Transcript: ECF Staffroom S03E07
‘Be ambitious and fail, but don't fail to be ambitious'.
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Elaine Long
Welcome to the ECF Staffroom. I'm Elaine Long.
Mark Quinn
And I am Mark Quinn.
Elaine Long
We are programme leaders for the UCL Early Career Teacher Development Programme. Why are we in the staffroom? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems can be aired bluntly and where solutions can be explored.
Mark Quinn
Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come in the ECF Staffroom. We will hear from early career teachers themselves and from the mentors and induction tutors who support them. We will talk about all things ECF, the challenges and the joys. So, why don't you enjoy a coffee with us, perhaps even grab a biscuit and sit down to half an hour of ECF Staffroom chat.
Mark Quinn
Welcome to the staffroom, George Wolstenholme George joins us from his school in Oxfordshire. George, you're at the end of a busy day. You must tell us what you've been getting up to today.
George Wolstenholme
Ah, well, let's see. It got very hectic towards the end because I am one of three, year four five classrooms and to make planning a bit easier, we carousel, so on a Monday specifically now, I do the same lesson three times.
Mark Quinn
Okay.
George Wolstenholme
Once in the morning, twice in the afternoon for the three different classrooms that come to me. I'm in charge of computing and as you know, as you can imagine, it’s a bit difficult to teach for year four and five simultaneously. You have to make sure that everything is differentiated appropriately for each level and they're getting the right content.
And so, we've got a bit. It got a bit hectic as I was ringing towards the end of the day, but otherwise I think it's going well.
Mark Quinn
My head is spinning, so, your head must be spinning doubly so. You're in our staffroom so, we offer you a drink. So, take a tea or coffee. How did you take it?
George Wolstenholme
This time of night, I take a decaf coffee with a little splash of milk and two sugars.
Mark Quinn
So, a coffee with all the ingredients, and you take a biscuit with that?
George Wolstenholme
Biscuit of choice is a custard cream.
Mark Quinn
You cannot go wrong with a custard cream. I know that we have custard creams Elaine. So, while I'm getting those sorted out. Why don't you start speaking to George?
Elaine Long
I will and I'm sure our listeners are keen to find out a bit more about the person behind the custard cream and the year four, five lessons. So, can you introduce yourself for our listeners, please?
George Wolstenholme
Well, my name is George Wolstenholme and in the classroom, I go by Mr. W because I found that many students find my last name a bit hard to pronounce in the first time around. So Mr. W is how it goes and when you know it. But my father was also called Mr. W. He’s a primary school teacher as well, and so there was a brief moment during my training where I was doing a week long internship at his class and I was Mr. W Junior, which I think just solidified just how much I love that last name.
A I said before, I'm a year four, five teacher and I've got to say is what I love most about the job would definitely be the moment where it sort of like clicks inside that child's head and you see that light bulb moment happen. And it's just a moment with, right, that's how it works, that's why we do it and like it certainly just feels me like, yes, success happened just then.
Mark Quinn
That's great. George, we talent spotted you. You were one of the very many people who filled in your end of module completion forms, and we liked what you said, so we thought you'd be an ideal guest. We know that you're in the second year of the ECF programme with UCL, so you're now getting on with your third inquiry, I guess, your major inquiry for this for this term on module eight.
So, can you tell us anything about your first inquiries that you did before Christmas? You might have done one or two enquiries before Christmas.
George Wolstenholme
I've managed two different enquiries. The first one was an exploration on behaviour management and how effective time is in both classroom preparation and classroom, you know, packing away. I found that through continued use I can do practice. I just got managed to lower down the amount of time that I give the pupils in the class to either get ready for the next task or to pack away their things and I started off with 5 minutes that and very quickly that became like it was very generous amount of time that I gave them.
They were ready within a few minutes, and I was like, okay, alright then, so I can cut down the time. And towards the end of my first inquiry, I came up with this sort of like visual model where the first half of it was given them, given the right expectations. By the end of this time, you will have gotten your math books out and I've got and, and I put the reading books away and then I set the timer and then I just leave them to it.
I trust them now, they're trained, they get it. The one problem with that is that by the time they get their math books out, they have the date and title. They were like maybe a handful that were just like sort of sitting there just waiting out the timer or even worse, it's sort of like the timer still going on.
And they know that they can get it done within like 30 seconds if they really applied themselves. They stood next to their friends having a chat while the time's going down. So, my solution to that was to have a continuous task at the end of the timer. So, by the end of this timer, you will have started these starter questions, or you will have started this opening task.
And that cuts down a bit on the chatter, a bit on the taking the mick, whilst also just keeping that time of preparation as slim as possible. I considered that very successful as it gave me a very handy tool and a very handy routine that the kids recognise. And so, I use that almost daily and hourly at times.
But my second inquiry. how much time do you have? But let me tell you a tale. The long and short of it is that it was a classic case of me biting off far more than I could chew. So, I wanted to do something I was passionate about and the first thing that came to my mind was theatre, drama, performance. And I wanted to include that in my inquiry in some fashion and wouldn't you know it? It was Christmas time and we were looking at Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol, and I thought, how brilliant would it be if I could put on my little class production of A Christmas Carol? And my inquiry was how does performing, how does rehearsal and performing increase the oracy of my daily readers?
So, I have a group list of children who read with my TA on the daily. And how does rehearsal, that process of learning a script, performing it increase their reading ability and to my credit, the rehearsal process was incredibly useful. The data I got was just brilliant, but it was also Christmas time on the second half of term, and there were loads of other priorities that I had to make sure that we got through.
In the end it turned out that I had to say, I'm really sorry guys. I know that we've been trying our best with this, but I'm going to have to say we can't perform it. I'm going to have to prioritise whatever it was that we were doing.
Mark Quinn
Ahh humbug Mr. W.
George Wolstenholme
I know, right. And so, for what it's worth, the inquiry itself was incredibly beneficial because I got a lot of insight on how, you know, just learning those well-balanced lines of Dickens and it was an abridged version as it was, but it was still more or less the original language that was used.
And the response I got when I first announced that I was going to try this, they were so engaged. They were so excited at this opportunity that we were going to try. But sadly, nothing came to fruition. I ended up having to email the parents saying, I'm very sorry, but we tried our best and it wasn't to be this time.
I know I want to include drama and theatre in my teaching in some fashion, but at the very least I know it’s not a quick process. It's something that really needs to have time and effort put into it and the space for it as well.
Mark Quinn
I'm going to guess that your mentor told you that.
George Wolstenholme
Yes, almost immediately, you know, and I was determined. I was very determined; this is this is the idea. This is the one. I'm so thrilled I found this idea because I've been wanting to do this. I wanted to put theatre in here somewhere forever. And lo and behold, the ECF has granted to be an inquiry. I can justify it by gathering data as I go.
Mark Quinn
George. What the ECF gives with the one hand, it takes away with the other, right?
George Wolstenholme
It was just a question of time.
Mark Quinn
The was a lesson learned there, isn’t there?
George Wolstenholme
Absolutely.
Mark Quinn
Inquiries have to be fitted into….
George Wolstenholme
As I came to this conclusion, I realised that I would rather be ambitious and fail than to fail to be ambitious. And so, we gave it our honest to God best go. But it never happened.
Mark Quinn
I imagine your pupils forgave you in the end, George. But can I just ask you to go back to your first inquiry, which is the one about using the timers and in order to be more time efficient, I suppose. What guided you to that question?
George Wolstenholme
Well, I will say this upfront. I adore my class. They are wonderful and what struck me first about them when I first met them at the beginning of September was just how hardworking they are. But then little habits start creeping in. Little habits such as, you know, because I'll say dates, title, and they'll do it, and some of them will do it really fast.
Some of them get ready really fast. And then the habits are that they start the chat. Now, I forgive them on this because sometimes I'm not quick on the draw when it comes to starting the inputs and I need to make sure, but that's what the time was for is providing structure. So, when I arrived at this inquiry, I knew that if I can narrow that time down to as small as time as possible, which id more or less around 3 minutes, depending on what I need them to do. But 3 minutes to date, title, starter. We begin. Or more like 3 minutes, pack everything away, stand behind your chairs, and then off you go to play time, you know,
Mark Quinn
So, it arose how you, you know, watched your class and saw what needs they had there. Actually, we're picking up on something which was not an entirely negative thing, but just a small thing that you felt that you could improve. And you could see an aspect of your own practice where you might be, I don't know, as you say, a little bit slow on the uptake of things. So, it actually guides you.
George Wolstenholme
They’re incredibly hard working, but some of them will inevitably write very much slower or an extra second, an extra minute or two just to finish off those starter questions or whatever it is we're doing at the start. And so, the challenge for the first inquiry was to determine exactly how much time is reasonable to allow them versus how much time, how quickly I want us to start to the actual lesson that we begin.
Mark Quinn
And that adaptation to the whole starter business that you described as well. Is that something you've done subsequent to completing that inquiry?
George Wolstenholme
Well, my use of “start” is, was something that I began or rather was sort of trained in with me in our first year. So, it was just a question of what is available in the room for children to get started as soon as they entered the room. And so inevitably I will be in at break time setting up my PowerPoint for maths and on the PowerPoint that will be the starter, the date and the starter questions.
So, as soon as they come in, the books will be ready for them on the table. They come in, they see the book, book open. Get started and then it was just a matter of just fine tuning those timings down. Yeah.
Mark Quinn
And you're still and you're still doing that?
George Wolstenholme
I’m still doing it now and I think I've gotten a fairly good idea as to how long I could reasonably put that timer on now.
Elaine Long
I love the fact that you were so reflective in that inquiry because the things that so often we can make a change in the classroom, and we think that change is linear. So, we think, Well, I've done X, so now I'm going to get Y out and that's brilliant. But I love your reflection.
George Wolstenholme
The more often you adapt at the start, the more often you realise, actually I could probably do that a bit better. I guess it's not linear, it's more cyclical.
Elaine Long
Yeah. So, I like that’s it’s kind of iterative leaps and then I like the fact they've got a continuous activity because the thing I was thinking about as well, was there might be children that take a long time, will find it more difficult to write the date and the title and you wouldn't want them to feel sort of singled out. But having a continuous task kind of solves that problem. If they go straight on to do that.
George Wolstenholme
It allows those who would finish that starter or the date in title, who finish it quickly to have something to do continuously while the other ones catch up and then we all start the lesson together.
Elaine Long
And it's a small thing isn't it? Sounds like quite a small thing when we're describing it, but actually getting those habits and routines right in your classroom are a massive thing I always found for your wellbeing.
George Wolstenholme
The impact is subtle but noticeable. Very much so. It's like you can't help but feel like, yeah, everything is going according to plan, even as different children will reach that point, you know, separately.
Elaine Long
And I guess it buys you that wellbeing at the start of the lesson as well, if you need to move around with something. Students are in that routine. It means, you know, you don’t have to start your lessons, you know, like some of my lesson started, I think, will you be quiet and sort of just get on with it?
Obviously, I never did that as a teacher, but I've heard some teachers did. But yeah, I think it's really fascinating, actually, that fine tuning that detail has really helped and it's really pleasing that your inquiry helped you to do that. And more generally. How do you think your inquiry approach has helped with your personal growth as a teacher?
George Wolstenholme
I have found that with the inquiries, with the responsibility and independence that they've granted me in my own classroom, my own practice, my own questions, asking my own data gathering. They're not even assessed that properly and while that may provide some maybe make some pause to, you know, people that may think, so what you're doing isn't really being checked properly, aside from my mentors and various other colleagues that I collaborate with.
At the same time, it's like it lives and dies with me. And that has been so freeing. It's been so liberating that I own it in a sense, and its mine to do with as I will and I can decide what to do with it. It could be that after all my inquiry, it's like, okay, I haven't really found anything that can help me, but that's still useful because I know now what not to do. If I had chosen to go down a different path and yield different results. So, generally speaking, for my personal growth, I wish it had been introduced to me much sooner. But the thing is that catch 22, because if it had been introduced me sooner, I wouldn't know what to do with it. You get my meaning. It feels very satisfying to complete my inquiry as and when I want to do it.
Elaine Long
I think that's so important, George. What you said about learning what not to do as well, because it's important to fail as a teacher and really, it's not about failing. But if you think of classrooms as, you know, kind of large and complex systems in which every action you take has an impact one way or the other, but it can make it worse, it can make it better. That sort of iterative leaps of action all the time and fine tuning it really is hopefully something that that now becomes habit because when your next problem comes up, whatever that might be or challenges, it's an approach you can apply to it as well, I think.
George Wolstenholme
it's interesting that you mentioned the word fail because yeah, it's not really fail. It's more like troubleshooting and a bug has come up, an error has come up in like, okay, what is the source of this? And I might talk about that more a bit later because it's something that's, you know, been on my mind as I as I go through the ECF.
Mark Quinn
Has the inquiry used up a lot of the time, George, on top of your teaching.
George Wolstenholme
Yes and no. Yes, it requires a bit of my time, but no more than I would normally spend on the ECF and the modules and the various self-studies. In my first year I had those 2 hours and this year I have that one hour. And more often than not, I'm just typing up what I what I found out from my observations on how my inquiries went.
So yes, it just it does take up my time, but the data is being collected as I teach.
Mark Quinn
Yeah.
George Wolstenholme
The, the actual inquiry itself is happening when I'm in the classroom teaching anyway. So, of course naturally it's taking up my time, taking up brain space as well and taking up memory and taking up priority time. But no more so than anyone else, I guess.
Mark Quinn
So, it's part of your assessment of your teaching, it's part of your reflection upon your teaching. It's not separate from your teaching.
George Wolstenholme
I wouldn't say it’s separate, although the recording aspect of it takes up the free time that ECTs have.
Mark Quinn
Yeah. I guess though as you, as you wind forward your career though and you continue to take an inquiry approach to your own learning, you won't be recording all, will you? You're not recording for any particular audience, not reporting back, you're doing it for yourself. And I suppose that that becomes more habitual than I suppose. Is that what you imagine will happen?
George Wolstenholme
I haven't really thought that far ahead, if I'm being honest, but I can only imagine that you're right as I level up in my own abilities, this inquiry and not necessarily recording, but more like exploration of what I can or cannot do in a classroom. And as I try new things and experiment, it will only get, you know, I'll only learn more, but it happens, happens in the classroom, it happens on the job. It won't happen from, well research was indeed some part of it, but it won't happen by just reading books.
Mark Quinn
That's right. That's right. I mean the more you know, if you do those things that's a great bonus and teachers who do that often do feed into their own teaching. But if you're doing that and not reflecting in your own practice, then you're missing 70% of it at least. Right?
George Wolstenholme
I've often felt that, well, like my teacher training was more or less the prologue of my career. It's how I how everything started, how we got here, so to speak. And year one was my actual training. There's no better training than the real thing. Within a few months, the difference between how I started and what that Christmas of that first year was palpable to me.
I felt so much, obviously nowhere near where I needed to be as a teacher, but so much more confidence, so much more. I felt much better in my position as a teacher, more self-assured and that's only, only increased.
Mark Quinn
I now reached the point where I quote you back to yourself, George, because you told us in your end module completion for the last module, you said that you feel you are well on your way to becoming the teacher you want to be. Well, what did you mean by that?
George Wolstenholme
I've always imagined myself as a teacher that can handle anything (Asterix), and by that asterix, I mean what does anything mean in the classroom? What happens in a classroom that teachers need to handle? I'll admit to my naivety and admit to my ignorance that I don't quite know what anything really encompasses at all. But I have a better idea now. And when I say handle it, I usually think, well, I'll tell you a bit more about my circumstances. I'm on the spectrum. I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was a teenager, and you'd go by autism spectrum disorder these days. Teaching on the spectrum is difficult.
It is something that I'm not very secretive about or ashamed about, but it's something that I know about myself, that I know I will find challenges. And in going through it, becoming the teacher that I want to be, not really in spite of that, but because of that, or using that as part of who I am and my practice as a teacher, it's becoming the teacher that I want to be, the teacher who's capable of handling anything, the teacher who can do. Am I getting across?
Mark Quinn
Yeah, you are. I wonder if you've got an example, you know, So if you see your place on the spectrum, as has your superpower or what, does it lend to your teaching that perhaps.
George Wolstenholme
I have two ideas and two responses to that question. The first is that it's not just teachers who are on the spectrum, all manner of students will come through your classroom. And I've had more than a few who are diagnosed, undiagnosed, what have you. And the level of well, I get them, I get it. I know where they're coming from and when they get overstimulated and like, I'm right there with your little guy, I’m getting overstimulated, too.
And I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it. And that leads into the second response in that getting overstimulated was a real problem during my first year of teaching, it still is. I own that problem. And me and my mentor, my induction tutor, we worked really hard to address that problem and it came right down, for me, learning how to better regulate my emotions, how to better regulate my stress.
And there were things going on at home that weren't helping and so on. I won't get into that here. But the classroom in particular turned out to be an incredibly loud, bright environment and anyone on the spectrum would be able to tell you, like, I really don't want to be able to handle this. And learning how to handle that was a particular challenge of mine during my first year.
I'd like to say that I can handle it now, but really, it's an ongoing journey. I'm much better now than I was this time last year in regard to how I manage myself, how I conduct my emotions, what I act on. And even though sometimes that overstimulation still reaches it’s peak, the, training, all the practice I've been going through, it was just a question of choice.
Like there's a moment between stimuli and response and that moment is choice. What do you choose to do? What do you choose to act on? And sometimes that choice is take a breath, turn to your TA. I need 5 minutes; I'm going to get a glass of water. I'm going to try and regulate my emotions. Because if my if one of my pupils is allowed to step outside to regulate, why can't I take a step outside to regulate?
And because I can do that, because I can recognise the signs of overstimulation and choose to do something about it, it's meant that my classroom demeanour, the atmosphere in which that I tried to create in my classroom is altogether just way more welcoming and inducive of success and learning.
Mark Quinn
That's really, really interesting. George I wonder if you can say or if you've thought about what all the different ingredients which have helped get you to this point 12 months on from where you were and because you've mentioned your mentor and your induction tutors has obviously something going on in your school and the relationships you have with colleagues in your school, which is….
George Wolstenholme
Absolutely. Yes. This is going back to what you mentioned Elaine, about the concept of failure. And I don't want to, I don't particularly enjoy using that word, but I'm going to use it in lieu of anything else, because the support I have here boils down to one element that I've I rather adore about this school. I am allowed to fail.
I am allowed to get things wrong. I am allowed to mess up because my mentor, my colleagues, my induction tutor, my head teacher, they're all they're all brilliant. And they say, George, not going to lie. You might have mess this up, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. This is not what we want. You need to be much better than this. But we're going to help you get there. Okay! This is what you do next.
Then the plan starts between all the different moving parts and the staff at the school. This is what you need next, this is what you need to do, make sure you have this ready. And then with that level of just systemic support from everyone, that was probably the key ingredient in being able to overcome not just the challenges of overstimulation, but all of them, all the all the all the issues that I may or may not have undergone throughout that first year.
Mark Quinn
This is kind of what we know, Elaine, isn't that about the importance of leadership and culture? Do you want to come in there?
Elaine Long
Yeah, you know, I was just going to say it's so great to have more neuro diverse teaching teachers in teaching and we know that, you know, schools aren't haven't always traditionally been very good at supporting that. So, I'm so pleased that your school sounds like it has. That's really inspirational and we can already see the impact that's having on some of your pupils when you say you understand them. That's a tremendously inspiring thing.
But I was going to ask a question more generally, really about what you think schools and educational leaders and policymakers should be doing more of to support the inclusion of neurodiverse teachers in schools more generally.
George Wolstenholme
Even speaking generally, it's a very difficult question to sort of hone in on and find the correct answer, because everyone's experience with neurodiversity is going to be different. I am on somewhere on the spectrum and I recognise myself as on the spectrum, but there are often times where I have to remind people that I'm on the spectrum and my ability to mask my symptoms is, well, I'm quite proficient at it these days.
It wasn't always when I was growing up. But these days it's something I have to remind people of. Yes, I'm autistic and you're going to have and that's something I'm working on. It's something you have to be aware of as I try and work with other adults in the industry. But speaking more generally to support Neurodiverse, I guess, we, I mean, it's one thing to say we want to support neurodiverse teachers, but do we want to support them in being neurodiverse teachers or do you want them in being neurodiverse teachers who can be, who can mask well enough to teach more traditionally?
And that's where the rub is. Do we want that or do we not? And for me, it's always been a case of, I've always been able to do what everyone else can do. How I do it is the question. So, the question isn't what can we do, but how can we do it? And it does often come down to the fact that, yeah, we have ways of thinking, ways of working that may be outside of the norm.
Welcome us, use us. We are, we can be very invaluable to your staff. We can be incredibly useful to you and have perspectives that you might not have considered and give us our moments I suppose, because each teacher on the spectrum will be different and their needs and their priorities will be slightly different as well, and their experience with autism will be different as well. They may be very open about their neurodiversity, they may be very, very aware of it, but also wanting to keep it to themselves and that should be respected. Again, it's a very tricky thing to narrow down and be able to find out what can we do to help neurodiverse teachers?
Well, how about listen to us? We probably already have a good idea as to what we need.
Elaine Long
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting challenge there George, about you know, do you want us to make us fit within the system or is there freedom there for people to be different? And I think that's a really good provocation and I think it's a dialogue we need to continue having in education. But thank you for being so honest about that because it's really fascinating to hear you talk about it.
George Wolstenholme
Please be more open about it. It'd be a much cleaner, much happier world if I was just allowed to tell whoever I want. And now I do. But yeah, don't be afraid of the conversation because it needs to be had and the longer you don't have it, the less of it that you have. We're weaker for it.
Mark Quinn
It does strike me, though, that we will have ECTs and maybe other teacher colleagues listening to this podcast who are themselves neurodiverse and whose experiences haven't been as happy and because schools are all very pressured places, aren't they? And for that reason, they're often very impatient places and it's really interesting to hear you say, George, that the leadership in your school and your mentors, given you, given you space to make mistakes, actually being quite blunt with you, this is a mistake.
George Wolstenholme
Oh yeah. It’s the only way to get through to me sometimes.
Mark Quinn
But that's also, as you say, giving you a moment, allowing you your moment. I think that that's a great line as well. And it's hard, it's hard in for school leaders, I think always to remember that that's important to do and that however pressured a school is, a school is never more successful than the quality of its teachers, right?
And so that really needs to nurture those teachers in all of their diversity. So, it is great, as Elaine says, it's great that you were able to talk to us about this. I'm going to ask you a question about the framework itself and our book around the framework and you can see our therapy dog has begun to start barking uninvited as always.
So, we work really hard. I hope you credit us for that, George, Elaine and I and our colleagues on trying to make our programme as strong and as an all embracing as it can be, But there'll be things that it doesn't do, and there'll be things that early career teachers would like to have that they don't have. Perhaps they want a therapy dog.
Is there anything you feel that our programme or the ECF more generally misses that it should have?
George Wolstenholme
I mean, it's difficult for me because of, it’s difficult for me to answer this question because I don't really know what better looks like necessarily, and I don't want to sort of speak wrongly at this moment. But if the ECF were to, I guess it probably already does this, but I'm just ignorant of it. But opening up dialogue about, you know, just being able, about people's different experiences and allowing ECTs and mentors and tutors and whoever else is on the platform to be able to get their say and to have honest discourse about issues and challenges and unique challenges in particular, because I can talk all day about the things that I've been facing. And but applying that to context is like, you know, it’s why I particularly love those face-to-face meetings that I have for every module and being able to talk with my ECTs and get their opinions on things and understand where they're coming from and not make sure that my experience is so insular.
Because, as you so rightly said, my experience was altogether a very happy one altogether, a very positive one, and a productive one. But there are probably scores of teachers both on and on the spectrum whose experiences are very different from mine and what can be learned. At the end of the day, school is about learning. So, what can I learn from their experience? What can they learn from my experience? What can my head teachers learn from their teachers? What can their head teachers do from learning from mine? And having discourse between everyone will be just largely so much more beneficial.
Mark Quinn
There is a there's a function for that actually already on our extend platform. It's not something you've missed, it’s something that we disabled. In the very early days of our programme we had discussion forums but we did, we did bluntly, we shut them down because if you can remember, George, when you first enrolled yourself on our programme, there are many things you didn't know about the programme, the many things you didn't understand, and you would have been one of, you know, 100% of people didn't understand stuff.
There were lots and lots and lots of people were asking questions in the discussion forums. And actually, part of what's what you didn't realise is that if you post a comment in the discussion forum, everyone gets it in their inbox. And, and so we, we decided we actually had to shut that down because, because people were getting far too much and a lot of it was disinformation or people asking questions that other people should have known the answers to that kind of thing. But that doesn't mean we couldn't investigate it itself and certainly the idea, Elaine, of having themed discussions that somehow people could opt into, that would be a great innovation.
Elaine Long
I think it's a good challenge for us and I think perhaps the online forums, it's quite a terrifying amount of freedom and things could go wrong. But providing opportunities for more structured dialogue online about certain problems and challenges people might be facing or themes that people could opt into with someone there within a few hours to curate it, you know, a leader at UCL, you know, and perhaps even some sort of suggestion board, you know, people could suggest what they want to see on their or what they want to talk to other people about. I think, you know, that could be really interesting because we do have such a vast and powerful network that there is that potential there for dialogue. Well, you are right, George? It's a good challenge.
George Wolstenholme
I will say that it was brief and unfortunately. I don't really keep in contact anymore, but there was a short while where I was in contact with other neurodiverse teachers and we were, I mean, it wasn't so much as looking for advice, although sometimes we did bring up concerns in the classroom and ask how we dealt with it but it was just talk. And I think it wasn't necessarily collaboration, but it was just teacher talk and as if we were sitting down in the staffroom just talking shop like we are now, this kind of discussion should be happening, you know, just day to day with people, you know?
Elaine Long
Yeah, I mean, maybe I feel like, well, you're right, George, because Mark and I spoke about the power of the staffroom, hence the title. For this podcast. The staffroom being where most powerful professional development can take place. Like you said, free casual conversations, mutual support for each other. So, maybe there are ways of thinking about staffroom chat, so opening the staffroom, you know, at different points for people to come in and talk about different things. Yeah, you've done our job for us tonight, George. Thank you very much.
Mark Quinn
You had given yourself an extra job as well, George because I think Elaine and I are going to have a good to chat about this in the office tomorrow. But one of the upshots might be we might give you a call and see if you can give us a bit of advice on how to set these things up or, you know, give just a little of input. I think that'll be great. It really would be very helpful.
George Wolstenholme
I’m not too sure how much help I'll be, but I'm here to help.
Elaine Long
Well, before we go for Mark’s therapy dog gets to over excited because he wants it’s tea We give every guest on our podcast a Post-it note to write some advice on, and you can write whatever you want on your Post-it note, and you can stick your Post-it note wherever you want, so I'm going to pass you the Post-it note and I'd like you to tell us what advice you'd like to write on yours and where would you stick it?
George Wolstenholme
Okay, well, in this hypothetical staffroom of ours where people of, teachers and teaching assistants of all walks of life are coming through to have chats about things that need to be chatted about and hopefully gain understanding. I would like to leave a small little Post-it note for everyone who walks through. Hopefully people will watch it and or be able to read it and it just says something very simple.
It just says, “Be a bit forgiving of yourself, please”. I think it's important that, you know, this idea of pressure, you mentioned it earlier and how schools can be a very pressurised environment. And I, I really think that on every level from school governors to everyone, to head teachers to the teachers, the teaching assistants, to students themselves, we just need to be a bit forgiving of ourselves and let ourselves off the hook every now and then, take the pressure off. You know, It's a bit of a silly one, if you ask me, but it's something that I really think about, we need to get we need to be better at.
Mark Quinn
I can hear a bell ringing, George. I don't know if you can and that's telling us that we've got to forgive ourselves a little bit and let ourselves go home. George, it's been really, really delightful talking to you and listening to you this afternoon. I do mean that; I hope you enjoyed your decaf coffee and your custard cream.
Good luck with the rest of this week. Good luck with the rest of this year. Good luck with any inquiry you develop for this module. Enjoy those children that you love so much teaching and say hello to your mentor and your induction tutor as well, because they're clearly doing a great job too.
George Wolstenholme
Thanks, George. It's just an absolute pleasure.
Mark Quinn
Our thanks go to George Wolstenholme from St Ebbe's Church of England Primary School in Oxfordshire for sharing a decaf coffee and a custard cream biscuit with us this week in the ECF Staffroom
Elaine Long
Please get in touch with us if you'd like to chat with us about your ECF experience. In the meantime, do join us soon for a biscuit and a chat with another colleague in the ECF Staffroom.
Mark Quinn
If you've enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from. Search IOE podcasts from wherever you get your podcasts to find episodes of the ECF staffroom as well as more podcasts from the IOE.
Elaine Long
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