What Does the Data Miss? Seeing the Whole Child with Matthew Savage

Matthew and Leisa Grace explore what it means to truly see students as whole people, not just as attainment points on a dashboard. Matthew Savage helps us rethink data and assessment as relational knowledge that supports equity, belonging and wellbeing. 

• the equity problem behind performative data cultures 
• the Mona Lisa Effect as what personalised learning should feel like 
• how conformity and “being weird” shapes students’ school experience 
• assessment as the process of getting to know another human being 
• making space for uncertainty and co-discovery with students 
• meeting regulatory demands without letting them drive school values 
• being held to account for inclusion, wellbeing and belonging 
• permission and courage as the conditions for real change 
• the “even if” clause as a test of priorities 
• practical liberating data use through observation, conversation and products 
• moving from deficit language to a strengths-based approach and student agency 
They reach out to me via LinkedIn or they send me an email or they contact me via my website and we have a an initial conversation 

Connect With Matthew Here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themonalisaeffect/

Transcript

Welcome And Why Equity Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You are listening to the Teach Middle East Podcast. Connecting, developing, and empowering educators.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Hey everyone, Lisa Gray, welcoming you back to the Teach Middle East Podcast, or welcoming you for the first time if this is your first time listening to the podcast. Today I'm speaking with Matthew Savage. I think Matthew's been on the podcast before, haven't you, Matthew?

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Yeah, I think I have. I think it was a while ago, but I remember it well.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Yeah. This podcast episode is a little bit self-indulgent. Matthew is one of my favorite speakers. I'm going to make him blush, but he's one of my favorite speakers on data, on understanding students, on understanding the whole child. I remember once we we talked about spikes and curve cuts. It's never left my mind. He's probably going, what does she have to think about in her life if that's what she's thinking about? But really, I think about these things because it speaks to that level of equity that we need within education. And it also speaks to the fact that we have to look at students beyond just numbers in a spreadsheet, beyond just dashboards and fancy colourings, what we're talking about, like red, amber, green. Matthew, welcome before I go off and wax lyrical. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Thank you very much, Lisa. It was lovely to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

I think for those who don't know who you are, give them the skinny CV version. Who is Matthew and why is he doing this great work?

SPEAKER_02 1:45

I mean, that's the elevator pitch. I always struggle with that. Um I think you mentioned the equity uh piece. Um, and for me, that's what drives me more than anything, because I I do really believe that a lot of the children and young people in our schools are not getting the things that they deserve and the things um to which they have a right. I think that the way in which schooling has evolved, the way in which it's structured, the systems that seem to motor it, um are uh inevitably somewhat exclusionary, and therefore we've got kids missing out. And we, you know, you see every website, uh every school's guiding statement is about the whole child and everyone's part of our family and our community, and I just don't think that that's often the case. So I think perhaps I'm motivated most by that. Um and I try and explore that tension through data, but in a slightly different way from how many people might do, so I guess.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah. And I think that's what's drawn me to your work. I think it's the fact that it's coming at data through a lens of equity, and it's super important. Um and then I also remember the fact that you've come up with

The Mona Lisa Effect Explained

SPEAKER_01 3:15

almost your own trademark called the Mona Lisa effect. So for those who didn't listen to the first part and they've never seen you speak, talk to us about the Mona Lisa effect.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Okay, so on my honeymoon almost 30 years ago, 30 years ago next next summer, uh, we went to the Louvre in Paris, and we went to the Dunan Wing, and we saw Lisa Gerardini in her tiny frame. And there in person, as also happens when we see her in a book or on a website, she was looking at each of us in that room, and each of us in that room felt like she was looking very specifically at us. And for as long as I've been in education, uh, schools and governments have talked about personalized learning without ever really understanding what personalized learning feels like to the student, and I feel it feels like the Mona Lisa effect. It feels like uh the whole system and the individuals within it uh can see me for who I am uh in all my kind of beautiful ugliness and all my contradiction and messiness. They can see me, uh, they know me, they are um intentionally wanting to hear me, and they're motivated by a desire that I belong. So the Mena Lisa effect is about seeing the individual for who they are, not for who they feel we want them to be. And I think that's the difference.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, I like that. And I did go to the Louvre and I did see the Mona Lisa, and it did feel like she was just looking at me, actually, now that you've said it. I never kind of thought about that. And can you just imagine within the school context how valuable that is for a child to be seen for who they are and not just sort of like in a batch and bulked in with everybody else, but to be thought of as a specific person with varying needs and complexities, and to have all of that accepted in its wholeness and its in its entirety, there is just something so satisfying about that, so enriching about that, that if each child gets that kind of education, we wouldn't have what we have now. And what we have now is people leave school and they are bitter about their schooling because they didn't feel seen and they wanted to get out as soon as possible. Have you heard things like that?

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Excuse me. Yes, I absolutely have. And this isn't to say that schooling harms every child. It's not to say that there aren't amazing teachers and leaders out there. Yes. It's not to say that data isn't being being used in really uh nutritious and nourishing ways. Of course, all of those things um are absolutely true. But I think the very nature of a system which asks that we conform and comply is that when that takes a lot of effort for us, and we're having to put that effort in every day to conform and to comply and to fit, then when we finally leave that system, it feels like finally we're breaking free. And so we feel liberated from it, but it can make us feel resentful of the fact that we were caged all that time.

Letting Students Be Weird

SPEAKER_02 6:48

And I don't know whether it was before you pressed record today or after, but you talked about you being a little bit weird. Um, and I um attended at the Dayton Schools conference we last met at. There was an amazing workshop by an educator from Taiwan, um Olson Kelly, which was called Um uh Let Them Be Weird. It was about that sense of weirdness. And even this morning I woke up to a LinkedIn post from the lovely Zubia Ahmed, um, which was about eccentricity and that feeling of uh being eccentric, being weird. And I certainly think I'm a bit weird, right? And uh for much of my life I've worried about it, or whether I say or do things or behave in ways that people might think, well, that's a bit weird. Um but the more people I talk to, the more I believe that an awful lot of us feel that about ourselves. Yeah? So if if we're growing up in a school in those formative years where we feel the overwhelming expectation is that we're not, the overwhelming expectation is that we perform at age-related uh levels or age-related expectations, that we we look like, we wear uniforms like all the other um students where we're judged against a strict behavior code, which is essentially a a handbook to neurotypicality, and um, all of these different systems and structures ask us to be the same. Um, I think that's hard when that's not how you feel each day when you wake up and when you look at yourself in the mirror. So I think there is a sense of that. Yeah, the longer I'm told that I need to fit this mold, if I don't naturally fit this mold, which is the nature of molds, most of us don't naturally fit it, then that takes its toll. Uh and I think that's absolutely real.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

You and I have had conversations in the past about, you know, like my journey through school, and some of it, you know, obviously I won't be talking about on the podcast. But that feel that weird feeling, not weird feeling, that feeling of being a bit weird is something I've always grappled with. Because my mind kind of works differently to people. I see things differently. I ponder on things that people would just gloss over and they just stay in my head and just keep running over and over and over. And I mean, a few years ago, I was brave enough to start writing some of these stuff in public on LinkedIn and Twitter, when Twitter was Twitter. Now it's no longer whatever. And in doing that writing online, I realized that it wasn't as weird as I thought. Because I would get messages in my inbox from people going, I feel the same way, I see your point of view, which really validated me and helped me to think, okay, Lisa, you really aren't as I mean, you are weird, girl. Don't get it wrong. But you are not as weird as you think you are. And so sometimes, like I write a lot online and in public, and I have a fairly large audience. But when I go out and I sit quietly in a corner, people might think, oh, she's being standoff, but I am genuinely exactly like that. I'm always kind of a loner, always in a corner, always a bit quiet. So it kind of this contradiction where the persona seems to be one who's like vivacious and out there, but in reality, I am like literally not. A lot of the work I do is just sitting in a corner quietly and working, and it makes me think of our students. And that's why I kept thinking about our topic for today is what don't we know about our students? You said something earlier. You said data is being used and can be used in nutritious and nourishing ways. And I was like, hmm, yes, talk to me more about that.

Redefining Data As Relationship

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it really can, but I think it requires a bit of redefinition. So with all of the um schools within my partner, quite early in that relationship, I offer a different definition of data and indeed of assessment. Because assessment for me is um the process of getting to know another human being. And as a teacher, my role is to assess my students, by which I mean my role is to get to know them for who they actually are, to get to know them with all of the the cracks and and the dents and the the foibles and the imperfections and that make them who they are. And even machines aren't perfect, machines when they're producing goods, uh produced goods which uh the people in that factory deem to be defective and throw to one side, right? So I absolutely think that data, if it's a relational tool, needs to be um an instrument through which we get to know the child behind the camouflage and the mask that they wear. And in that case, data for me is simply all of the manifold different messy parts of my story that you are trying to find out about. And that way, it has to be nutritious, right? Because the better I get to know another human being, the more we both grow through that relationship, the better I can understand what that human being needs and wants, what their strengths and challenges are, and the better that I can try and meet as many of those needs and strengths as possible. So that's what I mean about data being nutritious and and nourishing. It's relational knowledge. And relational knowledge is too often lacking in this performative world. And if data can give us that relational knowledge, then I think that that has to be a good thing. But the question you asked about or the the provocation that you you offered about what we don't yet know about students. Um, for me, that is a critical one. Because I I think there I sense a real pressure in the world today that I need to be certain about stuff. You know, we we see in people's entrenched opinions which then play out in these toxic battles online, etc. I need to be certain about this thing. I'm certain about this, you're certain about that different thing, and therefore one of us is right and one of us is wrong. And as a teacher, I need to be this um certainty machine. I need to assess the child in order to know the child, in order that I can communicate on the dashboard and through the school reports and through the parent-teacher consultations, the truth about that child. Whereas I think, what if there were more space for uncertainty? For me to recognize all the things I don't know about you yet, and then to engage in a journey of kind of co-discovery. That for me is another way in which data can be, as you said, and or as I said, nutritious and and nourishing, right? Does that does that ring true?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yeah, it does. It does. You know

Playing The Reporting Game Wisely

SPEAKER_01 14:40

what came to mind though is circ there is a lot of work that can happen in that space, but the schools are grappling with the regulatory requirements of the presentation of data in one way. So how do we reconcile the two?

SPEAKER_02 14:58

I mean, that's a question schools often ask me, and I don't want to appear cynical or subversive in any way, but I think that the data that any um any uh inspectorate or or any authority requires of me as a school, I see that as a bit of a game. And I think that as a school leader it's possible to play that game. We know in terms of data as a whole throughout society, data can be presented or spun in all sorts of different ways. And I think that as leaders, we obviously will always have to play that data game, but that doesn't need to shape the way that data actually functions on a day-to-day basis in our school. I'm not talking about being dishonest to those regulatory bodies at all. I think we need to be helped to account, right? Um, but help to account on what? Help to account on the proportion of our kids that reach some arbitrary age-related level, help to account on uh the the number of our kids that are above the average, help to account on which of our kids go to Ivy League or Oxbridge or Russell Group Universities. No. We need to be held to account on how many of our kids actually feel included, how many of our kids actually feel like they are well, and how many of our kids actually feel like they belong. Um so if those inspectorates and those regulatory bodies are asking us or holding to us to account on stuff that we know doesn't serve the interests of the child, then that does become a little bit of a gain. But we need to tell the story that needs to be shared of all the successes and the strength that our student body does have through that kinder and warmer uh framework of that relational um knowing. I hope that doesn't sound like it's waffling, but I do think that you can keep the authorities happy, you can be held to just account by them without becoming um kind of a tyrannical system whereby children and young people are held to that sort of cold and harsh accounting in the same ways.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

No, you're not waffling. You are making perfect sense because I I mean, if I should paraphrase it, what you are saying is that you can satisfy the regulatory requirements while still using your data in other ways to ensure that every student has an enriching experience at school, that they are all seen and heard, and that all their eccentricities, all their nuances, all their awareness, if you like, are celebrated, that they feel a part of a community that understands who they are and helps them to be a better version of themselves. Did I get that right?

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Yeah, absolutely. And and and for many years I've talked to audiences, including parent audiences, about how if we get the well-being and the belonging in place, then the academics will follow, right? Because there's an overwhelming weight of research which proves that is the case. But recently I've studied even to question that argument, because that suggests that we need our kids to feel well and to feel like they belong, in order that they can get these high grades and have that successful future, whatever that looks like. And I think that loses sight of something far more intrinsic, far more important, which is that it's important for kids to be well and to belong, because it's important that kids have positive well-being and that sense of belonging in and of itself, right? Um so I think it's important for us to remember that. And so when I talk about data, I am talking about numbers and charts and graphics and visualizations and dashboards to some extent. And I think when done well and for the right reasons, I think that those elements are really important. But I think that we live in the shadows of um the work uh of Aristotle and Plato, of the rationalists and the empiricists, of the people who have shaped so much of Western society over the last few thousand years, um, who said that what we know here is the stuff that really matters. And somehow there's a hierarchy of knowing. The best knowing is this knowing, and then sure we can know things through other ways, through our senses, through our intuit, through our gut, through our heart, through our relationships, but none of those are as important as this sort of knowing. And then our assessment structures assess this sort of knowing. And I can know as a teacher that a child I'm teaching is growing and developing and learning in truly exciting ways, genuinely before my eyes. But when they're assessed through the narrow view of a standardized assessment, it may look like they're not learning and they're not growing. Um, and so that's why I think that there shouldn't be this hierarchy that, you know, if we look across species and we look across time uh and we draw an indigenous wisdom and knowledge and ways of knowing, we remember that we know in all sorts of ways. And if you think about the person you know best in the world, Lisa or the person who knows you best in the world, and the same um for me, they haven't got to know me through my completing a weekly survey, the results of which they maintain on a dashboard and asking me to sit tests on a regular basis so that the two together can formulate an accurate picture, a truth uh of who I am. Because who I am, if it's reduced to something of a colonial ledger, really, um, it's stripped of so many of the things that actually make me who I am. And that's why that sort of diversity of knowing, that plurality of knowing, I think is really important. And that's what I mean when I talk about data. It's all of that data, not just the stuff that we've been taught to rate as most important or somehow most important. Most valid or most reliable or most accurate?

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, I I completely agree. Completely agree. In your work, as you go all over the world and you talk to different schools and speak at different events, have you seen any examples of any schools that's really understanding that wholeness of data and and kind of I'm not saying they're defying the regulatory authorities, no. I'm saying they're doing what's required, but also doing what's required, if you see what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Absolutely. I see schools who are on that journey. And most of my partnerships with schools are over many years because it really is a journey. It's something we are doing, not something we aim at some point soon to have done. Um and I think the schools who choose to work with me also are those who want to go on that journey, who who know that they haven't cracked this yet and and they want to tread further down that road.

Permission, Courage And The Even If

SPEAKER_02 23:08

And I think in order to do so, any school leader needs a couple of things. Well, needs lots of of uh things, I think, but in particular a couple. One is permission and the other is courage, both of which to do things differently. If I don't feel I have permission to do things differently, whether that's I'm a teacher and I don't have permission from my head of department or my head of uh phase, or whether it's I'm a head teacher and I don't have permission from my board or from the authority that sits above me. Um, or whether I'm a student, I don't have permission from my teacher to do things differently. I think permission is critical. Um, but also courage is critical because for any of us, even the weirdest ones of us, um, to do things differently from how they've always been done is scary, right? We you know, all of us um repeat rituals and habits daily that if we think about it, we know aren't very good for us, but we do it because we've always done it that way. So to do it in a different way takes courage, courage and permission. And that's where I see schools who are really wrestling with this complexity, uh, being just those couple of steps ahead. They have permission from the powers that be in whatever context that is, and they have the courage um to do things better and to do things differently. And it's not to do things in a new way, it's almost returning to do things in a way that i instinctively and intuitively for as long as there have been humans we've known are the many ways in which we can we can approach the pursuit of of knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Yeah, yeah. And then when it when it talks when you talk about courage, I I kind of wonder permission is is super important. But also when you talked about courage, I thought, I wonder where the courage needs to start. Does it start at the leadership level and trickles down, or do we need some courageous teachers who are going to feed that information up? Like where is this courage starting in the school?

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Well, if we look at societal change, courage that comes from lower down, whatever ladder it is, is the stuff of revolution, right? And uh deep down I I'm so excited by the notion of revolution, but I also know I work in lots of countries where if I were explicit about somehow wanting to foment revolution and never be allowed in the country again, right? So I think that there's interesting things that happen when that courage is shown um from lower down that that hierarchy or that ladder. But I think in reality, in schools, the courage needs to be demonstrated at the top and then it's passed down, right? So it's almost part of the permission.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

I am giving you permission to do things differently, and because you are seeing in me the courage to go in a slightly different route, that empowers you to be courageous too. But I think that like many, many words that we use in education all the time, courage um is a very complex concept, and I don't think we can dis um uh disentangle it from fear. So when we're doing things the way that we've always done them, to a large extent, that will be because we're scared of what will happen if we don't. And so I think addressing those fears um is critically important. I remember Ewan McIntosh from Notosh, he and I were both giving a virtual keynote at a conference uh a few years back, and he talked about the even if clause that schools should be able to add on to the end of whatever they're going to do next to really show how much they believe in it. You know, we believe that relationships and the building and the time to build one-to-one relationships is critical to everything we want to do in a school. Even if that means there is less time for curriculum coverage within um learning, teaching, instruction in the classroom, right? The even if bit. We believe it's so important to free kids of the competition that can so often be erosive to their sense of self and self-esteem. Even if that means that we abandon the annual rewards assembly or um celebration that we've had every year for as long as we've existed as a school. And I think that working out what your even-ifs are um is really critical, I think, when you're deciding um, you know what, we're gonna do things a bit differently. Um because I think otherwise also teachers pick up on different things and read them for what they are, which is yet more things. And as a teacher, that's the last thing I need. So um, yeah, I think tapping into the fear piece um is really important, both professionally and in our own lives, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Yeah, uh yes, there is that balance between fear and courage. I didn't think of it that way, but you are so, so right. Um, and because I was just kind of thinking of where does that courage come from? Does it come from the ground up or does it come down from leadership? But then also, even if it's coming down from leadership, there's that balance that needs that balance in play with courage and and fear. And for schools who do this kind of work with you, I think they've not that they've there's an absence of fear, but I think the courage is coming up a little bit stronger than the fear piece, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Yeah, and I I think they've recognized the dissonance between all the language they use in their collateral for marketing and attracting new teachers and and families. They've recognized the dissonance between all those words they use around belonging, around well-being, around flourishing, and then the ways in which they measure kids being about something totally different. So if I give you an act uh an example of a small act of courage, there's one school with whom I am uh working uh long term at the moment, who even at the get-go, even before we started to work together, they said they'd already made the decision not to publish or promote or share through social media their academic results at the end of any year. They decided I'm not playing that game. Most schools do it, most schools put on their different uh social media channels, look at all the um IB scores of over 40, or look at all the straight A's or the straight A stars or whatever else it might be. And they'd made the decision we're not doing that anymore. Because doing that is us competing against other schools purely on a narrow academic metric when we believe that kids are so much more than that. Now that didn't do anything to their enrolment, because I have this hypothesis that if every school is saying, send your kids to us because we pursue academic excellence and the kids will get great grades, then actually me shouting about that with my school is not making any difference to um to recruitment and enrollment of any families, right? Um so I don't think there's any harm in taking the decision that school took, but it communicates something really loud to the entire student and teacher and parent body that we're not about prioritizing one aspect of a child over all of the others. We're not about saying we value individuality and character and holistic well-being and belonging and all those things, but actually we're interested in the raw academic grade above all else. You know, they're saying, you know what? No, we're interested in it all, and we want to be holistic, and we will show even to the outside world that that is who we are. So that's an act of courage. Yeah. You know, I think what a big act of courage, um, but with huge um impact um on everybody who's then a part of that school.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Yeah, I I I I wish I knew which school that was. I would big them up. That is such a good thing to do because it goes against the grain. I mean, we're we're coming to, I just looked at the time and realized, oh my god, we've done it again. We said 30 minutes and we're way over that. We're heading over that.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

But we could talk for days, Lisa, couldn't we? Let's be honest.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

I'm gonna be honest, I could literally sit here and learn from you for days. Here's what here's what I really want to dive into when it comes to schools as we close the podcast.

Triangulation And Strengths Based Assessment

SPEAKER_01 32:39

You talked about the way data is seen, either limits or liberates the students. So, to close out the podcast, how can schools look at data practical ways now, in a way that will liberate their students? Because I think they want to, but they don't know how.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

The um province of Ontario in Canada back in 2010, um, the Department of Education released a new uh assessment protocol. Um, it's over 100 pages long, lots of it isn't that great, as with many things that come out of many governments. But at the core of it, and I love triangles, and schools I worked with will know I love triangles. Um uh I'm just drawn to tessellation, I think, because it's the beginning of really rich intercontextual webs. Anyway, their triangle at the center is that if I really want to know a child, I need to know them through an equal mixture of observation and conversation and what the child produces, their products. So I think if data is used in such a way that it liberates, then it's used equally to enrich my observation of a child and to enrich the relationship I formed through conversation with that child, and also the things that that child produces. And that um intentionally triangulated and kind of wide angle view on a child um is less tyrannical. It's not about holding them to this narrow colonial ledger, it's about trying to know them from lots of different directions, true holism, if you like. Um, and that's the beginning, as I think, of of using data in a way that that liberates. And I think we too often talk in deficit terms about our students when we use data. We're measuring what they can't do yet, or which threshold they've not yet met, or which subjects they need to do more in, or whatever other deficit we're identifying. Whereas the other shift I think we've moved towards liberation is to take the strengths-based approach, where through this radical and both ancient and uh fresh uh collection of ways of knowing, we're trying to understand the child's strengths and get them to uh show them off um as much as they possibly can. And it reminds me, and I know we have to keep to time, but it reminds me of um I have many things do to the experience of one of my children. I live through my children in many ways, and my children teach me so much every day. And my son took a very circuitous and weird route through education, leaving um school around the age of 14, not doing any post-16 um qualifications, going to art college purely on the basis of his hard work and his talent around the age of 22. And he graduates this summer. Anyway, long story short, um, as part of his final year, he has to write a really extended essay, you know. I think it's six, eight, ten thousand words of dissertation that forms a part of that. And he always wrestles with that in art because he's like, I'm a I'm a practicing artist, my medium is oils, I work in miniature, that's my thing. So I've got to write an essay. But he knows that sometimes we have to play it again, right? So he went to his super supervisor and said, I'd like to do my final year extended essay in the form of an illustrated children's picture book. Um, is that okay? And they talked through how actually all of the things in the assessment objectives could absolutely be demonstrated in that way. So they said, But why not? And you know what, I've read the final draft, and it is extraordinary, but it is a children's picture book. And I think that for me is I suppose using our knowledge of the individual to negotiate with them ways in which they can present the learning and growth that they've undertaken in a way that is asset-based and not deficit-based, which is part and parcel of what liberation means, right? It's that where I no longer feel tyrannized by uh the pressure to do things in a certain way and a certain time scale. I'm being given the agency, along with the expectation still that I grow, but I'm given the agency to choose how I want to do so and how I want that to look. So I think that's uh part of the answer to that question, which is a question, the full answer to which would have taken us probably years, sir. But I don't think anyone would listen to a podcast that long.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

No, I don't think they would.

How To Work With Matthew

SPEAKER_01 37:44

How can people reach you to learn more about your work? And if school leaders are listening to this and they would love to have you come in and work with their teams on data and understanding how they can look at it more in a more holistic way, where can they reach you?

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Well, firstly, they need to be humble and they need to recognize there's a lot that they don't know yet. And if schools are schools who feel there isn't much they don't know yet, then probably, I'm not saying they're wrong, but they and I probably are not gonna kick. Um so the humble and and they they want to um explore uh new and exciting territory, then they reach out to me via LinkedIn or they send me an email or they contact me via my website and we have a an initial conversation. And as I say, I I prefer to work with schools over a number of years. I'm generally booked about 12 months in advance. But there's always gaps though. So I'd say to a school, if you'd like to try this out, don't take my word for it. Talk to some of the schools who feature on my website and with whom I've worked, hundreds of schools across um so many different countries, and have a chat with me. And then if you think this could be fun and formative, then you know, let's see whether the journey goes from there.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Thank you, Matthew. It's it's just I can literally just sit here and pick topics and just chat to you and learn and chat to you and learn. But no one wants that for a podcast, so we'll do that at our own time in in at another juncture. Don't don't don't worry about it. But I really want to thank you for being on the podcast with me today.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

No, it's always a joy. Whether whether we're chatting recorded or we're chatting unrecorded, I I could chat to you for hours. So it's just a pleasure to be honest with you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Thank you so much.