your area because it's down to them how they rule and do it because they might be I'm not oh I'm staring the pot here maybe, but I'm some nurseries are probably trying to eek some more money out of people. I don't know. Maybe I don't know if it makes any difference to them. It must be how they run it. I don't know. But look at your local nurseries, see what their rules are. Check. Literally just find out when you return to work and your child turns 9 months old. Get a date online, talk to an expert. When will this kick in so at least you can plan ahead. That's what I'd. Say to you definitely very good questions there, very centred around children as well. 22 questions in a row. Love it. On to the next man child. Recently David Walliams got cancelled and that meant a lot of teachers had to suddenly decide if he was an appropriate person to have books of in their classroom. This reminds me of a Neil Gaiman was also cancelled and suddenly lots of English units had to be rewritten. What's your opinion of having to change a curriculum when it turns out the author is a bit of a bad person? Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater or can we focus on the subject matter and text instead? My gut feeling is context is really important. People, authors are role models, which and we have so many of them.

25:51 Why would we risk it and keep him in the classroom? That my gut feeling is of course we get rid of him. Of course we like he's a terrible rumble and has done horrible things. I don't really want to be talking about with kids either. Yeah. So let's just here you go, there's all, there's 7000 other authors we can use, right? Just get rid of that one. It is a privilege to have your work used in a school. Yeah, there, there are so many really, really good authors out there that we can afford to be picky. Why are we getting political? Is it political? Is it political when we look at what some of these people have done? So there's kind of two points to this, right? I really just want to focus on the initial point because it always fascinated me, but not not my whole career because I, I read books like Miss Distinct in my class, I read Grandpa's Great Adventure, I've read David Welland's books in my classes earlier on in my career.

26:38 But very quickly I remember thinking, why am I doing this? Because the I would argue this is not a case of David Walliams wrote some books that were really good and quality text and amazing and in his personal life, he's done some horrific things. So now we should cancel him. That's more of a question about whether the work's affected. Right. Because it's like the work itself stands alone and was really good. Yeah. That would be more of a conversation to me. But I think his work was always wrong as well and just. And just ridiculous. Yeah. Why are we putting this in, like, a second first place? It's like separate. It's like, cool. Yeah. He could be the best person in the world. He could be an absolute Angel. I actually don't think we should be doing his books in the classroom anyway because of the stereotyping. And I just think children, oh, don't you get the nuance of the comedy?

27:22 What is it nuance? Some of the stereotypes in this book don't even feel like I want to go through them. Anyone who's read David Williams books knows do we need to teach 7 year olds that oh, it's OK because it's just a joke and we can make the shopkeeper this stereotype of of an Asian man. We, we can talk about how if you live in a high rise block, you're poor and you're scum. If we can talk about how the homeless person stinks called Mr Stink and he's homeless and isn't he just a person who we should ridicule and and make jokes out because of it? And the council flat mum is just the. Yeah, yeah, bags of crisps for tea that you have your 6 pack of crisps. Yeah. There are a lot like, do children don't need that? No. OK, We're not saying council comedy. These people who get really angry when everyone mentions everyone should be able to do whatever they want because it's freedom of speech and why are we getting involved?

28:04 We're just a school because we're choosing. We're getting involved in the act of choosing because they're 8. Exactly. They don't have fully formed brains that understand adult. Comedy, that's the new ones there. I don't, I don't actually think now that all Asian people are going to have this specific name be really good at maths well. I think what whilst we're there, let's take off all the age ratings of films then, shall we? Right, right, right. Yeah. Why do we need 12 to put it in the classroom? Do you know what? Because we recognise that kids you'd have developing different rates and actually they're just not appropriate for them until your brain's more developed. Simple as that. Really. Like take basically David Bunyan's books. To me it's just Little Britain, which was an adult risky comedy, but it's adults for adults. And the point is adults hopefully understand the nuance.

28:44 And I'm sure even still there's arguments to say and people would say that adults won't even understand anyone and just thought it was funny. And then and then, well, racism's funny, OK. They're not. It's not, though, is it? Putting it in children's books is another step. It's like you're just mental. But I agree that you were making two points there. I still think the first one's really interesting. And I still hold the opinion of even if his books were good, the fact that he is now a terrible public figure and lots of things have, you know, been come out about him in the public, it is enough for me anyway. I'm like, purely for the fact that we're picking. I'm like, yeah, OK. I don't. I don't want that person face on the inside cover of books in my classroom with kids who have potentially seen on the news of their family or been told by anyone the allegations and the things that have happened with this person. I don't want that.

29:31 Why would I want that? It's a classroom and then like you said, there's thousands of books. I can control it. It just seems so stupid to do that. You've got no right to be in the classroom. That's it, isn't it? So there's no right there. It's not. It's not ruining anyone's. It's like saying it's like me walking into a classroom in Wolverhampton and going why aren't you playing my podcast? Why aren't you playing my podcast trying to silence me? No, no, it's just not relevant. I'm not chosen to do it. And I think it's frustrating because we talk about workload all the time and imagine you've got this unbelievable unit you put hours and hours into, right? And it and it's really, really good unit. And I get what this person is saying about, you know, the text itself might be great and you've planned this whole thing. And then the author comes out and they say, oh, for goodness sake, it's frustrating. I think you have to change it.

30:12 But This is why I think the second point I was making is relevant here, because what I implore people to do is, although that's frustrating. Now, let's say you've planned a really good Dave Wellems unit and you're just like, say I've got to do a brand new one from scratch. That's frustrating. I would implore you just in the 1st place to, to have maybe made the decision not to use that text, but to maybe have thought, well, could I have picked a different text that is more appropriate for the children? And you wouldn't find yourself in that situation anyway. Like I, I just do think there's some harmful there. There's some harmful stuff in in. Old texts as well. If you read Son of Narnia, for example, the way I think I can't remember this section now, it's frustrating me. Maybe it's when Father Christmas appears or when Aslan's there was, but the way he treats the boys is very different how he treats the girls.

30:55 So like putting a pedestal of like, you're the boy. Of course you'll do this and that and you're the girl and you'll do that lovely thing. It's like separate. But I remember reading it and thinking, Oh, it is different and it had a language that was different as well. We, we've read Iron Man, which is an older book, you know, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Dr Roald Dahl. Our 4th episode ever was about should we cancel Roald Dahl? And everyone's like, no, it's a different time. I think all of these conversations are really pertinent and are important. And I think you can still use texts even when there's controversy around them. But I just think when we're talking about very young children, there does come a point where it's just like, yeah, just don't do it. Yeah, We can also protect them from this other thing that's happening in real life, though, that is linked heavily to the author of this book.

31:35 Yeah. But yeah, I agree. There's some things that are slightly more black and white, some things that are more nuanced, some things that can have great discussions, some things you can say. You can have a really good discussion and be like, this is, yeah, let's challenge this stereotype from 1960. How has it changed? Why has it changed? Is it better that it's changed? You can have some of those conversations with 910 year olds like that. That can all happen. But David Walliams, I think just get him in the bin. I think people have been trying to get him in the bin for a while. So it's almost like, yeah, OK, that's final nail in the coffin here. Let's let's just get David Walliams in the. Bin I just can't imagine many teachers out there were planning really good new David Walliams units in the last two years or three years. I think we all kind of know. And, and there's one more thing as well. I want to come back to you. I don't know if it's too deep. It might be too. I'm like, let's go deep. I might be thinking too a Jingle. This is the Teach Steeper podcast, and we're going deep. So deep listen up after you follow and share with your friends.

32:29 Yeah, it's AD break. Yeah, literally. So what I was going to say was in in like this current climate of like even just politics in the world, which just feels like chaos, by the way, where it seems like when you just have when you're just in a leadership position or in lots of power, you can just do what you want and everyone and you just get away with it. It doesn't matter. I feel like this is the best time more than ever to for there to be consequences. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, David Williams, if we leave him in the classroom, there's this little part of me that would be like for those kids that do know what's happened. They are just thinking, oh, but I still get to read his book. It turns out you can do what you want when you're rich and famous. But it's just This is why I think it's probably a bit too deep and I'm reading too far into this. But no, there's like a sub subconscious subtext here where I'm like, yeah, let's just show kids that. Yeah, you don't.

33:17 That's not how it works. That's not how the world works. I mean, it is how the world works a lot at the moment. But it shouldn't be. There are consequences. Doesn't matter if you've just got a bit more money, a bit more fame than someone else. You've done terrible things. Oh, you've lost your privilege of being in the class. And you said it's a privilege. No one's going to read your books anymore. Goodbye. Doesn't matter. I don't care that you're famous. I don't care that you made loads, TV shows and X Factor or whatever you've. It wouldn't sit today. Pop culture, you are bloody X Factor, man. Yeah. Britain's Got Talent. Yeah, no, you're right. Because in the classroom, wouldn't the classroom, you know, structures fall apart really quickly if consequences stopped happening like you might, you might imagine having a conversation with a kid about how it's really important you don't say these things in the classroom, in the in the playground when you're talking to people because they really affect people negatively.

34:01 And it's not nice. And even though you might not have even meant it, I have this conversation with kids all the time. You don't need to mean something to to offend and hurt someone. It doesn't mean necessarily you should never ever, ever be able to say those opinions whatsoever. But it doesn't mean that if you're just growing as a human and having empathy, you might make choices differently in the future. And it means if you keep saying that people will choose not to be friends with you. And you can't have both. If you're going to moan about the fact you want to be able to say what you want all the time, you can't then moan about when people don't want to hang around with you and you talk about these consequences of actions. There has to be consequences as well. Like imagine saying that and having a really deep conversation and you get through to a child and say it's really important to treat people with empathy. You can't say those kinds of things in a playground, it's unacceptable.

34:42 But that bloke can. Let's read it. Or even the whole text about it. This kid though, he's really popular, so the rules don't apply to him. He's so popular that he gets to keep all of his privilege when he does these things. I've just told you that you can't do so. Enjoy. Yeah, I think. You wouldn't do it. Just keep licking your boots and stay here to the ground, boy. Yeah, and that'll be all good. Last question, Go on. So I read it. Yeah, from Richard Whiteley, which made me laugh. If anyone knows why that made me laugh after I read this question, please put it in the comments down below. Richard Whiteley. Hi Teach sneak repeat podcast. I love game shows. Me too, like the 1% Club and Countdown. And I was wondering what game show you think makes the best activity for the classroom. I've seen things like Taskmaster and Countdown for years, but I was wondering if you thought there was a game show that's been missing.

35:26 No doubt you will say traitors, but I just can't see it. Trade. We mentioned traitors today. I don't think necessarily traitors is for a teaching and learning thing. I think it can be for a you know, it's a lot of deception, it's a lot of learning about lying. It's rewarding lying and stuff. I don't think it necessarily fits with a primary classroom the whole time to be honest with you. No, no, probably not. I mean, I feel like it's not been mentioned. I need to mention it. Who wants to be Millionaire? Is that the ultimate game? Surely. That'd be good. One multiple choice I suppose. I guess what they're getting at here is, you know, like 1% club is good because it's lateral thinking. It's like it's learning. Countdown's really good because it's letter than numbers. I I would go back to a very obscure quiz show that I happen to be on. Of course, another 10.

36:07 Just just letting you all know. I've actually, I've actually been on this show and I know how it works. All right, which is why I know it's so good. Impossible with Rick Edwards. Really good premise to the show because the idea was there's a group of like 20 of you. Let's say you get asked the question and there are three possible answers. One is the correct answer, 1 is the wrong answer, and the other one is impossible right? So for example it might say in which US state was George Washington born, right? It would give you the right answer, which would be AUS state, the wrong answer, which would also be AUS state, but it's incorrect and the impossible answer wouldn't even be AUS state, so maybe it's Mexico. It's not AUS state, it's impossible. Which I would put as my answer you. Probably. You probably would. You probably probably would, but the point being that if you got the answer right or wrong, you stayed in the game and at the end, whoever got the most in the per round move through. But if you ever put the impossible answer, you were out. Oh.

37:00 That's pretty cool, isn't? It so you had to avoid it. And the reason I'm saying all this now is because I think there's something in that when it comes to testing children about maybe things they've learned or imagine a maths answer, right, where maybe there are two negative numbers and a positive number. It's like, well, this question, it's a negative, it's a negative number in degrees and it gets colder. It's impossible that it's positive. It might be the other two. And I think there's lots of reasoning opportunities there to have something that's literally impossible. And you can say to the class, and I always like doing this, I don't want to know the right answer. I want you to tell me why it can't be this answer and force them to do that reasoning rather than just going for an answer or procedure. I think that's a great idea because I think it can be a short, snappy thing, and I genuinely think you could probably, if you put up enough thought into it, make that work for basically any subject, you know what I mean? I think about foundation quiz.

37:44 Yeah, like imagine, imagine you're you've done a history lesson and you say which, which Roman emperor did this exact thing? You put a Roman emperor, another Roman emperor, you know, the children have learned. And then maybe someone from a different history unit you've done previously. Yeah, Yeah. And you can say how do you know that's wrong? Because that's actually a leader from the Maya Empire or someone I knew from historical that we've done before. I think that's a really powerful one to do your kids, and just in general, any opportunity for children to explain the opposite usually really deepens their understanding of something, I find. This is brilliant. I think tuning in a couple of weeks we'll be selling a product that does exactly this for you. Why is everything selling well? You're such a capitalist. Listen, listen. I've quit the classroom, become an entrepreneur.

38:26 That's what I do. Now supplement that statutory maternity pay somehow. I need to, I need to pay somebody else now to make me these questions and I'll sell it to you and that's how it works. Oh, do you remember you talking about the world? It's just people getting away with stuff. Yeah, we can't beat them. Just make a slot product to sell to your podcast audience. But we'd never do that. We'll be Dylan. Not with Mathsu, which is the fantastic way that you can solve maths in your classroom. But it's not. Slop. That's the thing, It's amazing. It's not slop. It's actually a really good product. And we're doing loads of demos at a minute and it's going in schools as we speak. It's literally being put in front of children helping them with the arithmetic guys, you can probably tell we're super excited. If in your school you want to smash arithmetic and fluency, please get in touch with us because do you know what? At least we can just get on a demo and show you. We will show you in action.

39:17 And as of yet with all the demos I've done, and this might be true for you head and confirm it is no one has finished the demo and not said Oh my goodness me I want this in my school right now. Exactly the same for me. In fact, they've said. I'm so glad it was you as well. I'm not Dylan on the call showing me this, which has made it better. Like that's the one step further it went, which was just crazy. If you want a demo of Hayden, get in touch and we can show you what we've got. Thank you so much for your questions. If you want to submit any more questions in the future, you can join our WhatsApp community down in the link below. You can book a demo for Master down there as well. Please do. We'd love to chat with you, Hayden, before we finish off anything to say. Oh, he's going back to this old chestnut. Have a lovely rest of your day and I look forward to seeing him in the next except dinner. Good use of words.

40:00 Maybe you do need countdown practise.