Work It Like A Mum
Work It Like A Mum
Blackboard to Boardroom: How Teacher Alison Goulden, Became a Business Powerhouse
Ready to dive into a story that's got more twists than a roller coaster? Meet Alison Goulden, the superwoman wearing three capes—mother, teacher, and business owner—all while spinning plates, juggling time, and getting her kids to do their homework!
In this episode of 'Work It Like A Mum', we're delving into Alison's world, where classrooms meet living rooms and business plans. From chalkboards to board meetings, Alison's journey from a dedicated in-school teacher to the entrepreneurial brains behind Golden Brain Academy is nothing short of a syllabus for success.
Alison gets real about the part-time job puzzle, the tug-of-war between teacher duties and being 'mum', and the heart-tugging moments of expat life in the sun-soaked streets of Dubai.
Strap in as we explore the trenches of teaching, the ebb and flow of motherhood, and the thrill of business ownership. We're talking remote learning roller coasters, technology in the classroom, and why every teacher deserves a gold star.
Plus, Alison's giving us the scoop on why creative writing isn't just a school subject—it's a life skill. And for the parents out there, she's got GCSE gold dust that could turn homework time from a battleground into a brainstorming session.
So, if you're ready for an episode that's equal parts heart, hustle, and homework, tune in and let's get learning! This is one class you won't want to skip!
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Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life. I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women Job Board and Community. In this show, I'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business. They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all. Think of this as coffee with your mates, the mixed with an inspiring TED talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school. So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and make sure you cozy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays. This is the Work it Like a Mum podcast. This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women. Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers. Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you. They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job? Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity.
Elizabeth Willetts:Now back to the show. Hello, and welcome back to the Work it Like a Mum podcast, your go-to source for inspiration, guidance and, yes, a dose of camaraderie in navigating the labyrinth of motherhood and career. I'm your host, elizabeth Willits, the founder of Investing in Women. Now, if you've ever found yourself scrambling through homeschooling while managing a job, or if you're knee-deep in textbooks trying to prep your kid for those luminary exams, boy, have we got a treat for you today.
Elizabeth Willetts:Meet Alison Golden, co-owner of Golden Brain Academy and a true champion for children's education. After over two decades of in-school teaching, alison opted for a change, diving into the world of tutoring for a much-needed work-life balance. Now she successfully runs a booming education business, with her husband offering over 250 lessons to 500 students every week. Talk about juggling family, career and, yes, even some me time with a glass of chilled Savion Blanc. Alison has cracked the code on how to help kids thrive in today's education system, even in the midst of a pandemic. From creative writing to GCSE prep, she's got insights you won't want to miss. So grab your go-to mum fuel be it coffee, tea or perhaps something stronger and let's dive right in to this enlightening conversation. Thank you so much, alison, for chatting with me today. It's such a pleasure to obviously learn. What about you and Golden Brain Academy?
Alison Goulden:Thank you for that lovely intro. I listened to that as though I was here talking about someone else.
Elizabeth Willetts:It's like the eulogy or something. Am I really doing it for that long? Yeah, people haven't heard of Golden Brain Academy. Do you want to give them a bit of an overview as to who you are and what you do?
Alison Goulden:Yeah. So basically it's probably easiest to explain it from the beginning, really. So what started out basically as me just doing a bit of tutoring which we can come to why I got to that stage later but basically I was doing one-to-one lessons from my home, face-to-face usual, and I basically had too many children. So I decided that maybe I could do put them into little groups instead. Of. That way I obviously had more time. So I started doing that in a little sort of community hall, really local to us on a Saturday, and I had sort of throughout the day, about 60 children by the end, lots of different year groups. I did one, yeah, an hour of year one, an hour of year two, an hour of year three and so on, and it was absolutely brilliant and I loved it, Absolutely loved it, and it was sort of everything that I wanted from teaching really.
Alison Goulden:And then good old COVID came along and obviously I couldn't do it anymore. I sort of had a couple of lessons a couple of weeks left, of sort of the half-term. I thought what am I going to do, Because obviously I can't teach live. So I thought, oh, maybe I could try online. I had never done it before, was quite skeptical, to be honest, having spent 20 years teaching in a classroom. But I thought, well, I'll give it a go and see, sort of see what happens. And obviously it was completely new to everybody. At this stage no one had done it. This was just before the actually actually locked down actually.
Alison Goulden:And so I did it. So I basically rehearsed with my own daughters on a Friday night, panicking, thinking, oh. And then basically that Saturday I just taught all day online and I thought, cool, this is quite good, I can sit in my pyjama bottoms.
Alison Goulden:You know it's this is actually quite nice and it worked really well and the kids loved it and, yeah, there was. It was basically no different to being in the school as well. I was obviously still a novice at that stage and sort of, with zoom I'd never, ever used and never even heard, I never heard of zoom, just you know, it was a complete baptism of fire really, I guess. And then obviously we had the lovely joyous news that we were, the schools were closing and I we were sort of watching with my daughters. I can remember sitting in the lounge in a social and they were like, yeah, I mean, god, I knew they'd know. And I said to Richard, my husband, I said, oh, you know, maybe I could do some lessons for children. You know, the children that I teach, I could teach during the day Because obviously at this point the schools were you working as a teacher at this point, or were you?
Alison Goulden:No, no, I was only tutoring. And yeah, basically I just said, well, maybe I could sort of, you know, teach the children because they were getting nothing. The schools closed and that was it. I know some of the private schools launched straight into some form of online lessons. 90% of children basically were on holiday, as it were. So I sort of sent a message to some of the parents, to my parents, and said, look, I'm really happy to teach the kids, I'll do it for five parents an hour Just so they just get something during the day. So I did that and basically I had no idea and I'm not surprised, having trying to also homeschool three quite reluctant daughters Everyone loved it and they, everyone just sort of signed out and before I knew it, I'm sort of calling my teacher friends who eat like weren't working hard for them, like were basically not doing very much.
Alison Goulden:I was like, can you help me? I need people to take groups and people to do this. And it just basically went from there. It was just primary. We then expanded into secondary as well, not so much that stage and I just I taught all day, every day, all throughout lockdown, and, as I said, I absolutely loved it. It was brilliant and I just feel it was like my little way really of making a bit of a difference and I thought you know, like Joe Wicks?
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah, I was a wicks of you, non P version of Joe Quite as well, but it was, you know, it was just something.
Alison Goulden:So the kids had some a bit of structure, I guess, in their day and and it was lovely and they all got to know each other and the loveliest thing is, I mean, it's quite sad actually, but some of them I've just lost actually because they've gone to secondary school, but something might. I had my year threes at that time basically stayed, have stayed with me all the way through, and they've just started year seven now.
Elizabeth Willetts:Were you a primary schoolteacher then, when you were in school yes, I'm a primary schoolteacher.
Alison Goulden:Yeah.
Elizabeth Willetts:And why did you leave then full time teaching in a school to become a tutor? Children?
Alison Goulden:my own children, basically completely in utterly work life balance. I mean, that's when I saw about you and everything I thought this, this actually is me. I am that woman. So I started teaching once straight out of university. Obviously, we all know teaching is quite a challenging career in terms of the hours actually spent. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. No such thing as going in at nine and finishing at half three is very much what you put into it. And I am a bit of a workaholic, I will be the first to admit that. And it was fine when I obviously didn't have children of my own and to work my way up.
Alison Goulden:I was head of pre prep at the school I was as work was working at, and then I got pregnant with Lucy and I kind of I went straight back to work pretty much. This year was five months old when I went back to work, but actually she was three and a half months old when I went back for a bit before the summer holidays and I don't think I was completely unprepared for what that meant really. You know, getting up in the morning taking like my I was. Some days Lucy was with my parents, Some day she was at the childminder, started off at nursery and then she got pneumonia so she couldn't go to nursery anymore. You know, it was just one of those days.
Alison Goulden:You're still expected to be that person at work and I was, you know, obviously running a department and teaching all day and I have these, these children. But then I also have my daughter, who I'm trying to sort of. I felt like I was just shoving her around, really trying to get her to fit in, and I can remember I think the worst one was I got home from school once and I had her in the car and had all my books and everything else and I put Lucy and Lucy, I think, was about eight months old and I put her in there. You know those doorbouncers yeah, she's like Fluffing away in a doorbouncer and I went back outside to get all my books and everything in to plow on with the marking, and the wind blew the door shut.
Alison Goulden:Yeah leaving Lucy and so, and the outside, no way of getting in. So she's quite happy to start with bouncing around and I'm calling through the letterboxes. Hey, I'm tired. I mean, you know, it's been a long day at school and I'm starting to get a bit panicky. Neighbors trying to bash the door in, and, long story short, after about 40 minutes of trying to get in, I had to call the fire brigade, by which point Lucy's bright, red in the face, screaming for all she's worth. Anyway, they had to let me in and I thought, yeah, this kind of working and mothering things quite hard. So there was that. Then obviously the others came along.
Alison Goulden:I carried on working throughout all of them, but by the time after Lucy was born I had well, I didn't realize them, but post-natal depression, but it wasn't so bad. But then I got pregnant with Emma again quite soon after Mm-hmm. It sort of really kicked in then and I realized that I really wasn't gonna be able to to do it all. So I I had a small break, but not very long. I went back to work part-time. I know I was six months old.
Elizabeth Willetts:Was that in a school or was that two school?
Alison Goulden:Yeah, all in school, still in a school. I loved it. I just didn't feel and I know that you know people don't always appreciate that, the fact that we do want both. I loved being a mom yeah, you look, being a teacher. I didn't feel complete when I wasn't teaching, but you know, that was my thing and that's when I whatever was going on around me, I could be in the classroom and nothing else mattered. Really and it sounds a bit corny, doesn't it?
Alison Goulden:But you know that that is how it was and I wanted, I desperately wanted to keep doing it and trying to find a way and thankfully, you know I had my parents were absolutely amazing and really helped out with the children and you know I couldn't have done that without them and the schools that I worked in. I ended up sort of working in schools that were able to offer part-time. Unfortunately and this is still true, and I'm sure any teacher moms out there will know that they don't like part-time teachers- my friend had to leave because they rejected her part-time request and I never, I've never been able to understand that from being, like you know, sort of running a team myself.
Alison Goulden:Would you rather have two brilliant teachers who are you know job, who are sharing, or somebody that more mediocre, just because they can do full-time? It's just never been something that I've been able to get my head around, but that's what it was, and so I was kind of a little bit taking jobs that I could really, that were localish, that would Offer me part-time. It wasn't perfect, but we kind of made it work. And then we moved to Dubai for five years with Richard's job and the plan wasn't really for me to work. But then it turned out that we couldn't get the children into school, and the one way that we could definitely get the children into a school was if Muggins here got a job.
Alison Goulden:So I did and it was brilliant. I loved it, but I have never worked so hard in my entire life. Luckily the kids were at the same school as me, so you know I was still able to sort of be part of it, because the other thing, when you're teaching you can't just say sorry, everybody, my daughter's got a harvest festival but I can't come in today. You know, it just doesn't, it just doesn't work.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah, it's the job where you have to be very present, isn't it?
Alison Goulden:You can't and you feel so guilty. I cannot tell you how guilty you feel if you can't go in, because you know what a hassle it is to school. They've got to get a supply teacher, They've got to do this. It's not one of those jobs we can just run up and say oh yeah, I feel a bit old today. Yeah, I'll catch up tomorrow.
Alison Goulden:I'm not coming in, you know, I'll catch up tomorrow because there's like 30 children that are relying on you being there, and it's that horrible night before when you know that you're pretty sure you're not going to be able to go in and you know You're gonna have to phone the the head in the morning, and so I'm really sorry. Anyway, so in Dubai we came back after five. Get works.
Elizabeth Willetts:I honestly never come back and ask you remind me when we'll get to how you mean so, to tutoring. But it was so interesting to hear about your experiences of teaching in Dubai, so we will definitely come back to that I loved it.
Alison Goulden:It's a whole different thing. Very close to me, you see, lovely absolutely loved the job, love the people I work with. It was brilliant. But, oh my god, did I work hard and I know my. I was basically running on a journal in and again, I'm sure that loads of mums listens this will know exactly what I mean Just totally running on a journal in, and then every single Holiday I would stop and get really ill.
Alison Goulden:It was just like I was in this cycle of just work, work, work, work, work, get ill, be forced to stop working, just about get myself Ready to go again, and then I'd go straight back in and it was just. I was in this vicious cycle. I was getting really bad migraines, like terrible, terrible migraines, and I had no time for the children. I was really snappy with them. It turned out that they were sort of distracting me from. I couldn't get on with my work Because I had to deal with that. You know it was just. I just found myself in just not in the right place. I mean, when I left that job they actually replaced me with three people.
Alison Goulden:Really, yeah they split my job in three. So that kind of made me feel a bit better because I was starting to think why. You know, I look at all these other women and they can do this. Why am I struggling? Yeah, and I loved I. Just all I want to do is teach. I love my job so much and it kind of just felt really sad because I thought I just don't think I can do it anymore really. So we came back and Richard stayed for a year in Dubai and I came back with the girls, mostly so that Lucy could start Secondary school at the beginning of year seven, because we thought otherwise we're gonna have to really disrupt somebody. So we came back and I thought, well, my mum, on my own, there's absolutely no way that I'm gonna be able to teach and look after three children and ferry them to different schools. And so I said, right, I'm gonna take, I'm not gonna work. So and I drove myself completely insane at home making just trying to occupy myself with you know, I love a list.
Alison Goulden:I love a list list of my. So I'd be making lists about the list of, like writing down what I was gonna do. You know, I was just. I like a list to get that. Yeah, I write lists about my list. I write things on my list just so I can cross them out.
Elizabeth Willetts:You know I write things I've already done just.
Alison Goulden:But I was just. I was really unfulfilled and I thought I need to do something. And as it was my lady that lived opposite us son was going to be applying for secondary schools and she asked me if I'd do a bit of work with him and I said, oh yeah, you know, I'd love to. I thought, brilliant, I can do this. He just literally walked across the road and he came, and then suddenly it just started picking up and then I'm tutoring loads.
Alison Goulden:And then I'm thinking, but obviously it was difficult because I had my own children and I could only tutor when these after school, because those children were in school as well. So it was kind of a little bit difficult. And then, but I was sort of making it work, and then my daughter's school asked me to do some supply and because I just basically can't say no, I said yes and what I thought was going to be a couple of weeks turned into me then accepting a job, a job share for a year, and then that's when I then said, okay, I'm going to stop now and I'm just going to do my Saturdays at the thing. And then obviously that then seeped into the whole lockdown thing and then it just sort of snowballed from there really, and I, yeah, that's it.
Elizabeth Willetts:Wow, that's crazy. That's a really great story. So we'll just reverse that, because I know the big one. Yes, rewind, how does the education systems differ? I guess in Dubai and I know you work with other tutor children from other countries as well yeah, we do so it's big business in Dubai.
Alison Goulden:They're on state schools, so obviously it's all private schools, mostly international schools, you and an international school. I was at the Dubai British School, which is British curriculum, so it was pretty much the same as an independent school here, but they are run very much as businesses, to be honest, and the class sizes for an independent are quite big. But I loved it. I said that the relationships that you have with people. Is there something very special about being an ex-pat, because you build a different kind of relationship with people, because they like become your family really and you don't have that way and there's this sort of we're all in this together mentality really and yeah, I mean the girls love it.
Alison Goulden:It is different in some ways, especially teaching somewhere like the Middle East, because the children learn it. They have to have three hours of Arabic a week. There's lots of years. So I think that made it very intense because we're still teaching the British curriculum, which is, even here, very, very full. You have to fly through at such a pace in order to get everything covered, which is something that we'll come to. But obviously in Dubai, when you've got all these other things going on as well, and you're still trying to squeeze that in. It's quite intense but lovely, and it's just little things that are so different, like they have red break in Dubai.
Alison Goulden:It's always red break, so where we'd have a wet play here, every single dread wet play, because you know you're just going to have hyperactive children who are basically in the classroom like caged animals In Dubai. That's the opposite. So once you get to May, it's too hot to go outside. Yeah, have red break, so you have to. They have to stay in and basically they then can't really go out again until probably October.
Elizabeth Willetts:And so let's call you the same. So it's September to September July.
Alison Goulden:When we first went there, the week ran from Sunday to, but actually subsequently they've now changed that. Now they actually go Monday to Friday again, but they finish on Friday lunchtime instead.
Elizabeth Willetts:I was going to say they changed the time, Like do you start a bit earlier because it's so hot? I do.
Alison Goulden:Yeah, so school starts at half seven and finishes at well, the younger ones that help us to the older ones a bit later. It's a very early start because I'd be getting into school again. I mean it's just the length of the day I'm having to get my own children up and out and we're in school at seven, so we're getting up at sort of half. I mean I know a lot of people do it. It's not that much of a hardship.
Alison Goulden:But, trying to get three young children out of the house. It was hard work.
Elizabeth Willetts:My girls.
Alison Goulden:Lucy was four when Emma was born, so I had three under four, yeah, and I thought it was quite hard then. And then they turned into teenagers and I thought I wish I could go back to that.
Elizabeth Willetts:I was going to say mind you younger than yours, we're not going to get easier.
Alison Goulden:No, she's shaking. No, I saw this lovely lady when I was walking the dogs yesterday and she had a four-week-old baby, beautiful little baby girl, and she was like I'm so tired I can't tell you. I didn't realize it was going to be this hard and I said I'd love to tell you that it gets easier. But honestly, this is quite a nice thing, you know what it is.
Elizabeth Willetts:We finished our first. I mean, the sleep deprivation is horrendous, but I do remember watching a lot of Netflix, the things that I wanted to watch, snuggled on the sofa. I can remember doing 24.
Alison Goulden:Do you remember 24? Yeah, I love that Marathons when.
Elizabeth Willetts:I was three yeah.
Alison Goulden:And now I look back at God. I'd love to do that now, just down the sofa watching TV.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah.
Alison Goulden:So how's your?
Elizabeth Willetts:work-life balance transformed. Now Now you, I mean, I suppose it's a bit different because you're now running a business and the business is growing, which is great. But I suppose you know, when you were tutoring before you became a business owner, how did your work-life balance transform?
Alison Goulden:So, as I said, during lockdown Foothill, richard was made redundant just before lockdown actually, and he was sort of thinking about what he was going to do and then obviously, lockdown happened and I was basically just tied to the computer all day, every day, which was great in some ways because I was responsible for other people's children's learning and I didn't have to deal with my own, which completely, and I see, fell on Richard, which is quite nothing, and I think that was fine. Then the difficulty, I think, with the nice thing about the tutoring is I take the kids to school in the morning. I can be there for them. I make their breakfast, I can be there, I can also. It's slightly different for me, but because I've got all the admin to do as well, but I can pretty much teach around things.
Alison Goulden:Do you still teach? Yeah, so I teach about 25 lessons a week. Oh, yeah, still, yeah, so, and that's obviously predominantly in the evenings, but because we're lucky, because I've managed to bring across quite a lot of students that I taught in Dubai sort of recommended. So we've got quite a lot of students in the Middle East and in Asia as well, which works really nicely because we can obviously do them during the day, because in Asia we can start teaching from half nine our time. That then moves into Dubai and then the UK students and actually we've got some we've even got some students in America now that we teach at like. Some of our teachers teach at like nine o'clock but that works really well for them because if they've got children, their children have gone to bed, so actually it's not impeding on their family time. It is a juggling, I would say, because I'm not around. I am basically at the computer. I mean, my poor family have to listen to me all day, every day.
Alison Goulden:I haven't got the quietest voice in the world and they just have to listen to me droning on, but it just works really nicely and I'm not stressed anymore. And you know feedback from my teachers as well is as I said. You know people are so over listening to teachers whinging about how hard they work. I know, but you know it is so intense People don't always realise how. You know it's the parents' evenings, it's the shows in the youth, it's the marking, it's the putting displays up, it's all of these things that you know take a lot of time. And you know you've got constant being reviewed, people taking your books in to check that you're marking properly. You've got people coming round and checking, you know, randomly walking into your classroom to check that you're teaching what you're supposed to be teaching and doing it properly. And you know it's. You're constantly feeling like you're being watched all the time and judged. And teachers on the whole, you know, take their job extremely seriously. You know take great pride in what they do. So it adds a lot of extra pressure.
Alison Goulden:And the beauty of now is that I went into teaching, as we all do, because I love teaching, I love making a difference to children, I love seeing their faces when they get it, I love being on that journey with them. And now that is all I do. I don't have to do parents' evenings, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to do any, not that I'm not being mean about parents' evenings, but it's. I don't have to do any of that stuff, that report, you know like with everything, so much paperwork now, and is that really what is benefiting the children? Because what they need they need a happy, enthusiastic, you know teacher who's going to motivate and stimulate them, Not an exhausted teacher who's constantly feeling that you know they're being judged and someone's telling them they're doing something wrong and so I don't have that anymore. So now I just, literally I can plan what is best for the children. You know I don't have to whiz through the curricula. I mean so many parents phoning up and saying you know he's so behind in man. You know I don't know what to do and I know why. It is because I've been there and I've done it and it's because they have to.
Alison Goulden:Teachers have to move so quickly through everything and if children don't get it, there's no time to say, oh, do you know what? We'll go over that again tomorrow, because there's just no time, because then they'll get behind on the other things and they won't get through everything, and it's just this vicious circle. And so obviously, these poor children are just being moved on and on when they haven't really got it and the gaps are getting bigger and bigger. Throw COVID in there, which obviously made what was already a nightmare even worse, whereas for me I can say oh, I did a long division yesterday with a group and you know they really found it difficult, despite my and I'd find it difficult, I'm stretching and I know, I know that probably half of them, some of them just completely, were like looking at me, like what are the others?
Alison Goulden:Others were close but they didn't quite get it and if I'd been in school I would have moved on to the next thing, whereas I said to them look, you know what, let's just stop there, let's do a game, let's just have a bit of fun and let's revisit this again next week, and and that's what we'll do, and we'll do it next week. And you know, obviously I'm in the situation where I can do that, because what I'm doing is what's best for the children. Always I can move at their pace, I can make sure that, whereas in school, unfortunately, it's not anybody's fault but there just is so little time these children to really secure the objectives really before they move on.
Elizabeth Willetts:I don't know how I got to that but anyway, no, no, I mean this is obviously getting a bit political. You know, if you, it's Jolene Keegan, it's like the education secretary. If there was somebody here that actually was responsible for schools and national curriculum, you know what would you say to if you had a stake in that and could say this is, you know what I think would make education better for our children. What would that be?
Alison Goulden:I think possibly just to relieve some of the stress. I mean, the difficulty is, you know, teachers don't have the respect that they used to have.
Elizabeth Willetts:Is that from the parents or the children?
Alison Goulden:Yeah, from everyone, from parents as well. You know, like if if I saw it it was a cartoon, actually, I think, and it sort of said it was along the lines of something to do with the teacher said I'm going to call your parents and the kids, like children would be like oh my God, please don't tell my parents. And they'd phone the parents and the parents would be like how dare you do that at school? You need to be like. Now, if a teacher says I'm going to phone your parents, they'll be like, yeah, go on then. Because they know the parents will be like well, no, no, no, no, it's not their fault and you know it's, there's, there's a real, there's been a real shift in and children will very much know their rights now.
Alison Goulden:You know, you can't make me do that. I don't want to, you know, but never happens. And in a classroom of 30 children it only takes a couple of children who are not from their own full tall, may have difficulties, and the teacher's attention is going to be mostly put on them. And you know, you've got this core group of children in the middle. You've got your really bright ones. They'll do well, whatever. You could plump them in the middle of the desert with a book and they would learn. And then you've got your weaker children who generally are well supported. I mean, that's a whole nother issue, but you know, generally and the teacher will be forced really into paying them a lot of attention Most of our children, my children, are sitting in the middle and they are left to fend for themselves. That is an issue that I think, if I had more, say I would. What are we really doing about just these children in the middle? And these are the ones that come to us mostly and they're children who probably would and that's a huge thing in secondary school as well. But these are the children who probably would do really really well with the right input.
Alison Goulden:How you know, as you said, we know that money is really tight for these schools there. They're having to. Unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of their expensive. Older teachers with more experience are leaving younger, cheaper, weren't coming in. You know, it's just such a well, I speak to parents day in, day out, every single day and they're just like I don't know what to do. Really, there is.
Alison Goulden:I'm not sure what the answer is, but I do think we need to stop kind of not being so competitive, but I think we just need to try and put the children first a bit more and actually what they genuinely do need to know, because children learn if they're having a good time and if they're inspired. You know, like middle-doughty, you know she'll come home and say, oh, we did this and we did that and we've been talking about feminism, and then she was talking about bringing even stuff like about. They've had this discussion about Angie Tate and you know she was really going really, really in depth, whereas Lutty will come home and I said she'll be like I don't know, she's just not really inspired in the same way and I think if we could somehow get back to you know, I don't know it's so so I wish I had a better one and I could. But for me I just feel that what we're trying to do is just, in our own little way, just make that difference. You know, a child could be in school all day and, just you know, not be noticed at all, and then they can come to us of an evening and, just for 45 minute, you know, feel that they've actually seen.
Alison Goulden:Yeah.
Alison Goulden:Do you know what Feel seen. That's exactly right, absolutely spot on.
Elizabeth Willetts:How many children are in your groups that you teach?
Alison Goulden:Though it's a maximum of eight, and sometimes parents, how do you, you know? How can you see whatever you know? Just, and I said, when you're teaching, we used to teaching 30 children and you have eight. It's an absolute dream, and you know. That's what we do. It's by use of questioning and we use a lot of interactive tools so I can see the children's screens.
Alison Goulden:They're constantly engaging. They're constantly engaging with each other. You know, they get to know each other. It's lovely, actually, because some of my year sixes went to a an open afternoon for their new school and they saw each other there. They'd like known each other just for a while Zoom class and they actually saw each other in real life and it's so lovely, they were so excited.
Alison Goulden:Yeah, one of the moms said, you know, he was so nervous about going because he didn't know anyone. No one from his school was going there, and then he went in and then learned behold, and there's something really special about that and the fact that, you know, on a Saturday morning I teach a creative writing class and I've got two children in Hong Kong, one in Beijing, two in Dubai and three in England and they're all learning together and it's so nice, it's just love and you know it's. They come from all over. I've had children teaching in a hotel room in the Maldives. I've had. I've had one child I taught a lesson to who was at the Grand Prix in a tent. Oh yeah, nice, they were at the Grand Prix so I could hear the Roar, roar. Yeah, I still didn't do it. I think it's amazing.
Alison Goulden:They teach the car on the way to swimming. They're doing their lesson and it's just, it's really fun.
Elizabeth Willetts:What sort of families come to you then? What sort of backgrounds the?
Alison Goulden:children, all different, all different People always say to me I see you don't have any private school children. I said, well, you'd be really surprised the number. It is a complete mishmash of some people who themselves but a lot of parents who speak English as an additional language are finding it really difficult to support their children because they don't have a strong enough class. I mean, goodness me, the way that English is taught. Now you know talking about subordinate clauses and fronted adverbials and you know most people that speak English as their first language have no idea what are. Yeah, do you?
Elizabeth Willetts:realise that's gone over my head. I lost your, I lost your, I lost your.
Alison Goulden:I tend to lose people at fronted adverbials. So a lot, of a lot of those parents and especially for for English related subjects, very often masses they can kind of do themselves because it's sort of, but again, parents will say, well, we didn't do it like this when I was at school. Yeah, what is this weird chunking thing or this, you know, with bar modelling stuff and so? And the nice thing is because in school you send your child to school and the door shuts, yeah, and that's it. And they come out at the end of the day and you are pretty much relying on them telling you you know what happened and they're not going to, you know God. Mostly it'll just be like I'm hungry or like, yeah, don't get a lot.
Elizabeth Willetts:How was your day? Bye, yeah, fine.
Alison Goulden:I pretend to get from teenage daughters, whereas this way parents can be involved in it as much as they like. Some parents sit next to their children and do the lessons. We have a nice bit of banter with them. Sometimes they float around in the background. Some parents go woohoo, I've got 45 minutes to myself. I'm going to go and, you know, do whatever lay down in a darkened room, but you know. Or they can do some work themselves.
Alison Goulden:But they all say that the beauty is they suddenly able to see how children learn in school and see the method, so that when the children then bring homework home, they can go. I'll hold on a minute. I know this. So you don't get this. Children saying well, my teacher doesn't do it like that, although my children say that to me, we don't do it like that at school. Well, I'm like yes, you do. I can't say that to me because I know so. I think that's a huge benefit of it and also for busy.
Alison Goulden:Most of our children have two parents working Very few of them and mums are, you know, juggling and, you know, trying to do this. Oh, I've got to take into this. You know these children do so much. Now They've got karate. So the lovely thing about this is they can. You know, it can be squeezing, no one has to drive anywhere to do it, you don't have to take them, you don't have, it's just all there and it's just so easy.
Alison Goulden:And you know, on the flip side, for us, teacher wise, it's brilliant because you can have a teacher. You know one of my teachers, harry. He lives in Devon. You know, he is amazing, like the most incredible teachers, completely opposite to me, whereas I'm like, he's completely chilled, calm, really patient with the kids. They just love him. But I know we worked together in Dubai, that's where I met him and he wouldn't be. You know, these children wouldn't have access to the Harries of this world if it was only face to face, whereas, you know, because we can literally pick the best teachers wherever they are, which is, you know, our French teacher spends half her time in France. She's from France, she's from France. You know you can do it. You can go on holiday and still do it. You know it's, when it comes to flexible working, it's just the absolute best, really.
Elizabeth Willetts:The people that your tutors do. They give up there. Do you have some people that are doing teaching in the day and then do teaching on the evening, or do you have other people that are full time in your? Yeah, a complete mix, total mix.
Alison Goulden:So I've got some teachers who teach full time, so someone like Laura, who's our second teacher, and Harry. They both pretty much teach about 30 lessons a week. And then we've got other teachers that do two hours a week who you know they might do. They might it might be because they're still teaching full time in school Quite a lot of them will be doing part time in school and then do a little bit of tutoring extra, but many, many of them have actually started to have actually stopped and are now just tutor, although I have this kind of difficult thing and I was saying this to somebody the other day and I'm like these teachers should be in school, these teachers we've got these incredible teachers make such a difference.
Alison Goulden:And you know, even myself sometimes I feel bad because I think you know, but we really should be in school, but you know, for one reason or another it just doesn't, you know, it just doesn't suit. So we're just, we're still helping, but just in a different way, really. And what subjects do you teach children? So, personally, I do primary, predominantly 11 plus in creative writing, but we teach absolutely everything, and mainly English. Maths and science obviously are the key ones. But we've got our Arabic teacher is in Dubai. We've got Japanese teacher, we've got you know French, german, geography, you name it, psychology, sociology.
Elizabeth Willetts:So we teach everything, I suppose, if someone's doing a GCSE in geography, so they may might want additional support.
Alison Goulden:Yeah, I mean I think secondary wise it's more intense and I think people get quite. I think children sort of drift towards GCSEs and they're generally quite unprepared. They've never had to really do anything. I mean, they do the sats obviously, but then between sats and GCSEs there's very little they do in terms of preparation and it can. I mean I call it with my own daughter who's in year 13 now. She had absolutely no idea about revising, she didn't know how. I mean, that's probably her excuse, she just didn't like revising but she had no idea how to do it. There was you know, she just hadn't, whereas our teachers are able to say, you know, help them with revising and just give them that extra boost. Really, I think they just need I said, most of these children just need a little bit extra time to make such a big difference.
Elizabeth Willetts:And you've mentioned how important you think creative writing is and what a skill. Why is it so important?
Alison Goulden:I'm very biased, obviously because it's my favourite Saturday. I think when people say creative writing it actually covers so much, not just about writing stories. So the curriculum is you know there's many different genres. There's like persuasive writing, discussion text, everything else. And I think the biggest impact that creative writing has is it does impact all other subjects because you have to be able to write. You can have all the best knowledge in here about, I don't know, global warming, for example, but if you can't get that down on paper in a coherent and structured way, you don't get the marks. And I think this is the biggest benefit of creative writing is it actually teaches you about structuring your writing and how to put your point across in a coherent way.
Alison Goulden:And actually it's another thing that in school has fallen by the wayside, really, again, not by anybody's fault, but there's just no time for it. So you know, at best a child will have time to write a paragraph. Maybe in creative writing they'll be like a set less than a week for it and there's just no time. And so children are losing the ability, sort of the stamina, to write. Really they're just not used to writing very much at once. So then suddenly, when they've got like 18 mark questions to answer in their GCSEs. They're like whoa, what is this? Whereas we sort of getting them used to writing early on and, to be honest, it's a life skill being able to write, even if it's just you're going to be emailing whatever.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah, absolutely, even the physical writing.
Alison Goulden:it's just obviously it's typing or whatever, but it's just about being able to put words on paper that make sense. And also, you know I say to the children of the time it's, you know it's about entertaining. You're writing to entertain your reader. It's you know you want the person who's reading it to enjoy what they're reading and engage with it. And that's the same if you're preparing someone, you know, for an exam, if you're an examiner, you want to be reading this, you want to be absorbed in it, you want to you know, understand it and this is that's why I just I love it so much, because it's just such a, it's a great skill.
Alison Goulden:And kids love it because I say to them there's no right or wrong. You know, in maths you can get the question wrong, but in creative writing you know there's things you can do to make it better, but it's not wrong. Yeah, it really allows all children. You know, whatever their ability level, wherever they're coming from, they can all. They all actually like writing, they like using their imagination. And again, with I mean a whole nother topic, screen time. You know, I was listening at the other day to something and they're saying that children just don't use their imagination at all anymore. Apparently, daydreaming is out. Children just don't know how to daydream anymore. Well, that's a shame. My daughter would go against that grade. Yeah, now children are losing the ability. They just don't daydream anymore because they're constantly like no divide, divide, divide, divide. They don't just sit and do nothing ever. Yeah, that's when you use your imagination really. So it's just my. I feel like my creative writing lessons are just this little bubble of time.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah, it unlocks that piece of our brains that we obviously use to use a lot, but maybe you know we're losing. What is your opinion? Because I've been sitting in the news recently about some private schools that are ditching GCSEs and starting, I think, their own qualifications. What do you think about?
Alison Goulden:GCSEs. It is a difficult one, I think, because there has to be some kind of something, I guess. I mean, it has been said that you would sort of ditch GCSEs altogether and just go straight into A-levels.
Elizabeth Willetts:But that would actually provide even a bigger gap, because you said there's a gap between traps and GCSEs Exactly that.
Alison Goulden:Then you've suddenly got 18-year-olds being forced into doing it. Sounds like they've got no experience on it. I completely understand it. I can see that there's a lot of benefits to it, because what people are saying is that for many, many children, gcses do not show what they're actually capable of. I've seen this a lot. I've taught children who they've got so much about them, but they just they're not academic. Answering questions, as I was saying about so much of it, is about being able to structure an answer. A lot of children I have just completely crumble under pressure, under time pressure. These things GCSEs don't necessarily reflect what that is.
Alison Goulden:In this day and age as well, we're turning where everything has switched a lot into. It's not all about I got this. Companies now are now much more looking for much more rounded individuals with experience. They're saying they want people to come in at the bottom and work their way up. They train them. It's not all about coming in with a master's in whatever. There's so much more to it. My own philosophy has changed.
Alison Goulden:I always just imagined that my daughters would all do what I did, which was just go to school, go to college, go to university. I just assumed that that's the path that my daughters would follow. My youngest probably will, the other two it's just not the thing. I think there's. So many children now are in the same thing. This is this big thing about.
Alison Goulden:There's a really famous quote you might have seen it I can't even remember if it took my head, but I think Einstein said it. I can't remember if someone said it about you can't judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree or whatever. It's got all these different animals. And it's basically saying you've got a fish and obviously the fish isn't going to be able to climb a tree, but the fish can see it. There is a lot of that.
Alison Goulden:Rgcse is becoming a little bit outdated and people are saying why am I learning? My daughter will say well, have I got to learn this chemistry? I'm never going to use it again. There is maybe a switch. There is. People are moving more towards. My daughter is doing digital design at college, for example, which would never have been an option before, because she's learning how to use Canva and stuff that will be really beneficial to her that she'll be able to take to a company. So I do this. Is that more beneficial to her than doing a history, a level which maybe she's not going to use. It's really hard. It is difficult. Again, I don't know. I have a feeling that GCSEs days are numbered across the board, but it's what they're going to. I mean, they said, you know, obviously they did the teacher assessment after COVID and then, rather than so, maybe there's going to be a more of a thing of like it's judged over a longer, like a lot of MVQs. You know you do four assessments over the two years.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah.
Alison Goulden:So, rather than it so much of it being on one exam, maybe that would be a fairer way of assessing, because obviously there are so many children who really struggle under exam conditions. But then other people will turn around and say, but in the business, you've got to just get on with it and it's difficult.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah, I suppose chatGVT has made it very difficult now for coursework and setting coursework and marking coursework.
Alison Goulden:Like for things I say to my children all the time you have no idea Like Emma will come home and say, right, I've got to do a poster about I don't know, it's an artist or something, so she'll just get straight on Google and then there we are, it's the unshifted book. So you have to go to the library, yeah, and then everyone will be trying to get the same book and you'd have to get in there first. Yeah, and we've had, you know, people pay a lot of foreign students, pay people to write essays for them. That's just crazy. That is crazy. And I haven't had any issues with AI, with chatGVT, at all, apart from the other day.
Alison Goulden:We did creative writing and I can't remember what it was, but it was one of my Hong Kong students, actually, and I asked them to do a paragraph about something. I can't remember exactly what it was and I can see it on their screen, so I could see what she'd done. And I said, oh, can you read it out, timmy? So I was thinking I don't even know what that word means. So I said, oh, can you read it out? And she was just going to read it at all and I said what does that word mean she's like I don't know. I said, well, you read it. I didn't pull around, I didn't want to embarrass her, but blatantly she'd just put in I need to write a paragraph on a tree describing a tree or whatever it was, and then just basically brought up this. I mean, I don't know how teachers or markers now can get around this and, as you say, that's an issue with maybe doing more coursework, and the fact is that it's all a bit too easy to get someone else to do it for you.
Elizabeth Willetts:So, if you're a parent listening to this, what advice have you got? Any tips on how to support your children through their education?
Alison Goulden:I can give tips as a teacher, but I'd say, whatever you do as a mum, don't do what I do, because I'm not sure if that's a mum. It works very well. It's so bizarre because I've taught God thousands of children in my family and, honestly, even the most reluctant kids I've managed to well learn. And then I'd say, and people say, oh, your kids are so lucky, they've got a teacher. As a mum, I'm like, no, if anything, it's a curse, because I cannot understand why my children won't work for me. And then I'm trying to move and thinking if I had my friends when I was 15, just here on my phone all the time, that's all I would have done. I can't even pretend that I would have been sat doing my.
Alison Goulden:Yes, I did do my homework, but I didn't really have anything else to do. I didn't have, like, netflix, I didn't have TikTok, I didn't have any of that. So there was not really that much else to do. So doing my homework wasn't really that much of a big deal. My children, why would you want to do homework when you've got? I mean, I caught Lottie the other day watching somebody on TikTok washing a doll's hair.
Elizabeth Willetts:And she was like you thought I'd get in trouble and he'd do it. And I was like what, like this, and the sister likes it. She says they're very relaxed.
Alison Goulden:You've got English homework to do and she's just sitting like and it's so hard, and I talk about this with my mum friends all the time and I've got my mum's therapy group with all mums of teenage daughters and we walk our dogs and we just basically go help me, please, guide me through this. And everyone is in exactly the same boat with it. And we haven't got, we didn't have it. So it's so hard because I know it's all well and good for me saying well, I didn't think that, which is what my mum used to say to me, but the thing is I didn't have this phone, I didn't have this here, and it's so difficult for them to understand. I mean, I think this is the biggest thing is just that they don't understand about playing the long game anymore, and this is why children struggle with their GCSEs, so all revising full stop, because they're so used to everything happening now.
Alison Goulden:And I'm gonna have an immediate response to this and I, you know I want to. I want a McDonald's. So I'm gonna get on, just eat, and I'm gonna get a McDonald's straight away. I need a new pair of glasses. Oh, I've gone Amazon and it's gonna come. It can even come the same day I want to watch Barbie. I've watched Barbie the other day, fabulous.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah, I want to watch it now. Anyone has done that. I think it's on.
Alison Goulden:I wanna watch it. Oh, I can just basically stream it immediately. There is absolutely no waiting. And they've completely lost the ability to look in the future and say I'm going to work now because that will benefit me later. Because it just their brains just do not work like that. And I think from a teacher's perspective it's really really difficult and from anyone's perspective it's really really difficult. But I'd say to parents now there's no point in saying that do that.
Alison Goulden:Or taking the phone away. I mean, I can know from my own children removing a phone is literally like taking their heart out and it just creates this. Do I take them away? I read these things all the time. I take my daughter's phone away. Should I take my daughter's phone away at night? Shouldn't I? And we're all fighting this constant battle of some people are allowed. Some people like because I get this thing, you're so strict, you're like I'm so scared, make me do this. And it's so difficult.
Alison Goulden:And where education fits in in all of this because they can't, they cannot see that I'm going to do this now and this will enable me to do this. Get these exam results later, which will enable me to get this job later on. They just just don't have it and I think, unfortunately it's just. It's patience, really, and I've noticed this. I try it with my, but it's just like little and often because they've got to want to do it. And I say this to a lot of the 11 plus parents that we teachers they're like, you know, I don't know how. You know, I say they have to want to do it because you can sit a child down and you can tie them to that desk and say work, work, work. If they don't want to work, their head could be anywhere. They're just not going to do it, they've got to want to do it.
Alison Goulden:I honestly, I wish someone would come up with something that would just help us all, because it's really hard, but I think our little lessons are just there because they have 45 minutes and I think they don't have to go anywhere to do it. They don't have to, and so just for 45 minutes they can be in a little group of people or, you know, we do one to one lessons as well, but I do like the groups. I think the children learn so much from each other. And then you know it's good role model wise that they're with other people and they see other people doing it and you can just sort of say to them do this for 45 minutes or an hour or whatever. And then you know that you've done something.
Alison Goulden:And a lot of our parents say it just relieves a little bit of parental guilt, to be honest, because I can't make them do it. I can't make my daughter work. She won't work, but you know I can, kind of we've reached a stage now where she'll do that. And then I say, right now you can have your phone or whatever. I think it's just we just have to try and just do what we can really and hopefully one day something will happen and all the phones will suddenly.
Elizabeth Willetts:So it's very hard because that gene is out the bottle, isn't it Very much? Out the bottle. It's difficult and you know, sometimes you know I'll go on my phone and then you feel a bit guilty and actually it must be even more extreme for the team.
Alison Goulden:I know the thing is, that's why I say it and I because I just few times I watch things on dog. I've watched it on things that come up on Facebook. I'm like a proper oldie and still like love my Facebook and you can suddenly realize that an hour has gone by and all I've done is basically look at dogs reacting to new babies being brought home or children opening dogs. My dogs are like I've spent an hour doing that and then I will have a go at my girls. She's someone put makeup on for an hour, you know, and I'm like there's not really any in this. But on the other hand, they are also using TikTok in a positive way, in the fact they do learn quite a lot from it and there's a lot of sharing of tips and ideas for revising. Yeah, there's YouTube. They go on their own, they can watch YouTube videos on how to do things. So there are some positives to it as well, but unfortunately, in most cases it's more about how to apply eyeliner.
Elizabeth Willetts:But it is, you know, I think it's very, very, very teenage girl who's like here and, you know, almost in the size.
Alison Goulden:Well, how does a stick fake eyelashes on would be even better.
Elizabeth Willetts:Yeah, I know I would have watched those videos If I'd have had YouTube as a teenager. I'd have to blot them on for sure. Yeah, yeah, it's been so nice to chat with you today on this. Then where can people find you, connect with you and learn more about Golden Brain Academy?
Alison Goulden:So yeah, so you can find out more about us on our website, wwwgoldenbrainacademycom. We're also on Facebook, instagram and TikTok. We have just doubled our toes into TikTok. So, yeah, we're really happy to obviously chat to and give anybody any advice they need about for their children's education.
Elizabeth Willetts:Brilliant, and it's obviously worldwide, isn't? It Sounds like you're teaching children in Asia, italy, newark and obviously, the UK.
Alison Goulden:And I can really vouch. Our teachers are amazing and I can vouch for them both as a colleague and as a mom as well. They really are fab.
Elizabeth Willetts:And I know that your recruiting is us. Is there any teachers and scientists that fancy doing what you doing, or you know, either on the side or for a better work life balance, then we'll put all our lessons and details in, definitely.
Alison Goulden:Absolutely. Please do as I said, and we are all about flexible working, people choosing when they want to work, how much they want to work. We literally fit around them. So yes, get in touch.
Elizabeth Willetts:Perfect. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us.
Alison Goulden:Lovely to chat to you, thank you, thank you.
Elizabeth Willetts:Bye. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like a Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend. If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode. You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram. Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.