Ep 151: Teacher Guilt, Making Whole School Changes & What To Look Out For When Touring Schools

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Teach, Sneak, Repeat. My name is Dylan Price. My name is you, right? Oh, you've, oh, you said your surname. I'm trying to build a personal brand. Dylan Price. My name is Dylan Price and my name is Hayden. Still my surname is not still. I'm just still Hayden. That's a long name. It's Hayden still. My son is, I'm still. It's just Hayden. So for sure, Mr S. And we're back with another podcast episode, Are You Still Mr Still? Yeah, Mr S Mr Still Stevens. I'm still Steve. Anyway, welcome back to another question and answer episode. You, the listeners have been submitting your questions. Mr Still, where can they still get the link from to join our WhatsApp community to be able to give us questions to answer still? I feel like you answered your own question there within the question itself.

0:50 Classic Dylan Price move right there, Dylan. Price, thank you. Build that personal brand. If you go to the WhatsApp community Dylan that just mentioned in the question and join it and use the link that Dylan just mentioned in the question down below, you can actually submit your questions that we will potentially answer as well. Maybe Dylan likes them. Or not I'll. Tell you what, I'll tell you one of the reasons why I sometimes think to ourselves, maybe we just need to get our names out there a bit more. We went to the 2 Mr Show a couple of weeks ago and it was really, really funny. It was really, really good. Well worth going to see if you it's coming to a town near you in the future. But the amount of people who walked past us and pointed at me and went teach, state, repeat, that's not my given name. Yeah, and you got really angry. When you started? Shouting him you did, it was really embarrassing. He was like, that's not my name, All right, Dylan, they're just fans, completely fabricated fans. I agree.

1:39 Quite often people just like, which one of you? Again, you're and we know you're those guys, but we just don't know who's who. I don't mind actually. We will chat with TC Appeals, like yeah, shouted through the rooftops, but it's really good. And if you were there, it was so nice to meet you. Thank you for chatting. It was really lovely. Anyway, we have gone through all of the submissions. We've got so many. Here's the first question. Hi guys, love the podcast. You have really assisted me in managing the work life battle all teachers have so thank you for that. My question is how would you approach senior leadership around staff morale and expectations? Our team are working really well with their new classes since September and there is a lot to celebrate. However, we seem to be bombarded with more.

2:21 Work due to this it's a really tricky 1, isn't it? I've I've we've said a lot on this podcast that if you just treat your staff right, they all want to do things for you anyway. It's all like nice, but that's not necessarily how reality works because I can think of some schools right now where they're nice places to work, but still you can't then just expect your staff to just do extra like people will still then get their back up even though, you know I can imagine some head teachers will be like, oh, but I've done these nice things for you. I'm around was really high before and everything's going really well. So now surely you want to do these extra things. And the problem I find is the bar is the bar. Like you can't, there is just no situation where you can actually just expect your staff to go above and beyond the contract.

3:05 And what, they're all every staff members already doing stuff outside of school. So even when you're the nicest school in the world, as soon as you have any hint of expectation of like, Oh yeah, this is so lovely to work it. Remember that time when I took you all out with that staff thing? We had this great time, didn't we? And everyone gets this thing or this globally loop policy. Yeah. Need you all to run a club on the weekend. And people are still going to be like, no, yeah, know that. And and you're within your right to do that. And the problem is, I imagine this person is feeling awkward about it because they're thinking, well, you know, things are going, things are going well. But does that do I, can they take advantage of me now? Like is that OK to do? Yeah, yeah. It's like you've hit the noun on the head. Like it seems from this question that because things are going well and swimmingly, leadership can look at that sometimes be like, oh, sick, so let's do all this.

3:53 Absolutely right. You can be like, well, let's do XYZ as well then. And we're going to bombard them with more because they can clearly take it. It's like a classic example of often who is seen as the strongest teacher might be given the toughest class. You're thinking what reward? What reward for me potentially being one of the stronger teachers in the school? Oh yeah, we'll give it to that person because she's really good with behaviour management. So we'll give her the hardest class. Well, you have just kind of signed me off for the year with a really, really tricky class that's going to give me, you know, these feelings of overwhelm and and tie me out massively because I have to go up and beyond to do stuff. I think you hit the noun on the head. I always treat it with a bit of trepidation because I think it is different. I think it's very different to these very strict schools you get sometimes, which are, you know, whipping their teachers into line. You, you have to do all of this all of the time. We all know that's bad.

4:40 We've called out a million times. So we have to have more nuance here in terms of it's obviously good when you're in a school that treats their staff really well. But I, yeah, I, I get like, I don't know what the saying is, like squeaky bum, almost like when it's kind of laughed about and gone, ha, ha. So please do all this though, you know, being applauded for having the correct line in your staff's work life balance and the morale being great, being applauded for that is fantastic. You should say well done because it's so easy to go past that. But like you said, that's the line. It it doesn't mean then you can go past it again. It should mean cool. That's where we're working at. The biggest example always for me is, is like stuff at the weekend, it doesn't matter. Like, you know, at the start of my career I went to so many cross countries, I went to so many football tournaments. I wanted to do it.

5:31 I knew it was extra. They asked me, I said yes. But then it got to a point in my life where I thought, OK, the answer is now no. And it could be no for a number of reasons. It was no for me before I had children because I had a tutoring company. You had me to look. After I had you to look after, I need to make sure you're OK at the weekend. But you know, and even it could be no, because in my own head, I don't want to. It doesn't matter what the because is. But the answer became no, so I stopped doing it. OK, that's also fine. So as soon as you start looking at going well, the kids are missing out. They keep me. We're not going to be able to run this thing on a Saturday anymore. No, we're not. OK. Is it that important? Is it that important to you? Yeah, it's great. Of course it's important to me. I want the kids.

6:12 Me personally, I'm talking about now. I really want the kids to get as much as they can. Of course I do. I want every kid to have a lovely, hearty meal in the evening. I'm not going to go around to be the personal chef. You know what I mean? Like there is. There is just a point where you just go. Something can be nice, but I can say no to it and it doesn't mean that I'm a bad person and it certainly doesn't mean I'm not fulfilling the role of my job. There is no point on the pay scale, whether it's in the main pay scale, the upper pay scale, TLR, whatever it is. There is no point in any of that where you look at your contract which should justify you having to do something at the weekend. Your UPS 3 doesn't matter, your UPS 3 is. I'd expect you to be coming to the old cross country and running the odd club at the weekend. Yeah, OK. That's fantastic and you might have come to an agreement with someone where they agree to do that, but UPS 3 or whatever it might be, there's no pay range that says you should be giving up your time outside of working days.

7:04 It has to be a choice. You might not like that. You might think that's really frustrating. Every single person in the room might think it's objectively better for children to be able to do a football tournament at the weekend. It doesn't mean, though, that you just say to someone, we got to do that. Yeah, No, it you have to hold the line. Staff morale is important, end of question. It doesn't mean you can then use it against your staff to say or. Remember when we got rid of that marketing policy? Yeah, I do. And it was great. And it brought it down to where it should be. You can't then say so therefore bump up at the week. No, no, no, no. Yeah, it reveals that your line was always way higher than the actual where it should be anywhere, doesn't it? I've, I've brought, I've brought. You're only doing 3 hours of extra work a week now instead of 10.

7:46 So those seven hours ones that I've saved, I've now I've put towards this. It's like, no, no, sorry. The bar you were trying to get back down to 0, right? You weren't there's there's no increase. You should only be trying to decrease it. Yeah, it's a tough one and it is particularly hard when you work in a school that is generally nice. It's really hard to say no. You don't want to let people down and it's personal at the end of the day, like you know these people, you work with these people, probably you probably know the head teacher really well. If you work at this school for a long time. You don't actually want to disappoint them or make them feel rubbish or make them be annoyed at you. But you just have to remember of the contract. So how would you apply it then? How would you approach it? Because you're absolutely right. The amount. I don't think these are bad people all the time who are saying things like, guys, we need someone to do at the weekend. Yeah, they're really good people, probably because they're looking out for the kids.

8:28 But how do you approach that then just to answer this question directly before we move on. Yeah, yeah, sure. You're in that situation. You're really good on with your leadership team. You know, they're good people and they're saying you have to do, come on, got you. Someone has to do at the weekend. How would you approach that genuinely or say to someone they should approach? It if it was that exact example of the of the weekend, I'd say basically what you just said there. I'd say, let's just remind ourselves someone doesn't have to do that. No one's contract stipulates that we should be working at the weekend. It is really nice. And I'd probably give the same example as you and say it's also it would also be really nice if we did XY and Z, but we don't have the staff to do that because no one's paid to do that. And we shouldn't be making people feel bad because they don't want to give up their extra time. And I'm not prepared to make myself feel bad.

9:08 And you could even Chuck in if you really want. I don't think you should ever have to give reasons, but if you want to like really hit home, a lot of people can will say things like, so you'd like me to sacrifice time with my own children at the weekend to come and do this. You'd like me to sacrifice time with my own family or sacrifice X whatever it is that you're doing to do that and make it real and be like, just remember what you're asking me is unreasonable. This is not part of my contract. And that's it. And then just say I'm sorry, but I'll continue doing my job to a really high standard within the the remit of the job. And if you want to change things within the job boundaries, I can't really complain. I can have my opinion, but ultimately, if it's in directed time, you want me to do X but I want to do Y. Well, OK, that's a different conversation to you saying outside of this contract time. So sorry, but I'm not going to be able to fulfil that. I know it's a bit disappointing, but we'll have to think of another solution.

9:56 Absolutely. I think so. The right way to go about things have to be brutally honest and clear. That's why I'd say to people is be clear, be honest. Don't try and push your foot around it and say Oh no, because I've got this at the weekend. Well, that means you have to make up something else next time to make up something else next time. The answer can just be no because of this. And I think there is a small thing, just think about this question because I thought we've kind of gone off on one there. There is a small part to say in other jobs, I imagine people would not teaching this into this being like, well, if it was in my job, right, and I had this project and actually I did it in half the time because things are going really well. It would be reasonable for my boss to say, well, I didn't expect you to do that job this quick, but you are paid for 10 hours and you've done it in six. So here's another bunch of stuff now you can do in those other four hours.

10:40 Those people would be like, I wouldn't be able to just say, no, I did the job quicker. That's my morale's really high because I did it quicker. Now I should have those four hours off. Do you think there's any comparison between that example and what you think is happening in teaching? I think the biggest issue we have with teaching when it comes to people outside of the job looking in and saying those kinds of things always happens in my job. I always go above and beyond. I always do the extra stuff is you have to remember that built into this job, we're already doing extra. This is what I always say to people. It's like I'm like beating this drum against the wall there. There isn't a situation where a teacher isn't already doing stuff outside the contracted hours. OK. And that is stuff that directly links to what's happening in the classroom. I've got to plan my lessons. I've got to mark based on the schools marketing policy. I've got to have meetings with parents about, you know, needs of children in the class.

11:24 I do parents evenings. I do open evenings, All this kind of stuff that's linked to the actual being in the classroom delivering my role. I'm already doing that extra. And that is baked into the contract that we have to do a bit extra. So whenever anyone says, well, I'd do extra, but like, yeah, I do. I do do extra. But when we're talking specifically about directed weekend work, of doing stuff outside of my job, outside of my contract, there is no justification in the world to say that I should do it. You can say that maybe it's a nice thing to do. You can say maybe it's good for the kids. You can put an argument forward to to describe anything. Almost. OK. Do you run an under Nines football club, Mr you know, bricklayer who who who doesn't have a child in that team? Do you run that club? No, of course you don't.

12:05 Of course you don't do that. I don't think you're a bad person. But if you did it, I'd be like, good on you mate. That's quality. That's nice. Well, that's really lovely. Well done pal. But if you don't, I don't demonise you. I don't say it's going to oh, you might have to go on a capability plan then for your building work. It's nothing to do with it. It's separate. And this is what's sad about this situation. Sometimes people feel like they can't do that because they think they're now be targeted as soon as they say no to these clubs outside of school. Oh, that's weird. The three people who said no live in two months. They're on a capability plan because they're because of their planning of their math, because they're being targeted, because it's not easy sometimes to speak up and say no about these things. But you have to do it. And as a staff, you have to do it collectively. And I'll say this again, be really clear. If you're the kind of person who goes above and beyond and does all of this stuff, you are a lovely person that's doing really good things for the kids.

12:54 But you have to be the first person in that meeting saying I'll do this. But Mike, you should absolutely not expect anyone to. And you need to be defending your colleagues and you have to be a front on this. And you have to understand that you're not wearing this amazing badge of honour and doing an amazing thing and you're not better than everyone because of this. You're doing a good thing that should be celebrated. But you have to defend your staff. Don't just watch as they're made to feel like crap because they're not giving up their weekends just because you chose to. You should be the loudest in the room saying I'll do this but never ever expect this from anyone at at all. Or me in the future just because I did it once. I see that happen all the time. It's literally happened with Lauren multiple times because we're now we've got we've got a child now.

13:35 So our lives are very different. Years and years and years ago, Lauren did all sorts of extras. She did because she was part of the PE leader our school years ago. And she did like a swimming club and she took went to swimming tournaments and she did speed stacks clubs and tournaments, all this stuff. You ended up every cross country. Obviously she just can't do that now, but she just can't do it now. OK, she could. Doesn't. Want to yeah, yeah, exactly that even if she could. That's what I mean because it's in the past. I see it all the time. I know people be like, oh, you you've you used to used to love doing this. You do. You can do this again as well. That's just because I did it in the past. Don't please don't then assume that my life is very different now and I was doing that as extra. That wasn't the baseline. So defend yourself for the future because honestly it will come back and bite you if you don't like but also defend your your staff like just you've got to protect everyone including your future self.

14:23 The only reason before I move on, I said then she can is because I want that to be what everyone knows and understands, that you don't have to not be able. You don't have to have a reason that you can't do it, to not do it. You could do all of these things. And let's say your Saturday morning is free and you can do it. I want everyone to know still that you shouldn't be forced to just because you can, you know, could Lauren leave Rivi with you for the morning and go? Of course you could. Don't want to though, and it's absolutely fine. Yeah. And that's, that's the end of it, you know, it being a can or can't thing. But we did it in the past, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Yeah, completely. Because I said in the past that don't hold me to account for this. I'm doing this this one time. I know it's nice and it's extra. That's it. Yeah, yeah, You know, absolutely right. Right.

15:05 Next question. What is the most appropriate response to injuring yourself in front of the class? I accidentally shut the tip of my sausage in a filing cabinet and nearly swore. Lots of love, Carl. Hickbread. Well, Carl, haven't we all been there? What a flex. Oh no, how? How have you done that mate? You telling everyone, are you? Ohh, the filing cabinet the other side of the room. Ohh yeah. So crazy, that filing cabinet that's by my feet, that's mad that I, I can't. I don't know how I did that, everyone. I got a court underneath this chair. Oh my God, what is the appropriate response? What's the worst pain you've ever had in the classroom? Like with the kids there? Can you remember? I remember vividly having a Nosebleed. It's not pain but I remember teaching and just blood starting to pull.

15:51 From my nose. I had to just leave the room and get an adult just to stand at the door and be like I'll be right back. Luckily I caught a bunch of it in my hand but it's not a nice thing. Is it in front of your class? I remember the children noticed before I did so some of the faces I was teaching them was like, what do you think? And they were like, you're OK. I was like fine. Blood everywhere. Yeah, so that wasn't necessarily pain. I guess the worst pain I've always felt is trapping your feet when a kid's swinging on their. Chair. Oh my God, Yeah, that is something. Insane pain right on a toe or like the little toe at the end and I just want to scream. What's the pro? I think if that was me, I'd be like, I'll let you know. Your little. What you doing get? Out I've told you 67 times oh, don't say 6-7 yeah, I think the. Appropriate response is to completely lose your rag, go absolutely mad.

16:42 All specialism at the window. Now. It's a tricky 1, isn't it? I think if I actually think about the times that I've been, I've had a couple of migraines, you know, I mean stuff like that where you think, you know what, my head is killing me. Or get your sausage. You know, I can't say I've ever done that. I remember, I vividly remember having to walk like into my cupboard because I was in so much pain from my foot. Honestly, I was like, you crack on your work, please. And I had to go into the room. But look, it was so excruciating, so funny. And yeah, my I don't about you. Like I think there's a lot of teachers out there who swearing. Like, again, people watching this podcast. I get the odd thing. Swearing's like a it's actually quite a big part of my vocabulary. Like outside of school, I swear probably a bit more than the average person A. Bit more, a bit more.

17:26 Quite a lot more. Because well, the point being like, it's just what I grew up with, you know what I mean? Like it's just like family heard swearing all the time. So it's like kind of just within my vocabulary. And I I my first thought in my head, it took me a long time to learn this in school because the first thing that always came to my head was like, now like if something annoyed me, I'm laughing sake, sorry all the beeps in this episode. But yeah. So I had to really train myself to not do that. Yeah. And I found I don't you when I do my teaching, like if you go into a YouTube channel where we're like modelling stuff or like doing a maths or English or anything like that, if I watch it back, I'm like, that's not me. Like you're going to like another extent you. It's the same with like the reaction. But even this to an extent, because we try not to swear, obviously with a couple of swear words, but we do actively think.

18:10 You should see the bloopers. Yeah, sometimes we have stopped in the past because we've been like, oh, I didn't want actually want to swear there. I don't want to bleep it out. We've redone a bit. Yeah, I can. I thought of one while she was talking about the time I was in pain. I only talked because I knew you needed time. Yeah, and it came. It came to me. You probably saw me start like giggling to myself. When you were talking. So it's very linked to this in a way because it was only a sausage roll. It was, I had sausage roll. It really hurt my stomach. No, it was outside and we're playing with, you know, those they're like rugby ball shaped with a bit of a bit of a a bit. Of a tail? No, I know what you mean. You know they whizzed through. Don't. You and you can launch them so far just playing with a couple of kids and one of them threw one at me and hit me right in the private. It's like, you know, you know, that absolute sweet spot that's like cripplingly painful. And I had that massive stomach ache and I was like, Oh my God. And and they saw they did it.

18:56 I didn't mean to, but I, I was brought to my knees, honestly, on the floor. I was in so much pain and they came over and all you can do, I feel like is just say I'm in a lot of pain. It's going to take me a minute, but there's no point pretending you're not unlike trying to roll off. I'm in a lot of pain that really hurt. It was just an accident. Don't worry, I'm just gonna need a minute. And I just honestly had to like stay on my knees for like like 30 seconds and eventually got up and walked it off and so much. And the issue is your knees are so bad. Good girl, your knees are. Added to the pain of my knees. But yeah, in that situation, if you injure yourself from the class, you've just got to be honest, I think. I don't think there's any point in pretending. You didn't. Sorry kids, my sausage got trapped in the final cabinet. Bloody hell, anyone seeming knob gets stuck in that cabinet there.

19:41 Blimey, no, maybe don't say that. But honesty to a degree. Yeah, it depends what it's. That's probably the only situation. Just hurt myself. Yeah. What did you do, Sir? Just, you know. Yeah, it's funny how this, the one that's written, is probably one of the rare examples of where you can't actually just say what you've just done and hurt yourself. My advice is to be honest and tell me exactly what happened apart from the question that we literally. Is the worst answer I've ever. Given, I remember one time linked to this, it's not me, but I remember feeling absolutely dreadful because it was like the end of the year, John, you gotta play rounders in the field. I felt an afternoon. I'm not doing this bloody lesson on or whoever it is. Let's never bleep for you. I'll just go up to the field, we'll play some rounders and the kids were playing and they're like Mr. Price, come on. And their team was losing and I was like, I'll kind of their team.

20:25 Then I think I'm this big, go on. I'll wackle for a rounder, get one. Big boy price. And so this kid's underarm throat to me ready. And I smashed it. I absolutely smashed it. Hit his throat, hit the boy's throat, hit the boy's throat. Oh my God, hit him with the throat. Couldn't like, of all the places in the world, like where is Adam's apple like right there. And I was like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. So you know, immediately, like I was like, ohh, God, what do I do here? Because there's no need for me to have been in this situation. I was literally just going in to just get around. Or did you get one kid? No, didn't you get around that? Even around? Yeah, I left the kid in the middle on the floor. Ohh, no. One second, one second got run the last running, running my helping. So it's just you here, Class 1st aider you go. Meanwhile, you got 5 rounders.

21:14 Yeah, get going around 5 rounders accounts, guys, that's 55 for this team. We win, we win. Do we go in to get a wet paper towel on that? Anyway, I spoke to mum afterwards and I was like, I'm so sorry. We were playing rounders and it literally happened. And this kid how? Did you even say that? I know. I punted your son in the throat with a with a full pelt adult swing rounders. Essentially, it wasn't a rounders ball, OK, It was a tennis ball, which is, you know, less hard. But yeah, it wasn't nice. Obviously. I was like, mate, I'm so sorry, but to my mum was fine. He was fine as well. He actually found the funny side of it. Yeah, because he he was the one goading me because he was the bowler as well. He's like, hey, come on then that showed him, didn't it? But yeah, mum was fine about it. It went through good aim. So I felt absolutely awful.

21:55 So in that situation again, honesty, honesty is the best policy. I wanted to show off in front of some 8 year olds actually. And I into the throat and. It worked though, didn't it? It did work. You did show off and everyone remember that. So no one ever forgot that game, right? In a jiffy, yeah. That's so funny, honestly. All right anyway, next one, how to be a good teacher when you have a cold and feel all round rubbish instead of just being a miserable old cow. I feel so guilty when I get home even though I've not been horrible, just not my normal bubbly self. But I just find it so difficult when all I want to do is just line the sofa and recover and recuperate. Did you write this in? You are quite. Anyone listening to me right now? No man, I'm not a teacher anymore. Just just before you read that question, we had to cut because Dylan needed to cough off camera. He feels so rubbish.

22:43 That's hilarious. How do you, how do you be a good teacher? I don't know. It's a weird 1, isn't it? Like you're still a good teacher. If you're a bit poorly, it doesn't make you. Doesn't make you. You're not. I mean, I'm not a good teacher anyway because I'm not a teacher anymore. Go on, you go. No, I'm just going to say that I think you know something we said recently about every single day that you're a teacher, there's 190 days, you're with the children, There's absolutely no way every day can be on the same level. It's impossible. It's just human nature that we have peaks and troughs and Bel is going to be one of those troughs. And you have to, you have to understand that you did what you could. Did you maximise what you could have done that day? Well, with the cold and feeling like crap, yeah, I did actually. Maybe it wasn't at that level where if I'm firing on all cylinders, but for that day in that situation, I did what I could.

23:29 And I think if you reframe it like that, my advice would be not to maybe change what you're doing at all, but just change your reframing of what's going on because beating yourself up about it when you're I'll, if you went into school still, let's say you're not contagious, but you just feel a bit rundown. And in those situations, you should still go in. If you're not going to make anyone else I'll absolutely. I don't think you should just take those off fully nearly. But if you've done that, you've got him done your best for the kids, left everything on the table, get home, feel like crap. Still, I'm sure you put in a good shift. If you ever felt like that when you felt that in the past, did you? Were you quite honest with the kids? Because I always found, I always found because that's such a nice felt like that personal relationship with the kids. I just say to them because I'm feeling a bit rundown today. I might not be doing things exactly. As a normal massive advantage of huge advantage. OK, licking our lips right, we've got him. Mr Still is still I'll chucking.

24:15 Things at me? Well, you don't. You can throw things at me. I can still see that. I was quite proud of my Mr still is still I'll I'll my next line. Not really conversation we have, is it? No, just two separate thought trains and we're just waiting for that. It's like kids at nursery, isn't it? Yeah, they just parallel, parallel play, not actually interacting. I've got everything I want to say. You got everything you want to say. We just just go back with. The battle Who'd you like the most? Like me the most? Like me? More like me. More listeners. Like me. Not Dylan. If you like Hayden more, leave us a review. If you like me more, leave us a review. Oh, that's clever. I wonder which one? Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, it's good. If you think Dylan's funny, leave a review. Oh, it's not funny. It's not. Funny, I can think of it. You've got editorial, you know, snip, snip, final cutting. This you just cut out, right. Anyway, so that's me.

24:56 I'd be reframing. I'd be like, you can have crap days in terms of being honest with the kids. Yeah. Jokes aside, absolutely. The amount of times I would say to the kids, guys, I've got a banging headache right now. Sometimes I said it when I didn't just because it worked so well. So like every now and then, black guys, I just just, I can't really speak loudly because my voice and yeah, but in general, they're actually quite good. Not like you, you'd be horrendous to teach, but in general they're just like, okay, and they crack on. So yeah, I've used it sometimes, even when I've not been ill. And if you are genuinely too ill, as Dylan said many times in the past, the best thing you can do to be a good teacher is not come in honestly. There is, there is a point where the the literal best thing you can do is just not be in school spreading your illness.

25:40 I just, I just stay at home and then recoup quicker and then you can come back in. 110 million percent. Wow. Next up, I'm new to mass leadership after nine years leading English and I have a very old school colleague who is very resistant to change but maths is an area of weakness at my new school. Any advice for this and maths lead in general? Very tough one. Really, really hard when you've got a member of staff who just blocked everything, like it's very, very, very hard because you almost cannot get around that without just being like, well, I'm putting my foot down like this is how it's going to happen. OK, straight away before we get into this then do you not think that we sometimes champion that a bit too much champion what saying no? Yeah.

26:24 How many times have we said don't just change things or as well in any, don't just do all that, you know, it's going to increase my workload massively. These changes sound like, you know, changes in maths fundamentally will increase workload. We are very big advocates for people being like, say no, Someone hearing you at that point saying, oh, it's tough when people just say no, isn't it feels to me kind of hypocritical. So how would how would you address that? I think that's fair enough. I think that's, I think that's completely fair. I'm going in with the mindset here that this person is is making a reasonable change. So maybe I shouldn't have presumed that. No, but OK, So even if it's not a reasonable change, let's say maths is dire, let's say change is needed. Yeah, it's literally needed in this school because it is dire. You know, is change bad then? Like all I'm trying to coax out of you is this idea of, OK, it's all well and good saying no to stuff all the time. Yeah, we seem to champion, but I don't feel like that's our message.

27:15 No, I don't think so. So how would you clarify it? Because I think sometimes it can come across like it would be very fair for someone to say, well, you guys always say say no. Yeah. Why you wait till Max colleagues like they're blocking stuff like they're bad. You've literally said to me before, if you're doing wholesale changes, then just hold your horses a bit. OK. So just on that then, how are you framing this straight away? Let's be really clear because I think when we say about saying no and putting your foot down and saying I'm not going to do this, we are always doing it under the caveat of the change that's coming. Or the thing that you've just been asked of you is completely unjustified and unreasonable. Like, and you can point to something and go, This is why this massive increase in my workload will have no impact. So therefore I'm not going to do.

27:55 It or it even does have an impact, but it's alongside 7 changes. And, and it's disproportional, right, as well. There's 2 two ways of doing that. There's 15 things happening at once. And you're saying, look, these are all great, but I can only do one or two of these things at any given time. So we need to rethink about what the structure is of how we're going to make this change over time, right? That's why it's completely reasonable. And the other thing is I can see that that might make a slight impact. It will take me 10 hours and it will make 1% difference. At which point I'm going to argue to you that this is completely unfair and unreasonable because it will impact my time outside of the job, completely outside the direct of time. And that's when you can start saying no, put your foot down, be really, really, really clear of that. But if you're in a simply in a situation where maths is in a dire situation and the maths lead is saying I've got a plan for the next two years, I've got a plan for the next year. And they've thought about this being reasonable. It's not an unreasonable amount of extra workload like we do as teachers, we are simply expected to plan and deliver lessons. That planning sometimes does take a bit longer than other times.

28:50 There is a bar, you know when it goes way beyond that. That's what we're saying. You could say no at this point, but if it's within the remit of the job, which is ultimately you need to deliver effective lessons to children, that is your job. And the planning is dire and the everything about maps is dire so far it. And as a mass lead, you should be able to say, here's the plan, here's our school improvement plan for the next two years. This is the first thing we're going to work on. I'm going to deliver some staff training. I'm going to get some training in. I've got some resources here. I've taken a bit, I've done a bunch of the work for you as a mass lead. And this is what you need to do now to implement this change. We'll review it in three months and then we'll move on to our next step. And someone's just saying I'm not doing that. OK. I, I really appreciate the clarity because that is bang on one I think as well. So that's really clear then. So in this situation, what would you give advice then for these maths leads? Because I think you've mentioned something there about, you know, a time frame.

29:37 I think giving a really clear time frame can help get people on board. I think all of the things you've talked about are very, very clear to me. OK, I really want to narrow down into you are literally working with someone who just has the mindset that what you're doing is bad and it's not. Let's just say it's not. It does need revamping, but they've been doing it for 25 years. They say it works for me, it's great. But as a school, you do just need to move in this direction. How do you convince them that a different way might actually not only be better, but and not be so bad for them to? Improve, sure. I mean there's three prongs for this. Number one is actually talk to this person, develop a genuine relationship with this person so they can actually like talk to you and trust you. Like if you don't do that bit, a lot of leaders don't do that. And he's like, it's just like talking to a brick wall and know who you're talking to.

30:24 Develop a relationship with them #2 do it yourself. Like actually show them you need to, you need to give them something. You can't just say this is going to work in my ideological world. Show them maybe you've been doing it for a couple months already, whatever this change is, and literally put the comparison in front of them and say, look, here's what we're doing before. There's some pros and cons to what you're doing. And this is really great, but these areas are really weak. And actually look at the way we're doing it here. We can maintain these pros that you like about what you were doing it and we can really develop these weaknesses. And I've done it for two months and have a look. Don't you agree? Show them. And my third prong is back up and research as well. If presumably you're doing this because you've learned about it from somewhere, show them that as well. Say, This is why we're doing it. It comes from all this research here. All these studies have shown it's really effective. This is me doing it.

31:06 And you can see the comparative effects here and how good it is. And also I'm talking to you face to face and we can arrange some more time to talk if you want to go through it. And I'm happy to continue developing this positive relationship with you so that we can make the change we actually need to make in our school. As a leader, I feel like doing circling around those three things, you can generally turn people onto your side because they realise you're not just some top down press who wants to make a name for themselves and you don't really care about what you're doing. You just want to be the guy that's put their foot down and controlled everyone in the school. Because I think that's what people think sometimes. You're actually just a reasonable person who wants to develop the quality of teaching and learning in your school. And 99.9% of teachers, when they realise that that is your true motive, will actually be on your side because guess what? That's what they want to do as well.

31:46 They just want to be good teachers. Do you see there's much room for compromise as a leader? I've always found this really, you know, really fascinating to us. You talked about not wanting to be the the leader who comes in and puts their foot down and said this is better do this because it can ruffle some feathers. However, there might be some situations where it is better. It just is better. And you just as teachers, you just don't like change. You've done it your way, it works for you, but there is a better option out there. Is there room for compromise? Like because I'd say to leaders out there, mass leads, especially, I'm coming from my kind of point of view of maths. The amount of times where we've, we've implemented things we've said, right, we're going to use this here's, but here's your freedom and we've said here's the structure and maybe the progression that we have to map across.

32:31 There's certain stuff that I as a maths lead need to implement. I have to put this in place, guys. I need to make sure that in a year three classroom to a year 4 classroom to Year 5 classroom, the individual child is getting a really good, sensible progression. I have to make sure there's coverage across the curriculum. I have to make make sure that what we're doing in terms of how we're recapping basics and fundamentals and how we're moving on to the lesson and covering the curriculum and how we're doing interventions and how we're looking at data and filling gaps. That also needs to be consistent and need to know that's happening. But is there room for compromise then? Because you come in and say this is better, this is better. Should we be still building in and as a leader saying to staff, but you know what, if you feel the need to do this, then do it.

33:17 Or do you think there has to be from the top down all across you convincing them to do it your way? I think ultimately that's the goal is, is top down convince, trying to convince people to do it away. But I think you cannot do that without compromise. I think it's important. I don't. I think it's literally impossible. I think you have to look at your staff team as a leader and consider everyone on a personal, individual level. There just will be some people and there's so many reasons you go through, some less valid to some more valid reasons as to why someone might not be able to take on that workload right now or might not even just know how to. Do it not even workload literally fundamentally what you're doing. Ignore workload for a second. I'm really pushing in here on I think as a leader, mass leader, the amount of time someone said to me, oh, I do this for addition number bond facts and it really works.

34:00 Like can I carry on doing this, please? And I've been like, hell yeah, that's awesome. Like it's not necessarily what I put forward in my plan, but that's a really good thing that's helping the children, improving that and you've noticed it and it works well for you. Someone else might say, well, for times tables, I do this with my class because I've got a leaderboard and it's really competitive. The class are competitive together. It's not a school wide thing. You say do this for times tables, but can I just do that? And I've been like, yeah, that's great practise. What I'm talking about is individual teachers who have their own ideas and things that work well for them. I think I, I disagree slightly. And I'd say that is fundamentally part of being a good leader. And it's not just about convincing everyone to do it my way. It's about being a team. I've maybe got the expertise in what's good and what's bad in general, but I can't pretend that my staff out there, some of them won't know more than me in certain things. When it comes to these little bits and bobs, I think the best leaders look at it and go, do you know what? I'd be changing that for the sake of it, maybe for my own ego, maybe for my own vanity.

34:55 And sure, it might be rooted in research and I know it works, but you know what? Clearly that works as well for the benefit of the class as a whole. The teacher will be happy if they're just doing that. It's 5 minutes a lesson. It's working great for the kids. I'm not going to say no to you. And I think that's where I'm talking about compromise. It's like I might have this 100% utopian idea of in my head where everything should look like all the time. And I can see then when people push back why leaders might go to that. Well, I've tried to convince you it's not working now tough, you're all doing it this way. I think the best leaders go through that process of trying to convince people to do stuff. But on the way they go, yeah, I'll concede that. That's cool. Bring that in. Bring that in, cool. And by the end, you're looking at maybe 80% of what you wanted, 5% of this teacher, 2% of that teacher. And even not just everyone does stuff that teacher does now, but just the freedom to say to your staff, this is what we're doing. We have to, it's fundamentals here. We have to do this coverage, we have to have this progression. But if you want to do your times tables like that, let's do it and feedback and we'll see.

35:50 Oh, I'll say to everyone, look at this great practise, try this out. Look at that great practise. There can't be one way to do something. I think that's absolutely fine. I, I, I don't disagree with what you said at all. I think I was very much going down the lens of assuming the thing that people are doing is simply not good enough. Whereas I think in that situation, I think that is the ultimate outcome. It still stays true to what I'm saying because what I'm saying is ultimately you want to convince everyone to be doing the best thing for the kids. If they happen to already be doing something that you would say is equally good for the kids, then of course you're going to compromise on that character. If the compromise is I really don't do this thing and it's absolutely objective and terrible for the kids, you're not going to be like, all right, you can do that one thing. I've got 80% good stuff now. 3% of those is absolutely dire. The thing they're doing for their timetables is blow dark mouse.

36:33 It's absolutely dreadful for the kids. I wouldn't compromise. New listeners. I think it was you know what I. Mean like the compromise? What you've made, I'm thinking of a separate thing. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Because I guess I got my, I got my back up a little bit in that situation of just like, yeah, I think you're just trying to convince them to be your way. I guess maybe we can come to some kind of middle ground here, which is just like you're trying to get the best out for the kids and everything you said, I think answered this question really good. We kind of moved on a little bit to, you know, as a leader, what your advice would be. My advice would be though, be open to compromise. Be open to compromise. And you're like, they're not coming along with me 100%. You know what, can we get them 95% even, even if a part of that is just not ideal? Well, you've moved the dial on like 9/10 of things like progress is progress at the end of the day, and you can work on stuff.

37:22 And it might be that in the first time you make a 20% move. We've tried that and I'll call it. OK. I've also been trying this with timetables. Should we give it a go? What do you do? We'll run it side by side. Oh, actually at the end of Christmas, your class seems to be doing better at timetables. We'll keep that. Maybe that works great. OK, cool. We'll not move the dial. Not moving the dial doesn't mean failure. I think if you're in the right systems and do it the right way, not moving the dial can be a real positive sometimes. A good thought experiment could be for this person and other people in the same sort of situation, think about that teacher who's resistant to change, right? And I want you to think about their practise. Make sure you know their practise for a start. It's so it's so easy to like get people's back up because they think you don't even know what I do. Make sure you actually go and observe this person and see what they do. Look at that book, like find out exactly how they do things before you start saying everything they do is wrong.

38:04 And genuinely, because I think this will be true all the time. Is 0% of what they do effective? Yeah. Because of course that's not going to be true. Of course, I want you as a leader to look at that person who you think are really resistant to change. And I do need to implement some of these changes for good reasons. Look at what they do and find the things that they're actually really good at and praise them for it and say continue doing that and here are the things we are going to change. Work with them. Don't work against them. They don't need to. They probably, they probably like that because they've experienced in the past too many times people coming in don't really know anything they do and just saying scrap everything you're doing. Do this now, but why what I'm doing is really effective. Don't care. Do this now and they're and they're annoyed. They get their back up because I think people just change stuff for the sake of it. But if you go in and say, wow, that works really well. Like you said, there's your compromise that works really well.

38:48 I'm going to implement that in with our with our policy. I want everyone to start doing what you're doing here. But here's another thing I've seen from another good teacher or part of my policy that I, I really want to implement this as well. Can you give it a go? And you'll find that you can just make change more subtly. You think is good like that and, you know, doing everything you've said as well. So I really like how you press next on the PowerPoint. Keep pressing Next on PowerPoints, but here's all PowerPoints user for now. And here's 80, but keep pressing the way you press Next on that PowerPoint. Is so good. Well done. Yeah. Next tip. Don't be patronising. Don't find genuinely good things. Don't just say, Do you walk around the room with such grace? No. Where did you get those shoes? I'm gonna make a policy for shoes at the school because everyone should be wearing those shoes because the shoes you walk in are bloody fantastic. They're Crocs, Yes.

39:33 Very comfortable. Yeah. That's an interesting question, that one. Really, really good question. Let's do another one. Yeah. When visiting a new school for interview, what key things should I look out for and should I ask to make sure that it's a good place to work? Oh, I love this question so much. Can. Teachers wear Crocs. That's number one. I honestly think that can teachers wear Crocs? You say #1 do we number things when it's just one of them? That's one thing. If they wear Crocs and you know it's a good place, can you start you? You seem passionate and exciting. No, the reason I love this is because I think it's so important for especially new teachers to be equipped with these ideas. And the first thing I say to you is, oh, how do I put this?

40:14 You can go and look around the school and there are certain things that schools can put on. Lie about, exaggerate, make sound good. And there are certain things that you can't fake, right? So what I would say to you is, you know, if you're walking around with the head teacher of a school and the head teacher is going on about how amazing life is for the staff and how brilliant the children enjoy themselves, and it's just you and the head teacher walking through the corridor. Take it with a pinch of salt because literally anyone can say that. I'm not saying they're wrong, no, But what I'm saying is it doesn't mean they're right. There's things that you can put lip service to to make sound amazing. OK, so when it's with that, still ask those questions, still say what's your policy when it comes to marking?

40:58 Still ask about, you know, do the children enjoy school? Still ask about the timetable, still ask what's expected from staff. Do you have to run clubs and things like this? Because it's hard to bare face lie and say no, we don't expect clubs of our club of our teachers. And then you join and it's like, oh, no, actually we did. I just lied to you. That won't tend to happen. So this, you know, I'd still ask all those questions, but I'd really just, I'd steer people in the direction of what can you not pretend what, what can you not put on for a walk around? And for me, I say this all the time. It really is the way that people, and I say people because I mean everyone, every single role an adult has and every single child, how do they interact with each other? How do they naturally interact and talk and treat each other? Because I don't think you can fake that. And for me personally, this is 1 string, OK, because we've talked about workload a million times and that can be separate. But I do find that if you go into a school and you know, the site manager is in the office with the, with the office staff and a teaching assistant walks in and there's a child delivering the register, just look at that. You know, it's small things like the office staff being really jolly and happy with the kids, the teaching assistant saying, oh, you're right, mate, to the site manager, How you doing? Is having a chat camaraderie?

42:12 Yeah. Yeah. Just I think, I really think that that is such a green flag in places where no matter where you are on the spectrum in terms of what you might say is traditionally a hierarchy in a school. Yeah. Does it, does it feel like the interactions between people transcend that? Because you might get really nice conversations between three teachers who are sat together. That doesn't tell me much. You know, it's nice. It's great. But then when the head teacher walks in with you for a tour, how do they react? Yeah. Is it relaxed and like, hey, hey, guys, How you doing? That's nice. Oh, yeah. Brilliant. Oh, nice one. Yeah. Or is it you notice the shoulders go up and oh, God, I've got to get back to work because, you know, what's that like? What's the dynamic like?

42:53 Does the head teacher know the children? You know, does he walk past the corridor and the kid opens the door for them? They go, oh, thanks, Frankie. You know, just just things like that. And this is the reason I love this question because schools are unbelievable places to work in When you're in the right school, the sense of community is unbelievable. It's genuinely one of the best parts of the job. Honestly, I'd love it so much where you just feel like a team. And I think when different members of the staff team and different children and, and all the roles come together and just have this balance and equity, I love that. And I think I want to be part of that team. So that's a huge thing for me. I'd say maybe you can go into some more hardcore stuff that actually is, you know what, what workload etcetera is. But I think unless that's right, I'm not bothered about working in the school.

43:38 I was going to say, and it was one of your last ones, it was the biggest one for me. So I'll just summarise it quickly because you basically said it is how people respond when the people that are showing you around walk in the room. That one to me is like. Keep. Why do you think that's key? What does that show you? And it shows what kind of relationship the staff have with their superiors. And I think that's really important in education where it is the, you know, 10s of thousands of people leaving this job all the time. And it there are lots of toxic places and workload can be dire so easily in so many places. Seeing how your head teacher and the staff respond to each other and just react, like you said, if they're getting the shoulders up or if a teacher looks like they're getting nervous when you walk in that classroom, yeah, it might be just because they just get a bit nervous when anyone comes in. But if it happens like 17 times you go in all these different classrooms, I would be thinking I wonder why that is. But then they go to the assistant heads office. Hey my guy.

44:29 And they're already. Bali yeah, It stands out, doesn't it? It does. It does stand out. And that that is genuinely like the biggest thing for me is literally that, like you said, because it's hard to fake people's reactions to help. Because I can think of a school I worked in right now where if the headteach came round, I would be sweating because everything, all they want to do is catch me out and it's and it and make me feel rubbish. And I can think of a school I've worked in where the headteacher came in. All I'd be thinking is how can I have some bad with them right now with the class because the class will love it. Get them involved for a few seconds and then they're going to go away and do something else like and it's just I like having them in the classroom. It's another body. It's another it's fun and it's you could so easy if I was walking around, you know, looking at myself in those two situations, I could very quickly tell which school I would not want to be working and clearly isn't very nice and which school is probably quite a nice place to work in. But obviously on top of all that, you would just be asking the good questions that you said at the start, just literally find out as much as you can without being too over the top.

45:15 So I think there can be a point where someone might be like cracky, just ask a few key questions about workload. What the, what policies are like, what's, what's the corridor display like, you know, looking around the corridor displays. Oh, these are really nice. How do these, what's your sort of policy on this? Oh, well, once the turn we get our Tasmania a day out and they come out and come around and whip up some displays. Fantastic. Or oh, we just expect our teachers to change them every two weeks. OK, interesting, interesting different responses there. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. You just just find out little bits about the workload and the policies that you can and then just make an informed decision, get the feel for the school, a few legitimate questions, put it all together. Yeah. And then and trust your gut, genuinely trust your gut. And if you get the opportunity, not most of the time you won't get this opportunity. So it's easy to say if you get the opportunity to actually talk to a member of staff.

46:00 Oh. My God, exactly what I was about to say if. You if you can actually like not in not in the little group and they're just like being robotic. Oh yes, we love doing this gun to the back. We love we love being prodded. We love the workload policy here is great. Like, you know, an actual conversation. You just say to them, oh, what's it like working here? Thinking about applying? Is it a nice place to work like? What's your work like? Have you watched the film Get Out? Yeah. Where the guy, he goes, he goes to the family reunion. And then like there's one just kind of like crying like this is a great. Place to be, yeah, I haven't seen that. Yeah, so. I agree constantly to think about that. Talk to people, talk to people. That's the best thing. And yeah, some someone once said, you know, would asking this question put people off hiring me? And I was thinking about like, I'm like, so interesting. Because there's clearly two ways you can go about it that are just legitimate, which is, yeah, do you know what? Pushing too much about how little work you want to do at the weekend might put you off getting the job. But my, my thought is always, if that puts off someone hiring me, then I don't want to work for them. There is a line that you have to decide personally where you think, is that a reasonable question to ask? Do I really need to know this?

47:07 Like, is it a deal breaker? Because if it's a deal breaker and it makes them not want to hire you because you asked it, well, it's a deal breaker. So you don't want to work. The deal is broke, right? So you need to think where that line is for you. Because that's true. There might be certain things where like, oh, ideally that, but you know what? I just want to get my foot in the door in general. I see all these pros and cons. You're never going to find a school with 100% pros. No, of course, never ever going to happen. So yeah, but there is a fine line I think between again, just of just being a little bit, I don't know, just not painting yourself in the best light. Even even if some of these questions are good, it might if someone asked 5 questions in a row and the first one was, do do we have to, do you have to mark much here? And, and the next one is, is all the planning provided for us? And then and the next one. And it's all questions like that that, like you said, make be sensible, make you sound like you just don't want to do any work, even though they're probably realistically just reasonable questions as well. Last five in a row, I can understand why some leaders might be a bit like just a bit just about your personality, just thinking why are they obsessed with like these things and just just like, OK, like you don't seem like a good person to have.

48:04 I don't know. That's true. It's true. You have to balance what your perception is, what you actually are and what you need to know before going in for a while. Because the amount of people I hear about who get a job and they go in and it's very different to what they thought it would be. That's what I would how I'd finish off answering this question is like no matter what you do, it will still have differences when it comes to getting into the school. Yeah, right, Dylan. I think that's it. We've run out of time. We've had some great questions today. Continue to write these questions in. Don't forget to share the it's. Not that easy. Is it doing to sign? Up you will normally do this you. Got thrown over to you I. Wanted to say it's like and subscribe but it's not YouTube. So it is on YouTube. It's YouTube as well. So you've not really talking about. Really messing this up again guys take over despite. This absolute car crash of the ending of the of the episode. Please do leave your review wherever you get your podcasts, send it to someone who might find it useful. And as always, my the last question, Hayden, anything to say before we finish?

48:57 I just. Want to say you're really good at doing the end of the podcast? Please can use it every single time. See you guys next time.