12 Matt Pitman Educator Reflection

Dr Matt Pitman's name has become synonymous with "connection" in Education. His books "The Connection Curriculum" and "The Connection Connundrum" and the "Digital Literacy Handbook: How to Think, Act and Stay Smart Online" are all available through Matt's website. 

Guests have frequently shared their appreciation of teachers who 'saw' them in some way, or spoke to them 'as people' or cared. In this episode Matt and I chat about what this means for teachers and possibilities for greater authentic connection between the people in our school rooms. No teachers are surprised that quality learning happens in the space of positive relationships. This might be articulated by various school based programs, but is the way we live it, rather than the posters on the wall that make the difference to our young people.

Transcript

SPEAKER_09 0:13

Was the thirteen years or so that you spent at school well spent? This is an educator episode. The second educator episode. After five guests, I'm chatting with another educator to reflect on the sorts of things that have come up from the guests. And the theme in this one is connection. The idea comes from Guy Claxton, who wonders if young adults would say it is 13 years well spent. I'm Susan Taylor, a teacher of Japanese and leader of languages. But this is not about me or any of the organizations I am, have been, or might in the future be associated with. And if you would like to share your story and are 18 to 30-ish, please email me 13 years well spent as one word with 13 as a word, not a number at gmail.com. Before we get into this episode, I would like to acknowledge the Ganai, Kernai, and Banerong people as the traditional owners of the unceded land where I live. I appreciate the knowledge and stories of all First Nations people and thank them. I would like to thank my partner, Gary, for much joy in our life and for the beautiful intro and outro music. And I am most grateful to the stars of this podcast, the fabulous guests who have been willing to share their experiences and thoughts with such depth and vulnerability. And not least, of course, to you, the listener, who's chosen to spend this time with us. And please do share it with others so we might all consider how these stories might mediate our thinking about school-based education. So let's listen to the conversation with Matt. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Matt Pittman. I hope you're starting to get used to the doctor in front of your name so far, Matt, because the last time I saw you, you were all new to that and feeling like, oh, whoa, is that me? So I first met you when you gave a keynote speaker at the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership, which they like to call the Academy. And it was at the end of the Teacher Impact Fellowship, which I had completed last year. So it was kind of the graduation day. It was called the Insight Summit. So, Matt, can you tell us a little bit more about who you are, what the doctorate was about? And I know you've got some books too. So give us a bit more background, please.

SPEAKER_04 2:54

Yeah, absolutely. So uh I'm a teacher. I've been a teacher and a school leader for I think this is 16 years. Um, and the majority of those have been very, very privileged to be in leadership, which is not something that I set out to do. And I and I wasn't aiming to be a teacher either until probably the start of year 12. Um that was it all happened very, very quickly, and now I've very much made it everything I do, and I'm here, I'm gonna talk about education out of hours, and so I seem to never really shut up about it now. So there was a big there's a big pivot. There's a big pivot, and now here we are, and I'm just obsessed with it. So yeah, about 16 years. Um I I did a gap year, and it was all about education after school, and then I went to university. Um I've worked in government schools and Catholic schools and an independent school, and I'm constantly trying to find different roles and different ways of challenging myself, I think, because um I think one of the things that I try and live by is keeping myself as curious as possible so that I'm at the front and I'm interested and I and I'm there to learn, so that's some of that hopefully fills the front rows of the room, and then that kind of flows back. Um, and I'm still in leadership positions where I'm in the classroom, which is really, really valuable. Um I've done some masters and things, and I've stayed at university um because I I clearly don't value downtime. Um I'm a dad, I've done my doctor of education, and that was focused on uh family school partnerships. So trying to connect our families who are very much on the outside of our schools, and I think we'd we probably would like to think we're very much connected with our families, but I think we rely on our students to probably do the heavy lifting there, and I don't think that it's their responsibility or that they're quite ready to be doing that heavy lifting. So as adults, we can do a little bit more, and uh families in all shapes and sizes are wanting to be a part of education, um, and schools seemingly want to do it, but there are things that block it. So I looked into some of the barriers and that all ended last year, and then we met at earlier in the year, and here we are.

SPEAKER_09 5:42

And here we are. You missed the books, so as part of your obsession, which doesn't stop, somehow it turned into three books. So give us a bit of a precy on the names, what's in each book?

SPEAKER_04 5:55

Um, so the first book I wrote is called The Connection Curriculum. Um, it's for I guess it's predominantly for maybe school leaders or teacher leaders. Um, and I guess it's about how to work connection into your planning as a community rather than just having it as a buzzword and having it as a you know, one of those things that's on the strategic plan because it's always nice to have connection on there that sounds nice and fluffy and and really fills out the page. And I'm sure the reviewers all go, yes, very nice. Um, it adds a bit of weight to it, it's has a framework to follow. It's very much aimed at how can we actually connect to this school and and give our community something that is worth connecting to as well, rather than just assuming that we're all connected and because the students are turning up or or they're not turning up, um, or the staff are uh are still coming to school or they're or they're deciding they're not anymore, or principals, or whatever it might be, because people seem to be here that we're all connected. Um, and so it's trying to, I guess, reframe connection from this assumption that we have to something that's very real and we've perhaps forgotten is a part of our biology and our psycho psychology as humans.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

Yeah, the second book is the connection conundrum, and so that was written um after some teachers said, Well, our leaders, we really like the first book, but our leaders are not really embracing it as much as we'd like. Um what can we do in the classroom? And I started doing some little posts and things on social media, and then um again, because I don't really sleep all that much, obviously. I just kept writing and writing, and it turned into another book with some of the offcuts from the first book. Um, and then just recently a little handbook as part of a larger series um with the publisher I work with Amber Press, which is um for high school age kids. So more in your seven, year seven to year ten students around digital literacy. So not a lot of you know, depth, but the things that they need to know that we're probably not covering in school about some of these tools that they're using and how to stay safe online rather than how not to use something. And so, yeah, some of these social smarts in this digital world where they're choosing to use, uh, that they're choosing to use to connect, um, which I would always advocate for person to person, but you and I are connecting digitally tonight. So yeah, yeah, it's a it's a viable means, it connects people, it's when used responsibly and ethically, and it's a it's a fabulous thing. So if the students are getting into it, I think they should know a few little things. So I I wrote um, you know, it's a hundred pages, it's written in in language that hopefully is accessible and something a bit different.

SPEAKER_09 9:13

Sounds amazing. After all of that, I want to take this in about six different directions all at the same time. And the um restraints of time and audio actually mean I need to pick one to start off. So I'm thinking I might pick one of the things that has motivated me to start this podcast, 13 Years Well Spent, is really about what is it that we're missing in school. So listening to the adults that have left school rather than the people that are in the school at the moment and tend to be already in the, you know how a fish doesn't know it's in water because you're immersed in the thing. So it's hard to get a perspective on what it is. And that's that's part of why I wanted to get that adult perspective and also the perspective of, okay, now I've lived in life for a little while and I've had to pick up some of the things that school maybe didn't give me. What was it that I would like to suggest that is more available in school? And I remember one of our guests, and I can't remember which one it is at the moment because they do tend to merge in my head sometimes, said they'd really like to understand a little bit more about scams and how um the digital the digital world makes us a lot more vulnerable towards scams. So I'm thinking that perhaps your book perhaps is beginning to plug that hole a little bit. What do you think?

SPEAKER_04 10:42

Yeah, potentially. I think it's um, you know, I think it all boils down to trust, which is very much a part of connection. You know, when you're sitting in a room with someone, it's you can connection, trust, safety, all of these things that are ingrained in there, you know, they're within us. They're things that we feel, you know, and there are there are little things that our body does to, you know, pick up the environment from things we hear, things we see, you know, things, you know, you can sense that something's not right. And you know, your hair stands up on end, and you don't get that from the digital world. So when you read something and you're in a certain frame of mind, you're vulnerable, you're looking for something to connect to, you've had, you know, you're 13, you're feeling isolated, you you read something, you're it turns off that part of your brain that says this is too good to be true.

SPEAKER_03 11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:47

And that's and that's why you know, and it's not just 13-year-olds, obviously. We're all vulnerable to it. That that the digital world doesn't have, you know, the the little signs that we give each other as people. You know, it's like when you walk down a dark path and you get that feeling like, well, I'm not sure I want to walk this way. Yeah, there's no dark path online. You don't go click on a website and go, hmm. Should I have clicked that? Like it's too late. You've already it's like you've already you've skipped the dark part of the path, you're already down the other end of the path. Do you know what I mean? It's so that's there's you're jumping ahead, and so the click has happened. You're not you don't have that thought process, you don't have that human moment of decision because you're you just click and you're done. And I think for you know the developing brain, and certainly I mean, it's I mean, I I'd assume this is why, and I'm I'm making assumptions, but I assume this is why it's quite risky, you know, for older people as well. You know, it's you know, there's that wanting to feel connection, wanting to feel trust, wanting to, you know, oh somebody's telling me that something's wrong with, you know, something that I need to communicate with family or that I need have been told I need to do my banking on, or whatever it might be. And I think we all just want to feel, even if we tell ourselves we don't, we all want to feel like we're a part of something. And if a message pops up at the right time and it says, hey, come on in, like sometimes that will get us. And unfortunately, technology can grow and it can improve and it can take us in incredible directions. But every time it takes a step in the right direction, it takes a step in the wrong direction as well. And for every innovation that improves something like education, there's somebody working in another end, you know, in a I guess you could imagine it's a darker part of wherever it is, who's working on something that can snatch up your credit card details, I suppose. Like, I guess, you know, that's that's the world. And I, you know, the the reality is in schools, I think there is a lot of the pastoral care and the well-being programs and the things that are, you know, on the surface, perhaps not contributing to the score that schools are chasing. They're the first things that are getting axed. So I think, yeah, like scams. I think one of um the the I say young people because I feel like when I listen, I go, oh man, I'm old. Um the younger people, like they're um, they said financial literacy, great one. Like every time I walk past, um my brain was never mathematics aligned. Um when I see complex algebra on a classroom, I just go, oh, get me out of here. Like I've I haven't used it. I know it's out there in the world, but thankfully, like somebody who can do the algebra or has written a fantastic program for me with the algebra, has sorted that out for me. Like, that's the world we live in. But financial, like I I'm quite happy to say that my lovely wife helps me manage our family budget, she's all over it.

SPEAKER_09 15:27

And okay, that's cool. So you would have appreciated some extra financial literacy in your schooling if you had got 100%.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

Yeah, I was listening to that and I was like, I'll take it now.

SPEAKER_09 15:38

Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's uh all sorts of podcasts, but then podcasts can be too much too. Which one do you listen to? But yeah, correct. Just in case you feel like getting some basics in financial literacy, my favorite is she's on the money, works for men just as well as for women. Um, it just goes over some of those basics. But yeah, nearly all of our guests have mentioned financial literacy tax and some and a lot of the other things that have come up are things like understanding the political system just at a basic level, so that when you do go and get that great big long Senate thing that you have to fill out to vote with, you understand why there are two pieces of paper, you understand why the Senate one's got such a great big long thing, um, all sorts of things. But that's not the main point for us today. The main point for us today is about connection. And I think that I'm a teacher who's a little bit not as far advanced as you're thinking about connection. I have tended to think as a teacher that the reason that I'm being paid, the reason that I'm being put in the room is to help the students learn. Well, it's almost a tautology, but I've always been chasing uh improvement of some variety. And I tend to look for growth of the individual rather than who's the best in the class, which I think is an advancement on just doing the numbers in terms of who's the best. But I don't think I've paid enough attention to the human beings in the room and how they are thinking and feeling and connecting to each other. So when I started to do this and started to listen to the guests talk back, I was really quite surprised by how much conversation they had to offer about connection. And I'm just going to go through it really quickly.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Please.

SPEAKER_09 17:37

I sent Matt was beautiful because he has listened to all of the podcasts, even the ones that aren't live yet until the one that he's going to be on, which is like hours and hours and hours of dedication. So shout out to you for that dedication. But here's a little bit of a praise. Bella in the first podcast said she didn't feel worthy and of all the teachers, and she noticed when teachers gave their time to others. And that message for her was she wasn't worthy. Grace talked about being noticed, even though she was quiet, and the teacher came to her and asked her about what was going on. So really came and investigated what was the background. They were able to have a conversation, and then her learning with that particular teacher just skyrocketed. Jonathan spoke about teachers who treated him as a person and spoke to him as if he was a real human being, not a child in the room that they had to uh manipulate into learning. Claire spoke about the teachers not caring unless the child was in the VCE stream and she clearly wasn't. So she really felt the lack of care from teachers generally. Liam talked about a couple of teachers who really, really did listen to him and particularly took him and maybe a small group aside so that the conversation wasn't in front of everybody, but really created an actual caring connection that helped steer him in his um life journey. Christian had a brilliant idea. Christian is an educator, as you know, and he was in the TIFF course with me. So he would have listened to your um keynote as well. He said, if you connected just with one child every week, and every teacher is capable of doing that, that's 40 children every single year. And if every teacher did that, our whole school would feel so much more connected. Then we have Rebecca who is telling about how she masked her feelings and therefore potentially teachers didn't know what her feelings were. She ended up being um disengaged, wasn't able to participate in a sporting event that she wanted to participate in because the teacher had assumed that it would make her feel bad and therefore had pushed her out of it. Best intentions, but it just wasn't the right thing to do. But then she was masking as well. So it's hard to have a connection with somebody who was masking. Jazz was explaining about how teachers don't always believe her when she was talking about her dyslexia. And she ended up having a panic attack because one of the teachers wasn't believing her. Lucy, it goes on and on. Matt's just sitting back and going, yeah, I know this. Lucy has this amazing story about primary school. I'm guessing it's a nap plan that she was doing and she didn't get to the end of it. Um, she was still doing it when everybody else had finished. She ended up drawing a duck on the page that said, don't draw anything on it. And the teacher went off at her and she felt terrible about that. So, you know, as teachers, we need to really be managing those emotions. But Naplan is also stressful for teachers. And we as teachers want to make sure that everything's right because there's consequences. So I've got sympathy for the teacher as well. Then we've got Soth who talks about the sports jocks in her community. She was in Denmark. And then the teacher who was reinforcing those um put down bullying type behaviors that the sports jocks were doing. Presumably, the teacher was thinking they were connecting in, being cool with them, but really missed the. Message and ended up compounding the problem of the bullying. So much about connection. What do you think?

SPEAKER_04 22:11

Yeah. Oh, look, I think it's I think the first thing that jumps out is it's really interesting to to speak. You know, this podcast is really reflective of great example today. Uh, you know, it's um a whole heap of students came back to our school today and they desperately wanted to come in the gate and we couldn't let them in because that's not how school works. Like you can't just turn up and come inside and be like, hey, and pop around the school and cause chaos. But former students, but they just wanted to talk about you know, classes and and what it was like, and none of the wanted to talk about curriculum or they wanted to, you know, like they they remember the human moments, and I think that's what a lot of the positive aspects of what all of your guests have spoken about. They've spoken about being seen, or they've spoken about being heard, or they've spoken about, you know, things that make them cringe a little bit or laugh or you know, or make them feel a bit uncomfortable. Like not all of those are positive things, but they're very human things. They remember when people built them up, they remember when people made them feel small, like these are the things that sit with us because those are the things that create, you know, memories that stick and then help inform our growth and inform how we would either like to replicate things for other people or ourselves, or how we'd like to avoid things. Most teachers I know are teachers because they had a great teacher themselves who inspired them, or they had a series of really poor teachers that then you know they wanted to avoid that and be the opposite. And I think a lot of your guests have kind of shared that same idea, not following the in particular that idea of teaching. But I think in one of the early episodes, one of your guests has basically been in school, like from kinda through to primary school to secondary through to university, and has barely stopped. And so then that's not just learning, that's not just curiosity, that's formal education. And so to think back and go, oh, some of my high school time or whatever it was wasn't very positive, but it clearly there's something there about education that still connects. There's it's you know, the human idea of grabbing onto something and learning and and chasing something down a rabbit hole, and there's something there. People don't do degrees to put a whole heap of things on their wall. Like you can do that, and you can get a nice big one and put it on your and frame it and tell everyone about it and put it on LinkedIn and off you go. And you don't need to get like a ton of them. Like, there are ones that will finish the job for you and make people think you're very important, you know what I mean? Like to be in continuous education and continuously learning, and then go, oh, school's all right.

SPEAKER_09 25:27

Like so, are you saying that there's something about learning itself that is a connection device?

SPEAKER_04 25:32

Yeah, of course, right? Like, I'd think, and this is but then this is the other thing that's missing. Like, are we do we especially in schools, do we actually encourage learning or are we just educating kids so that they can just regurgitate it?

SPEAKER_03 25:50

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:51

Are we actually are we actually encouraging learning because because a lot of your guests have reflected something that I you know truly believe, you know, that the kind of stuff that has you stuck in traffic on you know in Melbourne is notorious for its lovely, you know, straight, clear roads, no traffic, not um and people that can merge really efficiently.

SPEAKER_09 26:18

I moved to the country, I recommend it.

SPEAKER_04 26:20

Yeah, tell you what. Um, so like, but it had me cheering in the car, like when I was listening to some of the episodes. You know, it's because they talk about the things that they're that they are learning now, and the things that they pick up now, or the things that they've picked up since school, and they're talking about life skills, and you know, oh, I'm you know, I've learned all these things, and this is how it's valuable. And the things that were valuable at school were, you know, sometimes it is a bit of rejection. You learn how to deal with things not going well, or you learn some, you know, the shy kids learn how to deal with praise, or do you know what I mean? Like you learn to deal with other people, and sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn't go well. Sometimes you learn to be comforted if you live in a household where comfort isn't the norm, and sometimes where you're really sheltered at home, you learn that life's a little bit tougher when you go to school. Like you kind of get a little like a little gentle look at what the world is at school, and sometimes that's the learning. I think when we look at schools, specifically, you know, primary and secondary schools, we we put a lot of emphasis on you know what they're supposed to do, but they're just supposed to get us to a point and then have not destroyed a passion for learning more. That's really what I think our schools are all about. We need it, we need to have people who can know enough stuff to be able to at 18 go and do whatever they want to do next and still learn some fun stuff as well. And that's and I think that sometimes we look back and go, you know, like 13 years well spent for somebody might be just creating friends, and 13 years and some of them said that.

SPEAKER_09 28:26

Some of the people really said the main thing that I got out of school was to get my friends.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

Yeah. And I think that sometimes, you know, we've made school all about these scores and these numbers, and I wonder who for.

SPEAKER_09 28:41

Oh, I completely feel that. I I I do I do quite like numbers myself. I do quite like to see seeing the numbers increasing and stuff. But how one of the questions I'm really interested in if you've got any clues about this one, because the concept that we manage what we measure, the Peter Drucker thing, if our numbers are going to be about exam results, test results, ATAR scores, NAPLAN results, PISA scores, all of those sorts of things, well, that's what people are going to look at and go, are we successful? Aren't we successful? But that's not the whole picture by any means. It's just hard to compete with numbers that are produced in ways that we've become accustomed to for starters. They're not necessarily actually representative of that person's ability anyway, but we've become accustomed to how that works. How do we get something that's more humanly authentic into a place where we can say this is working for you, and I can see that you've made progress here. Any clues?

SPEAKER_04 30:07

Well, it's the it's we have to make things really individualized for one.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:15

And we've kind of run ourselves into a bit of a tricky situation staffing-wise. So like individualization requires staff to do it, and you need resourcing to do it, and they're things that are we don't have a tremendous amount of like so to speak. Yeah. It's it requires a lot of effort. And the first thing that it would require is I think a lot of our system leaders and and our generous overlords, our our wonderful people that support us, would be to just really look at well, what what do we need? What do we need to learn? Because it our curriculum is is really, really full of stuff. And some of it is wonderful stuff. You know, there's a lot of new curriculum coming in about different cultures and and you know, things that broaden our world instead of making it small. And you know, that's some there's this just this feeling since the pandemic of like our learning is becoming smaller and smaller. It's becoming it's becoming very just like, you know, back in the 80s, there's you know, you've got your boxes and you're just studying your boxes. When we can just like learning is in all shapes and it's all over the place and it's messy. So we like even our core curriculum, like there's so much to get through. And when putting staff under stress, I mean, school is just stress at the moment, everyone's stressed, and I and I wonder, you know how much learning is happening under stress. And I look, the nature is the perfect example. Like everyone loves using nature as a metaphor. Every education book you read has a nature metaphor for growth, and then we seemingly don't understand it. Nature doesn't grow under stress, it needs you know, it'll it'll move, it'll shift, it'll go where the stress isn't, it'll change, it'll adapt, it'll it'll create its own conditions, it'll, you know, it'll do something different. Whereas we just sit in the stress and we just push through until we either get the growth or we just tell ourselves it's coming soon, or it's it requires some a lot of pruning and then a bit of a reality check. And I think that we're very scared to do it because I think if we were to cut back on some things, our natural instinct would be to fill the gaps with things.

SPEAKER_09 33:13

And I've noticed that. I've noticed I spend a lot of time helping teachers not have to do very much after they leave school. So they're I see teachers' roles as the time that you're in that school ground, you are teaching and all of the things around it. But once you go home, please I want you to tell me if you're spending a lot of time at home doing slides or whatever it is that you're doing, because I want to have a conversation, so you're doing less at home. But there's some teachers who actually push back a little bit against that and say, I feel much more comfortable at school if I can have this time at home to do whatever it is that they do, or I feel much more comfortable walking in in the morning if I've been at school until sometimes seven o'clock to plan for. And I don't know, some teachers seem to just prefer it that way. So are we our own worst enemy in that?

SPEAKER_04 34:19

But I think though that they've been created.

SPEAKER_09 34:24

I think so too.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

And I think it's we've we've created the system, the system, our our own, you know. I mean, it might not be in service of school, but I fill my time, you know, as I was saying right at the start, I fill it with other stuff. Like, yeah, I'm very rarely not doing anything, you know. Once my daughter is asleep and my wife often goes to bed earlier than me, it's quiet. And I'm not somebody who sits very comfortably in the quiet. So the laptop comes out and I start writing things, and then those things turn into stuff. And so, you know, if I get lost and I'm in the zone, sometimes it is single digits in the morning, and I go, I'm supposed to go to school tomorrow. Like, so it's not it's not a healthy way to be. And I'd say it's the same of the staff that almost feel compelled. It's because it's not a it's not a I feel comfortable walk, I feel more comfortable walking in tomorrow. It's I'm afraid of walking in tomorrow and not having it done. It's I think it's a fear more than it's a comfort. It's a I'm not sure, you know, what is going to happen when I walk in. So I'm going to control what I can so that at least I have something in my hands that I have control of when I'm hit with all of the things I can't control until then. And I can go to sleep and hold that. I mean, you don't hold your slideshow, but I can at least know in the back of my head that I've done something that I am in control of because my day is wild. And I would say, you know, at the start of my career, that uncertainty was a draw. It was exciting to come in and go, what is my day going to look like?

SPEAKER_09 36:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:24

But I wouldn't say that, you know, 16 years in comparison to some of my colleagues and some of you know my peers that I've I know have been teaching for much, much longer, um, you know, has been super long. But I've seen the shift from that being fun to being sometimes scary and anxiety-inducing. What am I going? Like draw the drive to work, I find it relaxing because you know, I have a toddler and I have a chaotic household. And sometimes, you know, the drive to work, it's quiet, it's calm, I'm podcast, audio book, whatever it is, it's 20 minutes, half an hour. It's me. I can reset after work, I can set on the way to work. I don't know what the you know, and but I know for other people it's really anxiety-inducing because they're not getting ready to get to work. They're they've been ready all night, and now they're they're just they're like the starting pistol, and it's been loaded since the moment their alarm went off.

SPEAKER_09 37:32

And it's and I think you I think you're describing really well one of the possible reasons why so many teachers over the COVID period said, actually, if I don't have to, I don't think I will, and headed towards the workforce shortage that we're currently seeing.

SPEAKER_04 37:50

I think it's students as well, Susan.

SPEAKER_09 37:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:53

I think that that's and I think some of your guests have kind of highlighted that too. If if you're a young person and you're, you know, for better or worse, your brain is developing, you don't have the the lived experience. If you don't have the support, or maybe you do have the support, but you don't have the tools in your hands, and you're waking up every morning and your fear is greater than your curiosity. Schools are must be a chaotic place to go. And so I think one of the things your guests pointed out is how important it is to be heard, like the the importance of voice. And almost every single guest has said, I remember when I was heard. And imagine if we if we in all these, you know, hypothetical curriculum reviews, we had some young people involved. Like I know the the value of this podcast is talking to people that have have done it all. What if we were also talking to people that were in it?

SPEAKER_09 39:00

Absolutely, especially in that's in those senior years, the five grade five, six, even the grade threes are quite capable of articulating a lot more than you think they can, but there really is no excuse in the secondary space to not get some really frank, open discussions with a variety of the children that are in the room. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 39:27

I think so. I mean, if this really is a community and we we're saying we're connecting, and we want students to connect to the work, and we want them to connect to each other, and we want to connect with them as teachers, and all we're doing is firing up the laptop and asking them to turn on their laptops, and then we're basically talking to a PowerPoint, and they're looking at the PowerPoint on their screens, and then they're looking at their notebooks. Like how much eye contact is happening, how much interaction is actually happening there? It's a that's not learning, and that's not connection, that's a transaction. Like I'm I'm giving you this, and I'm only giving you stuff that then you're going to give me back. That doesn't sound like learning, that just sounds like a waste of time when I phrase it like that.

SPEAKER_09 40:24

But when I listen to the people who are passionate about a knowledge-rich curriculum and quote E.D. Hirsch or wherever they get their source from, in terms of you need a knowledge base in order to build learning. And if you don't have a knowledge base, then you're basically trying to do things without traction in an understanding. You haven't got anything to connect to your new learning to. So I understand that as a concept. I completely understand it in terms of reading comprehension that you need to have the background knowledge in order to bring a comprehensive piece of writing into comprehension. And that background knowledge needs to suit what you've experienced in your life. So be careful not to disadvantage people from different back cultural backgrounds or socioeconomic backgrounds and so forth. So there's all of that sort of thing where I start to jump on the soapbox and get super passionate and loud is I want people to use the stuff that they get. So if you're getting a piece of knowledge, how are you going to use it? And if that use element isn't there, what's the knowledge doing? And yes, there's a certain thing of we need to build knowledge before it gets used. But I'm a languages person. I'm with, I really think that as soon as you've got a few words in a language, you can start manipulating that language and make it your own. I teach in a way that the children choose the words that we're learning instead of me telling them what we're going to learn. And then I teach them how to put the sentences together and I teach them different things about the sentences, functions, grammar, that sort of thing, but not we're going to learn this grammar and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But just more along the lines of, okay, let's now look at the words that we've got. Like, what is the funniest sentence that you can make right now? And the sorts of sentences that we've got recently was the creepy girl drives the yakitori stick. If they can say that in Japanese, I'm like, yes, let's go. Because I've got that sense of use, I've got that agency from them. I've I'm getting lots and lots coming up from them. And that's what makes me excited. I mean, you can tell in my voice, right? You've got no chance.

SPEAKER_04 42:54

It's fun. Yeah. That's and that's learning is fun. This is why people go out and you know, even on the computer, this is why people fall down, you know, whatever it is. Maybe it'll show my age. But the Wikipedia, like rabbit hole, people click link after link and they're just like, Oh, look at this. I annoy my wife to no end telling her things that I find. And she like, but it's because I I somebody instilled that in me, and I, you know, the schooling system has not changed much. And this is, I think it's 20 years this year since I graduated year 12. So, you know, that's also another thing, too. What what you jumped back there.

SPEAKER_09 43:42

Now I want to know what was it in year 12 that got you interested in education?

SPEAKER_04 43:47

Oh, it was a teacher, it was my um health and pe teacher. Like just during year 11, it was just it was again, it was it was connection, it was making me feel. Feel like even if I didn't understand, because I was very I was very quiet, very shy. I was always, you know, and I turns out it's like a lot of anxiety and all those kind of things. But that they weren't that wasn't being diagnosed back then. Like I don't think we had a counselor or anything, it was just the year 12 coordinator doing her best, um, wearing 50 million hats. But you know, so I just sat quietly and I just thought, well, this is me and this is how I do it. And so the teacher would come to me and would, you know, ask the questions and would explain it until I got it. And if I didn't get the result I wanted, you know, would work with me on it. And it was just the extra mile, as many of your guests have said. And I thought, well, I never could replicate it in an exam until I went to university. And then again, something clicked at university, which I don't know what it was, because obviously then you go into a big lecture theater of you know 300, 400 people. So I'm not sure why that worked, but it was interest, I suppose, and I was obsessed with it, and I wanted to do it, and so I was dedicated to it. But at school, I like I couldn't replicate it in VCE. I very much scraped through to get into the education degree, which was a great relief when I decided that's what I wanted to do. Oh wow. But it was it was bottom of the barrel stuff, like for, and I'm quite happy to share it. Like it's for anyone that looks at you know, all these degrees and things, like it's VCE contributed very little to them because the scores and those exams and sacks, I couldn't do it. I had the knowledge, I loved the subjects I had, and I was a big nerd, you know, and I was all about it, but and but I just couldn't do it in the in the exam room. And so that teacher it just made it not matter and got me there. And I was like, yeah, I think there must be other kids out there like me. Yeah, and if I could do that, if that you know, if he he could do that for me, I reckon I could do it. And so then I did the gap year to kind of test that, and I worked in a boarding house. And so the next test was, well, if I can work 24 hours a day with with kids, little British kids waking me up, then I reckon I could do it. And so here we are. But I think that that's that's that's where connection started. It started with somebody who gave me the time, yeah. And I think that we're so worried about time, there's always time. I said this the other day in a presentation I gave. There's always time for being human. And lovely. And I think we're so worried about it, but a little activity at the start of your lesson, a game, a moment, you know, one of the big things that I took away from a couple of episodes. Um I can't remember the names. I should have written down all the episode names. Um, but there was a couple of guests who who spoke about feeling like they probably weren't the focus of the lessons, like the teachers were drawn to, you know, whatever your typical students, but then the teacher will come over to them. And I think that was kind of maybe I was in the middle of those groups, or but in your classroom, if you're a teacher and you're out there and you're going into class tomorrow or whatever it might be, there's not just two groups, there's not three, there's like four or five different groups in the room, and they all just need a bit of contact, and some of them just need eye contact, and you know, there's gonna be your group that your magnets, and they're gonna ask all your questions, and they've you know, they're gonna have shoulder issues because they've got their hands up constantly, and all of those kind of things, and then there's the kids that won't look you in the eye, and you've just got to swing past their tables for a bit, and they're like the people you know that you've been speaking to, and it's I guess it's like your guests spoke about it like all of a sudden they were the only ones in the room, but that teacher also got over to the really needy students. Uh, needy might be like a horrible label, but just for the sake of the example, the ones who are a bit louder about their need. Yeah, answered the questions and also got over to them. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's time for seeing everyone, there's time for games, there's time for brain breaks, there's time for dad jokes, there's times for the tech to fail, there's times for being a minute late if you had to help somebody on the stairs or whatever it is. Like, there's time for just being a human being because that's what we are, and just allow it, be okay with it. Like I always say to teachers at my school, you know, when I'm trying to encourage them to do something different, it's not going to ruin your lesson if you do something different for five minutes. It might actually wake the brain up and you'll get more out of them. Like they aren't just desperate for something exciting and something different. And instead of that, you know, you're coming in and your lesson plan, your little outline says spark, and it's a question about what they learned last lesson. And I know that for a teacher, that looks like great, you know, we're returning to the last lesson. They don't want to talk about that immediately. They just want something, just tell them a story or crack a joke, or I put a riddle on the, you know, the board or something, and they go, What is this? the first couple of times. And then the next eventually you walk in and they go, Is there going to be a riddle today? And you go, all right, now we're on to something. And it brings them together. I don't know. I'm just a big advocate for also treating them like they're kids because that's what they are, they're not adults.

SPEAKER_09 50:22

I think for me, I need to redefine the reason why I walk in the room because I think I've always had such a sense that I'm here to make as much learning happen as possible, and I will do everything that I can to create the conditions to make that learning happen. But I want to, I'm pushing the learning, learning, learning rather than allowing part of the conditions for the learning is that human element. Um, I'm not particularly a funny person, so it doesn't feel comfortable for me to imagine going in and cracking a joke or even doing a riddle. But to do a crazy Japanese sentence, I'm all over it. So it everybody's got different ways of doing it. And I think if other teachers are listening and feeling like, how can I be funny? I'm just not that person, there will be ways for each of us to create a human connection with everybody in the room as a whole group, but also then those individual little connections. And um, quite a few of the male guests, I guess, more than the female guests, have been talking about how important it is that the teacher doesn't just come down on them to be quiet and sit still and those sorts of things. But when they're um riffing off their friends and trying to get a little bit of humour going, because really they've turned up to be at school to be social and the learning, well, we'll do what we have to do, but that's just not where we are. If I as a teacher am a little bit more, yeah, like get your humour, like now can you do this? It's a completely different space to stop, listen, blah blah blah, and being a little bit more authoritarian in that. So I think part of it is me redefining in my own head what it means to be a teacher and why I'm in the room in the first place, because the curriculum doesn't give it to me. So hence hence the connection curriculum. While I've got the microphone and before you go for it, give a response to that. What I'd like to know is within that connection curriculum, you've used the word curriculum, which is great. Does that mean that there's sort of a little bit of a recipe for how to do this that you've created? Because when I watch, when I read your posts and when I listen to you speak and all of what you've said today, there's no recipe. So is there a recipe?

SPEAKER_04 53:06

Um, I think a lot of it falls to what you were just saying about being authentic. Like you have to, because connection is felt, you have to coming, you have to know how you feel connected as well. Because it's a it's a trade-off. Like, I'm gonna connect with you and you're gonna connect with me. And so in the book, in the first book, there certainly is a framework for how you can approach it as a school, and it's um there's three dimensions. Um, though there's the there's the idea of connection is a is a connection journey, and that's I've framed it as a journey because I don't think that it's rigid, and I think a journey is very flexible, and sometimes you make wrong turns, and sometimes you have to go back to where you started and start again. And the same with connection, it breaks down, you have to rebuild. Um, yeah, it just maps much more in in a much more human way to a journey than it does, you know. I have built a relationship, and that relationship shall live on forever, and I will do no further work on this relationship, and it will be strong.

SPEAKER_09 54:20

Do you think that's part of the reason that some of the other programs that we have had in schools? And I'm thinking things like you can do it, Habits of Mind, um Universal Design for Learning. Um, I put a list somewhere or other. Do you think they're too much a recipe? And that's partly why they've failed.

SPEAKER_04 54:45

So, guess like in the book, it's I have focus areas rather than a recipe. Here are things that you can focus on. And I think that we have to have a broader idea of what we're looking for, and and you know, and so then we can see it when we're in the right area rather than you know we're baking, and there's exactly these things going into it. I think a recipe is too perfect, and humans are not perfect, like the the recipe for humans isn't doesn't even come out with this with the same every single time. Like nothing about the human experience is the same for anyone, even in the in the same household. So then the way we connect isn't either. Um look, I think the the programs um one, they need a lot of resourcing and they need to they need like priority status, and quite often they're not. And so they look quite good on a tour, they look really good on a banner, you know, out at the front of the school, um, on the website. Um you know, they're they're good for your your days and your events and whatever it might be, and they're done with the best intentions too. I have I have nothing against, you know, initiatives and programs. Um I I quite like things like um you know, school-wide positive behavior support programs and things, but you know, quite often they become just about, you know, not so much about connection and and community, they become about how you shouldn't behave. And yes, and so then and they get skewed and they become you know educationalized rather than and they drift from the human side of perhaps what would then have it implemented in a way that would build connection and community and collaboration. And I don't know, there's probably some other words starting with C. And so, you know, like it's we don't have a real focus on on humanity with these programs. It's usually, you know, there might be connection in there somewhere, but it's also to target something else, and so it might be all, you know, our major behaviors have crept up, so we're gonna we're gonna implement this, or uh, we need to, you know, fulfill some community outreach. So let's do this. And so there's some box ticking in there as well, not always, but it's it's trying to patch a need that is, you know, dynamic and constantly moving and kind of in the bones and the muscle and the blood and the and the organs and the body of your organization, you know, with something that is external to it and it's very rigid. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 58:12

Because the child is not showing um the sorts of behaviours that we would like them to be showing. And therefore, we're saying, well, how does that sit with this particular school-wide expectation? Right. But given that that's not really an effective source of evidence, as we're we're noticing at the moment, what would you see as being an effective way of seeing, like physically visualizing or noticing that connection is something that is authentically established at this school, because you can't just tick box it in the way that we've just suggested doesn't work.

SPEAKER_04 58:55

So I think like your things, like your matrixes, your matrices and your things out in the yard and the visual tools are really great and they're they're a good start, but they have to they have to mean more. And I think it's a lot of it is in the messaging. And if the only time you come across, I mean it's not just all about SWPBS, but let's just use that as an example. Like, if the only time you come across your positive behavior matrix is when you're in trouble, yeah. Then you only align yourself with that. Like, you do know what I mean? Like you it's about how we associate everything, and you know, restorative practices is another great example of it in if done properly, it should be about how my actions are impacting another person, and that is connection. Yeah, but it's quite often you know done on a sheet, you reflect on a sheet, you have a mediation which isn't about reflecting on the feelings, it's not reflecting on the actions, or it's about just now you two are gonna get along, okay? Like there's no hard feelings, let's shake hands. And so it's I don't think, and this is why um I love connection too, because I don't think it's something that needs to sit, you know, we don't need to demolish the foundations. Like we have everything we need, and it's just you know, like what we were saying before, you need a foundation of something to then be able to build off and go off and learn great things, and it's the same with the school, you need your structures and you need something, and but then you've got to contextualize everything, and if you can frame everything through connection, and why should I connect to this? And how does this bring me closer to you? And how does this help me connect with my learning? And how does this bring me closer to my community? And why should I connect to it? One of the things that I think that threads through every episode so far, and hopefully this one, is why all of your guests have reflected, even Christian reflected on why. Why are we doing this? Like when they think about is it 13 years well spent, the question is always why. It's not about what did I learn so much as it is why did I learn it. And that's a I think that that's a it can be a really brutal reflection if you think back and you're not sure why you learned much of it at all. And that's I think maybe becoming a broader, harsher reality for a lot of students now is that they're finally coming into contact with authentic learning after 13 years, or they're coming back to it. I mean, my my daughter is three and she's in kinder and she's off, and I know you can't really I don't want a whole heap of 16-year-old toddlers. Well, maybe I've got them sometimes, but at school, but it's not the same, and I and I I think sometimes you know the comparison doesn't work, but there's aspects of it I think that do in terms of discovery and and curiosity and and they're all human things, and we just scale it up. Like there's a love of learning there, and I think lifelong learning has kind of been hijacked to become, you know, a bit of a like a government term for keep, you know, doing professional development in your role, keep progressing instead of it being we all it's lifelong learning is just every day. It's not something you have or you don't, like, you know, it's I don't know, I it boggles me lifelong learning. Like when I wake up, I am learning, like something is going to surprise me. The temperature was different from when I got into bed. So already I'm like adjusting. I'm you know, uh, I didn't do that washing I decided not to do. Now I'm problem solving. Do you know what I mean? Like they might be silly examples, but lifelong learning is very I don't like that term. I think it's I don't know, I the connection to everything around us and what we do, it's the most important thing. And I I'd hate to think that in 10 years we're still talking about uh, you know, school in the same way that we talk about it now, as it not having changed too much. I think there's a real opportunity here to invite a lot of people to the table because people are really keen. And let's get some big tables and put them together. Like it's doesn't need to happen immediately, but the conversations can start. And I just think what an opportunity to actually see what ideas are out there, and the fear of not being able to action it this year is just so irrelevant. Like this podcast, and and there are other podcasts out there, and like there's so many great conversations happening with people in education, out of education, on the peripheries of education, they all have these beautiful ideas, and young people and ask some toddlers what they think. They can talk about puzzles or whatever they want to talk about.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:56

Like I just think toddlers, in terms of being lifelong learners, they know how to learn. My goodness, they are in it.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:04

Yeah, and I just why why aren't we talking? Why aren't we why why won't that door open? I just wonder who's who's got the key?

SPEAKER_09 1:05:15

And I don't know, but how do we find out? I'm I'm really interested to keep on doing this conversation with all of the guests that come on and with the educators that come on to bring that perspective as well, because I'm not coming into this with an agenda. I don't know what it is that's going to come out of this, but I am definitely coming into it with a sense of action. And in the episode with Christian, I was looking at, well, maybe I should be creating videos. I've done some research lately and found that there are, in fact, some people who have created quite similar videos to what I was envisaging. So there's no point in me doing exactly the same thing. So connecting those people. And maybe putting a package together that an educator like yourself or Chris could have access to and just say, hey, let's just listen to this while we muck the role or whatever it is and give a little bit of. So anyway, lifelong learning, that is definitely what I am doing. I don't have an agenda with this. I just want to see where it will go. And to really be creative, to open up the possibilities and be almost crazy, I suppose, about what could education be if we actually just demolished what we expect it to be and went what would most serve our people today. That's my thought. And definitely, definitely the connection piece, authentic connection with all the structures that whole school positive behavior support and um school-wide expectations and resilience project and the old I can you can do it, all of those sorts of things that come into the mix. They're awesome as part of it. But bottom line is just go and have a chat with somebody eye to eye and see what's going on in their world and see what happens as a result. What do you think?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:16

Yeah, 100%. I think, you know, make your staff room an ideas room. Like I I said, I know where I don't I could talk forever, obviously.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:29

But I'm watching the time and I'm trying to be very honourable about your time.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:35

So here's what I'll say to as like a last idea. Like ideas are created over like tea and coffee. So take all of your coffee machines that you have spread out around the school and put them in one spot and make everyone go to that one spot to get their tea and coffee, and you'll start seeing conversations happen. Stop siloing the tea and coffee, and you'll stop siloing the people. They'll still come for the tea and coffee, trust me. And they will come and they will meet people and they will talk with people they don't often talk with. That's where ideas happen.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:13

That's where add biscuits and cake.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:15

100%. Yeah. You'll get the food in there, put tables and chairs in there, have a hub, and it won't just be disgruntled stuff. Like you might get the crumbles, but people start to share. All right. And that's that's where you'll start to sow the seeds of connection for your staff, and that'll trickle in and the kids will get the benefit.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:37

Amazing. Thank you so so much for spending your time um and listening and being part of it and giving value to it as well. I really, really appreciate that, Matt.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:51

Thank you. I hope so. I'm like, I I don't expect to be better than the young people, but hopefully it's a value. It's I just like talking about education. So sometimes I can go on some really wild tangents. So as you're editing, just I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 1:09:09

I don't think there's much that's gonna be part. It's it's amazing. So thank you and have a great evening. Have a great holidays, they're coming up.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:20

Yes, you too. Thank you. No, this project really appreciates it, and I think um, yeah, keep doing it. Like it's really, really valuable.

SPEAKER_09 1:09:30

Cheers. I don't think that there is anything controversial about the idea of teachers authentically connecting with students. I don't know of any teachers who would disagree that this is important. Yet our guests all, in different ways, indicate how important it is when teachers do this, and perhaps the implication is that not all do. I also doubt that the potential reasons that teachers don't achieve authentic connections are news to anyone. It's things like the emphasis on outcomes, especially those with numerical scores, the number of people in the room, the teacher attention often being diverted to classroom management, leaving little capacity for the sorts of individualized check-in or conversation that builds relationship. Matt alluded to all of these things. And also the diversity of needs in the room, including learning needs, emotional needs, impact of what happened before school or in the yard, social capital, learning avoidance, high flyers, and so on. Matt's point is simple. Find time, do it anyway. I remember listening to some podcasts, and I can't recall which just now, but they were advocating against having what they called a soft start to the lesson. Meaning, let's not have a check-in time, a story, a riddle, or any chat time before the lesson. Their point was that this reduces learning time, especially when it accumulates over a long period of time. And they were advocating instead for do-now activities that students begin as soon as they enter the room. I'm a very and also person. And I don't think that these two things have to be separated. What if the do now activity actually becomes the space for a check-in on a couple of students? Matt was suggesting that sometimes it's just an eye contact moment where that student knows that you're in the room with them and I know that you're here. So Matt's point is simple. Again, find time, do it anyway. When I reflect on the plethora of connection building programs, and this is an incomplete list, and all of them have been very, very important components in creating connection, but don't necessarily by themselves do it. Here's a list: the You Can Do It program, Resilience Project, Mental Health in Schools Programme, School Psychologists and Counselors, Growth Mindset, Wellbeing, Bullying Upstanders, Personal and Social Curriculum, School Values, Whole School Approach to Positive Behavior Support, Inclusive Pagogies, Quality Differentiated Teaching Practices, NCCD, Nationally Consistent Collection of Data, UDL, Universal Design for Learning, Many, Many Different Authors. A quick shout out to Andrew Fuller in this space. All of the autism and ADHD sorts of professional learnings that we come across, readings, podcasts, and actually in-house professional learning. Connection that happens around the religious schools. Catholic dignity of the person, the Catholic community using our father, our, not my. And various wording, I'm sure, is part of many of the other religions that are also involved in school-based education. I'm not dissing any of these things. They are fabulous. And Matt was also reinforcing the importance of these sorts of programs. But given the long list, you might wonder that discussion about real connections is still something that we need to have. I think Matt alluded to a clue. When we put up posters, thinking of whole school values, for instance, and write it into the school strategic plan and teacher planning documents, there is a sense that this is done. Why? Because the evidence sought by school reviewers and school consultants is ticked off. So here's where my thinking was really challenged. I used to think that assessment is the tail that wags the dog. In other words, we tend to teach what we assess, or Peter Drucker's manage what we measure point. Education values what we assess, and the quandary of value what is measurable or measure what is valuable. My thinking had been, therefore, that we need to find ways to measure what is valuable. And as a consequence, that's where we'll put our time and energy. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we do what is valuable. Be what is valuable and not necessarily measure it. You know as a teacher when you have a connection with a young person, there is evidence. They offer you more eye contact, they sit and listen when you come to help, they put more effort into the learning, they smile, they spontaneously tell you something. And when this happens, I'm thinking of a particular young person I've been working with this week. There is a sudden joy instead of struggle. And it doesn't take much. Maybe it's better not to measure this. Notice the evidence, but not necessarily record it in an externally imposed way. What do you think? Let me know by emailing 13 Years Well Spent, as one word, 13 is a word, not a number, at gmail.com. And if you would like to be part of the podcast, or if you know somebody or are somebody who is 18 to 30 years-ish and would like to be one of the guests on this podcast, please, please get in touch. I'm always excited to meet a new guest and have a new story. I will conclude this episode with a medley of clips from our episode so far, specifically around connection. So I'm saying bye for now, leaving you with this medley of clips, and I hope you'll join us for the next episode. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_12 1:16:51

Episode one, Bella. Even like who the teacher likes, who who they're spending more time with, because it's almost like they deem that person more worthy of certain information or certain attention. Um, and I think yeah, kids notice notice things like that.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:09

Episode two, Grace.

SPEAKER_11 1:17:13

So it that that moment for me was really special. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_11 1:17:20

That moment. I I I came in, they had no idea that whether I was smart, what level I was at. And he was really quick to on that assessment. And then he he did. He continued to grow me, he continued to help me develop in areas that I was interested in and areas that he thought would benefit me as well.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:41

Incredible. Did he actually test you? No. Interesting.

SPEAKER_11 1:17:47

Not in that moment.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:48

So how do you reckon he picked up on it?

SPEAKER_11 1:17:50

Um, I think he picked up that I wasn't engaging in a couple of those first lessons. Yeah. And he came over again, I'm a new kid. Why aren't I engaging? So that sort of triggered for him. And he came over and he basically went, Hey, what's you know, what's going on? How are you going? And I went, Oh, you know, this is good, but I've done it before. That's the information you need. And yeah, and I don't know if you you noticed, but even as I'm retelling the story, my voice gets small, I'm little, I feel young, I'm not confident, you know, you know, it's I I've done it before. You know, it didn't feel like a big deal that I'd done it before. It didn't feel like it was something I needed to share. Um, so as a student sitting in that seat, if he hadn't have come over and asked me a direct question, no way he would have known that I'd done it before. No way he would have known that I wasn't engaging because I was.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:50

So you would have just stayed not engaging and stayed that little small timid student. Exactly.

SPEAKER_11 1:18:56

Exactly. That's why, that's why that confidence, that being seen is so powerful. And for that teacher to make such a quick assessment, and it's I mean, it might sound like such an easy question to ask, but it's so powerful. Such a good message to teach us out there. I do want to say the follow-through is also important.

unknown 1:19:19

Right, right.

SPEAKER_11 1:19:20

So, yeah, you can see a student, but hey, let's let's continue to develop them. Let's and it was a lot of additional work for him. I know that it was additional work because he he then had to pull from um other units, other areas, give me additional work um to extend me. But it it was it was worth it, it was amazing. Um, and even after he left the school, I continued uh his tutoring ongoing.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:49

Incredible. Incredible. Episode three, Jonathan.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:55

One, I had a legal studies teacher in year 11, and he was just someone who was happy to talk to you as if you weren't teacher and student. And so, and he would he would really connect with everyone as like a person.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:11

Episode four, Claire, there's no care at all for anyone that's not doing VCE. That's what I find. And I think if the like if they want them to at least finish year 12, they need to put some effort into you're not gonna do you're you don't you want to do more of a trade side, let's do other stuff than the VCE stuff.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:38

Episode five, Liam.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:41

It was just one turn of the steering wheel for someone to say go the other way. Okay, who was that?

SPEAKER_09 1:20:45

What did they say?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:46

That was my English teacher. She was uh she was really helpful, actually, now that I think about it.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:53

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:54

She sort of looked not like a mum, but she had a few students that you could tell she really wanted to succeed. Yeah. That weren't necessarily the gifted ones that you knew were going to be fine, but me and a few others that you know just needed a bit of a polish up and Yeah, she really helped out just saying things that we probably needed to hear at the time.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:16

Yeah, what sorts of things that's this is the sort of gold that teachers need to know about because when it comes from somebody who's actually talking, it's different from reading it in a book that says, Oh, this research says blah blah blah, and it just goes straight over our heads. So tell us the gold, what did you say? Uh if you can remember.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:35

Oh yeah, we're going back ten years now, but it was it wasn't one of those things that she says at the front of the class, it was those ones that you'd take your side either in a group of two or by yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:45

And I don't know, just has a little one-on-one heart to heart with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:50

And I I sort of gravitate to those conversations a bit more than just a big broad, you know, classroom or hall that you'd feel like you're getting spoken to with care.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:04

Yeah. Um episode six is a discussion with another teacher. This is Christian Williams.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:14

If you could be that teacher for one kid a year, that's huge. What if you could do it for one kid a term? These are the types of things that um they are realistic. And if every one of us as teachers said, you know what, I'm just gonna I'm gonna try and just have like an authentic conversation once a week with a with with any kid. Forty weeks a year, that's 40 really could potentially deep and meaningful and memorable connections with kids. So we don't have to think about these things as oh my god, I I don't have time for this, you know, I've got AER duties this week and I've got you know a full teaching load. Like, how am I supposed to have these conversations? It's like you probably won't be able to do with all your kids. But it's okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:00

Episode seven, Rebecca interviewed by Lucy.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:05

Yeah, I actually remember like some of the staff saying, like, seeing me like with my textbooks and stuff, and it was like, Oh, like she's really studious, so you should and like telling other kids to like take the cut like following my footsteps as well and stuff. But like it in in reality, it was literally just like I was literally just focusing my whole energy on that. Um, because I wasn't like telling anyone like how I was actually feeling in the UK. Like I also I thought I think people knew in my school because like I was very very like active on social media and like pretty much everyone knew what was happening.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:43

Episode eight is Jezz. There are two clips.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:48

11 I was like really struggling. I was trying to say too like my English teachers and stuff. I'm like, look, I can't do this, I know what you want me to do, but like that's what kind of caused the panic attack. I think can't really remember, it was a bit of a blur, but I think I got some results back, and I'd worked super super hard and just wasn't showing my results, and the teachers were just saying, Oh, she's just stupid, like and um the second clip from Jazz. But I will say I did have this really good physics teacher in year 10, and he did a test, like a written test, and I think I only got like 30% on it, and he was like, hang on, you're getting all the classwork right. Why did you do so badly on this? Yeah. He gave me the test with the same content but different way, reading the different way, diagrams. I got 98 on it in the and figured out, like, okay, so you learn differently, so you need different tests, exact same material, just diagrams, that kind of thing, very visual, not as much words. Yeah. So he was also very important in because that was before he was one of the teachers that believe without actually a dyslexia, because he had previous learning difficulties himself. So he picked up on that fact. So he was really integral and helping me in year ten. Episode eight, Lucy.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:07

Everyone had finished their test except me, and they were playing games, and I was just sitting still doing my test, like not even halfway through. Like, it wasn't that I didn't know what the answers were, it was that I genuinely had no idea what the question was and what it wanted from me. I just had zero clue. I remember I drew a duck on the other side of the table which said, like, do not write on this, or do not like, yeah, don't write on this, um, in like big, bold, scary letters. And obviously I didn't read that. And then the teacher got really mad at me, and it was also, I think, a little bit like, can you just finish up already? Like, everyone's done. So I think that was a that was a real cool memory of like, oh yeah, I'm not good at this stuff. And this stuff matters to other people. Like, I think it was also like, yeah, finding out that that was where value was seen a little bit at school. Episode 10.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:07

So uh when I went to the eighth grade in this different school, it was all like sports jogs in my class, especially the footballers and the people doing handball were very loud and they took up a lot of space and attention, and that was very overwhelming for me. And at the same time, they would also laugh sometimes at uh people who would uh raise their hands and answer questions and stuff like that. So I felt I felt very on the outskirts of this um class and this school. I didn't feel welcome, I didn't feel confident in my um learning anymore.