Ep 113: Accidental Swearing, Spelling Nightmare & The Summer Behaviour Dip!

0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Teach Stick Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name is Hayden Dylan, Where are your arms? Where's the enthusiasm? And there's been a few weeks in a row now where it's been mentioned how I throw my arms out at the start of the podcast. I know there were on video and stuff where on YouTube and Spotify but I just felt self a bit conscious bit self. Conscious. Oh mate, you're right. I'm fine. I'm sorry. It's OK. Listen, listen. I'm over it. It's all good. You can be yourself. I'll be a shell off myself because of the way you treat me. It's fine. It's no problem whatsoever. I'm. Just going to go ahead and cut all the clips out of this podcast where you've told everyone that you do all the work and I'm nothing. I'm nothing, I'm just the Co host. OK, listen went, oh, this is something we need to mention because we've made our own Instagram accounts. So maybe we'll actually link this down. What should we do? A bit of self promotion. We've made our own personal, personal professional Instagram accounts. Like how would you describe this? That's because I have an Instagram account that's private.

0:47 Obviously we have the Teach the Repeat podcast Instagram account, which we put loads of stuff on. We've made this like kind of middle ground where maybe some more personal stuff that we're getting on with in the world of education, etcetera. So I'm Mr Dot, Dylan Price, and you came up with a really interesting option after you saw mine and you went. For Mr Dot Hayden Stevens, OH. Right, exactly the same. Yeah. Nice one. Yeah. Well, it makes sense. Well, I've got this nice picture where I've got like a cut a picture of myself with this classroom background. What did you do though? Are you? Trying to expose me, I'll expose you. I put another. I put a nice picture up as well and didn't message me saying are you not going to use that one with the background? OK, when you say you had a different picture up which was nice, what do we, what do we mean by nice? It was the same picture of me with a different background.

1:27 You you were like, are you going to use the one with it that I made you And I was like, I forgot you made me this one. Of course I will thank you for controlling my life. That's. No problem, it's just much, much better. So my prediction for the next year is on your Instagram page, you'll. Post the absolutely nothing. Yeah. What? OK, do cross posts count? Yeah, OK, we'll do some cross posting. Do they count? Yes, they can. OK. That's fine. I'll be more than 0, then I'll be more than 0 on that. Anyway, go and follow us, go follow our Instagram, all that good stuff. And do you know what you can do before we crack on with this? You can leave us a review. Every time we ask, we get a big bump in reviews and it's so good. I'm so grateful. But then we forget to ask for a couple of weeks and it kind of. Just stays the. Same. So I'm doing it now. Leave us a review on whatever platform you listen on. But Tatum. We've chatted enough now. Now do you know what, Dylan? I'm going to come back because you kind of forgot the whole point here, which was you were going to take the Mick out of me for writing Co host in my biography.

2:13 Why is that so funny? I am a Co host of this podcast, right? No, because I wrote host. I was ready to move on before even getting to the point of that whole thing. Yeah. So in my bio it says host of the teacher CPP podcast in your bio, which you copied off me anyway. Yeah, but still copied it incorrectly because you're Co host. Modest. So all I can think of now is Michael Scott and Dwight Shrew from the obviously, yeah, I'm assistant regional manager. You're assistant to the regional manager. No, you're regional manager. I'm assistant to the region manager. We were joking earlier that you're the Co host and I'm the assistant to the Co host. OK. And then the host has just started that Alastair Campbell from that one time he was on. I don't know. Yeah, replacing me. Either way, last week was SATS. Let's actually talk about something to do with Education Channel. You're a Year 6 teacher.

2:56 We talked a little bit last week about top tips for SATS and and getting through the week with the children, etcetera. So now it's done. Any reflection you want to talk about? Any or and also maybe a bit of a plug for something? Yeah, I was going to say I'm not going to talk too much about the stats. Firstly, the embargo has not been lifted yet anyway, so we can't actually remotely talk about the content. Fair enough. And we are going to be doing an episode soon with the Wonderful. Bartlett, who's been on Missy B. Missy B, She's been on the podcast a few times. She's become a really good friend of ours. I guess originally from the podcast. Really. Good friend of mine. Really good friend of the host. The Co host does sometimes get involved in the conversations. I'm allowed in every now and then, aren't I? Chat with you guys sometime? Rarely, probably once or twice a year.

3:37 But we have got an episode coming up with her. So once that embargo is lifted, check it out. Because she is like the analysis person for the Sats. We're going to be picking her brain. She's going to be picking my brain as a person who was involved in the Sats. Dylan will sort of be around as well in that episode and we'll be talking all about the Sats and it'll be actually, in all seriousness, it'll be good to get. It would actually be really nice to have three different heads because we'll have Sophie with her analysis, me involved in the Sats heavily and obviously you. He's completely clueless. Completely clueless. But outside of the SAT, it'll be good to have your perspective. On it all as well, absolutely. I'm really looking forward to that. So in general, anything that popped out from the week that you wanted. To I've only got, I've got one story I wanted to share with you and it was from SAT Suite. But it's obviously not about the content. Just gonna make that really clear. So classic, classic, classic every single year, right? You think it's all going perfectly smoothly? Our head of year put in so much work to make sure that the SAS timetable was clear.

4:28 Everyone knows where they are. It's already good, she. Does a cracking job at that. She does a cracking job. She puts so much time into it, probably more than we even needed, but it was there as a safety net for all of us and it did make it very smooth. However, last Test of the week, everything has been completely smooth up to this point. And one of the kids who was in the my room of of testing fell off a wall at break time like 3 minutes before the SAT started and like really sprained her arm or something Like she was in enough pain where it was enough. Discomfort writing arm. Yeah, writing arm. It was enough discomfort where she was like, I can't just sort of brush this off like she was upset and things. And there was just that just a small part of me where I was like for, for like a split second. My first thought was, Oh, no, that's terrible for the SATS. And, and even, and I feel like I'm pretty good at at like at just being like, this is just the sats. I don't ultimately care that much. I care more about the kids.

5:16 But even just for a second, my first thought was, Oh, no, what we're going to do because now she's not going to be able to do her SATS exam, which is so much more important than the fact that she's literally crying in pain in front of me. And it did make me think, God, it's so easy to get sucked in, isn't it? To this world of, of just like day to 1st day-to-day to day. These children are just numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. That's the pressure that we talk about a lot with the Sats that we are critical of. That's in Yeah, you've, you've summed that up perfectly because I was guilty of it just then. You said she fell over and sprained and really hurt her arm. And my first question was her writing arm. Yeah, exactly what? Like, yeah, it's so, so, so ingrained. And. And, you know, people might argue, well, yeah, because you're thinking about the Sats right now, but that is so true that. We're I guess we're in that system where that ultimately is the most important thing.

5:59 Yeah. And yeah, that takes a bit. So people sort of delivered that first aid came in and all that. And they were like, we think she's OK. She's a bit upset still because it's just happened. But we're going to sit here and, you know, she's coming to your test room anyway. We're gonna get started. And I'm sort of thinking, OK, you're kind of just leaving a crying, a crying child here with me. But you're saying she's all right, you've checked it out. And I do trust them. And then and then that we was, you know, we're getting ready to start the test. And I started the timer and she was just like, I just, she tried to write some stuff and she was like, I can't do it. It hurts too much. And she got upset again. And I was, it's like, I don't, I did January was like for a second, I don't know what to do because I've not been in this exact situation before. So obviously ahead of you who's wonderful and has read over all of the guide, you know, guidelines and all that framework and everything knew exactly what to do. It was absolutely fine. We took her straight out of the room and she had a scribe.

6:41 So we had like people on tap you. Can make that choice. You can make it, yeah, for emergencies you can. Obviously you do a lot of with Sats, you have to do a lot of pre work, applying for all sorts of things for children to have transcribes, readers, prompts and all this stuff. But there are obviously situations where you can write down on a form like this happened in the SATS, by the way. It all goes off as evidence to show that you've done the right thing. Oh no, every single child needed a scribe suddenly and they all fell off the wall. We were doing wall climbing before the the test and they all fell off. And I accidentally pushed the wall really hard by accident. Accidentally, not only people to scribe and do the test for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's why they do, I guess, because there is that risk, isn't there? Completely a. Scribe. It's so much. It'd be so much easier for a scribe to underhandedly or really explicitly be like, oh, you sure you think that?

7:27 Answer, you know, not writing something immediately when you're like. Yeah, yeah, those little hints, but yeah. So we she went out and had a scribe in a, in a, in a she write in the area. She was fine, like her arm was OK, but just I just felt so bad for that minute and I felt, and I felt even more guilty that forever moment. My the majority of my thought was not just is this child OK, this other stuff is ultimately meaningless really. But and I was more worried about, oh, what the sats arrangements I need to do. I need to do it right so that she can do her sats. We can't have her not doing her SATS. She might get expected. Be careful Hayden, because if this does get clipped out and put on social media, there will be plenty of people lining up to tell you how bad of a teacher you are for saying that the Sats are meaningless. How else can they prepare? This is the snowflake generation, geez. But you know, I haven't though, because the other, the other team will be saying how dare you not think of this child as holistic first.

8:11 It doesn't matter. They were doing the Sats. Think of her. It turns out putting yourself out there on social media, it's just opening yourself up to a lot of angry people. And it is up to you how that gets clipped, so I'll leave that in your hands. I'm saying this, I get, I clip this thing and I get all these comments. I'll clip it. I'll do it again. Yeah, I'll do it again. Yeah, you'll clip it. But anyway, other than that, like Sats was all cool. It was a really, it was genuinely, other than that, a really smooth week. The kids seemed cool. We did Breakfast Club in the morning where they had them out. They were happy. I honestly, my role in Breakfast Club, I found I was like a jester. I was basically just going around to the classes with other staff, like on toast and other staff like giving drinks out and I was just walking around trying to make the kids smile and make them laugh and point. I could pick out those few kids. I could just tell they're feeling anxious. And you made it worse for them.

8:52 Made it much worse. Oh. God, this teacher's in my face constantly. Yeah, You feeling anxious? You feeling anxious about this test? Watch me juggle that one is. You're trying to revise? No, Yeah. And that was just my role really for the first few. Days, but you play the jester card. Test the card and I think, you know, that's what they needed. That's what they needed. They did. They needed that more than anything. You could say. Yeah, yeah, you could say you could not. Anyway, how was your week? How's it like, I guess, you know, being in the school as well, the wider impact of Sats, Obviously you're not up there doing the Sats, but there's a lot of rules and things in place. Did it? Affect you? I mean, wow. I mean, you're thinking of someone other than year 6. I mean, that's pretty. That's incredible. Well, yeah, we do exist. The only SATS week. Yeah, time's out. No one. Cares no it does. It does have a huge impact Sats on the whole school, no, no matter where you're at, because at the end of the day, year 6 when they're doing their Sats need every single pair of hands they can possibly get.

9:40 Whether it's the teaching assistants going up to be scribes for children or, you know, the SLT are there literally administering the paper a lot of the time. I know our assistant head was heavily involved in that. So, you know, even the things down to we stream in maths and English a little bit and have smaller classes because we have extra qualified teachers in in the morning. That didn't happen because because that extra adult had to go up and help. So, you know, we weren't in our normal sets for maths and English and there were some sometimes we were when there wasn't any tests going on. So for example, on the Monday, I think it was just GPS on the Monday. So that meant that the first session we didn't, the test wasn't happening in year 6 because you could do the test in the second session after break time. So we had lots of adults in the morning, then halfway through they all went and the timetables go all skew. If break time's like half an hour later lunchtime, you might not actually get out to lunch on time because for certain reasons the test overran because it didn't start at the right time and all that kind of stuff.

10:37 Essentially, you just got to be really malleable. And this was a big thing we mentioned before about how to prepare for summer term is, is being malleable in all of the respects we talked about in, in terms of trips and stuff. But this is the ultimate version of that, which is at the end of the day, you do, you just have to suck it up and do it. I don't think it's a problem at all. No, I don't think there's any other way of doing it. I think it's absolutely fine and it's the right thing to do because the adults need to be in that room. And do you know what I actually loved doing this week? It was almost like a, a flipped coin because I want to kind of talk about behaviour as well, but I absolutely loved just having my class all day. That's nice and a lot of schools do that anyway, so the class with the teacher all day. But like I said with us, we go to different pupils, go to different teachers from maths and English.

11:18 I really, really, really just purely enjoyed teaching my class, some maths, teaching all of my class, some English and teaching all my class in the afternoon, some art. So I did like what I see as like a really traditional primary school. Yeah, very traditional. And I really really really really. Enjoyed it? Why though? Like what? What is it about that that made you enjoy it? Is it just because it was a novelty that you don't get to see your class as much? Or was there something more deep I? Think, I think it was both. I think when you stream right, you. So for example, in maths, being completely open and honest in maths we do stream not completely. So we don't have, we don't rank the children in in file order. And then there's the top percent there in the class, there's the next percent. But we do stream in a way where children who need more support are in a smaller group and have more adult support in there.

12:02 That that's the extent of our streaming. And I have been heavily involved in those groups over my pretty much my whole career because I love maths. It's a strong point of mine and I can help those children who struggle with maths to become inspired by it or want to do it and just get better in general. And what I miss out on a lot of the time in maths is as a teacher. I loved being in a room with 32 children with completely different backgrounds in maths, completely different abilities in maths. And I kind of, I almost, I loved the challenge of teaching them all one mathematical concept because I had some children who finished in two minutes and I could use my brain to be like, amazing. Why don't you go and create this type of question or you're going to be the teacher now and I want you to mark this piece of work I've done over here. He go, why am I wrong?

12:47 Dive into that, explain it. Usual reasoning. OK, problem solving. Let's think of this task while simultaneously having a group of children who were struggling to read a pictogram. So you know, the, the, the the breadth that to me was something I was like, oh, I can't wait to sink my teeth into this. I'm going to try and help as many children as I possibly can. It was so different to what I'm I'm doing normally, which is very focused on children who are narrowly grouped together in their ability. I loved that ability to kind of push some children on, help some children, let them crack on. It was. It was fun. I think a lot of teachers would find that quite terrifying, though, yeah, because. Because there's a lot, isn't it? You're kind of saying because you're so competent with math and math is your thing, that you sort of relish that challenge. I think a lot of teachers that would be quite overwhelming because you've got so many different abilities going on at the same time, but.

13:28 For a lot of children that is normal. A lot of classes, a lot of classes do not. It's very mastery approach to not stream. Yeah, I get the arguments again, we've done a whole episodes before on streaming or not. So it is that is that. But again, I didn't want it to be like, wow, aren't I a superhero with a Cape? But this is completely normal for a huge percentage of the population. Yeah, sure. And I really enjoyed doing it, basically. And I relished it. And I think the other flip side of it was there is definitely something to be said as a positive when you have your children all of the time for all of your lessons because it does really open up that cross curricular thing a lot more. If you're talking to a child in the morning about their presentation in maths, when it comes to them writing their date in English, you can just make those links and say, right, what do we say about the way you form in these these numbers in this date? Sure, let's keep up presentation because in maths you just let it slip a bit.

14:14 I know you're better than that. So I really want to see this now. And then in the afternoon when we're doing art again, it's completely different. But you can draw on those little things and you can have that narrative through the day of. OK guys, come on, let's smash this. Because then in English at the end, we'll read a chapter of our book. Whereas you miss that a bit when you when you stream a lot and some kids are dropping in and out. Yeah, I never know how I feel about that one because I totally appreciate that's a huge pro, but I also find a pro the other way around. Like is the fact that you can kind of get that from other teachers as well. Like, for example, I'd say my attention to the children's presentation, it's probably not actually that great. Like I do forget about it quite a lot because I'm so focused on just the learning. I'm like, it's not a high priority maybe in my brain naturally.

14:55 And I do find that when when the children go off to other teachers and come back and they kind of get slightly higher expectations of the presentation, it does kind of kick me into gear sometimes be like, Oh yeah, Christy, actually. Yeah. Next door they've been, they've been saying this. Yeah. Actually, guys, what am I talking about? No, we do need to have these high expectations. They've been doing it in their class. We need to be doing it be doing it as well. And I do fear that if I had all my children all day, they'd actually miss out on some of the benefits of the qualities of other teachers that I don't have. I think that's it's a huge pro. No, I'm not even disagreeing with that completely. I think that pros and cons, I don't want anyone to think right now I'm saying this is the way to do things. Yeah. I just enjoyed that variety of it's a new challenge and I think there's, like you said, there's pros and cons to everything. A big thing for us recently. I don't know about everyone else. I'm sure it's the case based on all the research I've seen, but spelling at the minute in this, it's just horrendous.

15:38 Like I'd say post COVID from my point of view, that's the thing I've seen fall off a Cliff. I mean, it was it was, it wasn't great anyway, to be honest with you spelling. But like my goodness me, the baseline the average speller ability to spell is very low. Across. The board. And so, yeah, again, we're trying to combat that as much as we can. We introduced explicit spelling lessons, whereas before we do it as part of English, we wouldn't not teach spelling, but we introduced last year specific spelling lessons on streamed groups. So some children were still doing phonics. Yep. OK, Who still needed that just little push? A lot of children. We were like, hey, there's no point doing phonics anymore. We're going to push them onto some very basic spelling rules and some high frequency words maybe. And then there was a group of children who were quite solid with that and actually they could. And this was the top set.

16:23 The top set were just accessing year 3-4 spelling rules like the top set were just doing what they should. Be doing. That's where we're at. That's how skewed the whole lot, the whole cohort was. I find spelling, it's one of those few areas of, of curriculum in general where I, I just don't know what the solution is. Because I feel like I've spent all my whole 10 years in this job constantly thinking, God, kids can't spell very well, can they? And then I've seen loads of different approaches and none of them really seem to work. And the only times I ever see it sort of work at schools are when they have to, like greatly sacrifice time from something else. And I'm like, I, I just can't, I, I feel like there's just not an approach to spelling. Yeah, that is like quite casual and doesn't take up too much time from other areas that then suffer. It's hard that actually works. I just don't know what the solution is. Well, this, this is the point I was making in terms of we went down this road a bit streamed so I'd have children come to me just for spelling. So it wasn't even like we're saying before I had them for English and spelling.

17:12 And there was that kind of ribbon that run gone even further. It's like I had children come in for 20 minutes everyday from different English groups who then at the end went off to their English group and and whilst it was whilst the move towards explicit spelling, teaching based on what the children needed was a positive I think, and we saw a movement there actually, there was a drop off again, like you're saying as soon as you do something, something else drops off because there was no consistency. Then in terms of I'd get children from a different group, I wouldn't necessarily know exactly what spelling was the wrong because I spoke to them and then I'd missed that string that I'm saying we get from having our children. Yeah, because where do you embed spellings in the writing lessons immediately afterwards? So if you know what they've been doing exactly, really implicitly, then obviously you'll use it. So what we're doing now is middle ground again, changing constantly anywhere we, we have our English sets, right? OK.

17:57 And we do spelling a, a full spelling lesson. It's a bit chunkier once a week with our English sets, right? So with the whole group of abilities. But we're like, OK, we're just going to go through these spelling rules. We differentiate obviously. So children kind of get it. Might maybe do some work with root words or suffixes or prefixes or putting them into. But you're staying in your English. But they're in our sets now, because then every single day as a starter, we go back to that spelling rule, right? So Monday we learn the spelling rule. Tuesday, start at 5 minutes. Use that spelling rule. When do they start at 5 minutes? Use that spelling rule. Does that make sense? Use that spelling rule. Then next week we'll go to a new one, do the same again and eventually over the term, those Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, maybe even more towards the end of the week, we say cool, OK, remember from three weeks ago we did this, Add Ed to this.

18:38 Root so can I clarify do you still also do set spelling groups as well? No, so you're you're going so how is that middle ground? So we've come back to class. We only. Set for children who need phonics. They're the ones who. Don't do it so that should. So the middle ground now is that, OK, We're all learning spending rules. We're all going to go through this exact set. Some children might be really good at spelling these words. Cool. We need to differentiate for them because it is going to be a waste of their time otherwise. But the vast, I'm going to be honest, the vast majority can just do the spelling rules they need to. And we dip into key stage 1 spending rules. We dip into that basic, basic spending rules because they're not consistent enough. And that's that's where right now it could change again, but. You've pulled out the children who are significantly blown that couldn't even access to that level because they still need to.

19:18 Learn that if there's children who honestly can't spell AT I'm not going to do a needy spelling rule. No, no, it's just pointless. But there's children who can't form the letter D. Why am I teaching them how to do Ed Like it's important but they can do some high frequency? Let's learn, Shun. Well, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, so we did shun recently and there's definitely a handful of children around, like it's kind of pointless. But then what we do is we constantly go back to those big spelling rules like that are linked to tents, like EDING. So they're, they're the big ones where we can embed spelling rules that kind of flow through all spelling. But that's why we're having an impact now. And I think I'm having way more of an impact because I've I've taught them the spelling and we can have a non like, I hate the word non negotiable, but it really is a high standard of I'm sorry, guys, we've done shun this week.

20:04 Any words where you've got the shun sound? You might get the beginning wrong, but you have to get the end right, because we've literally. Done it. We've just done Shun. And that that accountability I think is working quite well. But it's such a slow, hard Rd. I would love to hear anyone who thinks they have crack spelling because even all the spelling things out there, they're just rules again and it's ways. And I'm like, OK, I know I teach spelling rules, but it's still not having a. Huge. It's almost the wider approach that I want to know that's been done really well. It's OK. How do I how do I apply this the most effectively in school? What like passive things do I have to do? How much time should I be giving it? What should we be doing with homework? Is there a parental expectation? Is there a point where you just have to go is so out of our hands because so much it relies on parental expectation and like how much they do that.

20:50 Actually, depending on your catchment, this approach might not even work or work really well for you. Like there's so many factors where I'm like, I don't, I just don't know. Have you noticed a correlation between your quality spellers and the amount they read? Oh yeah, big time, right. So I think that's very straightforward. So we're we're here like, oh, how can we just change this slightly and do 10 minutes instead of five and have these groups? Yeah, OK. Ultimately, 90% of the shift is going to be what vocabulary are exposed to all of the time in your home life as well, and how much you're reading. Exactly. If we actually want to make a huge difference, This is why teachers bang on about reading so much, because it affects everything. Yeah. That's the one thing I'd say I'm very passionate about is, is the impact we can have on encouraging children to want to read for themselves.

21:31 And, and you can do it in a way where it's like you're almost breaking down the boundaries of it doesn't even matter if your family's pushing you or not. I just want to make I, my job is to try and get you to love reading so much that even if you're your auntie and your dad and your mum, whoever it is that looks after you, even if they're not big readers, you still want to go home and read your book because you love it. Like that's where we can have a huge impact in terms of enjoyment. And it all just comes back to just reading for pleasure. And it's such a simplistic thing that I feel like in this, you know, in this day and age of education where everything has to to be unbelievably complex and we have to measure it to the degree we do kind of start. Like we've talked about this loads of times before where it's like, oh, simple things are bad, though, because everything is so complex and we're so professional that we have can't have simple things. I know. Do you know what it is to me with reading particularly as simple as get the kids to like it?

22:16 That's it. Do whatever you need to do to get the kids to like it. Stop telling them that they've they've their word count is too low. Stop telling them that, oh, they shouldn't be reading that. But I mean, there's a degree you can do that. But you know, sometimes we say don't read that because you've read lots of those genre books. Recently we. Want you to have a different genre now, is that OK? There is a conversation to encourage them to read different genres, but for Christ, they're enjoying reading. Just do whatever you can to get them to enjoy reading. And so much comes from it. So much for writing, so much for spelling, so much for the, the underpinning parts of writing like grammar and punctuation is crazy. The correlation is obviously really strong. I even I, I speak, I was giving my Class A pep talk, you know, before Sats and just being like, I, I said to them because I've, I've got, obviously we stream and I have a really high ability set and they are amazing class. And I've repeatedly said to them, I said, they always say every class.

23:05 I said, you're the most amazing class at English that I've ever had. You're so good at English. I've never ever met a child who's proficient in all of the different aspects of English that isn't therefore because they're a good reader. The only, the only time I've ever seen some slight discrepancies is in GPS. I've seen sometimes some children who reluctant readers don't really like reading, hate writing. Typically a few boys I can think of in my head absolutely adore maths and rules and are amazing at maths. I've, I have seen them apply that to GPS and be like, well, OK, I know what an adjective is. That's the adjective and, and rules black and white. But in terms of that tricky, like spending is so tricky, it's grey area. Writing is so tricky. That only comes from that deep embedded nuance of reading so much.

23:50 And again, I think that's where as teachers, we just step back and actually we can have much more of a powerful impact on a child's outcomes by encouraging that reading. And that seems so basic and obvious and like, but you weren't working 10 times a week to make some new plan on how they can do the spelling from all the PowerPoints we've made. Listen, encourage that or have a bigger impact than switching up how you're delivering your spelling to a new way, which you going to change in six months anyway. Still do all that because we're professionals and we're going to obviously react to things. But realistically, what's going to move this the the the needle there? It is longer term, big, huge things that we can't change overnight and it is long term. That's the point, isn't it? Yeah, you summarise my point. Nice. I went off on a bit of a tangent there.

24:30 But that is ultimately what I was trying to say is that reading is so important. It's so important. It affects so many other areas. We should absolutely be putting it on a pedestal how important we we deem it to be. So you said at the beginning of this conversation, you never really dived into it, that there was a bit of a flip coin to this and you said something about behaviour and then you kind of went off and. Well, the the OK, yeah. So that's the one side of the coin where I really enjoyed it. Yeah. It was really nice to have my class all day. And I said to them, I feel so lucky to be able to teacher all day. And I was saying how lucky their teachers are to have them and like you said, just bigger them up, making them feel. Good. Make sure you said how lucky they are. Have you as well. You guys are so lucky. I didn't say that. I just implied that heavily. And anyway, yeah. And the other side of it, and I think maybe I'm to blame here is I've noticed is it May, is it a May thing is at the end of the year, but behaviour is really, really, really, really, really dipping in general, I've got to say.

25:21 And I love my class. I, I, I always get to this point in the year and I'm always like, I love my class. It's like, yeah, because you can't spend this long with a class and love children in terms of helping them as much as we do in our jobs and not end up just having a real bond. It's just impossible. It's just really impossible. And I'm always lucky with the classes we get where I'm able to do that. But I just felt, I, I felt myself more times than ever this week in my head thinking genuinely, Oh my God, shut up. Like genuinely in my head. I would never, ever, ever. No, of course not. The children, obviously. But do you know when you're just like I'm I? I can't believe that that you would keep talking as much as we're doing right now when I've asked you. So I'm so nice.

26:04 I'm genuinely so nice to these kids and I give them so many opportunities to do the right thing and very, very strict and and it because it doesn't take much normally and I'm very nicely asked them firmly and they understand that they stop straight away. But I just feel like in is this a thing in general? I'm seeing it online a lot as well where behaviour just starts to move and I'm just like, OK, a more inexperienced to me would really take this person and be like, Oh my God, I am fat. I need to change what I'm doing right my way. I did a stupid thing this week. Very, very silly of I had my sunglasses in and I, I wore them and the kids were like, oh, you look cool. And I was like, OK, this is going to be a thing this week. And I would give my sunglasses to children working really hard. And I'd be like, right, who's going to get the sunglasses this time? Giving them out and stuff.

26:46 And that excited them. But like, Oh my God, it made them so happy. And, and then they were all working really hard because they wanted the glasses. It was like a win, win, win for me. More work, happy children. At one point, side note, the head teacher was showing someone around. Oh no, came to the door and was like, it's Mr. Price the maths lead. And they given all the speed he normally gives. And I just heard, I just heard my head teacher go, excuse me, do we need to be wearing those sunglasses to one of the children? Oh no. Like the kid was like oh God. Oh, that's so awful. And I and I learned, but I had to say, I had to say I was like, oh, no, sorry. That's that's me. That's mine. He's earned them for working really hard. But again, luckily, because I had teachers so normal and cool, Yeah, it just assumed it was like, oh, nice one.

27:26 He was just laughing. He was like, oh, good job. And then he carried on. But like, yeah, I, I felt bad at that point. But anyway, my point is I'm doing things like this. Yeah. Is Hayden, What do you think? Is it my fault because I'm doing things like this? Can I then sit here and be like oh but behaviour was so bad or is it something else? I think it's personally all exclusively your fault. No, I'm joking. I it it. It they're genuine because I want to know if you think it. Look, probably doing that probably had an impact. That's what I was going to say. Realistically, you probably, you probably could have done things differently and their behaviour outcomes would have been different, right? I reckon. I don't know because I don't want, I don't want to discourage things like this because I think you, what you doing that with the sunglasses is what creates real bonds. It might just be that you need to rein it in a bit more than you would have done six months ago, because six months ago they were still a bit more like those relationships weren't quite as formed as they are.

28:13 They didn't really know how to test the waters. Whereas they now know you extremely well. They probably know exactly what like where, what they can get away with, what they can do, and maybe they just took advantage of you in that in that situation, I I don't see it as a huge problem and I'm sure you don't see it as a huge problem either. No, it's just frustrating. I never felt like, I don't often feel frustrated. Yeah, I feel like I've got control over this. I have control of this behaviour. And I know if it goes wrong, I can say, excuse me, thank you. But like, but this week, it was very much like I was in my head. I was like, OK, this is where I feel like a fraud. And I've talked about this before because my usual thank you, like because I rely so much on that, that understanding and that respect and that bond that we build up as soon as that doesn't work, like the kids are being nice, the kids are being lovely. I really like my class.

28:58 Then honestly, they're just chatting when I'm like, don't talk. As soon as it flipped and they did and I was like, oh, I am a fraud. And I think that's a bad thing to know. I can't help but go to. OK. I'm in the same position by the way. I'd say at this point of the year, I consistently say that every year and I do, I do partly put it down to because I've had, because I do have a quite a friendly relationship with the kids, but I don't feel that bad. I just don't feel too bad about. I think it depends on what you do next. Now you've identified it, I think that's where the experience comes in. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do next week now? Because I know, I know you and I know that you will probably go in now obsessively thinking about the fact they were really taking the Mick last week and actually completely took advantage of my goodwill and good nature that we've built up all this year. And I know you'll go in and make sure they understand that. And from a like a mutual respect point point of view, I can imagine you'll go in and do some sort of talk of like guys last week, right?

29:47 You know, how we built up this mutual respect and, and I really care about you and you guys really care about me. You really took advantage of that of last week. And it's maybe not want to do anything fun of you this week. So for this week only, we're going to reset ourselves. And actually, I'm not going to be handing out the sunglasses because you took advantage of it. We're not going to be spinning the wheel over here. You took advantage of it. We're not going to get Mr Stevens face in here and print them into little cards and throw them out here. I love that you're low key exposing all of the nonsense I do. But I could, but I don't know. It's amazing. I. Don't want to stop doing that, that's my point. No, but you can use it as a tool. I think you can say actually just to remind you kids, right? I was giving you something. I was giving you this thing here as like a sign of respect. And all you had to do back was show me the same sign of respect. You've kind of broken that agreement that we've all sort of come to as as a group of people. It's not about your authoritarian approach and their children, silly children can't think of themselves and you tell them what to do. It's so we're all people here.

30:35 We've kind of agreed how we speak to each other. You've broken that agreement and I'm and I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to track myself a little bit from that as well now until you understand again, because we're teaching them the ideas of like socialising. Right, yeah, I agree. It's, it's that idea of, you know, I still think our job as teachers is to teach more than just the curriculum. Like there's a lot of people out there who do push back when we post stuff about this. And they'll be like, now my job's to deliver the curriculum. That's it. I'm like, OK, right, all right. If a child's been rude and not had not doesn't have table manners when they're eating lunch in the lunch hall, OK, you could sit there and say to me, that's not my job, I'm there. Had to deliver the maths curriculum and then the English and then the afternoon curriculum. OK, right. But it is though, isn't it like it?

31:15 But it is like, you know, part of your job can be to instil these values. And it's the same thing now with behaviour and stuff. What I want to teach them it's I don't want them to teach them. You listen to me because I'm in charge and that's the end of it. I don't think that moulds good side of people in our society. I agree. I think what would mould good people in our society is to understand that is a mutual agreement coming on here. I'm in a position where I know more about this thing than you and that's why I'm your teacher at the end of the day. But you're still a person here is the benefit of acting this way. When you act that way, you don't get the nice things that you think we get all the time. We, there's five different paths we can go down. And it is also down to you which path we managed to get ourselves down. And you're absolutely right. That is what I'd go to. And again, I want people listening. I'm nearly 10 years into this job and I still have these self doubts.

31:57 And we talked real about this before. And you might be 15 years in, 20 years in one year in and you're having these doubts. You need to know it's normal. And actually, it's good practise to reflect on that kind of thing and just just back yourself a bit because I think I, I, I would never, although I say all that, I would never choose to not be silly in those moments or have those because, because to me, that's what defines me as a teacher. That's how I build that bonds with my class. It works for me. But there's going to be pros and cons to every aspect. What I don't want is someone coming along and hearing me say this and go see. That's why you've got to be authoritarian from the stop and never smile till Christmas and not give them an inch. Well, I could sit here and say how that's got cons as. Well, massive cons because I tell you what something I do and it has a a tonne of power, right? In those situations where I have been obviously nice relationships and maybe someone is really disrespectful later on in the year is I can say to them things like that really hurt my feelings and it actually means something to them because they're people and I've built a real relationship with them.

32:48 And not if I had an authoritarian approach the whole way through, they wouldn't care. They wouldn't care. They'd probably snigger about it and laugh. Hurt his feelings. We hope his feelings, we hate him. We just do as are told because I'm sorry, I'm getting into my mind. We just hate him. We hate Mr Stevens. It's my dreams. We really do expose in this podcast your need for validation, though it's not that true. It's not that. And then you'll see the bit hates me. Yeah, but in serious point, right, authoritarian approach is like you're just masking it. The kids are just pretending to be nice to you because you've told them they have to behave this way. I'd much prefer a class than where the kids actually just like me. Like for example. Again, you're not helping yourself. No, it's, it's real. But what I mean, it's just the way you said it, you could have framed it like a classroom where they choose to do it because we built a bond. You know what I mean?

33:35 I prefer when they like. Me. Yeah. For real. Not faith. Yeah. No, you know what I mean. No, but but, but I'm just going to really clarify it. What you mean is they like being in the room. They see you as another person. They want to do the right thing. It's mutual respect. So when you say things like, oh, I actually hurt my feelings as a person, they're like, oh, crikey, OK, I'll think about that because I don't actually want to do that. Yeah, just one more example. The other day is with me now, but we've got a job share. We have job shares and my job has just been off for a couple of weeks for for certain reasons. And they said, oh, when, when's she when's, you know, miss coming back? And I said, oh, she'll be back next week. And a couple of the kids I saw in the back and went yes. And I was like, you know what I need to share. I haven't shared that with her yet, but I keep meaning to text her because that to me is like, yeah, that's that show. Doesn't that just show that there's a real relationship?

34:16 They actually like, they value her as a as a human being. They just want to know that she's back in the building so they can they can have a chat that she's OK, they can catch up because they miss her. And that to me is what it's all about. And I think, you know that coming, coming full circle. You can have a really good, the behaviour can can slip. It's normal for behaviour to slip. It doesn't mean you have to go down to the extremities now, OK, authoritarian approach is much better. We have to be horribly strict and not make any friendly. No, that's not the way because there are cons to that which we've just described. It's just now from wisdom, perhaps from time in the game, like what you do next is going to have a big impact because if you now let them walk all over you, OK, Well, then actually they might, they might start losing their respect for you as the leader of the classroom and and then then things can go horribly wrong. So it's all about now what you do next and how you helped them to learn that what what they were doing and how they're making you feel is not OK.

35:05 And your feelings are just as valid as a teacher. That's kind of what I was getting at. That's lovely. And and that they love you and they have to, they have to all think I'm best teacher and they have to, I have to be their favourite or it's not worth it. Right, let's have a quick break. We'll continue a chat. We've got a few emails and some bits and bobs we want to talk about after. I think now's a good time to do a couple of message writings that we've received. So I've got one from Instagram and it's referencing something we talked about recently. So I'm gonna read the whole thing out to you. Sure. Hiya. Relatively new to the podcast firstly, but firstly, absolutely love it. Always nice to see that. Thank you. Your views and points resonate so much with me and sometimes give me the sort of validation I need when the system infuriates me. Literally what we're trying to do. So that's so nice to read.

35:47 I love it when, in the spirit of your funny stories, I couldn't help but laugh about the story of the teacher who asked the children to write their names backwards on their mock set. Yeah, if you don't know that story, go listen to the last one because that is just hilarious. It reminded me of a not too dissimilar situation in my NQT year. So new teacher, The best stories always happened with my year five class where for whatever nonsense reason we had a chat about how girls are called Miss up until they're married, in which case they can choose to become misses. And then. So then I got asked why are boys always Mr though? And I explained that until that about 12 is actually boys are technically called master which we know out of loads of like bank statements saying master price and stuff like that. And I remember the day it changed and I thought oh I'm growing up now.

36:34 So they had a laugh and then carried on with their morning. Then at lunchtime I did my usual silly register and I decided to greet them as Master or miss. About 3 names in I realised we had a boy with a surname Bates. Oh no, that's such a classic I can't even say it. I can't even say it. You can imagine it. Never repeated that exercise again. That is so funny. Do you know what it reminds me of? Do you know what that reminds me of? Do you remember at school? Maybe it was just my immature cohort, right when when you used to try and combine the words a debate in maths. Do you know what I'm talking about? When it was like a. Huge debate. Sir, Sir, what do we call it if we had a debate in this lesson? What do you mean? You know what's the subject we've had? This is a maths. This is a maths lesson, what we call it. If you had a debate in here and you get in the same. Yeah, honestly, I love it.

37:20 The big one for me was like, what if we have a small debate? What have we got? Loads of people involved. Like like a huge, like a mass gathering of people. Yeah, mass gathering of people having a debate. What would we call that? What would we call that? Yeah, completely. That's unbelievable. And that that is I've had that multiple times. I can't even do you know what, because the feeling is so intense of almost embarrassment when that happens. Yeah, I, I know I've done that multiple times, but I actually can't remember what it was that happened. Yeah. Yeah. Because that feeling of like, Oh my God, what have I done? Dread where you're like, you set yourself up to do this silly thing with all these kids. Yeah. And you know that it's going to have to be inappropriate and you just have to, you have to stop. And the kids are like, no, go on, do it. Do it. I'm like, God, the more you think about it, the more you realise why I'm stopping and you have to deflect.

38:01 It's like the amount of stories I've heard in my career, because I think this is not going to normalise this because it's like, oh, but the amount of stories I've heard from people in my career where they've, they've accidentally sworn. Yeah, they've actually sworn and they've been in the school, in the school environment and they've just that one second of the day, they've their their normal self because human self has slipped out and they've said a swear word. And then just like the utter dread that they feel, I mean, because a child has heard it and they're like, did you just swear? You know, and you think the world's ending and then actually, you know, you realise that it's just, it's just a word. And most head teachers are like, yeah, OK. Have I told you the story when I did that? I don't know. Like when I was training, I think I might have said the story before I say again, before you go to do your PGCE. So I was in my year between university ending when I started my PGCE.

38:42 You had to go to schools and get a bit of just experience. Yes, 10 days I think. So I went into a local primary school and at one point I think a child was, I think a child was misbehaving or something, I can't remember. But anyway, I got asked to go outside and play a board game with this child I'm already imagining. Like so many avenues of this. Me and this child were in the corridor playing Snakes and ladders and obviously I'm a young, but I'm just out of university. So I'm still a young adult and I'm my back when I had my competitive edge and there was no like there was I wanted to beat this child snakes and ladders. So I was rolling, rolling up and down. You want snakes and ladders like you get to the toddler, blah, blah, blah. We got to the end. We're both on the top right. So he rolled it and he didn't get exactly to 100 right. So whatever was happening.

39:22 Still have a chance to win. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and then I rolled mine and I rolled a number where I landed on that big fat snake on 99 or whatever. On 99, you go down to like 20. Yeah, yeah. And I remember I did that and I went, did I went. Oh, fuck yeah. Right. And then immediately I was like, because I this is the first time probably honestly, I was with a kid and the did you just say no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't. Yeah, you did. And I made-up something and the kid was like, no, I heard you, you said. And I was like, let's go back into class, show how to go and explain how to go and explain this guy who's going for experience. Honestly, yeah. I just full on was like, because in my head that's what I say when I'm losing. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't have that built up professional kind of.

40:04 Thing yet I bet you're a child I bet you're like that's my career I've started this career yeah it's. Over There's a point where you're just like, have I ruined everything? Have I done it wrong? Yeah, but no, I, I, I'm 10 years down the line, look at look what's. Happened. Well, I tell you what, thank you for that story because that's really funny. I think it's always nice for other teachers to hear that sometimes we do just everyone messes up. Like, you know, it's not intentional what happens sometimes. I'm sure you went very red when I did in that, in that moment, you and and this person, it was, it was well, kind. We've had we've had an e-mail. So once again, I've intercepted an e-mail. This seems becoming a running a running theme, right? I saw this e-mail and luckily I was out on my phone and it pinged through. Yeah, I read it and I immediately replied saying can I use this to read out to Dylan in an episode? And they said yeah, as long as it's kept anonymous.

40:45 So I've got to read the whole thing to. You. Isn't it great when they say keep it anonymous? Come like this juicy. Yeah, exactly, exactly that. And I remember, by the way, anyone thinking, are these guys staging these? No, because literally Hayden immediately as well voice noted me and said do not read our emails. Yeah, so I've. Mentioned it was, it was at school and I think it was on lunch break or something. I said don't read that. I was, I was doing, I was doing Golf Club. Oh yeah, because I'm at school. No. I'm at golf. I'm seeing it. OK, so you'll like this story though, and when I read this I thought Dylan's going to love this. So here we go. I'm going to try my best to keep this anonymous because he doesn't use names and things for it. I'm going to take them out as I go. He says hi guys, hope you're both well. Keep up the good work of pointing out insane practises. I have some something of a perla for you and I was like where we go. I was hooked. Well, never hooking me in. For some background, I was a teacher for seven years and I quit at Christmas.

41:28 I'll be taking up a post doing some research internationally in August and figured it was worth a last hurrah to respond to an advert I saw for a local school doing exam invigilating. For reference, the school is the mothership of one of these multinational chains. I was reading that slowly because he names it here to make sure I didn't read out and it seemed like a sensible choice for some. Steady income, ��13.00 an hour if you're interested whilst I whilst I get myself prepared for new adventures in the summer. I was like OK, cool to set the scene. Lovely hot 25�� day and I turned out in my absolute finest shirt, tie and chinos combo. Invigilating went superbly with seemingly every stereotype hit over the course of the two hour English lit paper. A child had a Nosebleed, a phone was ringing in a bag and said bag needed to be removed from the hall. I felt like a bomb disposal expert, many pens running out of ink having seemingly written nothing. See it, say it, sort it.

42:23 I'll tell you what. Just that is a thing. That is a thing. My pen doesn't work. Can you show me? Works fine. Oh no, it's got it's flat on the end. What just it works. Just use the pen. I'm not giving you a new pen for that wasting pens. But anyway, this aspect of the job, invigilating went fine and I was even thanked for locating the nuisance of a phone with my superb hearing. Being 30 puts you at quite an age advantage as it turns out when trying to find a vibrating phone. Where I imagine the average age of invigilators was about 65 in the room, it was older people doing it. So he was the youngest person there by far. On leaving the building, I was approached by a member of staff who who had that mischievous SLT glint in her eye. It really made me laugh.

43:04 An air of arrogance and a sprinkle of thinking that she held a role of significant power and superiority. We all know the type, right? We all know. We call them out on this podcast. We did. You know what she'd say to you? Learn how to pronounce mischievous properly, that's what. She'd say even the kids tell me that. All right, Mischievous. It's just spelt not like that and not pronounced like that. No, it isn't my world like me anyway, so this is a bit you're gonna like. OK, ready? So this is what the SLC? She said with a half smile, half scowl. You you know where that. Is I need to put can? You imagine that the half smile scowl. I know that. I imagine this person right, I need to put, I need to get to justice the voice. The dress code says you should wear a jacket and tie and then ask if you can remove them on a hot day like today. Oh my God.

43:55 He put in brackets. I checked and can can can confirm it does not say this. Oh my God, it doesn't even say it. They're the worst of both. You can have a policy, but there and then having done sorry, I know, having done no research, he said. I faced the choice. On the one hand, I could leave quietly and just say oh sorry about that. And just it. Doesn't matter who cares, right? Or or, he said with your two voices acting as my conscience go out in a blaze of glory with 0 consequences as I didn't want to come back anyway. Too hot and boring as a job, he said. I chose the latter with a renewed sense of IDGAF ISM, which I'm not going to say out loud if you can work out the acronym yourself. With the hopes and dreams of all those teachers stuck with leaders like this, I thought this was my small chance to challenge the the idiocy of daring to allow teachers the autonomy to not wear suit jackets on a day where the temperature was, I repeat, 25�� in a school with 0 ventilation.

44:49 I said. Oh, that makes absolutely zero sense as a policy. And perhaps that's something that should be looked at by the insert name of the chain here. Overlords. How? Funny. Is that brilliant? How? Funny. The member of staff froze for a second, a look of confusion and horror in her face, as though her brain had momentarily malfunctioned and needed a manual reset. And she's put, she said. But but the policy very clearly states that you have to ask a member of SLT to remove your jacket. Unbelievable. I paused. I watched her face contort and shrivel with a genuine sense of anger and echoed the words of you 2 Maybe, just maybe, the policy is a load of.

45:32 Yeah, you're saying that? Yes. Safe to say I wasn't contacted again to complete any more invigilation work, but I left with a warmth in my heart that I'd done a small part sow a seed of doubt in the policy police types of leaders. Thank you for continuing to share common sense ideas and fingers crossed teachers realise that they have autonomy to push back against bullied being bullied by these specimens. Believable. The idea of a miniature like 5 inch hater on someones shoulder and I'm on the other side both saying the same thing, Yeah. It's not the. Two devils. That is an unbelievable story and okay, that's hilarious. And actually, there's an argument to say that's warranted in that case, but that's the ultimate version of what we're talking about in terms of you don't have to just go into if, if, if that is an actual problem from a actual adult human to another adult professional. Yeah, who's doing a job?

46:22 There's only one person in the wrong there. If there's only one person in the wrong, and it's it's that SLT member who's like. You ask an SLT member, do you think I'm a child? Yeah. What do you mean you ask an SLT? No one. Do you think we're preparing you for the real world? If that's what you think is a normal aspect of someone's job. Are you insane? I can't believe it. Crazy. I couldn't believe it. That's one of my favourite e-mail. I think we get some unbelievable. Yeah, we've got some such good ones, but those ones, I'm glad when I can get them before you see them. Yeah, yeah. I just think, oh man, I've got, I've got to save it. It's nice for me to like, not know what's coming with the podcast every now and then. So oh. Here we go. I couldn't go 11 podcast. That would be horrible. It's nice every now and then for that to happen, dude. Guys, do get in touch with us. It's our e-mail teachseekrepeatpod@gmail.com or you can find our Instagram at Teach Seek Repeat Podcast or TikTok at Teach Seek Repeat Podcast and get you get in touch if you have any confessions, any dilemmas, any stories like that, the more the merrier.

47:17 And also follow our personal socials, as we've said. Now, if you want to see some serious content, follow Dylan's. If you want to see it reposted on mine, follow mine as well. You know, get involved. Go have a look in the bio. We're going to have another very quick Jingle before we get into a nice little Q&A from our lovely listeners who've got in touch. With us. Love it. All right, so sporadically on the Instagram every now and then, I'll say hit us up with some questions we can answer from the podcast. Did it recently. You guys did not disappoint as always. So do get involved because we do use them. I'm going to start off reading some questions. Some of them are, as always, quite serious, good topics. Some of them are absolutely hilarious nonsense. So we'll get in there. I want to start off with something dead serious and this honesty. This was this this question, I piqued my interest straight away and I thought, oh, that's such a good question. OK.

48:01 And this is actually from one of our tutors who we work with. OK. So this question is, do you ever regret becoming a teacher? Was there another career path that you wish you took? And I said, that's a deep question. It's really deep. Do you try and guess? Who that is? I'm thinking who that wrote that. Yeah, I'll tell you that. Do I realise that's so hard? Have there been moments where I've regretted it? Probably Right. Do I like Because maybe I've had a really stressful day. OK, but is that do you regret? I know that's what I'm saying. Like do I deep like, no, I don't think I do. I don't think like deep down you get you get base level me. I'm not having like a super stressed day. I'm not having a really euphoric day. I don't think I regret it because I I very much see like this is going to sound really corny, right, But what whatever you do in life, right, it's just a sum of all your achievements before, isn't it?

48:49 I feel like I'm happy with where I am right now. I'm really pleased with the stuff we're doing and I and I just simply wouldn't be exactly right here in my life situation without everything before it happening. So I don't regret being a teacher. You wouldn't have a teacher podcast if you weren't a teacher. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know. It's a package. Isn't it? I find it hard to separate. I find the whole thing hard because if I think about if I didn't become a teacher, right, I wouldn't have met my partner and had my child. Yeah, that's what I mean. So it's I find it really hard to separate. If we're talking purely, purely, nothing changes at all apart from the fact you just chose to go and take your career a little bit, a little bit then because I do look back and I think, I think. Classic 8 I didn't know what I wanted to do and when I was 21 I'd finished, you know, I'd managed to to long out another three years of not knowing what the hell I wanted to do by doing a media degree.

49:38 Getting into 40 grand, what's a debt? Yeah, getting 40 grand of debt and not knowing what you're doing. And then, and then I was just desperate to find something in all honesty. And I and I and I maybe I latched onto it too quick. So I, I, there's been lots of moments that I've loved in this career and I genuinely love teaching kids. I feel like maybe maybe this was meant to be, maybe this was a career meant to be. But could I have, if you, if you value different things like I don't know, maybe I'd be in a bigger house, have a bit more money. Like I could have gone and done mathematics. That was the other thing I was good at. And maybe there was a job that maybe have been a successful accountant or something, but. It's just one aspect, isn't it? Yeah, it's one aspect and I do genuinely also think in life that it's so easy to believe the grass is greener. The grass is always green on the other side and I constantly see people making decisions and then and then three years later realising that they don't feel any more happy and in fact they have probably maybe even preferred what they've done before, whether it's like moving to a different location or getting a different job or whatever.

50:27 So I think it was a deep question. I had to kind of explore it out loud with you. I think ultimately I'm going to stick with I don't regret being a teacher. I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the majority of this career. Yeah, completely agree with you. I I agree with you. I don't regret it because I absolutely love it. I, I feel at home when I'm teaching genuinely. So like what I mean, I, oh, I might have got that in a different job, I might not have. I don't know. What do I enjoy? I enjoy being creative. I and I get to do that in teaching. I get to do that with the podcast, I get to do that on social media, etcetera. I like the idea of performance. I'm performing all of the time. I love maths. I love, I love, like, I love quizzes and knowledge. And it's like it's the ultimate amalgamation of. Everything. I love being liked by everybody. I know you. Didn't you get a lot of that?

51:07 You get a lot of that. There's a lot of people around there that are like. You. So yeah, ultimately, no, I don't regret it for all the reasons you're saying. But will I do this job forever? No. So I, I think that's a different question. I think it's easy to conflate the fact that I know I won't teach forever. No. And I will choose one day to stop doing it. Yeah. I I I. That doesn't mean I don't regret. It. Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? I was sort of thinking, is it sustainable? Will I be teaching for much longer? Honestly. No, seriously. But I don't regret it. Oh, go on, tell me who it was. I'm sure they remind. It was Chloe. Chloe. Thanks, Chloe. Good. Question. I know Chloe, lovely Chloe, right. Next question. It's it's 2 for one, and I'm going to start off with the funny version of the question. Serious one. This ones from Luke is the podcast too focused on teach and not enough on sleep. Both both both titled equally. Is focused too much on repeat.

51:51 We're saying the same things ever again. Yeah, that's funny. But the the real question from Miss M creates on Instagram, how do you get enough sleep as a teacher? And I thought, OK, actually, these are great questions put back-to-back. I mean, we have sleep in the title, Hayden as a teacher. Let's just take away the fact that we're parents now and sleep's a foregone member. Oh you ruined my joke. I'm sorry. I was going to say step one. Don't have? Kids, yeah, ignore all that. Let's just go back yo sleep. How do you get enough of sleep? Because, you know, we're working late and again, some people do prefer working in the evenings, etcetera. I, I feel like that's a question that's in most careers, it's easy to not get enough sleep. Yeah. How, how do you, I don't, I don't want to be patronising or condescending because I, because I feel like the answer is quite simple of just no, but no. But it's good to know because again, I don't think you're being condescending because some people do struggle. With it, I, I think you have to work, just work. If you struggle with it, work exclusively work on your boundaries.

52:42 I think you just have to work on your personal boundaries. You have to make a work life balance. And if your work life balance is not there, that it's affecting your sleep, which means it's affecting you right up until the end of your day. And I think that's a wider problem there that that your work life, but your work is seeping into your lifeway too much and there needs to be stricter rules. Everything we talk about all the time on this podcast about getting control of your life and getting control of your work life balance and learning to say no to things and doing everything that you can do to keep on top of that I think should be your highest priority if it's affecting your sleep, in all honesty. So you're, you're what we're essentially saying here is it's a, it's a work problem, not a sleep problem for a lot of people. It's, it's like the the, the act of not being able to sleep. If you if you struggle with sleeping in general, but you've got time to do it that you need to sleep specialist. Yeah, I was gonna say go to the doctors. Yeah, but if it if it's impacting because your work, you have to say no.

53:27 Yeah. And that that's the ultimate thing that comes down to us. Like honestly, like that e-mail we just read. Yeah, that person decided had to as a fork in the road. They could have just gone now, OK, and carried on with your life and that person carried on. Or sometimes you take a stand and you don't need to make maybe say it like that person did. Sure, I think it was brilliant. But same as you're asleep, you're not getting enough sleep. You have to turn around and be like, OK, like what can I get rid of then? You know, little things because I don't think I get enough sleep now, even even ignoring the fact I've got a child because I still choose to. A big thing for me is I get annoyed that I don't get my own time as much. So therefore I will justify staying up instead of going to bed at half nine when I probably should. Do I need enough sleep?

54:07 I'll stay up to half 11 because in my head I'm like, no, no, I'm going to have those two hours because they're my two hours. And I don't care if I'm just sat on YouTube watching something or maybe there's a new show that I'm going to put on in the background, or maybe I'm just sitting doing nothing for a bit or reading a book because that's my time. But then that detriment's been the long run because I'm tired the next. Day exactly. I was going to say my last point here is if you need any words of encouragement because you know what, it's tough to say no. Not everyone's predisposed to just say no. Maybe maybe that's keeping you up all night because you're thinking I'm going to, I'm going to have a conflicting, I'm going to have a conflict at school tomorrow and it's really weighing you down. The only encouragement I, I can give you is that if you, if you feel like it will negatively impact your school or your class because you're maybe they're not doing as much work as you're doing, I'm telling you right now, tired teachers don't perform as well as as well slept teachers. You need to, you're being not tired. Being energetic is genuinely going to impact your class in a more positive way than it will do if you're like, Oh yeah, I did that extra mark and change those slides and change that font, but I am really tired now.

55:01 So like, it's a good thing not to be tired. You should absolutely set boundaries. You're a better teacher if you have a really healthy work life balance and have good sleep. So try and try and work towards that, on the idea that I'm going to be an even better teacher teacher if I nail this. That's all I can say really. Okay, brilliant. Next question you will know who this is from. Okay, if you are a kebab fitting, what would you be and why? The real problem is here, there's so many people that take the nick out of me that I don't know who this is wrong. That mystery, I'm gonna leave it a mystery. And if they're listening, they can, they can reply and reach out to you on your personal Instagram, Mr Hayden Stevens. Should we just repeat this? Extremely serious. Question. Very very serious question. If you were a kebab fitting because it's the teach, seek kebab, repeat. Come on, if you were a kebab fitting, what would you be and why?

55:47 Oh, I think I'm gonna be the chicken cheese. What the actual chicken is. I mean, I'm the chicken Cheech baby. The main bit. The bit that everybody likes. OK, leave me alone. Chicken cheese grilled to perfection, Mr Kebab head there now. Sorry. It's just a it's a promo itself. Just I had work been working on it. All right. Oh gosh, I would be the rapper, the pitter, because I hold everything together. Well done. OK. Who's it from? Come on. No, no, no. I'm going to reach out and Hayden can't get it. You got to work out, man. Right. Next one again. This, this was this was a theme of a few questions. One one of them was worded like, what's the best way to get rid of OK, so that was hilarious. But the idea here is if you have a toxic boss at work, OK, but at school or otherwise, and you, you you can't quit.

56:37 Yeah, I'll quit and go to somewhere you can't for whatever reason. There's no, there's not a job somewhere else, not a situation, not a situation where you can quit. OK, but you have a toxic boss. What is your advice to that person? Like, because ultimately the e-mail we read earlier, that guy could do that because he's walking out the door and never coming back. Yet no consequences. What what is genuinely your advice to someone now is saying guys I listen to your stuff and you're spot like that. You are right that it's toxic but I work here and this pays my mortgage and I can't go anywhere else. I'm staying for at least three more years. What can I do? Fight fire with fire, baby out toxic them out toxic them all the way to the moon. I know that's a very big question. I think and it and it you've got, OK, firstly, it's probably going to be mostly case by case. Depending on what the toxic behaviour is like with some situations, it might be that it's just like mildly toxic and you can just have a conversation and squash it. The awkwardness with that conversation might be enough for them to be like, oh, I didn't really think about this before. If they're being ultra, ultra toxic, I think you have to go down the proper channels.

57:33 I think you have to just do it. I think you just have to sometimes you don't want to be like, it's like when you're at school, right? There's this, the culture, I feel like, of like being a narc. It's like, oh, you're you're the one telling. Oh, don't be that. Why are you such a telltale? Don't be the one that tells and it spoils everything. There's this feeling, I feel like for our culture where you grow up and I still have that in me somewhat where it's like, I don't know you. You don't want to be the one that's like going rocking the boat and challenging it. I'll just leave it. Why are you telling on them? Why go to a union? I feel like that now and I'm quite confident. I can imagine a lot of people feel that pressure. I don't be that guy. I don't be that person that does that. But you just have to, when it gets to the point that's impacting your life and probably everyone else is, if there's a really toxic person at the, at the leadership point, then you've just got to be brave and be like, cool, I'm going to go above you.

58:17 You're irrelevant to me now because you're being toxic. And that needs to be taken care of. I can't talk to you. So I'm going to do go through all the proper channels, go to the unions, go to the governors, go to the local council, whatever it is that is in your power to do and really challenge it and stick up for yourself and say, hi, I'm, I am speaking on behalf of a lot of people at this school. This is what we're challenging. This is I accept what needs to change. You'd hold me accountable because you're my boss in this job. I'm holding you accountable now because you're not doing your job properly. And we're just at the end of the day, we walk out of this school and we're just people. It's easy to think put people on pedestals sometimes or they've got this big important job. It is just a human being though. They're just another human being going like you, going home like they, they're happy to challenge you and pick you up. You are, you should be happy to challenge them, pick them up because they're just doing a job like you. So fill yourself with a bit of confidence and just just do it. It's those two prongs for me.

59:04 Prong one, get people with you to do some kind of thing in a group. That's always good for people. Because if, if it's a truly toxic workplace, then it is all going to be for a lot of people get a group of 678 of you who say this isn't acceptable numbers or you do less of something else. And, and I would push back on the question itself where it says I can't quit. My argument would be that there's, there's going to be very few situations where you actually can't quit. Like, you know, I know it's scary to quit sometimes, but they'll, you know, they'll be different job. If it is that toxic. It does actually get to the point where you do just have to quit because there are other jobs you can find if it's that bad and you've tried different things else. Your life is more important than it's true. But get it? You're totally understand that that is can be really hard. You can be in a very tricky situation.

59:45 It might mean that quitting is OK. It's not immediate, but it might take a year or two. You can certainly start looking. Yeah, brilliant. OK, let's do one more. All right. What are your thoughts on teacher recruitment and the process around it, especially day long interviews? So as in putting to context, I'm going for a job at a school just the the the interview that process of doing today. So they might, they might for example, say, I think specifically like what should it look like? Because you again, you're getting quite different. Some schools it'll be you come in for you teach half an hour of a maths lesson and have a 15 minute interview. Other schools it's all day. You've got to write a policy, you've got to run an assembly, you've got to meet student council groups. You've got to then have an you, some, some people set a SAT test.

1:00:27 So where's the line here? Like how? How in depth should an interview process be for finding a good teacher? I think it's a tricky 1 because I don't want to put, I actually don't think we should put a specific measure on it. I think people, I think leaders have very different skill sets, right? I think some leaders are unbelievably adept at like, understanding someone's personality in five. Members What recruitment? Basically in recruitment basically, and other people, it takes them a bit longer to get to the same result. So I don't want to penalise people and say yeah, leader, it should be this exact thing. And if you can't do it, tough, you've got to employ someone that you've got to take a gamble. There's probably a cap somewhere. I think a full day is probably the maximum. I think it gets a bit out. You see, so just genuinely of interest, you think a full day's interview is acceptable for a teacher role? Yeah, I think I, I genuinely think it is. I think because it's such a a permanent role you'd like. Isn't every job?

1:01:13 Yeah, in a, in a way, I think, I think with teaching it is you're very locked in. Like it's, it's, you can't like in a lot of private enterprises, you can't just sort of fire people if they, if they're not meeting simple KPIs and things like you're not firing a teacher for many reasons. Realistically, especially even if they're not, even if they're underperforming in their job, you're not, you're not firing a teacher. You've got to be really, really sure when you hire a teacher. I don't necessarily, if it was me, I don't think I'd need a whole day of interviews. I think I'd want to see someone teach for maybe half an hour and then have a good conversation with them and that personally for me would probably be enough to judge. I think the. Teaching almost it's like all you're doing with the teaching is making sure they can't teach because it's really hard to judge on a one off lesson. Someone could pull out a blinder, but you don't really know what you're getting there today.

1:01:56 So I guess, I guess my my only push back here would be like how useful are the things you're doing? Everything you do has to be for a reason in my opinion. For a reason for sure, and. Alongside that is, you know, I'm, I'm going to ask you now, do you think a school has a responsibility to streamline that as much as they can, knowing that there are people out there who honestly apply for like 8 scores in a row, don't get it, and are putting in basically two weeks of free work on interviews if they're all day long? Or do you just think that's just the game? Whatever. Yeah, I think I'm probably probably got a different opinions of what you think. No, I don't. Yeah, but I think it's pretty much the game. I think I think a day is probably pushing on being a bit excessive, but I don't think it's that crazy really when you're looking for a permanent teaching job that I imagine on average, I don't know what the average is, but I imagine it's years that people stay in these jobs.

1:02:38 I don't think a day is a necessary, but certainly if you're you are going from one school to another, I know that those days are generally paid as well because you'll be paid. I can't remember how it works, but I'm pretty sure you don't have to take an unpaid day to go do an interview at another school. I'm sure that either that school subsidises it for your school because you've been at theirs or it gets paid like so. I don't even think there's a. Well, you haven't got a job yet if. You haven't got a job yet. I don't think you do. Yeah, I think you just have to take you just have to take the hit. It's unpaid, but presumably you haven't got a job. So anyway, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not too bothered about it. I imagine most schools don't do whole days anyway. But if they do, I'd I'd probably just challenge a little bit and be like, OK, which would work. What? It depends what it is. Because if they, if they're justifying the whole day as well. You're applying for this really intricate job that is like you are going to be writing policies and you are going to be the leader of this subject and you're going to be in the classroom three days a week and you're going to be a deputy for one day. And they were like, we need a whole day to explore this. I'd be like, fair enough, but if it's just a classroom teacher, right.

1:03:28 OK. I would OK that. There you go. There's my line. There's my line. If it was just a classroom teacher. Oh, just if you're so rude to me and no other roles, right, You're just going in. Does that existence teacher? Yeah. OK. Yeah. Then I think a day is excessive. Half a day maximum to have the teaching part and an interview and a conversation to get to judge characters would be completely acceptable. Yeah, I, I, my, my view on interviews are they're so limited anyway, but you could do stuff, you know, bar them coming to work for you for two weeks. You can't learn that much from an interview, whether it's an hour, 2 hours or a day. I think the big thing for me in terms of if I was recruiting for a school, I would want to see what they're like around children. Whether that's, you know, you know, part of the process would be going on a tour of the school, maybe at break time, you know, do they interact at all with the kid? Do they look like the kids are below them kind of thing, Like just the basic interaction, a little bit of teaching? Maybe that's why they do a full day then, yeah, potentially all those elements.

1:04:23 But I feel like you can do that a couple of hours because, again, teaching as well. I'd be like, look, I don't need you to teach a maths lesson. Yeah, All I want to see is your demeanour in front of the children. But OK, cool. I can get over in 10 seconds. Yeah. Like then genuinely. Yeah. And then the big one for me comes at the interview process itself. I think that's where I would be really getting an insight into their personality. And I suppose for me that that would hold the biggest weight in terms of, again, of course, everyone can fake every part of an interview, but you can really dive into their answers and their understandings of stuff. And I think that would be important, I think, writing a policy. Yeah, I can't, I think, Did I do. I feel like I this is a long time ago now and I can't remember if someone's told me this. Oh, I actually did it.

1:05:03 That's how bad my memory is. But for an interview for a school, yeah, it was me, I had to do a piece of writing. About how everyone likes me. Yeah, everyone likes me. I had to actually do a piece of writing. Like literally just a piece of writing to show that I was competent. Wow at English. That's it. OK, so there's there were people saying yeah, OK, So what? Yeah. So. So you're. Yeah, if you're good, you've got nothing to worry about. You've only got something to worry about if you're crap at writing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like my gut instinct is don't you dare insult me. But actually, you do need to be able to have a certain level. Yeah, it's like when people get annoyed, like they made the teachers sit and do SAT papers. And I'm like, OK, I understand how that is very condescending for a lot of people. But if you score 30 out of 50 on a SAT paper and you're a teacher teaching the SAT curriculum, that is a problem.

1:05:50 Yeah, that is a that is terrible. Like, we should be doing it honestly. Every year 6 teacher should get, should get full marks in the SATS. Yeah, you, you should, yeah, of course, because you're teaching every single contents strand in that Sats paper. Yeah. So like when people are like, Oh yeah, wait, of course. I I I don't know that thing should be 1/6 teacher then. Yeah. And if you don't know it, you need to learn it sort of quickly before you teach it, really. I'm a surgeon and I don't know how to do the lungs. I'm sorry. We we have got to do a lung operation though. Yeah, quite an extreme analogy, but yeah, no, no. What I mean is I feel like people will really not like that point I'm making some people, but all I'm saying is, but there is a line like I don't expect a year 6 teacher to know everything about the Maya that they're doing. They're going to teach in the afternoon. That would that's too far.

1:06:32 I think that's, I think that's not necessary. I think you should teach yourself stuff before you teach the lesson and be at a certain level. But I do think in general you need a really solid understanding of the key Stage 2 curriculum, especially in your maths and your English, which you teach every single day. I think it has to be enlightened. I think with a lot of year six teachers just put back on this a little bit more. I think with English, maybe there are lots of little nuances that you pick up by being a year 6 teacher. And maybe when you start the year, maybe you do year 6 for the first time, right or something. You might go into year six. Yeah. So I don't think it's objectively bad that they might not know all of it straight away, but I think as long as they make a conscious effort that by the end of that year, they've always been one step ahead of the kids with the things. Yeah, at least. Yeah, I do think it's better to know all of it because because so much of education is like passive things. You drop in before you've even taught that thing. There'll be some things that you might not know that you think I would have been useful if I knew that two months ago. Actually, now I think about it now, when we did that bit of writing, I kind of wish I knew a bit more about passive voice, so I could have really referenced the fact that this author kept doing it.

1:07:28 It makes you a much better teacher to have that big knowledge and you build that over time. And I'm happy to admit that. I just think there has to be a line where it's like, OK, you, you need to be able to complete a year 6 maths tax paper to be a teacher. Of course you do. Like, are we pretending you're like, come on, Who? You don't really. You're going to tell me you don't like, Oh, I can't really, I can't. I'm not very good with time problems. Why are you a teacher then? Genuinely, I'm not. I'm not sure. There has to be a line. There has to be a line. And again, you can be not very good at it. Please, please, please don't misconstrue what I'm saying. You're allowed to be less confident with maths and not very good at it. You have to have a way of working out the answer because you're going to be teaching kids to do the same thing. I think there's power in being a teacher actually, who didn't like maths and wasn't very good at it, but is now a teacher because the power is how are we going to get over that and still be able to to do it?

1:08:16 So you, you have to be able to do it. Yeah, it's it's. Simple, Yeah, No, I think so. Mass is different to English as well, I think. Yeah, sure, sort of long term, I do. I do think it's better if you've got a year 4 teacher that genuinely knows the end of year 6 expectations really well and they know exactly how to do all those things. I do think it probably bleeds into their teaching a little bit. Does it make the massive impact? Not really, but I think it is a good thing to be able to do. But anyway, back to the original sort of point where they're just wrap this. Up Wrap this. Up wrapping it up, like ultimately, I don't think I don't think there's much like to stand on to be like really a whole day interviews. I think you you could choose not to go to that school if you think that's an indicator of them being a bit over the top. But I don't really think it's that much of A Mickey take. I don't like that interview. I don't like them. That's the fact then, because I said it. Fair enough.

1:08:58 There you go. There. It's true. Everything I said redacted. All gone because I want to be liked by Dylan, so I need to have. Oh yeah, yeah, the same opinion guys. Think them out. Thank you so much for this thing. Go and follow us, do all that good stuff, leave a rating, blah blah blah, and we'll see you. Next time, blah blah blah.