Oh, just a quick one was just looking for my teaching contract
and obviously we've got directed time, which is the number of
hours that we're paid for to do the job.
But I was just slightly concerned because teaching time
of actually delivering the lessons seems to take up pretty
much all of it and I was just thinking, when am I supposed to
get these other jobs done? But show you got an answer for
me? When am I supposed to do?
My planning where you'll be really pleased to know that we
actually build in two hours of release time for you every
single week in the form of your PPA and the Pea?
P in PPA stands for planning. Well, that sounds completely
reasonable. I guess.
I mean, a bit of a squeeze to get my planning done in two
hours, but we'll give that a good go.
In that case, then when am I supposed to prepare the lessons?
You know, print off the worksheets, get everything ready
for the lesson. If I'm doing DTI, what's gonna
get all the resources, obviously, in my own time.
So when's that built-in? So the second P NP p, a stands
for Preparation, and we give you two hours every week to do that.
Alright, that's that's the same two hours.
I'm getting my planning done in, is it?
That's right. Okay, cool.
Interesting. What about assessment then?
And I'm kind of worried because I know what letter assessment
starts with. So let's see what your answer
is. How am I supposed to get that
done every time? You know, fit in all those
detailed analysis on line? That takes a long, long time.
When am I supposed to do that? Well, across the term, you'll
have multiple weeks where we give you two hours of release
time each week to get those jobs done.
That's the that's is that, what is that PPA?
That's your PBA, right? Okay, so PPA, I assume that's
what they stand for. So surely then marking, you
know, 90 bucks a day, English math science.
That is something else, right? We've got a different kind of
provision for that. I get some extra time or I can
get paid extra for doing that work.
Outside of my contract. What about that?
It's funny. You should mention extra time
because that's exactly what we've built into your contract.
You are given two hours every week in your PP, a to get that
done. Yeah.
We we kind of established. What ppas for though, and it's
kind of not already enough time for that.
But alright, no problem. Moving on.
We've got that. Sorted marking my year group
leader. Here's the thing, my PPA is set
for a Wednesday afternoon and Year group leader wants to have
weekly meetings after school outside of directed time on a
Friday, how on Earth does that square up?
So some of your PP a Time, Each we can be put towards those
important meetings. My Wednesday PPA time can be put
towards my Friday after school meeting.
Is that what you're telling me? That's right.
Okay, completely unhinged. Anyway.
Last thing I did notice obviously I'm in year 6 and the
residential is coming up. Very exciting.
I seen that the policy. So your rule tells me I have to
leave my home. For a week, fine.
Okay, we're going to accept that.
Do I get a day in lieu? Do I put in for overtime into
the office? How does that work better than a
day in lieu? And over time, we build in a
whole day into your working hours across five weeks, you'll
receive 10 hours of planning and bpa's a bit.
Yep. Okay, so my week-long
residential away from home, I'm supposed to do in the same time
for one hour a week. When I do my planning, my
preparation, my marking, my assessments, and my meetings
every week. Correct, that's right.
Yeah. You've been listening to an
advert paid for by the department.
Apartment for Education. Join teaching today to receive
two hours of release time a week to complete 15 hours worth of
work. Hello everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of teach sleep.
Repeat, this is episode 6. My name is Dylan and my name is
Hayden and we just want to start off by saying thank you for the
response to last week Hayden. It was a bumper episode, right?
I mean it was like more than double the length of what we
have done so far. So yeah, I think I did check.
It was just a few minutes away from being the full feature,
length film Shrek. So quite, wow, I'm probably
better as well actually. I think the farmer Or
highlights, I'm sure from that podcast.
So, first of all, thank you for that reaction.
We did ask people to put up a poll on Spotify of they listened
and we did ask them on Instagram as well.
And every single person said that they preferred the longer
one, or they didn't mind. So it looks like you guys are
really enjoying this and taking it all in.
So, thank you so much. We really really, really, really
appreciate the kind words. We've had so much positive
feedback and it makes it even more excited to carry on doing
these episodes. So, thank you for that.
And on the back of that whilst you there, guys, lots of you've
done this already as well. I'm going to ask something else
in a high degree polynomial. Going to say a rating would be
really good. A rating would be lovely.
We've already got about 17. I think on Spotify Aiden.
Yeah. And it just gives us legitimacy
right. When people come along and they
say oh this is a good podcast seeing your reviews, they really
help us out and they're not been one star either which is really
cool. They've been five so as many of
them as possible would be really, really useful.
Thank you. That's pretty awesome.
And they can also reach us on. Other platforms to is that
correct dinner. Yeah.
On Apple on Amazon whatever. You're listening to us on.
Thank you. And, you know, whilst were here,
check out the other Instagram. A, that's what I was thinking.
Yeah, we've posted loads on their will continue to post
because we started to film the podcast as well.
So hello, you're not watching it live but hello, if I make this
into a real, you'll see this. Don't waste it.
No wants to see this. See her on Instagram at teach
that repeat podcast, give us a follow and join in on the chat.
We have lots and lots of interactive things going on
there and that's me done Hayden for all of this.
So I wanted to ask you as always, how has your week been
my pal? I've had a great week as always,
actually always have a great week and a funny week this week
as some just funny moments with a kid, you know, I just love
those little bits. They stand out today.
Your jump in like I have noticed sorry because I did think this
earlier, we're getting better and better at not talking to
each other. The week.
Yeah, I know it's kind of sad. Have you noticed?
Because I think to myself, I go to tell you something now.
Wait, wait, I can put it on the podcast, I don't come and tell
you anymore, which is kind of cool in the way because I've
managed to condense, the amount of time I have to spend with you
to just one hour. Yeah, I did wonder, why you've
been trying to get me to do a podcast for honestly years?
And I realize now that this is it, it's your so much happier
now, because I'm not talking to every five minutes, it's
brilliant. But now you've got this forces
you to condense it to the actual useful.
Information. I want to ask, how was your week
right now? I want to hear it.
Let me tell you, okay? Because anyone that's listen to
a few of our podcast will know what I'm referencing here.
So, I make up some silly games, right?
Especially in maths, we had our my blow dart game.
What was that blow dart game? Yeah, I blow dart times tables
game last week and I also talked about doing sometimes a shootout
games, right? And I just love this little
moments this morning, you know, it's nothing crazy but it just
made me smile, a kid ran into my math class and straight to me
because I know if they ask a quick enough Might be a chance
where I'm like I'll go on them they're like oh can we, can we
play? And then I didn't use words,
they just did, can we play and the actions for shootout?
And there's just send it to hold up load up when I just this
little moment. I was like our man.
What have I done to these kids? Can you imagine them going home
and not using words and just using actions are like mr.
Stevens did what? Yes, cocking.
Lots of trouble for this. But I was because they may be
small. I was like, yeah, we can we're
gonna play both. So, did you know what?
You've done there. Do what you've done.
You've got a child running into your classroom asking to do
maths. That's brilliant.
I know they're learning that and I'll tell you what their time
say was a getting better because they don't want to lose because
they get to stay up and play again.
It's a weird impact. Mummy, mummy.
Can I do sometimes Table Rock Stars tonight.
Please. Yeah.
What's the matter darling? You okay?
Yeah, it's totally get tranquilized tomorrow.
No, mummy, I can't do it unless you pretend to Shoot me.
What? Maybe I can't.
I can't solve this time Stables. Can you just don't get that
stick and pretend to shoot me the blow dart?
What is 42? Something to you.
Yeah, well listen, I've not had any complaints yet.
So let's see. Let's say watch this space.
Brilliant. I know you want to tell your
stories but I just got this one. Other thing that happened is a
bit of a throwback again to a previous week where and you
remember when I was playing the two truths and a lie game?
I said, but was held responded to a question of mine with your
mum. My mum.
Yeah, I couldn't believe a kid's head.
That do a question like to my face.
Anyway, so we're playing Speed Stacks, in PE.
It's a bit of a cop-out P. Less than we do when you're not
brave. Physical right?
No it was the whole was taken last minute.
Like there was raining outside and I have to pee else is going
on. It's a whole come back saying I
won't talk of. Yeah, we couldn't do PE.
We couldn't do yoga in the hole which, you know, of course, by
stretching, I think my stretching him today so we did
the Speed Stacks is like a last minute thing.
The kids love it. I don't know why, because they
do I was doing it. I was like, okay, that was fun.
10 seconds don't want to thank ya, stacking some cups and they
love it for 45 minutes straight. Just the stacking cups.
They will do it every week. Every week, they love Anyway,
played a little competition with them that to have team names and
are one of them. Just is really nice, boys.
Actually, we're just trying to be funny, make that make their
class laughs and they will have, they will come out of funny
Tino's, to be honest with you and they can come up with
chicken nuggets or something, always comes up.
Yeah, I think that I kept it some strange name, some of my
try to make out of me as well. Come up with it was but it's all
good fight. It was in jest.
Yeah. And they were like ours at which
time they are like your mum laughing and I just off dead.
Seriously was like And I pretended to get my phone out
and was like, I was just doing this on the phone like yeah,
yeah, you're right. Mom.
Yeah, you needed for this game. They were first.
I thought I was gonna be there for us but about to like that,
get me trouble. They've was gonna tell them off
because I was really serious face.
Yes, you need to his game and I just worked, turn to the
Whiteboard and just write wrote mr.
Stevens mum, as their team name, and they're like, no, no wonder
why you're bringing my mom into this.
Is it just there? Like no, no, just your mum with
the you are. Oh yeah, just made me laugh.
Back to a previous episode, all right, your backside like them
links, we're rewarding the returning customers customers,
but they're not, they're not customers.
And our customers do not making any money yet, not not finished
podcast, okay, give it. Yeah.
Get a couple of weeks and will be raping in the mass slip
there, didn't it customers, your customers?
Hello listeners. You know, less is any more of
your customers capitalism has gone to the brain.
Literally, it's off. That Roald Dahl story.
It's all about can see returning.
Back rewarding, rewarding those customers.
So should we call them and let's call them clients?
Isn't that better? That's what they do.
Isn't it in the in the marketing world and not customers their
clients? Yeah.
Okay. Can you tell the clients about
your week? That I feel that's going to be
returning thing now? Yeah, my week absolutely fine
for my sins. I'm a Manchester United
supporter and anyone who follows football knows that it was a bit
of a dark week and you know, we're talking recently again
linking back as to how We let you know, we talked to the
children, we let them know about ourselves.
Try and build that personal bond with them.
Yeah, huge thing for me, very popular.
See of a lot of children in our school is football.
So that's something that I feel is a really easy win to kind of
get in and build those bonds with the children.
Every single child, in this school knows my Manchester
United fan and this is where it does backfire.
Because on Monday morning, I sat at my desk at 8:30, children,
start coming in and I could see one of my Lads outside right?
Big football fan, he stopped at the door and obviously Tans and
he'd seen Um one right? And I could see him because he's
one of the first ones in and actually didn't come in
Australia. I was okay, he'd walked back
off, right? Literally walked past my window
because when they come in, they walk past my window to come
through the door, right? He turned around and gone back
and I'll say, Okay, interesting couple of our people walk in
streaming in and then suddenly I see him again, but he's with
another lad in my class and they're walking in together
laughing. And I was like, okay.
Okay. You know, I know, I know that
you guys are football fan anyway.
So the class now has like six or seven people in this time where
he'd walk back. And they just walk in through
the door and they go seven ill to the Liverpool seven now.
But the rest of the class not joining in, even the ones who
don't know, it's just chanting seven now and I swear every
single child of what past obviously I'm here for teacher,
I walk in the hall at lunchtime, the FIS might be in their lunch,
every every single to 7 L7 now, that's okay.
Yeah. Okay, nice.
One every single child of what fast this week but I really love
it because Cuz they love it, you know?
I mean they couldn't wait, I was on break duty on Monday, break
Duty, the whole school or out on the playground, every two
minutes. One of the, one of the girls I
taught last year came out to huge Arsenal fan.
Should I say 7 mil? And I was like, oh Arsenal, good
as well. I kind of give you any banter
back. So that was my week whole week
of every single child is in two foot by coming up to me, just
love it. I know you probably the same
when children can find something that they can legitimately rinse
you about the see not like It's not like something where they
could get in trouble, which and, I mean, they're not, they're not
disrespect tablet or Mick out of you.
They've just about they latch onto it.
Then they let you said every child's.
Like, what? I can?
Yeah, we can say, there's a, his expense, and it's not, we're not
going to trouble. Yeah.
Liverpool, you think though, that that genuinely that's a
really nice thing to teach the children.
Like it's a really nice thing to say.
Look, we really strict in a school like every school.
You cannot be mean, you cannot be horrible.
You cannot pick on people bullying Zero Tolerance.
But just Seeing them for at your expense.
Almost that where that line is and I'm being really clear with
them, not being unfair with them at all because you have these
really straight lines and that's unacceptable, but I've told you
this information you re can have a joke, we can have a laugh and
kind of them experimenting with that line and not going to
harden them when maybe they do cross the line because you've
kind of open the door for them and your then like shut the
door, a bit unfair. You also of modeling to them.
Humility as well and showing them that it's like how this is
how you take a joke by the way? Yes, this is how you take a
joke. See how I'm taking this, and I'm
sort of giving a little bit back.
I'm not getting offended or upset or like, trying to be
nasty to you now, because you've embarrassed me a little bit and
it definitely does teach them. I think that, I think you're
right. This is, it's something that I
actively go out of my way to try and do every year of every class
and I'll usually almost like identify the children.
I'm like, oh, wow, they can't take a joke, like they are the
ones that go storm off and cry because of something like a
little joke. And I'm like, I want to say
maybe she looked at me like this and it's like, yeah.
But let's think about this Probably that's okay and it
probably wasn't maybe at a horrible thing for her to do and
I've had it before especially in the football context.
Someone come up to me once one child was really distressed.
I don't you know, I wasn't saying he's wrong, you've got to
make sure they're feeling so you know understood and you say what
you're feeling is absolutely fine.
Of course, of course, you'd be upset at this but then kind of
just nudging them in the direction of.
Well what can you do about it? And is it the end of the world?
Because someone had said to him that his his football team was
rubbish. That was literally it and I, you
know, take a look. This is a I promise you, I
promise you, as you grow up, if you're into football, people are
going to say a lot worse about your tea and then they simply
their rubbish and it's just like cool like learning where the
line is what's acceptable and what you can do to actually take
the joke and and try it and twist it into something funny
and that everyone can laugh about.
I don't about you, but I find that every year.
There's always one or two children, maybe a couple more
who are just really, really, really bad losers, right?
Like they visibly less mature than the other children.
They haven't sort of learn that lesson that we're talking about
now that humility and they kind of stand out as like, oh, oh,
okay. You know, you're sort of being
at maybe a little bit, little bit childish, you know, younger
than your age in terms of your reaction to this.
And I find it's actually really hard not to in the moment when
they're sort of like sulking about losing or making a bit.
Yes, stropping or whatever to kind of Pander to them and it's
taken me years to learn to be a little bit harsh with them
because I found that that does seem to work better need to
teach them a lesson. I'm just, I just call them out
but no, no, you're just, you're being a really bad loser right
now and it's, you know, you're making it ever seen your makeup.
Make yourself a look at. Look a little bit silly in front
of everyone. You lost the game.
You need to get over it and then ignored absolutely just just
move on. It's like the I think those
children perhaps through no fault of anyone because I would
have done it as well. Have been pounded to know that
they'll do that. Then someone got no, don't worry
little play again, we'll play another round of.
Maybe you'll win that one and then go out of our way to make
them win and then they let them. Yeah.
It's but they and actually sometimes they don't they don't
win the next game and it's worse this backfires, right?
And and you know what? I'm going to jump on what you're
in there because it's something that really frustrates me about
people who do not work in schools.
The kind of people who say, ah, kids these days, there's no
losers. They all win at they, sheriff in
sports, they are no winners. And look, I know there are
stories of that happening, right?
But it's just not true. There are winners and losers
constantly in school. Friday celebration assembly is
all about who wins trophies, who wins tournaments, how we lost
the other schools and we came second how we lost in the
quarterfinals. How actually these children One,
the cross-country race. Let's give them a round of
applause and then let's give a separate Round of Applause for
everyone who took part. It's actually not really
ingrained in the culture that we don't have winners and losers
and I think people kind of just read it in the press and I
snowflake generation they can't have winners or losers.
What? Actually, you know, a lot of the
time there are and children like you're saying we recognize, it's
bad to not lose. If you go through your whole
childhood not losing, you're going to become a bad loser.
And I think yeah, one thing that we're stuck with me was When I
was younger, I was definitely that bad loser 100%.
That was me, right? Because I was ultra competitive,
and I think as you get older, if you're not taught it, you kind
of have to teach yourself that. Actually, you're the annoying
one, it no one wants to play with you anymore.
No one wants to play against you.
If you win and you're happy and you gloat and then you lose and
you moan and you complain. Someone will speak into Middle
School. It was early on in my career.
As you know, when there's the kind of lessons come in and you
just remember the Mueller. I never thought about that
before, absolutely. And it's that classic thing of
like, maybe it was Sports are something.
We had to pick some children to take part in this competition
and my natural go to. As I ought don't just pick all
the sporty. Kids, try to be more fair and
like pick a more a fair selection, right?
I think, you know, I'm going to say, don't you?
Absolutely. And someone was like, no, no,
no, here--like, know pick your sporty, kids are like because
there are 12 other competitions going on this term for all of
the different academic things and stuff in school, and
celebrations assemblies, and quite often, and we're sort of
playing on stereo types here. But they were saying quite often
those sported children, the ones that are really into that sport.
Port. That's their only passion and
they don't really like math. So they don't really like
English. Obviously, that's not always the
case, but it is sometimes and they were like, so don't don't
deprive them of potentially, the only chance they're going to get
to win something because you're too worried about the way it
looks. You know, you're too old.
But that child maybe has, you know, I don't want it to look
like. I'm just favoring the ones that
are into sports. I know do pick them because
that's what it's for like you. They want to go and compete in
this thing and that's what they're good at.
And I remember this vividly because that teacher was the Art
Expert school and she made that exact point about.
Right, because she said, we're doing an art competition this
time and all the artists will be celebrated and the ones who
aren't these. Unbelievable piece of art,
they'll be the ones at the front, who gets shown off
because they're unbelievable artists who've done this amazing
work. Yeah.
And the children, who like you just said her a sporty who maybe
aren't bothered aren't interested.
Don't enter that competition. Suddenly when it like you said
when it becomes sports day, maybe they're just, you know,
they're frustrated because now this is where I excel and this
is where actually we should let those children Excel.
And let everyone else see what excellence in something looks
like and join in. It's not either or it can be
both right. Yeah, definitely.
Rather than taking away from them and just showing them that
site. No, it's not about how good you
are. It's about making everyone feel
good. So we've put you up here with
these other children who have no interest in the sport just to
look good. Yeah, is actually I think?
Yeah, they were right. It was a good lesson to learn,
it was really good. I love those lessons because I
still draw in the mirror and I bet every teacher does that
those those teachers who really in their early stage of their
career. Molded the kind of teach they
are because well, you know, whether you like to think it or
not. And I like to say it's all the
time. My student teacher as a student,
when I went into a school to train for my first year, still
good friends with this person and you're good friends with her
as well. She I walked in and I was in all
I was in awe of her teaching and I remember thinking to myself
like after I even half a day of someone who's never been in a
classroom before I thought to myself.
Cool. I'm just going to copy her.
Her. Because she does everything.
Exact she's happy. She's lovely with the children.
She's patient. She doesn't shout.
She listens to them. She's firm.
She's strict and fair and she was just helped me so much that
I always tell her. Now, I say, you know, you are
me, like you are what I want to be as a teacher and that's what
I've made my cell phone. I think I learned 99.9 percent
of everything that it means to be a teacher and all of my
teaching skills. When I got the job and, you
know, that might sound like, I'm just saying, I wouldn't work
very hard in my training here, but genuinely know, it's just
something else, isn't it having your own class?
And suddenly it really is your responsibility and not kind of
right, you know, not doing essays and and having to go to
university every now and then or whatever your course is, I just
yeah, I look back and I'm like, oh man, no, my pgce here my
training year that was great. It gave me all the pedagogy in
the foundation and the knowledge.
Sure. But that Inky tear that first
year my what would be an easy two?
Here. Now, that's where I learned,
everything. Absolutely, everything from
stuff like that. Seeing other people, how many,
and how many weeks I'm going to ask you a strange question here.
Like hypothetical. Okay, so you did a one year
course to learn how to become a teacher at University, right?
Yeah. How many weeks into the job?
Did you feel like you learned more than what you did?
The whole year before I reckon with, in a month?
So if you all week time. Ugly.
Yeah. Yeah.
The first time the first, yeah, let's call it a turn to be safe.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think that just goes to show what you're saying, and I
think most people have the Same thing there is no replacement
for doing the job. And I think, if you're what you
need to have before going into your first year is probably
really strong subject, knowledge in like the basics in the
foundation's. You never going to know the ins
and outs of ancient Egypt before you start, because you might be
teaching them. I know you might be teaching HD,
you might be teaching about rivers.
You might be teaching about, you know, whatever it is that,
you've got specific to your curriculum.
In the afternoon, you don't need to be a master at that but the
basic English and maths curriculum and science.
I'd say Feel strong at that. Cool.
That's that's almost and you know your basic pedagogy that's
almost all you're going to need before you start, isn't it?
I didn't know what I was doing when I started.
I'm not you know I'm not afraid to admit it because I think a
lot of people feel like that and they don't want to admit it
because we all know we have to pretend, we know everything.
I I didn't have the foggiest clue what I was doing when I
started. And I let you said that first
term, I just learned everything. I learnt everything.
And, you know, I look back, and it's funny because I was super
worried about it or and I look back on that.
Know we were, we were all there. We were all there.
Are some are people, you know, some are more confident than
others. It's just natural, but I can
confidently say, I was on. I was on the bottom end of that
Spectrum. I did not know what I was doing
and I picked up on the job and it didn't take long to put all
of that training into practice and make it make sense, but it
was together and how invaluable just on this, know, how
invaluable was it going and watching teachers, teach it was
the the most valuable thing without it, it would have taken
infinitely longer, you know? I mean, that's where I picked it
up. That's how I got good was just
like, you take something and back into your Classroom and do
it. Yeah exactly.
Yeah and you start to understand because you're doing in your
classroom you start to understand why it works or why
you do it. It's not just in a book anymore.
Yeah, for sure. And like I think what we're
going to have to do is I'm really looking forward to this
again. This, we've got a whole list,
but what I think we'll do a whole episode on, starting off
as a teacher, maybe training. Yeah.
That's going to be our new thing in every episode.
Now we'll say, we're going to do a whole episode on something
else and one day you'll be an episode but we've got director
time. We've got training.
Yeah, you had a bunch of other things as well.
We anyway, we've got a whole list.
Yeah. Should we move on?
What I really wanted to get into this week again hater?
Because like you said the list is a log was I wrong.
Luckily, for you guys, if you enjoy the podcast, we've got
enough content until Christmas 25.
So, you know, that's kind of what I wanted to talk about this
week was something that's really specific to us, I suppose.
But that I am really passionate about talking to other people
about and it is surrounding basically, our careers, our
careers have gone on very similar paths and how we've
ended up Right now, both of us, we work part-time in school.
We do three, four days a week. It's been a long journey to get
there. What we want to do is talk
about, you know, the pros and cons of going part-time.
But to give a real context of how we got there.
Because we did start as full-time teachers and we were
in that almost honeymoon, phase of being a newly qualified
teacher. Absolutely loving the job.
And we just wanted to give the context of our business that we
have outside as well, and how they kind of the to Interlink.
And and just Yeah, talk to you guys about how, you know, the
job is stressful and how we over time have come to a kind of
conclusion that it's all about balance and it's ended up just
being free. But we've you know, we've been
on that journey of thinking about distress journey and time,
right? Well I think we've been at the
bottom. We've been in the top you know?
And I think that's part of the story.
Do you mind if I jump in and talk about, go go for past a
bit. So you'll probably notice, guys,
there's a little logo in the bottom left of our of our
podcast. That called picture our icon and
that is typically picture mate. The thing.
What's the word thumbnails? One more, the things that thing
that we've made like five thousand dollars on YouTube
thumbnails. That's the one.
Yeah. So but so back in Arkham is
obviously about the honeymoon. Period.
Absolutely. Right.
Where we were just like every part of our life was teaching
and it was just it's something else we loved it and we yeah
yeah yeah, it's but is everything.
You know, you're hot, you're consumed by it because we're so
passionate so into it. We didn't do anything but think
about it. And obviously the best part of
teaching is as we've always said, being in front of the
kids, like, we love being in classrooms, but it didn't take
too long. I'd say year or two to realize
that teaching is a lot more to it and, you know, I won't go
into the details because we have talked about in previous
episode, but to summarize, there is a ton of admin.
There's a lot of marketing, there's a lot of planning.
There's a lot of other stuff that goes around teaching and we
were like, ha, well, this bit sucks.
Yeah, this is none of these. Like that's not the good bit.
This is the business that we do. We just have to do.
Can I jump on that really quickly and make another Point
on that because it's linked to that and like you're saying
about the admin sucks and stuff. What we also noticed was a maybe
you guys on the ladder of the main pace car, feel this, we
kind of knew already where we'd be in five years so after one or
two years of teaching you know we could look at the pay ladder,
the stagnating pay ladder at the time with 10 percent increase.
And you know we could see that in 2025 whatever it was we're
going to be an x amount of money doing this many hours still and
watching house prices completely outrun that.
And and just notice that we're getting further and further away
from being able to afford our own place.
We wanted to get on the ladder quickly as soon as possible.
And the only way to do that really was to try and become an
assistant head or ahead in that time which wasn't realistic
after 23 years of teaching and plow our whole lives into it or
come up with another way of trying to make some money,
that's time. Efficient and like Hayden carry
on saying now is the part of the job with up.
So I'll jump straight to what we did.
You know, we got into tutoring as a lot of teachers do and it
was I remember I still have a vivid memory of walking down a
corridor Go with you and just talking about how I always had
this idea I've always been into business anyway and I like the
idea of running making something and I was like, I want to do
something with tutoring. I want to make like a tutoring
business. I remember talking to you and
you were we we were fed not new friends at this time, but we
were only like a one or two years into our kind of
friendship. And you think about the fact
that, you know, it was only through working in the same
school that we kind of became closer friends I suppose.
Yeah just acquaintances and your response was very much in line
with like what I was thinking and I was like oh that's cool.
You know we're very much. On the same, wavelength here of
this kind of passion to make something else.
And that's, that's kind of where it was.
The idea was born and it just progressed from there.
And one day we spent all this time dreaming and talked about
yet, we should do a business. We could, we could start
tutoring, we could do this, we could do that.
I think I'm like, people can resonate with that by the way.
The idea of, you know, a lot of people do think they go, oh, we
can do this or that. And and, and it's all about kind
of just trying, it just doing it.
Yeah. And that's what you did.
We did the classic thing. We talked about it.
A lot, as most of us, We talked about it but never do it because
it's a lot to do and you were like, let's just do it.
Mmm, I remember. Sounds like, yeah, we should.
We should do not know. Like literally, let's like let's
literally make a business right now.
Let's go on companies house. The government website and just
make it absolutely name. We do.
I remember, we went to your house that evening like you said
just taking that first plunge, right?
That's what started this business off because we could
have really easily just not done that but it took us about 10
minutes. We thought of the name, think
honestly, that's why it's top the Lutheran as you can see.
What was the name for someone is good at something or what we
did, what we doing? All right.
I know, I know that you're thinking of a Funny Story.
We can tell you later about our name, but we'll come back to
that point later model here. This is a hilarious story about
our name, but we'll come back to it.
So yeah, we start, we start our company.
We started, we were super buzzing because we love teaching
and we were like, Hey, what how can we do this thing?
Where we only teach were like, let's make our own Tutoring
company and then we can literally teach and it's going
to be sunny All this admin body has down from the top down SLT.
Making up the wait a minute. We are SL, T, omorrow business.
We, yeah, we did it. So, you know, being passionate
and a bit younger than we didn't, we didn't have our own
houses and stuff. We would still work on that.
We were really, really driven to do this thing.
And like you said, we're at the bottom of the ladder.
We want we needed more money. If we were ever going to have
any chance of getting on the just for a context, very
quickly. Our annual salary was about, I
think we worked out the time. It was 12 times less than the
average. Price in our area, 12 times
less. You think about a mortgage is
four and a half five times. We had no chance and we needed
the 10% deposit. Yeah, exactly.
So there's a lot of driving forces here and obviously,
bounced off our passion as well for teaching.
So it's just everything was just in going in the right direction
for us here. So, we did it.
We made it. We made a Tutoring company and
it was on top of our full-time jobs and that's important
context. Because actually that, you know,
that that is enough to put off a lot of people, it's an
exhausting job as it is. So we started building this this
company but it was mainly on our Cans.
And it was our, it quickly consumed kind of every evening
as well and started eating into our actual time.
And I think the big thing Point here to make is that we fully
understand that no difference in that position.
If you think about people with families that it's just
impossible. Yeah.
If you think about people, you know, caring do to, you know, we
very much took advantage of the fact we were in our young 20s
living at home. Yeah, we could just plow our
time into it. So we're not saying, hey, why
doesn't everyone just do this because there's nothing more
annoying than when business owners.
Say, why don't you? Just do 70 hour weeks all the
time because no one's did you see some like it some diary from
a some CEO that's a pocket void the name as I also say the name?
Yeah I was thinking you know, just a book or anyone, you know.
And they're like, yeah, I send you look into the history and
it's like yeah. Millionaire parents would just
give they just given the time and money to do it.
But we, you know, we are recognize our own privilege,
that's for sure. We were really privileged to be
living at home. Still at the time, we had that
free time, we didn't have a family to look after all this
stuff. But yeah, we jumped on it and
but it was stressful still, I'm not going to Like oh yeah, it
was just it was just, you know it was a Dream from then on it
was easy. It was very, very time-consuming
and it absolutely 8 into our personal lives.
I think it kind of accelerated our thoughts towards, you know,
thinking that teaching is not long term.
Yeah, it's kind of depressing, isn't it?
But it's something that a lot of people.
A lot of people agree with. I think teaching is not long
time. When and usually, when I ask
someone directly will be teaching at 65, you know, I'm
talking to people they're like in their 30s and they look at me
as if like that, obviously you're joking, of course, I
won't be, they then they usually say things, That I won't be
doing this in 10 years. There's no way it's a burned-out
job. I did, you know what, someone
said to me once was, I asked that same question because I
always find it really interesting, because I've
genuinely never heard someone say yes, right?
So, that's crazy to me. Like what a situation for a job
to be in and it really hit me when they said, no, no, you look
worse. Come, you know, if I have to
take a job, I'll just, I'll just go and work in a shop like that.
I'll just go and work in the shop.
Obviously, I worked in as the absolute Saints, working,
though. Ups.
But the idea of a teacher with such a skilled, like set of
three precise, isn't it being a teacher?
It's a very, you know, a certain set of skills saying that they
don't want to continue using them because the job is, so
toxic to them in the long term and burns them out that they
want a job, that's different somewhere else where they don't
have to have those out of whack stresses.
They want to go home and that's the end of their job and we
definitely recognize that. I think we were very observant.
We listen to a lot of other people, and we get to see that
future. Like you said, we saw our paper
aggression. And we were like, oh, okay.
So that's kind of it in a few years time and no one seems to
be lasting in the career forever.
Anyway, so we kind of need a kind of need another way out of
this Rat Race for ourselves, and that's kind of, you know,
there's all these factors that were born into into the into the
kind of Tutoring company, but that was five years ago.
So, we've built this company over five years and the first
three and a half, almost four years of that time.
We were building that company on top of our full-time teaching
jobs, And I can speak for both of us when I say that that curve
of kind of stress and time we were having to put into the
business as it just naturally grew because we were passionate
about it and we're very driven to keep growing.
We didn't want to just sort of stopped.
Yeah it it will you know we hit the top, didn't we?
It was like we can't keep doing this and we both had a bit of a
over the summer holidays, wasn't that we sort of had a
discussion. Remember meeting we were like
we're burning out. We are going to.
If we do this for another year, we're going to burn out like
we're not as young as we were soul mates.
A seven-year-old extra. We're not be no, we are not in
that honeymoon period anymore. It's it we're finding and more
and more stresses of this job. We can't do this.
So what do we do at that point? It became more and more
realistic for us, still a risk. Okay?
Because at this point, I would say we start to do some maths.
Basically, we start to say, okay, you know what is the mass
of going part-time? And this really shocked me even
though I kind of knew the logic I kind of understood.
What would happen if I took the hit?
I was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.
So we did some maths. Basically the idea of their
part-time contract is that we are work three days a week out
of 5, okay? So where our time in school
reduced by 40%, which means we can spend days on our business,
which we needed to which freed up our weekend, which we were
ending up doing it. And then 40% time.
Reduce Hayden. You tell them the number.
Yeah. Hey go down by.
Well, I'm just going to make this a bit more because most
people would naturally We assume your payback or go down 40%.
And that's what people do when they calculate it, but it
doesn't cause you think about the way tax brackets work.
I won't go into the details. We actually ended up losing from
our take-home pay almost precisely 25%.
So it was like, Hang on. We're losing a quarter of our
pay. But gaining, 40% of our time,
two days 255, time back. It was not as bad as we thought,
right? Not nowhere near as bad.
And I think one of the biggest points for us at that point, was
to look at the difference, right?
And I would implore everyone to do this and I'm, well, aware,
we're in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.
I'm, well aware that we are on strike for are paid going up at
the right level. So me sat here, then also
saying, have you thought about going part-time?
Might be a little bit condescending, not the point,
we're trying to Make though is it's worth looking at the Maths
for your well-being and for your time, especially number one, if
you have dual income in your house and you know, that time
can be used doing something else and your partner, might learn a
certain amount where your bills are already covered.
But number two, if you are thinking of doing some kind of
side business, I'm trying to do something extra as well.
We're actually that amount of money, The Tipping Point for us
was where we were learning the difference and a bit extra.
So we are actually from art from our business.
On the side, we could say, cool We can take off and take the hit
from our pay by actually replace it with what we're doing with
our business. So at no point, was this as much
of a risk as well? It might be to a lot of people.
So we understand that one. Again, we're not here being
these people saying we're, we started the business.
Why don't you just start a business or go part-time?
No, it's risky. We did minimal risk, as we could
because we got the business to a point where we could replace
that income and we've not really looked back since have we, how's
your well-being been Hayden? Because we, you know, we talked
about every now and then, but I'm actually really interested
to Just to take a moment of reflection now, and that for me,
it's allowed me to fall back in love with teaching more than I
did at the point where I was kind of just bang out, and don't
get me wrong. Of course, we talked about the
pros and cons of teaching, but it allowed me to really just
focus on going in for three days, and giving quality
teaching, as much as I can with someone who isn't an exhausted
shell of a man. Yeah, it's same.
Steamer for me, it's like it's allowed me to compartmentalize
my time a bit. More.
Because, as, you know, like neither of us are particularly
well organized, when it comes to, like, compartmentalizing our
time normally. And what we were, what we'd
fallen into was this amalgamation of.
We just work every hour of every day kind of, you know, it was
like get the evenings over, we got stuff to do it.
Yeah, we kind of need to do this and this, okay, gets the
weekend. I've got to be planning for
that. Actually, we need to do some
stuff the business as well, and it was just eating our time.
So for me the, the well-being Improvement I've had is When it
gets to Saturday and Sunday. Now I know exactly what I'm
doing. And it's usually the fact that
I've done all of the business stuff on that on that Thursday
and Friday. And I've managed my Monday to
Wednesday is I've done the school staff and my weekends are
back to me again, which is nice after many, many years of not
really having that luxury anymore before our own creation.
You know. Yeah and exactly that and it
was, you know, we played the long game and it and it has paid
off and again we're not just saying this.
Blow is look where we've got its a genuine conversation.
Ation about, you know, flexible work and it's a big thing for
people coming back from maternity pay maternity leave.
Sorry, and it's a big thing just in general for lifestyle.
We've seen in the private sector.
I don't, you must have seen in the news head.
And they did a huge experiment of the four-day working week
where they literally took a day or at the, the pay stayed the
same. Some businesses went from an
eight-hour day to attend our day, so it was still 40 hours of
that makes sense. So for lots of 10 and 85
wherever they 8 times 5, so it was like the same hours but they
were way more productive. And the idea of the well-being
impact from having an extra full day, it takes away from your
weekend. I hated Sunday's Sundays were
just a day of got a little planning then we'll do the
washing. Then we'll do the housework.
Then we do the shopping. Yeah.
It wasn't a day to yourself. It was it was another day of
work, but just making sure the house was running and I know I
know this is another energy that's even like related to
teaching. I know this is true because I
spoke at a load of teachers now where some of them have part
Sign contracts, where they work every morning.
So, they still do five days a week.
They just finish it. Maybe like 12 or whatever, and I
spoke to other people who aren't on the same contract in terms of
pay. But like us, they will do it in
days, rather than mornings. And they weren't three days, and
100 percent every single time. The people are, some of them
have done both. Actually their most valuable
people to speak to. Well, they've switched across my
planning partner, my partner teacher, my job share teacher,
literally has done that. Come from five mornings and
said, it's just so so much better to have an actual all day
of not working, even though the three days she does the H of the
same but their condensed into three days and because when you
work five, morning's, you're still working five days.
Your days are kind of it's a workday, you know, it's hard to
be like, oh no, it's not a workday, it's a half workday.
Well, you still work for like four or five hours in the
morning. The work day.
If you getting up to 47 and having a shower, that's a
workday, in my opinion, not having a shower jebril, I mean,
having a shower before to hang on a minute Talent.
I'm pretty sure he never got before.
Seven and never have a shower. So, Okay, I'm really looking
forward to this one because it seems like over the last few
episodes we've had like a new feature every time and they're
always really cool. And they're kind of born out of
you guys sending us stories because I'm constantly asking
them on our Instagram. So, if you haven't heard, you're
not there already teach sleep, repeat podcast, go and have a
look on our Instagram because I'm constantly asking questions
and I'm constantly getting really cool stories.
And we've had one message that kind of sparked a thought in me,
that has now snowboard. And we've got some From
different teachers as well and different people and and also
just past experiences that we've heard of, we're going to do an
inspection now Hayden and it's called Confessions of a teacher
and I know that you've got some ready as well that I haven't
heard. I've got some ready that you
haven't heard and I just thought we could bounce off each other
now. And these are those really,
really embarrassing stories that are completely harmless.
But if you ever got caught, or if someone saw these situations,
you would just be horribly embarrassed.
So, they're all the moment, of course, you'll have to guess
which ones are actually us and we're just Pretend they're
anonymous because I do haters gonna have a few in there.
That's really him so I thought we get started.
We're going to go back and forth here.
I'm going to read them out and we're just gonna blind react to
each other's. Okay.
All right, go for it. Okay.
Number one, I want sat down on my teaching chair during
teaching time. That's a joke that's like this.
And we're gonna you are just seeing how to react the last.
Wow, our customers are going to love that.
Oh my God, it's so embarrassing. Ha ha ha.
Gavin will eat some Court Beach, sitting down.
I'm so lazy, right. Okay.
Well first it got going on. I once our God, I once went for
terms from Christmas and to the end of the year without once
looking or marking at the afternoon, work of my class how
You know how, you know how Dylan because people are just so busy
marking English and math. So they're like no, no, no, no.
I'm you know, I'm not saying how is this guy done that?
I'm saying, how is he got away of it or she?
Oh, I see. I was just trying to put our
house. How could he not Mark?
I was no. Why why?
No no completely. There's nothing more
demoralizing. This sat down in the day and
seeing a mass part and an English part and a topic file.
But I just don't understand what.
Yeah, because of it depends. What school year, I guess, I
thought I've just thought most schools do not think that books
and stuff as for total area, which was there.
And it was just like it was said in a proud way as well.
It was said in the proud way, to me, just clarify quickly, it's
not mine. It was listing.
Anyone's listening to Sade a little light, which there could
be. Well, this one's, this is funny
because you've not seen this confession.
I've got, and it's hilariously related and I'm not gonna lie.
Gotta one up your story. So, you know, I got someone like
this in marking, it primary is ridiculous.
I'm glad they started with that. Clearly listen to your girls.
Hours upon hours every day. Looking through children's work
just to do it all again. The next day, one time in my
first two years of teaching as a little win for my own sanity and
personal time. I managed not to Mark by our
ebooks, for two years before anyone noticed, and I just
pretended that I thought it was policy not to question their
thoughts and beliefs rubbish. Excuse got away with it.
Got a way of a simple you're an idiot.
Look from the piers That's unreal.
That is unreal. What a line to come out with
like on the cuff like to I thought was wrong as if as if
also, we don't only teach like we re isn't just, what do you
think every week? And they write down their
thoughts. We learn about different ways.
Yeah. So my class, actually, they swap
religions every time. And I don't know if it's all
about their beliefs and actually, I don't, I don't think
it's right to right now books, because it looks like I'm
questioning them. You just imagine some terrible,
excuse to get away of it. So there you go.
That's very funny. That is It's like basically the
same story. That's 10 out of 10.
Okay, I've got another one here, and I'm actually jealous of
this. I want this store.
I want to this confession to be mine and it's not.
And when this came in, I thought.
Oh my gosh. So this person says I have
secret access to the stationery, cupboard key, and feel like I've
won the lottery. I have to get into school
before, 7 a.m. or stay after six so that I can read the cupboard.
But I have glue sticks, Galore, and all the colored Post-it
notes that you could. Imagine.
I saw I was honestly, I replied straight away.
This one saying, like what I am so jealous and she just went,
yeah, A girl's, gotta do what a girl's gotta do, the idea of
getting it back trying to get in before SLT, to go to a cupboard
because you have none of it. Otherwise why aren't there any
way I can eat it so bad. Yeah yeah that's true.
I bet every school has at least one Captain hoarder just a
person they know to go to is like they always like me here,
conquering Comic-Con. Don't we won't take me back to
the SLT. Don't mind.
But I've got, I've got Like you know 50 boxes are pencils back
over the years. I've not used after stack him
up. I just know we kind of need
them, we kind of need them. Please come with nap, we have
them here. So she went on to say not even
our Deputy heads have access to the sacred key.
The TA that worked with me last year mentioned she was given a
master key for some reason and I told her to guard it with her
life and tell no one. So she actually keeps it but she
goes to her for Access so she doesn't even have the key to the
ultimate crime so the ultimate Just put a fashion that if
someone came and said someone's been accessing if you've got a
key. But no, she doesn't, she doesn't
even have the K know. That's, that's like, ruthless
today but I would bet to do that.
I think I do read on it reminds me a lot of our own, you know
that, you know, that unbelievable, pretty sick story.
That we're gonna tell us some point.
Oh yeah, we'll save. It was save it, but it just
reminds me that I've got another confession here.
So another one reading actually forgotten it.
I'm going to read it myself again, work out.
What is at school? I once worked in.
Oh yeah. Used a really complex.
Digital Teacher Assessment tracking tool where we had to
assess all of the children. Has hundreds of objectives
across multiple subjects. So, if anyone doesn't work in a
school, it is exactly that assessments by teachers based on
what you think. The children can do based on
your lessons, your market, right?
And just keeping track of every objective, you teach can be
quite time consuming. We would either necessarily do,
like, a piece of work, right? It's just what you think at the
end of the lesson. Yeah.
Basically. And this way, it will clarify
when they do it. So it said we were given no
additional time classic to do it and it was just expected to kind
of get done magically a Every lesson all week.
So I guess that was the idea of, right?
They had to regularly update, this assessment of these
children or whether they got the objective or not all like
excelled or whatever. Because they went nowhere and
Teacher Assessment was overridden by test scores
anyway. I just used to wait until they
finish their test and make up all the back that the Teacher
Assessment. So that it matched their test
scores, right? And I'm like, yeah, okay.
I can see them but this is even better.
One time I was called to the office to talk about my teacher
assessments and I knew I'd been caught turns out.
I was praised for having such accurate assessment and I was
asked to lead a staff meeting on how to use the tracking tool
effectively. So yeah quite funny right in a
way that's unreal. Yeah because then you have to go
in and tell them the really stringent way that you do that,
man. Oh yeah.
They were just had to completely black it when they complete guys
like in that meeting post, it's really easy.
Actually it's really easy way to see what they get and put it in
after ya. Well cause you know how to
learn. Yeah.
You know, how our teacher assessments don't sort of go to
anything ever. So what I did was I just didn't
do them and then when we did those tests where the scores do
goes out, Use them. So, you know, when you're in
your site in a pupil progress, meeting at the end of the year
and I just whip out the test scores.
Oh, are you going to use any of that stuff that I did every time
for that? No, no, no.
Okay. All right.
Oh, no problem. Yeah, no problem.
Why do we do it? Well, she's in case.
Someone asks aren't you? The people that ask it's okay.
Say it coming. Say the r-word.
Exactly. Exactly.
Okay, so so come in. So we look like we're doing
teacher assessments even though no one cares about them, haven't
used them since 2014. Oh okay.
Here I got you. But hey, ho here we are.
This is the wonderful world of teaching guys.
I've got another one. Okay, this one, this one really
really cracked me up because it's not me but I absolutely
resonate with this and I've got a joint story that comes in
after it, okay? Alright, so as we all know as
teachers, just the context, when it's someone's birthday in
class, they quite often bring in some sweets, they're bringing
something to give to the class. At the end of the day, we sing
happy birthday and they get some sweets to one for each child.
So, So this story, it really cramped.
So this boy is this boy's birthday?
He'd brought in sweets and they were those bags of harrybo,
okay? So bags of harrybo, and you end
up with like 12 in a bag, and they bring in loads, there's
always some leftover, so, once the children went, he'd left a
bag and it had ten to Fifteen of those small Haribo packets left
inside. I'll teach a walk back in after
a long day after dismissing, his children saw, there were 10 to
15 Harbor packets left. A All of the harrybo marking
didn't think much of it going through his books and then at
4:20 after Club finished which were the boy in question
actually went to Club came back to see him to pick up his sweets
as those as those leftover sweets, had been explicitly told
by his parents that they were for his party the day after at
the weekend. Oh no.
He walked back in and asked for them and the teacher was
mortified but managed to save face and explained how I do.
I'm not sure why they've gone maybe the cleaners of it and
maybe something Happened. It all went fine until he looked
at my desk and saw three empty packets on my laptop that is I
would be honestly I thought horrible.
I'd go to the transmedia me but like yeah but Mom the mom had
said, make sure you bring this balance.
Didn't didn't? Just spare.
Make sure to bring them back to the birthday party tomorrow
we'll get them out. It's for my birthday imagine
leaving, right? It's a it looks like this kid
out. You're feeling really bad and
Mom just looks for you and you've got ten Harry vo rings on
your fingers when you were playing with her.
Them just like I just don't, I don't know what happened.
I'm really sorry that there were 10.
There Were Ten packets. I just falls out your pocket.
What'd you put Gummy? Yeah.
Gummy bears. Falling out your shirt where you
just drop that pit pick it out your teeth like, yeah, I got my
God. So we have today to remind me, I
forgot to say this earlier today it's in my cupboard at
lunchtime. We've ordered a bunch of
marshmallows for detail. T like them, but they're like,
back to we're making structures with like switched again
tomorrow. Yes, classic thing, right?
And, and we ordered too many, the too many marshmallows.
Oh, oh, oh, did we did the massive twice.
So all of these marginalized in my cupboard as like they're
open, I'm just time and I just ate like four of them, like big
ones as well. It's big and I came out of
munching on a last bit of them. As I came out of my cupboard.
But you can't see through it. I didn't know it.
Was there just a child walking through just just grabbing a
book and she looked at me and I looked at her, she know exactly
what the hell I was doing. And I just sort of smile to her
because she's like, she's like one of the nicest kids ever.
And I just thought I was like, yeah, I me, I am eating those
much as I told you not to eat in DT, guys.
It's really important. We only have enough marshmallows
for every single child to build their structure.
Do not go to Mike's mom, but sir, We're the last ones to do
is, they've got to go to the next class, okay?
I'll use the next year mouth. That was our new feature of
Confessions of a teacher because I think that just allows for
some really funny stories to come forward.
So as always get in touch in the email teach sleep repeat POD at
gmail.com or come to our Instagram and let us know your
teacher confessions because that was one of my favorite little
bits that we've done so far on the podcast really fun
definitely. And so the last thing you want
to do is the Six kind of Link 2 because we've had some stories,
but we've got stories from the classroom Hayden.
You've got a funny one. I've got a nice one, but I want
to share with you before we finish this week.
Let's jump straight in nice. We're starting to be too long
this week, is it? Because my story is fairly
short, but I know that you like this one as it's, my expense.
So did I was trying to re tell me the story?
I don't know, come and listen. Listen, I'll tell the story
properly on the podcast because he's forgotten, he's forgotten
how it worked, how it can I give their very very brief overview
so you can jump in with the da. Go on, go on.
So essentially what happened was in our school, we had a bit of a
push At the time in English pdms of word, meaning, a vocabulary
to big thing for our school, making sure children are
expanding their vocabulary as much as possible.
And one of the things we really focused on was strategies on how
the children could work out what a word means when they just
don't know, because we're going to have test test questions.
That's a, you know, a testing them about what a word means and
sometimes the children have just never heard of it before.
So we have loads of strategies that we've taught them looking
for root words, looking for a suffix.
That means, maybe the opposite of Something looking at the
context of the whole sentence and a really big one was
swapping the word in for a different word and seeing if it
still makes sense, that kind of thing.
So, Hayden obviously, was reading his class text to his
class and they came across a word that they are unsure of
Hayden, take it from him, right? First of all contacts, we are
reading flood lands by Marcus Sedgwick and the only real, it's
funny that the stories come up because I'm literally reading
that story at the moment with my class and this were, I read past
this word. This or last week actually and I
was like how funny and I started giggling and I had to tell my
class this story because they were like, why you laughing
randomly in a sentence? It wasn't even.
It was a dark sentence as well as I not panic.
So I want you to imagine this. If you've got a pen and paper
and we to write this word down, if not just think of the letter
to cake or not to tell you what it says because, you know, such
a complex word, ready under-5 Edie.
Okay, just write that word down, right.
You might see that it made. Anything was he talking about?
I read that word in a sentence out loud to the class as under
fact, and with my room, with my reading, like all this reading
training, we be doing in mind as I all.
What great opportunity, those tickets talk about this, the
class a great opportunity to explore some word meaning
because you didn't know what it meant because you would
understand never heard of it before.
I was like, wow, this is, it was a verb is a verb.
Guys. Being used as a verb, okay.
I think it would be probably wasn't an objective, may be.
And, and as I've never heard it before, what do you think under
that means guys? 10 seconds told your partner
from the meat around the sentence, read the sentence
would have under this to work out what it means.
I was like looking at my screen think I'm going to get I thought
you know, the dictionary up an email Google so it will look
like you can very quickly we've done that which teacher has not
done that before when they just don't know and they say why
don't you talk about it chat and you secretly?
Go to your laptop like oh yeah. A search that.
Yeah, all you black it and you like it.
You know what? Yeah, I can think of the
definition but there's a better one on Google.
I'm just gonna check you. Just want to make sure.
Just get it right guys. Kids go along with it, like
they're thinking about what this under that means.
All right, there was, it was describing children.
I just remember the context of the sentence was describing
children. Flood lands is like a story,
like a post-apocalyptic story, right?
So under two children community, these under children are
starving communities or thing? And yeah, so I go to Google and
I Typing it in, think it was under oath to me when I type in
underserved and and then they sort of give it a feedback of
what they think. It might mean they like maybe it
means like really skinny, maybe because we know the context of
centers of these children being like in a deprived City where
there's no food left. I said yeah brilliant and I
looked at him death I was like wow.
Like well done let's say yeah when you've not had much food
that's fantastic and this boy and it's so annoying because
this boy was like the smuggest boy my class.
I love this kid but he was just any of it.
He has, he can tell me he got him and this was like the
ultimate win. Put his hand up.
Already smiling that mr. Stevens.
Yes. Yeah.
It's like think that says, underfed and Justice, like wave
of embarrassment, just flooded my whole head.
I very, very, I don't get embarrassed easy.
As you know, I very rarely going bad or just play it off.
Oh man, I couldn't believe I'd spent like a whole minute doing
exercise and thinking. Yeah, yeah, this is such a
great. This is such a good example.
Quality again, attention. Underfed, underfed, I just saw
on as a prefix and Thoreau root, word death.
And I, that's why I said as well as in what you think, death
means the root word deaf every world of that's why I did that.
I did that. I was like, we got on, we've got
Ed. Think it a lot prefixes
suffixes. That means if man what an idiot.
What an idiot. Unlike the fed and the kids just
held they laughed so much cause they were like they're always
like, I can't believe. Levi could some of them probably
fell into that trap as well because I convinced them, yeah,
of course it's other word and they realize it's just it under
for the underfed children. Obviously I didn't even twig at
the definition stage on Google is just another word for
starving. Okay, so my story, I'm right
away that we go on about how we love this job and we do, but I
am worried sometimes that we kind of fall into a trap of just
going into a rant, okay? And and kind of complaining
about something. So I want to finish with a nice
story cage. We love this job besides, I hate
it, it's just yeah, exactly, look into actually worried.
You love this job and it's usually connections with the
children, right and helping them out.
I've taught this lad previously, he's high up in the school now
but still in the school. I had a really nice relationship
with this ladder. I felt like I really understood
him and he got on with me and it was just such a nice yet
teaching him. I really enjoyed it and he would
have problems. Sometimes, controlling his
anger, he'd get angry very quickly, but the thing I was so
proud of him about this is going to be a story from the assembly.
Again, I'm gonna start crying heading.
No, I'm joking, not yet. The thing I was really proud of
him though because over the year he really developed such
maturity. Where you can't control getting
angry and we spoke about this, all emotions are acceptable and
fine. You cannot control getting
angry. He, of course you can't, you get
annoyed, right? But he got so good at just
recognizing it quickly. Understanding who is angry and
taking himself out of situations and he would frequently come up,
to me and say, hey, I've got really annoyed and I throw my
bag on the floor and he'll say stuff like this, and I would
always keep him with praise with.
Well, done, well done. Because that, Of excavated you
stepped away and you've told me you've recognized it and I just
remember saying to at the end of the year, I was like, you're so
ready to go up. You know, when you make a big
deal of the next year, when it's really it's not a big deal but
you're so ready for you five because you've got so much
maturity and you really do just know when to step away and just
basically just picking them up. I was like, well, done.
And so what happened was, I was on duty and this lad is on, is
on the playground. And the classic thing was
happening, okay, this group were just playing.
He was getting frustrated because one of the maybe wasn't
playing by the rules, legitimate thing to get frustrated about,
he wasn't being out of order, but he got angry and I saw him
getting angry from across the playground.
So, I make a beeline for him straightaway, right?
Just so we can see me and he clocks me and you could see him
kind of realize and go back into that moment of okay.
Oh no, I'm getting annoyed, KFC, mr.
Private, I remember mr. Fight, we've spoken about this
before, and you could just see it kind of click in his brain
and he walked over to me and I didn't even mention the fact, is
getting angry, right? I just made him laugh.
I just said, I said something. Sit at heart.
Remember exactly what I said, but the point was, I was taking
his mind off it straight away because he knew, I knew I didn't
have to go and talk to her about getting angry or not, because
it's acceptable and he knows what to do in a situation.
So, we ended up having a chat for a minute.
He came down, he went off laughing, he was on the edge of
getting really annoyed and working stuff up and maybe
getting upset, he went away. Laughing and I was like oh
that's really nice and I was very content at that.
And what really this is the part of the job that you do just love
because the day after I walked Into my classroom and on my desk
was a note and he'd written it and it said Mr. Price is really
nice. I've had two months, I've had
him once I but I want him. I want him twice like he wanted
me when he went to year six or something.
Yeah. As his teacher again and I
genuinely got not upset, but I like, you know, I was like that
is in a picture in a piece of writing there that impact that
you can have on a child just by building those relationships
with them and genuinely being caring and Interested in what
they have to say, and help you. Yeah.
And I remember because he came to me after to check, I got it.
And he said to me and this was another layer to this that I
really appreciated. Was he said, oh did you get my
letters at all? Thank you so much.
It was so lovely. I really appreciate that because
you were lovely as well, and I wish I could have you again in
my class, that be really nice. And then he said, I didn't cry,
I didn't cry. I, you know, I've had years now
to practice my assembly colonies.
And, but he just said to me, it's like, yeah, my mom helped
me write that last night and day.
The idea that he'd gone home kind of just understood that
interaction helped him, really appreciate it.
And asked his mom to help him like do something to show his
appreciation. That really, really, really made
me feel happy and it and again, it's that it's those moments
where you like this jobs, amazing.
This job is exactly the job that I want to have because you're
going to have an impact on these kids lives.
I think you have basically captured the essence of what is
so beautiful about this job. And it, and it is It is enough
for most of us is included because we're still doing it.
It is enough to override all of that stuff that we joke about
and we mind about me rant about and we talk on behalf of people
writing in about, you know, it's enough those moments.
That's why we do it. Yeah.
That's a nice story. Absolutely.
I just thought I think every now and then we have to ground
ourselves and put that out there as well.
Because I bet you've all got a story like that especially if
you work in a school of just those moments where you go.
Yeah, this is what I do. This is what I do and I love it
and you know what that? Yeah.
Stories really got me thinking because like the sentimental
value of that, just reminds me so much of the kind of Core
Essence of the pretty sick story.
That was so desperate to share sixth, or it isn't it?
It's a tearjerker to tearjerker. Unfortunately, we are out of
time for this week, are we? Oh Christ?
Yeah. Okay.
When we won't do it now then because it's a big story.
So we will obviously save it for to hold the whole episode on the
right? Yeah, yeah, we do.
Yeah. We do a whole episode on the
critic story. It's a good story.
It's a great story teller guys. Thanks so much.
I am. And if you got this far, then
Thank you so much and we really appreciate you.
See you next. Thanks for being our favorite
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