Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
Welcome to Bedrock Talks, a podcast from the team at Bedrock Learning that delves deep into the heart of literacy in education. Hosted by the insightful and experienced educator Andy Sammons, this podcast stands as a beacon for anyone passionate about enhancing literacy skills and understanding its pivotal role in education.
Each episode is a journey into the world of literacy education. Andy brings together a diverse array of voices from across the education sector, from seasoned teachers to renowned academics, policy makers to literacy advocates. All of our guests share a common goal: to explore and expand the horizons of literacy education.
We go beyond surface-level conversations. Our discussions are in-depth, nuanced, and filled with insights that only years of experience and expertise can bring. We tackle a wide range of topics, from innovative teaching methods to the latest research in literacy, the impact of technology on reading and writing, to strategies for engaging diverse learners. Our aim is to provide a platform where the complexities of literacy are unpacked and understood in a way that is both accessible and enlightening.
Join Andy and his guests as they illuminate the multifaceted world of literacy. Subscribe to Bedrock Talks and be part of a community that believes in the transformative power of literacy. Together, let's shape a more literate, informed, and connected world.
Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning
17. Persistent and Consistent with Dani Walley: Aligning behaviour and pedagogy
Ever wondered what it takes to transform behaviour culture in schools, especially in a post-pandemic world? In our latest podcast, we sit down with Dani Walley to discuss how the pandemic and social media have reshaped student behaviour, leading to challenges like shortened attention spans and reduced socialisation.
Discover the groundbreaking concept of a behaviour curriculum inspired by Tom Bennett's work and learn how to put it into practice. We discuss the essential steps of defining core values such as kindness and resilience, and how these can be translated into observable actions and explicitly taught. This episode offers practical strategies for developing a unified language among staff and creating a safe space for students, aiming to reduce suspensions and exclusions through constructive behaviour management.
By building clear expectations and routines, both students and teachers can thrive. This episode is packed with actionable insights and strategies, making it a must-listen for educators looking to create a supportive and effective learning environment.
About Dani Walley:
Dani is an Assistant Principal leading on teaching, learning and curriculum in a large secondary school. Previously a Director of Humanities, Dani has held a number of middle leadership roles and is passionate about empowering staff and students to succeed; she has a forthcoming publication focussed on middle leadership. She passionately argues that addressing these behavioural issues is crucial before diving into academic curriculum, setting the stage for a more effective learning environment.
hi everyone, thank you for continuing to uh, listen, download, stream and all the rest of it the bedrock learning podcast. I have been asked by professionals to make sure that, if you could like, subscribe and all that type of thing that feels very cliche. That would be great. If you could subscribe to us, that'd be brilliant. We've had upwards of near to 2000 followers and listens now, which is which is awesome, and, yeah, it's great that people are interested in hearing such brilliant voices in the education community.
Speaker 1:Today we have Danny Wally, who's an assistant principal for teaching, learning and curriculum, previously a director of humanities. One of those ones I came across on LinkedIn has written a really interesting um article on behavior and culture and that type of thing in in a relatively challenging context, and I asked her to come on to kind of discuss how she's gone about presenting and to staff and to kind of embedding a really robust behavior culture, because I know that's something that lots of schools, let's be honest, are struggling with this. This is not an easy, you know. Teaching, now more than ever, is a really tough gig and I think it's really great to have people on who can share insights about how they've made things better for themselves and their colleagues. So, danny, thank you so much for coming on. It's awesome that you're here.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me um, it's, yeah, it's, it's just so. It's. It's really great to have real people who have done, who are on the ground and who actually really know what they're talking about. So I'd just like to normally like to start with just you know, asking about you know your previous, your current role, your previous role, how you got to where you are now, just to give us a sense of who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. So I've been at the same school now for about 10 years and I've done lots of different roles here, lots of different roles within middle leadership, done lots of different roles here, lots of different roles within middle leadership. I'm currently the assistant principal for teaching, learning and curriculum. But, like everybody else who listens to this podcast, and probably every other senior leadership senior leader member across the country, is just facing a different context really now. So the school that I work at is part of a multi-academy trust. It's got a really high proportion of free school meal students.
Speaker 2:It serves a really disadvantaged community and I think you know it's that cliche, isn't it? It's that post-covid and the world post-covid is just different for education and you know there's so much to unpick there. But for me, one of the things that I noticed coming back this year and last year is that behavior is just different. Now. You know, children are distracted and they can't concentrate, and those kind of behaviors that we need from the students in order for a school to function and in order for the learning environments to be positive is just not coming naturally anymore.
Speaker 2:And so, as part of my role, I took on curriculum in October and one of the things that I said to the head teacher was you know, before we start pulling apart curriculum in terms of making sure that students are learning powerful knowledge, we actually need to make sure that children can learn and to do that, we really need to look at their behavior. And that's where we need to start. And I think you know, I think it got put under my remit really because curriculum's in the title, isn't it? Behavior curriculum, um, but yeah, we went from there really I think it's.
Speaker 1:I spoke to school the other day and and we asked I asked about homework and why it was, for example, that we were talking about culture and independent learning, and I said what? What is it that's happening now, do you think, since we, you know, in the last 10 years? And she said it was really interesting. She said kids just simply aren't buying what we're selling anymore. It used to be. You work hard, you get your grades to secure your future and that was enough for what you know, for better or for worse. That was enough. But there's, the macro context has just meant that things have just shifted a bit and I don't know, it's a bit of a cliche to say pandemic. But there's, the macro context has just meant that things have just shifted a bit and I don't know, it's a bit of a cliche to say pandemic, but it's, you can't escape it. Um, social media even my own children have got. I'm really. My little boy is on the cusp of kind of whether he has youtube kids or youtube.
Speaker 2:You know, eight, nine years old and I'm constantly flitting between allowing him to have any YouTube time because it's that much more addictive than YouTube kids, this constant scrolling the world these kids are growing up in is a very different world to the world that we grew up in Totally, and I read a blog the other day that actually was delving into that a little bit more deeply and it was saying that you know what you've just mentioned, the world of social media and the world of technology just means that children aren't developing the same skills that I learned as a child and because, again, of the post-pandemic world, they're not getting the socialization for their community either. And the blog that I was reading suggested that a child will change a screen when they're given a tablet or a phone or a laptop. You know they'll change the browser or whatever it is that they're looking at every 19 seconds. And it really made me think because I thought, you know, if they're being socialized and being brought up to flip from one thing to the other on average every 20 seconds, and then in a classroom we're saying, right, we're doing an extended writing task now for 30 minutes, and you're not going to talk and you're not going to say anything. It's that difference between expectation and reality. You know, we're expecting them to engage and think hard and be challenged and be resilient in an environment where they're just not necessarily being socialized to have those skills anymore.
Speaker 2:And I think for me as a leader within a school. It's okay to kind of have those conversations and acknowledge those changes, but actually I needed to really drive and fuel a change in order for teaching and learning to be able to happen. You know those, those behaviors that we wanted to see from the students. We have to accept that they're not going to get those elsewhere anymore and we have to explicitly teach them really and and that's what got me onto this idea of a behavior curriculum- so that's a really nice kind of opportunity to then now ask how did you go about doing what you've done?
Speaker 1:So and actually almost before that? First of all, what specifically have you done and how did that journey begin?
Speaker 2:journey really was that realization and that conversation that I had with my colleagues, that we've just had really that acceptance that behavior is not the same game anymore, that it that it has been for 20 years. You know, the children are different, the the way that they're being socialized, their experience as teenagers is different and actually we as educators need to accept that and adapt and evolve to meet the needs of the students in front of us. Blame it on COVID, blame it on social media, blame it on whatever you want. Actually we need to accept that things are different and we need to change. So that's kind of where I started. And then the issue obviously isn't it is once you realise a change is needed. What's the change? So from there I started looking up, you know, this idea of behavior curriculum. I started looking up this idea of collective language across the staff and I came across the work of Tom Bennett and everything I've done really stems from Tom Bennett and I read the publications that he'd done for the Department of Education. I found his National Behavior Survey and I started there really because that phraseology you know, the behavior curriculum is actually a phrase that he coined really and he talked about this explicit behavior and he talked about having to teach that behavior, positive behavior, to students.
Speaker 2:And I think the bit that really got me is I noticed, particularly in September, october, our suspensions were increasing, our internal exclusions were increasing and actually the pressure from middle leaders to up sanctions and to treat behavior more severely was increasing. And there's only so far you can go. If someone's been excluded, what more can you do? And I think that feeling of helplessness really spurred me to looking into something different. And Tom Bennett says, to quote him, he actually says that by implementing a behavior curriculum you're working on certainty and not severity. And that really resonated with me because, like I say, there's only so far you can go with sanctions. So I engaged with the literature. I suppose really I read what he was talking about. I liked this idea of explicitly teaching. I'm aware even now talking to you about it, you know it isn't a silver bullet and it isn't going to fix all the problems in behavior, but at least it gave me a starting point.
Speaker 2:So I pitched, really to my SLT and said, look, this is what the DFE is saying, this is what Tom Bennett is suggesting. I think we need to break down what these behaviors that we think are lacking are in students, and then we need to work out how to explicitly teach them. So we started with our values. Really, you know our core values of it as an academy and ours are, you know, confidence, kindness, empathy, resilience, challenge. And we said, well, what does that look like? You know, it's all great having these posters everywhere and saying that this is what we stand for, but, but when we're saying we want a child to be resilient, what's that look like? We want a child to be kind, what's that look like?
Speaker 2:And we really started there and we started trying to, you know, write down, really, what are those types of behaviours that we want to see within the pupils. And from there we got a list, really, and and we then said, well, which are really important to us? So, you know, kindness is is huge, isn't it? But how can we break that down? And we talked about, well, actually, a way of showing kindness is manners, and how manners, to us as an institution, are really, really important. And we went back to that phrase you know, manners, maketh man, and we said that actually, that's a really core phrase for us and I appreciate, you know, I spoke about it on Twitter and on LinkedIn, and I got quite a lot of flack, honestly, from people saying that's outdated and it's this, but to us it isn't actually. To us, that was really core of what we're doing. You know, man is not sexist, it's not gendered, it's man as in human, and actually man is maybe who you are, and that was really central to what we were doing. So we broke down what those behaviors that we wanted to see from the students are in line with our values, and then I realized that the next step was getting the staff on board, and so we pulled Twilight and obviously got the free burger van, because that's what everybody wants on a Twilight. So we had to appeal to the audience and we got staff into the theater and I basically did um and you know a sequential powerpoint really, where I started um by quoting some of the things that Tom Bennett was saying, you know, and and quotes that really resonated with me, that I knew would resonate with the staff.
Speaker 2:Like he says that 12 minutes. I literally remember them now. You know he says that 12 minutes of every single hour's lesson is being lost to poor behavior, and he said that and if you add that up, that equates actually to six weeks of learning every academic year is just gone because teachers can't teach because of poor behavior. And and the one that hit me the hardest, honestly, is that only a quarter of all students surveyed reported feeling safe at school. And, and that one was a really powerful one that I used with the staff because I said, you know, ultimately, whatever your role is in this room, whatever subject is that you teach, we're all here actually, particularly within our community, to provide our students with a safe place to go. And if the behavior has kind of escalated to the point now where students don't feel safe, then I'm sure the staff don't feel safe and actually we're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2:So I kind of started with the problem. You know the why. Why is it important that we drive this? Simon Sinek, you know, start with why you're doing what you're doing. And then I talked about Tom Bennett advocating for this explicitly taught behavior, um, and actually as well, he really advocates the importance of it within disadvantaged communities, and I talked about that and then I broke it down really for the staff and said, look, these are our values and this is what our SLT and our middle leaders agree that these values should look like with our pupils um, and this is what I want to do and I you know, there were so many facets to it.
Speaker 2:So we spoke about um. We had an agreed language, for example. So we talked about um, an agreed language that all of staff would use with students. When we're trying to de-escalate conversations and we read things like um, that's not what we do here. And we agreed, obviously, to highlight what we do do here. So if you've got a student that's been sent out of a classroom because they've called somebody stupid, for example, it's that phraseology and that commonality between what we're saying and you know that's that's not what we do here. We are kind and we are kind to each other and why that's important.
Speaker 2:And we talked about thanking positive behaviours. So you know, thank you for telling me the truth. I can imagine that was difficult for you. Thank you for telling me what had just happened. And then also that kind of positive language of let's fix this together, let's work through what's happened and find a solution together. So we had agreed language and obviously there's a process of training the staff with that. So I did some mortifyingly humiliating videos. It felt like at the time where I filmed myself in school with real pupils in real situations, trying to use this language to de-escalate situations. And I modeled using things like slant, which is quite core to our behavior policy within the classroom, and again, even things like slant, you know, talking about how that isn't just a compliance measure. You know slant and Douglas Moff talks extensively and brilliantly about this you know slant is actually a way of teaching students how to actively listen, how to positively have those, um, oh, sorry for those who aren't familiar with slant.
Speaker 1:What is that? What is?
Speaker 2:that. So it's um sit up, listen, ask and answer questions, um nod slash, never interrupt I know there's variations with that and track the speaker, um, and that's really key as well to what we're doing, because it's teaching students to be polite when someone's talking to you, to look at them and you know to actively listen and to nod and to encourage that, that conversation and, again, life skills that we assume students have got and if we don't explicitly teach them they haven't.
Speaker 1:So you know, I often wonder as well in my hey, I'm not sat in my ivory tower here.
Speaker 1:My own two kids have got ipads and we've fallen into the trap.
Speaker 1:At dinner time we've allowed ipads because actually it's our first point as parents of the day where we can sit down and and just have some time to ourselves, and actually it's it's, it's easy and not to go through the pain if you're not having your ipad today. It's actually easier to give them the ipad and have a bit of but in in the. If you think about that and we often reflect on that and we don't allow ipads the majority of the time, but you know that whole thing about listening to a speaker when they're speaking but if you think about the screens that have now become part of our lives and and the, the ways that the young people are socialized, as you, as you alluded to earlier, it's so interesting that all of these micro things aren't being taught all the way through childhood. They're not being socialized by their own parents in lots of ways and I don't say they as in you know over there, I mean my children as well, and we all have to be cognizant of that, don't we 100%?
Speaker 2:and again, I completely echo what you're saying. I've got two boys myself, you know, three and five and, almost like you said, I'm a bit ashamed really with how often they spend on on YouTube and flicking and swiping and and watching their iPads. But I think, as a parent, as a teacher, it doesn't matter what your role is. I think that moment of reflecting on am I teaching them the skills explicitly that they need to succeed in life? And that's where I came from as a teacher and that's where I come from daily as a parent. We all make mistakes and we all do things to try to get through the day sometimes, but I think for me it was. It was that realization that, oh, it's on me now as a parent, as a teacher, as a leader, these behaviors that I want to see. Well, it's on me to teach them, then, and it's on me to explicitly teach them. And I think that's you know. If you were to describe the behavior curriculum in a sentence, that's what you would say.
Speaker 1:You know it is explicitly teaching the positive behaviors that you want to see so that does bring me on, really, then, to you know, what does this look like, broadly speaking, at different year group levels? You know how. How are students taught about this? You know how, how, how was it implemented? When it comes to when it, when you know, when it comes to onboarding, almost you know, young people into this and what, what, what do you do?
Speaker 2:what do you do, of course so having kind of I really don't like that phraseology having trained the staff I suppose more it's having shared with the staff what our plan was and what our strategy was and made sure that I've listened to their feedback and that they agree and that we've got this right and our kind of phraseology as a staff really was persistent and consistent, because what we were saying is even this amazing yeah, like even this amazing idea isn't going to change things overnight. You know, we've got to keep. You know, getting getting the whole of year seven into the theatre and talking to them about kindness isn't going to mean that they walk out the door and they're suddenly kind. It's about a commonality and approach. It's about being consistent. It's about challenging behaviors persistently and knowing the reason why you're doing and approach. It's about being consistent. It's about challenging behaviors persistently and knowing the reason why you're doing it. So it's not punitive. We're not cracking down on student behavior. It's actually that different approach and that idea Tom Bennett says about getting it right in the first place reduces the need for punitive consequences. So it was adjusting, really, our viewpoint and our approach to behavior to be that positive, proactive behavior rather than finding ourselves stuck in a reactive position and only being able to go so far Because, again, you know, I'm sure any other leader listening to this is facing the same difficulties. I am where they've got pressure from the trust and Ofsted and the government to reduce the number of exclusions. So it's like behavior's getting worse. But you need to reduce your exclusions and how do you do that? And this was my solution.
Speaker 2:So, in answer to your question, I got, I did a rota, basically, and I split every year group in half because we're a huge school, we've got 1200 students on roll and I got half the year group into the theater at a time for an hour and I did a lesson essentially with them where I told them the statistics from Tom Bennett. I was really transparent. I was really honest with them about why, why I was talking to them, about what I was talking to them about that day and why, as an academy, we were explicitly talking to them about our values and very much this idea of I want you to get it right. So, because I want you to get it right, I'm telling you how to get it right and I'm showing you how to get it right, and I used the videos with them where I was modeling positive behavior from students and from from staff. So I stole a couple of my year 10 lessons and I asked them to help me to model what students should be doing as well. And I mixed it up with some games and some recall and I did, you know, the takeoff touchdown. So stand up if what I'm saying is true and sit down if it's false, so that they weren't bored. And honestly, you know, a couple of colleagues said it was like Pavlov's dogs, because I had my big tub of sweets and every right answer got a chocolate bar. You know, because I had my big tub of sweets and every right answer got a chocolate bar.
Speaker 2:You know, I did what I needed to do to try and keep it engaging for an hour and to get my message there. Really, I talked about the stories of you know, particularly when we were doing challenge and resilience, I took the stories of sports people and I talked to them about opportunities to be resilient and I was really honest that we are going to face challenges. You know we are. It's a part of human nature, but it's how we react to those challenges.
Speaker 2:And basically every student had a series of three sessions in the theatre with me over the course of a week where we explicitly learned and talked about these behaviours. And then the idea was is that all the staff were on the same page, that they were reinforcing those behaviours outside of the theatre? And you know, we tried to make it as quirky as we can. So we talked about lining up, being shoulder behind shoulder, and then every assembly, every head of year is talking to the students about shoulders behind shoulders and the line up on the yard became shoulders behind shoulders and we were really consistent with the language.
Speaker 1:Really that's so important, the consistency of language, because I think as well, the other part of this is that children and humans feel safe with consistency and with boundaries, don't they?
Speaker 1:And if you can, you know, with something like a behavior system, it's really easy to laugh at, to find, you know, to get gaps in the. You know in the armory, cheeks in the armory and all that kind of thing. But if you're sharing that, you know that whole culture it's because then it becomes a culture, not a strategy, and that's what you're really talking about there, I think, which is incredible, and you know. The other thing that I was going to touch on there is that I'm not saying that your staff needed, needed kind of training as such, but I think the other piece that people forget about is that all of our resilience and all of our stress levels and stress tolerance took a hit during COVID. I certainly noticed it in my school. The staff that I was leading, the team I was leading, was that there was a change on a macro level in terms of their stress tolerance as well.
Speaker 2:I think the adults in the building need that consistency as well, perhaps I totally agree, but I think for me, what I was finding is staff felt very isolated. Staff felt like they were fighting behaviors within their own silos and departments or even on their own, and they felt like, you know, I'm the only one challenging skirts on the corridor and this and that and it. Behavior became very isolated, even though we've got a centralized welfare team. And I think for me, and that you know, I really dislike that phraseology of training I appreciate I can't think of a better word to say but it's because it wasn't training them on what to do. It was about getting everybody on the same page with consistency, so that people don't feel like they're on their own fighting behavior. Everybody is singing off the same hymn sheet and by doing that, you know that the person before you has delivered the same message and has therefore supported you. You're challenging someone to slant and to trap the teacher, but they've had five different teachers that day deliver the same message. It's actually strengthened numbers and by doing that, everybody, I think and would like to think, felt very supported in what we were doing and they could see very clearly that this wasn't, you know, another SLT initiative or another idea off the shelf. It was actually a way of refining and streamlining what we already do to make it a little bit more consistent. You know, everybody challenges lateness, but if we're all using the same language to do it, then we're supporting each other by doing it that way.
Speaker 2:And you know I said earlier have I got the silver bullet? No. Is behavior at my school now absolutely impeccable? No, silver bullet no. Is behavior at my school now absolutely impeccable? No. I would say there is still that 7% of really difficult students exhibiting really difficult and challenging behaviors that this behavior curriculum hasn't had an impact on. But that was never the purpose.
Speaker 2:The purpose was always to get the majority to support the majority in teaching them how to get it right. You know, ultimately children don't want to be in trouble, whether they're 15 or 5, they want to get it right, they want to be rewarded, they want to be successful. And this was a way of grabbing hold of that and saying right, you want to get this right, we want you to get it right, this is how you get it right. And by doing that it felt like quite an empowering movement for myself, for the staff, for the students. It kind of brought us together and created that culture, and we still use that phraseology now of this is what we do here. And actually now our teaching and learning strategy is this is what we do here. Our curriculum path, this is what we do here. Everything that we do now comes under that. That branding, almost the identity of this is what we do here. This is who we are.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to ask actually, how? How does this feed into the pedagogy um and and and the teaching in the room? Because obviously your, your title is curriculum. So what, how, what are the common routine structures?
Speaker 2:and and those types of things. What, what is there? Anything that's started to manifest?
Speaker 2:in the pedagogy as well see the two as separate. I don't see them as separate pillars of leadership. I very much see them as connected because you know, I said it at the beginning if the behavior isn't positive, then you can't teach. So for me there's an interconnectivity in everything that's happening here. You know, slant is a great behavior tool and it's a great way of teaching active listening, but it also allows for effective teacher exposition. And what I would also say is the teachers are now bringing those values into their lessons and they're feeling more confident in talking about resilient people through history and challenges faced by great people or challenges that are, you know, weaved in thematically throughout texts in English, and it's embodied the values in everything that we're doing, from both a pedagogical sense and also in a behaviour sense. And I think that's really powerful, that we've got this identity. The staff and students know what we do here and, as a result, the teaching and learning is better.
Speaker 2:Because one of the things that I feel really passionately about and where I feel like this all comes together is that sense of belonging, that psychological safety you know um Owen Eastwood talks about. You can't learn, you can't have a thriving team if they don't feel safe and and part of something. And actually what we did with the behavior curriculum was so much bigger. What we did actually was create an identity for our school, for our community, and show everybody where their part in that identity is. And what I would say now is within the classrooms there's an enhanced psychological safety. The students feel safe, they feel calm, they know what to expect and, as a result, yeah, they can learn and the relationship with the teacher is better and the teacher feels more supported, so they're calmer in their approach. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's interesting that you should say that, because I had a discussion with someone a few months ago and I'm not sure how common or how popular this will be as a view, but they said that they always struggle with the idea that one member of SLT could be responsible for behavior on their own.
Speaker 1:And behavior is just because actually what you've said there is about, it's about the culture. It's about something deeper than just behavior and discipline. It's about how that feeds into those other things that you're talking about belonging and safety, how that feeds into the classroom routines, all those things that allow, as you say, teacher exposition, that allow the structure of a lesson to unfold at a pace that is natural, that allow the structure of a lesson to unfold at a pace that is natural. So when you have a teacher, you know we talk at Bedrock about we've now got something called our Classroom Hub and all of the content that's available in MAPPA all of those subjects, specific words with the image, activities and all that stuff in it is now available at the click of a button. It's there, but it's almost rendered futile if you can't enjoy those and expand and relish those teaching moments because the behavior is not in place. It's almost like you can't. You can't have it unless it comes first. So what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:I mean I feel like I'm putting you on the spot a little bit there, but what are your thoughts on one member of sl team being responsible for the lightning rod?
Speaker 2:again, I totally agree with what you're saying, but I think it's the difference, isn't it, between strategy and operational. Like, the way I see it is the member of SLT who's responsible for behavior is responsible for the strategy surrounding behavior. I think behavior as a day-to-day tool to manage is the responsibility of absolutely everybody, but I think, again, that's where everybody has got to feel supported in doing that, because you know what's the most intimidating part of our job behavior, what's the most challenging part of our job behavior, what's the most frequent part of our job behavior. And I think, actually, what you've got to do is create a culture where everybody feels confident in talking about behavior and challenging behavior, so that the strategy is what drives behavior and not just what we found ourselves out, what we found ourselves doing in september, which was constantly reacting to behavior and firefighting behavior, and that's where we found ourself in a mess.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I feel like by doing this, we we changed our approach and and you know it's an it's an ever going process, it's an evolving process.
Speaker 2:I spoke to the students about how to embody those values, but then there was a further stage after that where we had to really zone in on how we enter assembly. And then you know, our current focus is lineups how do we line up in the morning and and you end up having to kind of break that behavior down to a really micro level where it's like, right, the whistle will blow and the students will line up the form. Tutors will do this, they will use this language. When they're done, they will put their hand up and you know there'll be people listening to this podcast that think, God, I wouldn't want to work there. I would hate being told what I need to do every minute of my day and I get that, but that really isn't what we're doing. What we're doing is not it's teacher agency. We're giving teachers the tool to add to their toolkit to be able to deal with behavior in a way that makes them feel supportive but that also has a positive outcome for our culture.
Speaker 1:I worked at one of the Dixon schools in Bradford a number of years ago now and when I first got there you could tell that behavior was a challenge. But we had a fantastic SLT there who implemented and were implementing a behavior system that wasn't dissimilar to what you've just described there and I was so thankful of that because it meant that I was able to then teach. I was so thankful of that because it meant that I was able to then teach and, fundamentally, the pupils knew what the language was, in order to kind of. You know how we talk about behavior. It wasn't perfect. You know, people listening to this who probably work with me at that school will think well, it wasn't and it wasn't perfect at all times.
Speaker 1:It really wasn't, but for the, for the critical mass of pupils, it was about you. You know, when you talk about whistles blowing and that type of thing, it's about the predictability that I I'm a pupil at this school the whistle's gonna go. It's about not knowing what I'm gonna do, but I know that other people are gonna react in this way. I know that the, a big mass of pupils is gonna react in this way. So I can feel safe as a young person at this school and I think it's really commendable what you've done and, as I say, when I came across the article, when I came across you know the fact that you you'd shared it and obviously I think tom himself has has.
Speaker 2:Uh, that's my time to fame. I'm just saying when that happened that was like the pinnacle point of my career.
Speaker 1:Tom bennett knows who I am mine is uh, mary, my shared one of my posts on linkedin the other day and I'm dining out on that now until kingdom come.
Speaker 2:That's literally curriculum.
Speaker 1:That is impressive, yeah it's been a thrill speaking to you. I've I've loved it and it's been. You know I have, I admit I've listened back to podcasts and I've thought to myself shut up, get out of the way of the other person and just let them speak. And it's been so lovely listening to you tell us all about what you've done, and I think I know that there'll be so many colleagues that I've worked with specifically, but colleagues all around the country who will love what you've said here in this podcast and will no doubt share this with their leadership teams and think and it will help them think deeply about it. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I've really really enjoyed it and, like I say, I really appreciate that we're having the conversation, because I think that's what's really important.
Speaker 1:So thank you yeah, well, hopefully we'll have you again. Anytime, we'd love to have you on again. That'd be great thank you bye, take care, thank you.
