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
29. The future of English with Elizabeth Draper
Ever wondered how English education is evolving to meet the demands of our rapidly changing world? Join us for a fascinating conversation with Elizabeth Draper, a trailblazer in the realm of English education, as we uncover the profound shifts shaping this field. With over three decades of experience and her current role as deputy chair of the English Association, Elizabeth shares invaluable insights into creating a more inclusive and innovative approach to English studies. From her pioneering efforts to integrate further education into the English Association's mission to her creative projects during lockdown, Elizabeth reveals how ambition and collaboration are key to nurturing creativity and learning across educational sectors.
Explore the dynamic landscape of 21st-century English education, where we spotlight the transformative power of oracy in developing articulate and critical thinkers. As technology continues to reshape our lives, Elizabeth emphasizes a balanced approach that encompasses knowledge, skills, creativity, and empathy. Delve into the heartwarming power of storytelling and fiction in fostering empathy and bridging divides, with inspiring examples from organizations like Narrative 4. Throughout our discussion, we celebrate the diverse richness of the English language and the collaborative spirit that drives meaningful educational change. Engage with us in this episode of Bedrock Talks to gain a fresh perspective on the role of English studies in cultivating a more empathetic and connected world.
Hello everyone. Thank you for continuing to download stream the Bedrock Talks podcast. I'm Andy Sammons, the head of teaching and learning at Bedrock Learning. I've loved my summer so far because I've had loads of chances to speak to loads of interesting people and really ramp up the pods, and it's been great and we've had lots of lovely feedback again. So please again make sure you remember to subscribe and send in questions and engage with us, because you know that's that's where the quality comes from, is when we can start to really respond to what people are enjoying and what they're not enjoying so much, and it's been just overwhelmingly positive. So thank you for everyone, um, for your continued um listenership, if that's the right term.
Speaker 1:Um, today we've got really another really fantastic guest. Her name is eliz Draper. She's incredible really. I mean, I can only dream of this 30 years an English teacher, been head of English in a sixth form, college director of English at an FE college. Obviously, we've just had Holly Barnes Lomax on from an FE college. She was an amazing guest and a lovely, lovely, lovely lady. I love chatting with her. Lovely lady. I love chatting with her.
Speaker 1:Elizabeth's also since 2020, been outside the classroom and been really active with the English Association and is currently deputy chair there and has done some really interesting work in reading campaigns around further education as well. So we've got a real seasoned, experienced, quality English colleague on the pod today. So no pressure seasoned, experienced, quality english colleague on the pod today. So no pressure, elizabeth. Um, we've got a real quality, seasoned campaigner who I think people will love to hear from um, and I've got some quite uh pressing questions for her that I I would love to hear her views on. So first of all, um, in in what must be an incredibly busy schedule with all your work with the english association, thank you for making time for us today, el Elizabeth, it's lovely to have you on.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for inviting me, Andy. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1:I must say I didn't say this before we started recording, but I must say I love our pre-pod chat a few weeks ago Because what I loved about it was that you I felt like you were going to hold me to account for everything I said. I felt like you've got a, you've got a real moral uh center to how you feel about English should be taught and and and English as a subject identity, and I think that's why I think this is a really important, another really important conversation for colleagues to hear. So thank you, um, for coming on again. So just just to give me me a sense, because I'm not sure how many people will have heard of and be and be cognizant of the english association, could you give us a sense of of what the english association is and and what it does and why colleagues might like to be involved with that?
Speaker 2:sure? Um, I can actually read you from the website the English Association is a subject association for people passionate about English literature, language and creative writing. We bring together individuals and organisations from all sectors of education and all areas of English studies. Through our publications, events and networks publications, events and networks we promote dialogue, distribute knowledge and defend the discipline, and we're currently working and this is outside of the thing working on developing a national conversation about the value of English studies, looking to the future and understanding where there is innovation, and we're sort of really really focused on that.
Speaker 1:I think it's a really important conversation to have, because I suspect no one it would be very there'd be a real minority if you asked people about the importance of whatever you might term English as in a curriculum and what that represents. So before we get on to that and your views as an individual on that, how have you supported the English Association's mission? You know what's your work, what's your direct work with them.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I have been involved in, first of all, bringing further education into the English Association, having spent a lot of my teaching life in further education in sixth form colleges. So it's no longer as it was when I first arrived in 2019. It was primary, secondary and higher education. It's now primary, secondary, further education and higher education and um I have. So. For example, the english association publishes newsletters three times a year which are not as they sound. They're very substantial publications that bring together different English specialists in different fields and in very early on, I was invited to edit a whole issue devoted to further education, so I got English practitioners, english teachers, lecturers writing about their work, their collaborative work they're doing within FE colleges, and also about the connectivity between HE and FE, which needs to grow massively. But my work has really been also about making connections between FE, secondary, primary and universities. That's the first thing. It's all about connecting everyone. So being a bit of a troubleshooter, that's the first thing. It's all about connecting everyone. So being a bit of a troubleshooter.
Speaker 2:But also early on, for example, I get involved in projects. So I got involved in a literature in action project, which I was one of the main kind of instigators of that, along with Jenny Richards, who's our current chair, and Becky Fisher, who's the CEO of the English Association, english Association, and it was during lockdown, and we worked with mainly GCSE research students across the country on Zoom, inviting them to write and express how they were feeling about lockdown, the whole experience in any way they wanted to. So we did workshops with them, we, we gave them lots of writing, creative writing, things to to do, and it was a really amazing experience, I have to say. And, as ever as always, gcse research students are incredibly underestimated, but if you give them ambition, they run with it, and they did. They wrote amazing poetry, you know stories, factual stuff, and they put it together in this volume which they then we, we um facilitate them, editing it, illustrating it, and then we published it and they called it the quarantines, and we did it all during lockdown and it was very moving.
Speaker 2:You know, we'd we'd see them on the screens, darkness falling, it was always about 4, 30 and some we put them in breakout rooms because obviously in that time everyone was isolated and, um, when, sometimes, when it got the time was up, they'd say, oh, can we not just carry on, can we not carry on a bit longer because they loved meeting up with each other online and it just demonstrated the power of literature and what that gives to young people in terms of writing, expressing themselves, if you give them the opportunity. And, um, yeah, so this is one example of something that I've done. I mean I could talk about a lot like creative, the creativity engine, which is another project that I was involved in, which is um, a web app which kept, which was being developed by software engineers and the English department at Newcastle University and the Turing Institute and the English Association, and what I did was I got again. It was GCSE research students to get involved in piloting the project and it was just brilliant because Tiago, who's the guy the software engineer, would go into FE colleges with the software.
Speaker 2:It's a, it's a story prompt machine. I kind of think about it because I'm not very techie as a kind of massive jukebox. They work with Seven Stories Museum in Newcastle.
Speaker 1:I've been there.
Speaker 2:It's great yeah it's brilliant, and so all the stories were kind of put into this software, so Roald Dahl and all the rest of it, and students. What they can do is they go onto the web and on the web page it's got gothic, adventure, you know, fantasy, sci-fi, different genres, and the students can click onto whatever story they're writing. They can then write on a blank page, start to write. If they get stuck, they can get help from a royal dial text or something, and then suddenly a copy of royal dial sentences will drop into the page. So it acts as a prompt to help them on their way.
Speaker 2:And so when tiago took this as a pilot to a few colleges, brilliantly, the students were trying to work out how they could break it. You know, they wanted to see how you could break it, which is tiago loved it and because he engaged in amazing conversations with them about how he could develop it, I how you could make it more friendly, for example, for students with special educational needs, and changing the type, face, the colour, the background. And so the EA, the English Association, and my work with them is all about enabling, connecting and demonstrating the value and power of English, but also for me, I have a massive thing about building up um, the, the profile of GCSE research students and the, and how valuable that work is because it is so undervalued. But I won't get on my soapbox about it right now well, no, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You should say that because you, almost just as I was about to interject there, you actually answered the question I was going to give you, which is a couple of threads around the lockdown piece and then what you did with your colleague at Seven Stories. By the way, I think colleagues will listen to that and think, wow, I've got to go and try that out, because I certainly would love to try that out, it's free.
Speaker 2:free online English Association website.
Speaker 1:Phenomenal. If you email me the link after this, I'll put it in. I'll make sure it goes in the description. That sounds incredible. It really does. I think, though, what you began to do there for me was connect the dots. So you're thinking about giving young people a voice. You're thinking about you know particularly vulnerable young people when it comes to you know the almost forgotten pupils. When it comes to you know the almost forgotten pupils when it comes to you know resits and things. What is it about that context and that profile of learner that would make you want to get up on a soapbox?
Speaker 2:What it would, why I feel so strongly about it, also because I've worked with them for 30 years, along with A-levels and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2:But I think what it really exposes is the inadequacy of the English curriculum in schools in that it lets down so many young people who are not necessarily in quotes, academic, but they have huge, other rich potential to offer.
Speaker 2:And the English curriculum is so limited and constrained by a lot of, as I see it, archaic, you know, 19th century texts and so on content that students have to wade through which actually doesn't hold much meaning or purpose for their own lives. For their own lives, and when you're in a class of young people who are 16 plus, who are, for example, going on to do plumbing, bricklaying, hairdressing, the trades, all sorts of things, and you're trying to get them to engage again with Charles Dickens or whatever, you would much rather have the opportunity to bring in stuff that's more relevant to them, get them to write portfolios where they can bring in their interests or the work they're doing and what their ideas are about. You know where they want to go with their lives. You know things are not. The freedom and space within the frameworks are not sufficiently there for young people to be able to express themselves, their own voices and also their ambitions beyond.
Speaker 1:You know the academic it's interesting because any long-time listener of this pod will know that my little boy is dyslexic, because I mention it every two minutes and what fascinates me and my dad, my dad you know if my dad's listening to this he'll laugh, but he'll. He said, you know he doesn't hand out praise for for nothing. You know, he's quite uh, when we were kids he never used to say well done for, like brushing your teeth. You know, like many, he would always be very like, kind of um, would take a lot for him to praise us, and he's the same with his grandkids. But he said to me do you know, wilf is his sense of humor and his intelligence and his knowledge is just so advanced for his age. It's just, it really is.
Speaker 1:But the sad part of the moment for us, for Wilf, is that he he's dyslexic and he really, really struggles. He's in year three and I get there needs to be reading, writing, numeracy. Of course I understand that I'm not for a second rejecting that notion, but he definitely. For a young chap who is as intelligent and articulate as him, the current education system does not make him feel clever and allow him to feel clever or intelligent or able to contribute as much as I think, as he could, and it breaks my heart, and so I understand why you feel this way. For a lot of learners who actually particularly know they get to this age and they feel as if they don't. I suspect they feel as though they don't have anything to give to society. I think they probably feel like that.
Speaker 2:It's in the road for them, right yeah, I mean, I think if you were to talk to, if people just take time and consideration to talk to gcse english reset teachers, they have so much expertise expertise in terms of what switches people on and how to switch young people on so, for example, there would always be breakthrough moments for speaking and listening. A lot of young people are very, very articulate if you give them the right context. And speaking and listening, as we know, is on the margins of the curriculum. So, looking forwards, that absolutely must be put right back in where it where it belongs, and I was going to change, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it's going to change the whole oracy thing, um but um. I would always have these, incredibly, these breakthrough moments when it came to speaking and listening assessments, where I would have young people who would be fairly disenchanted, not interested, not really respond that well. You'd have to work incredibly hard to get them to engage. But then I would, for the speaker, listen. They could talk about anything they want, like a hobby or something. And I always remember this young lad who came and he talked about fishing and he talked about his experience with his granddad going fishing and he was so articulate. He talked about his experience with his granddad going fishing and he was so articulate. He talked with all the different aspects of fishing, he knew so much about fishing and also he talked about his relationship with his grandfather. He was incredibly articulate, fluent, engaging, and it got no credits, nothing, no accreditation, and why?
Speaker 2:I mean it's just, it is really really not good that reading and writing gets accredited but speaking and listening is relegated as not worthy of accreditation and that disadvantages a huge number of young people who are better at speaking, listening than reading and writing. But that's never in the equation. I mean, obviously it is teachers, but not in the, not in the assessment regime. But I know I'm so delighted that in recent times oracy has come right into the forefront. In fact the english association works very closely with tom right dr tom right, narlene holmes, henderson on the um on oracy and we're involved in a project with them about it. And tom right is working closely with the oracy commission and a lot of people involved in his work are working with Jeff Barton on the Oracy Commission. So we're very, very involved with that and that is really a huge note of optimism for the future, for the English curriculum and for young people.
Speaker 1:The thing that I would ask you, and it might be a tricky question, but I suppose how would you rebalance? Because you can understand in terms of you know, particularly the reforms around sort of 10, 15 years ago, the move towards knowledge, the fact that knowledge is the great leveler-upper if that's the right, you know, knowledge is the great thing. That can people on Michael Gove, et cetera, et cetera. Where do you think speaking, listening and oracy can sit within that? Do you? Do you feel? Now, you know what? How do you see oracy coming into that picture now?
Speaker 2:Well, oracy is really the spoken language, isn't it?
Speaker 2:And they used to be on the GCcse language curriculum, a spoken a language study, which was really good, where students given the opportunity to learn about idiolect and all of that kind of thing, and they could explore their own accents, dialects and all of that kind of thing that is that sort of thing needs to bring come right back in the whole.
Speaker 2:Language study is is so incredibly relevant.
Speaker 2:Um, so, for example, you, if you consider artificial intelligence that is informed by linguistics, large language model, the clue is in the name. So the study of language for young people, if they want to work in software or any kind of artificial intelligence regime, which, of course, is growing, growing, growing, the understanding of how language works, is so useful, but it's useful anyway, and the CBI, for example, are crying out loud to have young people who are able to have conversations, you can talk, because they are commenting on young people as being very inarticulate and and and not. I find it very hard to engage interpersonally and this is a real problem and this you know, in english classrooms we could do a lot, I mean, obviously, in education across the board and in terms of spending time around understanding spoken language, understanding and teaching how to be articulate, how to be effective in the way you're communicating, how to relate to people effectively, and that's important for employment as well as for relationships, um, and, but that is a whole part of the curriculum that's been totally marginalized.
Speaker 1:But I would say language study is a is a really big area that needs to be, needs to grow and within that, the rich seam of knowledge and understanding, um, that can be gained from studying varieties of English, you know, in terms of dialect, accent, um, rather than just standard it's interesting because I I agree, and I think I suspect that in the in the coming years, things and the focus on just the bottom line and the number around progress will need will need to be relaxed to some extent to allow teachers to come away from that and focus on those, those skills which I won't call them softer skills because they're not. It's tangible and it's and I had a fantastic conversation with Sarah Davies the other week and I loved her. I think she's so insightful. She spoke about how fluency is the thing that sits in the middle of reading, writing and oracy and I think, as a profession, we need to move towards that. And I think that kind of moves me on to my next kind of area, which such a.
Speaker 1:I mean it's almost like a dream question for an English teacher. But I think it's also a bit of a nightmare question because you're like, I think most people become like kids in sweet shots when you ask them this with this question. I think this speaks to the idea, particularly with English, more than any other subjects what is English for? So, and before you that, what I'm trying to get to here is we have, at the moment, a very specific conception of English teaching with language and literature in the other bucket, and the way we teach the exams and how to write essays and that type of thing, and I suspect they're ticking some boxes for some people, but don't tick the right boxes for everyone. So how would you reframe the subject of English with this idea of oracy and fluency in mind, do you think?
Speaker 2:um, well, when you asked me what is English for, you also asked me earlier what could English look like in the 21st century? Um, and I'd kind of like to bring the two together, if that's okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's where we have to go. So, absolutely, let's go for that.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I think what needs to happen is, as a discipline English studies as I would call it it really does need to be recognised and acknowledged and understood, and I think to the general population it's like this amorphous thing, you know, and people don't really understand what English is, and I think English teachers also sometimes, or all of us, have trouble articulating what it is because it is so many things. So I think doing English to coin Bob Eagleston and what it is is really important. So it is multimodal, it's all sorts of things, isn't it? It's knowledge, skills, creativity, humanity, empathy, understandings that come to light through the study of English, that come to light through the study of English.
Speaker 2:But at the moment we're living in such fast-paced times with huge technological change. All of those things I've just mentioned are critically more important in terms of the humanity and the empathy which some would argue are, in quotes, soft skills, where they're absolutely not. They're very difficult. You know, exploring empathy is quite a challenging and difficult thing that english teachers engage with, uh, in the in the classrooms, um, we're dealing with so many different social media platforms, artificial intelligence um, we're living in an ultra information, false information age and the kind of bread and butter of English is distinguishing between fact and fiction. That's one of our staple questions.
Speaker 1:It is central to the 21st century and English teachers are in a key place to equip our young people, who are being bombarded every which way with false information, and we are equipped with teaching them how to critically um think about things or to think critically rather, do you know, um, something that struck me the other day, um, with the riots, you look at the disinformation, yeah, that was spread, and I'm going to share something here, which is you know, I wouldn't commonly share this, but I'm showing on a podcast, um, I watch every now and then. My guilty pleasure is I watch YouTube shorts, which is basically like um, tik TOK and YouTube in Tik TOK, and you just drag it up and you get. You know, the algorithm learns what you like. So it's, it's dopamine. Dopamine is so addictive and I've found myself listening a lot recently. Goodness knows what this says about me.
Speaker 1:Elon Musk, those guys and I'm a linguist by trade and I, what my true love and I'll never shy away from this is the study of language and linguistics and how an argument and rhetoric is constructed. I find I find the words of Nigel Farage fascinating. I find, you know, my colleague, liv, the other day said God, nigel Farage, and I looked to her. I was like I need some reassurance here and she said to me he's almost convincing, isn't he? Because he is, he's really convincing. But so what is it that he does to sound convincing? You know what is it about this? You know about his lines of argument and you can see almost it's not difficult to see how, for example, tommy Robinson riled up the people that he riled up the other day, and he's obviously financed by some individuals, isn't he?
Speaker 1:I suspect, from what I've read, purportedly and I think we, particularly in this age of now deep fake of AI being able to, you know, come up with it. We need to teach our young people, we need to show our young people a healthy relationship with this new technology and with social media as well, in order to not be passive recipients. I read a fantastic study the other day. Where we need it was about moving readers from being tacit readers to reflective readers, and we need to instill that. And it isn't a soft. I think once upon a time it could have been a soft skill. What is bias? This is interesting, you know. I get that. How it might have been once upon a time. It it's not anymore, because if you don't have this skill of being able to understand when you're being manipulated, you're going to really struggle in real life, aren't you?
Speaker 2:absolutely, and that's why everything that you said, I mean it's just really important and it's important to model that in the classroom, isn't it? If you're showing nigel farrell, you need to show a contrast, you need to, you know, discuss the differences and you need to look at how he's using language and how he's, how he is enchanting his listener, um, in a very articulate and clever way to get them to come on side.
Speaker 1:Because he's making people feel safe, isn't he In terms of, oh, this guy gets it, he'll protect me and my interests. And actually I would argue I mean this isn't a politics podcast, but I would argue some of the discourse from that is really quite divisive.
Speaker 2:It might have been very dangerous, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that, you know, is really quite divisive rather than very dangerous. Yeah, yeah, and I think that if you look at it, I always think really, I find it really interesting to look at the. There's a fantastic documentary about barack obama in in the white house and how much it took half him to get the health bill through, and it's almost like diplomacy center ground. It's almost like there's this like elastic band effect in politics and and in society, where we get sick of oh, we don't want middle ground, we just want decisiveness, and and I feel like we need to teach our young people to both manipulate language but also understand how it can, how they can be manipulated as well.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think your vision for that sounds really interesting yeah, we absolutely do and in fact, you know, everything you're saying at the moment is reminding me of a quote from there's this uh book that's just come out, called examination by sammy wright. It's being serialized on radio 4. Yeah, at the moment, and I just want to read you this quote that you see he's an.
Speaker 2:English teacher himself right, and it kind of speaks to what you're saying in a way. Um cause he. The question actually was why do we study literature? He asked a load of students, why do we study literature? And they came out with well, you know, help me get a job very instrumental. Very few were kind of giving you the dream answer you'd like to hear, but anyway. So I really like his answer.
Speaker 2:So I noted it down and he said all other subjects ask you to close down knowledge, to box it up into answers that you can put a tick or a cross next to. The study of literature asks the opposite. It asks you to blow things open, to allow uncertainty and ambiguity and contradiction and paradox. The answers in life are far more like the answers in literature than in all the other subjects. For example, he goes on to say uncertainty, ambiguity, contradiction and paradox lie at the heart of any school and I would say, any life, any relationship.
Speaker 2:And he says literature can be the best way to understand the world, the opening of space for thought, but in the English classroom, within frameworks obviously. But I just think that was really interesting and kind of speaks to what you were saying, in that you want to what we do is english. You know the tricks of our trade, or the tools of our trade as well as the tricks are are dealing with and navigating uncertainty, ambiguity, contradiction and paradox when we're looking at, you know, text, Nigel Farage, whatever it might be, um and uh. So I think that was quite interesting.
Speaker 1:I, I love that and something I and this is something that came to me relatively late on um, when I, um, during, when I, during the time I was teaching, I used to love I was. I was such a cliche as a, as a head of English, chose Macbeth in spectacles um, christmas Carol and power and conflict poetry. I went for the mainstream ones, but part of that was by design, because I loved teaching about what it meant to be human and the thread of vulnerability. If you look at what unites those characters, it's their relationship and I suppose it's any human right. It's their relationship with vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Macbeth's inability to be vulnerable led him to be manipulated. Death's inability to be vulnerable led him to be manipulated. Scrooge's rejection of his vulnerability led him to just be completely callous and scarred over completely. The Burlings, the ones who are willing to be vulnerable, will grow spiritually and intellectually. The ones who aren't don't.
Speaker 1:And I think that there's a thread all the way through the poems as well, and I think we need to equip young people to not just engage with that on the level of analysis and literature essays, but discussions as well. And I can you know, you know what it's like. I mean, you'll have had this more than me as a teacher, having served in the classroom for a lot longer. But you get it right with a class verbally and the oracy in the classroom, and it's just electric because it comes onto the page. All of a sudden those sentence openers become disciplinary literacy markers because you're supporting them to express themselves in a much deeper and more profound way, and I love what you've just said there about actually what literature is about is about teasing open the paradoxes and the contradictions of what it's like to be a human.
Speaker 2:and more than ever now, young people, I feel, need need that level of literacy and that level of language in their lives and communication and also that that facility and capacity to express themselves using creativity and imagination, um, and to be given the space in which to discover who they are in relation to the world, and you know, in response to what they're reading. But there was something else as well that I read just over the weekend and it was by Elie Shafak, the Turkish writer, which kind of follows on from that. Can I just read you what she said is very appropriate, saying right, obviously I'm a typical english teacher, right, um, in many, in many ways, she says I think fiction is the antidote to our extremely polarized and fractured times. It's a place where we can still hold nuanced conversations, have multiple thoughts at the same time, open up difficult issues and calmly ruminate and also do some slow thinking, because we're always rushing into judgments. It's about empathy, trying to put yourself in the shoes of another person, to become that person for a few hours, over a few days. I think that's a very good and humbling exercise for the soul. I mean, you know she really does express that and it makes me think of Narrative 4.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you've heard of Narrative 4, but it's this fantastic organisation and it's all about story exchanging and it works with young people and, um, the way it works is, young people come together and they're working in pairs and one person like it was you and me I would tell you something that happened to me as a story of my life. Like, maybe it would be a holiday, I went on, I broke my leg and I ended up in hospital. Doesn't have to be something bad, but let's just say I went to hospital and what that was like for me, and then you tell me something, maybe about your eight-year-old boy, dyslexia and then we'd swap you would become me, I would become you and we would tell other people so it's story exchanging. So I would become Andy and I'd say, well, and you know, I have an eight-year-old son, and you'd become I'm Elizabeth and I broke my leg, and that way you get into the shoes of someone else, yeah, and so it's about empathy building and it's a way of teaching empathy and it's called narrative four.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely fantastic and at Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College they've done a lot of work for that and they've written about it in the English Association newsletter and they were part of the Literature in Action project, which is how I know about it, and they were part of the Literature in Action project, which is how I know about it, and they work with Birmingham University. So it's all about collaboration, working together as well to get back to the future of English or English in the 21st century. That's the way to go. It's collaborating, it's working with others as a discipline, both within your discipline, but also in an interdisciplinary way.
Speaker 1:I think that's just fascinating because since coming to work at Bedrock and obviously a big part of my role is to work with schools and work with them on implementation and making the most of our knowledge grammar, subject, specific insights in order to kind of really leverage that, the kind of the pedagogy and the insights that you can get from that.
Speaker 1:But something that I've really learned coming into Bedrock as an organization is that although the mission is is absolutely front and center, it only can be front and center because you have to work flexibly, fluidly and responsibly to colleagues who think differently to you. You know my team, my colleagues in the new school partnerships team think differently to you. You know my team, my colleagues in the new school partnerships team think differently to me. My, my, my colleague in the subscriptions team think differently to me, and so do my colleagues in marketing and product and and that's all for the better. And I have to sometimes not be the expert in the room and and listen to what they, their expertise and this way of empathy and working and being flexible I think is a really important thing to get into our young people.
Speaker 2:Well, it generates a creative dynamic, doesn't it? Where everyone feels they're being heard and they're being valued rather than being ignored and marginalised. And it's the same with varieties of English accent, dialect, all of that kind of thing, because we have a very rich, different Englishes all over the place, and it's really. It's such an amazing opportunity to be in a classroom, kind of hearing and thinking and studying about all the different ways in which we express ourselves.
Speaker 1:And it's a privilege, I think, to listen to you and your thoughts about that, and we did say it before the podcast. Are we going to be able to do this in one or two, and I think I could do another half an hour just on this. It's just incredible. So I think that's a lovely place to finish and it's been just a thrill to speak to Elizabeth and, if anyone would like to, to please give the English Association a look. Look it up. They're doing some really exciting stuff and you'll get taken down all sorts of rabbit holes, all sorts of really interesting, fantastic threads and and themes that they're that they're working on over there. So, um, thank you for coming on today, elizabeth. It's been an absolute pleasure and a privilege. It it really has.
Speaker 2:It's been great, and as a typical English teacher, I could have said so much more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I'm guilty of that a lot of the time. I think our colleagues in schools will say that Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:No, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and please remember listeners to like, subscribe and keep supporting us, because that's what helps us get really brilliant guests on like Elizabeth. So, yeah, till next time, everyone. Bye, bye.
Speaker 2:Bye.
