Ep 180: Teacher Training, Middle Leadership & Finding The Right School: Our Teaching Journey

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of teach steep repeat. My name is Dylan and my name's Hayden and we are this week going to be diving into our story, our journey. We both taught for 10 years in schools. I taught for 10 years. Definitely not 9, definitely 10, definitely not one less than you. And we, we had a few people message us saying about like, oh, how did you meet each other? What did you do? What's your story? Who are you like? Why should I listen to you? Remember to talk about. Education. Why am I even messaging? You what's going on right now in this situation? And I just thought it'd be good for the new listeners as well. I looked back at the episodes and we haven't actually spoken about our story in a long time. And even when we did, it wasn't really indeed like. Pockets of things, weren't they? Yeah. So I thought it'd be nice to actually just dive into who we are, our story for teaching, and eventually we left teaching.

0:42 So I think it's going to be something that resonates to a lot of people, whether they're at the stage of at the start of their career, bright eyed, bushy tailed and wanting to do the best, whether they're thinking, oh, is this for me? Whether they're left teaching all together. That'll be something for everyone and hopefully it gives us a bit of validation as well. People understand, oh, these guys, OK, right, They do maybe know. And they are also relatively normal human beings. Also that relatively I did say relatively. Fair enough, fair enough. No problem. So I'm going to start straight away. Hayden, did you always want to be a teacher or was it just those who can't teach? So you have to end up doing that I guess. Classic. When I was a kid, I, I, I didn't obviously think I'm going to be a teacher when I order. I wanted to do like something to do with media or acting or art or film, something like that.

1:23 Maybe something math. So, you know, they're completely different. But often people say art maths are quite well linked today. But that's kind of, that was kind of my passion. It wasn't until I did a work experience placement when I was what, like 16? Whenever you do work experience. And I got placed in a school and I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. Lucky for me, I got placed with a really nice teacher who embraced the fact they had a 16 year old, probably objectively quite annoying in their classroom and just yeah, work, just work with some kids. And I was like, this is kind of cool. I think that planted the seed. And then I still went back to the media, went off and did a degree in film, radio and television. Wasted three years, basically never went in, racked up from there. It was pretty stupid really. But you know, got the new experience, as they say. And then that finished. I tried to get into industry, realised it was not for me like it was.

2:04 It's very cutthroat, full of like these super confident people. That was just not me, especially then, like I'm probably a bit more confident now, but really still inside I'm just that person who's a bit shy and like that was a bit scary to me. I was like, wow, this is that was a huge mistake. And then I was like, oh, wonder, wonder if that teaching thing was a good idea. Went back in, volunteered at my local school that I went to and it didn't take me long from then to go, Ah, this is really nice. This is really wholesome. I thoroughly enjoy the kind of people that work here. I thoroughly enjoy working and to the point with like children. It felt great just to help someone get something and from there that was it. I just was like cool. PGC did. I didn't think twice about it. Just signed up for PGC, managed to get in and the rest is history. One year course and then Bang was in teaching.

2:45 What was the what was the situation for you? Quite quite similar. To be fair, I never thought I wanted to be a teacher, to be perfectly honest with you. But I had a really good experience at school. I think a lot of teachers do have good experiences with school. I know a lot of teachers who didn't and actually they're really good teachers because of it. And they don't do the, the misgivings that they had basically done to them when they were at school. But yeah, I, I, I didn't know what I was going to do to both of you. Like, I went to university. I very much felt like I was a byproduct of the funnel of you went to a grammar school, you go into university. So we have to pick something. And I was like, oh, well, I don't know what I want to do. And in my A Levels I did history and maths and physics. I could have done any of them to be honest with you, because I enjoyed all of them. But I got my best mark and my highest performance was in history.

3:26 So I did history at university. Again, much like you, I didn't really spend a lot of time going into university. I didn't really engage with it too much. That's my own problem. I get that. But like all got like got the experience, like you said, finished up and I was working part time since sixth form. So for like 4 or five years working part time at local Asda and it got to the end of my PGC and I still really didn't quite know what I wanted to do. So there was an opportunity there to be the, the, the, what's the word, the leader, section leader or something. They'd call it Asda basically where they'd make you the manager but not pay your manager wages. Do you mean the end of your degree, not your PGC? Sorry, end of my degree. Sorry, my end of my three-year degree. So I went full time doing that and within two weeks I was just like, I just, I don't want to do this.

4:09 Like the amount of responsibility and stuff and and like the I was basically on shop floor wages and that's just like, that's not for me. And I was in the bakery. I was I in charge of the bloody bakery? You can't bake anything. Obviously I was like 22, in charge of a bakery, never once baked anything in my life. And I was talking to bakers saying, oh, we've got the bread ready. So I don't want to talk. Yes, mate, of course. Do you know what my job is? Of course. I've got the bread ready, you idiot. Literally. But so in that year I actually did quite a few things, things where I submitted my CV to recruiters and I got a few opportunities to go up to London. I had some interviews, some big group interviews for recruitment basically. So I gave my CV to recruiters and they tried to place me in Group recruitment as well.

4:50 And I got a week's trial in a London office recruiting for tech, for tech companies and for like, so basically what happens with a lot of people who work in tech like that, they, they just are freelance and work contract to contract. So like we'd get a job in from a big bank. It was like a 12 month contract. You need certain, you know, qualifications or experience in writing code in certain languages. And then you'd call them up and say, I've got this contract here, it's a 12 month contract, it's £200,000. You'd be doing this, this and this. I see you're suitable for the role, we've matched you out. Would you be interested in this? Loads of cold calling. Yeah, 8090% of the time they weren't interested. No, that's right. Thank you. Bye. Or the phone didn't. That was not for me. Yeah. My goodness.

5:30 Doing that. No one is it social interaction, which I struggle with at the best of times. It's salesy. It's pushy. Positive. The same thing over and over. Right. And I didn't know what I was trying to sell. Like right now when we talk about Mathsu, where we're currently at, where we built a maths platform and it's our passion and it doesn't feel like sellers talk because it's just what I'm passionate about and what I think will help people. We built it exactly. Whereas this was like, Oh yes, you'll be doing your C++ or your JavaScript. Isn't that fantastic? I didn't know what I was talking. About just reading of a script. Yeah, literally, I had no idea. Anyway, so 1 1/2 days into that week, I remember going into the boss and just saying I'm not going to carry on, sorry, this isn't for me. And I just went home. Yeah. And yeah. And then and I started thinking about teaching was in the back of my mind for a little bit through this because I thought there was actually a teacher in the office who used to be a teacher and was now doing recruitment.

6:15 So I spoke to him a bit, right, right. He was a music teacher in secondary and he said he loved it, but he wanted to make more money because there was a lot more Commission that you can make in there. And I was like, OK, fair enough. I'm going to start my career classic. So I went. I did some days at my old grammar school, went back in for a couple of days because I thought maybe I'll do secondary history. Oh, I didn't know he did that. Yeah, yeah. So I went back in there, shadowed a couple of my old teachers for a day. It was fun, but you know, there was one day where a teacher taught the same year 8 lesson 4 times in a row. They just happened to have all the they happened to have four year eight classes all in one day. And I just watched the same lesson 4 times in a row and I was like, well I'm bored now. I can't see myself doing this. I wonder what primaries like. Went into primary, loved it. And I think a big thing you're picking up on what you said.

6:56 The people who work in primary schools mostly are such good people. And really nice. Exactly that and like the atmosphere coming from like the recruitment process and it being a bit more business and cutthroat, although there's, you know, there's benefits to that in terms of maybe your pay pack, it might be more. Personally, I, I think it's all about the team you work with in any environment and schools in general tend to have really good teams and good people involved. Not saying you can't get that elsewhere in the private sector, you absolutely can. We work with people now who are unbelievable and I love working with them, but hedging your bets, like most people in the school are really good, nice people to work with. Did that for a few days, went to the PGC, applied for the PGC, got onto it and yeah. And and that was that was my journey really up until till training.

7:37 So what was what was your specific training routes? We both, we both did PGC, didn't we? Yeah, yeah. So yours was PGC math specialism, which love to randomise, right. Mine was just PG was the last year. Where that was the only version of it that you could, that you could do and you just got, to you, it was the same sort of thing. You picked your specialism within the course. You still, you still chose maths. I still chose maths and probably did exactly. You had my tutor as well. Yeah, we literally did the same thing. What you learned the year after was the same thing I did, but I had to pick it. And other people didn't pick that. But we were all under the umbrella of the same course. It wasn't from the outset like, oh, you're the math specialist version of the course anyway. It was a bit different. So yeah, it was a, it was a, I'm sure you have the same thing. It was a crazy year. PGC is absolutely wild. Like madness.

8:18 And I remember someone saying to me they were like, well, yeah, you are doing the three-year course in one year. Like realistically you do need to come out with as much of that knowledge that people get in the three-year course as you do. Like you, you can't just they're not, you're not going to lose 2 years worth of the knowledge and come out with a third of the knowledge. It doesn't make sense. You still have to learn, even if it's slightly more superficial because it's just you are restrained by time. Used to me to learn everything about the job, to go and do the job. And I was always like, yeah, that that is actually kind of crazy, isn't it, that people are spending three years and I'm spending one year doing that. I know Lauren did the three-year course. Did do you, do you regret that? Like do you like, even though it's more intense, do you think that having some experience doing something else or having a three-year course in something else where at least your options were open for a bit longer?

9:00 Do you think that's a good thing? Or looking back, do you think, well, I might as well just on a three-year course and just go straight into it? I don't know, it's so hard because obviously I only know what I've done. What what I can tell you is I think that was perfect for me. The PGC being one year and crammed like that actually made me do it. The three-year course I did before that was too relaxed and therefore I just didn't take it seriously. I actually think if I'd done the three-year teaching course, I just would have got bored and like I would have stopped taking it as seriously because I needed the intensity of that PGC year to make me fully absorbed in it. And maybe it was just timing as well. Perhaps if perhaps no matter what I did when I was 18, it all, it all would have failed because I was 18 and maybe that was the problem. Do you know what I mean? But when I was 22 coming into this PGCE and I'd had a bit of experience and I was a bit more like, OK, I want to try and sort my life out now.

9:43 Because actually I also, like you, did a year working at Tesco in that gap year before I went. I didn't go full time. Sorry, I was green army. I was Asda. Not like you, I'm afraid. Yeah, we were not friends then. No, I still didn't even go full time there. I was just honestly a bit of a bit of a waster. I was doing. I was just didn't know what I was doing. I was just like with the wind, you know, all over the place. But PGC locked me in and that was what I needed. So three-year, I don't know, probably would have been. Did you think it was, did you think training was adequate like when you were going through it? Because I personally, the training year that my PGC, I've said this before, was my favourite year in education, as in personally when I was being like educated, I was a pupil. Yeah, Yeah, it was. It was my favourite. It was my favourite year because it really felt like I was really narrowing down onto a skill which is teaching and there's loads to do teaching, but it's it's the one thing you're doing.

10:31 I felt really busy all the time. I felt like it was my chance to really throw myself into something and I felt like I was good at it and I enjoyed being in a school and I was with really good people. I was very lucky. Like we've still got friends now who I trained with at the time who we know are local and still be teaching. Some have left, some haven't, but it was just such a good experience and I, I absolutely loved it and I can see why some people might not thrive in the PGC and other routes might be better for them. You have schools direct where you can earn money as as you go through. Now you, like you said, you've got the three-year course. I don't think there's one size that fits all, but I think it's important to find something that suits you because if you enjoy it, you're going to get more out of it. Yeah, I agree. And I'm glad there's lots more routes now and it's a lot, a lot more accessible to get in.

11:12 One thing that's always been on my mind, I would love to know your answer this is, do you think that it was appropriate or do you think it's the best model that when you were 22 you got the choice to do the PGCE because you had done a degree in the past versus another 22 year old who maybe hadn't done a degree, Wouldn't they? What they're not given the option to do to do the PGCE. Do you think that's fair? Do you think it was like, Oh yeah, because I've done a degree before and that's what makes me able to do it in a year? Or do you think they're not really tangible? I think that that goes into more to like how flawed the system is in general of just does a degree make you a certain calibre right As I think in general, I think sometimes yes, sometimes no. It might not. Yeah, that's what I mean.

11:53 It depends what the degree was. I'm not even joking. Like there are some, there are degrees out there that are worth more than others, not going to lie. And, you know, it makes more sense, I think when if I'd done a history degree and gone on to be a secondary history teacher, that kind of makes sense, shouldn't it? If, you know, I had a history degree, I wanted to be a primary history math specialist. What they would look at for me to go into the math specialist course and to get a certain bursary level and actually like fund it was my A level results. You had to get AB or more at a level and they didn't really care what you did at university. You just had to have had that university degree level education. So I think there's something to be said of getting to that certain level of education. It shows that you can get through a course, you can do something. But yeah, I don't know. I think, I think that's why it's good. There are other roots now, because, yeah, you can still have the PGC, It can still be an education route. It can still be like leading on from university. But if that was the only way to do stuff, I think that'd be flawed, yeah.

12:42 Yeah, I, I felt, I always felt really lucky. I always felt really lucky that I chose to on a whim, really go to uni the first time, even though I didn't take it remotely seriously and genuinely probably got nothing from it. I felt I was like, oh, I'm so glad I kind of accidentally did that because if I was in the same situation now as a 22 year old and I was faced with my only option is you've got to do a three-year course. Now let's imagine I hadn't gone to union. This issue or you could train on the job like a lot. Of people do yeah, of course, but to me at the time I was like, I only knew of these two. I just thought these were my only options. I could do the PGC or the three-year course. Yeah, if the PGC was locked to me, I reckon I wouldn't have chosen to do the three-year course and I probably would have gone on to do to do something else. Yeah, but like for me it be a bum. For me it was a bit of a saviour that I had that option to be like, OK, you can do this rapid, you do it in one year. I was like, cool, give me that. Yeah.

13:23 That's why I always don't like saying that university was a complete waste of time because it kind of. Yeah, it was part of the stepping stone to get somewhere, open the door. But I also so do you think university was a waste of time in a lot of ways? And I'm glad now there's more ways to go around stuff and still become a teacher. And I could have still been really good if, honestly, I could have done absolutely nothing in my history degree, and I wouldn't have been a worse teacher. Like, it didn't make me better. That's kind of what I was trying to get out. Yeah. I, I think I would have got everything I would have got about the PhD itself. So I do think it's a flawed system in a way, but I understand why that exists. Yeah, sure. That's basically what I'm trying to get. So when you're in your placement school, do you have, do you have any particular memories, anything come back to you like a like a particularly strong memory or, or a terrible moment or a fantastic moment or something like that? Just thinking now, two things stick out.

14:04 First, this is not one of the two things. But I will say I was so lucky with my placement teachers. Yeah, I had. I had Fran and Nicole, so they were year 4, I was with year 4 with Fran, and I was in year 6 with Nicole when I went back in for my long placements. And they were just unbelievable. Not only they were, they amazing teachers, they were just really helpful and nice people as well. So that's the first thing I'll say that that's so lucky, I think. And my mentor was good to me as well. And yeah, so things that stick out to me in it was like this first or second week, both of these things happened really early. The school that I was being trained in and that you were in, funnily enough, you were working there.

14:44 You in your first year was going through the process of becoming an Academy and, and they were also going through the process at the time of talking about pay and stuff and restructuring. And I remember being sat in the back corner of the classroom, it was just me and the class teacher was at the front doing the work. We were both working whilst the kids were somewhere else thinking there might be an assembly and one of the teachers came into the classroom and spoke to Fran and was saying, oh, this is just ridiculous, how are we not getting paid for this? It's just unfair. It's ridiculous what we have to go through this, this, this profession, venting as you would about the profession. And she just looked at me after and went, I didn't realise you were sorry because she didn't want to put me on. Yeah, like, exactly.

15:25 Ready to get going. And she was like, oh, I'm so sorry. And I was like, I want to hear this stuff. Yeah, this is good. Like, yeah, please be real about it. I what? Am I just going to wait until I qualified to find out that this is the case? Like, it's good for me to hear this stuff. So I always remember that because she was like, horrified. And I was like, oh, please don't be here. And then the second thing was very quickly, my class teacher had to have the day off for some reason. And obviously the school would just like, come on, we do have a student. But bearing in mind, this is like my second week of being in a school and I think I taught a starter for 10 minutes and they were like, would you mind teaching for the day? And I was like, well, I'm not going to say no. I'd be terrified, Joey. I'm not going to say no though. Of course she's trying to be like. Exactly. I'm going to throw myself into it.

16:06 And do you know what? I did it and I struggled. By the afternoon I really struggled and I was absolutely knackered by the end of the day. Maths went all right, English was OK. Afternoon really struggled, had some bad behaviours in the class, had children having meltdowns, had to call the head to come round and actually help. It was a bit of a nightmare. But do you know what it was good to do? Genuinely, genuinely for, for my personality and me. For other people, it might put them off and they'll never. Cut to anxiety. But for me, actually, do you know what? I finished that and I thought I'm only going to improve and get better at this job and I got through this day and it's fine. I think that would take me over the edge in this exact same scenario. At that point, I was so, so nervous and anxious about you even being in front of the kids.

16:49 Like that would have been like, I would have been like, I need to go home. I can't. I'm sorry, but I'm not prepared. I cannot do that. And that's fine. What about you? Yeah, the only thing that I ever told the story a few times, I don't know if I've told in the pod, but I like to reflect on it because I think there's some interesting points from it. Right. And ultimately it's it's kind of a story to do with understanding how the important safeguarding is really in schools on on one of the first days I turned up for my place when I was in a year one class and I remember standing in the classroom sort of being like, oh God, I don't want to do like the teacher just gone out of the room to go and sort something. I'm just standing there like a lemon and an income. A child from the playground that had like early morning play. So school was just about to start and two adults brought brought this little girl in and she'd like fall over and herself. She was crying a little bit and they were just going to sit her in the little in this like shed area a bit right by where they were. So they were just going to the other side of the door standing there.

17:36 She was just be sat down right next to them, but they but she was inside and they went to leave her to, to be sad. Like you'll be all right. I'm just going to stand here so I can keep my eyes on the playground and be outside. And then they looked up and saw me and I saw them visibly change their mind in that moment, probably thinking, Oh, actually, there's a man that I don't recognise over there. I'm not, I'm now not going to leave this child alone. And in the moment, I remember feeling really offended. I was thinking, oh, typical. Oh, just because I'm a bloke, you think I can't be around? You think I can't be around children? How typical. What a stereotype. And I remember in my head being really offended, the idea that, oh, right, you don't think she's safe around me because I'm a man. Yeah, but in. Register because you're a stranger. Yeah, I know. I look back now and I'm like, no, I'm just an unknown person standing in the classroom. Also, I do think that's odd, like when I actually when I listen to the detail of that story because they're either leaving her alone or then.

18:24 I know. I think they shouldn't have been doing that. Right, because I was gonna say like Eva, you know, if the problem is, oh, we can't leave you alone with that person. What, so you can leave them alone when there's no one there? That's also bad. I. I think they were in that grey area of they justified themselves. Maybe it was just going to stand here at the door anyway. But then ball. But technically it might even be that they might be thinking, oh, someone there that might call out the fact that I probably shouldn't be doing this. Exactly so. But in the moment, I absolutely just thought it was a personal attack. And they were like, Oh no, there's a man over there. He's probably a weirdo because he's a man in school. Do you very much playing up that with a child? Take people maybe thinking that, wouldn't you? I agree for the sake of keeping them safe. Do you know what I mean? Like you just. Say, oh, your feelings are hurt. Yeah, I just don't know who you are, mate. Like, I'm sorry, I don't think this is prejudicial, whoever the word might be.

19:04 Yeah, I don't know who you are, so I'm just gonna make sure that I'm with this child. And by the way. You basically called their bluff a bit there because they were going to try and get away with. I think so. Yeah. So on, on, on reflection over the years, I think there was a lot more little avenues to that story that I didn't consider at the time. And it it, you know, one, it talks about it, it's a lesson about safeguarding #2 it's a lesson about like, not maybe not taking everything at face value. There might be deeper meaning there. And you think all that sort of stuff came from it and reflection and how also just over time you do just learn more and you have a better understanding of nuances of how schools work, all those. Things it's it's it is, it is important because you don't have that when you start teaching. And I don't think you can like we can't make everyone understand that straight away. But I think if we can just say to people like don't necessarily assume the buzz. Yeah, yeah, it could just be that. Which one?

19:49 One other thing. Last thing I remember is I was in Year 6 after Christmas in my second placement, towards the end of the school year, they went on residential trip and me and the other student teacher who were both in Year 6 at the time, we planned and did the events for the children who were staying. I did the exact same. Thing. So it's Rainforest Week and we did all rainforest stuff. We did tie dye. It was, it was me and someone called Mia. We both did it together. We both planned it. And we had like 15 kids for the week. And again, do you know, cynically you might look at it and think, oh, they're just getting you to plan it. It's easy for them. So well, yeah, you are a student and you do. That's part of the job as well, learning that. And do you know what? It was so fun. And we kind of had the freedom to be like, well, it's Rainforest week, plan whatever you want. And that like invigorated me, inspired me. We had so much fun.

20:31 It was nice and and like, it was a good thing. And I don't think I want to say to people now, like who are going through this phase of being a student teacher, like don't just think extra work is always bad. Like that was extra work. But it was the best way ever. And I really enjoyed it and it helped me, again, just fostering that experience of understanding the line between what's fun, what's helpful, having bonds with the children, how it just made everything more clear to me. And I really enjoyed it and the kids loved it. It was so. Fun. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. It's fun enough. I did in my second place when year 6 also went in residential and I kept back the other kids and we did some sort of project based thing and it was really fun. So that's quite funny how we had the same sort of experience there. Probably very common. Yeah, I imagine so. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. So get your first job. I thought that's a big one. What was that experience like for you going from placement to actually you're employed now?

21:15 So we had different journeys, didn't we? Because in PGCA the way it works is you do have two placement schools that you go to. Yeah, but for the vast majority of the time you're in one school, right? So you have like a six or seven week placement I think before Christmas and then you had another like 8 or 9 week placement after Christmas towards the end of the year, both in the same school. For me that was in a local Junior School. And then you have an alternate placement in the middle between Christmas and Easter, I think, where it was literally I think it was. Just one or two weeks. Two weeks and the idea is it's supposed to be like in a different key stage. So I went to an Infant School for a couple of weeks in another local area and it that's cemented to me that I did want to stay in a Junior School or for higher up the kids.

21:57 But yeah, in terms of getting a job in in the school where my main placement was a cut, a few jobs came up. I think 2 jobs came up and I obviously applied for one and got 1. So for me, the whole process of finding a job and we'll go on to moving schools later, but in general, I've never really genuinely had to go through the the rigmarole of, you know, going on websites, finding jobs, applying and putting CVS out there. I did it a bit in my PTC year because I wasn't sure what was happening. But as soon as that job became available and I said I wanted that job, it was quite an informal process of, OK, well, yeah, sure. Just apply, write this down, we'll have a interview, just a chat to make sure we're not. But we know you really well.

22:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for me it was quite seamless and not an issue at all. Probably the best version genuinely of had to get a job but used very. Different was quite funny because it was a good lesson and it's typical me. You're gonna laugh. It's good against my arrogance and my ego here got the best of me in my placement school, exact same situation. Job came up. I was like brilliant. I've had a great two placements. Everyone, I'm pally of everyone here. It's going it's genuinely just going really well, getting good gradings. All the observations like it's a no brainer of why with of course they're going to employ me. Of course they are new head came in during that. I had no interaction with this head by the way, before this point. So she had no reason to have any bias towards me. Like as far as I'm concerned, I'm just a random student in the school that she's not even seen or heard of, right. And so I rocked up to this interview thinking, oh, I got it. I got this in the bag.

23:21 Did not prepare enough remotely taught this one lesson where it was a maths lesson. I was like easy for me maths. They had projectors at the school I've been taught doing all my lessons on projectors. Prepared my whole lesson for this projector lesson. Went into the class and I was teaching no projector. Didn't work. I had to adapt on the spot. Didn't know how to do that yet. My skill set was not there. Taught the worst lesson possible. Went to the interview. I was already rattled by this point. Did the interview, clearly didn't prepare enough, didn't answer a few of the questions maybe as well as I could. I could see that visibly she just was not impressed already. That's rattling even more. Couldn't have flunked it harder if I tried. And then in her in her. I think I even spelt her name wrong in like in like a letter like I put in in the 1st place, like it was like spelt with an IE, but I put it with an I or something like that.

24:02 Like and just the literal first thing was firstly, you know, it's probably important to just get the name right of the person who said that to me. So completely embarrassed me like rightfully genuinely. So it was just stupid of me. I wasn't going to hire you after that. They weren't going to hire that. And then over at that point I really knew. And then it then it just said that you've rejected you. This was at the beginning of my second placement. So I then had to do the rest. I had like 8 more weeks of working at this school knowing they don't want to employ me. It very it felt really embarrassing. How do you deal with that? I was embarrassed, I was embarrassed at 1st and I and I just sort of had I just had to you know what I'm like, I just had to make everything a bit of Vanter, a bit of joke, even though I was mortified inside and the the class teacher I was with was really nice about it. You know, he he was just making me call. He's like, mate, this is just what it is. You know, it doesn't matter. You just sort of it's like a puzzle.

24:43 You're just not the right fit for it doesn't mean you're a bad teacher. It's just you messed up your interview. You are a bad teacher. You're a good, you're a good teacher, but you didn't put enough into your interview. Just face it, it, it didn't know quite how you wanted. You're not you're not what this what she wants right now to make. She wants something, something to bring something to the table. It did. It was useful to me. So then I was like, cool, I'll apply it. The the alternate placement school that I went to instead, they've got a job as well. Went in there, taught another horrendous lesson. I way too ambitious. I was like, I'll show them all this new stuff I know about bar modelling, right? Went in and tried to teach a bar modelling lesson to a bunch of year fives who've never seen bar modelling in a 15 minute lesson. Stupidest decision I could have ever made because obviously they spent the whole time being like what the hell is? This you just added cognitive. Load initially right and there's me thinking like wow them with this awesome Singapore math style thing. Couldn't careless, couldn't careless went awful. Didn't get the job there. I was like cool, brilliant.

25:24 So the two places where I've worked in don't want to hire me. I was really then I was completely deflated by this point. And then luckily for me that a head teacher kind of at the school ended up working in the same 1 you got a job in. The head teacher's daughter was in my class, in my placement class and had the daughter luckily gone home and said, oh, he's really nice as a teacher. So that was enough for the head teacher to be like, oh, OK, I'm interested. Are you looking for jobs still? And if you are, we'll do an observation, but I'll just come to you. I was like perfect. Because I know this class. That's clearly what's been messing me up here. We go to all the classes thinking I know what I'm doing and she came to me, observed me, was like, yeah, cool, that'll do. Gave me a job. And I was like, thank God for that because I was starting to get to the point where I was like, cool, so apparently I'm rubbish at this and I'm not going to make it and it's getting a bit late now and I'm not going to get a job for September.

26:09 It's quite, quite common parents that I've been pop a lot of people listening who might have had a similar experience. But a lot of the time in general that something does pop up. Yeah, it does pop up and it's. And it happens and it not by confidence it did. But it didn't take longer to come back like that ego for you that ego and arrogance was there again set the second second she walked out the room was like all employee. I was like yeah, see easy told you went straight to that head teacher. That placement said I've been employed by this other school actually. Thank you. Goodbye. So we both got a job. You're one year ahead of me. So obviously our NQT years back when we did NQT was just one year. They obviously didn't overlap. You were doing NQT for a year. Well your NQT year was whilst I was training, my NQT year was just then. You were just a teacher then at that point. But in general, how did you find those first, those first year? I'd say first year or two or three even at the start of your career, what was it like in terms of what you expected of the job?

27:01 How did you handle the jump from training to actually being a teacher? What were the biggest differences or challenges do you think you faced? Biggest difference and challenge for me was that just like the support network, even though it's still there, it's obviously extremely heavy when you're training going to, there's no longer another class teacher in there that you can always fall back on. It's now your class. That for me was terrifying. My first few weeks, probably months actually, my first few months in my AM QT year, I really was like, I was anxious every day. Like I had big old sweat patches every day. Not just because it was hard, because I was genuinely just like, you know, when you're just nervous, your body just sweat like that sort of level of anxious. You got 32 kids there. Exactly right. And I didn't have another class teacher in the room so I could just be like, I don't know what I'm doing. I just had to basically wing it when I didn't know what I was doing until I understood what I was doing.

27:44 Important to say to people, you're going to wing it in the fresh, you are going to wing it. No one thinks that they've nailed it or has nailed it in the first couple of years. Accept it and don't beat yourself up about it. Absolutely, yeah. And I'm glad I didn't because I didn't beat myself up about it because I knew that was true. And you know what, by the sort of half over that first year, I felt great. And then by my second year teaching, I was, I felt awesome. I loved this job. I was already there. I was fully absorbed in that job by then. I think it only took me that sort of first year to feel like I found my feet. I. Was going to say that. At what point did you start feeling more confident? Because I think I tricked myself into it by just pretending I was confident. Yeah, like I really struggled to actually think when I actually became fully confident.

28:24 So I think about the end of my career, I'm so confident in the job that I was doing that I felt like I could walk into any room and just deliver a good lesson, whether I had all the resources or not. Like I got to that point. And at the start of my career, I felt like everything had to be planned meticulously and I had to make everything was perfect. Clearly, somewhere in that journey, I became past the point of just, like, full confidence. But I think that actually happened much later than I convinced myself, Right? Yeah. I felt probably more confident than I should have been much earlier on in my career because I always got nice feedback, always got good praise, always got, you know, it felt like, oh, I'm really good at what I'm doing. I don't know how useful it was necessarily. Did it paper over cracks for example where I needed to work on stuff a bit quicker.

29:06 I think there was a good balance there and you, you have to vacancy make it as the point. Definitely. And it took its time, it took its time. So we've we've, if listeners of this podcast will know, we talk about it all the time that we obviously love maths and we've spent the vast majority of our careers as maths leaders or at least as part of the maths leadership if there's if it's been a team or whatever. So do you want to just give like a little just insight into your journey from just being purely classroom teacher into the world of subject leadership? Well, I don't know how it works now, but back then we had like hubs in our school because we're quite a large school and I think that's. Probably why? Because it was a big. School, yeah, it was a large school. So we had hubs where you would have a maths lead, you'd have an English lead, but you'd have a hub where, Oh, I'm on the maths hub in terms of you go to meetings with the maths lead and you as a team coordinate your plans for for maths as a subject.

29:53 So I was on the maths hub pretty much straight away. I think our maths hub is called Logic. LED. It was called logic. LED because we did an escape room. We called ourselves logic LED. Yes, it was. It was all like very, very corporate like funny names. Logic LED. And in our first year, I think when I was teaching, when I was training, I think I was went to a few meetings. And you weren't maths lead at that point. But then you became maths lead, didn't you? And but I was always on the logic LED like maths hub team. So I was always felt like I was involved in decision making. But obviously there's no, there's no payment at all. And we just met every now and then and I'd get the odd job and it'd be like, we've got 6 things to do guys, all obviously most of them because I'm the, I'm the leader of the subject and that's fine. But if you could just do that or you could just do that or you could run a competition for the school.

30:35 I was involved very, very quickly in the running of a subject in that regard. And then when I went to leave that school, and we'll talk a bit more detail about moving schools in a second. Long story short though, it was offered as a carrot almost to stay. You can become math lead, you can, you can become math lead here and you can do this. But it wasn't until I actually did move school and went to the school that we ended up with the school we finished that where again, I moved there. I wasn't immediately leader of maths because we had someone who led maths in the school. Things got jigged around a bit and then we became maths leads. Both of us joined together, actually just leading it, not hub, just both joint maths leads. And that's been my journey.

31:18 So I feel like I've always been involved somehow and most people going through their journey will be involved somehow in the leading of a subject. Yeah, exactly. So I don't think it's uncommon to have that, but I also think it is a good thing. I really do think it is a good thing to be involved at that level and have wider school impact because I could have an impact on maths, not just in my classroom, not even just in my year group, but across the school through what we're doing. And I think that's a nice way of doing it where you can lower the burden for everyone because maybe it's one meeting every big term, just an hour every big term. You part of the mass hub and you've got one job where you just run a competition, run a competition for the school. It it doesn't add hours and hours to your workload, but you're involved in the meetings, you can hear what's going on. And if you have ambitions to move into leadership. I think that was a really good way to actually see the the nuts and bolts of what goes on and understand that even the leader of this massive, although they're fantastic teaching large the normal person and I could probably do that job well. That's basically what what happened to me. Like so in my first year of teaching, there was someone else who led the logic LED maths hub and I was put into the maths hub because I made it very clear that I was, that was my passion. And then in that first year of getting that little bit of dripped experience, it did allow me in my second year of teaching to become the leader of that, of that maths hub. And, and probably in a lot of situations, I don't think if you're in your second year of teaching, you probably wouldn't be the leader of maybe one of the core subjects genuinely. But, but given, I think they did a really good job of giving that experience, like you said, by being part of the team, they allowed me to very quickly get into the role of, OK, cool, I'm going to lead the whole subject then. Did you get TLR?

32:40 Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I've actually always had ATLR for leading mouse and like you, I no, that's that's not true. I was going to say I wouldn't have done it without TLR. I would have done earlier on because I just wouldn't have thought anything. That's why I asked, because I knew you would have. Now nowadays I'd be like, no, absolutely not. I'm not doing that. It's ridiculous. But no, I did get a very the smallest amount you can get on a TLR three. I got that to do, to do, to lead maths. So can I ask something about when you LED maths then the people listening at whatever point in the career they're at, maybe they're already middle leaders or they're thinking of becoming a middle leader. We did a whole episode on this Middle leadership. Worth it, It's mid. Worth a listen for you guys, but I'm, I'm looking now as, as you're, you're now at the point in your career where you, you've gone past the initial, you know, push back from interviews and thinking like you might not be good enough.

33:20 You've got your job, your confidence is built back up again. You feel like you're in your zone now. You're lead, you're literally leading maths after gaining experience. Did you find at that point that you you felt that you hit a bit of a wall in, in terms of two things, really one thing of how do you keep progressing from there without potentially going into leadership and losing time out of your class? But also how did you deal with as a leader, dictating to other people to do jobs where you know, they're not getting time or money to do so? Yeah. Did you feel like you were stepping your toe into that? Oh, he doesn't know. He doesn't understand. They're just in leadership. They're out of the classroom. You don't understand anything anymore. Or did you really struggle with that? I, I really struggled with the idea that I don't have this answer your question properly, but I really struggled with the idea that I was getting paid ATLR to be mouse and then was also asking other people to do stuff.

34:07 That's what I mean. So I, so I basically, I as much as I could, I didn't, I mean, you probably remember, I just, I took the burden on as much as I possibly could and I spent so much time doing because I was passionate as well and I was genuine. I probably would have done it anyway. Like I was like itching to get into that role because I was like, Oh my God, I want to make these changes. All this new pedagogy I've been learning about mouse and all this new Singaporean approach stuff and this mouse mastery, which is brand new. It's all coming out, all this White Rose stuff that was just coming out. Then it, it was all, it was all fantastic and new and I was dying to spread this across the school. But yeah, I very much felt awkward of the idea of I still felt like an imposter at the end of the day. I was a young, probably the youngest member of that team other than you. And so I was a bit like 10 of these teachers that have been doing for 25 years on how to teach maths. Like, it is a bit awkward, but also I'm super passionate and I'm going to do it anyway. I've imagined it did, like you said in the last episode, it probably rubbed them up, rubbed them up the wrong way sometimes of like, who's this guy?

34:56 He's been teaching for one year, and he thinks he knows the best. Like, we've seen this all before this. This was here 20 years ago, pal. Yeah, we know this works. It's great. Adding to that, the issue is if you're then dictating them to do jobs and stuff, I can understand how most people who get into that middle leadership position think what is the point that all I'm doing here is massively increasing my workload or giving more workload to other people who aren't even compensated at all for it. It's just really awkward. I think people really struggle with that. So I think it's interesting to hear your point of view, like how you dealt with leading a subject because we both LED subject, both LED core subjects, both LED maths. And for me personally, when you get to that point of leading maths in a school, my up there as my top priorities was to not burden my staff with extra responsibility. I felt like I always had to have in the front of my head. I'm the leader of math, Maths is the most important thing to me. It's my job.

35:42 I'm the leader of maths, but I can't forget that there's also a leader of English. And in between English is the leader of writing, she's a leader of reading. There's a leader of PE, there's a leader of geography, there's a leader of history. New Ofsted frameworks come out and might get deep dived into history. The history leads really worried and saying you need to do this, you need to do that. I remember as a teacher thinking, what do you what I've got, OK, now history's got A and geography's got a change and this got a change. So as a leader, I felt that burden of I need to make things as easy as possible for my staff. And that, to be honest with you, can lead to increased workload for yourself. Yeah, and that's tricky. I didn't think that though at the start, I just thought I was. I fell into the trap of being like, I've been given maths to lead, therefore that is the most important thing and everything that I think we need to change in maths is of highest priority.

36:25 And I absolutely put that burden on our, on our staff 100%, which is why we think people probably were like, oh, on their eyes. I didn't even think twice about it. I was like, well, I'm doing all this time. If anything, I'm still doing the lion's share of stuff here. I'm just asking you guys to implement this, these seven things. Yeah, yeah. Really. It's like what you implement. You're asking staff to implement 7 things. What you're talking about that, of course, that's crazy burden of workload and cognitive load on them. I just didn't understand that. So I learned that the hard way. And then I definitely after probably like 3 or 4 years. So it took a long time. I definitely then flip the other way. And when we were master leads, I probably just got it from absorbed this like attitude from you, which was everything we do. And you were really, really good at this. Everything we do, no matter how passionate we are about changing it, what impact is it actually going to have on staff and is it the right time to do it Exactly in the in the global thing? Like though, I remember before I was like, we should make these changes to math because current because it's better for math because it's better.

37:14 And that's the end of that. And that was it, right? And you were like, yeah, but we are also literally rewriting our entire afternoon curriculum right now. So let's not do this change yet. Exactly. And I remember being like, yeah, but but it's better never mass. But ultimately that was the right choice. It was not, it was not a good choice to put that workload burden on those on the staff. And unfortunately, not everyone thinks like that. And what ends up happening like you, like you said earlier, is you normally get the situation of every single subject lead thinks that, thinks that subjects are the most important. They're all making changes simultaneously. And then being like, oh, why is no one doing this one thing? I've asked them, it's because they've also been asked one thing by that guy, that guy, that person, that person, that person. It's not one thing from their from their perspective. It's only one thing from your perspective as a subject lead. And you just have to, I think if you're going to be a good leader and that's something you want to do in your career, you really have to take into consideration that holistic view.

37:57 I completely agree. So we're both at the point in our careers where we're kind of hitting our stride now. We've been in our school, we got a job at the same school, we've been there for two or three years. We need maths. It sounds like it's all rosy. What made you want to move school? Because if you look at the grand scheme of things, I was a teacher for only two years and you were a teacher for only three years before we decided let's move schools. And it wasn't that we were pushed, That wasn't that we were forced out. We both decided we don't want to work in the school anymore. Yeah. What? What was the trigger for you? Like, what was it to do for the job? Obviously you stayed in teaching so it can't be sure what happened. For me, I became more savvy to teaching environments, workload pressure, the way staff should or shouldn't be treated, contracts, all the stuff we tell all of our listeners to like be really be aware of.

38:40 Now I became more aware of all that stuff and came to the conclusion that the school I worked was working was not really the environment or not the leadership style that I that I appreciated or liked. Even though I wasn't necessarily in the firing line myself. I'd seen members of staff and colleagues who I cared about by this point because they're actually, they're more than they're friends at this point. You spend so much time with them. I'd seen them being mistreated or treated differently or unfairly even to me. And it's like, and I could have easily gone like, well, I did the right, I did the right thing, so I'm fine. I'm in the good book. So whatever turned a blind eye to it. But I was like, actually, no, they're not being treated nicely. This is toxic. It was the first instance to me of, oh, it's like toxic management or toxic leadership. Like it's not kind what they're doing. I saw staff get pushed out or pushed the brink of quitting their jobs because they're so upset because they feel like they've been harassed or bullied or whatever. They felt like their experience wasn't nice. Yeah.

39:25 And I was like, oh cool, I don't want to work for. You and it wasn't isolated, No, it was 1 issue. You might think, well, that person might be taking this the wrong way. It was repeated how many women of a certain age with huge experience, who'd been at that school, that particular school as well, for so long, ended their career crying every other week, feeling that they were being pushed out because they were. Yeah, because, because they were and. It's like, OK, there's only so much that can happen when, you know, I look at that and I think, well, that will be me one day. You know, if you want to be selfish about this, if it's not enough for you, that there are other people who you care about who are being treated this way, If that's not enough for you, at least think to yourself, well, there'll be one day where you're the person who's that now, who's too expensive, who's too experienced, it's too set in their ways. It's too much of a problem. To just have turnover again, let's get a new.

40:05 One so alongside that was pay as well because it was an Academy and a lot of schools are being academies at the time. I just didn't really like the pay structure and I was like the scope for me here has just been paid for. The job I do is actually is just worse because of the way the pay structure now worked and I was like I'd rather just go work in a school that just pays people fairly and properly. Let's be really clear on what the pays, what happened, because if you think about the national pay scales that are given as you can go to any union website and get it, it's national pay scales and there's rungs through how much you should earn at each stage of your career academies to come in and do their own pay scales. So what this Academy did was when it became an Academy, one of the first things it did was add an extra rung between each one. It's like a halfway point. And when you finished your NQT year, whether you were amazing or not, you went up half a rung.

40:50 And it was like, why? Well, just because that's what we do here. That's our policy. That's our policy. It's, it's, that's it wherever you go to this new imaginary rung in between. So you were two grand off straight away. You were two grand off where you should have been. If you were just in a locally maintained school, a local authority school, you'd be two grand better off. From then on it was down to performance and the most you could jump is 2 points, bearing in mind they've halved it. So A2 point jump is just an old normal jump. So where you would go to be, You started on one as an NQT, finished your NQT year, you went to 1.5, not 2. Finished your year after NQT, you go to 2.5. Even if you've done the best possible performance management that you could have done whatsoever, you go to 2.5.

41:31 So you're capped again, half behind. Every single year you're losing 2 or 3 grand based on where you would have been. If you're in a local school. It compounds. People used to think I'm just missing out once, I'm just missing out a couple of grand in the first year. You missing out a couple of grand every single year and that's every single teacher in the school. So it was a huge cost saving exercise for the trust who were taking so much money than they would have if they just followed the national scales and it didn't sit right with. Us. No, yeah, it just, it just bothered me. It bothers. Me and that's why I left and that's why obviously the the the teacher, the head teacher, after I had the discussion with them, went to the governors and said oh, he left because of money He wanted more money yeah, yeah. And that was the only reason to be so like. Yeah, no problem. It's funny that because it's weird, I don't think they realised that we knew people on the Board of Governors who then when the Board of Governors meeting finished, came to me and said oh, it's weird they said that you left because of that. They left because you're greedy and you wanted more money. You didn't want to work even though you'd literally gone to them and said, by the way, I don't I don't want to work here because the working conditions things aren't great and I don't like this everything we've just.

42:27 Explained the two hour exit interview apparently was just two hours of me saying money really slowly and I have a reason because why else would you tell the government is that there's something inherent reasons why it might. Be but you live and learn genuinely. You never learn and you can't tie everyone with the same brush. Is that the right phrase? Yeah, 100% yeah. And even I even look back at this like I've got I, this sounds like a ridiculous thing to say right now because it sounds like it probably. Oh, it's just bitter. I actually don't really hold any resentment at all. When we talk about these things. I say what happened. Yeah. But I don't day-to-day think, well, bloody hell, I left. It's just what happened. That was my, that was my reaction to that. I just got out of there because otherwise I'd be saying the same thing I'm living now. So you've got control as well. Like if you're in a school environment you don't want to be in for whatever reason, yeah, go. And I told them not because I was being a Dick. I told them because I wanted them to understand what's literally happening.

43:15 Because if I was running an establishment and people like us thought, well, I want to leave, I'd want to know why? Because I want to keep on. With them, Yeah, yeah. Because then you get the balls in their court. Then they can either think, oh wow, I didn't, I didn't intend that for that to happen. I'm going to change some things. Or is for them to go. Yeah, OK. Yeah. And in that case, I don't care. I don't care either way. I'm leaving. I'm just letting you know if you don't want this to continue to happen, this is what made me make the decision. If you don't care about that, then cool. That's up to you. Thumbs up. See you later. That, that was the frustrating thing for me was I had like a literally 2 hour conversation and I had typed myself up for it. So I said, I'm going to be completely honest with you and explained all of the reasons we've just outlined. And at the end of that two hour, the thing that really kind of put me down a bit with the point, which was when they said what if we offer you maths leadership next year? And I was like and enlist people listening now and I can't express enough how within that 2 hour period, I explained that one of the main reasons I want to leave because I can't see me working up the ladder in this school because I see what happens. Yeah.

44:06 And I know that if I become maths lead, I've seen it happen where the time out to run maths goes every single week. Oh, sorry. Oh, just this week. We've got to get rid of that cover. Oh yes, sorry, we just got to do that. I've seen what happens repeatedly as a pattern and nothing's you. You're not suggesting anything will change. So why on earth do you think that I'd want to now? Oh, you've just offered me it. Forget everything I just said. Let's do it. I, I, I felt like that's when I kind of gave up at the end of the conversation. And don't forget, you'd also, some of you tell me this, you'd also seen the fact that other people had also been promised similar things that that weren't delivered on. Yeah. They've been promised things to stay and then not given that thing. So you were like, I can't even trust. This. Yeah. And I said that to them, not even harshly. I just said, look, I used the name. I said, you said that to this person, and that happened. Oh, yeah.

44:49 But that was because of that. I was like, yeah. So I think what will happen is you'll just have another reason that you can say because what, like, like, you can have the best of intentions even. You might even really mean what you're saying right now. But I've seen the track record. Yeah. Yeah. And the way stuff is run here. And I don't want to be here anymore. And I wasn't expecting them to turn around and say, oh, we'll completely change it and you can stay. I'm just another person. I'm a cog in the wheel. But I thought it might be at least interesting for them to hear. It sounds as if it kind of fell on deaf ears. No, definitely. I think you did ultimately, but that's up for them to decide, isn't it? So let's move on because that's that's, you know, I think we get the idea of that, of that school and the fact that we moved. So once once you moved, did it change your perspective of the job? Because I imagine at that point, your perspective of the job, your only experience of the job was it was actually a little bit toxic. And I've seen people get pushed out of this.

45:30 I've had a negative enough experience. I want to leave the school. Did your perspective perspective on teaching and the job change when you move to your new school? I didn't think at that point teaching as a whole was broken and would never work. So my perspective didn't change. The reason I changed schools and didn't change careers because I believed that there were different ways of doing it. So, so honestly, my perspective did not change. What it did was was confirm what I was thinking because what I got when I moved to school, and this is the school I stayed in for the rest of my career as a teacher, was the difference in trust in my opinion. And I don't mean trust because it's not a trust, not an Academy trust. I mean, to a local authority school, whether that had anything to do with it, whether I think there are loads of really good trusts out there, by the way. Let me just make that really clear. Now. I think it's easier for trusts to go down the route of toxicity and, and, and syphoning money, etcetera.

46:14 But yeah, what I found in my school that I moved to, and I'd say this to anyone now who's in their career thinking this school, I love teaching, but this school man, is always to try something else because I don't know about you. We both, we both ended up there. The trust that I felt as a professional was at first disarming. I wanted to go to the head and be like, oh, I've done this by the way. And he'd be like, OK, I don't care. Like in the nicest way possible. And the workload really, really, really reduced. Because, you know, I, I vividly remember being sat in a staff meeting once in like 1 of the first staff meetings the first term and someone said, oh, for marking, now we're going to do this instead of that. And I remember thinking the both of the this and that were like 1/4 of what I was expected to do before. I was like, are we?

47:02 I don't have to. OK, that's I was like, right, that's great. And then like two or three people in the staff meeting were like, no, come on. That's just, it's going to take an extra 10 minutes every day because it's just not acceptable. And I was like, am I in the. Is this the same? Yeah. I'm like chomping at the bit for that to be OK. Yeah, Yeah. And I was like, I've been indoctrinated to think that you must do loads of stuff all of the time, always. And it's the only way you can do stuff. The the attitude changed. It was about impact and it was and workload was taken into account and well-being was taken into account. And it just felt like I was surrounded by people who actually really did care about the the teachers and, and trusted the teachers. And that transformed it for me. The. First school we worked at, right? Just for comparison's sake as well, look for that analogy. It was culture and normal, right? That at 6:00 when the school closed, all of the teachers were leaving with that box of marking.

47:45 I remember being that was like the club. I remember, I remember like thinking, oh, who I'm going to meet up with on the door on the way out today. And it'd be like three other teachers that are now my mates and we'd be walking out with at least one of our boxes of marking of books at 6:00 that we still haven't done for some reason. And that was normal. And I genuinely like I was indoctrinated to thinking, oh, that's just how it works. That's just what teaching is. I'd take my marking home and some days I'd take home three boxes of marking because for somehow or some reason, between 3:30 and 6:00 PMI didn't manage to get any marking done. I was doing something. I don't know what the hell I was doing. Looking back, imagined a lot of it was probably just being inefficient to be honest with. You. Well, no but but some of it, but but still. Yeah. But still, yeah, some of it was just like, yeah, what? What? This was meant doing to that situation. Yeah, when I agree, when I went to this news, when I went to the school we worked at most recently, the one we've left, I was like, is this all they do?

48:30 Not in a bad way. No, not in a bad way. I was like, because what they all they do was actually probably more like a just a normal workflow, which is still hilarious. Over the years, I was like, we can decrease some of this. Yeah. But at first I was like comparatively I was like, Oh my God, yeah, I'm not going to be until sick. No one left there like that. School closed at half. Five, I was going to say that school wasn't even open. No, it was close to half five and very rarely was a bunch of people were actually leaving at half five. Yeah, it. Was and how often? From what I've seen I I can tell you now I'm not even exaggerating. I know it's not nice to hear sometimes when you're so busy, but I honestly didn't ever take marking home. No, no I didn't. Even I just didn't it wasn't a thing. And and and my my attitude ended up being if if I would have took marking home. I won't because it's just a line and I've done enough stuff. Yeah.

49:11 And that was also like, no one really. I was like, yeah. Obviously I only had one, one line, that one rule that changed that in my head, which was I did my big right marking. So when they did independent rights, I didn't know. And you know, to be honest, if you, I probably could have done some at school, but I chose, I was like, yeah, I would rather sit at home and have an UN like completely protected time. Like it's not no one's going to interrupt me or I can just do this. So you probably went home early sometimes. Almost definitely because. You would have done it for another hour between 4:00 and 5:00. Exactly that. But you went home at 4 knowing you're like, I'm just choosing. Compounded that time of the weekend I'd be annoyed about every single time still. For God's sake, I'm a mildly stupid big right, but that was the one thing I chose. But I never, ever, ever, ever my whole time there took a single book home to Mark. Other than those independent rights. Never. Not once. No, it's great. And I just just wanted to just to spend a minute just talking about, you know, that school and how I'll be forever grateful personally about how we kind of were able to do what we felt like we needed to do.

50:04 And more. I think more pressing for me personally was I felt comfortable enough to raise things that I forward issues and not not be so worried that it's going to end up me being targeted and putting on a support plan because I dared to talk against establishment. How dare I? It felt like it was. And you know, I probably took it too fast sometimes. I've already raised stuff too often. Maybe I probably was at some point came across the wrong way. And I genuinely do apologise for that. But I think it's better for that to happen sometimes than for a class, sorry, a staff team to constantly think, well, I'm worried about this. I think this is awful, but I can't say anything, can't challenge it. It was it was just a room full of normal people who understood life. Exactly, And take it one step further, and I've realised this more on reflection recently, given the fact we speak to a lot more people now, including lots of other people kind of on social media for various reasons. I realise how lucky we were now, the fact that we started that school, we're already with an established tutoring business where some head genuinely would have been turned off by the fact that we were just doing other stuff outside of education, talking to other parents and kids, interacting with out of their control.

51:03 And they just wouldn't have liked that. They were chill about that. And then also we started a podcast when we still worked there. They were chill about that. Like they were nice people. They were normal nice people. And they, if anything, praised us for that. They were like, they would ask, oh, how's your podcast going on? How's your tutoring business? Is it doing really well like they, they would like actively interested in it. And I think I took that for granted having spoke to a lot of people recently where I'm like, you know what, that we really, really did just have a lovely, a lovely ride there. And you see more and more on social media, like even big presences on social media, they've literally spoken about how Mr Firth on online, very funny, lots of the skits, he does really good stuff and built up a huge following online. And he did something recently about how he's not allowed to film in school.

51:43 And there's been a bunch of other people, I think organised educator teaching Mrs F in Scotland. They spoke about how they're not allowed to film in school anymore. This is a thing that's there's lots of reasons, but I'm not even literally going to get into that debate right now. The fact of the matter is that we were in a school where it was very much seen as absolutely acceptable that we can do stuff outside of the classroom if we adhered to rules. Obviously we never remotely did anything when children were in the building ever. Because I think that's, I just think that's bad. Personally, I really don't, I don't like that. But we followed strict rules and they trusted us and we trusted them. Like, I remember we started the podcast. We didn't tell them we were starting it. Yeah, people say, oh, there isn't that really bad practise. I was like, do you know what? In a way. But we've got that trust. And we didn't go over the line and we knew, we knew that through the through the relationship we made with them.

52:26 And then we didn't hide it. We said to him, oh, we got this, by the way, this like it was more like this is happening. And they weren't, they weren't saying they were just like, oh, that's OK. They obviously wanted to make sure nothing bad was coming of it. And they were like, well, obviously don't mention it. I was like, of course we're not going to do that. But we had trust the only the deputy head said to us was like, cool, can you teach me how to do it? Because I want to start with my son. Like he wants to make a podcast. It was like, there's nothing bad about this. Yeah. But it could have been, you know, some people would absolutely. If they're not all. They've said it to us in the past. And they said a message has been, oh, if you get in trouble for saying that on your podcast in school, for saying what they're saying, what? Speaking the truth about the education system, what we're talking about now, because they also think that we sit, we sit around with the head teacher and deputy head literally saying how much something sucks in the education system and how it's affecting all of us negatively.

53:07 We can have that conversation with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So no is. The answer? They weren't very precious. Dylan, I feel like we should now we've established, I think, that we had a really nice few years at that school. But at the end of the day, we've just sat here and said about how cushy we had to have the best possible experience of teaching the loveliest school. And yet we're sat here and we don't teach anymore. Yeah, of what happened. I want to go to the end of that journey. Yeah, because I, I, I actually genuinely think that the fact I found that school where I don't think, I don't think I could have, I could have moved to another school and it'd be equally as fun and enjoyable and the equal amount of trust. I, I genuinely don't think I could have moved to another school and found more trust and more freedom to do things. I don't think that exists. We had the best situation. Already, I think we literally did. And the fact that I still didn't feel like I wanted to continue doing the job at that point, I could safely say it's a job thing at the end of at the end of the time, my first school, it wasn't a job thing. I want to try somewhere else.

53:57 I love teachers. So I don't want to carry on because I still felt that way here. I was like, do you know what? It's a job thing clearly. And I could just stay in this job forever and I could be in the best school possible. And it's just, it's just still not. It's just too much stuff that I still think, like you said, I still think it's just a nonsense. And it's nothing to do with the leadership. It's nothing to do with the people who are working in the building. It's just the literal very nature of the job, the amount of funding you get to to execute the job, letting children down through no fault of your own because they're not getting the support they need. I couldn't do that anymore. Do you feel like there was a final straw moment or was it just a slow building up of those those understandings of the systemic, systemic failures that made you eventually just climax to a point where you're like, I've tipped over this line that's in my head now, and now I just don't think I should do it.

54:41 Or was there a moment you can think that thing happened and that was it for me? I'm done. I, I don't have a like an exact moment. I just don't like it just built up over time because I spoke up now. We went part time. There's a big thing in our story I've not mentioned here, like we went part time. I was very lucky enough to go and who wants 2 millionaire? I won a chunk of money and I thought to myself, do you know what? We've got our tutoring business on the side. We're making a bit of money there. There's a bit of leeway. We didn't have children at that point, you know, I mean, it was like, if any, any time is now to free up some more time to try some other stuff. And that helped us snowball right from then. Even going part time, part time, I was like, I reset and I was like, this is perfect. And then again, slow, slow, slow wore off. Yeah.

55:22 And there was no one exact point. But I think to me, it got to the point where I I just, if I had to pick one point, it would be when we're sat in like people progress meetings and we're doing stuff that I understand why it's happening and I understand that we get people premium budget. We need to focus on these certain types of children. And we're looking at demographics and we're looking at outcomes and we're looking at baselines and expected lines and and below lines and greater depth lines. And we're looking at children around the skirtings of the outs. They got to a point where I actually just couldn't pretend anymore that I think that's the way to do stuff. And it was, again, it was no personal starting anyone because I know the pressures that schools are under to get children to a certain level and to get X our people through the SAT paper and to get into expected. I know the pressure of see of closing that gap between pupil premium percentage achievement and, and everyone else percentage. I, I, I get all of that.

56:07 I know why we focus on stuff. But for me as the class teacher, it just, it did get to the point where I was like, Oh, I am just going to manufacture this now and not be the intervention that I would have planned just based on what children need or I OK, I really wanted to focus on these children who are close to expected. No, because they don't now. They're not now more important people. They're closer to an arbitrary line withdrawn. And we need to get them past that line. Fine. But their progress, you know, 5% progress for them gets them over a line, which looks great on paper, but their 5% progress is genuinely not more important to me than the 5% progress of literally anyone else on the scale. I want all the children to progress. So if I think, if I think there's something that's a, a need that pops up, I want to be able to give it to them. And I, I personally that that was a big thing for me where I thought, do you know what?

56:55 This is the way teaching is for lots of reasons. And there'll be lots of people who argue and say it's the right thing to do and we can have that discussion whatever. Me personally, I got to the point where I was like, I don't want to do this kind of thing anymore. I would like to just try and maybe help as many children as possible and just step out of that. So if I had to pick a point, it'd be that. But it grew and it grew and it grew and it grew and we've talked about a million times. A big thing for us was we were lucky enough where, well, I say lucky, we worked really hard to do it. We built income streams around it. And it just got to the point, didn't it, where everything added up? Exactly. Gave us that, gave us that choice, but ultimately the choice wouldn't be made if the other things didn't happen. So I I still made the choice because I was fundamentally just not happy enough with the job.

57:35 Yeah, and and you know, you started making other income streams genuinely not because you wanted an extra £500 a month. Like obviously that's nice part of it. No, obviously, no, obviously that's nice, right? Obviously you want that, but it's not going to be life changing. No, no. And again, I think a big part of us when we think, well, why are you working so late? Why are you doing that extra the? Because again, long term, we're thinking it just gives you more freedom. And if it grows and grows and grows, actually what what I do I want is freedom to do what I want to do. For sure, and and I'm sure you're the same here, but I'm just going to talk for myself. I am extremely passion LED. You know what I'm like in terms of like how much it impacts whether I want to do something or not. I'm really, really, really, really passion led. And I think it just got to the point, if I can try and summarise this in a better way than maybe when we last talked about this, it got to the point where too many parts of the job of teaching were just a buzzkill for me. They were a drain.

58:24 They didn't fulfil my need for like passion, being a passion driven person enough that it kind of killed the whole job for me. I just wasn't over there. If there's a passion quota in my mind that I need to achieve to feel happy in life, I was no longer hitting that, even though I was still passionate about certain aspects of the job. Like you put me in front of some kids and I'm and I'm in my element. We did an assembly last week for MASU because our, our old school is actually going to be is using is using MASU. And we went in and we did an assembly because we know those kids. And it was the best 10 minutes I've had in the last month because I just thrive off of that experience of being with kids. And we're making them laugh. We're being a bit silly but showing them real things and doing a bit of maths learning. I love that and I'll probably always love that and get me back in the classroom right now.

59:05 I'd enjoy it right now. But overall, all the other stuff was pulling my passion metre down too far that it was just, I just, it was just ultimately deflated with the job. It bored me. I was getting to the point I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like I don't get up excited anymore. That little thing. Yeah, I get to see the kids. Yeah. But then I think about the other 12 things that just crush every part of enjoyment I'm going to have in my day because I've got to spend 4 hours doing a bunch of stuff that I either hate doing or don't even agree with doing. And I'm going to have to do it anyway because that's just the way the system is. Exactly. When it got to that point, that's when I was like, I guess I have to quit. I have to like, I and I'm in a position where I can, so I have to do it now. If I wasn't in the position where I could, I'd probably have to have carried on and just been a bit annoyed about the fact that I was in that position. But I could quit. So I was like, OK, this is the time, then you've got to do it. Yeah, I echo for you just said.

59:50 Last question. And I suppose for me, having said everything you just said, do you think you'll ever go back into teaching? I think there's a if I'm going probability wise, I reckon there's like a 70% chance. At some point in my career, I'll be back in front of a class being employed to teach kids. Yeah, definitely. I think maybe it's higher for me as well. Really. Yeah. I just don't think I can do the rest of my career. I don't know what the context will be, but I want to teach lessons still. I want to teach lessons to a class of children. Like it's really fun. I love doing the assemblies. I even even doing, we did a webinar last week for for mathsu and talked about maths fluency. Even doing that to to fellow colleagues.

1:00:31 I loved that. Still teaching, it's still performing in a way. I really enjoyed it. You're passionate. I was so. Passionate because it was fun, like it just it went in the zip. Do you know what I mean? I really, really liked it. I love delivering, you know, help. I like serving people in that way because it feels like what I'm good at and it feels like I'm helping other people as well. It's like it's the ultimate job in terms of that fulfilment and also what my specialism is. So the idea that I finished my career, my working career, and I don't go back to doing that again makes me really sad. Like I don't want that to be a fact. So I think that in some aspects, somehow I'll be doing some kind of teaching. I hope anyway. Well, I will. I just will in some way. Yeah, definitely. My passion metre needs some time to recoup and a big part of that because I'll never not be in education and evil you, well, this is always going to be our world. A big part of that will be I will, I will never stop fighting for and drive for positive changes in the education space because those changes ultimately, if they're good changes for education, they're going to make my passion metre go back up and get me back in the classroom. So when I can see some positive change coming, it might make me think, well, do you know what?

1:01:33 I reckon I'll give this another go now, you know, maybe right now what I'm getting from building MAFSU is like satiating my brains passion metre because I am loving it so much like so in this, in this private world right now I'm getting everything I need. But maybe in five years time when we kind of completed that project and we're happy where where it's at, I might be thinking, I think I need to go in the classroom for a day a week. I think I need to go to classroom three days a week. I think I need to do something else to fulfil that. I don't know. Start holding school. Start holding school. School. Yeah, literally. Like, I probably genuinely love to do that. So yeah, we'll see. That's the fun bit about life is vibing our way through, you know? Code vibing our way. Code vibing our way through life and just doing what we are passionate about because that's what makes you happy. Slightly different episode there.

1:02:14 I thought. I thought it was nice just to go under the covers there and just give people our experience because I think a lot of people will be sorry, will relate to a lot of the stuff we said and you guys can understand a bit more about us rather than just the guys who come on and say I'm not doing a display. I don't want to do some two cents me. Well, actually, you know what? We've got our own story. Well, actually, you know what, I don't want to do a display and I don't want to do a $0.02 back in boarding. So if that's what you remember about me, good. Is that right? That's right. And all the other stuff that we just talked about for. An hour guys leaves a review. It helps some massively. Please share it. This sharing of the podcast is one of the biggest things you can do to help us. Hayden. I've not done this in all. Anything you want to say? Before I do, actually, I think you need to vote in the poll that goes into this episode about who you like more based on what you just heard about us. So vote Hayden.

1:02:59 Seems really harsh. Vote Hayden. See ya. Bye.