Somebody was sick all over a wedding guest book, and by the end of the night half the room was convinced it was Dylan. There were three witnesses. It made no difference. That is how this Q&A episode opens, before the questions start landing.
🎯 Trigger Dylan in the shortest possible time
An anonymous listener sets Hayden a challenge. The broken oven, the door handle nobody has fixed, the state of the garden. Dylan takes all of it in good humour until one specific accusation lands, and it is not the one you would expect.
👶 Is leadership compatible with having young children?
Following on from the tongue in cheek advice to just quit, a listener asks whether Dylan actually means it. He does, mostly. The answer goes deep on cognitive load at home, why a job designed around a single income household in the 1960s still fills every hour of the day, and why that quietly shapes who feels able to step into leadership. Anyone weighing up a TLR while their child is still a toddler will want to hear the alternative Hayden offers to quitting outright.
📚 Is English a bigger subject to lead than maths?
From an English lead, answered by two former maths leads with ten years each. Short answer, yes. The longer answer covers splitting reading and writing between two leads, why halving the TLR when you do that makes no sense, and where maths actually sits compared to art, DT and music.
⏰ Is your PPA really ten per cent?
Lucy's timetable does not look right, so the lads do the maths live. Why ten per cent is calculated on contact time before PPA is given, why an afternoon out is very often less than half a day, and the simple fix one head teacher put in place within a week. If you have never actually worked yours out, do it after this one.
🌲 Forest School, school refusers, and names on the board
Harrison asks whether Forest School is worth the time away from reading and writing. This is where the episode really opens up, into behaviour, why happy children learn better, and whether making school somewhere kids want to be is actually part of the job. The bit about tadpoles might hit hardest.
🌏 Eleven years teaching, still treated like an ECT
James qualified in his mid thirties with a decade of teaching in China behind him, and has now had five interviews where that experience was waved away. Practical advice on how to make it impossible to ignore.
Honest, funny, and right on time for this point of the year.
🧮 Free for school staff: generate arithmetic worksheets in seconds at tools.mathszoo.app
🎧 New episodes every week. Leave us a review if you enjoy the show!
🔢 Want to boost maths fluency in your school? Book a free Maths Zoo trial at www.mathszoo.org
💬 Join our completely free WhatsApp community and connect with teachers from across the UK: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HB7n1PNGdGL5STACssEH1s
