Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Teach
Sleep Repeat. My name is Dylan.
And my name is Hayden, OH. One SEC.
Sorry. Phone's ringing.
Hello. Here we go.
Scam hotline. Oh, it is.
It is. Yeah.
No problem. You want Hayden?
Yeah. And I was following up from your
scam from this week. No problem here.
You. Go.
We'll take. Yeah, Sorry.
Yeah, thanks. Sorry, guys.
Yeah, hi there. Yeah, I did get scammed.
Yes, Yes. At phishing link.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. No, I'm not 90.
No, I'm actually a young person. Did it anyway.
Yeah. Thanks.
Thanks, Dylan. Thanks.
For bringing that up guys, jokes aside, right, Hayden did
actually get scammed this week and I just wanted to very
quickly summarise what happened because genuinely right?
I know I don't understand like ageist or anything, but we're
not like old age pensioners. I'm not understanding how things
work. We do think, Oh well, we'd be
able to spot someone trying to scam us, but you did actually
get scammed. So like what?
What? Come on.
Long story short, had a package coming with DPD.
Needed to change. Needed to change something
right? Couldn't do it on the app so I I
thought I'll just ring them. Googled this is this is the
first thing I googled. DPD contact UK number or
something like that and and normally with Google the first
thing that comes up is the number.
Right, so that now. So I was like, OK, I'm used to
that being the right thing at the top anyway.
Was it a number? Was it a link?
It was a. It was a right.
OK it was a link. This is where my brain just
wasn't braining. So I clicked on the 1st and the
second link was the same. It was just like paid for and.
They were sponsored. Yeah, I.
Didn't notice it was sponsored. I didn't notice someone's paying
to put it. Sometimes, obviously, actual
companies have. Sponsored post as well.
I know, I felt like such an idiot so I clicked on this link.
I was like oh there's the number.
Rang that number, someone said, Oh yeah, I'll put you through to
the right department, I've just got to give you a different
number to ring. I was like, yeah, fine, standard
stuff. Companies ready?
Get away with giving a premium number, like not having it
online but just redirect. Yeah, literally.
It was clever because then the
second one I rang said oh, £2.50 per minute, that's cool.
And there's me thinking I just need to get this done so it's
fine. 6-7 minute, 8 minute call, whatever it was in the end.
Was he stalling? He was stalling big time.
And I just spent all like £25 on this stupid phone call for you,
for you later in the day to be like Hayden.
I think you've been scammed about when I was explaining some
of this. Story And I thought Australia
was like, oh good job it's Hayden because if it was anyone
else I'd feel awkward. How do I bring up the fact that
I think you've been completely scammed because it was you?
I was like you, idiot. Yeah, literally scam.
Such a such a mug. But the fact is, like you said,
like with older people in my family and stuff, I'm constantly
saying that be careful of that text, that's not real.
Be careful of that e-mail. It might not be real unless they
mean you. It's not real.
And there's me Googling a number and playing £2.50 a minute.
What was the link like XYZLMNO p.co.uk forward slash DPD
customer service dash customer, dash customer?
It was literally like customer.service@dpd.com.
So it was quite like, it was quite real looking.
But yeah, so be careful. Be careful out there.
Yeah, a lot of scammers. Your bill this month has just.
Yeah, my phone bill went 799-790-9799 thirty 2 lbs this
month and I was like brilliant, that's I've just given £25 to a
scammer. Oh my gosh.
So yeah, pretty annoyed about that for like.
The time for the podcast, me just winding.
Yeah, winding me up, making me feel like an idiot.
Anyway, so yeah, that's my week. Got scammed.
Only thing that relevance anything, nothing else is
important. To me, well, I want to talk
about Spotify Rapt because obviously he's been Spotify Rapt
this week or last week, depending when you're listening
to this. And I love the memes that kind
of technomic out of people who post Spotify Rapt.
OK, I find them funny. It's just funny.
Like there's one that really made me laugh and it was this
like video of Messi when he just won the World Cup, like taking
it in like, Oh my God, I just can't believe what's happened.
The caption was when Spotify Rapt tells you the artist you
listen to most this year was the artist used to most this year.
Like it like it's information. Yeah.
Oh my God. Taylor Swift was number one.
It's like it's all used to all year.
Finding out Dylan does like the killers.
Yeah, every year the Killers are in there somewhere.
And Lin Manuel Miranda with Hamilton every year always in
there somewhere. But what?
You know, I do actually like seeing other people's Spotify
rapt. It's interesting to me just to
get into the head of, like, what they listen to.
Yeah, sure. But as a creator now, because we
upload this podcast through Spotify for Creators and we're
under that umbrella, you get your own rapt information about
people listening to your podcasts and stuff.
And I just wanted to say it really does match up with what
we've been like noticing from messages and stuff and people
listening because last year our following went up by over 300%.
Amazing. Yeah, our listeners went up by
about 170 hundred, 80%. Yeah.
And our streams went up by a similar amount because streams
are just like people actually listen to whole episode, right?
Right. But yeah, it always like close
to 200%, a huge amount of following growth.
And it just wanted to say thank you basically to you guys who
are listening right now. And, and thank you to those
people who've reached out and messaged because you don't have
to do that. And it's so I can't explain how
lovely it is when I open Instagram and and sometimes they
lost their requests. So I don't see him for a few
days. Yeah, God, sorry.
And you go in there and it's just someone, you know, who's
just honestly written like a whole massive paragraph about
how thank you for the podcast. Someone said it's part of their
Tuesday routine when they go to the gym.
Someone said they have a Monday evening dog walk.
And it's like. That I'm really looking forward
to an evening dog walk because I can listen to the podcast and
and I'm just like, Oh my God, we are part of like thousands of
people's. Like routine.
Didn't someone say that they literally went and parked up
because they just had to listen? To like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
rather. Than go I just like.
That's so nice to me to think that it makes me feel good.
I think went to the seaside and just listened and yeah.
And what what's amazing for me constantly is the amount of
people who say it's had a positive effect because like you
said, and and today's episode, you've clicked on this.
We're talking about things we change.
When you talk about things you change or things you think
you're are broken, it's so easy to kind of get into a spiral of
people telling you you're being negative.
I don't do that. But I think it helps us stay
strong, doesn't it? To talk about these things when
people say no, no, these need to be talked about.
Do it in a positive way. Talk about how we can make it
better. Yeah, yeah.
Because we like something. Solutions genuinely.
Yeah. So I I really appreciate it
guys. Basically, if you're a listener,
messages, even if you've already done it messages again, say
hello. I love, I love talking.
To you guys, how where do they message us still?
Live, you can go to Instagram at TCP podcast.
I'll put a link down in the description to this episode, but
one other thing I wanted to talk about before we moved on go on.
It's from my week. We've been we did a bit of
writing. We're doing Vajat Paul, my
favourite book to do with the children.
Such a good book and the children absolutely love it.
And I always feel like there's really good opportunities for
quality description, quality action, speech, dialogue between
characters and things like that. And it's really perfect for Year
4 for that exact example, because that's what you want
really from Year 4 writing. Yeah, of course, sentences that
make sense, but a bit of action, a bit of dialogue with speech
marks, some description, some, some ability to put some adverbs
in there to move around, play with the sentence structure.
That's where we're at of Year 4 basically, and this week we just
had a lesson where we've done a lot of itty bitty stuff and I
guess it's what I want to try and talk about.
I find it tricky sometimes with writing kind of bridging that
gap between I've got to teach you how to use adverbs, how to
use conjunctions, what they are, and and literally teach you the
building blocks to build a sentence using these things.
But I also want you to do writing as much as possible and
when you, when the children aren't concentrating on how an
adverb works and where it goes, or particularly speech, because
there's so much to remember of speech, commas, punctuation
marks at the end, capital letters, blah, blah, blah.
I really struggle with that like bridge.
So I just thought, you know what, I, I want you just to do
some independent writing today. And so I generated a picture
online of Var Jack in the city with the cars whizzing past.
The kids could immediately like put what we've been reading to
it. So there's all the inspiration
was there. That cognitive load was taken
away. But I then felt like on the
board, I just had like a checklist of stuff that we've
done in the last two weeks. And I kind of just said to them,
I want to see these things. And I really struggle because I
don't know if that's good or bad.
I don't want your opinion on this is because they did some
writing and the children who did most of the stuff on the board,
it was kind of incoherent when I read it.
It didn't really flow. There was no there was no focus
on the story. You feel like we've lost that
they've. Just tried to so hard to put
that thing in that you said. Exactly.
They're like they've done a they've done a sentence with an
adverb. Yeah.
And then the next one, they've just done a sentence and put as
at the end as a conjunction, even though it doesn't
necessarily make any sense to do that.
Then then the next one down, they've just added a bit of
speech randomly, even though I literally said to them, don't
worry about speech today, but they've done it and they want to
put it in. Yeah.
And this, this whole, I really struggle with this attitude of
I'm going to teach this thing and then I need to see it.
You're independent writing, so I can take it off on an assessment
and say you're great. Yeah.
I think, I think the whole system sucks.
I think since maybe 2014 I think is when people start complaining
like with Gov and all that. I think that we have become like
slowly obsessed with like grammar, grammar terms and like
and and seeing specific grammar things in writing to make that
and that means writing is good. That's what I mean.
Because honestly, I read this. I'll be really honest, I read
their writing and I thought I could probably take off most of
this stuff in the mood because you're actually really good at
it now, but the story was crap. The.
Writing was crap. It was, it was bad.
Like, yeah, I love my kids and they did so well.
And then do you know what they did?
Exactly what I wanted them to do.
And of course, I said, this is amazing because it's what I
said. It's what I told them to do.
Yeah. I'm giving them this structure
and this scaffold of how to succeed, and they're doing it.
But I know deep down in the back of my head is just like a person
who reads stuff and knows writing.
I'm just like, I find it gutting that they don't.
I've not really fostered that imagination or the idea of how a
story works or it being, like I said, coherent.
And I really struggle, we're all teaching with writing because I
feel like I'm quite good at teaching writing in terms of I'm
going to teach you how to use this in your sentences.
And it, and it's beautiful when you add information, it makes
sense. But when it comes to a longer
piece, I, I, I, I don't think it's very good.
Yeah, because. There's a whole part of it it's
lost, isn't there? Like you said, I feel I feel the
same. I feel like I'm good at teaching
GPS. Honestly, I'm pretty good at
teaching a punctuation lesson and getting the kids at the end
of it to write sentences that have that piece of punctuation,
punctuation in it correctly. But yeah, like you said, when it
comes to bit of writing, but I feel like I'm starting to turn
like change the way I teach now quite a lot.
I'm really moving away from those sentence level lessons
where it's like today we're doing noun phrases.
I've really stopped using that language.
And I'm starting to do just things like today we're looking
at how how this author creates description in this paragraph.
And then and then, and then all I'll be thinking is when I'm
modelling it, I say I do this. I'm very much trying to do this.
Yeah, I'm not quite there yet, but I'm really trying to do this
right. I'm trying to honestly just stop
using the grammar terms very much at all.
And then just we'll play the game when it comes to the GPS
test, honestly, we'll mention those grammar times later, but
the moment it's like, I just want a model writing that has
the thing in it. Lots and lots and lots and lots
and lots. And now you write a paragraph
and just hopefully, because we've been modelling that
specific thing loads, they'll naturally kind of do in their
writing, but it doesn't always work.
Yeah, that works for some, but not for others.
For example of noun phrases, right.
I actually don't think you ever need to explicitly teach noun
phrases in writing, because all noun phrases are.
It's the script. Describing now just.
Like you describe will naturally do that when you describe like
that will happen. However, when it comes to like
using a semi colon or when it comes to honestly putting an
adverb at the front of a sentence and stuff like that.
I get you could kind of take away the fact it's an adverb,
but you have to really solidly teach the structure of building
that sentence and when it comes to speech, right?
OK, cool. But I do need to teach you that
the reporting clause is here, then the comma comes there, and
then this. And I've got to really be bitty
with the the mechanics of it. And I feel like that takes
precedent across the board before actually, let's just
write a really good piece of writing.
What I'd like to see more of, and maybe some schools do this
and I'd love to hear if you do, is just some right.
This is what I tried to do, but this is the point I'm making.
I tried to just give them a prompt and, and just say just
write for me. I had them on the board.
I wanted to see them because I feel like that's what I've got
to do. But what I said to the kids was
honestly, I want to see two things in this writing.
I want to see action and description.
And that's all I said to them. I said I want to see action and
description. I want you to describe where he
is, what he's, what's around him and I want you to, I want him to
do something. So some of them had some cool
ideas like Varjak jumped on top of a car because the idea is he
wants to talk to a car. He thinks they're dogs and he
needs to recruit a dog to help him at home, and he thinks the
cars are dogs because they're monsters, They're loud, they
growl and stuff like that. So there's some really cool
ideas, but it's just lacking that flow.
And maybe it's because they're 9.
Yeah, I'm going to say you've got you've got to come into the
players. I do feel like we've lost touch
with like age when it comes to writing.
Like the end of year six objectives, the end of year 6
levels is like, oh, perfect writers.
Yeah. Is that realistic?
I'm a 10. What do?
They care about really. Because I honestly like if I
read some of that writing. My gut now as a teacher was, oh,
oh God, I wouldn't be able to take anything off on that
assessment sheet. They haven't quite done this in
to an extent. And OK, even those who have,
they've lost the story. Really, I should be able to as a
teacher sometimes just look at writing and go, wow, that's,
that's a cool idea. That's imaginative.
And I understand that this this action led to this consequence
led to this action actual building of a story without
being obsessed with or by the end of year 4, I need to be able
to. Preposition.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
I just really struggle with. It can I say the best, the best
writing unit I've ever ever, ever taught with my kids was
last year. It was planned by my job.
Share Julie. It's planned by me.
Yeah, it wasn't by me plan my job share Julie.
It was it was like a whole weeks unit right and it went totally
kind of off script what you normally do.
It was really, really different out there.
She actually spoke to she spent so much time on, she spoke to
her friend who's a secondary school English teacher and was
like, how did you guys do it? Because I feel like we're not
nailing it in primary school. Basically what you were saying
and her English and the English teacher really helped her and it
was, and do you know what? We didn't do any of it in the
week on grammar terms, None of it at all.
We spent the whole week looking at loads of quality texts,
reading them, unpicking them. Then we had sheets all around
the room and we were picking out phrases and vocab, right.
We did a whole lesson on the structure and how it makes you
feel as a reader. And they're like, why did the
why did they do a one line paragraph there?
What did it make you feel? Did you notice they repeated
that word three times? Why did they do that?
Do you think that should be writing?
That's that's right. Best writing I've ever seen in
my life. And and we didn't even mention
now phrases we didn't mention. Because you're absolutely right.
Because we had that training recently about writing.
And the phrase that will stick with me really strongly is the
text is the teacher. Yeah, yeah.
So it's, it's where I think we fall down massively in writing
is I'm stood at the front modelling how to use a front of
the verb 4 times in a row. Then they do it and they just
plunk one in because of the sake of plunk one in, or they plunk
some parentheses in for the sake of just adding extra
information. Yeah, it needs to be completely
warped. And I might be preaching to the
converted here. Maybe I'm, I'm behind on my
writing teaching and this is very normal, but I feel like
this is a widespread problem where the assessment comes
before the actual process and enjoyment and the act of writing
creativity almost. Because what should children do?
Of course they should. They should literally be magpie.
How on earth can we expect children to come up with amazing
stuff? They can't.
They're children. What they should do is read
fantastic texts. Like you said, the text is the
teacher. So we're going to take from
this, we're going to use this structure, we're going to change
who the characters are, but you're going to build suspense
because you've read suspense here.
Exactly. And this is where my knowledge
is floundered. Like I, if I wanted to build
suspense, I would not have a clue where to start in terms of
there'll be people out there right now who are going, Oh my
God, you have to use this book for suspense in Chapter 7.
I just don't have that. And I feel like there's a long
way to go to build that back up. But I think what's holding us
back is the the curriculum and the assessment profile of
writing that's holding us back into being less good teachers at
writing because we can get through a tick box at the end.
And it makes me sad. I think we're suppressing
writers and I just don't like. I've been to enough writing
moderations in year 6 to know how depressing it is that
honestly the end game is there is no one cares about the
creativity. Genuinely, no one cares.
All it is you sit there with your tick list and you go
through and you're just making sure you can evidence all of the
grammar curriculum. Honestly, yeah.
And the punctuation stuff and, and a little bit of flow.
Like if it if it genuinely makes absolutely no sense and they'd
start saying, OK, doesn't make any sense though.
But on the whole, then no one, really, no one really cares
about the flow. Do you ever sit down and read
like a you've written in Essex an amazing like shriller piece
where you're really building suspense because someone's, you
know, walking along a creaky floorboard goes and it's dark
and I've got to see something run across?
No one cares about that. No, it's just like, did you put
semi colon in there to join 2 clauses that quite.
Yeah, yeah, mate, I get that that's important to understand.
I'm not degrading that. I quite like teaching that.
Like you said, it's quite formulaic.
It's like maths almost. I don't.
I don't mind teaching it, but what do I actually want from the
kids when I read their writing? Really interesting, imaginative
writers who are making the reader feel something.
Yeah, I agree. That's really all I care.
About and if a kid who was maybe a bit lower ability in terms of
like all the grammar terms wrote a little paragraph.
But it was really good in terms of the structure of it and the
way it made you feel. But every sentence started with
the there weren't really many conjunctions in it.
It was quite basic in its form, like in the structure.
No, sentence structure varies. But it built tension because
they forced some nice words to use.
They honestly, they they wouldn't in this current system.
They just wouldn't get picked up as a good writer as much as
someone who didn't, like you said, like Vajic, poor stuff
didn't really have like much flow to it or like the tension
didn't really build up. But they've got very sentence
starters or they've used a range of conjunctions that we've
taught recently and look at those adjectives that that's an
expanded noun phrase. Well done.
They've even tried to use brackets in that sentence.
Take that off and it's like doesn't even didn't in warrant
brackets in this. Does it make any sense to use
brackets in this suspense paragraph?
But that's the sad thing anyway. We'll talk about this forever.
We should. I mean, I'm sure we'll come back
around and do an episode on writing at some point.
Absolutely. I'll be very excited, too.
And. But, yeah, that was my point,
basically, you know, as a teacher, sometimes you sit there
and think, wow, we talk a lot about success and like, I know
the right thing to do and this is what we should do.
We're going to talk about in a minute actually what we think
the right thing is. But I think it's really, really
important sometimes just to sit there and go, do you know what?
I am struggling with this. I really don't think it's
hitting the mark. I wish it was completely
different. Yeah, we're giving our kids good
curriculum, don't get me wrong, and they're learning how to
write. We're doing lots of writing.
I just feel like the scaffold around it, the structure, the
purpose would be much better suited to just being a bit
different. Yeah, definitely.
Let's go on to our fixing, shall we?
Or do you have a few things you wanted to show me first?
Maybe we. Could do I do yes, I want to do
a little session before we move on and it and it's inspired by
last week when I mentioned that we used to do riling up riling
you up back in the early days of the podcast.
I've got a couple of screenshots on my phone right have things on
Internet. I'm not showing Dylan no, I
thought contacts. I even said do you sure you
don't want to see him just before He's like no live raw
reactions. Yeah, well, you said, you said
to me, do you want to know like Rafa so you can start thinking
it's like no. So if there's a bit of silence
here, guys, I'm regretting my this.
Yeah. Now, there's three things,
right? You've got a choice here.
You've actually got a bit of a choice.
Two of them are just like, I just saw them.
I thought, I've got to tell Dylan this because he'll just
write them up. One of them is.
I read it on a forum, and I've seen this question loads of
times, and I still just have no clue what the answer is.
I want your opinion. Yeah.
All right. OK, Let me find it first.
You don't know what the answer is.
No. I just don't know what.
I don't know what to. I didn't comment on it because I
was like, I actually don't know what.
This. Wow.
He didn't comment on it. I didn't.
Comment on it. I didn't get people warrior.
So here we are. Just basically in a nutshell,
because you know, I'll keep it anonymous person said they got
sick, that's cool. And they blamed it on their
class. They said there's lots of
sickness bugs going around. They ended up catching it as
well and we're off for a couple of days and they missed their
PPA day and then they were back in that week and they're
basically just saying should I get my PPA back?
Because they still use the lesson planning that they did
for that week and all the stuff they've still got to do all
their planning, but they weren't in on the day that they get PPA.
So should they get the PPA back? And I've seen that question
loads of times and I genuinely, I'm like, I don't know.
Yeah, yeah. But do you have, what was your
opinion? Because you might not know
either. Well, my, my, OK, my, my, my
instincts, my gut instinct in my opinion, are slightly different.
Yeah, my gut instinct is that is unfortunate, but tough like,
like I, I'm what I'm saying is I think it's normal.
If you're sick on your PPA day, it's normal to not have it moved
around. Let's say you're off for a week,
whatever it is. Like you said, the amount of
planning you did hasn't changed but you were sick on that day.
Sorry. Like that's what I think it is.
I don't. I don't know if it should be
that, but my opinion is right. If your workload genuinely
literally hasn't changed, you are being penalised for being
sick. And instead of it will go down
as a sick day on Tuesday, let's say, right?
But really all it's done is it's moved that Tuesday work to
Sunday when you're feeling a bit better because you don't need to
get it done. For the PPA work.
Yeah, the PPA work so and the work you would have done anyway
at the weekend outside. So it's a really weird one
because, you know, in the real world, if people are sick,
depending on their job, they do have to catch up.
Yeah. That's that is the reality of
it. Like if you're sick, you have to
catch up. If you're in an office and
you've got to work through 100 different, like claims or
something and you're off sick, you've still got your 100
claims. Someone else might be able to
pick up and help you a bit. Yeah.
Which is what happens anyway in a school.
They help you have other ways that you don't have marking and
stuff. But at the end of the day, you
still need to get through your list.
So you're gonna have to catch up a bit.
Yeah. I feel like it's one of those
things where it's like really unfortunate, but.
The I don't know you have a leg standard.
So it's quite funny you said that because I haven't got them
on my phone, but I remember reading the top two comments
where literally those two things you just said, the first person
was like, no, just get like, you, you are sick, just go over
it. You're back in school now.
You can't, you can't help being sick.
No one could plan for that. It would be really chaotic.
Yeah. If we had a system where it was
like, now someone's got to suddenly find 10% PPA for you in
the week when it's not remotely planned for.
Yeah. Yeah.
And the other person was like, no, you're absolutely, you're
entitled to 10% your teaching time.
So whatever your whatever your teaching time is, the rest of
that week, 10% of that should now be your PPA.
But if if you're off all week, do you not get any?
Yeah, that doesn't work, does it?
Whole week. Yeah, is that just cancel that?
No, just only feel planning. So I don't know if that points
the best point. No, my my opinion there is sick
pay is just slightly different. You get paid to do nothing by
the way. Yeah, like, I know, I know
you're sick, but you are still getting paid so.
I'd love to know what the actual like union advice is.
So if anyone knows anyone knows, everyone's like, listen to this
thinking. I know this answer because I've
been there and I've done it like, well, yeah.
Spread it because then we can say at the podcast more people
know it and then it's out there. Yeah, genuinely, knowledge is
power. Because some people, some people
just don't know stuff. Yeah, we do.
Yeah. So I thought that was
interesting, OK, Because normally I feel like I know such
stuff, that one. Got me.
Give me one other one and then we'll go into the.
OK, one other one. Yeah, we can go for it.
OK, this one's a good one. OK, this will write you up.
In a staff meeting last night, I was chastised for not staying to
help at the disco. Oh.
For God's sake. I was told it was an
expectation. I've got a young child at home.
I literally just can't do it. Can anyone clarify?
This is allowed. It's after 6:00 PM.
No, obviously not right, unless unless you at the start of the
year have a directed time calendar.
You've all agreed that this is part of directed time because
it's been taken from XYZI. Think they made it quite clear
that was not was not the case. If it's not the case, you don't
have to go. Let them chastise you.
This is something I've learned in education, right?
There are always going to be people out there who do exist,
by the way, because we did a post about martyrs and the
amount of people who commented saying these people don't exist,
they're just trying to get the job done.
So I'm telling you, I've met these people that you've very
clearly defined as a martyr. Yeah, they're martyrs at that
point. Yeah.
If if they're saying to you it's an expectation that you have to
come to the school disco in the evening when you have a child at
home for your job. Yeah, tell them to get stuffed.
Don't do that. Just just just say to them, no,
sorry, I can't do that. And then when they say it's an
expectation, say, OK, well, when will I get this time back or how
much overtime will I be paid for doing this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you won't be.
It's it's a number. Section 8 of the Teacher
standards. Don't let anyone ever say that
to you. Section 8 of the Teacher
Standards has nothing to do with doing extra work outside of
school for free. It's not about that.
Section 8 of the Teacher Standards is about setting an
example in the wider, wider school, presenting yourself in a
certain way. And even if you want to go to
Section 2 of the Teacher Standards about being outside of
school, still being respectful and professional, read the
Teacher Standards. There is absolutely nothing in
there about having to do discos. Because I remember being a
student teacher and then saying, why don't you do a school disco
tonight? It'll take off teacher standard
8. And I'd be like, yeah, sure,
I'll do that because they didn't think twice about it.
No, no, read it. You absolutely do not have to do
that. People will be annoyed at you.
Here's something I've learned. Sorry.
Here's something I'm getting riled up the.
Session's working. Here's something I've learned as
a teacher. OK, setting boundaries will rub
some people up the wrong way, and you setting yourself
boundaries is going to be difficult if you also really
care what other people think about you.
And really caring what your colleagues and people think
about you is completely normal. Don't feel like you're strange
or bad or weird for having honesty, wanting that validation
from your peers. That's completely normal human
response. However, you at some point have
to decide would you rather feel awkward because you don't?
You get a bit chastised from your colleagues, but you have
your evening with your son. Or does your colleagues opinion
matter more than spending the hour with your child in the
evening? Let's be honest, it's obvious
which one is the best option for you.
Let them chastise you. They're in the wrong.
Don't let these people control your life just because you don't
quite like that they think you're lazy.
You're not lazy. Doing the bare minimum as a
teacher is already someone who is not inherently lazy.
It's insane. I've heard people say this
before. I've actually heard this before.
This is real. A teacher saying to me that
person doesn't like working. Yeah.
And this is a teacher who also works in the school we work in
work shy while their work shy. I'm like, OK, And I'm at the
point now where I say, well, no, that's not true though, is it?
Because they do come in half 7 till 5:00 every day.
They're just saying no to the stuff on top.
So let's not set the norm as this much work.
It doesn't mean someone's work shy.
It means someone sets boundaries for their personal life.
Get over it. And as the person setting the
boundaries, it's tough to set boundaries.
You have to be able to accept there will be people, no matter
how reasoned your arguments are or how fair it is that you're
doing it, will not want to put up with that and will make you
try and feel bad. Try and make you feel bad.
Can you imagine a whole school filled with people who actually
did set boundaries? I wonder if that exists.
I wonder, I wonder if there must be some schools in the UK, in
the UK where everyone has our same, our opinions on genuine
and it's like we are really just on it with our boundaries and
this is how our school operates well.
Someone, someone's response to this would be genuinely, well,
how can they just go around if people don't do it?
And, and honestly, honestly, it wouldn't probably.
But do you know what? At what point?
Honest. So yeah, do you honestly, yeah,
I'm sorry, I'm not I, I, I love to do things for the kids
outside of school and stuff like that.
And do you know what? I might do it if it not, if it
benefits me, but if it suits my timetable and I'm like, OK,
yeah, of course I'll do a little something.
I used to go to the cross countries on the weekends and
stuff like that. And then we started doing
tutoring and we couldn't go to cross country anymore because we
weren't getting any kind of pay rise off the government.
So I thought, well, I'll bump my pay was and tutoring then yeah,
that means I can't go to the cross country or who's gonna do
the cross country? I don't know pay me properly?
Someone else do it for free. I'm doing something else now,
yeah. Exactly that.
So just basically setting boundaries is not is.
We're the first people to say set boundaries, but it's not
easy. No, you that will happen.
People will make you feel bad for saying boundaries.
You have to try and ignore. It most famous.
One last point on this is clubs, isn't it?
How many people have we spoken to over the years, even recently
where they're like, Oh yeah, my school, everyone is literally
just peer pressured and bullied into doing a club.
And if you don't, you're ostracised.
Yeah, oh, don't do any work, you're lazy.
And we, we all do clubs. We actually do clubs for the
kids because we love the kids. We actually like the kids.
And you really don't. You don't like the kids?
We heard the story that we have someone, you know, they they go
around the room and individually ask people, Yeah, making the
person have to say no, I'm not doing a club.
And then kind of like, OK, well, you're not doing a club, even
though, you know, it's not unacceptable.
You're just bullying, bullying, intimidation.
It's tough to say no. You've just got to do it.
Do you know I really want to just be in AI want I wish I was
omnipotent and I could just go to those places and then.
That's a new quote for the podcast.
I wish. I was omnipotent.
I wish I was right. I want to be everywhere.
I want to suddenly be in that star from when that's happening,
appear like, you know, maybe some sort of genie and be like,
oh, toxic, you're bullying, you're starving to doing this.
Poof, I'm gone again. And they're all like, oh, it's
awkward now for that head teacher.
Yeah, I love the idea of of doing like staff meetings and
stuff like running CPD, right, Yeah, yeah, maybe we'll do it at
some point in our future where it's around like how to, you
know, break down these barriers and help your staff, etcetera.
I love the idea of helping staff being efficient in school, being
efficient in school, saying saying no, etcetera, and just
completely calling out, like you said, toxic people in school.
I I, I just stand at the front now be like, God, some of you I
I bet, Can you imagine make. And I know this is what they do.
I'd already get this off the teachers beforehand and I'd be
like, yeah, it's like when schools make people do clubs and
they don't have to. And you know what?
Happens and I know what happens in that school and look at the
head teach, but you would never do that right?
You would never just disrespect someone's time and head teach
like sweating. Yeah, I definitely would never
do that. Problem is in a real world, they
just those people are manipulative and they would
never book in the training because I know in advance this
is a risk of, you know, the power of control I have over
these people such a same way. But yeah, people are going to be
annoyed at you for setting boundaries.
You know what? Put yourself first.
Set boundaries. Thanks for your opinions there.
I enjoyed that. Maybe next week we'll do a bit
more riling up for Dylan because I've still got some stuff to
share with you. Enjoyed that move on to the main
part of the episode. God, we've actually got an
episode we plan. Yeah, yeah, quite often when
you, like we just said, set boundaries and talk about how
the systems broken or what's annoying you, The big thing
people always say is, OK, well, what's your solution?
And it you know, sometimes it it's annoying.
People say it's like sometimes something can just be broken.
OK, But do you know what? It is important to bring a
solution to the table as well. So what Hayden and I have done
is we've put together a list of policies that we would
immediately introduce into a school for various reasons, but
most of them being, you know, well-being, workload, children,
even just just what we think would improve a school
immediately and things that are kind of what we feel widespread
and broken, how we think we can kind of help.
That this is my favourite thing by the way, because like how
many times on the podcast have I said, oh, in my perfect school,
in my made-up school, I'm always making up this school in my
head. And now we get to like be like,
this is what we'd actually do. So I'm really excited.
So let's do it. And again, I would absolutely
love feedback on this. I'd love people to say, guys,
that's not realistic because of XYZ.
Or maybe they say John. Yeah.
And also this let me know what you would do if you were in just
dropped in charge of a school. By the way, being a head teacher
in SRT is incredibly stressful and there are some amazing
people out there where like him really hard who feel like their
hands are tied. They've got to get stuff done.
Some of that's passed on to their staff.
And you know what? It's not because they're a bad
person or toxic, it's because the system is so horribly
broken. So just a quick heads up, what
we've done here, if we haven't said, oh, get more Tasmania in
because that's impossible, You know, you need more money for
that. Oh not don't do sounds more
money. Yeah.
It's like these things aren't things we could actually change.
Yeah, we've done 9 policies here that we genuinely think you
could send this podcast to someone who you're close to an
SLT or who you just know an SLT and they could genuinely listen
to and think, well, maybe we'll do this this and.
This. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
So, hey, don't wait to start us off, OK?
First thing that we would do. This is huge for me.
Yeah. OK.
The dress policy? Scrap it.
For children or for teachers? For teachers, that's an
interesting point, actually, we'll talk about in a minute.
But for teachers, get rid of this.
I mean, if you saw your any of Dylan's Instagram posts where he
gets annoyed about the clothes he's wearing, you'll know that
we do not like the fact that we have to wear shirt and trousers
and maybe even a tie in some schools, Blazers, maybe in some
schools. Who knows how crazy it goes.
Scrap the dress policy. Go on.
You're more passionate about this.
Talk about. It Yeah, no, it's it's really
the reason I feel so strongly about this is because I think
that the theme through this will be, and this is something I want
to remind people of teachers are professionals.
We are literally professionals who have trained in this craft
who know ourselves. We're not just some plebs who've
just been picked off off the street to be teachers.
Honestly, honestly, we're not. So when teachers feel a certain
way, it is valid and it annoys when people from the top just
go, Oh no, it's just what we've always done.
We can't do that. So we can though, can't we?
And this is the number one thing that comes to my head the most
when it's APE day in school, where as teachers are allowed to
come in in PE uniform or P kit, you know, just sportswear
basically for the day so we don't have to get changed
awkwardly halfway through in the toilet.
Like we can just just come in your PE stuff.
On those days where I can come in in my PE stuff, jogging
bottoms that are still not, you know, not horribly informal.
Just like the nice sport jogging bottoms, trainers, a T-shirt.
I teach better, comfy. I I am a better teacher.
I'm comfy, I'm comfortable, I don't look rough, I don't look
like some hooligan. I just look like a person.
And what even is that brain? What do you mean?
What do you even mean? Look like a hooligan.
Yeah, exactly. Like what?
Honestly, what can you wear that this?
I'm teaching these children how to AA number.
Does it matter? I'm wearing a shirt for
goodness. Sake, do they behave differently
on those days? No Of.
Course no they don't. Maybe right.
If initially we did this huge massive change and the whole
staff suddenly are in comfortable wear, the kids might
pick up on something subliminally.
Oh no, have the same expected, have the same.
Do your behaviour the exact same.
The kids do not behave worse and I teach better.
I this sounds ridiculous. I feel more springy.
I feel like I'm ready because I've got sportswear on.
And my point here is I'm going to try and be as extreme as
possible. In this case, my policy would be
that there is genuinely no policy for what you.
Wear what you want. I'm not going to question
remotely what you wear. And the only asterisks on that
is you're a professional. That's all I'd have to say to
people. Wear what you want, but you're a
professional, you know. Don't wear something horribly
revealing. Are you telling me you'd trust
your professional teachers to make a judgement on what clothes
they can wear literally in public?
Literally. Yeah.
Because they can't. Because on the weekend,
obviously, they haven't. They have.
No. They need that structure.
They have no idea how to go out and be in the public world.
And children absolutely can't possibly respect anyone not in a
shirt and tie because they never ever do that.
Ever do. They didn't Like we take the
swimming on a Wednesday and everyone's.
I couldn't possibly respect that person because they were wearing
a polo that's not tucked in over it like we are creating that in
school. Like that idea of.
Well, no, you have to set an example for the kids.
Yeah. No, I don't.
I'm setting an example of what a
teacher looks like because you've made me look like this as
a teacher. Yeah.
You know what? If I wore sports clothes or
comfy wear, that would be the new expectation of a teacher.
The kids respect wouldn't dwindle.
The kids wouldn't suddenly not know how to behave around other
adults. You'd still teach them how to do
that. At what point do you ever teach
your children to judge someone on how they look?
It's the complete antithesis of what we say is really important
to model to the children that everyone's equal, treat them all
the same. But not me.
By the way, I'm wearing a shirt and tie.
Should they immediately respect me?
I'm Mr This don't care. OK, So what if then I'm trying
to be devil's advocate here and think of like, the worst thing
that can happen, right? You do this and genuinely,
you're ahead, right? And your staff come in and you
actually look at them, think, Oh my God, this is really bad that
they're all wearing massive chains.
Yeah, they've all got like, really long fake nails.
It's like totally impractical. They're wearing 2 pairs of
sunglasses. And because your policy is wear
what you want. Yeah, sure.
Do you know what it's it's number one.
I just think it's so unrealistic.
It's not going to happen. But that's my initial point.
Genuinely, it's like this just won't happen.
But let's say there are a couple because there might be a couple
of people like, oh, actually, that isn't actually what I don't
know. It's inappropriate.
It's inappropriate, right? I would just get them on one
side and talk to them in the same way, right?
There isn't a policy telling me exactly what script I have to
say when I'm teaching. I'm trusted as a professional to
deliver the English lesson. If I was to say something really
inappropriate on a lesson, you wouldn't go, oh God, I need to
give my teachers scripts on exactly what to say every single
time they do anything. No, you would take that person
to the side and talk to them about being professional.
Say that's not acceptable, obviously because of XYZ in the
same thing with the dress code. Yeah, sorry.
Can I have a word quickly? I know we can obviously what we
want, but this is inappropriate because of that.
I hope you understand I'm not going to obviously do a new
dress code because of it, but in the future actually trying to
avoid. Doing well, actually, there's no
policy in this. I'm going to take this to the
unions. How dare you?
How dare you tell me what I should?
Yeah, OK, OK. Well, I could introduce a
policy, couldn't I? And I might do that then,
because it's very normal to do that.
It's not against union code. So join to introduce.
Policy is just that person. This person must wear.
But again, I just think that's such an unrealist that it's
minute amount of people who would do that.
I agree. Yeah, that's my get rid of.
It yeah, I'm brought you know what, I wasn't on your level of
this until we had this actual conversation.
I was a bit more like now I think there needs to be a line
and I think it should just be something loose like smart
casual or. Something like that.
That's so. Vague.
Yeah. And I would leave it vague, just
just vague enough because it, you know, people can interpret
that how they want, but they're always going to interpret it
some somewhere further than 00. I don't know.
But you know, I think anyway, yeah, I probably would, but I
actually think you're right. I think we trust teachers for
loads of other things to do right.
Like you said in the lesson, yeah, we don't live in our
policies and everything single thing they do ever.
We trust them because, oh, you're a trained professional.
You know what's appropriate and what's not appropriate.
We trust. We trust teachers not to swear
genuinely. We don't have a policy that says
these are the exact words you can't say.
Like, come on, no one has that. Yeah, we just go, oh, your
teachers. Oh, you did three years of
training with of course you know how you're supposed to speak to
kids and how you're not. Supposed.
And if you don't, we'll sort it out.
Yeah, so you. Probably know how the dress as
well. You know I'm not going to I'm
not going to rock up in my hot pants.
Do you know what I mean? Please do.
That's just what the podcast maybe.
Yeah, I'm not. I'm waiting right now.
You don't know you're listening to this podcast.
Hated this dress completely. Demerating yeah, likely you
can't see waist down on the video, but yeah, no, good point.
Really, really good point. I like it.
Scrap scrap the dress policy. Stupid, stupid, archaic thing
that every school does just because it's always been Yeah,
new point next. Point #2 No formal observations.
Let me be really clear and say it one more time very clearly
for you all, in case you're getting annoyed for me straight
away. No formal observations.
Let me describe what a formal observation is.
Please do. A formal observation is when
you're told 3 * a year that the assistant head or the head
teacher and the subject lead will come in and sit down in the
back of your lesson for 25 minutes and watch you teach and
pick up on all the tiny little things that you do and it's
completely pointless. It doesn't help at all.
Same thing, the theme. We're professionals.
Sometimes we get things wrong, sometimes we're not doing stuff
based on school policy because sometimes our policy is wrong,
but sometimes we need to do something we shouldn't be doing.
We need feedback. Yes, we do formal observation,
no undue pressure, undue stress, especially when they're rated.
Some schools still do this. They still rate teachers.
Very rare now, but it used to happen a lot and it just creates
this angst. It creates it.
Do you know what formal observations do in the when
they're done in the wrong way is they create a as in them with
your teachers and your SLT, we're on the ground teaching
everyday. I resent you coming in and
telling me that I'm doing this thing wrong that I think is
insignificant. But I can't argue with you
because you're my superior, blah, blah, blah.
We should we still should get feedback.
And my point here is we still still should be able to have
adults in our room. My point here is no formal
observations, but drop insurance.
Hello. How you doing?
How can I help you? Support.
Daily should be the norm. Yeah.
And and when you see SLT walking into your room, you know, it's
not a formal observation. What you know is.
Good morning. Yeah.
Good morning. How are you?
That might be it. One day walk for the classroom
just like. Our school does this really
well. I'm a big up school because you
know what our SLT do walk in quite a lot.
Even just thinking 2 days ago deputy head came in and I and I
no single part of me thought always coming in to check on
what I'm doing. I thought he's probably coming
to see. And he might have been.
It might have been which? I didn't think it which.
Is fine, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I didn't.
I didn't think it. I thought, I don't.
He's probably just checking on the kid.
Maybe there's been a concern. Maybe there's something's
happened. Maybe it's maybe.
Do you know what? Maybe he's just making himself
known so the kids know all deputy head walks around and.
I'll tell you what, our children have an amazing relationship
with the head and the deputy head.
Yeah. And it's because of that.
It's because of that relationship that they build by
being in the room a lot. You know, the children know who
they are. They're not.
You know that. Yeah.
They can be disciplined. Yeah, by them.
But do you know what, 95% of the time it's them bigging them up
and just build a relationship with them.
And my point here is it should be just about support for the
staff. There are some staff who need
feedback and support and there are some staff, let's be honest,
who are doing the wrong thing, or let's phrase it could be
doing a better thing. The the answer to that is not
sat down formally going for a tick list and saying, well,
actually, you know, this person used this wrong colour pen and
then this person didn't quite underline their date.
And by the way, pointless, get in the bin.
Don't care, don't don't talk to professor, get out.
Do you think honestly that a professional, do you think, do
you think I care that the kids have written in a slightly
different pen? Maybe some professionals do and
it's at the top of their priority list and they really
are hot on that. For me, it's lower on my list.
I'm afraid you sat there telling me.
I know you're. Oh, some of your kids do really
wonky margins. I know.
Yeah, I know. I know that.
But do you know what? I'm not going to spend 5 minutes
every day doing it myself. I'm not going to stop my
learning because they're what? Their margins a bit wonky.
I'm going to get on to how to AA number.
OK. Did you see?
They could double the number or I could, but then the line went
through that number and now I can't.
Yeah. No, they can Stop.
Stop it. Yeah.
Give me support. Give me help.
Ask how I am. Give me feedback.
Please do. Yeah, please give me support.
We've had training. That's amazing.
Cool, I want help. What I don't need is someone sat
there with a clipboard judging and it and it just creating this
oh God I've got an observation next week.
I better spend 3 hours planning it and then Oh no, the rest of
my week will be worse. But that's fine because the
observation has to go. Well.
What a horrible outcome from an informal observation.
When the observation I'm being observed on Thursday.
I put all my time into making this lesson amazing.
God, I'd just do 2 minutes on the other lessons though.
That's not better for the kids. Who's that?
Mental thought and and often ends in tears.
Do you know what the amount of teachers I know of who ended up
in tears based on this? This ridiculous feedback?
Ridiculous system? Quick question before we move on
to the next one, what would be your opinion on doing neither?
As in no formal observations and no drop insurance either?
It's just we just trust our teachers.
Crack on. So what's your opinion?
This to me is under the same bracket as when people say get
rid of Ofsted, get rid of Ofsted, trust your teachers.
I'm like, all of this sounds fantastic.
It's not realistic. No, OK, it's not realistic.
I did not say don't give teachers feedback.
Don't tell teachers what they need to improve.
Don't tell teachers. By the way, this can involve
just praising your teachers for the sake of it.
This is a big thing I want to say.
No formal observations. Go in and give feedback.
Go in and say good morning. Go in and say isn't your teacher
an amazing maths teacher? Yeah, yeah.
Do you know what? I just want to big up again.
I came, I came from a school that was unbelievably, horribly
toxic that you know, that school we talked about where they just
bullied staff out and people just got 30 year careers.
Never, ever, ever got a. Compliment honestly horrendous
school to work in, horrible environment, horrible SLT,
genuinely horrible people and they would literally go out of
their way to make you feel bad, make you cry.
They've made so many staff cry like I've there's times where I
felt like that, right. And then after, after coming
from that environment to a normal place, right?
With actual nice human beings running the school.
Yeah. Where I had my first observation
right. Now, bear in mind, I was, but I
was very angsty. I put so much work into the
observation. I like left the plan on the
side, didn't even pick it up. Blooms Taxonomy at the end.
I literally did. I literally did.
I had that at the end. I had Blooms Taxonomy.
I'm not even joking. I had that.
I think that's probably in your brain.
From that time didn't. It didn't pick it up.
I think he was a bit like, why have you done that?
Like he didn't spend last night doing that, did you?
And at the end, right, the feedback was when he was when I
had teacher, he was going around because the caretaker was off.
He was doing this and he came around like he was in his
T-shirt and he had a bin over his shoulder and he went, oh,
whilst you're there actually, yeah.
Bloody good lesson today. He was, I was really, really,
really good and just listed off just a couple of positive
things. So yeah, thanks for that mate.
Thank you. You're brilliant, teacher.
And then walked off. I'm sweating thinking OK, OK,
cool. Now let's get to the bit where
you tell me I'm terrible, you know, because obviously you got.
You're buttering me up, you're back me up.
You give me 7 things that I'm not doing.
Properly so that you can justify not giving me a pay rise.
There's much yet next year. And and I was like, Oh yeah,
that that place I came from was horrible.
And actually this is this should be normal.
This this is what it should be like.
Just you can't just give praise. You don't have to be like
there's not always feedback anyway, so I went off on a rant,
no. No, it's good.
It's you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right.
Let's. Go to #3 OK #3 So this is, I
guess you're passionate about this.
Yeah, I didn't really explain to you when I was talking about
this, but so rebalancing the curriculum, I would, I would
just this is maybe a bit more wishy washy, but I am actually.
Trying to be specific on what would.
You do. I am getting a bit sick of maths
and English taking up so much time of the week to the point
where we're always like oh, how do we fit in all these other
subjects? How do we fit in all these other
subjects? Completely ignoring the fact
that we spend so much time in maths English.
You know what? Cut maths in half then, right?
Maybe not in half. Yeah.
Cut a little bit of maths off. You know what?
Do 4 maths lessons a week. I really genuinely believe that
there is, there is space for doing that.
I honestly, I'd love to just shake up the curriculum in the
school and get rid of this norm, which is like 5 maths lessons, 5
English lessons. It takes up 70% of your week.
Yeah. No.
OK, do you know what? No, I'm scrapping an English
lesson a week. Get over it.
You know what? We'll do writing and reading in
history. Yeah, and we're going to do it.
We're going to get into some more.
We're going to do, we're going to do something fun.
I just feel like fun. Like I want kids to you know
what, you know what everyone knows, what opinions on podcast
about primary school is to get kids engaged with subjects
honestly and then then go to secondary school and actually
learn difficulties. Can I push back on it a bit?
Go on. I completely agree with what
you're saying about having fun in primary school and stuff,
especially with the other, the, the core subjects on there, the
foundation subjects. Sorry.
Yeah, I get, I completely, I, I agree with you completely.
And I do think there is scope to reduce stuff, right?
Yeah. But we, we, we frame this as
realistic advice, realistic policy.
I'm just going to say it now, there's only one reason that
happens. It's because of SAS data and
it's because of league tables and stuff.
So my genuine question to you is, would you still do this?
Yeah. OK, I really I I could because
part of me also you. Think it wouldn't affect?
It I don't think it'd affect right?
I think it'd be positive, right. I think we are caught in such a
trap in this country and it is it is government top down of
more is better yeah. If you do more maths, they'll
learn more and I just think there is a cap yes.
I feel like this, I don't want to, I don't know the research.
I feel like I've seen things that are pointed towards
research before. That's like, oh actually there
is a point where if you do any more it actually just overloads
them and they don't remember all the other stuff.
You get a surface level knowledge of everything and they
don't really learn anything. And it's like, you know what I
reckon, I genuinely reckon I'm going to put myself out here
right now. If you gave me 3 maths lessons a
week rather than 5I reckon I could get my kids to the same
point at the end of the year, the same point.
I genuinely think the same. Kids to the same.
Point same kids to the same point.
I really really really think that.
I honestly think we could have two 2 maths 2 lessons where we
just don't do any more maths. And just for contact with anyone
who might be a new listener. By the way, just so before we
carry on, you, you are maths lead, yeah, You're not someone
here like. Yeah, and I'm teaching you.
I've taught me 6 for loads of you.
I know what the Sats are like. I know what it's like prepping
for kids for the Sats. I genuinely wholeheartedly
believe that if I had three maths lessons instead of five
per week, I'd reshuffle how I do things.
I'd I'd rethink my long term plans.
I meet them term plans. But I reckon I could get a kiss
to the same point. Yeah, honestly, that's really
interesting. I think so much, I think so much
time is wasted. I really do.
And and and so much time is like, oh, the kids are
completely exhausted and knackered.
Let's do more of it then. Okay, well do you know what, I'm
gonna move straight to the next one 'cause it's linked.
Okay, okay, so we're still in the same discussion here.
The next thing that we'd introduced cuz we're doing this
as a force. You can tell probably some of us
have stronger feelings about what?
Yeah yeah, but I am 100% behind this next so am I is completely
banning interventions during other lessons within lesson
time. So context, what happens in a
lot of schools completely normal, by the way, not digging
anyone out who does this. It's.
Normal. Yeah.
I can't imagine any schools don't do that.
Exactly that. But how many times have you as a
teacher, been stood in the front of your car?
You've spent hours planning this lesson.
Oh my gosh, it's a really cool geography lesson for these.
Kids Geographies. Oh yeah, I was doing it.
It's a lovely latitude lesson. I can't wait.
I know, but you've got really engaged in it.
You've got your kids. You want to teach them.
It's the only time these kids might do ICT, let's say.
Yeah. OK, let's say there's one time a
week 1. I'm not a slot where they do ICT
and there is this kid who loves ICT so much is their thing.
So. Oh my God.
I've done five hours of maths. I've earned this. 40 minutes of
ICT. You can't wait to do it.
Knock on the door. Knock, knock, knock.
Hi. Yeah.
Can I have this, this, this, this, this and this kid, please?
I've got an English booster to do with them.
Devastated. I've seen children crying,
crying with sadness because I had to take them out of a group
to do a group. I had to take them out of a
lesson they loved because they had to come and do some maths
with me. Again, Full disclosure, where
maths leads. OK, I hate it.
Yeah, I hate it with a passion. And it's almost like the cap
you're talking about it. There is there.
There is room for intervention. I I know that.
I know interventions. Same day.
Particularly, I think it's quite.
Good. I've done interventions before
where there has been a tangible increase in the child's ability
to do something. But you know what also happened
to that child? They didn't get any ICT for that
time, so their ICT dipped. OK, at what point did we say
that's fine because it's maths? At what point do we say no guys,
stop it, they're going to get to where they get to.
It's OK. It's So what if their arithmetic
score was 6 marks there? Honestly, So what?
Who cares if an 8 year old on an arithmetic test get 28 or 36?
I don't care. And that's 8 marks, so you
should be doing the intervention.
No, I don't care. If, if the cost was that child
didn't do ICT for the time, yeah.
Or was pulled out of PE or didn't do any, any subject you
can even think of because we'd never pull them out of maths to
do maths. Yeah, we'd never put sorry.
We'd never pull them out of English to do history.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Would we?
Of course we would. We could be like no, of course
not have to do history. They they have to do their
history as well as whether. It's about the holistic
approaches, and that's what we're talking about here.
There's a holistic, we're losing the sense of holistic approach
that primary school is about everything.
It's about exposure to everything and getting kids
inspired to learn. Right.
And we don't do that when we, when we constantly take them out
of subjects they love to do more subjects they hate.
Because, by the way, most kids that aren't very good at stuff
don't like the subject. That is the catch 22.
You generally don't like things as much if you don't feel like
you're very good at them. So to be brought out after five
hours of doing it in the week, we're going to do more of this.
By the way, you know, you didn't get it in five hours of specific
teaching. I'm going to take you out for 20
minutes and lose them more. It's like, oh, OK, brilliant.
That's what I needed. Yeah.
But it's it's like every week you get 5 hours of maths and 40
minutes of ICT or you get 5 hours and 40 minutes of mass and
no ICT. Yeah, who are we on?
Paper. Like, look at that now.
Are you joking? Yeah, I agree.
Are you joking? Can I give another perspective
to this? Because that was very child
centred and that's where it should be.
I'm going to take a bit more of a bit more of a selfish.
Perspective as well, not you. Shut up, shut up.
I got scammed. Leave me alone.
Child got scam you. Can't be mean to me.
Hi, Yeah, this is the mass booster hotline.
You have to come out of ICT, I'm afraid.
Yeah, it's a. God's sake.
Ridiculous anyway, right? From a selfish point of view, I
am, you know, I said, losing the world to live as a teacher if
you ever. Go Yeah.
I am losing the world to live as a teacher When I, when I, like
you said, I've spent ages planning a lesson and it's two
hours long. I've got to deliver it.
I've got all the sheets ready. I've got everything ready.
You know people can. Differentiate to the tempt.
Differentiate so many different children.
Yeah, exactly. So many children in my class.
I've really put extra work in for those, those children at the
kind of lowest ability in my class because I want, I want
them to, yeah, absolutely 'cause I want them to enjoy the subject
as well and achieve something. Oh, every single lesson,
specifically during the input of it, they're gonna be taken out
to do more maths, which they can't do as well.
Okay, are brilliant. When are they gonna come back
in? Oh, just as you start the task
also, they're not going to know anything.
And then I have to work with them.
OK, brilliant. So what do you know?
I'm, I'm, I'm at the point where I said to a teacher every day.
And then, and I know I'm just being like exaggerating.
I literally said I'm going to stop teaching in the afternoon
and we're just going to watch YouTube and have some fun
because I am sick of teaching lessons and having kids pulled
out every 3 seconds. Yeah, that that literally are
the ones that need to be in there here the most.
Sure. And it just drives me absolutely
mental. That's that's the problem.
It's the children who have to be in that.
And you know what, I just want to say I don't blame the, I
don't blame the. I take kids out for.
I don't want to do the group. I take them out.
I'm not blaming anyone at my school or any other school that
has to do it. It's the top down pressure that
I'm annoyed with that is forcing schools to be like, yeah, but
even though we think ICT is important and on policy, we say
it's an important office. Enough Ofsted came, we suddenly
wouldn't do interventions that week.
We actually are going to be judged by this data.
So we need to do something. I just.
What you're saying is basically as a leader, you would take that
first step to be like, guys, I know it's on me, it's my risk.
Take the Flack. OK, I take the Flack.
Gift of the gab. Talk to Ofsted, whatever, we'll
work for it. I'm just not doing it.
I'm not prepared to take kids out of all your age.
Is bad you have them all. The kids do ICT every week.
Yeah, yeah. Does that matter?
No. OK, I guess I'll start doing
that immediately. Bonded, but now I do it.
Cool, next one. This is again extreme.
I feel strongly about it. I think it doesn't matter.
I've had discussions and I respect other people's opinion.
Yep, I would love to know what you think this one is no written
marking. None.
Wow 0. OK, zilch.
My first question to you is nada.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
I think I understand that bit. Oh, none. 0.
How much written marking? No, no.
I really want to was zero, yeah. That's really good.
You got more than I would think. I said Sup but everyone ZAP
something that starts with AZ Sounds like it means 0 zello.
Zello, Zello sounds like you're doing with some strange accents.
Anyway, this is going crazy. So Zinc, my first.
You put me off so bad here. My first question to you, Dylan.
Thank you. This is a podcast for a serious
podcast for professionals. Is is OK?
What? What feedback do children get
in? Oh, none.
They're getting no feedback. Oh, sorry, that's what people
hear when they say no written marking.
They don't think about it for more than two seconds.
I'm not. This is very much like when I
say no formal observations. I'm not saying don't give
feedback to your staff. I'm saying no formal
motivations. I'm I when I say no written feed
every time you go no written marking.
I'm not saying let's not give children feedback on what they
need to do better or what they've done well.
All right, so let's get that through everyone's head who's
annoyed at me immediately for saying this.
No written marking means don't spend an hour after school when
the kids aren't in the building writing something down they
can't even read or understand, and then they'll have absolutely
no impact on their ability to do anything in the next lesson.
Anything. There is 0 room for it.
Genuinely no. Absolutely nothing.
I think you could very much justify doing some something,
but I think this job is a bottomless pit where you could
justify doing almost anything more.
You could justify looking at your planning for next week and
spending an extra half an hour adding some stuff in.
Don't do it, though. Yeah, you could.
You could justify it. Same for writing.
You could justify if you want. You could.
You could write something in the book that says really
encouraging for the child. OK, do you know what I think is
more powerful? Just say that to them.
Just literally say that with words to the children, like say,
or you've written it down on the piece of paper.
You've done a very. I like the one sheet thing.
That's like a middle ground to me.
Yeah, where you might flick through the book.
Jot down some notes. Jot down some notes and then
just give some verbal feedback. That's like a really nice.
Whole class feedback. Exactly, because that's what
that's doing. Is basically to me that's that's
again, it's not really written feedback.
Don't sit with the size 2 books writing something in every book.
What that does is it at least, you know, has some kind of
policy in place that ensures the feedback's happening again.
I trust teachers to do feedback, but I think that's AI think
that's a nice middle ground where it's going to save a lot
of teachers time. You're still getting the
feedback in terms of you, you've written it down at least.
So tomorrow you'll be like, oh, do you know what?
I no matter how good we think we are at doing it, there are
definitely kids we miss on verbal feedback because we just
forget like tomorrow. Like oh God, yeah, no, I did
want to talk to them about that. The one sheet things are nice
middle ground to me, that still counts as no written marking.
Sure. So what I'm saying is.
Not writing in their books. Yeah, there should be 0
expectation to sit through 96 books every day and then someone
picks up a book for a book look and goes, excuse me, where is
the positive feedback on the next step for every single
lesson? I can't see it.
You must not give them anything. Oh, sorry, no, you've got VF
written in the book, so you must have talked to them.
Yeah, I'll get nothing. Nothing should have to be in the
book 0. It's pointless.
Again, it's just pressure. You're giving your leaders jobs
they don't have to do. Oh, this week I'm doing a maths
book. Look, could I please have 3
maths books? And I'm just going to take these
names off the People premium list, which is completely
arbitrary because they need to make sure they're getting the
written feedback, which doesn't help them at all.
Yeah. Nothing.
It's an optic. It's an optic, isn't it?
Most of the time I find it where I struggle with this, right,
Genuinely, maybe you can help me with this is I think again, with
maths going back to, you know, I put a bold statement out there
that I could do it in three lessons rather than five.
I also think I could never, ever, ever look at a maths book
and I'd still make a really good progress with the kids.
Sure. And honestly, there might be a
dip, but it would be so negligible compared to the
amount of time saved that was worth it.
I'll plan a bit lesson. But I like looking at the maths.
Book. I will still look at them, do
you know? But what I'm trying to
exaggerate here is the idea that I don't need to mark maths
books. Honestly, by the time I've
finished the lesson, I know exactly where they are because
I've been with them for an hour. Yeah, an hour.
And I was with them for an hour yesterday when I taught the
previous. I know exactly where they all
are, like for. Christ's sake, yeah.
What do you think we're doing in that time?
Yeah. I don't need to mark their
books. Genuinely.
We self mark every single day. And I'll flick, I'll flick
through them. Like you said.
I'm kind of looking for whole class feedback.
I'm flicking through thinking, yeah, is there a massive
misconception here being made? Because if there is, I'll
address it. If there's not, you know what?
OK, that's fine. We're doing right then.
Yeah, well. This is no, I'm gonna this.
Is yeah, I'll come back to this later anyway.
But with English, I really struggle.
I really struggle with this concept of no written marking
because maybe it's because I'm in year 6 and I, and I've often
worked with like quite able writers as well, where I'll
write them some feedback and they really genuinely understand
it and they implement it. And I, and I, and I just can't
imagine a system where I can speak to all 32 of those kids
daily and give them verbal feedback.
I, I just don't, I can't see that happening.
I can't see a system that's that's good.
Yeah. So isn't me writing in that
book? I guess, yeah, I I think you
make a really good point about the more the older the children
get. I mean, that's a really good
point because you're absolutely right that does that does impact
their understanding of marking stuff.
Honestly, with a lot of children, you're 3 and 4, if you
write down in their book use conjunctions, it honestly does
nothing. It does nothing that that it
doesn't matter. Do you know?
What the proof is, it does nothing.
It's because before that, before you spent 10 seconds writing
that book, you spent one hour on a lesson that was all about
conjunctions, telling them 5060 times what conjunctions are,
modelling it, and that task was doing and they didn't do.
It yeah. So all all I think that has to
come from that is OK. Let's say most of the class
can't do conjunctions. I'm going to do again, let's say
two of the class can't do conjunctions.
Next time you do conjunctions, make sure they're your focus.
I don't think it needs to be in the kids book.
So even when I'm thinking about year 6, maybe you could set me
straight here, You don't. They've done a piece of writing
the kids really take into account.
OK, my next step was use semicolons right?
Do you mean tomorrow? Do you mean go back and do it in
your work now? Do you mean next time you
literally do semi colon anyway? Like in what way is that doing
something for the children that wouldn't be happening anyway for
your planning? Yeah.
OK. I'm going to flip this a bit
because I think you're focusing on hilariously.
The thing that we're going to English earlier, right?
I think those things is absolutely fine to keep a whole
class sheet genuinely like a spreadsheet if you want of kids
that still can't do stuff that you talk and then you can just
feedback to them as when you, if you have a good teacher, has a
good understanding of what the kids need, right?
It's more powerful. That's way more powerful.
Agree that doesn't need to be in their books all the time.
You could just have that separately and you know, as a
teacher, this is what I. Need to work with.
When it comes to when it comes to you want to have it, you want
to write a paragraph, you want to have an actual conversation
with the kids of why this structure of that paragraph
doesn't quite flow properly. I, I feel like you need to have
a proper conversation with them, right?
I think that's better. I do think that's better, but I,
but I don't want to do nothing. And I'm like, it's hard to, I
couldn't write on a whole class feedback.
I just want, I want to give them something.
So I'll at least write them a sentence of.
Maybe I'll underline these. These two sentences don't really
flow very well. I don't know.
I don't. Know I just, you know what I
don't, I'm going to say that I don't think that's bad.
No, but do you think I could get rid of that and not have much
impact? That's what you're saying.
Could I? Because that will take, It takes
me at the moment like 2-3 hours honestly, to mark one English.
Exactly. It takes me so long to mark it
there. Has to be, we talked about this
before the scale, the time in and the impact out and too many
people just look at the impact out and go, well, if there's
something in the impact out, then it's worth doing.
That's not true. If the impact out is I'm going
to make up a unit 5 and the F in is 100, it doesn't matter that
yeah, I know it's not just 50, it's 5% better.
No, no, you put in so much effort, remove it.
Don't do it. My point there is I don't think
you need to do that. Yeah, sure.
I don't, I think through your teaching, right.
You for example saying 2 sentences don't quite work
together. That's going to be covered when
you look at new texts. When you look at stuff.
And you're exposed to it. Then having it written in their
book, I just don't think. Honestly has I didn't impact
last point on this one move on to next one.
But I I saw some research recently.
I watched a video, some guy, I think he did the research and he
summarising what he did about marking right.
And he had three control groups. One was the, the children
received like a score, you know, like classic, like out of 10
score or like a a grade for their work.
And that's all they got any, any other feedback.
And another group only got like only got feedback.
I think it was written, but it could have been verbal as well.
But the point was there's no score or grade attached to it.
It was just how to improve. And then there's a middle
control group that had both. And really, really, really
interestingly, this, the study showed that children that just
got a grade, that process of marking, given their grade did
not help them make progress in any way.
Like it was as good. There's another one to be fair,
that didn't have anything at all.
It was as good as that, right? And then the ones that just got
feedback and no grade, it was proven to have a significant
impact on their progress because they actually knew what to
improve and they weren't caught up in the yeah, but you're
rubbish, you got. 6 out of 10. Yeah, you got, you got an F in
this, you know, grading system. And the one of the middle ones
I'm really interested in because I feel like schools do this
because obviously we're all martyrs and we do the absolute
worst possible option where we do all of the work.
We give them grades quite often for lessons, like, you know, our
school might highlight other schools do stickers other
schools will do like another different colour or something.
That means they did well. Yeah.
They got a grade and they got the feedback and it had the
exact same impact as just the grade or doing nothing at all.
So it had less impact than just feedback.
Yeah. So.
So giving feedback to a child. Yeah.
Had more impact than giving feedback and the score.
Yeah. It made it worse.
Yeah. Yeah.
And the idea I think they were getting at was the the point,
the grade, it just no one cares about the rest of them, right?
Yeah. They just want to get into this
culture of I just want to know if I got oh, am I green?
Am I? Did it get this pass?
Did I get did I pass? Did I not?
OK, but I didn't pass. Don't care.
I'm rubbish then. So another thing that just
clearly, but we've always given grades to the child.
Yeah, I don't think they're useful.
I think they useful for us. We can keep assessments of them
for our own understanding. They don't need to know.
You don't need to tell the kid, oh you're rubbish.
A mouse, by the way, you've got 10 out of 50.
It doesn't help them. Right.
I completely agree. Anyway, separate point, right?
Next thing we would introduce straight away.
For me, I'm very passionate about this.
It's about director time. Firstly, I think director time
is just a broken system. I really do.
It's just, it's this imaginary amount of hours that we've all
got to be directed to do. But by the way, you've got to do
everything else crazy we've talked about a million times.
My point here is when when I come into a school, director
time is obviously still going to exist, but it will not, it will
absolutely not impact what I feel like I've got to make my
teachers do. So my point being, there are
lots of schools out there who'll say we've got to have an hour
long meeting after school every single week because it's part of
director time and we'll fill it with something, we'll have
something there. My point is, unless it is
actually genuinely impacting something that must be improved
in your school or something where you have to be there in
person to be there with the person training, you either
don't have a meeting that week, it's OK because by the way, no
one's going home early. They're going to set a mark and
do all the other stuff that's part of the job, or B Basically
that people want. People want training when it's
helpful. Doing this will just give
something back to your staff. No one sat here going oh, I hate
training, but what people are saying is I hate pointless
training. So don't just think just because
of you've got these hours to hear.
Yeah, don't worry about it's OK. Your staff are going over these
hours anyway. Yeah, you could do nothing
extra. You could do nothing extra and
direct your time doing nothing more.
They're going over the hours anyway, so just check that.
Don't force it. I would not have every single
week we have to be together to do this.
Yeah. Send an e-mail.
Do you want me an e-mail? Send an e-mail.
I'd ignore, like, I think that's what you're getting at.
I'd ignore the directed time hours for the year.
I wouldn't be sat there thinking in a positive way.
Yeah, in a positive, Yeah. Oh, I'm scrolling the finger.
Oh, we've still got 20 hours left to use up with the staff
and we've not done the whole thing.
You know what? I wouldn't be thinking that.
I'd only be checking. Make sure we haven't gone over
it. Sure.
Anything under it doesn't. It doesn't.
Matter, I think a lot of I think a lot of SRT do that, but my
point is I still think it gets I do still think it gets trapped
into yeah well, we do this every week because it's direct time
yeah, we don't have. My thoughts are on this.
Just honestly scrapped scrap directed time.
Not in a bad way. This what someone said and it
was like I saw this online. Someone wrote a letter dent to
an MP. I'll maybe share it.
We'll share another time. It was really interesting but
I've had this thought before, just just just make our hours
the same as any other job, how it all works genuinely and it
would be longer because we have more time off in like half
terms. Right.
So wait, then we go ahead around this.
So you're saying make it contracted that we have hours we
work? Yep.
So that in the entire year it's equivalent to just working.
Yeah, just a normal public, normal holidays, exactly that.
So what normal what? What does normal work for seven
hours? Something like that.
Isn't it so it couldn't be that for teachers because we do just
have more weeks off, so it wouldn't be fair.
So to average out is something it works out at something like
44 1/2 hours a week, right. And I genuinely, I would love to
just be like, cool, these are our working hours of the day,
even roughly like banned. What it is this chunk is for is
your teaching time. You have this at two hours after
school. That is administrative time in
in, you know, you could get your marking done and things like
that. And you have this hour before
school. This is administrative time as
well, getting ready for your lessons.
And because it's like 9 hours a day isn't.
It it works out, yeah, quite a long day, 9 hours a day, which
is a suitable amount of time. 7 till 4.
Is that right? Yeah. 7:00 till 4.
So even that sounds like Peach is doing longer than that
anyway. The minute.
Oh yeah, it's a good match. Check the math.
I was like, hang on, check. Or 8 till 5.
Yeah, 8 till five, yeah, that's probably or half 7 till half
four, genuinely, that's probably quite common and I'd still give
a bit of flexibility of. You saying sorry very quickly.
Doing that every week would be equivalent to just doing a
normal full time job with normal holidays.
Yes, and nothing extra. And then and then build in an
overtime system like every other job does.
If we want to start taking teachers time seriously and
solve this crisis of retention, we need to do something drastic
like that. It sounds mental, doesn't it?
And and I'll tell you why it sounds mental because we've all
been gas lit into thinking that teachers have to be martyrs and,
and wear shirts and ties and wear shirts and ties.
The fact that it sounds mental to do a normal working hour job
as a teacher which just just 44. Hours a week.
Just says something, doesn't it? The fact that it sounds weird,
it's like, what do you mean it sounds weird?
It doesn't sound weird. In any other job ever, you get
paid over time, leisure hours. And genuinely, like I said
before, you look at it, if someone goes over those hours
regularly, nothing, and they're doing extra work, you pull them
in. Like what's going on or why
something's gone wrong? Like why are you doing all this
extra stuff? This isn't right.
Can you imagine? I just I, you know, I think what
gives us honestly room to say about this is that we literally
run a business as well and we, we pay people, for example, to
make resources and stuff, right? So let's say we're, we're, we're
coming, we're working with someone saying, right, we need X
amount of resources, please. All these sheets, we'll come up
with an even hourly rate or a rate for the job that we think
is really fair. And we work with the person we
really mindful of, like we really value your time.
So let's agree something together.
Yeah, it is honestly like I was then going, oh, by the way, can
you do 10 more? Because it just got to get done.
It's just got to get done. That would never, ever.
Have you like, OK, pay me for that then be ridiculous.
So I think I like the idea of get rid of the whole directed
time system, basically the normal public sector working
hour job, just start time, finish time, overtime.
Yeah, done. Brilliant.
OK, how about next one? I want you to talk about PPA.
So you're, you're a staff leader.
You, you come in and this is another policy article.
Let's let's perform PPA. But what?
What would you like to see? That's not a quick fix, no, but
I would do a massive review on it.
I would look at, I'd talk to the staff in my school.
I think there's not probably 1 system that works everywhere.
I talk to my staff in my school, find out what they do in their
PPA, find out whether they like it, whether it works, whether
it's not enough time, what kind of task they need more time to
do, and genuinely come up with a better system.
I think even like the basics, right?
The bare minimum a leader should do is make sure they're even
getting 10% because so many schools don't even actually give
that staff 10%. It works out like 8.5% because
an afternoon, by the way, yeah, is not 10%, yeah, depending on
your timetable, but almost certainly, yeah, most because
like if you actually look at it, the afternoon it, it's basically
you need half of a day. Yeah.
Well, that's weird because we do English and maths in the morning
and an afternoon lesson, yeah. It doesn't quite work out does
it's always yeah. So I'd review it and then and
you know, I think you've you've thought of some nice.
I'm trying to think of some of your ideas.
You've thought some nice like alternatives to just doing the
classic one afternoon out a week, right.
So so. Firstly, like you said, I think
it's really important to talk to your staff and individualise
your PPM the way it works, because it doesn't work the same
for everyone. I really, really agree with
that. I would offer at least half the
option for everyone to take it from home.
Yeah, sure, absolutely. From the start.
Oh, but it doesn't quite work because of this.
Make it work then. Yeah, make honestly make it.
It's their time. Move something.
It's their time. Exactly that.
And do you know what? I'm a teacher.
If I was given the opportunity to go home, I'd probably stay
half the time. Yeah.
Because. Because it's more beneficial for
me. I've got stuff in school I need
to do or I've got people I need to talk.
To then you. Also, I'm a professional.
Some weeks I'd be like, oh, I'm going and you know, some weeks
I'd go and I'd do my like Christmas shopping because I can
do more work later and it's less busy, right?
Do you know what? I'm professional, leave my own.
So that's the first thing straight away.
The other thing, I think, I can't remember where I saw this.
I think this might have been from a real Mr P talked about
where he went to do some training in a school.
And it hit me as this is such a nice way of doing stuff, which
is so quite often in a school. Everyone leads a subject.
Very, very normal. We've talked about a million
times how it's a ridiculous thing that should part of the
school. OK, cool, all right, fine.
That's annoying. Can't really fix that, can we?
Can't come in and be like, no, we can't.
We need a geography lead. So this episode isn't for
talking about what the government should do, etcetera.
We do need a geography lead. So what I thought was an amazing
solution this school did was everyone needs a subject.
So every single week you get a day off.
And, and the point is this isn't a day off like people here.
They're out of class, a day out of class where they can do it
from home if they want. They don't have to come to the
building or they can come into the building and do whatever.
And the point is half of it is PPA.
So you're absolutely getting your 10% because it doesn't
matter that it's half for English, you're not doing half.
Yeah, half it's your PPA. The other half is subject
leader. It's OK.
You, you will do your subject leadership stuff in this time.
Yeah. So actually giving people time
to do their subjects, it's a great solution and and it's so
much effective. Imagine this is like it's so it
would help retention so much. Yeah.
Because A, it's solving the issue that you don't get time to
do your subject leadership, you've just got to do it at the
weekend. B, it's giving you proper PPA
and C, it's giving you a three day weekend.
Yeah, yeah. And I know your day might be on
a Wednesday. Yeah, but it's just giving you
that time to go and do your admin stuff if you need to.
Yeah. Yeah.
But when you get your work done, people, teachers are used to
work in an evening at the weekend.
They might still do that, but on a Wednesday they can go to the
gym at 9, carry on working at 11.
It would increase that well-being so much, I think.
But then we're not maximising that.
They're not working all day and then we're not getting there.
They should be in school because then we can.
If they're going to the gym, they might not then do as much.
Work. It's such an insane view on this
profession. That's just because we care
about kids, right? We've got to sacrifice our lives
for it, No? There can be perks to the job.
This can be one of them. Get over it.
I mean, the biggest barrier there is probably being
realistic again, probably is government, isn't it?
It's budget, it's funding for schools.
I'm sure some schools would love to do that.
They just, they're just not a big enough school, they don't
get enough funding, they don't have enough Tasmania or whoever
cover supervisors. I really work hard to try and do
it, I guess is what I'm saying. I'd look at it and be like, at
the very least PPA can be done from home.
I'm not going to force you to stay in.
There's stuff you can do straight away.
I'd really look at that. And even if it was like every
other week you get a subject release time, we can't afford to
do every week, sure, but you get something, sure.
And we'll rework our budgets and we'll.
Do it in that PPA day so you can have the day off, yeah.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, That's really cool.
That's really cool. This is a long old Listen there
a couple more things to finish up with a big episode today.
Next one, just a quick one. Actually, it's just have a
policy because every school of policies, a managing change
policy actually really strict. So it would be literally a
policy. Changing your clothes.
From where do you change into your PE stuff At home because
you can come in every day. Brilliant.
Love this policy. Managing change policy would
literally be how we change stuff in this school that's going to
impact your workload. It's kind of like a workload
policy. So it's tied I guess to it.
But I'd have a really strict policy of if we want to change
anything in this school, it has to go through these steps.
And these steps are all really thoughtful and mindful of the
teacher and the Tasmania and the office stuff.
Whoever it is who have to do this work, it has to go through
this. If it doesn't go through this,
we don't do it like we because it's very classic for school to
be like after to come in next year, we're going to change
absolutely everything in the entire school.
You've got to do 8 years of work in one.
You've got to do it though, haven't you?
That. That's the big one.
But you know what I see a lot as well?
Someone's just passionate about their subject, which is amazing.
They're leading DT, they love DT, and they want to implement
this really cool change and it's awesome.
Yeah. But not now, please.
Yeah, because you know why? The arts, art leaders also
really passionate and so is the maths 1 and they all want to do
these changes at once. The school needs a managing
change policy. I'd be really strict on it.
I think a lot of schools have it as a tick.
Box. But why?
Why is the reason for this? Is it directly the well-being
and workload? Well-being and workload and I
need to be held. I'm, you know, if I'm a school
leader, I've got the highest count, I'm being paid the most,
mate. I need to, I need to be as just
as accountable as anyone else, if not more accountable,
genuinely. And that is like you should need
to, you should be more accountable, absolutely should
be more accountable. I'm being paid twice as much as
some of the teachers in that school.
Of course I am. So they need to be able to hold
me accountable for their workload and their stress and
their well-being. And this policy will do that.
And I think it is important for leaders to recognise that they
should do that, even if it means, oh, this is only going to
scrutinise me. Yes, yeah, that is your job.
So and part of this managing chain policy I assume would be
something like, yeah, of course the well-being the workload of
the teacher, we need to manage that so we can only do X amount
of subjects now and the rest in the future.
Yeah. But also, I would love to see a
big part of the policy being how much impact is it going to have
for the children? Yeah, because so often things
are brought in because they're trendy, because other schools
are doing it, because they've had good outcomes.
How many times have you put so much effort into a massive
change and seem a little to no actual proper progress
difference in the children? Because you know, and you
usually because it's been rushed, there's not been
adequate training before and there's not been adequate
research before this. So my policy would be like if
you want a little flow diagram, if you want to implement change,
right, is a massive change in the school already happening?
Yes. K you can't do it honestly ends
there simple as that has to be OK put on the school plan for
later then next one if it is something we can do now.
Brilliant. OK first step research stage
needs needs to be some time on that need to complete a thing
whatever the task is The thing is there needs complete tangible
evidence. Yeah, next one, you know the
impact, what impacts is going to have, try it in your own school
of a couple of staff or whatever, you know, to have some
sort of trial process and and then get the training, give them
time or even before that, get the training and training,
training, training, training, training, make sure everyone's
really, really secure the training.
And then it's right now we've got to actually implement all of
this workload. Start not thinking of, OK,
you're going to start getting extra time out.
You know what, not doing staff meetings for the whole year,
every single staff meeting time we were going to do.
You're now going to have that time.
And that comes back to the whole director time thing.
Yeah, doesn't listen. Listen, if you're doing this
massive implementing of change this time, scrap your scrap your
staff meeting. Yeah, it's, we've had this
sometimes in our school where it said no staff meeting this week
because we're changing RE. Yeah.
So now you've got time to you got time to go.
I appreciate that. Yes, every single time, Yeah.
Absolutely. But but you can appreciate it
and say that's how it should be. Yeah, because it's how it should
be. And thank you for doing it
right. Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, managing change, that's a big thing I'd do as a
leader. I'd get that written up.
I'd get that implemented and make it really impactful.
OK. So last one we're going to talk
about, I guess we spent a lot of time talking about policies,
obviously the head teacher policies on, on impacting the
teachers because we do feel left behind sometimes.
Let's be realistic. You've talked about it, you you
did it put it really nicely last week about how putting the
teachers first will actually put the kids first as a result.
I really agree with that. But the last one I'm going to
talk is very much child centred and I am, I could not be more
passionate about this. It is.
I would absolutely ring fence as the most important part of my
timetable, the amount of time children get to play.
OK, that break times. Lunch time, I'm talking, I'm
talking play. Just play.
This can be structured play. It could be play where they just
got free play, IE their break times, their lunch times.
If your assembly is, let's say your assembly is before break
time and assembly overruns, that's fine.
That's gonna happen because your children might have got in late
because they're less than over. It's normal.
That's normal. But the answer isn't to say, oh,
we'll catch that up, we'll get them at the same time.
They've lost 7 minutes of their break time.
They've only been out for 8 minutes or.
So yeah, no, no, no, no break time protected.
Break time should be honest, honestly as important, if not
more important than the time we look at for maths.
We'd always go, Oh no, gosh, we can't miss 5 minutes of mass is
awful. You're late by 5 minutes of mass
every day that's you'll have a huge impact and we all agree
that's that's true. It's going to have an impact if
you're late every day to mass. It's going to have an impact if
every single day you're having 5 minutes.
Cut off your lunchtime, cut off your break time.
Not only for the kids and this is really child centred.
I think it's so important the kids get time to play and be
social and not sit at their desk and just do work constantly
because we can manufact social interactions in the classroom.
There's nothing like the real thing when they're outside
playing and getting annoyed at each other.
I want my kids to get annoyed at each other on the playground.
That's part of growing up. Yeah, that's part you're going
to fall out of social interaction.
Only way you can do it if it's manufactured so that that's
minimal time they're in the classroom.
Guys, talk to your partner, please.
Oh, no, no, no. Don't disagree with each other.
No, don't shout at each other. Just talk to my please talk to
talk about conjunctions. Give me some conjunction.
There's no, there's no room for that in the classroom because
it's so structured and behaviour has to be perfect because you
have to do all your learning behaviours.
And that's fine. Yeah, but the kids aren't
getting the chance to fall out if they aren't understanding
this is an all part of being a human and having interaction
where you're going to you're going to not like people.
You're going to when are. You going to?
Give and take, you know, like when they I want to play this
game, they want to play that game.
Do you know what? We'll play your game today.
Yeah. Losing that self.
Yeah. I agree.
Social interactions should be completely protected.
I couldn't agree more. Totally, totally important.
They shouldn't be given up for anything.
And this links and this policy would link to teachers as well.
So like break time, Golden. OK, Golden.
And I know you might choose to mark your maths, but I'm not
going to ask you to do something ever in your it's your time,
it's your time. Because I know you're doing more
than director time anyway. Lunchtime.
OK, OK. Get started with lunchtime in a
school. It's such a facade, isn't it?
A lunchtime doesn't exist. But you know what?
The reason for me, it doesn't necessarily exist is because I'm
choosing to mark something in that time.
Yeah, that's my choice. Because then I can go home half
an hour earlier. Yeah, that's fine.
Never, ever, ever as a leader, would I ever ask any of my
teachers to do anything at lunchtime unless it was a
dramatic emergency. Fine.
Yeah, of course. Of course.
I'm a normal human being. I'm going to do that.
But it's never, ever expected. It's not like, oh, yeah, we do
one lunchtime duty a week schedule.
Sorry. What?
I hears teachers say that like, Oh yeah, we do 1A week.
Like it's like. Yeah, yeah, you don't get.
Sorry, what? What do you mean you do what?
And then you teach? Yeah, teaching Nothing.
No, that's not OK. Yeah, that's not OK.
I know school should. Be part of the furniture.
Should it? Yeah, I know school, like
literally someone I know personally who they have, they
do breakdown duty every day, five days a week.
Wow, Genuinely there's like there's quite a small school
five days a week, but they never, they never get a break
and it's not built in for them afterwards either.
They can kind of have a break in literally as if they're lucky
they've got TA around, they can just pop to the toilet whilst I
take them. It's mental.
Five days a week. Yeah, I think as a teacher, the
point the some people might sit there and go, yeah, of course
you can work from half eight to half 12.
Everyone does that in a job, fine teaching.
I don't think people understand how mentally exhausting it is
and you just need 10 minutes sometimes.
But also I think what people don't realise is so many, we're
not using it as a break. No one's actually going and
having a sit down cup of tea. 15 minutes, yeah, No, no, the break
is setting up the next lesson. Yeah, is maybe getting up with
your bit of marking or it is sat down.
Reflected You know what, some people probably do have a tea
and that. Should be OK.
Some people too probably just spend 3 minutes on it just going
to make the tea and then bring back to classroom cracking on,
but it gives them that chance. I agree and lunchtime.
Do you know what the sad thing is of lunchtime?
I also spend it marking, but I quite regularly still end up
going home at 5 half 5. And I think if I didn't
sacrifice my lunch willingly, I wouldn't even have been able to
get this job done because the school closes at 5:45.
I would have been here till 6:30.
That's mad. That shouldn't be.
It should be a sacrifice because I then get to go home at like
really early. If I get if I go home at 3:45
because I spent an hour at lunchtime rather than going home
at 4:45. OK, fair enough.
That's my choice. But yeah, it's, you know, it
goes so far, doesn't it becomes an expectation.
Of course you'll mark a lunch because then you can do all the
best of your market after school for three hours.
What? Yeah.
Protect it. Protect breaks.
I love it. Dylan, that was a really long
list. It was a really long episode,
but I did enjoy it. Loved it.
So are we going to be school leaders soon?
No. No.
OK. Sounds like a lot of effort.
And maybe we can finish with that.
Huge respect for school leaders. Yeah, I honestly really do.
And again, sometimes we talk about bad school leaders.
Yeah, for a number of reasons, OK.
In the past, we've witnessed it. We see it so much online.
I see stories I can't fathom. And I think that's testament to
the leaders we work with, who I do genuinely think have our
interests at heart and still have these unbelievable
pressures where they've got to get stuff done as well.
It's such a hard balance to strike.
I think it's really hard. And it is not a job for the
faint hearted. But you know what?
These things, send them to your SRT, send them to someone in
your school. Do you think they're realistic?
Are they just complete poppycock?
I don't know. I don't know where that word
came from either. I don't think I've ever said
that word in my life. You've never said that.
Has come out there, but I'm really interested because I
truly think these could be implemented.
Yeah, me too. Yeah.
I agree. How did you want to end this
episode? Just.
What I'm thinking of doing is I'm gonna make a really, really
impactful point and just cut it halfway for it.
So the one, the last thing we want to mention is that it's a,
it's a must for all primary schools.
We have to.