025 - Pit Pony Leanne Herring - Classroom to Voice Artist and Content Creator - PART 1

In the first part of this fantastic two-part episode, we introduce Leanne Herring, a passionate teacher whose love for education began as a six-year-old teaching her teddies. Spanning a decade-long teaching career across four schools, Leanne’s story unfolds with both moments of joy and deep challenges.

Leanne reflects on her first school, where creativity flourished and she thrived, only to move to a second school where a toxic "mean girl" culture took its toll. From being excluded in staffrooms to enduring relentless microaggressions, Leanne recounts the pivotal moment when a confidential grievance letter she submitted was dismissed – and later shared with colleagues behind her back.

Through her experiences at her final school – a new academy rife with micromanagement and extreme scrutiny – Leanne paints a vivid picture of her fight to maintain her integrity and creativity amidst an oppressive system.

This episode explores:

• The impact of toxic school cultures on mental and physical health.
• The importance of trusting your instincts when the red flags appear.
• How Leanne made the courageous decision to leave teaching for good.

Don’t forget to tune in for Part 2, where Leanne shares how she rebuilt her life and discovered joy in a new career.

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

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Pit Pony podcast with myself Sharon Cawley and me Sarah Dunwood in which we talk to teachers from all walks of life who exited the classroom from what they thought was a job for life and thrived on the other side of teaching. Coming up in this episode... So I did go down, the informal and the formal grievance procedure as well did all the right things, said to the trainee teachers do you mind if I take this to the head as evidence because I've been keeping a whole log of everything that's been happening through the year as well what's been happening to me. So I did, I had an informal chat with my line manager, with the head teacher, I even got a witness in from the upper part of the school who was wonderful, who actually said in my meeting with this head teacher it's happened before, they've done it to other people. 

So for her to actually support me and say that in the interview with my four-page letter I wrote documenting times, dates, how it made me feel, what it actually done to me physically, I lost weight, I had eczema, you know all the classic signs and pretty much a week later I found a letter in my pigeonhole saying the investigation's closed, we found no evidence of this, it's pretty much just all in your imagination, lack of communication, no further, nothing further will happen and that's when I knew I'm gone, I can't stay somewhere like this, the fight's gone. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another wonderful episode of the Pit Pony podcast. Today we've got Leanne Herring, this is a bell to Sarah, buckle in. 

Leanne did 10 years, exactly 10 years, 2010 to 2020 and this is what I loved about talking to Leanne beforehand because it really chimed with me because I've done it myself. There is a photograph of Leanne at the go, she's created her own classroom but this is, this is what's brilliant. She even does the work for the teddies, she marks their work and probably tells them off as well and sends a couple of them out so we can genuinely say born to teach and I love that because I did it, did it the same.

So from very, very early doors we've got Leanne, she wants to teach and she does four schools over those 10 years. Her first school, amazing, loves it, loves it, loves it and then she follows her heart to Essex to get married and changes schools and that's where her first cracks begin to appear. She moves again to a third school, Okidoki and her final school is a new academy with huge red flags waving within the first couple of days and by her own admission that is the school that made her leave the profession but when we were talking beforehand I was getting a sense of what was going on and she talked about a mean girl culture. 

She talked about cliques or cliques if you're from the north of England and piqued my attention massively with that topic in schools. But parking that to one side, welcome Leanne Herring and can you tell us now what it is you do since you've left the classroom? Oh, thank you for having me. So now I'm a professional voice artist, I'm a content creator and I'm currently growing my own phonics channel. 

Right, so straight away Sarah, no pressure, voice artists with our vowels. We've no chance have we but welcome Leanne, it's absolutely brilliant and I'd I want to start before we get into the wonderful life you've created for yourself. I want to go back to those four schools and if you could choose for us certain moments that that made you realise that what you were creating as a six-year-old wasn't actually translating into your adult life. 

Yeah, sure. So like you said, that's all I ever wanted to be. I've done other jobs. 

Before teaching I had another career but I used to always say to everyone I work with, I'm going to train to be a primary school teacher. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to train and I did and I had two very, very happy years. 

So the first experience I had, I had two experiences in my career which one of which affected me personally with how I was treated and second of which was how I was treated and finally I just couldn't do it anymore and I had to take a step back from the profession. So what I think did it for me was the almost I think normalised culture now and I call it the mean girl culture of, well let's call it what it is, targeted bullying of teachers who don't fit in, who like to question things, who push back and who don't feel comfortable conforming or doing what everyone else is doing if they don't feel it's right, who the face doesn't fit and you are to feel that way for the time you're there as well. So that was really my first experience of it and I'd never experienced it before so it was all new to me and so it wasn't a very nice year to go through. 

And am I right in thinking that it happened from the get-go, from day one you got out of your car and I mean you only have to listen to you, I should imagine you're bubbly, you like your puppets and your balloons and all that and you walked into the school car park on day one in that second school. What happened? Yeah it was day two, yeah it was day two and there was quite an obvious click in the school to be honest, dominant click as well, predominantly female teachers and on my second day I remember arriving in the car park and it was quite a big premises as well, it's quite a big walk to the school gates and two of the teachers in question got out the same time as me so I said good morning, I'm quite chatty and they just proceeded to walk in front of me and didn't bother turning back, bringing me into conversation, asking me how I was getting on, welcoming me in and I'd never experienced that before and I thought oh that's, this is a different school, this is not like my previous experience and it kind of went on like that, the isolation very clearly not fitting in and yeah I did feel quite targeted behaviour as well which did escalate throughout the academic year but that was one of my first little flags which said to me oh I don't know if I'm going to enjoy it here. I don't think it's unusual, I really don't and it can happen if a gang of TAs feel like that about a teacher, it can happen if the leadership team have got that kind of culture. 

What were the targeting, targeted incidents that were happening with you? Do you know it's quite funny like I was making notes before speaking to you guys and it was all just flooding back, lots of the different things that happened to me so some of the ones that still stand out, stand out to this day was I was ignored in social areas and it was a large school in a small town so lots of people grew up together, went to school together, knew each other, related to each other in some shape or form and I came in from a completely different place, completely different city and it was quite apparent I didn't fit in. So I'll give you one example, I was asked to direct the Christmas show because I had a background in children's theatre and it was the first day of rehearsals and they got out enough chairs for themselves but didn't get one for me so I had to sit outside with the kids the first day of rehearsals and also it was before sims and before everything was told to you on your phone and on apps so lots of things were in the staff room on the notice board and because I didn't eat in the staff room I felt uncomfortable, I either ate in my classroom or I ate with the kids in the in the canteen. They didn't tell me what was on the notice boards and one of them was my co-teacher so she worked literally in the classroom next to me and I remember one day her coming in and saying you've got to run our whole school assembly after lunch and I was like well I wasn't told that, when do I find out? It's on a list in the staff room knowing full well I don't go into the staff room, why? And she had to walk you know past my classroom every day, why didn't they come and tell me that? So that was another example of just just out to get me to throw me under a bus. 

What was actually the straw that broke the camel's back was they used to talk openly about me in the staff room at lunchtime which was overheard by trainee teachers and I was really friendly with the trainee teachers as well and the teaching assistants, it was just this this dominant group and they were saying things that were quite quite personal, that were quite judgmental, that were quite detrimental to me as well and I remember these young trainees sending me a message saying I'm really sorry this is what I've heard and I just thought enough's enough and this was probably around Christmas time and I put up with the little nitpicks all the way through and it got to Christmas and I thought I'm going to do something about this because this is not right, this is bullying, this is targeted bullying and this is isolating somebody so I did go down the informal and the formal grievance procedure as well did all the right things said to the trainee teachers do you mind if I take this to the head as evidence because I've been keeping a whole log of everything that's been happening through the year as well what's been happening to me so I did I had an informal chat with my line manager with the head teacher I even got a witness in from the upper part of the school who was wonderful who actually said in my meeting with this head teacher it's happened before they've done it to other people so for her to actually support me and say that in the interview with my four-page letter I wrote documenting times dates how it made me feel what it actually done to me physically I lost weight I had eczema you know all the classic signs and pretty much a week later I found a letter in my pigeonhole saying the investigation's closed we found no evidence of this it's pretty much just all in your imagination lack of communication no further nothing further will happen and that's when I knew I'm gone I can't stay somewhere like this the fight's gone oh let's just let's just press pause you are not segueing into the next part of this journey until I bring in Sarah just nearly collapsed off a chair okay right okay let let me start back with this we tell ourselves we don't fit in so straight away Sarah we put in the responsibility on ourselves we're doing something wrong because we don't fit in well I want to flip that you couldn't you weren't even allowed to join in now it's an interesting one because our Ellie moved from her school to a new sixth form so this is a kid starting a new school she was given a buddy there was a coffee morning welcoming all the new people she was introduced to key key people with it they bent over backwards to integrate that child into a school and they were brilliant but it seems to me that number one they did nothing to even welcome you to the school and in fact quite the opposite they made it impossible for you almost to stay Sarah come on I don't have words but where I have gone is I've gone back in my head to my previous schools all by the last the last few years and I'm actually stood in those staff rooms in my head and thinking about how staff were with with a new face who came into the room whether it was a supply teacher um whether it was a new member of staff and regardless of whether they'd been introduced or if anybody knew who they were people said hello it's a basic common human courtesy for crying out loud so just even on that really base human level what sort of person doesn't say hello to somebody particularly when they've been said hello to that's that's champion level so aside from that the the human element it's the I mean it is music to my ears that you kept a log of absolutely everything because because when you give one or two examples and we've talked about this on a on a previous podcast with with it with another guest when you when you give one or two examples they sound really low level and it was when we were talking to um johnny millard before christmas but when you tally them all up they're microaggressions and and and they become a big thing and adjust that and then to go with that level of evidence she took a witness in who said this has happened before and the bloody trainee teachers had the guts to say yep put our names forward i know and that's what i was about to say is for them to have that investigation in inverted commas closed after a week with that mountain of evidence and you know what i'm like about evidence that that's immoral that's immoral but i think what happens and you might agree with me liam we talk about what kind of a person when you've got a mean girl culture and you've got a clique you can't tar them all with the same brush because what there will be there will be what did they used to call them like in prisons top dogs top dogs ring leader a ring lead i'm thinking be out of prison a cell block h that's exactly where i went to right so very quickly in order to fit in you have to make a choice you either have to start to be sycophantic around the top dogs and the inner circle because you can see what's happening and if you're not strong enough you go well i might as well align myself with that cultural group because if i don't i'm going to be i'm good so it's there was possibly say there was five of them there's possibly two main players and three little underlings who were too frightened to do anything about it but knew they were in the wrong does that chime with you liam what i've just said there yeah absolutely it really does do you know what this will probably just make you fall off your chair again so when i first had my informal chat with my line manager what was going on and how i felt i actually took it upon myself because i thought maybe it's me maybe i'm not doing so maybe i'm not making enough of an effort i actually went in to the particular ring leader's classroom and said look i i think we might have got off the wrong foot i'd really love to start again like you know and have a chat and stuff and sit together at lunchtime because i don't think we're you know we're really gelling at the moment and she sort of looked up and went oh okay nothing changed nothing changed um so i thought i've tried that and then just to rub salt in the wounds as well after this whole thing happened it was a year later and i was at a new year's party it was in a pub i saw one of them at the pub and straight away oh my heart was going i was sweating and she came up to me and she said you do know we all saw that letter don't you and what you did was really shady and i think i had a few choice words then i walked off burst into tears left and then i thought that was a four-page confidential letter to the head teacher why was that shared with all of you after i left right wow so that was another and you know and by that point i was so broken at that point i just didn't want to take it any further i thought they're away from me now yeah so let me get this right it wasn't the kids i had a lovely class it wasn't the workload it wasn't parents who can be challenging when they want to be these were your colleagues who had made the decision before you'd even set foot in this school so it wasn't a breakdown of relationships it wasn't that you don't you didn't even have a sporting chance before you even got through the door no oh one more thing guess who took over my job one of their friends that was a trainee teacher there at the time and we we've we've touched on this in other episodes this yeah this feeling of nepotism especially when the head teacher i don't want you to go into too much detail and i'm quite happy for you to be vague do you think the head teacher was strong or do you think the head teacher could not have taken on the mean girl culture herself or himself not at all uh left pretty much not long after i did so yeah not not strong enough in the slightest so basically the tail was wagging the dog in that school with personalities very much so and i don't think that is uncommon and i think what is incredibly disheartening is for you to do all that with that weight of evidence and then feel so trapped within an environment where you have got employment law protecting you sarah had liam not has been as frightened as she was because when you are being bullied or when you are being intimidated or you feel isolated it takes a great deal of strength to do what she did in the first place probably living in hope it would be sorted and then it didn't get sorted the average person would just go right i'm going what could she have done if she'd have wanted to pursue that further three things for me and one of them i'm going to draw the parallel with what we do with children for for a starting point even if even if the head teacher has decided there's no evidence the very least i would want to do is is pull the parties together to do some sort of i don't want to use the phrase restorative justice but some sort of mediation and dispute resolution because there's something there there's something wrong so bring the parties together and at least try and work out if that doesn't work realistically this appeal to the to the to the outcome of the of the initial investigation and make it formal union support or whistleblow to governors or see depending whether it was a matter or not but whistleblowing or or taking it formal but it just we would not do that with kids so why do we allow it with adults it's not it's not uncommon liam it's and you know what nine times out of ten whenever there is a situation like this it is seated in the huge insecurities of the top dog the jealousy that they perceive i can imagine you bouncing out of that car in that on day two and absolutely being a huge red flag to the imposter i bet you ticked every smiley bubbly young and and that would have been right you are the biggest threat that is walking through this door now it's easy to look back and be philosophical about that but the time being what we do is we internalize it and we use expressions like my face didn't fit i don't fit in it's not good enough it's not your job to fit in it is the responsibility of the workplace to integrate you into the to induct you and to welcome you that's their responsibility so how long did you stay at that school just the year the one year do you know what i did though because i knew by christmas when the trainees told me that and i'd started filing agreements i actually um reached out to funnily enough the lovely school i went to next because i'd previously interviewed there and got down to the final two and was picked to the post and i was gutted because it was such a lovely place and i just on a whim emailed them over christmas and said if there's anything in september i would love to re-interview with you i really liked your school and someone must have been smiling at me on down on me that day because the literally two days later they invited me in for an informal chat and offered me a position for that september and said you don't have to re-interview we loved you we were gutted we couldn't give you something but now something's come up so i knew i was going to get out so christmas it made a little bit more bearable knowing i was just there for the year and i thought i just need to see out the year just need to see out the year as well did you witness these this clique culture do this to anybody else were you watching or was it just you was was it your turn it was just me it was just me from what i could witness but i kept myself to myself i didn't really go out of my classroom um but obviously when i had my witness come in who was from a completely different part of the school she actually said to me this has happened before so i didn't really ask questions i didn't want to delve into it but i don't think i was the first but i was the only one that i saw it happening to that year wowzers so you do a year and the little girl who's lined her teddies up is told by her parents that primary school teachers running through you like blackpool rock you go okay that's clearly that's clearly a one-off that that's absolutely not how it's going to be i'm going to go to my third lovely lovely village school where i stay for five years and i'm assuming they were typically okay great five years in a school yeah yeah absolutely they built my confidence back up they were lovely they embraced me for the creative teacher i was you know they allowed me to to to use my expertise and my experience as a teacher they knew i loved drama and puppets and thinking outside the box and they really embraced it so it really built me up and and like i said i had very many happy years there so it got to the point where i i was thinking oh i'm ready for the next step i'm ready to move on i'm ready to go to slt i'm ready to take promotion i'm ready to go you know further my career so they were kind of they helped me they helped help me build me until the next day and that's and that's beautiful because that goes to something that sarah and i talk about we're not talking about every school we're not talking about every slt every head teacher there are pockets of brilliance going on sadly life after teaching the pit pony is an echo chamber for these experiences there are other people who could come on and talk about 40 years of the best years of their life in teaching and hearing that that third school experience always fills me with with joy so what i'm going to now say to you are you ready sarah this is this is your foreshadowing you'll see my setup now so basically you are creative quite a unique in your approach you like to do things your way your experience you get the best out of the kids so the last thing maybe is to be told how to teach and given your powerpoints and micromanaged so here we go how did it work out for you at the new academy your previous guests have said this as well and it's it's quite funny so when i go for an interview for a teaching job i showcase what i'm good at i you know they know what they're going to get they know i all the bells and whistles they know how creative and they know i think outside of the box so i don't understand why they take you on and then say no stop you can't do that get in a box stay in your lane how dare you try and veer from the plan so i've never understood why schools do that so that was the experience i had when i interviewed there but the funny thing is and i always say to people always trust your gut instinct there's you know you have an intuition for a reason and even from my initial walk around i had a gut feeling this wasn't the place for me but i persevered because i thought i'm doing the right thing it's the next this is promotion you know they're building a team up i can move on to slt i can do the next steps in my career just ignored it just you know don't listen to it and of course i started and within a week again echoing what previous guests have said i knew i wasn't going to stay there no what what happened in that first week what were how can it happen in a week yeah it was an interesting situation again because i can't stand bullies and i am a big believer and if you don't think something's right question it or push back or ask so i was one of that they had a few people there already a few teachers there already um who did you know conform and they did as they were told and then i came along and i was like hang on why are you doing that why is that working so just an example of it um when we started my my ta started with me the same um the same day and she's still a very dear friend to me to this day years later and she was told she was contracted to come in at half eight every day and she was told to empty and fill up the water bottles of 31 children in your class every single morning so i only had a ta for 15 minutes before the kids came in and i thought well how am i going to do a handover how am i going to work with my ta how am i going to you know how are we going to do anything when she's filling up 31 water bottles every morning nobody liked doing it all the staff there thought it was a waste of time but no one dared say anything so i went along and said hang on why don't we just send them home get the kids parents to wash them and fill them up and then the ta's can be used more productively in the classroom and you know you know help you you can do a handover you can tell them what's going on and reluctantly the head teacher at the time agreed then my card was marked and i even had people that were there before me saying so glad you said something because we hate doing that you didn't even say anything then why have you just let this happen so that was my uh i think that was uh yeah my card was marked from that moment so we again we use expressions like face doesn't fit i'm not fitting in my card was marked yeah really tell me you probably thought you'd scored a victory in the face of lunacy where actually if they'd done a costing out of the wages it was taking to fill up water bottles you're probably talking thousands a year card was marked taught me taught me round what you mean by oh okay i haven't had a victory at all yeah what happened then this is a bit of the usual story so lots of things lots it was incredibly micromanaged so lots of things started so for example constant drop-ins and also we were told the cea's cut the ceo is coming today so you know you need to have uh outstanding lessons ready the classroom needs to be perfect so this one week every day um he's coming he's coming never turned up never actually came so she was almost as if to say right i want you to to make sure you're everything's perfect and you're working extra hard every day but no one is coming to see you then it was the book looks as well so it was taking all my books in so this was a few weeks in and bearing in mind the kids there were five they'd never had a formal book before they never sat down at a table they were expected to stick everything in all the worksheets in so of course they're a bit skew with and they're a bit all over the place and um she came in and she threw them on the floor and said they were disgusting i wouldn't show anybody these books i'm embarrassed i'm gonna bin them all and order a whole new batch and i said well they're five they're not gonna know how to stick something in perfectly well that's your job now so then i had to do every single worksheet every single piece of work for every day so the books look perfect and every week we would get an email with a list of everything that was wrong with our books what we had to change bearing in mind she used to move the goal posts every week as well with different marking regulations different ways she wanted things done different things she was focusing on so you were pulled up every single week there were constant drop-ins we were told we were going to have casual drop-in observations to see how we were getting on they were formal ones with clipboards where they stayed the whole lesson and then i remember feedback i got i got once where they said to me you were doing a different thing at a different time to the classroom next door why was that that's not on the plan you should be following the scheme of work that we've ordered for this school and then another incident was why wasn't your ta there at this exact time it said in your planning and i said because one of the children my class had an accident and obviously my ta was was sorting them out it wasn't on the plan i didn't i didn't plan for that to happen so it was it was deliberately finding things um you know to beat me into submission to kind of like break me we were filmed in the playground we were told you're not allowed breaks you have to do every break duty i don't pay you for breaks so both you and your ta had playground duties which there's a camera on us and we were given designated areas to to look after on the playground and if you you vid from that area or you dared to talk to somebody passive aggressive email would pop in your inbox straight after um oh my goodness i could go on honestly i remember when i left writing down a whole list of things that happened because i knew in years to come no one would ever believe me of these things that actually happened didn't you have something like the level of detail of feedback for your marking oh yeah yeah if a child did you not used a full stop on one page but used it tell me about this full stop feedback that you had at one point that was it that was that was out to get me so that was basically they had a very rigorous well again it was made up by her the week before so we had to go through every single book um and make sure every child had spelling punctuation and grammar also the objective of the lesson as well at the same time and then follow up on every page so for example i had a student that say for example the target was to use a full stop gave that target then they use a full stop excellent five pages later writing a beautiful story the objective was to write a story but missed out a full stop so i was penalized how come this wasn't that the child didn't learn how to use a full stop obviously they weren't taking their steps seriously you need to go back and consolidate why can't i see that in your book and it was just ridiculous amount of scrutiny which was unfair okay apart from the office question who the bloody hell has the time who has the time to be doing that if you're not monitoring in the big cctv headquarters of the staff room tracking where staff are on a camera how have you got the time to double and triple mark all the people's books to be right lady dunwood just jump in with this level of we thought water bottles were nuts but christ alive i'm i'm trying to keep all my swear words in well i have to do might might have to do some bleeping here we might have to put an e in brackets where as adults we're externally audited three times a year or we have been for the last 43 years at no point have i had feedback from from our auditors or anything like that about a missing piece of punctuation in a formal document that's not how the real world works now i know we have to teach kids these things so they can function but for goodness sake none of us are perfect all of the time and i'd love to see some of that head teacher's work because i bet it wasn't anyway all i've written i've written one word tyrant it's the behavior of a of a despotic tyrant now i'm going to ask about this because you know when i asked julianne about to look at the psychology that was sitting behind the clink i'm going to ask you to do the same with what was going on do you think that the head teacher was the tyrant or do you think the head teacher was the gerbils so frightened of the ceo that that's that's why it was happening do you think that head teacher was probably as straight-jacketed as you or do you think she was just off a rocker i think it was a controlling element and the fact that i dared to question her she used that to actually get back at me i think that's what i think it was to a certain extent personal as well but we didn't see any other evidence from the academy or the ceo to tell us the things the head teacher was getting us to do so i think it was very much a controlling issue i agree because you told me at one point not only was liam and the ta sticking in every single piece of work but at one point you you weren't guillotining it perfectly enough were you yeah that was another observation that was yeah that was the day before i handed my notes in um that was another observation so um again i had gorgeous kids i pride myself on having such lovely relationships for kids and parents great lesson we had they were so engaged having fun learning and my feedback was i hadn't trimmed my worksheets small enough you're gonna love this you're gonna love this sarah so when you went back in to to challenge that because you went to the ofsted framework didn't you when you went back in to challenge it tell us what you did so this was um i mean there's a whole other story building up to handing my notice in so i knew i was leaving um long before i i physically handed my notes in so i had it in my pocket for that perfect moment and i just thought oh this is my moment this is my moment so that night after i had that ridiculous um and i think she gave me like quite a bad grading as well considering i've been through three offsteads and been graded outstanding in two of them and good without standing in the third and um printed out the offstead offstead grading guidelines of outstanding teaching and examples of it and i went in and she she had asked for a meeting with me to discuss my attitude at this point the day after this observation so i printed it all out and thought right i'm ready for you so i walked in put that on her p put that on her desk and said right this is exactly what offstead consider to be an outstanding teacher this this and this was evident in my lesson nowhere does it say i need to trim worksheets in able to be to to be able to be an outstanding teacher um i don't agree with your feedback i do think you're actually squashing creativity of your teachers i think you want me to be a certain type of teacher which i can't be and you know i'm not because you interviewed me and you know exactly what style i have it's very clear that i'm not going to fit in here this is not the school for me you know this is my resignation please tell me that you'd precisely trimmed that letter of resignation i wouldn't have done i'd have had it wonky i'd have double mounted it and laminated it that's brilliant that would have been oh i wish i did that i wish i did that i would have been the cherry on the top wouldn't it uh yeah i handed my notes in a lot earlier so i was supposed to do it easter i think i did it i did it just before the first lockdown um because i thought this is my ideal moment and she knows i'm not putting up and i said it's clear you're not going to change this you want a certain type of teacher at this school which i am not so i'm going to go in between us talking and then this recording you said they've come flooding back to you and we're going to talk about and we're going to talk about in a bit what you've moved on to in the life you've built for yourself now can you actually believe it was happening when you were writing those things down i've got to show you i know obviously it's a podcast so you can't see but i'll just show you now so the day i left i went to a pub garden with my husband and had quite a few wines and i wrote down you could probably see a little bit like a whole list on my phone it just goes on and on and on and on and on on on and on it's like an essay of everything that had happened to me before i went because i thought you'll never believe me leave me things all the examples i have of this happening can you see why it's so powerful that even 22 23 24 25 episodes into a podcast of this nature that some of the most horrendous things are happening the way we've talked about it we've been laughing about cameras on the playground we we're not laughing but but it's that ridiculous that the the only human response we can do we've had episodes and whether people have listened to them we've had parents of disabled children having to teach about the holocaust and the euthanization of disabled children we really do need to just sit for a while and go what we just heard we've heard about this this level of control of somebody who went in with puppets and balloons and to have those books handed how were you feeling every time an email pinged or the door opened oh the anxiety was tremendous yeah it was it was even think i mean it was many years ago now but thinking back it really does trigger that anxiety again of how you felt and you do question because obviously i had the two incidents in my career where i think is it me and it's ridiculous to think that but you do go through it and you think can i just not do this am i just not supposed to be how how i am am i not supposed to be this way you know is it is it me and you do question things and you do kind of it does trigger you even certain things now when you you think back it does trigger you what you went through and you do think is oh i must have been very resilient as well to go through that and persevere and and have a little bit of fight in me i think that's a trauma response you just fight fight fight fight until you can't take any more i mean you started teaching in 2010 sarah and i started teaching in the early 90s when they didn't have lesson observation schemes of work i think i was probably only about the national curriculum came in in 1988 and i started teaching in 94 there'd only been eight years of a national curriculum and to see it change over a period of decades in our lifetime into this behavior that nowhere does it say on the ofsted framework nowhere does it say probably in their policies and processes within the mart but this is the problem you opened your mouth about filling water bottles and she did that and in in the most toxic of situations you say why did they behave like that because i can because i can and wow sarah what are you thinking at this stage when you've listened now we've let the dust settle when you listen to some of the stuff she went through i was i was desperately trying to find the quote that i've that i used it was a it was a news article in schools week not so long ago and somebody who's quite significant and i it's really annoying me i can't remember his name but talked about how controlled teachers are now compared to so long ago and i and i reflect back on when i started in 95 and i've said this in in my own episode i wasn't observed for at least the first three or four years of my teaching career aside from one ofsted inspection and that was it and that was the ofsted when it was six months notice and and you got your grading sheet in a brown envelope it was very different and i just think i i'm i'm just trying to think from a practical and a philosophical point of view what happened what happened in the system for us to go the best way to nurture and educate kids is to be so controlling and so restrictive and and and i'll go to this there was a nasa study done a long time ago arthur moore talked about this with us at conference last year sharon and my coach talks about it that that if you test and he did this he tested 1600 children um in terms of their ability and aptitude and all the rest of it and at the age of five 96 of them sat at genius level in terms of problem solving and thinking skills and by the time you get to 16 years old that had dropped down below double figures because the school system eats away at the creativity and the problem solving and the thinking skills and and that's being accelerated now to my mind people will disagree there are plenty of people on twitter who think structure and and and standardized powerpoint slides and all the rest of it are the way to go but i wouldn't want it for my children and and grandchildren when they happen i think one of the one of the things that needs taken into consideration is this when i went to school um 1983 to 1990 saint aildred's roman catholic high school school newton willows built in set of results i got asked me was that school good outstanding satisfactory we didn't have a grade asked me how many kids in my year group got five a stars to see or got so many level that wasn't published we didn't know there's no ratings there's no rankings saint aildred's was a good school and selwyn jones that was the catholic school we didn't know which what schools were good my mum and dad didn't weren't able to go and find some data on that school that put a judgment in that was the local school and you sent your kids there as simple as that now somewhere along the line when i started teaching this was starting to emerge this is a good school an outstanding school and that i think started to rattle people in terms of parental choice where teachers chose to go and work what were their statistics and then and we started moving away from a stars to c because obviously certain high schools are going to get more a stars to see because the kids come in with getting and you know then we have panda data and that kind of thing i think that was one of the key c changes we publicly judged schools like they were on trick advisor and and we decided that data could put children into into little clusters of what they should achieve and and the irony is genuinely not lost on me that for 12 years of my career i was in charge of data and target setting and all the rest of it and i did it and i did it very well but it didn't sit well with me in terms of you know that feeling where you go this this isn't right you can't put yes you can put statistical analysis on and all the rest of it but we took i i referred to quite frequently the pink floyd video about fundamentally yeah you're turning kids into schools into sausage factories you want them all to be the same shape size consistency as they come out no just no data data is helpful to a point but when it becomes the be all and end all which is what i think has happened in the school system and it started with panda reports which i think was about 98 99 that that for me was the start of the rut well why that we're not achieving this level and i've seen the damage it's done to my own son and it's it's it's clearly damaged liam because by her own admission school plays creativity all of that stuff what i want to do liam is i want to take you to when you left that new academy you've handed in your notice it was beautiful if they did a six-part drama you know you could even play yourself darling i have no doubt so you do this wonderful crescendo where you hand in your letter of resignation on the back and believe me that is the fantasy of so many teachers you really really picked some boxes that 100 if we're going to be fantasy girls it's it and take that so glad i'll have my moment you didn't just walk out and never come back you went to the school social right she was still that frightened talk us through go non-negotiable they lost a few people at the end of that year as well that's a different story and we were all forced to go to this leaving leaving party where we were presented with a bouquet of flowers and uh uh and it was announced that i was leaving because i was going to pursue studies it's like when a politician's caught with his pants down he's leaving living to spend more time with his family you were going on to do his studies okay yeah and i remember the head teacher at the time as well she sat next to me and when we were all having like food and drink and stuff as well so i wouldn't be able to talk to anyone about what was going on and i remember going through those school gates when we could finally leave we had to stay for an hour like minimum and then leave and i just deleted every single whatsapp group every app everything connected all they saw was just leanne has exited leanne has left leanne has left and then did didn't you go enough your own unofficial leaving do with your husband we just went to the pub garden and it was it was a gorgeous summer that summer and yeah i just literally had a lovely old time celebrating properly that i had gone i'd escaped and i swore to my you know it's that very last day i pulled into the um car park i said to myself i will never pull into a car park and dread going to work again i'll never do that to myself again beautiful and what that's done nicely leanne that's brought us to the end of part one of this episode because i just think you've captured it so beautiful in the first part of this so stay with us and we're going to uh we're going to talk about your thrival pal we are going to talk about the next steps from when the hangover lifts the day after you leave and you um you emerge on the other side thank you so much for staying with us throughout another great episode and on behalf of myself sarah dunwood and all at the production team we appreciate your continued support if you wish to contact me directly for a support session or a clarity call for your next steps please find my link in the comments below see you soon