016 - Pit Pony Jonny Millard - Chapter 1 - The Teacher Who Dreamed Big

Welcome to a very special Christmas special 5 part episode of the Pit Pony Podcast.

In this first chapter of Jonny Millard’s compelling story, we meet an ambitious young history teacher from the Midlands. With dreams of becoming a headteacher, Jonny entered the profession full of passion, eager to make a difference and climb the ranks of leadership. But by 2019, his journey had taken an unexpected turn.

Through this introduction to Jonny’s career, we uncover the early years of his teaching path, his rise within the classroom, and the cracks that began to form. A single incident with a faulty laptop cable would soon become the catalyst for a life-altering decision, one that would ultimately lead him to a completely different path.

As Jonny opens up about his struggles, this chapter sets the stage for the deeper complexities of his journey in the chapters to come.

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Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

Transcript

Hello, my name is Sharon Cawley. Welcome to the Pit Pony podcast, with myself and Sarah Dunwood, in which we talk to everyday teachers who have left the classroom and thrived on the other side. With this particular Pit Pony episode, we speak to Jonny Millard, an ex-history teacher from the Midlands.

As is about to be revealed, Jonny's story is a complex one, covering multiple issues faced by teachers in the classroom today. And as Jonny opened up to us during the recording, we realised there was so much in the story that we felt it couldn't simply be presented in a one-off episode. And as such, we've broken it down into a series of chapters to be known as Jonny's story.

So here's chapter one, the first phase in which we meet Jonny, and he outlines the start of his career and where it all began. An ambitious teacher, keen to rise to the top, who truly believes he has the world at his feet. Hello, welcome to a smashing episode today of the Pit Pony podcast.

Found a little gem of an episode today, Jonny Millard. You are going to really, really appreciate, enjoy and get something out of Jonny's story. Jonny, based in the Midlands, you'll get that from his accent within his first three vowels.

But from 2014 to 2019, history teacher, and when I first spoke to him, the passion about his subject truly led me to believe this guy was a lifer, an absolute lifer. But 2014 to 2019, Jonny wasn't a lifer. There is a story and a journey that we will weave through with Jonny to find out why he quit a profession he loved in 2019.

But in the meantime, please let me welcome him today. Jonny Millard, what are you doing now? Yes, I am the founder and the managing director of UK Fire Door Training. Wow, wow, wow. 

OK, Jonny. Your time as a teacher, can you take us back to the period and the circumstances surrounding your exit from a job you clearly, clearly loved? Indeed. So there was a lot of things that led up to this.

But I think if I give the final reason as to why I left the profession, it probably doesn't paint me in the greatest of light to begin with, but I think as we go through the podcast, you'll start to realise more and more and more that ultimately what happened was a good thing and a good thing for me. But I, in the spring of 2019, was involved in an incident in which we all used laptops at the school, so we didn't have fixed computers. We all had laptops that we moved around the school.

And what this required was us to put auxiliary cables into the laptop, lesson to lesson to lesson. Of course, these go through wear and tear. The one in my classroom was, let's say, had degraded and would sort of slip and had to be in a very specific position. 

And if it wasn't, it made a very loud grinding noise. And I'd brought this up with the school many times. I need a new auxiliary cable. 

Can I please have a new auxiliary cable? And I just never got one. And one day, when I probably wasn't in the greatest of frame of mind, it made its typical very loud grinding noise. I was with some Year 7s or Year 8s, and most certainly it was Key Stage 3. The volume in the room has gone up all the decibels.

You can imagine what Key Stage 3 children are like. They're all screaming, hands on ears. You've lost the classroom. 

And I pulled the cable out the wall with such force that it threw from the wall behind my body and either did or very nearly did come in contact with a pupil. Now, what actually happened immediately after the incident was I said to the pupil, Are you okay? Did that hit you? I asked the other pupils on his table. I know that it was sort of a square table. 

There was three other pupils on that table with this youngster. And the reaction was very much like, No, no, no, it's fine. It's okay. 

Don't worry. It's okay. It's fine. 

Not a problem. And I remember feeling very sort of worried that this is a serious incident or very nearly a very serious incident. And to cut a bit of a long story short, but the child basically said, No, he was fine. 

And I thought that was a close one. You really dodged a bullet there. And I chose not to report it because I felt that, well, the incident was resolved within the classroom. 

We've all agreed. Nothing happened. It's unambiguous as to whether or not it even hit him.

And we moved on. Now, around about, I'd say about four to five weeks later, I tell this particular pupil off in an unrelated incident for talking over me or back chatting me or whatever. And he then chose to go home to his parents and say, Well, Mr. Millard told me off today. 

You're not going to believe what he did to me four or five weeks ago. So then his parents brought up this incident with the school. And the school decided to then carry out a disciplinary investigation into me, my conduct and various other things that they were claiming about me and my character.

And in the context, as I'm sure this will come out as we talk, I already wanted to leave the academy. I already wanted to leave this particular school. And unfortunately, there were things going on that they were making it very difficult for me to leave.

And had the result of this investigation being a final warning, that would have stayed on my record for two years. I already felt like a prisoner. And then that would have been like extending my sentence and making me feel even more trapped.

And it got to the point where I just said, I'd be better off leaving this school on my own terms and owning the story and owning the end of all of this. So I was a member of a trade union and I'd only joined it that year because there were certain things going on that I felt I need some protection here. Because I'm being honest, trade unions was not something I ever really felt.

There were strikes and I think 2016, 2017, I wasn't on them. I wasn't a member of a union. So all of a sudden I'm joining a trade union and they said, what do you want? What do you want out of this? And I just said, I want to leave.

I want to leave this academy. I want to go and make a new start somewhere else and rebuild my career. And that's essentially what I got out of it was, there was no finality to this investigation.

I wasn't given any warning and I was able to leave the academy in the June of 2019. And then my plan was to go and have a fresh start elsewhere. Wow. 

So much, so much, so much, so much yet to come. Because we'll talk about the vulnerability of teachers in the classroom in a moment, Jonny. But I listened to the semantic field that sat behind your story.

You said, I felt like a prisoner. I felt trapped. It was difficult. 

I needed protection. Now if you're hearing that, they're not the words you associate with somebody who's working in a healthy school. That's not what you get the feeling of where you were. 

You were cornered. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. I spend a long time talking to members in the Life After Teaching group where something has happened.

And this is the vulnerability, in my opinion. I don't know whether you'll agree with me, Sarah or Jonny. There's very few institutions and organisations where the judge, the jury, the prosecutor and the executor are all the same person.

What happened to you wasn't outsourced externally to be investigated. It was investigated by all of those players. So you're absolutely right.

That level of vulnerability, it's like a kangaroo court sometimes. And if there is a black mark against you already, you don't have to be a genius to work out that you don't really have a sporting chance in this situation. Had you have been golden boy at the time, that would have been the old style quiet word in the head teacher's office.

Jonny, if this happens again, pal, we are not going to look at this favourably. Now, go and get back on with. Schools have got the power to decide the extremity with which they deal with a situation of this nature.

But you talked about the fact that there were things going on that you didn't even feel you were in a position to leave because you were trapped. Jonny, frame that story for us in the circumstances under which you were working, the line management system, the relationships you were having with your colleagues at the time that made you feel even more vulnerable with the laptop incident. Well, honestly, this might take me some time.

And honestly, if you feel the need to genuinely say, let's just get around this bit, Jonny, feel free to do so. But I feel if I can get the full context of the story out, it will all make a lot of sense. And Jonny, I can feel a two parter coming up. 

Godfather one, Godfather two. So, honestly, tell us the story. Tell us your circumstances.

Because the purpose of the Pit Pony podcast is you have no idea the resonation that what you are saying right now will have with so many people. The bit you're about to talk us through again. These are resources for teachers who are in your position right now.

So let's get the kettle on, Sarah. Let's sit back to Jackanory with Jonny Millard. Jonny, take all the time you need.

OK, so in my second year of teaching, because I did school direct, I always considered that to be my first year of teaching. So my NQT year, I always considered to be my second year of teaching, which I know a lot of teachers kind of consider their NQT year to be their first. So if I say my second year of teaching, which was my second school, was fantastic. 

I had a great boss. I made it very clear that I had ambition within teaching. I made no bones about the fact that I wanted to be a head teacher one day.

And it was always a case of I've always considered myself a leader. I've always considered myself somebody who has vision and drive. So I genuinely sometimes struggle with small tasks because I like getting into the big tasks and the vision side of things and driving something forward and being a focal point.

And that's the kind of thing that I really enjoy. And at the second school, I really felt like I've got a great boss. He was a few years older than me, probably about 10 years older than me. 

At the time, I would have been about 24. He would have been about 34, 35. I looked up to him, very supportive. 

And we had a great relationship. We had a good department. And I want to set this in the context of, and I know a lot of teachers will really resonate with this, the socioeconomic background of the school was challenging.

It was around about 99.9% Muslim, but that was split 50% Bengali, 50% Pakistani. There was a tradition on the last day of the school year for them to go and have a fight. And every week there was something going on in the local area where they'd been either.

This is in Birmingham. And there was obviously, there was gang violence and various sort of things in the community. And the school was also a community center. 

And it had this kind of, it was a focal point of positivity within the local community. And whilst the behavior was challenging, I liked my head of history. I liked my head of department and I liked the SLT team.

And I liked the head teacher. And in hindsight, I should have stayed there in hindsight. What happened was it got to the end of that year, towards the end of that, that first year, let's call it May.

Sorry, not May, March, April. And as all teachers will know, you need a job for the next year. And 31st of May is generally the cutoff point for you to go and get a role for the next year.

In this particular school, it had been mentioned to me and another colleague who was also an NQT. Unfortunately, only one of you will be here next year and we will be holding interviews. Now, this was mentioned in the February. 

And we got to the March and nothing happened. And then we got to Easter and nothing happened. It always felt like, don't worry, it's next week.

It's next week. These interviews are next week. And unfortunately, these got to sort of April.

And I thought, I need to kind of force the hand of the school here. I need to make it clear that if I don't have a role here next year, then I need to go and find a role elsewhere. So I did go looking for other jobs and I applied to a particular school.

I'll narrow it down to the Borough of Sandwell. That's as far as I'll probably narrow it down to. And I found this school and it was a history teacher role.

And it's, I think at the time, it's Ofsted rating was good. The general gist of what I could see online was it was a similar kind of school, probably a greater mix of pupils. I remember the split was very much sort of 20 percent black, 40 percent white and probably another 40 percent Asian.

But even that Asian was split Pakistani and Indian. It was much more sort of a melting pot of a school. And I went to the interview and I got the job. 

They offered me the job. Now, I went back to this school in Birmingham and said, I've accepted a role elsewhere. And this is, again, another regret of mine was they said to me, but Jonny, we really like you.

We want you to stay. Is there anything we can do? There's a TLR position coming up for the head of one of the year groups. Would that not tempt you? And when I was going through my school direct time, we had this talk one day about professional integrity and making sure that you do things that may not be good for you in the short term, but will be better for you in the long term. 

And it was said to us, you know, if you accept a job at a school, you go to that school. If you told them you're going to be there in September, you go there in September. And I felt this weight of professional integrity. 

And I said to the school in Birmingham, look, I've said I'm going to be at this new school in September and that's where I'm going to be in September. Really, what I should have done is just gone, TLR position, eight grand pay rise. Yeah, I'll take that. 

That sounds good to me. I'll give them a call and move on. And it's interesting there, Jonny, because I don't know if this is true or not, Sarah, you might be able to help me on this because you're more compliance and rules.

I always thought, and I'm going back, Jonny, 30 years when they told me this. That if you accepted a job at a school and then rescinded, which is exactly what Jonny was talking about, there was a blacklist and you would never get a job again because you'd messed a school around. You'd accepted the position verbally and therefore you were legally bound to take that position. 

Sarah, is that actually true? Strictly speaking, a verbal contract is a legal contract, but proving it is a very different thing. And the thing about the blacklist, I think, is urban myth, but it's founded on reality because certainly it was when you and I, Sharon, because we're old hands. When we were in the profession, we used to have head teacher meetings in local authorities. 

There was Cash in Cheshire and there was Bash in Bury. Do you know what it was in Liverpool? On the Larch. On the Larch.

On the Larch. But those head teachers did, when everything was local authority schools, those head teachers did meet and did talk. And so if somebody was applying to schools in local authorities, there did tend to be a bit of a culture.

And it worked positively as well that if somebody didn't get a job at a school, but another school was looking, a head would recommend the second person from an interview round, so I've got a really good candidate. So it did exist. I don't know whether it does to the same extent today as of academies, but the thing about a verbal contract technically is correct.

But whether anybody would pursue it is another question. And what could they do to punish you? But it's interesting because Jonny did something there because he lent into his integrity, his honesty, his decency. Sarah, I want you to make a little note of that because it's going to be peak irony. 

The fact that he did the decent thing to go to this school is going to become peak irony a bit. I have written it down. Peak irony. 

He did the right thing. He was honest. So, Jonny, you make that decision. 

In hindsight, you probably regretted it because of what you had to then go through at the school you agreed to go to. You don't regret it long term now because I know what your world looks like. But you then say, no, I'm doing the right thing. 

I have shook the guy's hand. I am going to now go to my, technically my second school. How did that work out? Yeah, so actually, in my head, I always think of this as my third school. 

And so just so that I've got, when I say second school, third school, it all sort of ties up. So I leave the second school and move to the third school. And this would have been the September of 2016.

And in the interview, you get the typical kind of questions, where do you see your career in five years? And I know that the answer you're supposed to give is, I want to become the best teacher that I can possibly be and grow my skills and all of these things. And I gave that answer. But then I sort of followed up with, but I make no bones about the fact that I want to move here because I see my career progressing here.

I want to pick up management skills. I want to take on TLR positions. I want to become an integral part of this academy, whereby I become a head of year or a head of history or eventually on SLT and really grow my career as a fantastic teacher.

And of course, the response that I got was, we'll support you 100% of the way. And again, naivety. You've got to remember, I'm in my early 20s here, mid 20s rather.

And I think as you sort of get older, you start to realise, oh, I'll believe it when I see it. But at 25, you believe when somebody says to you, we'll support you 100% of the way. You take that as fact. 

Now, what happened immediately after the interview, I was called that evening to say, congratulations, you've got the position if you wish to take it. But I've got some news for you. And I want you to be straight with me because I'm going to be straight with you.

We just had an Ofsted report. We're going into special measures. I am not the full time head teacher at this school.

I am on a temporary basis. I've been brought in by the Academy Trust. The last head teacher has left.

And it was all to do with a safeguarding incident at that particular academy. And my response, so of course, they're going into special measures. And naturally, that will mean there's going to be an Ofsted inspection in my first year. 

Again, like I say, my response was very much, thank you for being honest with me. I like the challenge. And I'll be, because again, from an opportunity point of view, I thought there'll be a lot of moving and shaking at this school.

There's going to be opportunities, people moving, you'll get, positions will come up that you'll be able to take on. And, you know, I ended up going to this academy. And in the first year, there was a head of history who I really liked.

He was quite quiet, meek and mild. He was very professional. He wasn't afraid to say when he wasn't happy with something, but he did it in this very sort of mild mannered voice.

And he dressed very sort of, he was a snappy dresser. You could trust him. He was an excellent teacher.

His understanding of pedagogy and lesson structures and not being too heavy on these starters and all this kind of stuff. He just got the balance about right. And I liked him. 

And I felt that I could learn a lot about teaching from him. And I felt that I was, he was supportive in terms of my, cause I knew how to do behavior. Behavior was my, I was an expert at behavior management, pedagogy.

And perhaps the more sort of assessment side of things is where I can improve. And he was really good at that. And I thought, well, now you can sort of really tie up the parts of your career.

But by the end of the first half term, he came up to me and said, look, just to let you know, I've accepted a role at another school. And I'll just set this back in the context of, I've already pointed out on my interview that I'm somebody who's got ambition and wants to take on managerial positions. Very, very quickly, it became quite clear to me that what was, I was told in my interview was a complete lie because the head teacher was a temporary head teacher and had now moved on.

The new head teacher had got no concept of any of this had never even met me. They had no idea of any of my ambition and they were brought into the academy to bring it out of special measures. So I was a very small part of their priority list. 

I was right at the bottom of their priority list. So my reasons for moving to this academy are already not in a great place. But what happened after, so this head of history left at Christmas of my first year, it was agreed within the department.

It was very strange because I remember the classrooms had got these huge glass windows on them down a corridor. So like a fishbowl, you could see into all the classrooms. I remember one day that there was the current head of history, another member of, and two other members of the history department.

Well, there was only four of us. And I thought, why are they all having a meeting without me? This is all a bit weird. I found it very bizarre. 

And then the next day or certainly that week, it was this colleague of yours who I'm not going to name, but this colleague of yours is going to be the new head of history. I found this person a bit odd. And I remember speaking to you a few weeks ago, Sharon. 

I mean, we were chalk and cheese. I'm five foot six. He was about six foot six. 

He walks at a pace that I would jog at. He has a tone of voice that is totally different to mine. Everything about us is different.

I love football. He doesn't like football. I love sport. 

He doesn't even like that much sport. It was just everything with polar opposites. We couldn't, we were never going to be friends.

The only thing we had in common was history. And I loved modern history and he sort of loved all the classics and the Tudors. I can take or leave, to be honest with you. 

It's World War One, World War Two, Cold War for me, you know, nuclear bombs. That's where my love of history really came in. And we just were never going to get along.

But it happened that he was going to become the new head of history. And the best thing for me to do here is sort of give you a very short version of what I'm about to tell you. His taking over the department led to a steady decline in my motivation, my mental health, until ultimately I was thoroughly depressed.

Thank you for listening to Jonny's story so far. And I'm sure like myself and Sarah, you found it utterly captivating. You'll find the next chapter available to you straight after this episode. 

And we hope to see you on the other side.