Ep 110: 10 Tips For Every Teacher To SMASH The Summer Term! Reports, Behaviour & Forward Planning

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to the episode of Tea Slick Repeat. My name is Dylan. My name is Aiden. Why are we laughing so much, Aiden? We just started this podcast and as I was talking, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. That's really gross. I'm ready to stop. I really wanted to keep. Oh my God, no way. Maybe in like a year we'll rerelease, rerelease. We'll release the bit of me throwing up in my mouth as I started to. Record faster, getting ready to trigger warning was organised and disgusting. Oh man. Oh my goodness me. That cracked me up so much. I was ready to do like a proper intro in that. Yeah. And I'm just not in a mental state to do that anymore because that's the funniest thing I've ever. So thank you for listening.

0:40 We hope to see you next week. Oh, no, no. We've got a lot to talk about today. Oh, gosh. Right. I'm gonna just go straight with my week. I don't care about your week. I'm just gonna go straight in. Go for it. Because I just had a moment of a child that really made me laugh. You know, children, there's this whole obsession children have with the age of people, right? And either you're almost like a teenager their age, if you're like a young teacher, or you're 74. Like in your own mouth, that kind. Of age stop, stop some people don't like listening to this kind of story so like there's there's no middle age as as a as a as an adult, you're either just a young person or you're yeah, you're extremely. Old. So we were doing a text, We we we started Narnia as our new class text, the line The Witch in the wardrobe.

1:25 And one of the words we were looking at was old fashioned. And a few of them didn't quite know what it meant. Others had worked it out other than heard it before. And one child said, it's like olden days, like something from the past. And I was like, yeah, you were making links here. That's awesome. Old fashioned something that, you know, used to be the way of doing something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of the children then said to me my mum was born in the olden days. Oh God, here we go. Yeah, when you're a kid, when you're a kid, anything before you when you were born was basically World War 2. There's no, there's no between. It just really made me laugh what she did after, because I said thinking. OK, so how old is your mum? Yeah, that's what I asked her because I thought, I bet your mum's like, 37, you know, like, you know, not even far from us, literally, like, around our age.

2:06 And so I said, OK, how old are you? But I'm thinking I'll continue. But like, well, no, actually really older days. I know it's funny and it's a laugh. Her reply was just completely ruined this facade her Mama tried to build up to other people. She just said, well, I'm supposed to say 29. You're supposed you're not supposed to say. I'm supposed to say. That bit ruins it. That bit. Now we all know she's not 29. You've ruined it. And that she's told you. To say, yeah, because she's actually 30 and it's 50. No one wants to say 30. OK. Yeah. I say kids just have no concept of age, do they? No, because sometimes, sometimes they joked and they're like, how old am I? They're like, you're 100. And I'm like, OK, I know you're being silly, but sometimes there's those genuine moments where you said I've said my age before and. And I did, funny enough, the other day I literally said my age.

2:51 And one of them went, oh, God, I didn't realise you were younger than my dad. Yeah. And I was your dad, 40. I was like, what do you mean you falls? You falls over 40? Like come on, you've had. Eight years, you're just an adult. I think in my head, kids have just three stages of adulthood and what the first stage of adulthood is when you're clearly just like a teenager, right? You're very young. You're basically a kid. The next stage is just my parents and my teachers, and that's just it. And then the last stage is old person. Yeah, that's it. So that that middle one is huge. Yeah. That middle one genuinely goes from like 25 up to like 60. Yeah. You're just. You're just in. That brand, it's not until you live in it that you start to realise, oh, that you do look kind of different at different phases. Oh yeah. Right at the moment I'm so finally starting to like, look at like 20 year olds, yeah.

3:32 And be like, oh, you look like babies to me. Yeah. Whereas mid 20s, I looked at them, I was like, I think I look, I look like that, right? I think I look like that. We look the same. But now I look at them, I'm like, it's a university student. I'm like they're a child. I'm like, do I teach you in year 6 or not? Because I can't really tell. You're doing what the kids do of adults or children. You're just young people. It makes so much sense because when I was younger, I'd always like when I was like 17. So like really old people would honestly have no concept if I was like between, they thought I was somewhere between 12 and 20. They would just have no idea like what actual age I was because I guess they've just it's just so far removed. Well I was at my friend 70th the other day and not my friend. You have a friend that's. My friends dad 70th.

4:13 We play golf, film and stuff. Sometimes he's my friend. As well, I was being friends. Was my friend 70th? Yeah. Was that my friend Dad, who's also my friend? He's 70th. And yeah, so, so we, we, we went out for a night out. We had this like function room hired and it was in the middle of the town and we, we left at the end and we're walking past the clubs and we're, we're seeing people go into clubs. And I honestly was like, that's a child. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're children. That's a group of lads there who are 15 and they're obviously like 1920. They're just going out. And I was like God when I was them. I, I didn't, I think other people would be looking at me with this kind of like view of that's a child.

4:54 But clearly I was well. Fortunately no one did with you because you looked about 28 from about 14. So you are an anomaly to this. I however did look about 12:18 and but I thought to myself, oh, I mean I don't know clearly whose question. What do you want to see my ID for? Clearly I'm 18. No, you're like, no child. You like it. We both went through big, big changes in how we looked, didn't we? Like almost overnight I grew a beard and I was like, you look older. Immediately you lost Yeah. You look older yeah. Jumped out that's. Exactly it. Yeah. I'm not sure which ones better think about that move. Yeah. Anyway, is he? Sorry. Very quickly as I walked in today and you were playing a new game and you'd create an avatar. Yeah. Maybe you think beard's better because look at your avatar. It was basically, it looked like what you were like the ultimate version of me. It was a bald man.

5:39 So, OK, that's Hayden trying to be himself with the most majestic beard you've ever seen. Little bit. Little bit jealousy, maybe. I don't know. And like the most ripped person ever walking around with their top off like I've built her house. So obviously that bit's true. Yeah. So that bit, obviously the ripped bit is true. Obviously completely me, but the beard. But yeah, I would like to grow a beard. I wish I could grow a beard, in all honesty. Oh God, I wish I could. Right, I I've from from what you told me earlier, you're really annoyed at something. Yeah, well, my whole week's recap here was just going to be something that happened or something I saw on Facebook. I got hooked in because I'm a keyboard warrior. You know what I'm like, but I try to not be as bad these days. Anyway, someone put a post try fairly a fairly new teacher clearly in one of these groups put something along the lines of I'm taking on math lead. Hey, what's up at my school, which is really cool, really exciting.

6:22 I remember doing that. I loved the first year I was to come out lead and just the first year, not the first year after that, I was like, I did enjoy it and they said so I just want to clarify something because I'm not really too sure if I'm being wrong or something, but I'm going to get paid a TLR which sounds really cool, but they've put me on ATLR 3 and I'm reading right here on this extremely clear document. I've added that from the government, yeah, from the. Government that TLR freezer for like temporary positions and then the lowest paid one. Just checking. Am I supposed to be on ATLR 2 for this permanent mass lead role that's always existed in this school for decades? Yes you are and never not existed. Correct. And put it put the poster. And that's what I thought I was like we talked about this in the pod. I was like getting ready to get my hands warmed up to type. Absolutely right.

7:02 Yeah, you should be challenging that. But I actually ended up typing something along the lines of, yeah, it is wrong. It's also one of those weird ones where unanimously across schools, for some reason, we've all accepted the TLR three's are given and it's actually annoyingly normal to be given a TLR 3 from Ashley. Then I read some of the other comments and I was surprised to see that quite a few people were saying, Oh yeah, I challenged this at my school and now we get paid TLR 2's. That's absolutely right. Yeah, more than one person put that, which like really made me, I think I might have even deleted my comment because I felt embarrassed the fact that I'd said no, it's totally normal for schools to do TLR 3. The next two comments of people saying no I've got a TLR 2 now for mass for being a mass lead. Doesn't that go to show that bringing something up and actually challenging it sometimes does work because they're just being awkward? They were both sort of basically saying, yeah, yeah, I brought this up and This is why I'm on TLR too.

7:45 Very next comment. No, I don't get paid for this. I don't get paid for this. You. Should know if you get anything. Yeah, next comment was that basically saying literally like patronising, like why are you why are you questioning whether you're getting when you're getting money? Like why are you questioning it? You're getting paid. Shut up basically, honestly, and just that it basically went from the whole range of everyone being like I get paid absolutely nothing. That's fine Yeah to you shouldn't moment I get I get paid nothing but we should do to just be happy you getting paid something to yeah that's wrong. I get paid a TLR 2 at my school and I just Oh my God, I just I let us save it for the pod because I wanted to rant with you and be like. I don't understand how we can have a public service job. It's the same job and there's 10s of thousands of us across the country doing the same job, the same pay scales.

8:26 Unless you're in an Academy and they're just renting you because the CEO needs to take 300 grand a year. You know, that's a different conversation. We're all doing the same job. How can it be? How can it be that someone 500 metres down the road and a different school is doing the exact same role as me, which we've all established across the government is like, yes, we need mass leads in all schools, but they don't get paid. I get paid a bit and they get paid more. It doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't. It doesn't make sense because it's the same role. Yeah, it's insane. Absolutely agree. And the Academy thing does just muddy the waters even further because there'll be other people underneath saying, Oh yeah, that that is true. But I guess my Academy doesn't have to follow it because they can do whatever they want because they're just basically a a private business in disguise as as a school that can be funded by the government and can do what they want with all the cash.

9:09 It's insane. So we already have that dichotomy of local authority schools following, having to follow this, that that don't local authority schools are having to follow this guidance that do and Academy trusts who can just do whatever they want anyway. So that's where I'm, yeah, I'm really behind that. There's a current push from the government that they're going to make every single school have to follow all of these STPCDS and documents and stuff. And a lot of academies are pushing back saying, Oh no, no, no, no, that's bad because I think I would like quite like having control because it can help my staff. No, no, 90% of the 90% of the ways that the academies apply their freedom to do what they want with money is to take money away from teachers. Of course it's lower. What else would you argue? Yeah. Have you ever seen an Academy or a really good maternity scheme which matches that in the private sector though? Yeah, of course you're not going to put more money into, are they?

9:54 They're going to lower your pay salary, lower your pay grades. We worked in a school that was an Academy that literally did this systematically across the board in a way that was so underhanded. It was, it was almost, it was, it was crazy. And I only found out through you only find out through digging. So essentially, if you think about the pay scales on the main pay scale goes up to M6, so M1 up to M66 jumps. And if you're in a local authority school, you'll just go up a jump each year. Quite straightforward. You can apply to go through UPS whenever you want. You might get accepted, you might get not whatever. But what this Academy chain did, and we worked in this school, was they created their own pay scale, which is completely allowed. Not, not, not illegal. Nothing, they nothing they did was illegal at all. I just thought it was horrible.

10:37 So you'd make a new scale and you'd go M1M2, but you'd put your own little jump in between. So now instead of there being six jumps up, there was actually I think 11. There was that 11, yeah. Because there was one between each jump, so five extra were put in. And again, they were like, okay, so every year you go up to jumps on the scale, which is basically 1 jump. Anyone who's already worked out shouting me saying yeah, okay, right, So the baseline was if you meet your performance appraisal, because all linked to performance, you jump up too. Which is just what everyone should get anyway. Yeah, but they reserved the right to jump you up 1 And here's where they systematically did this to new teachers. We are NQTS, we join and we were told unequivocally every single NQT, no matter their performance, so no longer performance related, no matter what they did, they go up one point in the scale. So every single NQT in this school, which was an Academy trust, which and this was completely allowed, went up instead of one scale up to the next, what was traditionally M2 went up to the new next jump, which was halfway. So that year you were earning 1 to 1 1/2 grand less than you should have done.

11:43 But here's the kicker, you might think, oh, that's annoying for a year you've lost a grand. But then the next year you can go up two points and it's back to normal. No, because then you're on 1.5. So you start on. You're on. SO let's say you start on one. Yeah. Year 2, you're on 1.5. Yeah. Year 30. I can go up two now, can't I? Yeah. You're going to 2.5. You should be on three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every single year you're half a scale, half a pay scale less than what you should be on. So every single year of your career, of every teacher in the school, no matter where they are, they're saving 1000 to 2000 lbs. Yeah. And it was just an example of how. Yeah. Academy trust, we've got the freedom to do what we want with the money. We can do what we want. TLR, It's all down to us. Isn't that great? Because we can really give our staff the money they deserve. 95% at the time it's going the other way, it's not happening, which is why all schools should have to follow these guidance. Yeah, that was actually the first time that I'm just thinking, reminiscing back to that time because we both worked there.

12:33 That was the first time I found a little bit of confidence and I and I actually did challenge it. It was probably the only time in that I'd finished my newly qualified teaching year and I found out this whole pay thing and I was like, I'm pretty sure that's wrong. I was quite naive at the time, so I didn't really know. I was like, pretty sure that's not supposed to happen. And I did challenge it to the head teacher and just got literally, I remember, I actually can imagine being in there and heard you saying to me, no, that's just what we do here. Just shutting me down. And obviously I didn't have any more. That was my confidence done. I spent it and I was like. OK. Going in was your confidence. Yeah, exactly. I walked out thinking just a bit, been a bit annoyed, but it's sowed that seed. And what those leaders need to understand is it's sowed the seed for me to have resentment. I left that school a couple of years later, and I resented every single thing about it. And you know what?

13:15 Those little things they did build up and they grew inside me, and it annoyed me. So these leaders think they can get away of it and then squash it and it's done and they'll forget about it. No, people don't forget about these things. Well, we're ten years in now. And talking about it, I. Still think about it because I think it's just, I just think it's an instinctively horrible thing to do because someone would have to sit there and make that decision. Yeah, that was like an active decision where we're like, right, we'll make these pay grades, we'll invent these rules where we can save 10s of thousands of pounds out of the pockets of of our teachers, every single one of them over their career at the school. That decision was made actively. And that was maybe pay made because, Oh, well, we've got to we've we've just saved in our school. We've just saved, let's just say it to grand every teacher. We've just saved 30 grand. Yeah. Oh my goodness.

13:55 That's my pay rise next year. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. You've made-up this role for one of your mates in the top, which is funded by screwing over your staff. Yeah. Never mind the the way teaching assistants were treated. You know, it's even worse with them. Absolutely. So when you look at it and you're thinking, oh, aren't these cost cutting measures good that schools can have this to survive? Not really when they're spending it on middle management that do nothing and go around and make teachers feel even worse. Yeah, And the TLR thing coming full circle back to what you just said, it's a, it's a conversation which I think is really powerful because in a local authority school you've got it written on paper where really it's quite hard to argue that. And some schools still will. Yeah, but it's almost irrelevant then when you go to an Academy, 'cause I just like. Well, yeah, let's make up your. Yeah, we don't. We don't even pay TLR here at all.

14:35 What you talking about? What's the TLR? Honestly. Okay, they don't exist. Yeah, everyone just leads everything. Please. Oh. Yeah, you just got to complain. You just got to complain to these schools. You should. I shouldn't be here. You should, you should complain though, in general, like even if you're in an Academy, I would go to them and say this isn't really enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then don't do it. Say no. Yeah, OK. I don't want to do it then it's not worth it. That's. The problem because people often go, oh, OK, and then do it anyway. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, let's let's make a fork in the road. Do it and get paid for it or don't do it. So imagine saying to them, what would you do if I refuse this role? Yeah it's not gonna be will fire you yeah this is good luck we're gonna say to that you might wanna say that because the hypotheticals are great in real life is okay you got a mortgage my relationship with this teacher, this head teacher is maybe important to me as well so maybe I will or even.

15:21 If you don't like them, you want to stay in your job. Yes. I mean, you don't wanna cause too much, too many problems. There's lots of things to consider. But we should definitely have that line of thought in our head of I could challenge this though. Absolutely. I could complain about this. Absolutely. You know, Yeah. Yeah, one last thing before we played Jingle and Crack on, we did receive a bit of a complaint. We got a complaint. I know, right? We're not. CEOs of a of a multi kind of trust are we Dylan. We're actually fleecing off the customers. We've changed their pay scale. No, we're from not mentioned in a while. Mr Need Financial Planning. My good, good friend Mr Need Financial Planning got in touch, but I said he's just catching up. There was a couple of podcasts behind and he mentioned a couple of podcasts ago we had to put a beep in because we got a bit overexcited and we we said me and I said, so that might have needed to beeped and he just got in.

16:08 I was to say, you know, brilliant. Whatever, that's fine. I'm glad you beeped it. But God, I was, I was listening to it in the car and it was really loud. And so I think you said you're listening to the cartoon. It was quite loud. It was. The beats were quite loud. So just one thing to say, to be honest with you, Mr Neat, financial planning, I don't really give a so we're going to get onto our top tips for the summer turn later. But there's one thing I wanted to talk about first, and it was from a TikTok video that I posted. So anyone who's following us on TikTok at Teach seek repeat podcast or on Instagram or see reels that we put out constantly, often they're from recent episodes, obviously to try and show what we're talking about. But every now and then I'll post something from an old episode.

16:50 And I noticed again on TikTok again and Instagram, I still see quite a lot of teachers, educators, people working in a school posting content online, including us. We post content online all the time, all the time. But I have an issue when I see content post online that's clearly been recorded during a lesson. Right. OK. Like with kids in it or kids voices or. Whatever, Yeah, whatever it might be, I think there are still levels inside of that with with actual kids in the video is insane. And I just can't think of a reason ever, ever to do that. But then there's also the idea of OK, kids voices in the background, but the video's on the teacher. But we'll get into why I still think that's all very strange. I did a reel about this and it got a lot of views, a lot of traction, a lot of likes and a lot of agreement. Like 95 to 98% of people are saying yes this is this is insane.

17:46 We should never be filming content for our own personal use on our own personal TikTok accounts during lesson times whilst children are in school. That seemed like the absolute that that should be it. What was the because I'm just curious because I haven't read the comments. So what were the what was the main reason for that? Is it the obvious one? Is it simply because kids safeguarding? Safeguarding is that it Simple as that. There There were a few that cropped up a lot. OK, so #1 would be working in a school, if you're a teacher, you will know how important it is for a lot of children to not remotely be able to be identified for their own safety. Yeah. The ultimate safeguarding version of children in care, perhaps where where adults cannot know where these children are and if there's any way of working out whatsoever, they'll find a way of working. Do you think even like voices?

18:30 This is what that that can still fall into it because at the end of the day, if you you know your child's voice and you hear it, OK, And you then figure out, OK, that's this person who's a social media influencer online who I know of. I can very easily work out where they, where they work. I know what school that kids at now. I know what area they're in. That can be a huge safeguarding, OK. That can be a huge safeguarding issue. Yeah. And the other one was, you know, teachers having their phones out in lesson time. Sure. Teachers having their personal phone out and setting it up like on a tripod with like a light around a ring light and then setting all that up and and then doing a bit of the lesson. Yeah. OK. The point was there was never, ever should your personal phone be out in the classroom, never mind recording and taking photos and stuff like that on your personal phone.

19:14 So a lot of this was predicated on. And, and to be fair, the real was too on this idea of consent and this idea of if it's OK or not. Well, some, some schools just think about the phone thing. Some like policies are really different across schools. Some schools genuinely have like the strictest phone policies. I've seen some people online saying like we have to put our phones in like a locker on the way in genuinely as adults and other schools. I, I know of these schools because I've heard of, I know people that work in them where they're like when they go on school trips and stuff, they're allowed to take pictures on their phone. They just have to prove they've deleted at the end. They can upload them like they can take pictures for the, for the school website on their, on their personal phones. And then they've just got to delete them at the end and they can upload them, which I think is, I think that's pushing the line too much personally. But like, do you, do you think then that these things are objectively wrong?

19:58 Or is it just your opinion that they're wrong? Because some schools probably do have a policy where that person would actually be allowed to get out of their phone. Well, this was the huge thing. This was all about consent. This was the huge part of the video. The video was very clearly talking about if we're not finding any consent, This is insane. So I think nearly everyone, every single person can agree that without any form of consent doing this is is wrong. It's not an opinion. It is wrong. OK, You can't, you cannot give consent for the children to be posted on social media at all. Right? So now, now we're going into the murky area of with consent or not, because again, a lot of people are saying these people obviously have consent from the parents. And I was like, yeah, some do, but some don't. And that's my issue. Some just think it's OK because they see it online. So my point here is even when there is consent from parents for children to say I consent to this teacher filming during lesson time, I consent to this teacher using their own personal phone during lesson time, I consent to it being uploaded to their own personal TikTok.

20:54 Let's say you get all of that. All of that consent. Let's say all of that consent is there from parents and then the school even like do your classes based on the fact that well that we know that in this guy's class, this person's an influencer that does a lot of stuff online. It's beneficial to us and him. We let him do. It all the. Official channel. It's all fine. It's OK even in in that case, I personally, and I'm not saying that this like should be the law because I don't know if this consent. I'm sure that's fine. I still don't think that should happen. Why I think that any it's just it's just a safeguarding issue. Why do we have cards that are security cards to get into school? Why do we have that? Well, just so no one else can get in, that shouldn't be allowed. OK. Are we saying, are we saying that everyone who who could possibly come into a school is going to do something illegal? No, it's right exactly so.

21:40 This person might get lots of consent, and there's a 99% chance that a teacher will absolutely do nothing with those whatsoever. But there's a chance that someone will have access to that phone, even if it's not that teacher, and have access to those files. Yeah, the data could be like you think about GDPR, actually not we talked about that, but obviously GDPR came in a few years ago and was like really hot. And that's all about consent though as well. Yeah. And but data protection, yeah. You think about like you just saying about the phone there. Yeah. How, how often, how common is it that your personal phone will be in the hands of someone else? Yeah, probably not very often with. You because you hate. You hate to touch your phone, but most people like they might give us their partner or some of their family or friend might just or can I have Rory phone make a phone call? Lauren's always got my phone taking pictures of Rory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, constantly. So there is a, there is a data protection thing there. I've not thought about them until right now, where just like, yeah, even if you've got all the consent, someone else could still get the like, let's say you've got consent, but you have to blow out the faces.

22:28 Yeah. OK. Well, the raw video won't have blurred out faces, will it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got to edit that in. And if your phone's got that footage on it and maybe it gets uploaded to the cloud or whatever, there is just a data protection thing there. I think that's probably, yeah, completely a big enough risk. Completely. But even I just think with all the consent and stuff, you're always the lead of a school and safeguarding, as we've always said, is a top priority. I just think I would err away from that. Yeah, Even giving that as an option. Yeah, I would just err away. What's the benefit of the school? Well, the benefit. Of the school can be, you know, loads of stuff you can get lots of if the if the school lots of schools have their own tik Toks yeah, and the school can get a bit of, you know, local notoriety as oh, that's a cool, fun score and you can get bums on seats because there's so much competition at the minute to get bums in seats and stuff like that. But the, but the overall point I'm trying to make here is that I still, I just don't think it's something we should do. I, I, I personally think it's, a lot of the time it is just for clout.

23:19 It's just for clout and for building a personal brand and for looking like a cool teacher and being and getting accolades online. So my, my two points to this is #1 nearly everything I've seen that's involved in a classroom could just be a video after when the kids have gone home. So for example, I've seen stuff before where someone's set up their camera, put them on themselves and they've gone, they're doing a callback or something. So the teacher will go tikka masala and the kids will go sue. And like, it's just like, it's like. I hope not. But but, but, but my point here is that that's just for clout because if you actually only cared about the pedagogy, which what people come back to, and I'm just sharing cool ideas for the kids. Cool, set up a video after the kids have gone and explain that.

23:59 Yeah, but that's not what you want to do. Because what you want to do is have the clout of the kids in the background saying it and seeing an action because you want that to be on your video because, you know, or get more engagement, you know, or get more clicks, you know, or get more likes. So it's it's often disingenuous when someone says, oh, I'm just trying to share my pedagogical knowledge. Loads of accounts share pedagogical knowledge without doing that. I've seen there's an account called Mr Minchin who props up on my Instagram. He has unbelievable ideas. But I heard you be sat in an empty classroom saying hey guys I tried this out today. Yeah, this was the. Thing I did, and this was really good for coordinates, and then the next thing is I'm setting up this outdoor adventure thing for my children to have some free play. That's how you can share pedagogical knowledge without sitting. Up in it exactly.

24:41 He's not doing it like he yeah, we're, we're, we're aware enough to be able to just, like, apply it to the classroom without seeing the kids doing it. Right. So my point being when you've chosen to have the kids in it, there's another thing in play. And I don't think you can just say, oh, it's pedagogical. It's not because again, half the time this is my other point is a lot of the time with these people. And again, I didn't like how it became name calling in the comments because I genuinely, I was not thinking of an individual whatsoever, but a lot of names came up in the comments and I just ignored them because I'm not out to get anyone individually. I'm talking about a point of view I have. The other thing is that, yeah, OK, what we just mentioned about the kids being there and it's for clout and stuff, A lot of the time what they're actually sharing isn't even that ground breaking the amazing. So, you know, doing a callback.

25:25 Yeah, we've all heard. Callbacks, well, we know, OK And again, if you're sharing it with parents just OK with kids and stuff or you're teaching them how to do it, you don't need to film that. Yeah, because callbacks are an established part of our whole teaching Like do you name a teacher who doesn't know what a callback is? Yeah. Yeah. And even if you are there to learn from this influencer, like I said, do it after school then. But you know you're doing that. It's not it's not groundbreaking. It's. And, and you'll get people again like, oh, aren't you the best teacher in the world because you've you've engaged them through doing a funny callback. Yeah, I, I. People do that in their sleep. Yeah. I've seen amazing teachers all the time being an amazing teacher. Do you know what usually means is you're not thinking about your phone during the lesson, You're just doing some amazing teaching. You're not thinking, God, how can I? I need to show the world that I do callbacks because isn't that great?

26:09 OK. Do it after then I think you made a really, really good point. I think that the clearest, like distinguished point that you've given here is there should be a flow diagram in your head. I want to make this content. OK. Do you know what some people do like making content? We like making content probably more than other people make like making content. We make so much content. OK, can I make this content after school? If the answer is yes and it doesn't detriment the content you're thinking of making there and you don't choose to do that, then you've made the wrong choice. I, I, I think I quite like that line of thinking because I've always been a bit wishy washy in this before. I felt like you've always had a really, really, really clear point of view. And I've always been a little maybe I just haven't thought about it enough. Like you're encouraging me to think about it more now actually. And I've always been a bit like my previous opinion was if there's consent, OK, whatever, get on with that. And then I've left my thought train there. But I do agree, I think I think there's I think if you're doing it for clout and it and it doesn't, it doesn't show anything great.

26:58 Like you could just do it after school. The new chapter. You do that for sure, for sure. OK, can I challenge you another type comment. Because there's something that's I don't know who these people are because I don't really watch. This we actually, but just for context quickly, you and I, we don't really spend much time on social media. I don't, which is funny because we have podcasts and we post on social media a lot. We don't really consume much. So yeah, I'm just saying I know you. Don't but around COVID time and it's this might not even happen anymore. I might be being really like old fashioned here with my content, but around COVID time, I remember there was a bit of a rise in, in content being filmed at school. Yeah, like maybe on those days, but there's only a few kids in or whatever. Maybe it was a bit more relaxed, I don't know. But I remember there was, there's been quite a few creators that have made like it's, I think it's all secondary school based, I think. But like like dancing in the classroom, people have done dances and.

27:41 Stuff. Well, we've, yeah, we. Know with kids like with kids like dances, like kind of like the callback thing, but like they've, they've done something and the kids are in it like they might be blurred or they might not be like fully in shot or something like that. I just remember seeing loads of videos of like teachers with kids in the video. I remember and I remember thinking at the time, well, that's quite sweet. You know, they've obviously got, they've obviously got consent. And my first thought was, they've done that because it's engaged that child, maybe, maybe that child, I don't know, maybe it's like a special need for that child or a behavioural need or something. And for them, it was like, this is epic for them. They were like, I can't wait to see my video on TikTok. I can't wait to see my video on Instagram. And I've got consent from my mum. I'm going to.

28:22 I was going to do it anyway at home, but now I'm doing it in a safe space with my teacher at lunchtime. What's your views on that? I think what you summed up there is probably the most compelling like retort you could have to what I'm saying, which is based in the grounds of discontent, consent from the parents. It's based in the grounds that the children actively want to do it. I just think that you should not do it like it's it's so. That doesn't push you back enough. No, you'd be like, OK, that's OK. So it pushed me back enough in terms of if a child has consent from their parent to go on to TikTok below the age they should be on TikTok. What? Who are we to go into someone's private home and say, no, you shouldn't be doing that right? But we are a school, we do have a duty of care and even with consent and stuff, great.

29:04 If a parent came in and consented to their children drinking bleach at lunchtime, we wouldn't just go, well, the parents consented, so we're going to have the bleach out. Of course, it's so true. Of course we wouldn't. It's so true. The blanket fact of that a parent has consented to something doesn't mean that a school should automatically do it. That encourages, right? So what I'm saying is that's great. A parent can give as much consent as they want, but I'm a school and I'm going to have certain lines and boundaries because I understand the dangers of online. I understand the algorithm is horrendous. The fact that anything I do as an institution, all my staff do as an institution that glamorises that in terms of the children seeing themselves on it is insane to me. So this is where the line I draw with what we do we do a lot of us chatting like this, this might turn into a real itself. This might find itself on the TikTok algorithm right now. Yeah, OK this this is very different to me to putting a child into that situation which we know as a school and we'll do parents evening talks about safety online. How on earth can I stand there as a head and deliver that or as a teacher whilst I'm simultaneously saying well the parents said it can go on TikTok then it's all good mate cheers. Yeah yeah, of course it's just not the idea of consent alone is enough to allow something doesn't wash with me. So when someone says, well, I've got the from the parents, it's fine, isn't it?

30:13 I still think no. Yeah, that's something for me. For all the reasons I've outlined, no. Like a wider ethical consideration isn't there? That's not, that's not about just simply a parent has given me consent, therefore I can now do it. It's a wider ethical debate. I think it's, I think it's a really, really interesting point. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't. I think it's interesting because again, I want to clarify to people right now, because a lot of people push back and say, well, teachers aren't paid enough, they're getting some money from this. I agree, teachers aren't paid enough. We can still have a disagreement here. And also, I'm not saying children shouldn't be in anything ever. OK, I've seen I've seen lovely website pictures of children doing their learning on the website. It's so nice. I think that I I think that's OK. We're not we're not, we're not, you know, glamorising someone being famous and a content creator online younger and getting them onto an algorithm.

30:56 That's a nice picture of you. I've watched Netflix shows where there's child actors who are doing very adult themes that gives consent. That's an art form. That's a different conversation. Adolescents recently. Exactly. That was a young man and I don't know how old he was, but OK, imagine he he could have been young enough to have not been on TikTok and he's doing a video about how he's on Instagram. He's doing this, sorry, a television show, but how he's on Instagram, there's emojis, there's murd. And and so I'm not don't think I'm saying I'm going over the I don't think I'm going over the top here with safeguarding in terms of like, no, not ever. We should protect the children at all times, but they're obviously going to be times. I just think in this situation but wouldn't open that kind of 1. Yeah, it sounds like the wider problem there is, like it's specifically to do with social media as well, isn't it?

31:38 It's about that. It's the, it's the Ave in which this media is being shared, like you said, a school website. It's not, it's not promoting any like underage use of social media that we shouldn't be doing that we know is rotting children's brains anyway. It's a website. And even, like, when I've seen like, schools having social media, they don't have an Instagram account. There's a picture of of like the team playing football that's very different. Again, we're talking about different stuff here when we're doing online trends that boost the algorithm for kids, for children. I just think it's just a step too far. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying no school should ever have an Instagram account anymore. Yeah, no, of course they should. And that's fine. And there's consent there. I just think consent alone doesn't convince me to do something. I have to look at the wider picture and and just. Decide case by case almost with the. School isn't it? Absolutely.

32:19 What if? OK, I'll challenge you one last time here because I mean, I'm really into this. And now you've mentioned school Instagram accounts. It's like it's reopened my mind to blur. Yeah, all right, school Instagram account, they've got all the consent, blah, blah, blah. They've done it all properly. And then they start doing on their school Instagram account similar kind of content. So like like more virally typed content, things where it's like these are trends and we do it because we know the kids will enjoy it. We know the kids will like this is like a treat for them. If they've done well this week, they get to be in our next Instagram Reel. We do 1A week. What's your opinion then on school TikTok or school Instagram accounts going further than just, OK, it's a picture of other kids doing football or something. You might know what you might put in a newspaper on a website. And it goes a bit more down the lines of we're doing this because it's fun and it's social media and it might go viral. And I wouldn't do it.

33:03 No, no, I wouldn't. I would not do that. That would be the distinction, I think. And again, I'm saying push me back like I I might move here because I'm. I'm saying there's certain things where I get consent, like giving medical assistance if someone's poorly on a school trip. We need consent to do that, right? Yeah. And if I get to do that, I'm gonna do it. Yeah, if the child needs it, right. If I get consent to have bleach as an option to drink at lunchtime. Yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm still not gonna do it. So there's a line somewhere, somewhere, And this is tricky, and this is where we can have a discussion. I'm just trying to explain where my line is and it's somewhere between that do. You think it's the purpose? Maybe. I think it's the purpose. It's the purpose, like a picture of a school team. It is for the parents. Yeah, it is for the parents just to say this is what your kids achieve.

33:43 Well done. The kids can look at it as well if they want to see their achievement. But really it's to show off an achievement Exactly. If a school if a school Instagram account did a thing like. A a viral viral. There's tonnes of dances and sounds in there. Yeah, they did one of those. Come on kids, get in. That's not really for the parents. So I'm gonna try and clarify here. OK? If only the staff did that viral trend and it was after school completely fine. Yeah, yeah, that's this is what this is what I'm sure. So I'm not against schools doing this or having a social media presence or their teachers being online. But the kids don't need to. I'm the children don't need to be there in that context. And one final point, because my last thing that I thought of, it's something you've got to fall after. I know it's because like, this is a good conversation here. Really. Like, I've never really thought this deeply about this before, but like, OK, you could even go down the avenue of you could still make these videos and things in school with children if it was on a school iPad and it didn't go any further than the school, like internal. It's fun.

34:37 You know how we do like green screen videos and kids? They do like a news report. That's a classic thing. You could still make these videos, but it just it's on a school like Precise, it's not on your personal phone and it's not for your personal TikTok. That's another really good distinction to make because I think it really clarifies the issue here. The issue is the algorithm and the and the viral trend seeking stuff. That's the issue. If it's on an iPad, I would do that in a blink of an eye. I think that would be so engaging for the kids and so fun. It's on a school iPad. We're going to change the green screen backgrounds. You're going to do a little dance. Great, that's fantastic. And even if it's just to do with learning like literacy of, of online and how and how things work in terms like editing software on like an app and stuff like that, I think all that's fine. I really do.

35:18 I think that really nicely draws the line of just, I hope it's clear to people listening where I stand on this. And again, I hope that if someone's listening to this and they think, well, I'm that person who has consent and I do this kind of thing. I, I I'm not saying you're a good or a mad teacher. My point here is exactly the opposite. I don't think it remotely defines what you like as a teacher. Sure, whether you post these things, I think so either. But it, it could, it could define where you are morally or ethically. It will. Like you might just be on a different scale to me. I think you're on a different scale to me still. Yeah, But what I would like to take away from this is when people think automatically those influencers are the best teachers in the world and therefore everyone else.

36:00 It's does not work like that. I want the I want general public to understand it does not work like that. Nearly every teacher. I very, very, very rarely seen something posted by these people which I've not known have all seen before. So it's not it's, please don't think that wow, these people are on the pedestal. And honestly, when people do that and you see people in high positions, like huge brands and even the government etcetera, almost rewarding it, I do feel very uncomfortable. Yeah, I've noticed that as well. Yeah, it's because do you know why? Do you know why brands do it? It's because they're seeing that this is a commercialised thing. It's nothing. It's clout. It's nothing to do with the kids. They're just like all those people comment on this, I'll comment on this as Heinz beans and maybe people comment on our thing, go to our things. They just care about business.

36:44 It shows. If anything, it is this is a business thing, not actually a thing for. Anyway, that was a that was a good. I enjoyed that conversation so I'm glad I would have clarified it more. I feel like my line is a bit more set now because I didn't really have a line before. I didn't thought about it enough. I don't think I've ever changed my mind so. No, I'm exactly impossible. You're extremely arrogant, so come on. I'm joking. I'm joking. I've changed my mind a lot. Clarify. I feel like we came to a like a a, a proper place there together by thinking about different things. That's lovely. Should we do what we're actually here to do? Oh, I guess. So, tips for some time? Let's play the Jingle right? We've made it. It's summer term, so here are a bunch of tips that we put together that we think will help you get through it as a busy, overworked teacher. I've got the first one.

37:26 If you don't mind, go. On, of course. You come straight again? Yeah, again. Okay, first one is you have until the May, the 31st to resign. That's the we have not planned. Hang on. Hang on, this is not tip. It's important. It's important. Tip, tip #1 genuinely, yeah, genuinely, I'm just going to say this right now, OK? May the 31st is genuinely the deadline if you wanted to hand your notice in. And it's important. No, it's important because a lot of people out there who'll be toying it is. Important. It's just funny that you came in with a tip. That's our tip. It's our tip. Is it? How can I get through this last time? Know you're quitting at the end. That'll get you through. It this is a notification. This is not a tip. That's really funny. Can I go OK, The Clara, this is not that's not tip number one. Yeah, I'm going to come in with a real tip number. One tip #1 tip #1 get Looking for new scores? Go go and look.

38:10 But seriously, if you're in a doctor's school, I'm going to make this point because I think it's important because a lot of people listen and they are in a school where they listen to everything we say and like, I just can't do this. You know, we said before, like we'll just try and push back. No, you're right to yourself. Still be in a school, which is just like, no, get out of that school. Go and try a different school. Go and try something new. So go and get looking. Go on your web, whatever website is relevant to where you live. We've got Kent teach and ask. It's Kent where all of the applications are done and you can go and have an interview somewhere else. It's all allowed. Just do it. Get doing. Until when, when can I do that? Until. And that is May the 31st because it's three months. Well, your funny thing turned into a kind of a real tip. I'll give you that. I'll give it a half tip. It's a half tip. So the second-half of tip #1 Yep, the second-half tip, tip number nought .5 is, is actually a real one.

38:54 It's about prioritising in the summer term, prioritise. You need to prioritise more than ever, more than any point in the year. You've told me to prioritise all the time. Why is it particularly important now? That so much more happens at this point in the year. Yes, we should. We should always prioritise. Maybe that was a bit patronising of me. Of course we should prioritise in general, but at this point of the year, you can expect even more things piled on top. Things like reports, if you're in year 6, you'll have a school play, end of year activities, parent evenings, whatever you've got like all these things that just kind of like happen at the end of the year at once, or at least within a term, you'd need to prioritise because you can't. What you can't just do is be like, OK, I'll just do all those things on top of my, my workload that already goes over my hours.

39:37 You can't just do that. You have to look at things and be like, OK, well, in this term, even though all year I've been quite happy doing this job and this job and this job, I'm not going to do that one anymore because I need to make some room for this parent consultation, that meeting that I've got to write all these notes for and I've got to start doing my report. So I'm going to need to drop this task as well. That is OK. We are professionals. If you go into any private sector ever, they, they will have, you know, tables, they will do certain things in certain times and some things won't get done. They'll get pushed into next week or they just say we're not doing that at the moment because our focus is this like, you don't get to just pile on and on and on and on and on. OK. And I guess one big thing when we're prioritising is why it's so important as teachers is you talked about in the private sector, you have like a timetable, you can jiggle stuff around 80% of our time. We can't jiggle around 80% of our time is set in stone. We need to teach English then and maths then and do those. No, you can't drop them.

40:27 So when we're saying prioritising, it's even more important because we have such less time to play with in order to prioritise. And you're absolutely right, I think this it's about knowing your contract, right? We said it a million times before but guys know them. If you are being asked to do 2 things and one of them is to re back and do every single display that's in the school corridor and the other one is to write and prepare for your end of year play. OK, Out of those two, you could know your, you could know your contract and be like, to be honest with you, I don't think it's really reasonable to ask me to do either of them. But what most teachers will do, if they know that they'll go, OK, I understand. Look, both of these I OK, I don't actually have to do them on my contract, but I'm a teacher and this is what most people think. I go, of course I'm going to help out with the school play. Yeah, that's really important to me and my kids. That's actually going to have a lasting impact on a lot of them. There'll be children who've waited all year to have this kind of go at doing acting because it's what they love doing.

41:18 They've gone through all the SAT's. Cool, I am going to do that. But do you know what I'm not going to do? The displays. So knowing your contract, it doesn't mean you have to say no to everything that ever gets asked you ever. That's outside of this black and white thing, because that's just not what we do as teachers. But what it does allow you to do is to say no to certain things. I really love your vendetta against display. I hate, I want to make a Super Cup. I get the energy. At some point I need to go back for our episodes and listen and find the times where you where your natural analogy of like some pointless work is, is a display because it's always a display. It's really funny. Did the problem with because people always come back to me and they'll be like they either like agreed or there's some people like, well, it can be useful and sometimes I'm like, I'm past the point now where I even accept that I'm like, I, I, I know, right, But I don't care. I'm just, I just hate displays, hate hating. Them, but you know what it does make me think they're another another sort of point within this is like work smart as well, because you know what and work within your school policies. Schools have different policies.

42:11 Like you might have a school where you have a resource creator, right? And someone's saying to you, you need to get these displays done. It turns from a horrible task to, well, hang on, actually all I need to do to do that is say to this person, I need these three things back to delegation. And you can delegate it. You might not work in a school where you can do that. And at that point, if you work in a school, it's like, no, you have to do it. I'd be like, okay, no, right, no, that's not happening. But if I can work smart and still get it done, you know then obviously. And if it's. Someone's role to do it, yeah. I mean, you don't need to. Sometimes I feel like we, we're suggesting like put up a put up a stern wall of like, no, I don't have to. You don't have to be difficult for the sake of it. If there's a way of managing that job and getting it done and it really hasn't cost too much time, obviously just do it. But if there's not, then don't. Yeah. So next 1.2, I guess it's .3 because my first point was very serious. 1.1.7, OK, gosh, we're going to lose track of the next one. It's kind of linked to what you just said about prioritising because this, this was kind of born from that is, is plan for disruption.

43:04 And we all know, especially we work in a primary school, but I'm sure it's the same in secondary school. There's always something going on. We've talked about a lot about how boosters for Sats have disrupted things. But in the summer term, my goodness me, you mentioned you kind of touched on all the things that can happen in the summer term, which I wouldn't change for the world. Things like trips, like you said, to sports days, the summer fair, there's transition day in there. There's end of school. Parties. There's tests that we have to get done, there's long assemblies for big celebrations, there's church visits if you work in a church school. There's May 31st. But the point being there's, there's more disruption than ever in summertime. So just plan for that and get your dates in your diary and, and work around this. And I think a big thing for me that that I really love doing at this point in the year is in September, you can't really think about the whole year.

43:55 It's almost too long. You can have a really too. Many things will change it. Yeah, exactly. You have a really vague long term plan about like maybe books you gonna cover in English and stuff, but yeah, you just concentrate on your next term. Yeah, we're at the point of the year now where I like to actually think, well, I can really compartmentalise. I've got 12 weeks left. Yeah, or wherever it might be, or 11 weeks because it's quite a short term. I can really now look ahead. And a big thing that helps me is to know exactly how much planning I've got left. So we'll we'll share planning in in our school. So I'll share maths planning with my partner teacher and we'll also share English planning because we have mixed sets and we go through the same book and how we're group. So I know what maths I've got to plan for the rest of the year. I know what English I've got to plan for the rest of the year. And I also know what topics in the afternoon I need to do. For example, I know I've got an RE unit to plan, I think in term 6 and we've got a cooking unit to plan as well. And then so I'm done.

44:43 So then we're done at the end of the year. And and knowing that, why? Why do you think that might be really beneficial for someone to have? Well, firstly, it's a finite manageable time, isn't it? Whereas like you said, at the beginning of the year, it's not. Well, it's useful because then you can plan ahead for summer, right? You can literally, you literally know your end point. Yes, you can think about what you're gonna do in the summer. You can think about next year. You can, I don't know, you can just be organised, right is? That what you're gonna do, That's, that's it. That's essentially it. It's like, I know I've got this to do. It doesn't mean I'm going to do it now, but it means OK. Actually, if I think about it, I've got X amount of lessons to plan. Yeah, I'll do that mass bit of planning here. I'll do that bit of English planning on my PPA at this point. Oh, I know because I planned ahead actually when PPA has changed that week. So I'm going to get it done early. Yeah. So just just having all this information, because it's such a small amount of time now until the end of the year, I feel like you're in a position where you can be really powerful of what you know.

45:30 Definitely. And just going back to your original point about just planning for disruption in general, right, How just a thought experiment, how many times in your career, particularly earlier on, right, have you spent time mapping out a medium term plan? OK, maybe for maths or English or whatever, and you've done day by day and each week I'm going to cover these objectives and then you. And then as the term progresses, you're like, oh, I forgot about the summer fair that's ruined that. I'm going to push everything back. Oh that's messed up my thing because I it. Was a first aid course as well. That was a birthday. Course. Oh, and then this and then suddenly 6 things have happened that you've not planned for. You've spent all that time in a medium term plan. It's completely useless now because six lessons have been pushed out. Do you know what? And the worst thing, I'll just say this. The worst thing is when in other terms at least you can generally be like, OK, I'll push it into next term. If you do that in term 6, you generally get to a point where you're stuck.

46:14 It's like if you've actually planned and every single lesson slot and you've really not thought about the disruption that's going to happen, you're going to get to a point where like I've actually got a sacrifice lessons now because it's too late. I can't push them into next time. And you don't cover some of the curriculum. Yeah, exactly. So you've just got to be really careful, plan for the disruption. I what I do now is like being more experienced is I leave. Are you going to say this when I've just stolen your point? No, no, no. When every medium term plan I do now for every term in fact and more in the summer, I always leave about 3 or 4 lessons genuinely blank in because I just know something's going to happen. Happened. I didn't even, it wasn't even in the diary. I didn't even know about it. Like, you know, even. If it was, you wouldn't know about it. Yeah, if it was, you wouldn't know about it or someone's forgotten or whatever. And or even a lesson doesn't go very well. You need to do it over 2 days now. And you know, you've got that flexibility. So when you're planning your, you know, your term or the rest of your year, whatever, at this point of the year, leave some space, leave some room, leave four or five lessons completely blank because you will fill them. Right, stop talking.

47:08 We need to get through all of these things. Next one, assessment. So assessment's huge at the end of the year. At the end of the year, you need to give your basically your formative assessment and you have your summative assessment. So let's just separate these two out very quickly and give you some advice for summative assessment, we're talking about when children sit tests at the end of the year. Now, depending on what school you're in, there can be huge pressure for SLT to have seen lots of movement and data points going in a certain direction. This can cause a lot of stress on the teacher and it can push teachers to be very tempted to do a little bit of bulging. Now, I'm going to be really honest with you, OK? I personally have never bodged the test, but I absolutely at the start of my career felt that pressure to have lots of movement where it would get me stressed and wound up and I'd feel like I got I need to need to drill these children with all these different things that might come up.

47:55 And I'd start guessing what will come up. And I'd be like, well, actually previously we did this, so let's do that again. Oh, last year what came up in the test that started to come up again. And you start to think about how you can boost your scores more than how you can help the kids get. Better. Yeah, that's so true, isn't it? Well, you're obviously a very good person because in my first year, I'll be, I'm completely happy to admit this. I didn't bodge my I've never ever, ever looked at data and changed it. I've never done anything in post. The kids get what they get. But one thing I did do and I and I got told off for this in my first year. And it's sad of me because I was like, I don't want to get told off And and I've never done it since because I thought, yeah, that's what was I thinking that was terrible was I knew the test content. So I was in a year 4 class. I knew what we did the same tests every time. So they don't even pre printed. I knew what was in there and I flicked through it like 2 weeks before. And then I made sure in all my lesson starters in those two weeks for the test, I made sure to cover extremely similar questions.

48:41 Like literally I'd, I'd be like, OK, that's they've done a hexagon with this thing. I'm going to do a Pentagon with this thing. It was like so similar where it's like, I've clearly just copied the test question put into like a PowerPoint. And then we just did those questions along the way. And I thought, that's good because I'm not cheating. It's not the actual question. It's just revision. And it's like, yeah, but it is though, isn't it? Because in a real test environment, you don't know, like I've been year 6 for so long now, I've actually got very used to like, we don't see the SAT papers until the 2nd. The kids are opening them, doing them. There's not even a possibility of doing that anymore. And I'm like, yeah, that should be how it is in all year groups. Because it's no longer problem solving if the children have had the. Content. And then the data is not real. So what we're saying here is don't do that. Don't be. It's so tempting. I succumbed to the pressure. Yeah. That break the chain. Don't do it.

49:22 Yeah. And call out other people that do it because it happens so much in school. You haven't have a new amount of school again. There was someone who rubbed out answers in an English comprehension test. Yeah. Do you know when you can, like, match things up? So in a comprehension, you can, like, write words or you can match up answers? Yeah, every. It's weird because every single child who did that test in their room got all of the match up. Questions. Yeah, all ones. Because they were all like rubbed out. So because they're obviously easier to rub out and this is talking about a teacher afterwards after the fact going back, rubbing out answers and doing them. Again, the data was to give the data. I remember that. So it was skewed. It was like, hilariously, I was so badly off where it was like, you can't even like pretend this is. Real There were children who couldn't read properly. Yeah, getting like great to depth, right? So yeah, so it's just don't do it because break the chain if you if you think the person before you has done it, yeah, be the honest person and it can be really put a target on your back so I can.

50:11 See what people can do, you can do with that, just don't be tempted to is giving marks where they're not deserves. When you're marking papers you're like I know what the kid means, if it doesn't fit the mark scheme, don't give on the mark. Genuinely just be harsh. Be harsh with your marking, it's good to do. Very quickly, formative assessment then is when the teacher at the end, for example, we'll sit down for history and we'll say this child is expected in history. Yeah. And then we'll do that for all of our class. Then we do it for geography, then we do it for science. Based on this, it's all that teacher guys, do not spend 10 minutes going through every single history book doing this. Judgments. OK, Think back to when you taught them history. Think back to when you spent hours and hours doing marking and just give them the level that you know they are OK. You do not. You do not need to go traipsing through books for 80 to 90% of your children.

50:51 You will already know where they are. I'll be able to say to you, this person expected that person or I remember their work was great to depth, absolutely fantastic. Don't spend age Dick, because it is utterly pointless. And even though someone can might sit there and explain to you why it's so important that we really intricately give an assessment for history in each of the different strands and geography and stuff, it just isn't so It's just not worth your time. And when we're talking about prioritising earlier, the priority there is called stop doing that. Go and get ready for something else which is actually important and will actually help the kids out, because this won't. Two last tips from me on on assessment. Number one, stop inputting data in more one place. I was going to say that like we we know not to not do this and we all still do it sometimes. You should not be triple, triple assessing. If you put it one place that's good enough, your score, they want to put it somewhere else, say, OK, cool, here's my spreadsheet. You crack on, then that's not your job to do that. And lastly, don't compare with your last cohort. It's very, very tempting.

51:39 I know a lot of, I think, in fact, I think most schools, they like to look at the data from the previous cohort, say, oh, your last year 4 class, they got this data, but your year 4 class this year, they're a bit behind, aren't they? Cohorts are completely, completely incomparable. It's so random because some years it'll be a, it'll be a fantastic view of vanity because you'll have a better cohort. Nothing to do with you. Sorry, guys, nothing to do with you. They were just a better cohort in other years. They're way lower and it's oh now you didn't know, you're just disappointed in yourself. You think you're a rubbish teacher. It's literally nothing to do with you. Please stop comparing the previous cohorts. Only compare the progress data of the actual child. You can look at their data when they're in the year before and see if they're sort of on track for the same place. Don't look at other kids and compare them.

52:20 What's the point, stupid? And that's where the consistency really helps because if you spend a few years with good results, being the person who says, please don't know, listen, these kids are these kids came up in a really good solid position. Actually, it's not me that really, really stands you in good stead when inevitably you will have children who are just lower, who have still made excellent progress for you to be like, no, no, you can't moan at me. Just like I said earlier, don't, don't praise me. Let's just look at the progress because some SLTS still get trapped into all these cohorts a bit lower, aren't they what we doing? Like, OK, we're going to do what we do anyway. Why are we comparing them? It's going to. Help these kids, I feel, I feel, I feel bad for the SLT sometimes because they feel the pressure too. That's them for coming to that pressure. Top down of well, our data last year our that data last year we got 90% through in maths and this year we're looking at 70%.

53:02 What have we done wrong? Literally nothing. Yes, literally nothing. The kids are just not as intelligent. They're just not there. The cohort is different. Yeah, and that's fine. They could have still made progress. Yeah, they all did. They all make the same progress. Yeah, but they didn't make accelerated progress to get to that 90%. Yeah. Oh well, OK, cool. It almost becomes resentful that kids do so well. It's like oh God, I've got 94% this year. Next year is going to be awful. What? Yeah, well, just celebrate. Things, it's fine, right? Next one. This is a very short one and to me it's really important. It's really, really important. Just because the evenings are getting longer and it's sunny till late and you leave school and it's delightful, it doesn't mean you have to work longer, OK? It doesn't mean the actual day has not got longer. Don't feel like your work needs to bleed into the evenings anymore.

53:42 Do you know what? If anything, you should be leaving earlier to go and enjoy it? Enjoy your evening plan non negotiables whilst it's sunny on Tuesday. I'm doing this at six, I don't care. I'm doing this at 5. I'm leaving at half four. Who cares? And if someone in the school wants to mask themselves to make a comment and say how they're staying so late because that's not like a teacher. Honestly I've learnt something this week. It's called an Irish goodbye. Do you want an Irish goodbye? Yes please tell me. Just leaving without saying anything. So I stand a goodbye but see you later where you're off to and you end up having like a 10 minute chat when you actually leave. An Irish goodbye is literally getting up and leaving and and I realise I've been doing an Irish goodbye for all my career. That's. What you do to me? Just get up and leave.

54:23 And that's what you see at the end of the day. It's 4:15, and you want to leave, right? Yeah. You don't need to go and and shake hands of anyone and say good day. I've put in a good day's work, haven't I? You're a professional. You're deciding to leave at 4:15, Stand up, walk out the door, drive home. See you tomorrow. Yeah, don't even do that. Don't even say you see you tomorrow. Stay in your own head. Yeah, just leave, It's fine. So my very, very short point here is we don't get much nice weather. We don't get much of the summer. It's not a country where we have this exotic climate all of the time. Just get out early and go and enjoy yourself. Start planning your summer holidays, look forward to them, have something to grasp onto. We're going away in a couple of weeks on the bank holiday. Can't wait. It's broken up the year. I'm not doing any work that weekend and I planned ahead and I know that's fine. Well, it's going to work.

55:05 My literal next point is very, very similar. I'm still going to keep it as a separate point, which is specifically about planning ahead. So actually like we've talked about prioritising, I guess it's kind of similar, but plan ahead so that you don't have to work talking to some. Holidays. Oh, are you talking about like big end of year? I'm talking about, OK, you're moving classroom, right? OK, don't leave it until the last day to think about it. At least think about what you're going to do because there might be some things you can do on the lead up to it. You might have it, you know, the odd 5 minutes. If I can't do this, the odd 5 minutes, you might start cleaning out your cupboard. Sure. I love doing that. I love cleaning out my cupboard as the year comes to an end. And then when the last day is over, my cupboard's completely clear. And I'm like, cool, don't have to do that in the in the summer. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And then you can start planning your some holidays and actually plan something for them so you can look forward to it. Give yourself something to look forward to.

55:46 The summer term is knackering. Like have something to latch onto. I'm looking forward to a little holiday. Give yourself something as well to look forward to. It doesn't have to be extravagant or expensive. Not be anything. It could be going to London for the day you make, I don't know, whatever it is. Anyway, next one, it's kind of linked to what you're saying again, of little and often. So this one here, I guess the overall point is little and often, But my point here is with report writing, pace it out. Report writing is a mammoth job. Yeah. We're not here to talk about whether your school gives you time to do it or not. That's a separate discussion. They should give you some time to do it, in my opinion. But either way, even if they do give you the time, just start pacing out. Do 1A day, even doing 1A day from now, do one child a day. Yeah, right, yeah, that gets you within a month. You've done all your comments for Mass Children in your past. Easy, okay, Even if you don't need to complete your reports before the half time.

56:32 No, I'm not saying don't do any in half time because some people like to do it in half time. They've got a day off, they block it off and they just do their work, get them done. What I'm saying is anything you do, anything, even if it's four kids before half term, right, If you start off with the best of intentions, that's still 4 kids. Fewer you've got to do. Yeah, exactly. So just do little and often. And I I want to have a very quick mention about what should go into reports. OK, go on. From the top down, you might get told you need to write 3 paragraphs about their religious education experience as well as five about themselves and six about. We can't control that, OK, But here's what we can control within the confines of what you've been asked to do. Just think about what parents actually want to read in a report. Think about the function of a report, OK? A report is something which is physical that their parents will receive.

57:16 And it's got 22 main jobs, in my opinion, one, to let your let your, to formally let the parents know where the children are at. Yeah, academically, academically. Yeah, academically, that's exactly what I meant. And to basically have a keepsake for their child long term so they can look back and see how they were as a person. Yeah. Do you know what? That's the biggest one to me, I think. That's my point, yeah. So completely great. I think expanded in a second. But what I'm saying is this should manifest itself as is for attainment. Can be a box. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah. Maths. Just maths. Expected writing, working towards. Yeah, just a box for each thing. And the comment should just be a profile about that child based on you spent a year with them.

57:57 Yeah. Don't start saying if they can defronted variables or not. Don't start saying if they can add on fractions. Completely irrelevant. When you're 40 and you're clearing out the loft and you find your old rapport, the only thing you're going to care about is just how you were as a. Person Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true because I've done that. I've looked at my old reports and I just want to see what my teachers wrote about me. I just, I don't care if I was good. Like in fact, I can look at the attainment box. I got an A in this and an effort of 2. Brilliant. That's good to know. I really don't care though, because there's nothing to do with me right now. But was I funny then? Did I make someone laugh? I love. Did I have a podcast? You've over the report. Was I funny? Yeah. Was I funny? Did the teacher think I had extreme banter? Did they write that in my report? No, they didn't. In the 90s, nothing like that. Yeah. So next time you sat there and you're you've given out a form to the kids to harvest data of what clubs they went to so you can write down what clubs they did in their report.

58:45 Just think to yourself, is that a good use of my time? Do the parents know it? Do the parents the ones that pick them up from the club and signed up for it? Do they know that their kid went to it and little? Derek enjoyed football club this year. Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, I signed him up for it. Yeah, and I picked him up every. Single time and I took him to the game and I watched the game. Yeah, yeah. And you weren't there actually funny enough. So how do you know that? Yeah. Oh, I well, I asked Robert to tell me. All right, so your report is what your kid said about something that me and my kid did. Yeah. Yeah, he told me at the time. Also, S fish fingers were there quite a lot, didn't he? Yeah. He told me you cooked it for him. OK. Yeah. Just think. Just think about what parents actually want to. Hear they do get funny though. I completely Oh man OK next one I want to talk about. We'll skip past it a little bit. I think you're trying to move on here, Dylan, but I want to talk about it.

59:26 Behaviour. I want to give a little tip here on behaviour because I know we're running out of time. So let's not talk too much about it, but just just be aware, especially if you're newer to teaching, that behaviour does tend to get worse. It does tend to get a little bit worse in the summer term, in the summer term. OK. And there's a few reasons for that. They're more comfortable with you, You know, maybe it's very natural. Your expectations have slipped slightly because you've become more comfortable and familiar with them as well. It's very, very normal. And they're leaving your class soon, right? Like kids know that, especially when you're 6, they're leaving the school soon. They they really know that once they're done transition, then they come back. They're like, hey, we are not going to be here much longer. And quite often they're not doing English and maths and stuff, are they? Exactly. It's all chaotic and it's very tempting as a teacher to let your expectations drop a bit, but you go, OK, little things have changed.

1:00:09 I'm going to let my behaviour expectations just drop a little bit because we're near the end of the year now. They're going to be gone soon anyway. Who cares? I'll just let it drop. My tip is don't do that. Don't do that. Keep your expectations really high and really clear. Reaffirm them more than ever. I'm constantly saying to my kids at the end of the year, like guys, you're still here though, aren't you? And we've like, you don't need to them suddenly be disrespectful and we leave on. We have a horrible relationship in the last week. Like, why would you do that? We've built this lovely relationship. Why would you then start being rude? Let's just end this on a high, you know, and I'll say that more than ever at the end of the year, you got to keep this expectations up. And do you know who who does care? You, the teacher who's having to deal with his behaviours. Yeah. So when you when you pick up, who cares? Let him go. No, you're the one dealing here. Yeah, it's worse for you. Ruining your day if you don't. Yeah, exactly. So that's just my quick one there.

1:00:49 And keep them moving as well. Summer restlessness is a real thing. Seriously, I don't know what it is. I do know what it is. It's the summer. So I don't know what it is about summer restlessness, just. About summer, I just don't know. But it's real. Like you probably are gonna have to get him moving more and and realistically get him outside. Play it. Play it. Woo. Play the little jiggle. There it is. I've been waiting this whole entire right. OK, anyone who's thinking why is a Jingle just played? Yeah. I knew when we were doing something about summertime and how to survive it. I knew because you've said it 58 times before that some at some point going out your mouth for me. Get him outside. It's true. Come outside in the side. Yeah, because it's true. Dylan, get him outside.

1:01:32 It's nice. Plan a lesson out there, get him on the field, or just finish a lesson early and go outside for 10 minutes. Oh my gosh. Absolutely crap, man. Thanks for that. You've ruined me. Right. I'm sorry. Not predictable. OK, here we go. Last few. We're going to whiz through these. OK, go on then. So this is linked to an assessment we just said before. We are very close to the end of the year. You're not going to move the needle much. Do not feel like you need to put an extra 15 hours into planning for these really intricate interventions that the children won't know what what they're doing otherwise for. The last two weeks before. The test, yeah, Listen, don't worry about it. Just fill gaps the best you can and just teach the curriculum because you still have some curriculum left. Simple. Simple as that. OK, Don't worry too much about that.

1:02:12 Next one. Make the most of your time with a class. This is really important to me. I I I this is something that I think I did naturally even at the start of my career. So you guys might do this anyway, but don't, don't feel so shackled by timetables. And oh, gosh, what will someone think of this? If you just happen to think one point, that there's a week left, I'm going to play a game with my kids. Yeah. Who? Cares. Yeah. Do you know what? Someone's coming up, they're going to forget half the stuff you do in the last three days anyway. They're going to 6 minutes off. Exactly. Oh, don't own the week, but what if someone walked in? What if someone walked in? Yeah, and they were playing the. Pirate and they see your children loving being at school. Oh no. Yeah, honestly, well, you could have done this for a bit. I've done loads. I could have done.

1:02:53 I've taught the curriculum. I'm professional. I'm not going to just not teach them stuff ever. But as a professional, I've just decided actually, I'm just going to make the most of the time in my. Class yeah OK it might be nice to leave the year on a high so that they actually want to come back to school in six weeks time don't know just. Exactly. And, and do you know what you can do, Hayden? You take them outside. You can. Yeah. I was like, what? Oh, they're long. No, they're not going off this time. You're. Already there, it's just for you mate. Absolutely. I agree, Take. That's a great point, Dylan. Take him outside, go and have a bit of fun on the field. I think I just think, yeah, look, you're a professional. This is this is basically what this point is. Yeah, you are a professional. Just just remember that. So next time you're thinking, oh, can I do this? Can I do that? Do I have the authority? The author is yes you do. You are a professional educator who understands the curriculum you need to deliver and where the children need to get to.

1:03:39 And if within this confines you've gone. Do you not be good today if I just go and do this thing? You can't do it. Do you know what you're starting to imply here, Dylan? That children aren't just data points and there is a holistic side for being at a school that isn't just learning mouse and English and history and geography and science and that it's almost as if there's another, another element to the human psyche that we might be able to foster in a school. I don't know. But yeah. But you know, just finish up because I think it's a really nice point and I genuinely, really, really agree is that is this, you know, the kids the best you're ever going to know them at this point. Like this is the nicest part of the year. So you've got well formed relationships with these kids. You've had them all year. Like you're going to have the nicest, most personalised, actual real times of these kids if you if you plan them in now, like an ice breaker on day one in September is nothing in comparison to doing a very similar game, maybe even the same game at the end of the year when they all when you all know each other so well.

1:04:28 It's lovely. Enjoy it. You've earned it. They've earned it. It's a great time of year and. That works for education too. That works for teaching. I feel like I get so much more across to my children now because of that relationship where I can build up that time to then have some nice time with them and play some games in midsile. Well that was 9 tips. Yeah, I feel like we need a 10th. We do need a 10th. This is this is depending on your outlook. I mean, it's the most important one. OK, top hit. OK, right now start getting your little hints to the children about what chocolate you like. Yeah. Hey kids, Mr. Price had 78 Creme eggs. That's so funny because I do love Creme eggs, Specifically 78. Specifically 70. 8 Maybe don't put into a chat about how much gin you like straight. Maybe don't put that into.

1:05:11 A question when they ask you what chocolate is like. I like the gin filled chocolate. You know those ones with like alcohol in them get me them. Probably not the best thing. To say, yeah, but but, you know, just get them hints out to Paris, OK? Yeah, that was a joke. All right, Of course. OK, So anyone who's got this, I can imagine and anyone who's got this far surely understands that was a joke. Yeah, this far in general with that Nice to be honest with you, not even just this episode. If you have got this far, can you just like message us to say is your name Honestly, go to our Instagram, prove it. Because I, yeah, we see it Like, I mean, fair play to you've seen through that. Fair play. Let us know if any of the tips are useful. To guys, give us a review on Instagram, it's the most important thing. Actually don't. There's no. On Instagram I don't want I don't want to review on Instagram. Ignore this guy. A review on Spotify please, Which? I Apple podcast, Thank you.

1:05:54 I'll see you next time.