#070 - Ross McGill | Simple Practices to Make Your Teaching Life Easier

Ross McGill is an educator, public speaker, author, and the founder of TeacherToolkit. In this episode, expect to learn how to mark less while achieving the same level of improvement in your students, how to teach your students different ways to receive feedback, why many school administrators pursue a consistency that doesn't actually exist, and why the teacher shortage is puzzling despite the abundance of tools designed to save teachers' time. We also discuss why it's becoming increasingly less likely for teachers to spend their entire careers in the classroom due to the rise of online teaching opportunities, the eight characteristics of a toxic school, what you can learn about a school's culture just by walking through the front doors, the menopause policy in England, and, much more. Thank you for tuning in and we hope you enjoy the show!

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Transcript

Lucas Clarke (00:01.075)
All right, Ross McGill, thank you so much for coming on today,

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (00:04.64)
My pleasure Lucas. Hello everyone listening.

Lucas Clarke (00:07.83)
So first thing, you've written a dozen books so far in education. And so the lucky dozen so far. so obviously never enough time to go into all 12 in one session. mean, maybe some sessions down the road to cover some more. But the first one, I came across a quote on another podcast recently, and it was alarmingly simple. And as we were kind of just discussing that

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (00:13.087)
Yeah, it is 12. Yes.

Lucas Clarke (00:36.502)
a lot of your work kind of honed in on kind of the main kind of overall things that teachers doing on a daily basis. But the quote was, does it grow corn? Like does it do the fundamental thing of like, does it help the teacher do the daily thing? So across your books, I guess, like what did you kind of identify as some of the common struggles amongst teachers? And then what are some of the things that you kind of discovered through your work that helps them grow corn?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (01:06.55)
Yeah, it's a good one. I guess the common struggle, what I see on my travels, and I guess this is supported by all the analytics on my website. 20 million teachers have read my blog now. And when I look at the Google analytics, Mark and time and time come up as the number one headache. And when I go into schools and I do a workload quiz on the screen and everyone votes anonymous on their phone, I say, what drives you crazy? And they all say Mark in, every type of school.

Lucas Clarke (01:23.627)
Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (01:35.938)
I guess my passions, I guess when you become an expert, I suppose where I'm an ex, well, I'd like to think I'm an expert in simplifying complex ideas. because like any expert, you can make things look easy on the surface. There's a lot of decision making going on behind the scenes. so I hope that, people that come across my work, often tell me that they like, you know, simple language.

not over complicated, not too academic, just straight to the point. I'm picking, you know, complex ideas and like you said, often the odd nuance here or there that might give people a different perspective.

Lucas Clarke (02:18.902)
And so in marking, what are some, because I remember, for example, I was talking to a colleague once and he said, you know what? One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard for marking was at the end of the semester, let's just say your grade book has 26 things in it, because it's all the assessments you've done over the course of your four months. One of his senior teachers said to him, just take these six out and see what happens.

So he was going to trim it from 26 down to 20. And he said, watch the students grades and like the six less assignments, the grades were almost all the exact same. He's like, you're doing so much more work and you're not actually like gaining any kind of like aggregate value. You're just literally putting another, I mean, you got 120 students times six assignments. I mean, you just saved yourself probably 40 hours of marking, which is a week of work. So it's like, those are kinds of the things. So

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (02:56.438)
Right.

Lucas Clarke (03:16.03)
Is there anything similar to those lines that you kind of tell the teachers about kind of how to simplify that part?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (03:22.85)
Yeah, absolutely. There's many ways to mark. And I guess the next thing you have to think about is what is it that you're assessing and who are you assessing and topics and all, you know, we've got so many different permutations, you know, how a four year old translates your feedback compared to an 18 year old is going to be very different, right? So there's many ways to Mecca, you know, you can fly, you can take a boat, you can walk, there's many ways to be marking too. So I think whatever the technique is,

Lucas Clarke (03:39.734)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (03:47.872)
You

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (03:51.808)
What I've learned from studying feedback is it's not students. Students often are told what to do, but the research recommends that that isn't what we're trying to achieve as teachers, which is often we fall into that trap. Here's what to do next. It's knowing how to do it. And it's a small subtle difference, but what action to take next, how to fix it, what strategy to use to fix it is where we should spend more of our efforts.

So rather than, you know, when we provide that feedback and that score, whatever it might be, and telling students what to do next, it's equipping them with the skills of knowing what to do after and knowing how to do it is what I've learned most. How you do that when you've got 30 students, 25 lessons a week, there lies the headache for all teams. How do you simplify this process further? Well, you can't mark everything.

Lucas Clarke (04:26.486)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (04:31.892)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (04:40.874)
Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (04:49.014)
And you also want to teach your students to mark some things for themselves. Of course, you've now got technology and AI where you can get a lot of quizzes that are self-marking. So I think it's a blended approach to all of these techniques, as well as obviously when the teacher's expertise has the kick in, you have to sit down and actually read and respond in great detail alongside the assessment criteria. And this is where sometimes that workload can exceed.

Lucas Clarke (05:10.816)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (05:15.97)
I guess just day-to-day assessment is choosing a range of techniques that can reduce that headache. Some teachers work in certain schools where they might stipulate a certain approach that can often lead to more headaches themselves. We've got the examination system at a greater level. So I'm not necessarily talking about that summative aspect. I'm talking about the decisions you choose to make in your schools and in your classrooms that are the issues that teachers get wound up and fixated with.

through no fault of their own, just the burden of lots of kids or what the school or college decides the approach should be like so that students can respond. I guess one last point would be a lot of school leaders and principals try to chase consistency. You know, it's desirable, but what I've learned on my travels, and I used to do this myself as a school leader, is you can never get that consistency because everyone does it slightly different, different time of the lesson, things like that.

Lucas Clarke (06:01.792)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (06:13.122)
So I think it's coherence that we should be chasing rather than consistency. When I joined this skill, this is the preferred methodologies, how you translate them to suit your subject or age group. That's when the nuance kicks in and you can slightly change the technique, but we're all on the same page, know, the same team going in the same direction. We've got a good understanding of what we're trying to achieve collectively, but how you do it in math, science or history, it has a subtle difference.

Lucas Clarke (06:17.322)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (06:42.514)
Absolutely. And even as you're kind of saying that, I've kind of moved away from just asking everyone their thoughts on the teacher shortage and recruitment. But do you think there's almost at a time when there is so much more available, like AI markers and like even Google form quizzes I would often use that were like self-marking. Do you think, like, are you hearing the complaint of marking less and less even with these tools? Like, is that still contributing to a lot of the issues or?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (06:42.818)
That's it.

Lucas Clarke (07:12.04)
I feel like a lot of it has been solved in the kind of the smaller mundane part. But what are your thoughts on that?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (07:12.331)
Now

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (07:17.298)
I still hear the same headaches. mean, I guess AI is still developing right and we've still got to teach the AI how to respond to various assessment rubrics. Then we've got the headache of do we trust it? Are we confident that it's not adding in any bias? And I guess what will we use the AI to report back on, whether it's a detailed script or just a simple score?

Lucas Clarke (07:22.357)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (07:28.854)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (07:41.12)
Hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (07:44.035)
I think we're some way off that, but I wouldn't rule out that we're not too far away. But, you know, if we think about the pandemic, how we all thought there might be a kind of global reset on the exam system, we've all defaulted back to what we've always ever done. So whether there's some merit in, you know, having students sit in an exam hall and complete an exam paper away from a computer is one.

sure way to show there's a level playing field and there's no cheating going on with that AI technology. To how this ripples through into the classrooms, another, I guess, another conversation about how you can use these tools to improve marking. you know, last two years, know, every school I go to, I'm surveying teacher workload. Marking for the last two years, despite AI, is still the number one headache. it's a good, I guess an interesting question. Has AI

you know, supported or hindered the kind of process. I think the jury's out on that one, actually. That's a good question.

Lucas Clarke (08:43.924)
Yeah. Well, because even like I've noticed a lot of the teachers that I would come across is almost like a weird guilt associated with using some of the AI things is it's like, no, like, that's my responsibility. I should be the one that's doing all this, like in the trenches work. But it's like, no, like you can, it's okay to use this, like you don't have to justify it.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (09:00.258)
Yeah, well, I've used technology in my classroom for 15 years. The technology can tell you so much, but you'll still need to spend some mental effort translating what it says to then provide that individual assessment back to your teacher. That's always going to be a headache, even in and out of the class, it's going to consume some of your time. So yes, we can reduce the laborious.

Lucas Clarke (09:17.494)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (09:27.49)
manual labor of lesson planning and marking. But you know, 25 lessons a week, 30 students, that's a lot, a lot of work on a teacher. And I don't think that's ever going to go away. To be honest, I think, I think the dynamics of how we work will change, you know, traditional paper lesson planning. I used to have to hand design every single worksheet before I went to the photocopy and printed off 30 or I'd

Lucas Clarke (09:39.233)
No.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (09:54.402)
Or I'd write on an acetate sheet and keep that acetate for four or five years while I repeated the work. That effort's always there in another guise now. But I just think the nature of teaching, we know it's rewarding, it's rich, it's complex, it's challenging, but I think the nature of the profession when you're always working with a certain number of students for a fixed period of time, multiple times throughout the week, I think the nature of that

Lucas Clarke (09:59.551)
You

Lucas Clarke (10:05.93)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (10:13.43)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (10:23.37)
that role that will always make people's job hard to do.

Lucas Clarke (10:29.603)
And so I don't want to get into the encouraging teachers to leave the profession by any means, but how do you know if teaching is not for you? Like how often are you kind of asked that question? Like how would you advise someone to like carry out that individual reflection?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (10:45.846)
Yeah, that's good question. mean, I always say life gets in the way. You know, your circumstances change over time, you know, whether you get a mortgage, get a kid. So you have to have a secure career and more to kind of cover all your overheads, so to speak. Some of that can become challenging. Your circumstances can change at home and that can also impact on your career.

we've also got the dialogue of mental health, you know, something that we never spoke about 10 years ago. over here in England, would find no academic research on teaching mental health whatsoever. so when I started to find some things, I was really excited, but again, that phrase mental health, it was never ever used. at least today with that, with mental health and flexible working, there are things in place where schools and individuals can start to consider.

a more holistic approach to teaching and not just being, you know, working to live right. Instead of the opposite, you have a life and teaching just happens to be what you do. I guess that self assessment check for individuals, you know, your health is always a good giveaway. You know, you're not sleeping, you're stressed, you're not looking forward to turning up for work. If you can't get the basics right, I think it's hard for teachers, you know, just getting your five a day, bottle of water on your desk during the day.

You know, it's really sounds simple, but a lot of us take it for granted, but how often do you get a chance to go to the toilet during the day when you're a teacher? And when you're a principal, when you've got people coming in and out your door all day, when do you get to go to the toilet? These are common things that people speak up about after they've gone. And we're just talking about, you know, typical people, you know, if you've got a health condition where, know, hopefully your employer is being a bit kind on

Lucas Clarke (12:26.859)
Hehehehe

Lucas Clarke (12:31.126)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (12:41.974)
You know, your flexible working arrangements, then it can make things a little bit easier for you, but I still got a lot of work to do. I think with the world now today, we're much more connected. You can travel overseas for a few dollars. You can teach internationally. You can teach online now as well. think that the dynamics of the workplace for all types of industries, not just teaching is changing significantly. think the biggest headache for the teaching profession is.

Lucas Clarke (12:46.389)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (13:11.266)
Parents still need to send their kids at the moment to physical institution to be taught. They can go physically or work at least a hybrid approach online at home to work. you know, that big question, what makes a school, what constitutes a school? Is it a physical building where kids have to come to or can they all do it online? I hope we never get to a place where all of our schools are all online because...

Lucas Clarke (13:15.926)
Hmm

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (13:37.666)
You know, I work on my own now and I don't work all online, but if I'm not out in the school, doing teacher training, meeting people, I know that I'm going to start to crack up. So we need, we need to ensure that our young people develop those social skills. saw these headaches during the pandemics. If we're going to switch to a place where due to the market forces of the teaching and trying to recruit, you know, I, could lead an online class now with 3000 kids. You can't do that physically in the school.

Lucas Clarke (13:47.472)
Hahaha

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (14:06.784)
So you've got the technology and the market forces that might filter through to our teaching terms and conditions as we know it, versus the traditional route where there's you and I and a few other teachers in a physical building with 30 kids each, 25 hours a week. So yeah, it's a big question.

Lucas Clarke (14:15.637)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (14:25.482)
Well, and I think even what you said about like, you, you feel like you kind of start to lose your mind a bit if you're not getting out of your house and doing a bit more. Cause I'm even myself this year, I've transitioned to into a bit of a different role in my school where I'm a, it's like a different branch of like a resource team kind of thing. Like I'm not necessarily with special ed special education students, but I'm like a tier two teacher for academic support, but I'm not in a, don't have my own classroom every day with my, with my five periods. And I'm doing like,

pull out work and I'm doing, like I'm in everyone else's classroom, which has been super cool. But sometimes like I was just doing testing for a full month and I was just like, I'm going to lose my mind. If I go in every day and I'm just doing like the same reading tests, like there's something about that. Like the positive chaos of those 35 students sometimes in your class that are just like you have those fun conversations and you get to it. It's like, that's kind of the part that I think keeps you in the profession. And I think that's, I think if you don't enjoy that.

You're like, no, I want to set up my desk and just do some coding all day. Then you kind of know, okay, maybe this isn't for me.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (15:28.866)
You know, people that have lived the life as a teacher know it's incredibly exhausting and to teach success for three or four years, you know, in today's landscape, you're doing really well. You know, I did 26 years, which is quite a good stint. I do meet on my travels one or two teachers that do 30, 40 years and they often be in one of two of the same schools throughout their career. And I just view that as such a marvelous achievement.

Lucas Clarke (15:53.312)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (15:57.762)
But I don't see with the technology and all those circumstances we've just discussed, I would find it quite an impossible dream to imagine that a teacher might stay in a school for 30, 40 years and be a teacher for that lengthy time with all the things that we have access to our fingertips now where everyone can have a shopping cart, everyone can teach online, everyone's got their own video channel.

Lucas Clarke (16:17.471)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (16:24.386)
As I said, it's influencing all sectors and industries, not just teaching. So it'd be interesting to see how it all ripples through.

Lucas Clarke (16:32.648)
I'm also noticing a bit more of a trend of, I think it's starting more in the university, like post-secondary area where you're starting to see the accreditation kind of being questioned. Because I think if once that's, and like there's other kind of smaller scale, like online platforms and universities where like, you can take these courses with me, like you don't get a bachelor of arts degree in your mailbox, but you'll still get to kind of sit with someone and you pay them and you learn from them. Do you kind of...

think that we're going to head toward a time like let's just say I'm certified K to 12. I'm going to put these three online courses on for let's just say I'm in Alberta and I'm like, this is social studies 20-1. You can sit with me and I can give you the signature. Do you think that's going to be what kind of starts to happen more often, especially like the grade nine and above classes, if not already?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (17:11.126)
Please.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (17:23.234)
Well, yeah, I mean, if I think about the university model here in England, know, a lot of universities going, you know, scratching their heads now about, you know, uptake and courses, students quite rightly are questioning the costs of degrees. And a lot of the infrastructure here in England, we get a lot of international students that kind of fund the system. I think about my own doctoral studies, I paid thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and then the pandemic came along.

Lucas Clarke (17:35.861)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (17:51.168)
And it's been online, online ever since. I've not enjoyed it since that point where I don't get to see my mates. We don't get to check. I don't get to see, go to the university now unless I want to do on my own free will. I guess that kind of like a gym membership, right? You pay your gym membership and it forces you. You've got that motivation to turn up and eat it. I've, I've, I've always viewed that kind of for my own university studies, whether everyone else does, I don't know, but when you're spending

Lucas Clarke (17:53.558)
You

Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (18:10.665)
Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (18:19.778)
20, 30, 40,000 here in student loans here in the UK to get a degree and it's all online. It makes you think what you're paying for if that was physically, doesn't it?

Lucas Clarke (18:30.262)
Yeah, well, because I think especially at that level, like you are. The argument I've always heard is that you kind of pay for your network. That kind of makes sense. It's like that's usually the like you are going to work with a dozen other people who you can eventually do long term projects with. And that's kind of what becomes a significant part of the implicit value of your degree. But would you kind of agree with that still kind of being the argument?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (18:59.734)
Yeah. And like you said, you know, we've got plagiarism and all those kinds of headaches too, where you can just do online courses. Someone signs it for you. And we've all sat those PowerPoint lectures where you've got a self quiz yourself and then you get, have the download a certificate to show your employer, look at the training and we all cheat the course. Let's face it. So

Lucas Clarke (19:06.336)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (19:09.974)
Hmm.

Lucas Clarke (19:19.514)
What? I've never cheated those.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (19:23.51)
You know, what's wrong with a good old fashioned lesson with a teacher who's an expert, get you in a room, get you go through the hard labor and then you do your test at the end to prove your worth. It might not be as efficient as it is in today's society, but it's certainly, you know, I'm sure it's not without his flaws and bias and things like that. But I would like to think for teachers, it'd be most of our preferred approach is about teaching kids, right? Get them in the classroom, develop some social skills.

Lucas Clarke (19:33.162)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (19:49.654)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (19:52.758)
teach them knowledge, test them along the way, and give them perhaps better value for money.

Lucas Clarke (20:00.596)
Yeah, absolutely. Especially like, I think even myself kind of teaching in the middle of COVID is kind of when I was getting into it. And then now about four years later, I think that's kind of how far removed we are seeing the

the wider range of behaviors, I guess, is one way of saying it of especially in a middle school where I'm at right now, trying to, I find like teaching that kind of classic traditional, because I mean, I can sit here and talk history to you all day. I mean, that was my degree, that was my time social studies, but trying to just get through 60 minutes without trying to like herding cats for the entire hour. Like I feel like that's been a bit more of a change that I don't remember being as extreme like when I was going through.

the K to 12 system, anyway, that's kind of just a self anecdote, but.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (20:52.63)
Yeah. Our young people are born with mobile phones in their hands now, so they can watch a lot of the things that we teach them in six second TikToks. Right. So, you know, there's all that challenge of trying to keep them engaged in the classroom environment compared to, you know, if I pick up a phone and open up TikTok and I search the hashtag history, right. There's a lot of initial facts I could discover very quickly in a short

Lucas Clarke (21:03.414)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (21:19.338)
Yep. And entertaining. They are entertaining.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (21:22.722)
Yeah, in a short period of time compared to your traditional, you know, classroom lecture you might get in a school. So that's also a challenge for us all, right? You know, teachers trying to be a bit more entertaining as well as trying to keep our kids engaged in that 60 minute lesson, right?

Lucas Clarke (21:36.928)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. so one of the main things I wanted to talk to you about is I do the one thing that I hear from a lot of teachers that I've been able to have the privilege to talk to you like through doing the podcast and such is that the one thing that always keeps them in is usually finding the right school and feeling supported. So I know that you wrote one of your books on like looking at a toxic school culture. And so one of the main things I wanted to kind of dive a little bit deeper into here with you is

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (21:58.23)
Yes.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (22:02.775)
Yes.

Lucas Clarke (22:09.126)
How do teachers use their voice to improve a toxic culture and like what are the signs that they are working within one?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (22:15.328)
Right, well that's a, I'm just gonna get some, can I share a graphic on the screen or not?

Lucas Clarke (22:20.866)
I'm not actually 100 % sure you can give it a shot. don't see. Yeah. There you go.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (22:24.602)
Yeah, I think I can let's see there's a fast for your podcast whether people can listen to this on our podcast podcast would be another challenge, but So you got eight characteristics, you know, the first one obviously do a lot of people leave that school and There's a really obvious sign that things aren't working. Well, so the challenge is if you join that school for an interview How do you how do you know how do you read the signs? Well a great question to ask

Lucas Clarke (22:32.586)
Hahaha

Lucas Clarke (22:36.491)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (22:40.234)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (22:52.244)
It's quite a high risk question to ask an interview is what's your staff retention like? How, how, how many, how many teachers leave the school on an annual basis? I guess, like anyone you're entitled to know, if you've got a healthy, open culture school, they'll be happy to give you some ballpark figures. But anyone who might think that's a bit of a pointed question to ask it into might, might not be the right school for you. I think there's a good clue straight away.

Lucas Clarke (22:57.75)
You

Lucas Clarke (23:19.774)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (23:20.546)
I think in school and a hot school, a hot house school, guess there are, you know, the graphics speak for themselves. You know, you can have a lot of reasons why a school might sink, you know, a range of priorities, you know, lots of external pressures in the way, you know, no, no strong leadership at the top, changing leadership at the top. I guess that hot house is, you know, when things just bubble up far too much, everything's in the emergency, I suppose.

Lucas Clarke (23:48.884)
Okay.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (23:49.556)
is a good way to describe that one. The restructuring, know, thinking about how you, I guess schools more and more now have to really think about their costs and overheads, right? So, you know, thinking about how the world's changing, how your job and responsibilities change and how when someone leaves, someone's not appointed to replace them, their roles just spread between the rest of you. So you get a lot of repeated restructuring where sometimes it's engineered to get rid of people. Sometimes it's just engineered to say,

Lucas Clarke (24:00.853)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (24:11.915)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (24:18.784)
Yep.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (24:19.918)
and give people more work to do. Your five speaks for itself, like paperwork, but sometimes you can get a lot of people just keep them doing paperwork, keep you all busy. If you've gone on an inset day to learn professionally, you've then got to fill in a form to tell everyone else what you've been learning rather than trusted to get on with it. Balkanization, so number six, if you think of former Yugoslavia, was kind of...

Lucas Clarke (24:38.249)
Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (24:45.122)
Separated into different regions and a bit more theory behind it, but it's essentially working in silos rather than together. So that's where I can explain that in a greater depth if you're interested. seven. Number seven, guess this is my schema work. These are my resources. I'm not going to share them with you even if we're in the same department. And then you've got number eight. we never write, we always write lesson plans or we'll always mark this way. This is what we've always done here.

Lucas Clarke (24:47.21)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (24:57.629)
Absolutely.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (25:13.996)
Doesn't matter if your ideas are new or research informed. This is how we do it. So you've got those kind of, traditional signs. So the book toxic skills was actually what's called a ethnography. So it was a kind of deeper interview of six teachers who were working in toxic schools. And we tried to unpick through a range of structured questions. What is it? What are the hallmarks of where they work? And.

Lucas Clarke (25:34.912)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (25:43.648)
what are the reasons why they might stay or how to survive in a school or how might they engineer a way out. And we put that together in six teacher stories in these types of schools. So let me stop that side share without break.

Lucas Clarke (25:51.307)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (25:59.318)
Even just before you go, I've noticed sometimes like teachers will tell me like, that's a horrible school. And then I've gone somewhere and I'm like, I love it here. I'm like, am I a toxic person? What is the... that was a hundred percent. think the thing I'm kind of interested in, because in my subbing days, I found like you could just walk into a building and you feel it. Like you feel like a...

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (26:12.326)
So how did that resonate?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (26:26.465)
Yes.

Lucas Clarke (26:26.934)
pressure that's kind of like, don't know who's kind of looking at me in here. Like you kind of meet some of the admins, some of the teachers and they're kind of standoffish. Like they're kind of like, here's your lesson plan, see you later. Like there's not really any, not that I'm expecting like a warm greeting, like, Mr. Clark, thank you so much. But it's also some sort of professional kind of cordiality a little bit that you're anticipating.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (26:49.376)
I suppose when you're a cover or sub teacher, think you call it, people, your, your role is different and people, people perceive you in that role too. And I guess often it's, you're a one person kind of fleeting in and out for a day and we'll never see you again. So we won't ruin our emotions or, or mental effort in making you feel welcome, giving you a very good induction experience in the first 20 minutes of the day, you know, a match.

Lucas Clarke (26:56.74)
Mm.

Lucas Clarke (27:00.544)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (27:04.746)
Yep. Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (27:11.606)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (27:18.754)
a set of keys, here's your nearest toilet, here's a spare mug in the coffee room so you don't feel like you're in ROTSes. And this is our behavior policy, right? So when kids are really rude to you in the lessons, we got X, Y, Z. And by the way, in this lesson, so-and-so's next door if you need any help. That's a great induction process in any school if you're there for a day or for a week. Now, not a lot of schools put those things in place, but those are the kind of basics, I suppose.

Lucas Clarke (27:23.67)
Thank

Lucas Clarke (27:37.596)
Yep.

Lucas Clarke (27:41.302)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (27:46.182)
that I would have when I used to run the sub process for 200 teachers in my last school. So you would always try and make our supply teachers as welcome as possible, but also give them a lot of the resources they needed. You know, throughout the day, not just in the morning.

Lucas Clarke (27:54.4)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (28:04.296)
So talk to me a bit more about like the silo part of the Balkanization. What do mean by that?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (28:08.29)
So I guess it's when you're just working on, you you can have individuals that work on their own and you can have departments that work on their own. So, and you can have departments that are, can't see the greater goods or you can have departments that maybe hinder the greater good. So you maybe want to block it for whatever reason, through jealousy or through relationships.

Or just being difficult. You know, if I'm the new head teacher and I look cool and I've got a great reputation. Well, if you've been in the school 30 years and everyone loves you and you didn't get the job, then there may be one or two things that you might do deliberately to make me look bad publicly. Now, they're human behaviors, right? But they happen in all industries. I guess the older I've got, the more surprised I've got. Well, in fact, I'm becoming less surprised because we're adults and

Lucas Clarke (28:52.15)
Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (29:05.13)
these behaviors can manifest themselves in any human being. just because in schools we're teaching students how to behave and how to live a good life and how to contribute to society, you'd think these behaviors would mirror through to adults in our schools. But we're adults and we all have capabilities to do terrible things. So you can see how it's quite an interesting dichotomy that in an industry where we are trying to teach good of our young people,

not just knowledge, but skills and getting on with one another, that sometimes in our profession, we have one or two people that do the complete opposite.

Lucas Clarke (29:37.878)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (29:44.134)
And so let's just say you've been that teacher at the school for 20 years. like, how do you know if you've only been at one school kind of your whole career? How do you know if you're actually in a healthy school environment? Like what, are you looking for?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (29:58.645)
I can go through some... I guess you'd be looking for some hallmarks, certain things to know if you're in a good school, but I guess like anything you'd want to know what would you do if you were that teacher that's chosen to work in a school for 20 years and is really happy? Well, how would you know that you are in a happy school and what things could you do? Well, you'd hope that you were through social media, you could...

Lucas Clarke (29:59.786)
Or am I asking the wrong question? that's kind of like I'm looking at you.

Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (30:26.23)
whether it through anonymous account or a real identity, you could just tweet out some things that you might think were appropriate or inappropriate and see how the responses went down. You could gauge what everyone else is doing across the country to see if your skills up to date with the latest kind of pedagogy. guess internally, the things that you would be checking would be, all the teachers around me leaving? So that retention rate. Are you invested professionally? So is there a good CPD program in place?

Are pathways available and clear? you know, if I'm a new teacher in the school or an experienced teacher, do I have a clear CPD plan that's available to me? And I encourage to follow certain processes, even if I don't want to be a leader or go up through it in promotions, what opportunities are there for me at whole school level, departmental, as well as individual?

I guess you've also got the appraisal. So I don't know if you call that over in your neck of the woods, but that performance management. do you have a good process in place where your line manager isn't ticking a box and not just filling in a bit of paper, but it's a genuine conversation where they listen, they support, they challenge you and it's done frequently. It's not just done two or three times a year because the system says so, but there's good place processes in place. Some schools also have great coaching opportunities.

Lucas Clarke (31:27.754)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (31:43.318)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (31:49.75)
So even if we don't work in the same department, there's opportunities in place where I can go and develop some of my own general pedagogical thinking outside of my subject with another colleague who might help sharpen some of my skills in and out of the classroom, know, all the admin things we have to deal with. How do you prioritize? Well, a great coach could help you identify things that you could improve in your personal and professional life.

so there's loads of things, you know, staff, wellbeing initiatives, good policies in place procedures. one of the biggest trends over here in England at the moment is a menopause policy. one of our biggest trends is 50 plus females, grown in the profession because English schools are getting better at flexible working and also having a menopause policy by recognizing that there is a need here for.

for a woman going through the menopause and how might the school adapt its terms and conditions to facilitate people to be successful. So, go on.

Lucas Clarke (32:50.575)
And so what have like the, as I've never even heard that before, so what is the like flexible scheduling like? Like how have they kind of implemented that?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (32:58.476)
Well, could be for whether it's for my personal, personal needs or personal, as in family, you know, I think about my young boy. So he was born extremely premature. Let's say that it was very difficult for me to get him to nursery in the morning for 8am so I could get to school to start at 8.30. You might have an employer who was flexible enough for you to have period one off.

and then arrive at school for the start of period two. So it gave you that extra hour of flexibility in the morning to start teaching a little bit later in the day. So little things like that. You can have all sorts of good HR schools and principals come up with lots of different ways to meet the needs of the individuals. I guess how you might want to communicate what's available to staff might need a bit more of a sensitive...

I don't know what the word is here, but you wouldn't want to necessarily expose people's individual needs because you're bridging a bit of confidentiality, but you'd certainly want to know some case study examples of things that's available to people, or at least make them be aware of flexible work and arrangements. You know, here in England now people have an entitlement to ask to go flexible work and an employer should do their utmost to meet that person's needs. I don't know what it's like over here in America, but we're, I guess we're trying to get up.

Lucas Clarke (34:00.79)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (34:20.576)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (34:23.97)
up to speed with trying to meet people's needs, the dialogue of mental health, but also thinking about the teaching profession at large. How do we ensure that it meets everyone's needs? It's a bit more flexible in, light of, you know, the world and all its complexities and that the whole marks of a traditional successful teacher would be someone that works night and day and marks all the books, right. And has always got great plan. Well, let's face it, we can't live that life.

Lucas Clarke (34:32.182)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (34:53.474)
through 190 days of the academic year of the year and never say that we never have a difficult moment. So I think the more realistic we are about flexible working and that you can have brilliant part-time teachers and this is what it looks like, I think that's good for the profession.

Lucas Clarke (34:56.597)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (35:10.164)
Yeah, that's even like I'm actually in in Canada and I came from Alberta and I just moved to New Brunswick and so it kind of west to East Coast and I've noticed in New Brunswick, especially there's so many more positions that are like point fours and point sixes and point eights where they don't necessarily obviously you get paid more doing the 1.0 and doing kind of the full 25 lessons a week and such. But it's definitely interesting to see a bit more of that accommodation in the areas. And I've kind of all.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (35:16.64)
Right. Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (35:25.282)
All right.

Lucas Clarke (35:39.836)
argued in the sense that the shortage has kind of given people a bit more agency and saying like, No, these are the things I want to teach. And if, if I don't get to teach these, and then I'm not going to do this position, it seems to be a bit more the case and kind of what what you're like, we do, I think it's like the teachers get four preps a week of about an hour. And you're kind of saying like, they, if they needed a first block prep, because they're having so and so like, they just had a new child, etc.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (35:59.031)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (36:07.722)
they would like first block, you kind of find a way to make that work. Has there, is that kind of what you're saying or has there been like something specific added on to this kind of flexibility where you are at?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (36:18.55)
I mean, childcare might not be the only possibility. It could be, let's just say I've had a serious motorbike accident and I know, can't move my hip as normal as I could do. And it takes me twice as long to walk to school, or even get out of the car in the school car park, right. And just walk to the school and I can't go up to the second floor on the mass corridor anymore. So suddenly I need a lift key. You know, that is a flex.

Lucas Clarke (36:33.693)
Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (36:44.654)
And the lift keys are only given to senior leaders and the site staff, right? So suddenly you as a teacher has given a VIP lift key behind the scenes that you've not to abuse, but it gives you that extra privilege to meet your individual needs. So, you know, good flexible working. You've got some general things that can apply to all staff, you know, that entitlement to work flexible, but you've also got individual circumstances where through health, childcare, all the different things you can possibly have. It's about having a.

Lucas Clarke (36:48.79)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (36:54.324)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (37:14.144)
I guess a good HR team available and plus also your principals that in today's economy where we don't have as many teachers, I need to start thinking a bit more creatively about how to entice even a 0.2 teacher into my school because it's another brain, it's another personality on the school premises, it's another brilliant teacher that can meet the needs of my students. And if it means we've got to do X, Y, Z this way to facilitate it, I think that's a good thing.

Lucas Clarke (37:30.484)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (37:43.912)
And the biggest challenge we all know for schools is they've got fixed timetables. They've got a certain number of bits of budget. And often that can be a kind of Achilles heel or a down side, I suppose, of trying to fit certain teachers into certain classes for that consistency. You you don't want about seven teachers to teach one exam class, right? You might be one or two, you know, two teachers at best. So.

Lucas Clarke (37:44.054)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (38:08.451)
to try and think about all those headaches that we have to deal with in schools is also a big consideration. Because more than anything, our students respond to that consistency with the person that's being taught them, that relationship, right? So if you have seven teachers teaching one scheme in an exam class rather than two teachers, the kid's experience is gonna be very different, aren't they?

Lucas Clarke (38:22.486)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (38:32.31)
And something else that you've written about. So yeah, and even so to kind of like wrap up the kind of toxic culture, I do think in what you are saying and in kind of what how the culture is responding to an extent is there shouldn't just be this assumed role of what teachers will do in and out of the classroom and then just kind of put them into a box and schedule them. There seems to be a bit more of an initiative to try to find a way to

bring out the individuality and actually consider the person, not just the role. That be kind of accurate what you're saying.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (39:06.818)
yeah, I mean, great schools always consider the needs of their, the needs of their students, the needs of the community. And of course the needs of the staff, but that's always ever changing. In fact, they're all changing because your community changes. So does your student intake and every year you've got new members of staff. So, you know, what, what any leadership team has to do is establish the skills, culture and ethos, values.

Lucas Clarke (39:14.9)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (39:33.474)
And once those things are in place and clear, they don't just sit there, right? And stay on the wall. You have to live and breathe them and regularly revisit them and help new people to the institution buy into that culture. guess what that looks like if you're, I guess, an early years teacher with just a hundred pupils to, you know, a big FE college with four or 5,000 students and, you know, probably three or four, 500 staff.

That's much harder to achieve. So, know, good organizations always revisit their priorities, their values. They have everyone taking part in those things. I think that's also a great hallmark to avoid being a toxic school culture because you've got everyone having a say in the vision and values, you know, the terminology used. And I guess also what that looks like in practice. So.

Lucas Clarke (40:06.08)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (40:30.754)
yeah, so it's, it's a hard one to crack the culture and values, but it's an important one.

Lucas Clarke (40:33.472)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (40:36.82)
Have you given much thought to what role can students play in seeing if they're in a school that has a toxic culture and things that they can do to remedy just from a student perspective?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (40:49.474)
Well, keeping it at a student level, suppose you've got, you you use your ones like bullying and, know, all those kinds of issues that are important to them. So you're going to have a student voice committee where you might have individual classes that filter up into a kind of immediate committee. Then there might be a more strategic committee that once a term meets with the school or college leadership team and filters through.

some of those kind of messages and conversations. You can have all your online tech. So you might have student surveys that are conducted once a term. So that allows the school community to see the data. My advice would be to ask the same questions all the time. So you can mirror the changes in the data. Then you've got all the pastoral things that happen across the school and college. know, all your kind of clubs that happened before, you know, before school, during lunch, after school.

Those things that make a difference to students participation in their school beyond the academic studies, those things always help. So these things are always helping reduce those headaches, such as bullying and that toxicity. The biggest headache all schools I think face at the moment is the technology, not just the AI, but you've got a lot of young people with devices in their pockets, very powerful computers.

I can very quickly take a video of you in this lesson and circulate it. And then that the next thing it's on the news. So my preference would be yes, technology, but under a certain condition. Otherwise it would be for me a total ban out of sight, out of mind. And that might not be everyone's approach, but when you're dealing again, who are we talking about? Four year olds, 15 year olds, or, you know, 18 year olds that are doing their own university degree. So,

Lucas Clarke (42:30.528)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (42:37.622)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (42:42.516)
Everyone's got a way of doing things. How we, guess, make students feel safe and part of the community is quite a big thing that we do. We often, well, we don't take it for granted as teachers, but certainly, certainly the outside world who don't necessarily measure those things we do by exam results do not understand the importance of, for example, here's the behavior policy, here's the uniform policy.

If these things aren't put in place, then we have total chaos to deal with back at school. While, while parents are at work and wonder why Ross has been excluded again, because he's in the wrong uniform or he's got his phone out in class. so these things are essential to the, the kind of successful run of a day to day school.

Lucas Clarke (43:13.878)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (43:29.5)
And so just to kind of bring us to kind of getting near the end of our time here is I have two quotes that I kind of introduced to every guest that I have on and I find whenever a presenter kind of puts cheesy quotes on the board, I cringe a little bit too, but I don't mean for these to be cringey by any means. But the first one is do not let school get in the way of your education. So for you, what are some of the things like the characteristics and

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (43:40.311)
Yes.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (43:53.847)
Right.

Lucas Clarke (43:58.176)
qualities that maybe you've sort of embodied to kind of put yourself in a position of leadership or things that you've learned outside of your kind of academic, like when you're kind of working with your mates and your doctorate that are kind of outside of the academic realm, like what are some of the things that you would touch on?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (44:13.73)
That's a really good question. I guess we're talking about resilience here, right? And fairly so. I always find it quite tricky to explain how do you teach kids resilience if they haven't gone through something that is resilient, where you've had to learn through adversity, something that's been a bit traumatic in your life? And how do you bounce back? And I wouldn't know how to articulate that very well.

I guess we were also reliant on a lot of our background circumstances. So, you know, I've got a roof over my head and my well fed and have I got some books in my house and, know, many, many other things that allow me to fall back on some resources that I need during periods of adversity. I guess if I could try and answer some of the things that I might have done as a child and later on as an adult, you know, I always used to do my homework on the day I got it. I was a proper geek. I was a very shy child, but

Lucas Clarke (44:46.528)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (45:11.56)
A proper gig.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (45:11.874)
I just wanted to enjoy my evenings. As soon as we got home while I was still in school uniform, I did it there and then half an hour tops. And then the rest of the night was mine. And I did the same thing for homework. I had my uniform out the night before. That's just the etiquette that I was taught by my parents as skills. So that got me off to a good footing. But I went to seven schools as a child because my parents moved all over the UK.

Lucas Clarke (45:16.299)
Yep.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (45:40.834)
I always was on a back foot because I never had that social backing of friendship circles and those kind of things that we take for granted. So the reason I was shy is because I was always having to form new friendships in an unfamiliar environment. As an adult, I guess that put me in a better step. So when I often went to university to train to be a teacher, I was still quite shy, but I was comfortable with making new friends because that's what I'd always known.

Lucas Clarke (45:48.896)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (46:09.088)
Yep.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (46:10.21)
I wouldn't consider myself highly academic at the time, but I certainly started to discover reading and I used to get lost in books and, and find myself in another world and learning, you know, lots of new terms and becoming a bit more literate. and I found that quite a powerful things to do. and I guess now through my writing as I, as I struggled to express myself as a young man, I found my writing on my blog, you know, 3000 blogs, 12 books.

has dramatically improved my literacy as well as teaching. And in fact, one thing that teaching gave me was confidence, you know, being the actor on a stage in front of 30 kids for 26 years. So, you know, I now do public speaking in front of hundreds and hundreds of people every day in unfamiliar environments, but I now find that a joy and a place. So how things go full circle.

Lucas Clarke (46:51.845)
Yep.

Lucas Clarke (46:58.847)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (47:06.826)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (47:07.19)
it's something that I would fear. totally embrace now, personalized, we all have bits of adversity. So how do you bounce back? Well, that's the big question because what do you have as your resources and your prior knowledge to help you to bounce back? You know, we could throw into the mental health dialogue again, or also just things that you were born with that might stop you from bouncing back. So it's a tough question. find the resilience question a tough question, but

Lucas Clarke (47:18.869)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (47:32.939)
him.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (47:33.45)
Maybe you just got a sense of how I've dealt with it. You know, I lost my job in teaching once. My boy was born three months premature. So those were very challenging things that happen outside of school that influenced my life as a teacher and my decisions about my career path also. So know how to respond. Not just what, so a bit like the feedback conversation, not just what, knowing how. And I think when we get into metacognition and teaching students how to learn, not just what to learn,

Lucas Clarke (47:40.694)
Hmm.

Lucas Clarke (47:54.932)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (48:02.562)
I guess what I've come to conclusion is that it's a transferable set of resources and skills that you can use in all aspects of your life.

Lucas Clarke (48:11.757)
Beautiful. Okay, so now I got one more quote. hopefully this one's a bit more. So it just says, no, no, it says education. It's similar and kind of the overall connotation, but it's education is what remains once we forget everything we learned in school. So it's similar, but it's mainly like when you're giving your public speaking gig, like what is it that you want people that you're speaking to to take away from their time with you specifically that they won't get from anyone else?

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (48:14.562)
Yes.

Not too cheesy.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (48:24.117)
Okay.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (48:29.73)
All right.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (48:41.814)
that is a good question. I like to celebrate teaching as a brilliant career. I also like to highlight that it's incredibly complex and the things that we try to do when we try to evaluate teacher success through observation, through work, scrutiny of people's work or through children's exams. I think we try really hard to do that. And whether we do that well or not, I feel the jury's out on that.

So I think it's desirable that we want to evaluate teacher success. Of course, research can give us certain indications, but I guess the key messages that I tried to share is look, teaching is really hard. You we don't have 30 students behind us while we're a chat on this podcast. And that makes the podcast really hard, right? If you have 30 kids behind you. So that's the life of a teacher.

Then you get into the details of who you teach in, what you teach in them, how long have you got them for, where are you teaching them online or in a math classroom? What point in the year, what point in the day, how old are they? So when you get into all these specifics, my God, teaching is a fascinating world. And then you want them to be nice to each other, say please and thank you and get a grade A, right? And you want also the parents to be on board, but we know then we're stuck to get into really complicated territory with all the diverse student needs you have.

Lucas Clarke (49:45.898)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (49:50.24)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (49:53.94)
Yeah

Lucas Clarke (49:59.104)
it.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (50:04.116)
and their family circumstances at home or not. And again, the teaching is very fascinating. It's highly complex.

Lucas Clarke (50:11.58)
Yeah, I feel like even I don't realize how many things are influencing all of our micro decisions just when you're kind of saying it like that.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (50:17.344)
Absolutely. So I like to just unpick those complexities and try and find simple ways to explain them or to come up with some techniques or solutions to help teachers and not to stop evaluating those decisions, but highlight that trying to evaluate them is not lost effort, but needs to be a bit more calculated, if that makes sense, a bit more thoughtful, because the danger is

Lucas Clarke (50:42.015)
Mm-hmm.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (50:45.364)
If I come to observe you in a clumsy manner and my feedback is very poor and inaccurate, that might make you leave the profession prematurely. And that's what we get into the details of toxic schools again. And that's what we want to avoid in a period of time where we need more teachers than we've ever needed before globally, not just in your own country. And we need to recognize that it's a blooming hard job. Good.

Lucas Clarke (51:10.826)
Yeah. All right. Beautiful. I don't think I could have said any better myself. Thank you so much for coming on today sir.

Ross / @TeacherToolkit (51:18.4)
My present Lucas, thank you everyone for listening. Teach a talk online if you want to connect.