Ep 121: Our Final Week Of Teaching: Have We Made A Mistake?

0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Teach Steep Repeat. My name is Dylan and my name is Hayden, and this week we'll be diving into our final week of teaching before we quit and reflecting on all the highs and lows of our career. We're going to talk through the exact moment that we knew it was time to quit. And ultimately, whether or not we think that we've made a mistake jacking it all in. But first, Hayden has been teaching sex Ed. OK, Hayden, it's the end of term 6. You're in upper key stage 2. That means only one thing You've been teaching SRE not to be confused with RE. Yeah. It's not a special RE. It's not one super RE. Super RE. The kids are like, yeah, it's Jesus with a Cape on. Super Jesus. Yes, we love this topic. No, no, no, no.

0:40 No, kids. I'm really sorry. Actually, it's not that at all. We're gonna be talking about sex and relationships. So you've been doing this what is deemed by a lot of teachers to be probably the most awkward set of learning that we have to give the children. How's it gone? It's, I mean, if we're talking about how it's gone in general over my career, I, I think it's become less awkward for me. The kids, however, that resets every year because it's a new cohort. I I do find that it is completely different, by the way, every year. I like, you'd think there'd just be kind of a set level of awkwardness some year. Groups way too big for their boots, right? They stroll in like, yeah, no, already, don't I don't worry about it. I'll teach it, Mrs Stevens, you know what I'm saying? You get that attitude. And they they actually don't really have a clue.

1:22 They. Just they know a few innuendos, a couple of words and they've. Seen a video online and they think signal. Something literally right and then you get other year groups and I had it a bit this year a bit more like very white face sheepish like I don't think I know like I don't think I want to be here actually in learning about any of this, to be honest. Please don't talk to me actually ever again. I had a bit more of that this year. So you know, I'm in my element because it's because it's hilarious, like, because as a teacher, like I've done it many, many years now, I just see it as basically like a science curriculum. I even say it's the kids sometimes. I'm like, look guys, if you're feeling really awkward about this, just try, just try and remember that we, we, we wouldn't bat an eyelid about learning about anatomies of other other animals and things in biology. We probably would if it was a penis of an Albert.

2:04 We we, we probably would. Let's be honest. I think it's specifically what it's about, rather than true. Actually, there's not many times I put a fish penis on the board, but when we learn about under under the. Creatures sorry the fish have penis don't know I. I just said that and then I have no idea. They must do no, they lay eggs. They. Don't have a penis do you think if you lay an egg that's true That's true they. Come from? Yeah, true, that's true. I don't know, maybe that's a good point. That's a good point. I'll take that more. Fish cut have penises supposed to be here. We got 10 years of sex Ed. That's not well. What have you been teaching our kids? I just told them the humans and.

2:48 Female every month lays an egg. Actually, fun fact for you, in the human species, the female eats the male afterwards. Just like, no wonder they're like passing out. I've been sick. Oh. So, so we've established your limited knowledge on this. I did want to ask you, with your lack of experience in this in general, how do you teach sexual education? Like, Thanks, Dylan. Yeah, Well, actually. And no one challenges that anymore because I've had a child now done so. I actually only did that to prove that I've got some experience and I'm worthy of teaching it so. Did you get any children genuinely, who obviously they're in sexual education and biology, very much about biology. And just like the functions of you do a lot of puberty, right? Because children will be going through puberty at that point. But you do a small part on reproduction. Yep.

3:34 Right. So do you get any children after you've taught them what reproduction is? Obviously, you know, break that barrier, guys. This is just a biological thing that happens because we need to have children. Do you get any children and any children in your class who say to you, haven't you had a child, Mr Stevens? Not as if to say, wait a minute, you've done, you've done this. Hang on a minute. You gross, disgusting man. What have you done? Is that awkward? Like, because I don't want, I don't want the children to be thinking about all that kind of stuff. You know what, most years, no. Yeah, I've had the odd comment over the years and it's never gone. It's never crossed the line. I've never actually had to say to job. Well that's inappropriate. Yeah, be commenting on my personal life. I'm sure I've had the look I from some kids as like that brain has gone. Ohhh like 2 and 2 is coming. You obviously since you've had a child, yeah, there's only one way a child is made and children are very clever and they put. Well, actually Dylan, in our lesson, we talk about how there are lots of different ways that that children can be made and it might not not necessarily be from sexual intercourse. We talk about IVF and all these other things. OK, good.

4:29 I was. I was waiting for you to say something actually. Like an egg appears out of nowhere. Yeah, actually, Ari, Immaculate Conception. I just looked at the belly and it was in there. Actually, one of the kids did say to me they were, they were like, So what is a virgin? Because obviously we're a Christian School, a Virgin Mary. A virgin? Yeah. Yeah. What? Actually is a virgin then and so I have to answer that question, get all sorts of questions. I mean, that's that's good though, right? Not really something I've ever considered. The fact that it's the Virgin Mary, I bet a lot of kids just go through school thinking that's her first name. Yeah, yeah, definitely. They don't even put anything together as the fact that that's because it's special. Immaculate concept. Well, they must do because literally none of them knew I had like 40 odd boys and they're 45 boys and like no one could answer because sometimes when someone asked a question, other kids are like proud to like Oh, I know.

5:09 This one, I know this one, but they're all just like waiting like, yeah, what is it then? What is it then? It's like as if we've not been using that term since they were in reception. It's crazy. And because a lot of especially like ultra religious people might have a problem with this being taught. So you've been, you've been talking about the Virgin Mary since your child was 2. Like, don't you understand that that's got a direct link to the fact that she did not have these sexual relations with anyone? When you do questions and stuff, obviously it's a big, you see a lot of it online when people are saying, yeah, I just put these anonymous boxes, these pieces of paper just to try and like, cut through the awkwardness. Yeah. Is that something you do? Oh. Absolutely. Yeah. So like, not all kids want to put their hand up and ask a question, you know, I mean, sometimes the fact most commonly they'd like to write it down. You do get the odd child who is brave enough, like, especially when it's the first one, right? The one that breaks the seal when you're talking. They put their hand up in front of 45 other kids and ask a question, you know, that's awkward to them. But what I always do, and I think this is good practise for anyone that's doing SRE, is I'll always just stop for like 30 seconds and just big up that kid to the rest of the kids and be like, right, can you put your hands up if you were also thinking something along the lines of that question as well, but you didn't really want to ask it? And honestly, 25 hands go up every single time. And I stop the more I say right look around okay, well done you for asking yet.

6:19 So please don't feel like embarrassed that you're the only one that didn't know this thing because look, there were 25 other kids that want to know this and. Now, kids, I'm gonna tell you all what Morning Glory is. Thank you for asking that. Really good. Question you something so funny? Go on. Someone literally asked me this year. What's morning glory? Literally asked me. What is Morning Glory? Their their parents must be going to the Oasis concert or something. They would have heard it somewhere. It's a really nice album. It's a. It's a really lovely album. I don't know if it's an album or a song. Please don't write into me, Oasis mega fans. I'm so sorry if I've done anything to insult you. Did you tell them? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Because you're up to right. Yeah, the one one of the do you know what, I don't find much of it awkward, but the probably the most awkward bit is we do just follow a scheme, by the way. So I just sat there like right, I've gone home and plan these lessons myself.

7:02 Come on lads. That's an objective to know what wood is. That comes up every. Year as well, Really. Every year because I was having the term morning glory in morning wood. It's obviously funny, right? And they hear it and they're like, what is that? And then I just think once I've explained an erection, really fun, really fun conversation, they just again, they say, what's wood? I was like, think about it. Yeah. Why might that be called that? And they're like, oh, oh, I get it now because. It makes a bed. No, Do I really have to explain this again? Something really funny this year is I had to, I had to move rooms at one point and tech stuff, right? And I went into a different room and I was setting up my slides again, getting all back on the screen. And there was another, in fact, a librarian who is a qualified teacher as well. She's just been really friendly.

7:44 She just helped me escort these children and just keep them busy for like 30 seconds whilst I got all the tech up. And she said right, coming kids, we've all been through it. Don't be embarrassed about it. Tell what you've been learning whilst Mr Stevens gets his board ready. What have you been learning? What have you been? Come on, tell me something. A few hands go up and one one of the kids literally put their hand up right. And I was saying super sensible kid at the back. So this is going to be a good answer. They're not, you know, make me embarrassed. Said, well, we've been learning about erections and wood. And because obviously they just had, they just had this conversation where they were talking about other names for things and I was, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to tell them that like. They're not going to name things. Don't talk about that. It's only called a penis. It's only called a penis. And I was thinking, Oh my God, librarians like, all right, thinking. She's obviously thinking, what on earth are you doing in these lessons?

8:31 If that's what the kids erections and wood, it's about it, really. I thought these lessons were on puberty. That was SRA and DT, so it's just. Link it in. Honestly, I know there'll be some people listening right now. Obviously this is funny. We know it's part of secondary school. We know kids have to go through this. And I think it's really good that when your body is going through these changes, to be able to be taught and know what's going on, like even in the opposite sex. Like I remember becoming 15/16/17 and honestly not really understanding the insurance and outs of the female body and what, what, what. And from no fault of my own, I don't think I just wasn't told about it at all. So I do think this is really important. But then, you know, I think there's a line between puberty, what happens to your body, pure biology, and maybe they're moving into reproduction.

9:17 Clearly there's a line that's a step up. So do you think it's fair enough for parents to choose what their child is taught? You know, are there slips that go home? Should every child just get it regardless as to what their parents think? What's the line for you? I think it's a tough one because I can have my personal opinion and then I can have the kind of overarching. At the end of the day, it's like it's not my child though. So I kind of, I'm happy to be vetoed. Do you know what I mean? So my personal opinion is we put it in the curriculum for a reason. Like I remember back, I think back when we were younger, there was quite a surge in like teenage pregnancies and things and there just wasn't much, there wasn't much education around sex education, I don't think. And that's kind of why I think it was Channel 4. I think we're commissioned to do a tonne of stuff on sex education to actually teach kids so they're a bit more informed and, you know, can make decisions knowing what's going to happen, like the consequences. But there was a lot of pushback as well. I seem to remember at the time of parents be like, my kids shouldn't know about this if we're just teaching them how to do it then.

10:08 And then maybe people will do it more because they know about it when they didn't before. That's tricky. That's tricky because there will be some children who, like you said, you had a bunch this year who had no idea, and now they know. So you have told them things they didn't necessarily need to know yet when it comes to reproduction. So, you know, and I know there'll be some people who knew about it anyway. And now more informed. And it's maybe it's always better to have more information. Yeah. But fundamentally, like when a parent thinks my child's not quite ready for this yet, it is different to learning about mixed number fractions. Sure. Or you know, Henry the Eighth in the past and you issued lessons. Yeah. Do you think it's OK whether you would or not now moving away from your opinion and more into a professional standpoint of delivering education syllabus that it's OK that a parent be like I want them out of this.

10:51 Yeah, absolutely. I think ultimately it's their decision. Genuinely, it's their decision. It's actually not my decision at all. I think on a whole it's, it's probably better. We should because it worked, by the way, even though parents were like have pushed back 20 years ago, like, oh, we shouldn't be telling them because now, now they know how to do it and they'll definitely go to do it. That wasn't true. Actually, the, the numbers came way down. It was a huge success teaching children younger, you know, about sex and how and how their body changes and things. So I do think it's a good thing. But ultimately, if a parent came in to me and said, my child's really not ready for this, I'll have this conversation with them in a year or two when they're ready. I'm not going to be like, well, actually, no, because it's part of the curriculum. And I think I need to deliver this, this, this lesson about testicles to your child. Like, obviously not. I'll just be like, OK, fair enough. So the parents do have the ultimate decision. I think they should have the ultimate decision, but I'll always be more on the side of, oh, let's do it, though. Yes, let's, let's teach them.

11:36 Let's, you know, just let's educate them on their bodies, particularly puberty to be. Fair. That's, I completely agree with that. I think that to be fair, I'd say you need to, you kind of need to get over it and we're going to teach the children the anatomy of the body there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the I'll give you just a chat about puberty because I think it's really interesting. Well, thank you. Please tell me. Because I think you don't know much and I think you need to be enlightened. You said you didn't learn about stuff when you were at school about sex and things. Obviously you probably still don't know. So I can. I can. If you want to do it, yeah. Thank you, I know people listen but you do it outside. That's fine. That's fine, no different thousands. Of people no, no, it's fine don't worry it's all right man I don't embarrass you OK they're awkward in front people but puberty right so our school and I think it's the same a lot of schools we we have the kids mixed for most of the lessons in this SRE topic but when it comes to puberty and we're talking about like specific changes in through the body we do separate the kids and a lot of people go why don't you separate the kids the boys need to learn about the girls We we all do the same lesson we just give them we just separate them so they can feel a little bit more open to the idea of asking questions and maybe not worrying about that sat next to someone of this gender who might who might like be like that's weird I don't have that yeah yeah, so and it does work so when we separate the boys and girls we teach them about both genders equally right. They just have a bit more of a safe space to ask about things and we do find that the girls end up talking a bit more about like periods and the boys end up talking a bit more about their. Own.

12:51 I wonder why? Yeah, yeah, of course. Obviously I completely. Agree. I always say to the kids, and again, this is me just with my opinions on teaching SRE and I think this is so important and I obviously I always teach the boys. I think it's so important that we do our prop up huge chunk about the girls. We don't just gloss over it like, Oh yeah, the girls have periods and stuff. Let's crack on with the boys stuff because you're boys. I always say to the boys, it like it's 2025 at the moment. You, you cannot grow up being ignorant of half the population and how their bodies are changing. Girls that are not going to want to be your friends or your boyfriend or girlfriends or whatever it is if you don't, even if you're just completely ignorant to what, to their needs and stuff. Like you shouldn't be going at something just because you don't know about it. And the boys are always oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

13:31 Because it's really immature, isn't it? Otherwise it's really mature to be like that. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to be immature. I don't want to be immature. And the girls equally learn about the boys, right? And then I always say to the boys, this is something that happened this year. I was like, so you told we're going to be respectful. Aren't we not going to go up to the girls and be like, we learned about periods. That's gross. Don't do that. That's ridiculous. And then what did the girls, what do the girls do outside in the background? The boys come in to me saying they've been disrespectful because they saw a video or an animation or a pitch or whatever, something to do with like boys having erections because that's part of it. They were coming up to the boys and going like this with their hand. And I was like, Oh my God, no. So I had to take all the girls aside. I was like, you know how it'd be really annoying if the boys all like, started taking the Mick out of something you can't even control? Can you not do that for the boys as well? Because otherwise this is just like, it's just ridiculous. It's so important to say it, I think. Yeah, completely.

14:21 And that knowledge is key. Like, you know, you just the more, the more you teach about something, the more you talk about something less awkward. It becomes that first 5 minutes whenever you do SRE is that time where the kids are smirking, they're laughing, they're turning to each other. My teachers talking about penis isn't that funny? And then immediately it's like, yeah, I am. And they're like, and you just keep going, yeah, I'm talking about penis. And eventually they go, all right, yeah, OK, cool. And then you teach, oh, it's not funny anymore. Exactly. 42 times because it's an appendage. You have an arm. If you were teaching SRA in year 6, I know you've not actually taught SRA in year 6 before. No, I've taught in Year 5. Yeah, so to be fair, it's probably the same sort of thing. So when What's your opinion on when kids smirk and laugh? I'm not bothered in the class. Yeah, completely.

15:01 I'm good. They're going to it. Are we going to pretend that it's not funny for a 10 year old who's heard this taboo subject that's never been talked about beforehand? And it's like, oh, we can't. We can't know what, can't say that word because as a society would just have this weird aura around. Taboo. Yeah, it's just like, it's just not, you know, saying the word penis. If you walked into a classroom and said the word penis, children would smack enough. Yeah, if you walked into a classroom and said the word arm, no one would bat an eyelid because obviously it comes with so many extra connotations and part. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but if I'm teaching SRE, I'm not going to walk into a room and say, right, guys, we're going to learn about how a penis works today. And if a child started laughing me, excuse me, how dare you laugh at the penis, penis, whatever. No, just let them do it.

15:47 Let them get over it, almost give them a couple of minutes where you're like, okay, go on in. What a penis? What do you call it? What, what's another word for it? What have we heard it called before in in our language? And there's always 10 different things you call it and you just get them to get over it, get out of their system, laugh about it. And the difference comes when if they're being rude, if they're being misbehaved, if they're turning around, disrupting their friends. That's part of a lesson culture that we have when we don't do that, don't misbehave. Understand if you can smirk and you're a bit awkward, obviously I'm going to tape off for doing that. I agree. I just, I just simply, I think it's part of the process of teaching. SRE is breaking those barriers down and in doing that children will be smirking and laughing. Yeah, if something's awkward for me, I smoke and laugh. Exactly. It's quite a normal reaction. And I say to the kids, like you say, I'm glad you said that because I also tried to make the distinction between that line where it's like, yeah, you can smoke because it's awkward. But if you turn around your mates and start being like going like wee and trying to get them to laugh, now you're just misbehaving.

16:37 You're being rude. Like yeah, you're awkward, but you don't need to turn it into bad behaviour because you're feeling awkward. Yeah, definitely. Well, talking about feeling awkward. Oh, my God. Yeah. So I, I have to say about this, right. So normally in the school, we have visitors come around all the time. Very, very standard. This week, though, when I'm teaching sex Ed, I don't really want, like, visitors with young children come around to view, you know, perspectives to view the school, of course, obviously not. We're teaching sex Ed. So what happens, Dylan, right, is I'm in the middle of teaching in my lovely puberty sex Ed lesson. And the kids sort of go, oh, Mr Stevens. And they can see out. There's a little window, right? They can see our teach, our head teachers coming with some parents. And I was like, oh, no, not the time. Surely he knows.

17:19 Surely he knows. This is like the only time really. It's inappropriate to, like, be be bringing parents and kids into this classroom. And what does he do? Opens the door, comes in. So this is Mr Stevens. He says it's a bit of an awkward time. I said, yeah, a little bit. I turn around. What's on the board? Massive picture of a testicle, 45 kids staring at a testicle, head teacher with some parents. I don't know. Luckily, luckily, Dylan, it wasn't parents at all. I had teachers said, oh, no, no, it's just some visitors from a local school. Like, we have a connection with this school. They were just coming around to see what we're doing. I knew what you were doing. I wouldn't have brought parents in there. And I'm like, yo, thanks for telling me, though. I would have liked to have known. So, yeah, hilariously awkward, the kids. It was so funny how the kids knew, though. They knew. They were like, Oh no, this is this can't happen. This is not appropriate.

18:01 Yeah. Because the rules at the start, which is quite sweet actually, because I do say to them, some rules at the start of like this is this is we didn't teach this in Year 5 for a reason. Like we didn't, you cannot go out to the playground now and be sharing this information with younger children, otherwise we would have teached it to them at this point. Like teach very much. But we would have teach teaching it to the children. We're teaching them that fish don't have penises. Yeah. They can learn that, but they can't learn about puberty yet. So we know we just have that generic rule. So it's nice that they're aware, like, oh, someone's about to come in with younger children. They can't. They can't be here. Also, get the testicle off the board. Massive testicle on the board. We're just seeing about how sperm flow through the testicle. Probably not something appropriate. Yeah. Good times. Brilliant. I am. Those same people came through my classroom, actually. They're really nice, really lovely people. It was on your board, man.

18:45 And that was on my board was some very hastily written silent reading because it's one of the kids coming quietly. I always do that. Nothing on the board. Silent reading. When you write something on the board but don't say anything. It's hilarious how when one person notices. Oh, yeah, your whole classic, The board. Shut the board. Look at the board, Mr Bryce. Put something on the board guys and they go quite so quickly say reading and they came they came in came through obviously and then later on I caught up with a head teacher and I said who who are they like because they obviously weren't with children. I'm used to children touring the school and maybe joining and and he is just saying about how they're all the local teachers who've come just we're working with them in this group that we've got etcetera, and they're really nice They were lovely they walked through I I like it when people come through my lesson.

19:27 I actually do enjoy it because I want them to see the kids learning and happy and I think it's a good thing and how good you are. No, no, no, no, that's just like a byproduct Hayden, that byproduct. They think that when they come through, that's why not. But I like, I like adults in the room because I just think it gives the children a chance to explain their learning. She'll talk about it. I like to see that. Anyway, afterwards he said, oh, yeah, yeah. Before he went in, I said, oh, this is Dylan Price in this classroom, our maths lead. And then one of the people walking around said, Oh yeah, I know him from, from Top Dog Tutoring. That's the tutoring. He doesn't. He and I listen to his podcast, actually. I follow them on Instagram. Wasn't he on Who Wants to Be Millionaire? Oh. My God, your whole life, is there anything else to you? Is that it? I think someone just. Summarised everything about you.

20:07 Yeah, I think so. I may have got a child. Yeah. But it was just, it was really funny because then I had a teacher in every interaction I've had ever since, knowing that obviously I'm leaving at the end of the year, it's like you'll be all right. You've got your media career on the way. That's. So funny, I bet. Did you feel a little bit smug? No, no, not. Smug. Not smug. I actually. I actually fund. I feel awkward every single time and I know we do this social media stuff, we do this podcast with you guys every single time that someone brings it up in a situation that's different. So for example, in my school life, I don't about you. When I'm at school, I genuinely, honestly don't talk about the podcast or the tutoring or anything on the side. And I I really struggle with the overlap.

20:48 So when someone comes in and said, oh, you do all this, don't you do the podcast and all the tutoring and stuff on the outside and you've been, I'm like, yeah, because. You're in your teaching personality. Yeah. So that's. Exclusive I don't want anyone to think that whilst I'm in my teaching mode, I've got my mind elsewhere thinking about my my children, because I don't When I'm in, when I'm in my mode as teaching in school, I'm teaching to those kids. They're my everything right now. I want to help them as much as. Possible. I do forget sometimes how hilariously awkward you as a baseline. Oh, yeah. Like, because we do this sort of stuff. Yeah. And obviously we put on a bit of an act like this is a show almost isn't. It's a podcast. Right. But your baseline is so hilariously awkward around, like, in new situations with people or something. Just breaks that boundary that you've set in your head that no one else knows about, by the way, and completely, completely made-up in your mind. And someone breaks it and you're like, oh God, Horribly awkward.

21:30 Yeah, I can't deal with it. I can't do it. It's a word for it. I think there is a word for. It I think there might be. It begins with an A, and it's not amazing, but yeah, I think it's very clear that I struggle with that kind of thing and people are just being so lovely. Those people walking around was so nice and I enjoyed them being there. But then there's the idea that they said, oh, isn't that this guy who does this other thing? I'm like. Yeah, but I'm not in that mode right now, so I can't actually interact with you. So I'm sorry, but I'm going to back to teaching about fish penises. Goodbye, everybody. Do we do some silent reading in the class, please? But I can't go to this. Yeah. Meanwhile, I'll go on Year 6 Presidential. Yeah, I got recognised again by. No, not again. Oh, you're just regurgitating the same story about your. But you've just immediately Pooh poohed my story.

22:11 No, not Pooh. You made it sound awful by sound again. And I said no. No, I'm just exposing the fact that you got recognised once and you've dined out on it for about 5 years. I got recognised one time on a residential and a kid said are you that guy from YouTube? And I was like, yes, that's me. Yes, that's me. And I made sure all the kids in my class knew what. School are you with what's good yeah don't wait go and tell your teacher come with me for the day you're gonna walk around and say it's this guy from YouTube please you make a placard hold it up it's the guy from YouTube it's the guy from YouTube because I'm going to talk about this for the. Next five years. The most pleasing moment was when my class said what did that guy want? I'll tell you what that guy just said. I will tell you all what that guy, everybody here listen, this guy just recognised me from YouTube. I am your teacher though, and I am famous. They do fit your favourite.

22:53 They did love it honestly. When you're fit. We've got like YouTube 30 odd 1000 subscribers on YouTube. They have they'll make it like a YouTube account with their parents account waiver and have like 1 subscriber but I got 1 subscriber and I'm like. That's cute, kid. Yes, watch my stats walkthrough. Yeah, 30K baby. Literally, you're not getting. Close to this, but they do think that's like, that's like fame. Level. Yeah, yeah, Completely, completely. It's not. It's not really clear to everyone. It's not remotely right. Let's play the jingo. I've got a little writing from someone I want to talk to you about. We always get messages in from listeners. Absolutely love it. Guys. Go to our Instagram at Teach Sleep Repeat Podcast. Go to our TikTok at Teach Sleep Repeat podcast, sends a message because we love reading through them. Every now and then. One of them just piques my interest and it's perfect for the show.

23:36 I want to read it to you, Hayden, and see what you think. So we've got this lovely message from one of our listeners. Hi Hayden and Dylan. Hayden first. That turned me off immediately, but I kept reading. Don't worry. I don't know if I'm just being oversensitive or if this is genuinely unfair, but I'd really love your thoughts. I've just found out that I'll be moving classrooms again for the third year in a row. I've been in year 4 for the past couple of years and had to move last time because of a logistical thing that our school had to face. But now I'm being moved up to year 6, which means a brand new classroom. Most other staff are staying put, some have been in the same room and year group for years now and it just feels like I've drawn the short straw. No one's actually told me to come in over the summer, but the expectation is obviously there to move everything, get the classroom ready and be ready for September. I also need to plan for a completely new year group because I'm moving to year 6.

24:28 I know that I'll be expected to do SAT booster groups this year as well as going on the residential. I've always been someone who says yes just get stuck in, doesn't try and kick up a fuss, but this just feels a little bit unfair, like I'm being taken for granted because I'm capable and I'm someone who won't complain. I don't want to be negative but I do feel overwhelmed before the new year has even started. I'm just wondering is this normal? Should I just crack on or is it OK to push back a little bit? Completely justified, isn't it? Like even when when they doubled, it was bad enough when they said they've got a move room and there's no time allocated for it. We can talk about that in a second. But when you've got other things like residential and the other bits they mentioned, I think it's completely justified to say, hang on a minute. There is quite a significant amount of extra workload here that is pretty much exclusive to me and maybe a couple of other people.

25:11 I don't really think I should be do it in my own time. Like we like we're teachers, right? We already all give enough grace. Like seriously, if, if I, if I had to come in one day in summer, I'd probably would just be like, OK, right. If I can do what I need to do in one day, I'll maybe go over it, right. But if it was every three years in a row and my colleagues haven't had to do it once and it was just expected that I came in and did that three years in a row, they probably, I mean, me being me at this point in my career, I probably purposely just not do it. And then September would start and I'd be like day one. My classroom's still in the old place, like. Yeah, but here's here's the thing. You just wouldn't. Yeah, because you're that kind of person. You'd say that. You would. You would say that, and that's fine. And then you'd make that point. I think you'd push back. But ultimately for your kids, and this is the problem I guess we face in teaching a lot of the time, I actually know that you wouldn't do that.

25:58 Yeah. You would have your classroom ready for September no matter what you say. I'd say it, Dylan. Yeah, you'd say it. Or do some sort of hybrid. I think I'd be more confident now doing doing something where I'm like, you know what? All right, the end of the school year, I'll move all my stuff out of my current room so someone can actually get in here, because that would be quite harsh on the other person trying to move into my room because I'm like, no making a stand. But I probably would not do my whole classroom. And then when in September, if they came, if they dared come round and do like a a learning walk in the first week and pull. So the fact that I had no displays up yet, I'd be like, when, when do you think I was going to do that? Please tell me. I find that with toxic SLT like that, if you could, if you just challenge them back and say OK, what's the solution? Because there is no solution, they can't say anything. They either break the rules and say you should have it in summer you.

26:39 Stand at 8 baby, you do everything I say. Yeah, that's true. But I either say I tell you, oh, you do it your own time, or they realise they absolutely can't do that and say that and then they just start going like okay or. Just needs to get done, doesn't it? Just need to get done though, doesn't it? Because we've agreed this is the rule. Yeah, it does. When do you want me to do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you just keep. No, no, we need to do though, Hayden. Yeah, we'll call when. Yeah, just whenever you can, really. OK. Well, I can't because I've got lessons to teach, so maybe next time. Yeah, sure. No, it has to be done now though. So I understand you've not got much time, but it does need to be done. Yeah, fair enough. Well, if I get some time out of class, I'll do it. Yeah, no time, no cover, mate. I'm sorry that you've seen the state schools are in right now. There's absolutely no money for cover. What? Sorry, I'm getting a call from the executive CEO. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Yeah.

27:20 Go to your appointment. That's no problem. Yeah, that's fine. You've got no lesson to teach. Yeah, we just don't have time to cover you. I'm afraid we have no one that could possibly cover you. No. OK, well, fair enough. Well, I guess we have to do the classroom another time, but I can still teach my lesson. Another time could be after school today, couldn't it? Right. See you later. Bye. See ya. Yeah, that is that is what was being satirical, but it kind of is the truth. So it's hard. So this going back to this person feeling a bit awkward and feeling like it's a difficult situation, 100% it's a difficult situation. Everyone's put in a difficult situation when it comes to just being expected to do work. Do you, do you think I actually want to know your opinion on this? Because obviously it is part of the job moving year groups. Like when you become a teacher, I don't think anyone expects to be like cool, the year group I get put in first is that's my whole career. I'm in year 3 this year.

28:01 That's I guess that's it for the next 25 years. Like we all know it's completely normal and reasonable to be moved around year groups. So what are your thoughts then on some people being moved and other people not being moved? I think you have to just have it at the forefront of your mind when you make this decision because this decision has been made. OK, so I'm going to make the comparison to moving classrooms because I think that is just, that's a preference, right? In terms of it can be literally within the same year group. And I've heard of schools before who simply want the classrooms in a certain order in terms of the form that they're in. It's like I want this to be in the order of blue and then green and then yellow and then red, because then it's the same as year 4 and it's the same as year 2. And they're forcing teachers to move classroom within the year group simply so.

28:45 Even moving to a different. Year, right? That is, that is like insane to me. And if you want to make that call, it's fair enough, but you have to build in time for teachers to achieve that. You can't just make that call and then they sacrifice days of their summer holidays. That's wrong. But however, I do think you're absolutely right when you say moving year group is part of being a primary school teacher. And you do have to do that. But what I would say is that you'd be hoping to work in an environment where it's very normal that planning is shared. It's absolutely normal that planning's put on on a shared area online for anyone to access. So for example, I know for a fact in my score, if I needed to, I could go into the year 6 planning and use it. So if I was moving year groups next year and going to a different year group, there would be an established set of planning already there for me to access. And.

29:28 Use. That's one burden. It's kind of removed. And that's fine. And I think my biggest issue with what this person's writing in to say is that I know there are schools out there where if she went to SLT and said, look, this is this is kind of unfair. My workload's gone through the roof. I've got to plan everything from scratch because there isn't that shared aspect of the planning. Or you've made a rule that says you need to replan everything every year and it's just not built in that, OK, cool. Well, I'm going to year 6. The other year six teachers have their things from last year and a starting point and I don't. And that means my workload's gone up a lot. I know, I know there are leaders out there who will look at that and go, do you know that? Do you know what? That is unfair, isn't it?

30:09 That is so unfair that you're doing more work than everyone else. One second, let me just put out an announcement to everyone. Hello, everyone. Well, we've got someone here who's doing a lot of work and their workload's really high. So I've come up with a solution. Everyone's workload needs to go up. We're not doing any planning now. Everyone needs to plan from scratch from the start. Now everyone's work planning needs to go up. Everyone's workload needs to go up so that it's fair. What that you've given me a flashback because I remember at times really early in my career where this that exact thing happened. But with PPA, it was that's right. So we had like an inset day or for whatever bank holiday maybe and like people on the Monday didn't get their PPA because we weren't in school. So the solution, the solution to that was not to rearrange their PPA to another time. It was to say no one gets PPA in this week because it's not fair. It's not fair that year 4 didn't get their PPA. So year three-year five, year six, you don't get your PPA either to keep it nice and fair and balanced. And I remember at the time being really new to the job being like, oh, OK, I guess so users accept it. You know, you it's hard to challenge stuff and you don't really know the status quite.

31:07 Yeah, sure. I was like, oh, I guess that's just a thing. I don't get PPA this week then. OK, fair enough. We've got a shorter week. I suppose I did get that Bank Holiday Monday off. I could have done it then. And you start going into that line of thinking. No, let's establish this. This winds me up so much. And people say, well you had the bank holiday off, didn't you? So you could have done it then could have. Then you worked, then you had an extra day off, didn't you? A lovely lucky boy had an extra day off. No, there are 190 days in the school year with the children. If there is a bank holiday along the way, it's not an extra day off. It gets tagged onto the end. We have the same amount of work to do with the children every single. Year so let's make this really clear deal and so let's say there was a year like there was a couple of years ago where we had an extra bank holiday so the usual amount of bank holidays tagged into the middle of the year. How does that affect our school days it.

31:48 Gets it. OK, cool. You get that time off, but it's tagged onto the end, right? There's a statutory requirement by law that you have 190 days with the children. That doesn't change all the bank holidays. The bank holiday, it was in the half term. We get mugged off again. No, we don't. Yeah, it works both ways. Like you can't get the bank holiday in term time and then be like, oh, aren't we lucky? And then get the bank holiday in half term time, be like, oh, aren't we unlucky, missing out on the bank holiday? No, both wrong. Yeah, we get 190 days in the year with the children. That's that. Because if that one in the half term, what in the holidays was actually in the school term, all that would happen is another day of school would just be tagged onto the end your summer term. Like you'd just be going to the 23rd, not the 22nd. Exactly, you're doing that.

32:28 Yeah, exactly that there. Why do you think it changes every year? Yeah, yeah. Obviously the dates change the things and the start dates might change, but it's as simple as that. So you're telling me, Dylan, when the king in Sax Week wanted to put a crown on his head and give everyone a day off, we didn't actually get a day off, It just got tagged onto the end. Well, I certainly hope so after recording this whole part of the podcast. And that was the game. Yeah, but as far as I'm aware 190 days are needed. It just gets rearranged and shuffled around a bit. It's as simple as that. But for this person, ultimately what I would say is moving classroom. I think schools should give teachers time to move classroom because that is fundamentally a choice that the school have made and and it's not the teachers fault that they move and someone else doesn't. Don't just suck it up, it is extra. Give them time to do that.

33:09 If I wasn't moving classroom and you were, I would be grateful that you got that time out. And I wouldn't expect it to be the same for me. I'm not doing that job, which is moving a classroom. And in terms of moving a year group, I think you have to build and establish a shared kind of body of work or at least a team. Or if you can't do that for whatever reason, if you are moving someone, give them some grace, give them some leeway. If things aren't perfect straight away, it doesn't matter. I think a lot of amazing leaders do that. I think a lot of really good leaders would say, yeah, that's more than fair, let's make this work. But I do need you to move classrooms and I do need you to move year groups. All of it can be fair. It's just when something in these situations is kind of taken for granted, like this person won't kick up a fast and would just crack on. Those people tend to have the Mick taken out of them a lot more because it's easier for leaders to be like, well, they're not going to move you, are they Hayden? If they're going to move you or someone else who'll just crack on and do it from a leader's headache point of view, they're going to go for the other person every time. And that's also bad.

34:07 And people like us and people who aren't targeted and people who aren't in there getting the short straw need to be the loudest, I think, in order to protect those colleagues who are. And instead of just going, oh, head down, ignore that. It's not me. So it's not me. I'll just stay out of this because I'm not. It'll be you one day. Yeah. So stick your neck out and look out for them and make sure they get the extra help they need. Definitely, I agree. Let's play the Jingle and do what we're actually talking about. Oh, it's our last week of teaching. Oh. This is it, Hayden. We are in our final full week of teaching and we're going to talk about our feelings, our thoughts, and ultimately whether or not we think we're making a mistake.

34:48 So I want to get straight into your raw emotions right now, at this point in the year, we've made our decision to leave. It's on the precipice of happening. How do you feel? Heartless cold, Couldn't care less. I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher, Dylan, don't you know this profession is filled with people who are ruthless business. People sure okay, let's go in the tick tock comments so people have no idea what it's like, how you actually feel yeah. I feel very up and down, like I wasn't until basically this week I was very cool with the whole thing. I was like, no, I'm confident in my decision. I've thought about this for a long time. I appreciate that. I might feel a bit sad as I'm leaving, but I'm, you know, I was, I had a good baseline. I was pretty steady. Whereas this week I'm like all over the place. I'm like, I'm flitting between that that confidence to, oh, my God, have I made a terrible mistake? Have I overestimated myself?

35:34 Like I should I be doing this? I love being with the kids. This is such good. And I'm never going to replace. This is like the best thing I could ever do. And then I'll sit there in a staff meeting and waste an hour of my time or I'll mark books for free hours. Oh, no, I do hate this. Yeah, I do hate load too much of this job now. It's like it's not what I think it is. And I'm just back and forth, back and forth like I'm a bit of a bit of a wreck. You. Do you? Yeah. I'm struggling to differentiate between how I normally feel at the end of the year, because at the end of the year is an emotional time. You've made bond with your class, you've been with them for a year. You spent a lot of time with them. And always at this point in the year, I do feel a little bit sad because they're moving on obviously, and you've you've got to know them so well. I do think I'm a step above that though, where I get even a little bit more emotional, I guess in my head because I won't get that chance to do that again to meet a new class and build it up. And I think for me, transition day was weird, not like not doing a transition day.

36:25 That was odd because again, that's always a highlight at the end of the year for me is meeting your next class. They're all excited like rabbits in the headlight, like eyes wide open, really looking forward to next year and a few of the year. Three children who obviously have spent the year thinking, Mr. Price, the year 4 teacher coming up to me and saying, Oh, I'm so sad you're leaving. I wanted to, I wanted you to teach me next year and all that. But that's, that's not. And it just makes you think that they're lying to me, making me feel good, but that that that kind of does make me kind of dip a bit and be like, am I making the right call or not? But I get emotional. You know what I'm like, I get like, I'm absolutely fine for ages. Then suddenly I'm just like, oh God, this is awful. I don't know what's going to happen. So right now, yeah, mixed bag of emotions. And I think the last few days will be tricky.

37:06 My class are practising Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. You're an absolute banger. But also when you listen to the lyrics and it's like, Oh my God, they're moving on. And then I put it on for them to practise. And I was like, when I'm watching this in the leaver service, I need to walk out of the room. I'm I'm going to do. I don't know what's going to happen. But thinking about you kind of summed up nicely there where it's a roller coaster of we didn't lightly decide to quit, right. And you, you summarise it, the good parts and the bad parts. What do you think when you quit you will miss the most? I, I know the cop out answer is the kids, right, But it is kind of rooted, but it's true. That is true. Like I, I know it's like a cop out answer because everyone expects that, but I can go a little bit deeper, I think because it's not just like just being with the kids. It's not just spending time with the kids, although obviously that is like, if you're looking at all the bits of the job, that's clearly the best bit.

37:57 That's why you're a teacher, right? You didn't go, No one got into teaching for the marking or to plan lessons. Like no one did that. They they want to be with the kids. But for me, it's like there's particular those, those special relationships you make with the children. That's the bit that makes me feel so good. And maybe it's from a selfish perspective of like what makes me. Feel it. Is. Of course it is. I knew you were going to say that, but those particular relationships you make with children where you know that you've made a massive impact on their life, right? And quite often it will probably be something subliminal like they, they, I doubt they'll remember that moment. But hopefully through your words and guidance and whatever you, however you can solve them. If it's a sad situation, you've kind of planted a seed in their mind of like resilience or confidence, like how to think about something, how to tackle a problem in the future and them being thankful for it or them not even thankful that's the wrong word.

38:46 Them wanting to even just share that with you in the 1st place is what like completely fulfils me. That's what I think I'm going to struggle without in my life. So I think I'll miss that maybe more than I realise. Right now it's easy because I've got it. So I can be like, no, I'll be fine. But I do think a couple of years down the line, that's going to be part of me that thinks I really, really do just amiss being that support for the kids and being being there for them, making those special bonds. You're making them developing in more ways than understanding how fractions work. That's the crux of it, right? Because ultimately we can spend the next chunk of our lives, we will do still making, you know, videos to help children with their learning. Still got a tutoring going on where, you know, you might work with children throughout the throughout the year.

39:30 But ultimately it's kind of linked to mine. It's that it's that community aspect of the school, that part of society where you're in, you know, you are an established hub of help and support for children who need it the most and for families who need it as well. And being part of that machine, I think it's very fulfilling. And when people say and point like teachers should do all this because they're teachers and it's fulfilling and it's nice and it's for the kids, they kind of have a point in that it is all of those things. It doesn't mean that I'm going to stop pushing for, you know, the rights of the workers and things like that. But but they are right in terms of that is a really nice part of the job and you're allowed to enjoy parts of your job. And it can still be a job even though it's a nice thing. And yeah, for me, it's that that impact on the child.

40:11 Like you're saying, we've spoken before about how teachers actually have quite a small impact on the attainment of children through the quality of their teaching. There's a move there. And obviously it's good to be a better teacher. It's more than you think. And I, I really think that focusing on the social aspects or the, the, the emotional aspects of a child, that's where I've seen in the past so much more kind of how like warmth inside of me when I noticed that, like that Eureka moment in maths is great when a child suddenly understands what exchanging is. That's, that's, that's a good thing. But that moment when a child who struggles to kind of understand and control their emotions gets over the hurdle of understanding what anger is and why they feel angry and how they can react to that to help them and how them doing that makes them more appealing, appealing to people sociably rather than just throwing a hissy fit, hitting someone, moving up, no one's going to want to play with anymore. Seeing them develop that and have strategies and improve and see their friendships blossom as a result. To me, that's the ultimate version of what I want to do as a job.

41:15 And when I look back, it's those moments that stick with me. It's those those notes you get from the child who say, oh, thank you for being so nice to me. Not, not, you know, that is ultimate to me because to me, teaching it comes with the territory that you're going to teach children how to read their phonics, how to do maths, history. I do think that extra mile and the thing that I appreciate so much are those moments and and when children know that you're there for them and can help them. I'm going to miss that, I think. And the fact that they actually choose you because they ultimately don't need to speak to you. They can speak to someone else. They can speak to literally another kid. They can speak to another adult in the school, they speak to parents, family. But they wanted to, they wanted to confide in you. They they trusted you. And yeah, there is just something special about that I'm really going to miss.

41:58 It's when they're in different year groups as well, like you said, like they've been with you, right? I taught Year 3 for a year and I really remember that class vividly because one of the children I taught in Year 3, when it came to Year 6, obviously three years down the line and this girl left. She came and found me and gave me a card and said thank you so much. I was really worried about Year 3 because obviously we're Junior School. I was worried about joining a new school. You my first ever boy teacher is what she said. But you made me feel comfortable and you made me laugh and I learnt loads and I really. And then I got a note from the parent as well and I spoke to the parent and he said thank you so much for what you did. It was amazing. But that was three years ago, and that's not a data point at the end of the year that's making an impact on a child. And she was in my class as well.

42:40 I was livid. I was livid. I'm. Like right, Who can I go to? Sorry, sorry. Can you come back please? Don't talk to him. You're in my class. I'll have that card. I'll have that card Parent give me that note. I'll have that note give. Me that Starbucks. Capture, honestly ridiculous. Yeah. That was nice though. I remember. I actually remember seeing that moment thinking that is really sweet. Yeah, really sweet. So it sounds. I think if you were listening to this, people would be thinking, what? What are you quitting then? What on earth are you doing? What? You clearly love this job so much and you're even suggesting that you might not be able to replace that fulfilment with something else. So let's talk about the opposite side then. What part of this job Then let's go back down to reality. I think what elements or element of this job reminds you that you are making the right decision right now to quit teaching? A big thing for me was that I've, I've been so lucky to work with unbelievable people.

43:25 I think teachers in general always are going to be some people out there saying not all of them, OK, 99% of teachers are so nice. Like to get into this job and do it for so long and care about the kids so much and get all those sacrifices that are built into providing the children with all these experiences and all this learning. They're really, really nice people. They're amazing people. And what really, really like kind of I opened it for me and I opened up was seeing all of this, these lovely, amazing people who I work with who simply cannot change their attitudes and minds about the job. And what I mean is basically martyrdom. Martyrdom of sacrificing their own lives for the job. And I always hated this kind of discussion because people push back.

44:11 And I've had it myself where I think, oh, should we be making people feel bad for dedicating themselves to this profession? It's a lovely, noble thing to do, and my problem is when it impacts every single other person in the job. I don't want to give up my weekends every single week to replan something from scratch that just simply doesn't need to be replanned. I can adapt things on the spot. I can be given a skeleton plan and teach children really well. Yeah, but Dylan, six other members of staff in the school are willing to do that. So that's the bar now. So. Exactly. And that becomes the bar, it becomes the expectation. And especially when you're in a system where you are like sharing, planning or doing things together and you don't want to do that. You don't want to go and do 3 hours extra in the evening evening. You don't want to give up your time to go and do a residential.

44:52 I'm not leaving my family to go and do a residential for free in a year group that I don't even teach. It's not going to happen. And anyone who decides to do that, all power to them. You decided to go in residential. You literally decided to do it and great. And do you know what? You should get some compensation. But I remember I did it because I knew I'd get a Ludo back, right? Exactly. If I didn't get the Ludo, I wouldn't have gone. No. It was a fair trade. So I was happy with. It completely and but you've made that decision and what I want to make really clear to people is I'm happy for people to work and do extra in a school. It doesn't bother me at all. I think it's amazing. I think kids get really good stuff out of it. I think it's great when people give up their time to do a disco. It's the kids love it. OK, it's it's volunteering in general, but you can't make someone do it.

45:35 And I think that kind of aspect, a school which is just the ultimate example, I'll finish on this, is the strike. OK? In 2023, early 2023, when we started this podcast, teachers voted to go on strike. Most schools, even 9095% of teachers went on strike, or about 5% of teachers went on strike because there is that big chunk of lovely people in the middle who don't want to rock the boat, who will join the bandwagon and jump on and strike. Striking to me is the top of the it's the ultimate version of what you can do to make a stance about something. There's so much you can do before that and changes you can make and refuse to do in school to try and make small changes, which I feel like I've been trying to do for years now. So many people didn't do all of that, just jumped on the strike bandwagon, lost hundreds of pounds, came back off it when nothing changed because they didn't change their attitude to doing things.

46:24 They were like, why has nothing changed? Because you, Because you. We need collective action at every single point of what we're doing where we don't sacrifice for the kids. Because I still think we can deliver amazing things for these children and teach really well without having to do so many crazy things that just eat into my personal time into what is a job that I love, but is a job and I'm just not going to do it. And, and no matter what we did, I felt like we couldn't make any strides in that whatsoever. So I'm like, cool, I've got to leave. Yeah, it's like the system's so broken and you're trying so hard to change it and people that want to change it still aren't changing it. It's like these people like there's almost like 2 categories of martyrdom here. There are some martyrs who want to rabbit in your face and how, how noble they are. And it's like that, that just, I find that toxic of like, well, I'm doing it so you should.

47:07 There are other people who kind of accidentally might like the people you're talking about really who are lovely, who, who will, who will stand up and moan and be like, oh, I really, I've got loads of work to this weekend. You don't want to be doing this. And then when you offer the solution, they're like, Nah, they don't want to do it now we've got to do it. You know, we've decided, we've all gone on, we've all gone on strike. Oh, brilliant. The government have actually now like fast forwarded A workload reduction task force and they've actually come up with some new policy about admin administrative tasks you don't have to do in school anymore. They've actually gone ahead and like written it down in the clearest list you could ever see. Teachers don't have to do this anymore and it's a good place. Don't have to do it. Should we do that? Nah, I don't want to. No, I don't want to drop. That's nice for the kids. You just went on strike, though. You went on strike to get this. You lost hundreds of pounds and like put your job on the line. Like people now perceive you differently because you went on strike to get this and now you don't want to do the result. Like what do you mean?

47:50 So I agree, it's, it's a really, really, really tricky thing to navigate. And it is a bit soul destroying when when working the job and desperately trying to fight for everybody, they don't want to fight for themselves. Absolutely. That is just, it's just frustrating and it just, it just gets to the point where you're like, okay, I actually have no personal problem with you guys. I think you're really nice people, but clearly we don't care enough about changing this. So okay, see you later. What's yours? My 1 is very much linked to sort of the workload kind of aspect of what you were saying. For me, what reminds me that making the right decision is I can basically think back to any term of any year I've ever taught and think back to a time where I got really frustrated because we were reinventing the wheel. We were doing. There's something, some element of my school life, my working life, where I was just wasting so much time because I'm reinventing something that's already been invented 65 times. We're changing the scheme for this thing for the 15th time and it's like, I just can't do this anymore. And I look back and I thought, I'm apologise to the teachers when I was an NQTA newly qualified teacher. And I was sat there rolling my eyes at those older experienced teachers who've been in the game for 1020 years, who are rolling their eyes at new initiatives and schemes that I thought were amazing because I didn't know anything any different. They were rolling their eyes because they did it 10 years ago.

49:00 They did. They had that scheme in 1995. And they and they're like, Oh my God. Like we've literally been here and done this and I've just now got to do it all again and reinvent the whole lot again. And then do you know what happened in five years? We'll scrap this because the truth is right. The curriculum is too broad, there is too much stuff to do and we literally cannot do it all. This is the thing. This is what I was going to get to the crux of it. I'm going to put it back to you now because I I'm, I've been thinking about reinventing the wheel for years, ever since I got to like almost the second cycle in my career. Do you know when you're in your first part of your career and you think everything's new? So this is just what we do. It's not reinventing. It's your first time. Yeah, for me, it's the first time ever. So to someone else, like you said, clearly it's a new fad. It's ridiculous.

49:41 When it came round to the first lot of changing stuff, I remember thinking OK, interesting, it seems to have worked what I've done, but obviously OK, we're going to, we're going to reinvent and that's fine. Then the third reinvent, then the 4th reinvent. And what you very quickly realise is things change every single year and there's a reason for that. The curriculum, we all agree. And this is kind of linking back to my point. I think our points overlap a lot. Every single teacher you've ever speak to will agree that the curriculum is too overloaded, it's too heavy, like there's too much to fit in to the time we're given to do it. So when it comes to us focusing on something as a school, let's say it's reading, we're going to reinvent reading. We've got this amazing new concept that we're going to do, which we did 20 years ago and we then we stopped for a bit, but it's back now because we need to focus on reading. We're going to have on every single time we have a reading lesson, there's going to be a slide up that says to the children, they're doing retrieval and it's going to be a certain colour because how else would they know it's retrieval if we don't tell them that we're doing retrieval today. All of this just absolute, OK, fine, ticker box, find, whatever, I'll put it in the corner. It's an extra 10 seconds of work. Whatever.

50:41 That's when it's new again and it's new again and it's new again. And here's the thing. We can sit and argue about how much of an impact that will have. OK, cool. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. OK, yeah, just get on with your job, Dylan. OK, fine. Whatever. I'll just do it. What's annoying is then when we put all this time into fixing something, by definition something gets dropped off. Let's say handwriting. Yeah. We don't have time anymore because we're focusing on reading. Two years down the line, we all notice handwriting's got worse, readings got better, and we're focusing on it. We've got more time in it. That's cool. And maybe it did work. Handwriting got worse though, so you know. Happens in two years, don't you? We scrap the reading thing. We do a hand. We've got handwriting focus now, guys. We haven't got time to do you know what, you know, three years ago we built in an extra 20 minutes, the end of every day to do some extra guided reading and some independent reading.

51:23 We're going to have to cut maybe half of that now and do and replace it with handwriting practise. What happens three years later, Reading results go down, handwriting gets better and the cycle continues. And that's a really simplistic version. Do that. But now we've like 12 other subjects. At the same time, vocabulary in the afternoon, we've got a real big push on, you know, teaching children pre vocabulary units of work so that when it comes to doing history, they already know what a sarcophagus is. That sounds great. Oh, no. But now they're really bad at, like, understanding chronology. Yeah. So actually, because we spent too much time on vocabulary. So now we really need to go back and we need to like explicitly teach them lots of links between all the different topics and we just build 10 minutes in every day to show them this links to this last oh, where's. The 10 minutes coming in, oh, the 10 minutes timetable practise we get in the morning, that's got to go. Gone down. Yeah, that's got to go. Times tables gone down. What we're going to do?

52:04 I need to bring times table back. Yeah, I guess we can't do that reading anymore. It's just a big circle. But don't. Worry we didn't because we're going to work on times tables now. We're going to build in more times tables time into our maths lessons. Oh, we get to the end of the year. Their reasoning and problems are awful. We've been doing too much on the foundations. Right. Scrap the times table. It just goes on and on. And when the cycle gets back round to the first one, Yeah, that that's when I think teachers start to completely lose faith in the system. That's when you get this. It gets labelled a lot, I think, as complacency, like older teachers, they just don't want to do it anymore. Yeah. They don't want to do it because they know ultimately it's a waste of time. And it was just just pick one. Just pick one. I'm sure there are some schemes that are objectively better than others, right. But what we can't, what we can't do is be like, yeah, we'll be able to teach everything to maximum efficiency 100% for all areas of the curriculum. The curriculum's too big with not enough hours in the day to do it.

52:48 That is not me saying increase the hours in the day. That's not going to be a good thing to do. But there is too much curriculum to each is impossible to keep it keep up with. So I think in general, when we have these ups and downs and we think back, I think we always tend to convince ourselves again, OK, right, it's it's time to quit because we're at that level now where we're like, we know, we know all the positives like the back of our hand. It's the reason we've done it for 10 years. If those positives didn't exist, we would have stopped after two. OK, So we know those positives exist. Talked about the negative bits, the things in general that make us think that we know. That's why we quit and I think why we're making the right decision. But my question to you now is really specific because there would have been a point in your career where you went from complaining adequately about something like some it's my job.

53:30 It's normal to complain in a job how we can improve things. So there's always going to be people out there in jobs who say, well, that's silly, isn't it? They're not necessarily going to quit. Was there a moment where you actually thought to yourselves, I am going to quit? Yeah, like like a moment where the illusion of this job was broken, where I started thinking, oh, maybe I don't want to do this forever. Like you said, it wasn't just normal gripes. It was like a fundamental, I don't agree with this. I have an exact moment I can tell you about right now. And it was the first time I was ever told to put a post it note in a piece of work. And let's be really honest and specific about why this happens. And everyone when teaching will know this, right? The only reason I put a post it note in a piece of, on a piece of writing specifically here we're thinking about is because I don't want one to think that I've given that feedback to the child.

54:14 I want to pretend I want it to look like a child has thought of this correction or this editing to writing themselves. And they've edited it in their green pen or their purple pen or whatever your school does themselves. Because at that point, right? It can still be assessed, right. If in our assessment framework, if a teacher, if there is teacher marking on the page, it, the rule is OK, you can't use that for assessment. Then because you have guided them, you've told them to make that change. So obviously it's not independent writing. So the first time I was ever told, and I'm, I'm saying this honestly because I know basically every teacher ever has been in this situation, right? That to, to mark a piece of work in a way that disguised it as the children doing it and not be doing it completely broke my illusion of, of what the point of teaching is. What are we?

54:58 It made me think, oh, you don't have the best interests of the kids at heart at all. It's your own interest. It's the school's data that matters. It's actually matters more than the child's progress. I get it now. And that really broke it for me and and sowed the seed of doubt as to whether I can be in this in this system forever. Do you think there's a place for that at all, ever? Or do you think fundamentally, if we're pretending that we haven't given children feedback to jump through a hoop, do you think that is fundamentally wrong? Fundamentally wrong. There is absolutely no place for it. There are no there are no use cases of someone putting a post it note on a child's piece of writing to tell them how to correct something that isn't fundamentally cheating.

55:41 Yeah, completely agree. And we talked about it a lot. It it is cheating. And I think a lot of schools justify it because they'll say, and I'm interested to your feed your, your pushback on this. They'll say, yeah, OK, well, it's no different to just verbal feedback, right? Like if I was. Walking around the room and just said to them, oh, check this. But isn't am I right in thinking is that acceptable or is that also that's also like right with an independent piece of writing. Exactly. I don't know how people can't how people are misinterpreting the word independent. Yeah. It's like just think about the word for a second before you do anything. If it's verbal feedback written on a post it note or written in that book, it's it's not independent if you have told them what to do, you know what I mean? Yeah, completely. And that's different to you can have, you can give them a, a piece of paper and tell them to plan.

56:24 That's not telling them what to do. But why by telling what to do, I mean telling them what to write as in like specifically their creative ideas, their sentence structure. That's what we're not supposed to do. You know, the three weeks of lessons beforehand, That's OK because you have to teach the children how to do it. But when it comes to that one independent piece of writing, it's independent. You have to leave them alone and they have to go from the start of that process, at the end of that process by themselves. Can you imagine being sat in a maths SAT paper next to a child and then on post it notes, scribbling down how to work things out and putting it down. Then the child looking at it going OK, I'll do that and then taking the post notes out. It was themselves, it was themselves. We're going to mark it. Well it's no different to verbal feedback. Yeah, that would be cheating and a test as well. It sounds insane, doesn't it, that, but that is literally what's happening.

57:04 Just because it's not in a test environment and we do it through moderation, people think and get away with it. And you know what some schools do? They're like, oh, we'll get around it. We won't use post it notes. We'll do tracing paper. No, sorry. No, no, it's not the post it note that's the problem is the concept. We don't do post it notes or tracing paper. We just have separate books. I've heard of schools publishing 3 books before. I actually spoke to someone recently for writing. Yeah, for writing. They had a draught book that was like a scrapbook. They had that actual English book, which is where they did their first draught. And I know this sounds mental. And then they had their publishing book, which is where they wrote up their final copy, cheated between the three books. Yeah. It basically just allowed the teacher complete freedom to somewhere in that process, they could just give them the exact feedback they need and just manufacture that independent. No, it's insane.

57:46 By the way, all of this happens in loads of scores, and still only 13% of children in year 6 are greater depth. Yeah, I'm going to rant about this if you don't stop me, but let's just think about this for a second then. So SAS data this year, right, we're looking at the kind of greater depth bar in reading and maths. It's around 30%. I think reading was 33% and maths was 26% if I remember right. That's really sad, right? That's getting greater depth in writing. It's 13%. Doesn't that just scream at you that even with all this, even with, even though the fact that we all know this happens in so many schools or this cheating through writing, we're still only getting 13% of greater depth writers. That to me screams the bar is clearly way too high.

58:27 The bar is astronomically too high. How can it be so much lower than the other subjects consistently every year? By the way, the last like 5 years, yeah, it's been 13%. Even before COVID, the gap wasn't as big, but there was a gap there. And if you go back to 2016, 1715% were greater death writers and this year 13% are greater death writers. So we can look at the move and how it's changed stuff, COVID, etcetera. But fundamentally that does absolutely show the bar's too high. And I guess what you're saying is your moment was, oh, I need to play this game. Yeah, I don't want to play the game. It was more like I was happy playing the game before the game of teaching, whatever that is. And yeah, I had my gripes within it. But when, when I'm outside, when my fundamental morals and values of what I think teaching is are no longer even in the boundaries of the game anymore, I'm like, oh, this, this broke it broke it for me. It completely broke the illusion. So I offered a long time there.

59:18 Dylan, I want to hear about your moment. Did you have a moment similar or I've? Been thinking all the way through because I I often, I often go for generic generic vibes, don't I? About why it's good, why it's bad. But I'm trying to pick a specific moment. It was when I kind of became sentient as to what I was being asked to do in progress meetings. So let me explain. What wound me up and winds me up massively is when children are being given to me as a list from the top down because they form part of a predetermined group and I need to spend all my time focusing on them in my lessons. Right. OK, so as a teacher, my moral compass is very simple. If I teach a lesson to a group of children, whether it's 15 of them or 30 of them, if someone doesn't understand something, I will go and help them.

1:00:05 If someone still doesn't understand something, we'll do an intervention group or I'll focus on the next lesson. My whole outlook is if a child needs help, I'll give it to them. If they understand something, I'll stretch them. It's as simple on the spot. It's adaptive, right? It changes. It could be different children every day. And I think that's good practise. It should be different children every day, right? But what happens is you sit in a pupil progress meeting and then we look at these arbitrary lines we've made-up. So you're in a, you're in a meeting with, with, with senior leadership. And I know why they're focused on it because it's important that school get data at the right points and stuff. I think that's broken. But then I'm told, OK, look, we've got this group of six children and they're hovering on their assessments halfway through the year, two or three marks away from the expected standard in year 4. So if we just put all of our focus and our limited resources on these children, we might move them into the next band. And that will look great for data. Huge net gain for data, huge net gain for data looks amazing. But what that means is that every lesson I'm looking at a predetermined group of children that I need to give all my resources and help to just to get them past an arbitrary line. When actually, if someone is secure, expected right in the middle of that and no danger of dropping at all, they're still just as important to me.

1:01:19 And more importantly, I think the children who are below who have no chance of moving up at all, they're just as important to me as well. So if I'm going to be in a classroom and being told, well, there's an arbitrary line we've drawn as to what's expected for year year 4 or Year 5 or year 6 or whatever it might be. So we need to focus on these children. I tell you what, their five percentage point move is just as important to me, yeah, as A5 percentage point move of someone nowhere near a boundary that we've made-up. So as a teacher, fundamentally I hated that. And that really planted the seed of doubt because, again, very good, lovely, nice people who are trying to do the right thing, who have just a different opinion and, and different pressures maybe than me are saying to do this. I don't fundamentally dislike these people at all. And I understand why they're doing it. And that's why for me this was a watershed moment where I said, ah, I fundamentally think different and don't agree with this, so I need to not do this job anymore. So my analogy then of the kind of game applies to you as well, doesn't it really?

1:02:19 I was thinking about it when you were talking for you, the game within teaching is as a teacher, I should prioritise giving help to children who need it the most, right? And unfortunately, the actual game that you're saying here that you became Privy to is as a teacher, you should prioritise the children who can give us the best net gain in data, right? And you were like, Oh no, that's not why we should be teaching. And that kind of the illusion for you as? Well, yeah, that percentage point move past an arbitrary line in the middle, to me isn't that isn't as important as a potential point move for anyone, just in making them better. If you have three children, right, Child A, child B and child C, and they all make 15 percentage point move in their progress, I'm equally happy and chuffed for all of them.

1:03:00 If only one of them goes past the boundary, only one of them shows up on your data. Yeah, yeah. And that was the most. Important one, you should have. You should have done that. Well done. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, the others made the same amount of progress and I'm just as proud and happy for them as well. And when our limited resources are disproportionately channelled towards just one of those children. And, and you could even argue that actually, if we were going to be disproportionate, maybe the child at the lower end probably needed that support more than anyone because they're way below the standard. We really need to be helping them get up to it, but it just doesn't happen it. Just doesn't happen. And I think that fundamentally I just thought we are, we are, here's how we can set it up. I think we both realise that we're playing a game. Yeah. And and the game doesn't follow the rules we want to follow.

1:03:42 Maybe that's just us entering adulthood and being aware of things around us. Everything's a game. Maybe that's true. But yeah, it fundamentally didn't match up. And I think we've spoken a lot about how over the last couple of years, I think it's moved from us having a genuine gripes about the job, things that we think could be changed and improved to now maybe even more stuff where we're just like, oh, OK, this is fundamental to this job and I disagree or I don't want to do it. So actually I think we've made the right call. Yeah. So at the start of this chat, we said are we, are we making a mistake? I think the answer's pretty clear. We're not making a mistake. I don't think so, because you know what someone might say to you? Oh, you've got your tutoring and your podcast. Of course it's easy for you to quit. Well, yeah, because I thought for many years now I'm going to put this extra work in, build the podcast up, build our tutoring up to have the choice to quit.

1:04:30 Yeah. And worse comes to worse, OK, it doesn't work out. And we we try it for a year or two, we'll go back into teaching if we like. Good intentions are always there. Like I don't want to quit. No, I actually don't want to. Like we started this podcast to try and make a change. I I tried, I speak up in staffing as I speak up to all the people I can to try and make a change. But like you said, there's only so many years you can, you can watch people be like, yeah, that would be a good change, wouldn't it? And then not do it anything. I don't think I can. I don't think I can make this difference I need to make. And I don't want to play this game anymore. This is just, I'm going to miss it. I'm going to miss the bits I love about it, but the bits I love about it aren't in the boundaries of the game anymore. So there's no I can't do it. Last thing then, and we've spoken about this a lot, lots of Ects, this thing might be thinking, oh gosh, these guys are quit and they think they're doing the right thing. Would you change anything? Do you regret anything?

1:05:12 What do you mean? In your career, would you do you regret going into teaching? Would you what you're talking directly now to an ECT? OK. I would say to them it's the best job. Yeah, it's not. The best job at all I I regret nothing Yeah, genuinely, I have no regrets. I've absolutely love this career, Yeah, and I've just said I wish I could do it for. Longer, How can we? But how can we sit here and say it's the best job, but then say all that? But but do you know what? I stand by it because the moments you get in that job are unbelievable, an unbelievable experience. You might not be doing it for the whole of your life. No. OK. But I would definitely, definitely, if you're the right personality, phrase up into it. Yeah. Thanks. This thing, guys. We'll catch you again next time for another episode all the way through the summer weekly, baby. Let's go.

1:05:52 See you there. See ya.