Ep 150: How Teachers Can Deal With Tricky Parents

0:00 Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Teach Seat Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name is. Hayden, this week we're going to be giving you our top tips on how to deal with parents. I've got a little game for Dylan and before all of that. Hayden wants to have a little catch up. Let's do that, OK? You can't be asked to lead this one, so I'll. I'll do it. Don't worry about it. Fine. You've planned everything through. You've done your own episode for once, but you don't want the listeners. To know for once. Yeah, you don't want the listeners to know, you know. You want to just keep it all normal. So I'll lead. It's fine. I'll take all the Flack for chatting all the time even though you refuse to do it yourself. And you edit it as well. Edit it afterwards as well. Do all the work. Honestly, social media doesn't. Count, Honestly, yeah, you you cut a few gaps and I make 50,000 followers on Instagram. It's very cool.

0:42 Let's have a quick catch. Up. Go on. Yeah. Shall we? What do you want to catch up about? Well, it's look, it's been just over 2 months now since we did not go back to teaching. I'm not counting some holidays, right? So from September, I just want to catch up and see how you're feeling because I felt we used to do this all the time on the podcast and a few people have said I miss your catch UPS because we used to, we used to. I, I, let's be honest, our catch UPS normally spiralled into some complete nonsensical chat for like 15 minutes. But I do kind of miss the chat, the catch UPS as well. Now, since we've introduced the Q&A episode each week, I feel like we've kind of changed our structure up a little bit and I miss it. I just miss it, you know? So I thought it'd be nice to retention off. The curve right now off you. Guys, get back in. Not even that.

1:23 Don't talk about yourselves please. I click this for parental advice. Look, don't worry, it's not going to be completely off the rails here. I'm going to keep it within education because I want to know how you're feeling because it's been a couple of months since we've quit teaching, not gone back to teaching. And I just want to know now that the initial, that few first few weeks, we were super excited. We reflect on the podcast like, wow, this is so different. How are you feeling now? It's been a few months. Has anything changed? No. I think it's been more and more as I've gone on, cemented that it was definitely the right choice for me in this moment, that is for sure. Luckily we've been able to stay quite busy. Well, you know, we talked quite a lot in the episodes recently about the maths platform we're building. So exciting.

2:05 Can't wait to get that up and running. And if it's something you're interested in, by the way, get in touch with us. We're going to try and solve fluency and just get something out there for arithmetic and children doing maths. So get in touch and you can be on the list to try out first. Good pleasure. Definitely go. No, definitely, because I think we're going to help a lot of people. I'm really excited about that. I agree. So a lot of the time goes into that. We're keeping busy. But here's what I love about it. I love the flexibility. I value flexibility so much, so much now in in where I am my life. And I feel quite privileged to be able to have that because it's very, very, very easy, isn't it, to say to someone, yeah, just take it. Just quit your teacher. Be flexible. But it's not an option for everyone. So I feel very, very lucky, which I need to keep reminding myself because it can be be quite a drag sometimes. I'm working from home a lot of the time. There's lots to get done.

2:53 Everything is kind of off our own backs. We're self-employed essentially right now. Everything we do being self. Everyone out there who is self-employed or maybe has a partner who is self-employed will know how much hard work goes into that as well. It's not just teaching is awful, there's a utopia and everything else you come from and where teachers work so hard they do doesn't mean other people don't work hard. So it's not like we've just had an easy road now. But the flexibility is amazing. I think whilst I've got young children, I've said this, I'll say it again, whilst I've got Rory, who's to, the flexibility is the number one thing. Even though we've taken a pay cut to do this, quite a sizable pay card, I'd say it's the time, the flexibility right now.

3:33 I will never regret this, You know, I mean, like when I'm 45, you know, if I need to step into a role and then lots more money again and work 10 times as much, I will. And you know, you need to be answering someone to be in the exact place at exact time. Cool. But right now this suits me. I could do work when I want. So to answer the question, there are pros and cons. It's not just the utopia now we've left, but it certainly suits me way more and the pros are more beneficial for me. Yeah. Sure. Is there anything? I'll come to me in a minute. I'm going to quiz you for a while. I'm the interview. I'm leading this podcast, if you didn't realise. Actually, I'm. Yeah, I'm sorry, sorry. We're going to go back to the episode where you talked 95%. Of the time, yeah. You was there anything that every episode. Yeah, this is it. Now I'm just the. Come on, Jonathan Ross. Is there anything you didn't expect to miss that you do miss? You think, actually, I really do miss this from school, from the classroom that you maybe didn't anticipate straight away, unbelievably.

4:23 I miss interacting with people, but he's very unbelievable for you, like genuinely, because even though you know anyone who's worked for me will know that I am very, I keep myself to myself. It's the kind of thing that I remember the head teacher even said to me once he was like, oh, thank you, do a great job. You just keep yourself to keep yourself to yourself and crack on. And he meant it only in a positive way. But I was like, oh, OK, clearly does come across like I'm not the most chatty person. I don't really do small talk, but what I really enjoyed was still having a team, some people I could talk to every now and then, knowing that that was part of something, you know what I mean? And have you still got that kind of community aspect with the team of working with maths? They're amazing people. I absolutely love working with them. But a lot of time is now spent me sat in that chair over there doing work on the computer, not necessarily the most inspiring work in the world. I knew that I'd miss actually teaching the children and nothing comes close to that in terms of how to spend my time, but I knew that was going to happen. But yeah, in terms of your question, what do I not expect to miss?

5:19 I think I find myself sometimes at like half two thinking I've not actually interacted with another human being at all. And even though I wasn't necessarily doing my colleagues all the time, I did it every now and then. I was interacting with people all the time and my kids in front of me all the time. I was constantly interacting, constantly talking, constantly chatting, had my teaching assistants in the room whenever they're with me. I was part of a team, Yeah. I missed that more than I. Thought I would. Sometimes you don't realise the passive benefits of just being around people. Even if you don't feel like you're actively going, I'm going to go and interact with this person. You're obviously interacting with people, including children all the time. You just take for granted. I feel exactly the same. Like I again, I knew that I had missed the kids, but I don't think I realised how much it would impact me mentally. Like I'm definitely struggling more than I thought I would in terms of just being at home all the time. People always said I was.

6:09 I guess I was kind of anticipating it based on the fact that everyone ever says to me who works from home, they're always like, oh, give it some time. You'll start getting bored. You'll be your home. Body. I know, which is why I thought maybe I wouldn't really mind that much, but I, but I think I do like, I think, I think sometimes the days go by and I'm not, I don't feel like I'm naturally as motivated sometimes and I'm like, oh, maybe I, maybe I do just need to get out of the house and do something. Even even the teaching days where you think you come home, you think, Oh my God, that was such a slog. There was something to be said about the reward of coming home, and that sounds really. Silly. Yeah, I know what you mean. Like even when you've had a tough day, at the end of that day being like, do you know what, I'm going to mark this in the morning, I'm going to head home. That felt nice. That felt good because it was so tough. I could appreciate how nice it was. Whereas when I'm at home, I'm like, I'll roll out of bed and walk for four steps to my Home Office and then work there all day.

6:53 And then when the day kind of finishes, I'm like, what do I just move out of this room again? And then I'm back in my kitchen and that's kind of it. There's no, it's all closer. Yeah. It's just odd. I never really anticipated this and how like mentally I make some days I just feel a bit like, yeah, there's not much. There's not enough change happening. So that's the only bit I'd say I'm struggling with that I didn't really think of. You know, we've been working with you. We're we're building our mass platform. Yeah. And we're working with some people from a brand called Story Zoo. We spoke to Sophie on this podcast when we were leaving. She left teaching, went into that world. And there was a few opportunities in the past where we've had to like, go and physically do something with them. I went up to Birmingham recently to a, it was like a SEND show, helping children with additional needs. And Sophie was running a stand with her husband, Sam. And I went as well.

7:42 And it was US 3 and we were talking to send codes and it was all about stories. You know, if you go and check out stories, it's this kind of platform that they're building to help home readers, to encourage reading. It's had some really, really good beneficial outcomes for children just to get them being able to just access things that's suitable for them. And there's a lot of SEND kind of adjustments they're making in terms of, you know, that think of traditional overlays, etcetera. And there's a lot of discussion around that. But it's there as an option, the type of text you have, accessibility options, go and have a look because it's really good what they're doing. But the point I had is there was just just going there and being able to spend the day talking to people, talking to people who are working at Sencos in school.

8:25 That's kind of think where my push recently has come from. Being like this is such a hard job for you guys. And every single person we spoke to was so passionate about helping children. And I miss that. I don't get that as much when I'm sat there. You know, we've been making arithmetic tests. You know, we've been sat there building arithmetic tests for every year group. Can't wait to release those as well. We're just plugging everything here. But it's really exciting. It's really fun, but nothing can replace being in a room with passionate people being in a room and talking to people who are passionate about helping children. And I just, I'm going to take every opportunity I can. Do you know what I mean? I want to go to shows. We're going to go to the BET show in January, talk to some educators. We're going to go to as many as we can. And I think we need to keep doing that. That's that's what I'd reflect and I'd say to you now, like we have to keep making sure we have things in our calendar that are physical face to face, talking to people who work in schools all the time.

9:14 Definitely. And. Getting in schools, I know we've been invited to a school to come and see how they do play, continuous play, and I'm like, I'm buzzer. I want to do that so badly. I just want to get in school and honestly I just want to be in that that that buzz again and just interact with. What you're listening fighters along? Absolutely. Especially if you're in Kent. If you're in school in Kent, we'll come. We'll happily come to your school and have a look around, have chat, be really good. Bumble around. Just walk around pretending we're retired. Yeah, we're just retired. We just walk around schools. Now there's one thing I wanted to talk about. What we're doing is catch up. You talked about things that maybe you didn't realise would be a negative. Has there been any point then in the last couple of months where you've thought, Oh my God, yeah, this is what I thought, This is why I expect it's better than I thought. Definitely. And it is very much linked to your whole flexibility thing is the fact that we're in complete control now of when we do things.

10:01 So having multiple occasions now where I've literally said to you, I am doing this thing with my daughter and Lauren all day today. I'll do the bits of work we're doing tonight. You do all the time, all the. Time every day in fact, and I don't do it an evening, but like that is such a privilege and it's so easy to come very quickly, forget how much of A privilege that is because it just becomes your normal life. And I'll look at the, you know, I'll realise it's the school run. I didn't realise, you know, there'll be loads of people frantic going around. What are these people doing on the streets? God, get out of here, you know, get out of my way. I'm trying to have a nice day. And then it's those moments where I'm like, Oh yeah, the majority of people are just, whether they like it or not, just at work doing their job right now. And, and in this moment, the flexibility that I've managed to have. And yes, it did come up, like you said, a massive pay cut. I'm not going to pretend that everything is like everything has just exponentially got better, but that is a huge perk. And that to me, I'm like, oh God, I, I don't think I could trade this back in because I get to, I can spend some time with my child now at times when I normally wouldn't be able to. So that's really lovely.

10:55 Do you think I'm listening to this now? I'd love to know what people are thinking because my thought genuinely is just like, oh shut up, you 2 going on and on about how great it is and you know, people can't do it, etcetera. And there's loads of people listening who are on their way to school who are wishing maybe they had something similar. And it's not necessarily maybe helpful to hear us have this conversation. Obviously we're going to catch up about it. It's been real. So I guess maybe the last thing we can round up on then is just do you think we've already lost a bit of touch with teaching? Do you think we've already lost a little bit of something? Or is it just a case of just with describing how it is? Guys, I don't think we've lost touch yet. I think everyone thinks they don't lose touch, and I don't think I've lost touch at all with teaching. And maybe that's due to the fact that it has only been a couple of months, right, For a start, yeah, I don't personally think I've lost touch with teaching. I think because we do this and we're still so involved in education, I think maybe if I'd quit teaching to go and work on the trains, right?

11:44 And that was what I did and I didn't, I just had no involvement in education any more than maybe after a couple of months, I'd start to lose touch. But I think because we keep our ear to the ground and we talk to a lot of educators and we keep up with the news and we do this podcast and obviously researching things. I run their socials. You run all the socials and build our Instagram up to 50K followers, that sort of thing, I think. Therefore, I don't think I've lost touch. No, I don't think I've lost touch at all. No, I don't think at all. Do you think we won't? There'll be a point where we do, maybe. There'll certainly be a point where we do in terms of from the outlook of a classroom teacher. Yeah, that will happen with the best of intentions, you know, people who still stay in education and still maybe go and do some training or something or, you know, just do, oh, I'm just going to do a lesson every now and then, but I've got a million other things going on. Yeah, you just will naturally.

12:30 But I think by, you know, submersing ourself in this culture, talking to teachers all the time, we've got our WhatsApp community where we literally have over like 200 people in a WhatsApp community talking to each other, helping each other out. I love keeping my ear to the ground here, helping people. It's so good. Honestly, I would say to you, if you're looking for a community, click the link down below because it is really, really, really nice and people are so lovely. I just, I think that's what it is. I miss being around lovely people and teaching and education and schools in general seem to attract the most lovely people I've ever met. You know, down to teaching assistants, you know, people who help us serve the school dinners, site managers. I'm talking about all those people as well as the obvious classroom teachers, etcetera.

13:10 The people on the ground doing jobs or working in schools, they're not doing it for the pay, are they? They're not doing it for the pay, let's be real. And they tend to be the most lovely people that want to help kids. And and that's where I certainly feel like I'm missing it because I'm talking to you hates. Children I did 10. Years. But no, jokes aside, that's where I feel like I'm like, am I losing touch because I'm not in the classroom every single day? Eventually, I definitely will. I don't think I am. You know, we've got a huge listener race to this podcast now, and I'd like to think that they also don't think, please, hopefully, hopefully. If you do think it, don't tell. Us well, if anything, if you look at the numbers on our podcast since we quit and started doing a couple episodes a week, listen to questions. But in the community it's grown.

13:53 If anything, I think we're now I think IA is A1 and truly to the ground. But yeah, personal nice little catch up there. I would say it was the right choice. I don't have regrets, that's for sure. What about you? Do you have regrets? Overall, no, I don't regret it, but like I said, like I don't I don't what I don't want to make people think is the grass is just always greener, like in in every situation, because it's genuine. Isn't I've I think I've been quite honest about a few of the things I struggle with at the moment, and I need to make some changes. Like I'm definitely have to change my life a bit in terms of exercise. Genuinely honest. You know, it sounds silly, but like doesn't sound silly in terms of like you normally make out of. Exercise. But it's real, it's in exercise, diet, genuinely just getting outside of to the house, looking after my mental health.

14:33 Ironically, I feel like I have to do more than ever. And I come from a career in teaching where I felt like mental health was such a huge like it's it's something that was so high up in the priorities. You have to look after yourself because it can be such a burnout job. And ironically, my mental health feels like it's arguably in the most like it could potentially in the world. Yeah, fragile place it's ever been. So yeah, it's just I think it's good to talk about. I think we should be honest and not just say, Oh yeah, it's all great. And. You know what you need to do? Genuinely be real with you right now. You need to just bloody do it because you've been saying this to me for over a month. I know, like I know I'm doing this from a nice place now just do it then I'm. Doing it now like I'm out of it. I'm off to exercise, guys. That's great. It's been a great one. Thanks for chilling. In no, but honestly, because I need to do it as well. Yeah, I'm talking to myself here. Just do it.

15:17 We all know what the right answer is. You need to bloody do it. Sometimes go for 1/2 an hour walk in the day. I get too obsessed with work. Yeah, I'm so bad at drawing. You've. Always been bad at that I'm. Sorry, when I get up and I think I could, I could go and do a run or something or I could just get on with the thing I've been thinking about the last 12 hours because I want to continue doing this job and building the thing we're building. And I find it so hard to just be like, no, set a boundary. You're not doing that. You're doing this thing first and then you can carry on your work. You might get a bit less done today, but. If you're done. But if that's not, that's not right this time you might get a bit less done, but but that's OK. And I really struggle with that. I'm like, Oh no, I can't. How can I possibly get less done than I've already planned out in my head? Yeah. So that you've you've. Made. I've made-up. Yeah, completely invented. Yeah, because I've like we're literally accountable to ourselves. I cannot use that excuse anymore. At least before I could say yeah, well, the head teacher needs it done or my team are waiting for this thing. It's like, no, I literally, I'm making it up. So yeah, I need.

16:07 To I'll tell you what, your personality very quickly you, you made-up, you had this workaholic thing, right? If you didn't have the top dog tutoring that we did and the side businesses, etcetera, and everything we're focusing on whilst we're teaching, you would have turned into the teacher that you say needs to calm down and not do stuff. And you would have said that, but still done all the stuff you would have done for school. You kind of built that for you on the side where you could go away and spend 3 hours a day doing something different and easily be like, no, you need to say no to work. So it's very interesting. So true. You would have really struggled to be the person listening to us I think, but unless you had the side stuff. Think that would have happened ever? I don't, I don't think that reality could have happened because I think the only reason I did all of that stuff is because I also immediately also appreciated that that is not OK in terms of doing all that extra free workload. And I was like, if I'm going to do that, I'm going to channel it somewhere for my business, for my own, for my, for my business where I'm not just giving up my all my time for free for nothing.

16:55 Like, yeah, great point. So like, I don't think I was ever going to do that. Yeah, brilliant. I was always going to do. That's a good point. Anyway, Anyways, right, I've got a little game for you. So last week you had a little game for me. Embarrassed you. You embarrassed me. I don't know what PFA was, which haunts me. I couldn't believe parent teachers friends frog friends association Dylan I learned I. Love, by the way, if you go back and listen to it, you said a word that doesn't begin with a after. I know it was. I said trust or something. Yeah, trust PTC. I literally thought that. I'm glad you brought it out. Thanks for embarrassing me again. No problem. So I'm going to try to embarrass you now. I've. I've got literally just five questions and they're true or false. OK, OK, that is it. All right, so let's see if you have lost touch for education. Oh, OK. All right.

17:36 Let's just see right 24.7% of pupils in state funded schools in England were eligible for free school meals in January 2025. Is that true or false? False. I think it's higher. You think it's higher? Yeah. It's not 24.7%. You're correct, it's false. It's 25.7%. Free school meal eligibility is up from the previous year despite there being 60,000 fewer children in school. Oh my. Gosh. 60,000 fewer children in. School and the previous year. But free school meal eligibility is higher. Yeah, it's true. Like I'm glad I got that right because I, I remember a cohort that I had one year quite recently went to, I think it was 34% free school males because we work in a slightly more deprived area.

18:22 But how many? Kids and it was more deprived area we worked in. But then like again, if you think about the average is 25%, right? There'll be people listening though. My school's 42%, my school's 45%. Just shows you the range we have and the post code lottery that we have. And funnily enough, you know, I've had schools, I've seen schools before who can do lots of amazing stuff for their children because they have the high percentage. That's how it should work, isn't it? You know, of course if these children lower deprived areas, schools should get a bit more money to be able to then provide. I know a local school near near me who has a very high level of pupil premium free school meal eligibility who have made the decision to have free school meals for everyone. Yeah, I know for the. Whole for everyone who goes to that school, they have free school meals and I'm just like fantastic. You know, whether you fall into eligibility criteria or not, you should still get more if you need that. But that all they did was they looked at their community and they went do you know what?

19:15 OK, this line we've made let's just serve our community and feed children and I was so good and they have a really high you know, level of need and it just took that out for parents. Just take that out completely because they had the funding to do it as it should be. Yeah, definitely. As we should be doing. It's mad to think that people would be like, have such like, I know there'll be people out there that would be like, that's terrorised. You should. Feed your own. Exactly like that. OK, you should. Cool. You should. I don't care though. I'm going to feed kids. Yeah, I'm going to feed kids. And like, OK, you can honestly sit there and tell me why that's wrong. So until you're red in the face and I'll just be like, all right, well, I think we should feed kids.

19:58 That's the end of the discussion. Yeah, don't care. Children, them. I don't care. I just you are. The parents should feed them. OK? They can spend their money on something else. Yeah, they can take it to something and go to the museum now, Yeah. Whatever, whatever. Don't care. They. Can go and take Roy for the. Country. They'll just be going to buy some facts from Carter Shop. They were going to do that anyway. Yeah, they were going to do that anyway. It just means they had less money for their children at the end. So if we cover the food, there's more money for the kids. Yeah, Yeah. We can guarantee something, yeah, that they're going to get fed 5%. Oh well, they just fed that, but no, no, no no, no. Kid got fed. I ended it and kid got fed. There you go. Sorry to say as well, you're being passionate and you ignore my joke about taking Roy to see trains. So can you please acknowledge the fact that I'm. Joking. We went to see Rory, we went to see Rory, we took Roy to see some trains.

20:41 Funny enough, his ticket was free so there's no money and. How long did he spend looking at that? It's me, a long time, like father, like son, who wants to press that button to make the train guys so funny. Yeah, it was really good. Wonder works in Margate if anyone is like remotely local to where we are, it's like a hidden gem. Something interesting about anyway one nil to me. One nil bit annoyingly so. Next question. By the way, sorry very quickly, you didn't give me much leeway on that exactly. It's higher. It's nought point nought 1% higher. Well done. Annoyingly, that was the joke, but you were so in the zone I'll brush over it. I literally made change by 1% hoping you get it wrong and then get annoyed at the fact that I'd made it 1% different. You got it right you. Got it right and I still got annoyed. It's like, no, it's waiting this next.

21:22 Ruin my joke. There were 6,424,321. Children in the UK but OK ready The Northeast has seen the biggest fall in trainee teachers in England, down by 56% since 2019-2020. Right, OK, listen, is the true or false thing here the exact #4 or is it that the Northeast is is dropping? It's a true or false game mate. You've really set me up. It's a true or false game. True. Damn it, you're ruining my game. True. I was supposed to throw you off and you're like, oh, you've messed me up. That is true. Your narrative is not worth. It's really, really rude. Every single rest of them is true, isn't? It if you I'll tell you what if you get, I'll actually be considering I've purposely made this to try and make you get it wrong so I can make a fool of you. If you get 5 out of five on this, I'm walking out and doing some exercise.

22:07 And get me a pack of Whisper Gold. I promise you. All right, go on. Can I get a whisper gold per answer? I'm already on 2. This is now, this is the deal. OK, I'm going to go middle ground. If you get 4 or five out of five, I'll give you a bit of leeway there. One I will go and and to Tesco's after this and buy you a pack of Whisper Golds. I can't wait to post that with no context on Instagram and then when people eventually that is the deal, they'll know why. Bearing in mind by this point I was adamant you'd be on zero out of two 2, so you're on 2. So just to repeat that one because if case you want to talk about it. The Northeast has seen the biggest fall in trainee teachers in England, down by 56% since 2019-2020. Why do you? Think that if it's very quick, if it was down by 54% would you have said I was wrong in saying it was true? Yeah, I was really open that you were going to try and double bluff me and think you've made-up you've you've changed it by 1 and I but no, it's true.

22:53 Do you know what, I'm not even going to pretend to be an expert on this kind of thing in terms of different parts of the country, but it doesn't surprise me. And again, we've got listed up in the Northeast. I'd love to hear more because I'm always hearing in the news about the North-south divide, the amount of money in different areas, deprivation, etcetera. It, it doesn't shock me that that's been lowering up there. It's a real shame. We need as many teachers from as many different backgrounds as possible. And it's such a shame when it it feels sometimes like affluence links to, you know, how many teachers we get. And it's like a huge amount of teachers are, you know, white middle class people. And I think it's best for our children to have the most diverse range of, of teachers, not only racially, obviously, but just in terms of, you know, affluence class, etcetera.

23:36 Kids need to see everyone. So the the more the better. And it's worrying that, you know, that part of the country seems to be falling. Yeah, it's down a lot. I was genuinely shocked at the number. It's such a huge amount. Right, next one honestly ruining my game. 20. Percent of pupils in the 2024 to 2025 academic year were classified as persistently absent. And just to make sure you know exactly what that means, that is, they missed 10% or more of possible sessions. That's how you define persistently. Absent. It's false. It's fewer. It's less than that, I think. He's got three out of three. It is false. Not for that reason. It was the 2023 to 2024 year, all right. I can't believe I was in this game so. I thought it was in the teens, that percentage.

24:16 That's interesting. Maybe when I saw. It, well it has come down a bit. So for context, the previous 2022-2023 it was 21.2% and it went down to 20%. So it's ever so slight change. Do you? Think fines are working I. Don't know it's still 20% of children. Yeah, it's a lot and. There's so much persistently absent. Just maybe there's 1% become homeschooled. Yeah, potentially, potentially, I don't know, but yeah, I thought it was a. Shocking. That's a. That's a high bar though, isn't it as well to have that many reaching that high of a bar? What was the definition again? So it's so they missed 10% or more of possible sessions. So that's so in sessions, because absence is done in sessions, which is 2 a day. So that's why you do 2 registers more than an afternoon. So 10%. So that's one session.

24:57 That's half a day every week. Yeah. So one day every two weeks. So one in five children are missing more than a day every two weeks. Yeah. That's a lot, Yeah, it's a lot, isn't it? That's a lot. It's a lot, I guess if you have a week long holiday that that ratio means what's that? A week long holiday is 10 sessions, Yeah. So that's 10 weeks, right. So you can go on one week long. Holiday, that's such a good point. If you go on one week long holiday in a big time, you are technically could be classed as persistently absent. Yeah. But then I guess, yeah, that's interesting. And even if, like, let's say if you took the holiday out right across the whole year, let's say, you wouldn't have tipped into that persistently absent bit, but the holiday topped it up. So 10% on 190 days, that's 19 days, Yeah. So 19 days off a year is persistent. 19 days off a year sounds like quite a lot.

25:45 It does, didn't it? Like, you know, we talk about how it's fine to take children out every now and then if you're I'll, you shouldn't come into school. And I'm sure there's some, you know, there's some absences out there that go above that and it's all completely above board. It's like, yeah, you're oppositely, absolutely, but you should be. It's fine. Yeah, yeah. And yeah. They sound like a lot though, like. Would it be 19 days if it's 10% of missed sessions? Yeah, 10% though, isn't it? It's 10% of missed sessions though. Yeah, there. Yeah. But there's OK, 190 days is 380 sessions, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so 38 sessions, which is. 19 Oh, I see. Yeah, OK. 10% works. You know what? I. Need. I need. I need, I need. Yeah, but crazy. That's not always. I think we talked about a couple of years ago and it hasn't changed much from a tiny bit, but like. There's one star I read about this recently. It was that Dylan's on Three Nil. It is, yeah, crazy.

26:28 In a game designed to meet you get 0. Three hours as well, which is I just can't do quizzes badly. Really quite annoying, right? Here we go. Ready. Yeah. In January 2025, average class sizes infants, which is Reception Tier 2 dropped to 26.2, which is the lowest since 2009. True. Oh, I thought we have to re record this whole podcast where you lose because you're on which you've guaranteed them with packet wish for gold. You guaranteed a packet Wish for gold. I saw, I saw us that about 26 points something. I just hedged. I thought I, you know, I was so adamant that you'd go for something because I was like, we've talked about how class size is getting ridiculous. Now, here's the thing, Hayden, I just have knowledge of stuff. You can't trick knowledge. You can't trick that. You just got to get around it.

27:10 Honestly, I saw, I saw something about 26 points. I remember thinking to myself, really, what's called these? Where's how's the average 26.2 like? It's dropped to that. Which is the lowest since 2009. And the reason behind that is very very simple. I'm sure we can get it. Has dropped, It is true. Just just reiterate. It's true. What? Why do you think that is? Oh, just because I'm right. It's the birth rate. We've talked about the birth rate before, but the birth rate is so low right now. So in those early years, there's just not as many times. Interesting how the averages will will like kind of fluctuate and change in terms of school closures because like as schools begin to close, because like they're just, you know, known for free form to two form, maybe one form entry, schools closing, the average will be bumped back up again because it's fewer classes. So watching that over time would be interesting to see because I can't imagine the government letting it too low.

27:55 Yeah, quite expensive. Such an interesting point because yeah, if they close enough schools you can make the average as high as you want if you just cram enough kids into a queer of schools. Yeah, so it'd be interesting to watch that maybe I will continue to watch that and keep my ear to the ground, not not losing touch of education clearly because I've got 4 out of four I've skilled my whisper gold. This is about we almost don't need to do this I. Don't. We don't. I don't. This is for glory. OK, I can abstain if I want to. You can't say yeah, this is. Glory, I'm going to read out this. This is hilarious. Now read out this little bit. I wrote to myself. It's false. I wrote this little note for myself. It's false. I was meant to say to you at this point. Yeah, a little hint for you as you're doing so bad. That's what I wrote down here. Yeah, false. Just think about the last one we just talked about to help you answer this last. Question False False. Right. You're gonna false, right? The pupil to teacher ratio for primary schools in England rose for the first time in recent years, meaning there were more pupils per teacher on average than previous. That's true.

28:44 What makes you think that? I think I've read that somewhere again, like when people like you, you have like stats out there that make it sound like it's improving and like I'm like, oh, we've improved this. I think that could be true, but then I'm thinking about the whole premise of this game and you give me a hint to basically walk me towards it being true. I thought you might have written that knowing it's false. OK, what are you saying for I think retention. I think recruitment's got quite good as well actually, and there's fewer children than ever. Sorry, final answer. Read the question one more time. One more time, OK. And I said think about the last one, which is about the fact. That I know, you said. I think you're you're going against, you're trying to make me. Maybe maybe The pupil to teacher ratio for primary schools in England rose for the first time in recent years, meaning there were more pupils per teacher on average than previous years. I've that, that means I think it's false. There were more pupils.

29:35 No, that's false. Sorry. That's true. Yes, yes. I said true, to be fair. Though Oh, you're such an idiot. You're such an idiot. I can't believe you got 4 out of five in this game. When you said true at first, did you not see me go? Why do you think that thinking? Oh, come on. No, you Really. I do. You know what? Do you know what's really interesting? The only time I let gameplay get into my head I got it wrong. I know right? You went true. That's so funny. Gosh. I thought that was genuinely interesting though considering because I was a bit like that doesn't make any sense to me. Because, well, teachers leaving. Not replacing them. Yeah. So it's simple as this, right? Even though, even though class sizes are getting smaller because the perf rate's smaller, teachers are leaving even faster than kids aren't being born. How mental is that? Yeah, that's crazy. Like it's going even faster the down. That's nuts.

30:16 Yeah. I just can't believe that. Yeah, I can see that though because we left teaching and our roles were not advertised. It was just like, OK, we'll make deal, we're going to downsize a bit. So yeah, I can again, I can see that be interesting in to watch over time like how that changes when schools close maybe and classes close now. Last year do you How many teachers left overall? This includes, wasn't it 40,041 thousand? Because it was a bit lower than the year before. So obviously label like see it's lower. That's right. Yeah, right. But we're not replaced them though. So what's for replacement? Not much. The year before was 43,500 and it went down to 41,002. 100 yeah, it was something like nought .5% or something, Something like there we are. Interesting. One last start, I'll just give you a couple was related. 11% of NQT or ECTS, sorry, newly qualified teachers, 11% of them quit within the first year.

31:01 That's mental. That's mad, isn't it? Because I mean, we're quite often talk about how many quick within the first three years And I saw this start and I was like, that's interesting. Within the first year of teaching, 10 like 11%, a tenth of our training, a tenth of our newly most of these people would have paid as well money to go and train some of them three years in university, some of them one, some of them would have done paid routes here. And maybe that you know, contributes to a bit, but a tenth are like, Nah, I'm not doing this job. Crazy, crazy. I can't go over the fact that my percentage I said a minute ago was wrong. So I've been thinking about it's not .5%, it's 5%. I see going to 43,000 to 4241 thousand is 2000 which is about 5%. You know, when someone has like a glazed look, I could see you were absolutely in your head thinking I was. I don't know what he's thinking about, but I'll buy in some time.

31:41 Sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry guys. So. There we go. Thanks for I tell you what. I spent a lot of time thinking about that game and how I can structure it to make you look like a fool. And I am kind of annoyed that you completely ruined it. Backfired in it. Yeah, big time You're talking. Someone who was on Who wants to be in there? Yeah. Been on Tenable. Oh, this got an impossible. But on 1000 Heartbeats. I've done TV quizzes, Hayden. Yeah, you can't penetrate this. Who wants to be in in our YouTube bit? Dylan Price. Who wants to be a millionaire? It's on there, baby. You want some money? Big thanks to my friend who helped me out. I'm a friend, right? She's me, not you. Not the list of the list of my friends who want to help me. Honestly, you'd be below my inanimate desk. But I would. I would rather phone my inanimate desk and say hi. Yeah.

32:23 What do you think it's better? Yeah. It's a desk that moves. It's not an animate. Then it's very much animate. Full you shouldn't be on any questions. Oh, gosh, right. So we we've gone very old school here half of through the episode, not remotely touched what we're going to talk about. Let's do that. All right, jokes aside, you came with an idea for this episode. You wanted to talk about dealing with parents. And I think that's huge. I think that's a really huge part of teaching and you want to get it right, you want to be able to deal with parents professionally, but there are also times when something's just unacceptable. So we're going to try and go through a guide here you've put together of how best to deal with parents in general. Very much so. So some of these are just tips, things you can do and just quick actions, and some of them are more like just ways to be or just policies to follow and things you should be looking out for when you're actually in the school.

33:10 I'm going to start with #1 is my favourite tip. And, and I say this because our head teacher often reference this as Hayden's thing. I definitely stole it from someone else in the past, but it's called the positive sandwich. Oh, I love the idea of anyone in the world thinking that you invented. I know. Oh, I didn't invent this, guys. No, I didn't invent this. What? Most traditional way of giving a concern ever. But our head teacher did the need often before. It's like parents evening. He'd be like, remember guys? Hayden's good old Hayden's good old positive sandwiches. It's mine, is it? I don't think he was saying you invented it. I think he did. I think he was saying that you do it and it's good. But you've ruined enough of this podcast. Don't ruin me as. Well, I love doing it. You've got photography. People think, I mean, yeah, people think I came up with the idea of not just giving bad news, but rather giving good news even aside of it.

33:51 It works though. So just to clarify for those that are thinking I don't really know what this is. A positive sandwich is simply this. When you want to deliver some feedback that is simply awkward for any reason because perhaps it's negative about the child or whatever, Don't just go straight in with that. It's so easy just to get yourself worked up and then you just start this conversation and you say and you say the bad thing and you get the parents back up because they're thinking no one wants to hear bad things about their child. Start with something positive. Have a positive conversation with this parent first. Then you can weave in the bad thing, and you can the filling, the lovely, lovely sweet juicy feeling of negativeness in the middle, and then you come back around after it. Don't leave it on that either. It's just as bad starting with it as leaving it. Come back around to something positive. I've got an issue. OK, that's not a positive sandwich. Why not? That's a negative. Yeah, OK.

34:31 All right. It's a negative sandwich. It is. I have a jam sandwich where I have jam break jam, right? That's not that's a bread sandwich. OK, this is what you've just described is not a positive sandwich. So true. So first thing I'm going to carry on my ruining. I did invent it wrong. You did you. Did because what you did? What's you? You was a positive sandwich. You gave awful things. He was. Like but negative sandwich sounds so bad, doesn't it? Don't want to do the old negative sandwich. Oh, that doesn't sound good. Does. It it's not, it's my background, that's not on me. If you misunderstand what I'm saying, it's not my fault. Mate look, it's I'm calling it a. Battery. Let's role play a negative sandwich. OK, I'm going to be the teacher. OK, You're you're the adult. All right? So I'm going to role play with people. All right. OK. Hi. Yeah. Can I have a quick word, please? Yeah, of course, of course. Everything all right? Yeah, that's all.

35:12 Good. Johnny's OK. He's absolutely fine. Jordan here. Just a few things. No. Yeah. Go over there, go and play. With just a quick one. Yeah. So First things first. His hair looks great today. I love what you did of his hair. It's fantastic. Throw a chair at my face. Oh, throw a chair about it because he had his shirt tucked in all day. Frank, that's thank you. Bye. I. Think there's one thing you said I want to go back to actually in this conversation, which is his hair look good. I really did spend some time on this one. So thank you so much for mentioning that. The thing in the middle coming, we said. But yeah, he's a lovely kid. Yeah, fruit in my head. Lovely. He's. A lovely kid, Lovely kid. But let's not, let's not let that get lost. Oh, A. Positive bread, right? Think about the roll out of the roll.

35:53 That was not a good example of a positive. Yeah, or negative. So be really, really, really, really, really clear here. Then what is it actually looked like? Because, you know, it sounds good. It sounds a bit gimmicky to me, I'm not going to lie. But I think I do think it's a really powerful way of doing this. So what does it actually? Look, I think you gave an example of how it can be gimmicky exactly that. You have to do it meaningfully. Everything has to be real. You got to do things in a real way. If a positive sandwich doesn't mean just to think of some surface of a made-up thing that's nice just so you can quickly get to the bad thing, it means genuinely have a conversation with a parent and actually say something real to them about how you like that kid. There's there shouldn't be a child where you cannot think of one single positive thing in that entire a year about anything they've ever done that you can't be real about, even if it comes down to progress in something that you think that they've struggled with before. Yeah, one or two.

36:41 Do you think this could do you think a sandwich in this way can be done over time? Because I think, I think that the problem where I think it's quite gimmicky is where you try and do this in 10 seconds. Because sure, because you're thinking I've got a negative thing to say about this child. But I, you know, I heard Hayden on the podcast say I've got the same positive. So I'm going to try and just nip it in, but it is after school grabbing you quick because to me, the best way to do this is over time where it's like, you know, I've already done the positive part, like I've already built it up. That took me like 3-4, five weeks where I was happy talking to the parent. I was building up that rapport. I was going to them saying positive things just on its own. Doesn't have to be a sandwich all time. It's just wow, he did really well today with his phonics. Like he tried so hard.

37:21 He's learning so much. Well done, finish next time. He behaved so well today in assembly. I couldn't believe how well he listened to their teacher. Was so respectful. Well done, finished like build, build, build, build. Because then when you give the bad news, you can still argue it's with it's within the context of what you're saying essentially is don't just give bad news. Sure, but it's not in the moment. It's like, well, I've spent time building this up. Like I I feel like what you're saying here is done best over time, not in a slot. I think that works really well and I think that works really well with a lot of parents. But I do still think that there are some children, some situations, even some parents, you think about their personality where they just will not be able to take bad feedback or their child regularly receives negative feedback. And there are just some situations where I feel like you, you just can't get away with just saying a negative thing because you feel like you've built because maybe you haven't.

38:10 Maybe there genuinely hasn't really been many opportunities before and you've had a lot of negative, negative conversations about the child because they are genuinely really misbehaved. But you should still, when you're talking to those parents, still look for it's still their baby at the end of the day. You should still try to look for something positive and and not give off the feeling to them that you just don't like that kid. Because sometimes people get that feeling. Whether you think it or not, it's not about you at this point. It's actually just about that perception. No parent should be walking away from school feeling upset, thinking that you just don't like that kid. That just shouldn't be a thing. And the positive sandwich, I think comes in clutch in those situations. I'm not saying it's every situation, the negative sandwich, whatever you want to call it sharp, it does. It just works because you can say, and it has to be meaningful. Like I said, you can say, look, they were working so well to better than they have done the last few weeks. I know we had a few trouble a few weeks ago. They've really been trying to improve, but today it just got the best of them.

38:56 And then you can go into it. But even that one sentence before of just saying they've been really trying hard and I've really appreciated the fact that they've come in every day and done this thing it. Can be. It can be linked to the negative thing, but it still can be positive. Exactly. You're still starting in a way that shows you care about this child holistically, and you don't just want to quickly get to that parent and tell them how horrible like it is and then go crack on your day. And then finish with the positive. Exactly. And then go back to positive. So what I want to do is see it, see a bit more of this. He's done. Do you know what somebody's done fantastically recently? He's been coming into school and he he's held the door for me 3 times this week and I've said thank you and he smiled at me and I really want to pick him up for. That and then he threw a chat in my head. Yeah. No, I've already done that bit. We've done a little bit. I'm going back to the end. It's. A double salvage bread. Philly bread. Philly Bread. We've all been there. We've all been there.

39:36 You've got scooby-doo. Filling Philling Philly. Filling Philling Philly. It's 17. Sorry, no. Sorry, one second. I'm on the tomato at the minute. So wait a minute, he threw a glue stick at a child. Now I'm on the beef burger. He decided to break some pencils in the classroom. It's a big sandwich. Yeah. What is the limit of how many negative things you can put within the two positives? But by the way, I hope, I hope. I'm sure there's some nuances to this, but I hope the idea. Of jokes aside, I think you're absolutely right. You know, it's basically comes down to this, doesn't it? You don't want the parent to think they're out to get your kid OK. And, and wherever you are or not, you're absolutely right. It's perception. It is perception at the end of the day.

40:16 And yeah, I don't think you have to bend over backwards all the time. I think sometimes you have to just say it as it is. Definitely. I don't, I don't personally think every single time you do something, you have to shoehorn this in. That's my personal belief. I think it's a nice good technique. It gets to the point where I think it's more than fine just to say to someone, look, this happened today is unacceptable. I agree, and I agree and should be, really. Clear how for some time. This is just a technique. This is just something to have up your sleeve. I've used it before where I felt like I have had four conversations in a row that were negative. And I think you know what? This is just isn't good. This isn't a good perception of this child. So and I'll and I'll use it. Can I talk about one thing and maybe you can give me some advice? One thing, just one thing I, I've found before multiple times that I've put off speaking to a parent when something is kind of brewing or I, I see a kind of issue and I'm like, you know what?

41:06 It's fine, I'll just deal with it. It's fine. I'll try and stay on top of it. It's got progressively worse, but it's just like it's creeping up. Not enough where it's a full blown thing and I'm like, OK, obviously let's go to the head, but enough where actually it gets to the end. It's almost like a lobster in boiling water. You don't realise what's happening until oh, wait a minute, this, this was like a 2 month thing and it's ended here and now I've got to go and speak to the parent about this. And it's really awkward because I've got to go with seven other things that have happened that link to it. And there's no way I can say this without them thinking, why didn't you raise this earlier? So how, how on earth can we go about that? Like when do we know how to break the ice with a parent? What is the line? Do you go to your, you know, your leadership first? You're the line manager, your group leader.

41:47 What what do you think is the best way to? Do I'd say over time you do start to build up an understanding of that line, but definitely at the start of your career, I would absolutely recommend talking to other teachers, other staff, go to your senior leadership team and just be honest and say this is a situation. What do you think I should do about it? About it? Sometimes they will say, well, do you know what? I think I need to get involved and they'll take it off your hands. Other times they will give you just really good advice. And it's normally which, which is literally tip #2 from here, being preemptive, not allowing it to get to that point where you just said they're getting in there straight away and having that slightly awkward conversation to save an extremely awkward conversation a month later when it all blows up. So being preemptive, getting in there with communications, really, really, really important when it comes to talking to parents in the day. It's their child. They're going to want to know what's going on. Even if you think it's a bit awkward, even if they get a bit offensive in that moment, it is still objectively ultimately better for them to know what their child has been doing. If you feel like that should, they should know that they probably should.

42:38 How important is keeping records of what's been said and and what's going on? Like, because obviously we're talking about parents in general here and I've dealt with a lot of parents. 98% of parents been absolutely lovely. Yeah, absolutely lovely. 1% may be neutral, 1% may be problematic. What what's your, what's your deal on keeping records or, you know, writing things down of what's happened? How stringent should we be? Like, should we do it with some parents but not with others? Yeah, sure. Now what's that look like? I think with the majority of parents genuinely like you're not going to have these really horrible interactions all the time and these like these dire relationships between you and parent, but only in those situations where you do. And I have had a few before where I, I can honestly say like I would get anxious about the idea of talking to a particular parent because our relationship just was quite negative.

43:20 And they didn't, you know, they weren't very fond of the school for whatever reason. The best advice I ever got that year was write down everything they say to you because this parent was particularly initiative and would two months later say, well, the teacher didn't tell me that last time they told me to do this. And there's no evidence of it. Write down things they say to you, keep any letters, if they write in things, keep emails, put them in an inbox, you know, folder, whatever, just to protect yourself. And you know what, nothing happened to me in that, in that situation. I'd heard that it had happened before, that someone had been called out on something that just did not happen and there was no proof. I kept it all. End of the year, it got traded to the dump of it. But if it did, if something came up later and I didn't have evidence of actually, no, I didn't say that. I said this and I wrote down the conversation we had there and then on that day, this is the log of it. This isn't true.

44:02 Then I could have been in a tricky situation. And it's not about not trusting anyone. It's not about that. It's just about protecting yourself. So how wide that is the net for this? Like, you know, you're saying write things down. That's a huge job. If I write absolutely everything down that I have with a parent, yeah, interaction. But I can see why it might be useful to have for everyone because you simply don't know. You're like, you might have what you think is a really fine relationship with a parent, and then it turns sour. And actually, I wish I had that. I think we, we just have to appreciate the fact that the majority of parents aren't going to be like this. We have to accept that. Like I think if you start thinking 100% of parents can be like this and it's you're, you're going to create some mad workload for yourself. You need to go with your gut. In my opinion. There are just some, the odd time where you think and, and your gut might even be the fact that the previous teacher said this parent was quite tricky and caused me a lot of AG last year. Just be a bear that in mind and then you think yourself right, OK, I'm going to keep some communication for this parent and it might just develop over time. You don't need to do it the whole year for everybody. In case it starts changing.

44:54 If it does start changing, then you can start writing things down if you need to. But in all honesty, my whole career, I probably did this like 3 times, like literally 3 * / 10 years. All those parents like it. It's not something that happens loads, but you should just just have it in mind to protect yourself if you feel like things are going that way. We had like an unwritten role in our career and all the schools I worked with. It'd be interesting to hear listeners have this too, where if you were talking to a parent, like they caught you after school or whatever it might be, always, you know, if someone else was doing it, I'd be keeping an eye out. And if I was talking to a parent, I'd be looking around, just see if there's someone nearby. And the only point is just almost like you're saying, it's kind of like keeping a record, but it's just another pair of eyes. It's just someone like a witness almost, you know, especially if it's starting to get a bit of an awk conversation. I always would just hang around.

45:38 If I saw a colleague of mine talking to a parent and it was getting a bit heated, I'd just be there listening and both people would know I was there. I wouldn't be interrupted. I wouldn't be, you know, it's hard for me not to interrupt Hayden, as you know, but I wouldn't be getting involved at all. But I'd want both people to know that there's another adult just. Hit I always love that awkward thing where it's like you're blatantly just standing around because there's the last parent left on pickup and the teachers talking to them and you think, oh, I don't know if this is a positive conversation or not. And you're lingering around just, like pretending that you're doing something like, what's that looking over there like, oh, is that gate closed? Yeah, I think so. I have to check my watch. As if like they don't, as if the parents aren't going to work out. They obviously just stand. Just do it because you know what? Who cares about the awkwardness? Just stand around there. See you on an extra pair of eyes. I agree. And brings me on to my next point, really about if, if it if that conversation does go South and that parent starts getting angry and a raised voice.

46:24 What would be your advice to someone in that situation? You're getting yelled at by a parent. What do you? Do double down, shout back, make a scene, be the alpha dominant and just go for me, honestly, no, look, try and stay calm. Try and separate it, try and separate it out. I feel like I can do. I feel like I'm quite good at doing that where I can just separate out and and just think to myself, OK, I'm in the role of the teacher right now. If this was on the street and it was about something different, I Gen I know that I'd read differently. I'd be more likely to lose my temper as well. I'd be more likely to be like, this is just unacceptable, blah blah, blah. But I can very much think to myself, I'm in the role of the teacher right now, OK? I need to stay calm and not match this energy. I need to not get personal and don't be afraid to walk away. Don't be afraid to say I cannot have this conversation right now whilst you're behaving the way you are. I'm more than willing to talk about it. That's a range of time to do so.

47:18 And I'll have some leadership with me as well. We'll, we'll have a few people in the room. But what we're not going to do on the playground is have you shout at me and treat me like this. It's unacceptable. It's embarrassing. And there's lots of children and other adults here. So I can't allow you to do that. I'm afraid it's not acceptable. Yeah. And I'd I'd be very much to the line very exact and say that. I thought you've done that. You've said to a parent before, haven't you? Literally something along the lines of you need to calm down and when you calm we can have a conversation. Yeah. And it's still professionally, Yeah, still still in the way, which is still acceptable because parent was shouting at me. No, don't shout at me, please. I don't shouting at you. You're allowed to have disagreements. I literally said this to them. Like you're allowed to not like how something's going on. And we can talk about that and we can get to the bottom of it. And we can either understand, hopefully you can see why we've done it this way and come around to it, or it might be that we've done something wrong.

48:04 Either of those options are available, but we need to sit and talk about it. You can't shout at me. Do you find that that normally actually hilariously, your confidence in that situation kind of diffuses a bit? Every time I've done it, it has, and I'm not going to pretend that it means every time it'll work indefinitely because there will be some people that are so angry where that doesn't help and I'll just shout effing and blinding at you. But every time I've done that, I think more often you're more likely to get a good outcome where you can just be to the point. Calm. Being calm helps. And I found that I didn't know if you do this as a teacher as well, but sometimes I will talk for much longer than is like socially acceptable and, and just keep going on and making another point. Do you know when you keep telling your kids how, how really let down you are by your children and you've really gone too far this time And you could just stop there, but you keep talking because you want to make the point to the kids.

48:51 And I just can't believe it, guys. So whilst you're sitting there quietly thinking about what you've done, I just want you to remember that actually what you've done, you've gone too far. And as a teacher, I feel like we're a team. You've just, you've just let me down. You've just let me down. And I know you're all thinking, I wish you'd stop talking now, but you really need to understand this guys. No shush. You need to know and just keep going, keep going. I found with parents sometimes doing that, it makes them shush and it almost lets them calm down a bit because they're not able just to go motormouth and go. So you just, you know, you go two or three sentences too long being calm, being very matter of fact. And then by the end that they are often just like, all right, fine, but let's talk then. So that's what I always try and do, and I think that's a good way to do.

49:32 Definitely. I think another one's kind of on this topic of just interacting with parents in general is about gatekeeping your time. I feel like in educate, in teaching, it is just weirdly accepted that like teachers, time is just nothing. You just talk to them whenever you want. I'll I'll grab you in the morning, I'll grab you after school, I'll ring you after school and and it's just very much like a of course you do that. Of course you drop everything you're doing. Wouldn't it be great if doctors want? Genuine. I always compare it to doctors. I'm like, that's just not how professional sectors work. It doesn't work like that. We're obviously like our time is already filled. We don't reserve time for parent phone calls. That's always going to be replacing something else. So I think as a newer teacher, it's very easy to be like, I don't want to get anyone's backup. I couldn't possibly make anyone be offended or think badly. Of course I'll talk to you right now.

50:12 I'll. Talk to you right now and and I was in a situation, you know, I'll get your opinion on this about like emails, parents having direct e-mail to you. I was in a situation where I'd e-mail at 9:00 PM, I'd e-mail at the weekend, I'd reply all the time. And there were even situations where if I hadn't replied over the weekend, the parent might be like, oh, I didn't get, I didn't get a reply from you. And he's like, mate, you emailed me up 7:00 PM on Saturday and now it's Monday morning. What do you mean you haven't had a reply? Of course you haven't had a reply. But I was not confident enough to say that back then. So I think a big tip here is be really confident of knowing your boundaries in terms of gatekeeping your professional time and personal time. And that it is completely acceptable to say these are the hours that I'll reply within and, and it won't necessarily be within two hours because there's lots of other things to do. And that's just how it is.

50:53 Yeah, a big thing for me on this is 2 things. Firstly, I don't like the idea of all parents having a Direct Line to your e-mail from school. I don't like that. OK. I think there should be some kind of gatekeeping involved there. However, a lot of schools do do this and you know, OK, whatever, there's a lot of teachers who work there. I don't have to agree with everything, but some teachers do. So if you work in a school where actually parents do have that, I still think a lot of what you just said is absolutely right, but it falls on deaf ears when only two teachers are doing it. OK, If you just to say, you know, if what you used to be like and what you are now worked in classrooms next to each other, both in year 4, let's say there'd be a bunch of parents who are getting replies quickly and a bunch of parents here who aren't and they'll obviously talk to each other and they're like, you're getting in touch with a teacher much quicker. That's not intractable and it would look bad. So my point here is you have to when we're dealing with parents and we're talking about this now, if your leadership listening to this, a lot of leaders do and I appreciate them so much because it can come across sometimes that we're very much like this doesn't work, this doesn't work. But there's a lot of leaders who listen to this and understand what we're saying, which is trying to help everyone. You have to take grab hold of this yourself, take control and say, look, these are the rules.

51:59 These are the rules for getting in touch with our teachers. If you're going to be the person who gives them all, all the parents, the emails of the teacher that needs to come along with at least two working days, allow for a reply. Yeah. My staff have got this time that I've allocated for them. Maybe I've even put it in their directed time calendar to look and reply to emails. Yeah, right. Yeah. Just imagine. Just imagine. But I think you say take this. Yeah. What you can't do is just say here, here it is. And by the way, guys, can you just reply to that, please? Yeah. And if you happen to get that one parent emails every day, it's like, right, you've got to deal with that now. Exactly. So then again, as teacher, I'd be saying for any consistent problems or for these types of issues, I don't expect my staff to reply to you, so please don't e-mail them. Yeah, therefore when they do and they're emailing staff saying what day is PE day, it's OK for the teacher to not to reply to that. Yeah, because that's just something you can go to the office and ask in the morning when you drop off your kids. OK, So what I'd say is if you're gonna do this and allow teachers emails to be accessed by parents, it has to come as strict rules where it's not then on the teacher to decide what their boundaries are because then it can lead to some awkward situations.

53:02 Yeah, I agree. I, I, I. And the more we talk about parent e-mail, like having your e-mail address, the more I genuinely just fundamentally think is awful. Well, our old school, we didn't do it at all and we were fine. Yeah, and you know what they did? They've all the emails came through the office system and it literally allowed them to philtre out stuff like when there's PE on this day. So I, I sometimes got emails from parents, but it was the office saying, see this e-mail from this. Yeah, most of the time was information. Like it was like little Johnny has a dentist appointment, he'll be late for maths tomorrow. Just information. Yeah, sometimes it was something actionable like, oh, this, this person's going on holiday there, but hoping for a bit of work, OK. You know, like it might be that either I say to look while we're doing this and this, yeah, or I go by the school policy of what we do for that kind of thing.

53:44 Most of the time, even with that, it would be intercepted by leadership and now and the leadership would sort it and say we don't do this or we do do that, blah. Blah blah. I think that system worked really well. It took a lot of the additional stress off the teachers in our school. And it was a big job for the leaders. Let's not forget that. Yeah, of course we need to be very grateful because we didn't suddenly have, you know, a lower demand from parents. We just as teachers saw it less. But I do think having that means parents get the hint almost eventually. They're like time. Oh, this is a waste of time. The. Culture was really clear in our school. I think of what is acceptable to e-mail into school and, and the acceptable like layers of communication exactly. Some a lot of parents would have would have realised that's how it works. And I think you know what, I just need to have a conversation with the teacher. I'll just talk to them after school for 10 seconds sure, rather than emailing them at 7:00 PM and making them worry about replying. So I think that the ultimate tip here is knowing your boundaries as well.

54:31 So the school, you all need to have those boundaries. You also need to know them and follow those boundaries. Like you said with the example of me versus my old self, you need to know and follow those boundaries and your school should back you up. You know, when you're in those situations of a parent may be challenging that you've not done something and you know it's a school policy not to do this. Your head teacher, your senior leadership team should be actively going and talking to the parent saying no, no, no, no, you're wrong. This is the policy I've set for my teacher and they're just following it. So actually, please don't get annoyed at them for that, you know? Definitely. OK, last thing from me, we talked about this a bit recently and it's when you bump into parents outside of school, you know, how do you approach that? What's professional, etcetera. And I would say to people, don't be afraid to talk to them. Don't don't forget you're a human being.

55:11 You're doing a job. Sure. If you're in the middle of Tesco buying carrots, just say hello. Oh, it's chucking it down out there, isn't it? Drenched. Yeah, it was making a roast dinner. Have a nice one. That's it. You don't need to seize up and say, Oh yes, I checked your, your, your, your timetable practise at the weekend. It was fantastic. Well done, little Jimmy here. Don't worry about it. You don't have to go into that role. You're a human. They're a human. I think there's something to be said for parents seeing teachers in a different role and for teachers seeing parents and children outside of school and just knowing that this exists. We're just people. Have a great day. Hope you're enjoying yourself. Nothing to do with the job.

55:52 Monday morning times on that child's not been reading at home. I'm not going to say in Tesco I no exactly, but I might catch them after school and just say oh quick one didn't see a reading record sign. Funny to see at the weekend. I hope you had a great time. Are you doing much reading at home? I'm in the context of school there. You don't have to have those blurred. That really was a positive sandwich that one start with some negative. Well, great to see the weekend though. Back to the negative though. Very. Good, Johnny showed a chair. A chair on my face. It's true though, and equally the opposite way around. Sometimes you can keep your boundaries outside if a parent actually is the one overstepping and trying to make it about school. But oh, did you check my e-mail, you know, in the middle of the Tesco? Did you get my e-mail on Friday about this thing? You can genuinely you you are allowed to say I will check it on Monday. Obviously I'm I'm I'm off juicy right now. I'm just doing doing a shopping. Make it make light heart of it.

56:34 But yeah, of course I'll check that on Monday. I haven't had, I haven't had time yet because obviously, you know, you sent it on Friday. Did have time, Didn't want to, yeah. Didn't have time, didn't want to or whatever. Go away. Please leave me alone. I'm trying to buy some carrots actually for Rudolph. So it's nearly Christmas, mate. Yeah. But yeah, you can. You just keep your boundaries. It's acceptable. Like you're allowed to be a human being outside. You don't have to be a teacher 24/7 all the time. Like you can just be normal. I feel like there's one big strand going through all of this and it's like as a teacher, you can only control yourself. You can only control how you react to people, etcetera, OK? You can't control a parent frothing at the mouth getting annoyed at you over something. You also can't control the parent coming up to your Tesco and saying, Oh my kid, how are they getting on? You can't control these things. What you can control is how you react to it. And I think if for me, it's about being rooted in empathy, OK, That's always the thing.

57:17 It's always the thing you, you, you care about the kids, you care about yourself, you care about your work life balance and it's about getting all of those things right. And I think, yeah, it just comes down to that, doesn't it? That's how I look at this. And I think you've made some really good points here that I think are really helpful. How do you summarise? This is linked. A while ago we asked each other on the podcast whether becoming a parent has affected how we think about being a teacher. I mean, we did that maybe last year and at the first I was, I'm not really sure. I feel feel mostly the same. But I think this has changed now. Being a parent now has made me realise how unbelievably defensive I am of my own child. And obviously most people are going to be feeling like this as well.

57:57 It has made, it has allowed me to empathise with parents a bit more in situations where as a teacher, I might be thinking, oh, this is nothing, I've got 32 kids. This is just one of my conversations. This is they've just been a bit silly or whatever, or they were just struggling in this thing. I'm just going to tell you, go over it. And I used to think a bit more like that. Whereas now I'm like, Oh my God, I can really, really appreciate how intense that feeling might be for a parent to hear literally any feedback, whether it's positive or negative or more so negative. And I can just understand that a bit more. Do you know what? When they get angry, I'm going to forgive them even though that it was inappropriate. I can walk away and be like, do you know what? If that was my kid, would I have been feeling that way? Maybe I wouldn't have manifested it out, you know, so outwardly and got angry. But I can absolutely tell you right now where there's only two and there's already been a couple of situations where I've felt really defensive.

58:40 And I almost like my natural instinct is like, oh, I need to, I need to get a bit angry and angry about this. And realistically, it's nothing. I was like, they didn't need that at all, but I felt that feeling and that was the first one I felt that I was like, oh, I get it now. I, I get it now. This is this, this is the empathy I'm supposed to have for parents when they're hearing this. I remember speaking to my job share Julie when, when we worked together and she was really good at this. She was so good at being empathetic for parents and parents evening and things like that. And I was always like, Nah, just give the feedback we've got, we've got 5 minutes. Just get on with it. And she'd always do the positive sandwich approach and it was because the next sandwich. And it's because she had her own children and she totally understood how much they were her world and how hearing certain feedback would affect her massively disproportionately. And we should, we should empathise with that. So yeah, running thing for all this. I hope you enjoyed this episode, guys. We're talking about how to deal with parents, but having empathy is definitely a core theme for every single tip we've given. Well, that was 1/2 of it.

59:31 The other half was me absolutely smashing a quiz that you designed from the ground up for me to fail. No, no, listen, I've edited that but out so no one. I am buzzing because I love recording this podcast, but the end of this podcast means you're going to go to Tesco and get me some whisper gold because I did well in the quiz. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone you think might find it useful. Please leave us a review. It helps us out so, so much. And hey them before we go anything you want to. Say every now and then Whisper golds 4 pack are on club card price. I'll be going there right now. See you there.