Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1050 - Adam Voigt: What's Really Going On In the Classroom

Transcript

#1050 - Adam Voigt: What's Really Going On In the Classroom · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:02
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
0:05
Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parentho just once
0:09
Speaker 2: answers now.
0:13
Speaker 1: One of the best things about running the Happy Families
0:15
Speaker 1: podcast is the people I get to talk to. And
0:17
Speaker 1: today somebody that I just love learning from and listening to.
0:22
Speaker 1: We're talking school today, and when I think about schools
0:25
Speaker 1: and education, I think about what's happening in classrooms. The
0:28
Speaker 1: person that I want to talk to is the founder
0:30
Speaker 1: and CEO of an organization.
0:32
Speaker 3: Called Real Schools.
0:34
Speaker 1: Adam Vott is first and foremost a skilled classroom practitioner
0:39
Speaker 1: and a highly successful principle. He got his first principalship
0:42
Speaker 1: earned I shouldn't say god, he earned his first principalship
0:45
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty five. He's personally led full
0:47
Speaker 1: school turnarounds and also the design an establishment of a
0:51
Speaker 1: brand new school as its inaugural principal, and his experience
0:56
Speaker 1: is peppered with lessons and case studies from a career
0:58
Speaker 1: spanning more than a quarter of a century in the
1:00
Speaker 1: classroom and in school leadership. What Adam doesn't know about
1:03
Speaker 1: making the magic of learning happen in schools is probably
1:06
Speaker 1: not worth knowing, and he joins me on the Happy
1:08
Speaker 1: Families podcast right now, Adam, thanks for being here to
1:10
Speaker 1: talk about schools. Pretty challenging place to be as an educator,
1:14
Speaker 1: and sometimes we feel like it's a pretty challenging place
1:16
Speaker 1: to send our kids these days.
1:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right and my experience, And first of all,
1:22
Speaker 2: thank you so much for having me justin. It's really
1:23
Speaker 2: love let and that's the very glowing words. I'll try
1:26
Speaker 2: to live up to it through the podcast. But I agree,
1:30
Speaker 2: I think it's a challenging landscape at the moment. I
1:33
Speaker 2: think that in my time when I'm sort of at
1:35
Speaker 2: our time and recording this. It's now thirty and it's
1:38
Speaker 2: my thirtieth anniversary of being in government education. I first
1:42
Speaker 2: began as a preschool and prep teacher on an Aboriginal
1:45
Speaker 2: community in nineteen ninety four. It's never been harder than
1:49
Speaker 2: it is right now, but it's also never been more important.
1:52
Speaker 1: For parents who are feeling a bit stressed about and
1:54
Speaker 1: teachers who are wondering what's going to happen here. I
1:57
Speaker 1: want to just highlight four things that we're going to
1:59
Speaker 1: talk about today in a very limited timeframe, and g
2:02
Speaker 1: I wish we could go deep for like an hour
2:04
Speaker 1: or two, but you're so so pithy with what you
2:07
Speaker 1: have to say. We're going to talk about just teacher stress,
2:11
Speaker 1: especially in relation to additional needs. As a parent of
2:16
Speaker 1: an additional needs child, we've taken our child out of
2:18
Speaker 1: the school because it just wasn't working for her. But
2:21
Speaker 1: we know teachers are stress, so we're going to cover
2:23
Speaker 1: that off briefly. We're going to talk about student engagement,
2:26
Speaker 1: and I do want to go on a tangent there
2:27
Speaker 1: and talk about devices phones in schools. And we're also
2:31
Speaker 1: going to talk about a recent study that was published
2:34
Speaker 1: looking at how parents are pushing their kids in selective
2:37
Speaker 1: schools and how selective school attendance relates to life satisfaction
2:43
Speaker 1: as kids get older. So let's start at the beginning.
2:46
Speaker 1: Teacher stresses at record levels. We know that more teachers
2:49
Speaker 1: are indicating a preference to leave the profession in the
2:53
Speaker 1: next twelve to forty eight months if they can. And
2:57
Speaker 1: we also know that parents of students, especially those with
3:00
Speaker 1: additional needs, are feeling increasingly uncomfortable sending their kids to
3:03
Speaker 1: school because it doesn't feel like a quote unquote safe place.
3:07
Speaker 1: In fact, a click story on this. I was talking
3:09
Speaker 1: to a parent just the other day, whose grade one
3:11
Speaker 1: child with ADHD was locked in a store room, locked
3:14
Speaker 1: in like a cupboard because the teacher couldn't deal with them. Obviously,
3:18
Speaker 1: this is not representative of what happens in all schools
3:20
Speaker 1: with all teachers. Most teachers are doing a great job.
3:22
Speaker 1: But what's your take on this and how do we
3:25
Speaker 1: support teachers but also help parents to feel like the
3:28
Speaker 1: kids can go to school.
3:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, what we've known for a really long time,
3:32
Speaker 2: this has been the case for about three decades in Australia,
3:34
Speaker 2: is that the number one stress of teachers is student behavior. Now,
3:38
Speaker 2: if we make the class more diverse, if we make
3:42
Speaker 2: the students that come along more challenging, if we, for instance,
3:45
Speaker 2: have students with advantages placed in our independent and private schools,
3:49
Speaker 2: it means that our government schools, where the kids have
3:51
Speaker 2: the most need, the need gets more prolific and when
3:54
Speaker 2: we don't support those teachers to kind of handle that need. So,
3:58
Speaker 2: for instance, this goes conversations around both pre service teacher training,
4:03
Speaker 2: what sort of support they get, They don't get enough,
4:06
Speaker 2: they don't get enough of the practicalities. We are too
4:08
Speaker 2: many teachers who are graduating go and I learned more
4:10
Speaker 2: in the first four weeks of teaching than I did
4:12
Speaker 2: in four years at university, and that's not okay. And
4:15
Speaker 2: then there's the in career support and training that they get,
4:19
Speaker 2: which is often built around pressure around producing higher levels
4:23
Speaker 2: of student learning outcomes, which isn't the kind of care
4:27
Speaker 2: that a lot of people with the sort of kids
4:29
Speaker 2: that you're talking about who have additional needs, they're not
4:33
Speaker 2: looking for a nine to nine etar. They're just looking
4:35
Speaker 2: for a safe environment where their kid can learn to
4:37
Speaker 2: be a good learner in the company of other people.
4:39
Speaker 3: That's all they're looking for.
4:41
Speaker 2: But when we have more and more kids who have
4:43
Speaker 2: additional needs so that the kind of basic skill set
4:45
Speaker 2: that a teacher has doesn't do it doesn't do the job,
4:49
Speaker 2: so we have to invest more heavily in them, or
4:51
Speaker 2: we can expect more of these kind of stories that
4:53
Speaker 2: sit on the outside of it, stories like cupboards that
4:56
Speaker 2: we are unacceptable, but we can expect to have more
5:00
Speaker 2: of those come along because teachers are struggling as this
5:04
Speaker 2: as the work that's required of them becomes more difficult
5:07
Speaker 2: and the training that they have doesn't cope with that change.
5:10
Speaker 2: So really important that we kind of as parents, that
5:13
Speaker 2: we're advocating for additional support for our teachers so they
5:17
Speaker 2: can do the job that's required of them better and
5:20
Speaker 2: that we don't get kind of sucked into justin this
5:22
Speaker 2: kind of adversarial relationship with the school and saying, well,
5:25
Speaker 2: you're not doing what I need for my kid. So
5:29
Speaker 2: I'm going to kick up a stink. I'm going to
5:31
Speaker 2: go to a department. I'm going to call a current affair.
5:33
Speaker 2: I'm going to get adversarial with you. It's actually the
5:36
Speaker 2: time that we need teachers and parents advocating for the
5:39
Speaker 2: same thing.
5:40
Speaker 1: So if a parent wants to do that advocacy, I
5:43
Speaker 1: mean the easy thing to do is to go and
5:45
Speaker 1: yell at the teacher or send an angry email to
5:47
Speaker 1: the principal. How do they do that? I mean, that's
5:50
Speaker 1: not this kind of thing that most parents are usually
5:52
Speaker 1: thinking about doing, is seeing how do I support the
5:55
Speaker 1: teachers at my local primary school or my local high school.
5:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.
5:59
Speaker 2: I think one of the most important things to do
6:01
Speaker 2: is that whenever we decide that we're going to need
6:03
Speaker 2: to talk to the school about something, and we should.
6:04
Speaker 2: If you're concerned, we should talk. But it's one is
6:07
Speaker 2: to understand that the people that you're talking to are experienced.
6:10
Speaker 3: Qualified and capable.
6:12
Speaker 2: And so the first thing we want parents to do
6:14
Speaker 2: is to seek to understand. We want them to ring
6:16
Speaker 2: the school and say, can you explain this to me?
6:19
Speaker 2: Because our lens for our own kids. And I know
6:22
Speaker 2: this justin because I've got the call from the school
6:24
Speaker 2: to tell me that my kid has done the wrong
6:26
Speaker 2: thing at school now, And I got that call from
6:29
Speaker 2: a principle when I thought that this principle was ringing
6:31
Speaker 2: me to talk about principally things, and in my head,
6:35
Speaker 2: I was ready to go all irrational, you know, all emotional,
6:38
Speaker 2: because we are emotional about our kids, of course we are,
6:41
Speaker 2: But we need to understand that when we ring, we've
6:43
Speaker 2: often got an emotional hat on and we're not receptive
6:46
Speaker 2: to information that would put our minds at ease. So
6:49
Speaker 2: if we can ring up, seek to understand what's going on,
6:52
Speaker 2: and then let's put the problem kind of on the
6:54
Speaker 2: whiteboard and let's talk about it. Let's see we can
6:55
Speaker 2: solve it together, be resources for each other rather than
6:59
Speaker 2: adverse aerials.
7:01
Speaker 1: So valuable really appreciate that suggestion. Let's move to a
7:06
Speaker 1: second idea. There's been some talk in the media recently,
7:10
Speaker 1: including an article that appeared on the Conversation that some
7:14
Speaker 1: online platforms are starting to measure student engagement at school.
7:19
Speaker 1: What do you think about this idea? First of all,
7:22
Speaker 1: what do they mean by they want to measure student engagement?
7:25
Speaker 1: And secondly, is this what we need to be doing?
7:28
Speaker 3: Yeah?
7:29
Speaker 2: I think that I'm a really healthy and fierce skeptic
7:31
Speaker 2: around this stuff. I think that our tech companies have
7:33
Speaker 2: hijacked the word engagement, and I think that what they're
7:38
Speaker 2: I'm measuring engagement. Engagement for me is young people who
7:41
Speaker 2: are listening, speaking, thinking, or doing love it. So every
7:44
Speaker 2: teacher that and so the enemy of engagement then, by
7:47
Speaker 2: in a classroom, to be honest, is waiting as teachers
7:50
Speaker 2: who talk too long, because most of the time kids
7:53
Speaker 2: are waiting to can I just say something? Can I
7:55
Speaker 2: do something? Can I hear something? Can I get activated
7:59
Speaker 2: in my own learning? And we need them because if
8:01
Speaker 2: they're not activated, they're really hard to teach. So I
8:04
Speaker 2: think that these platforms, chiefly what they're measuring is is
8:07
Speaker 2: young people logging in, young people accessing, young people being present.
8:13
Speaker 2: But you don't learn from being present, you learn from
8:16
Speaker 2: engaging and so I pushed back against the idea that
8:20
Speaker 2: they're actually measuring engagement at all. Logging in doesn't mean
8:25
Speaker 2: I'm engaged. We've all sat through that we weren't engaged with.
8:28
Speaker 2: Where all watched a television show that with our brains.
8:32
Speaker 1: Somewhere, We've all sat in a zoom meeting that we
8:34
Speaker 1: weren't engaged in.
8:36
Speaker 2: You know, I can drive in my car and listen
8:38
Speaker 2: to an audible book and all of a sudden, I go,
8:40
Speaker 2: I've driven from last fifteen and I'd learn one word.
8:43
Speaker 2: So logging in or play, pressing play, that's not engagement.
8:47
Speaker 2: And I think we actually, as parents and as educators,
8:51
Speaker 2: we need to kind of be protective of the word
8:53
Speaker 2: engagement and say it's ours. Engagement is when you're getting
8:56
Speaker 2: the thrill of making dangerous, difficult progress in a topic
9:02
Speaker 2: that particularly is going to be relevant or useful for you.
9:05
Speaker 1: A cynical view of Kevin Rudd's education revolution is that
9:08
Speaker 1: everyone got a laptop and we just moved education onto
9:10
Speaker 1: screens but kept doing the same thing, maybe even more poorly.
9:13
Speaker 1: And technology is I mean it's everywhere in schools.
9:16
Speaker 3: Now.
9:17
Speaker 1: Is there too much tech in schools?
9:19
Speaker 3: Well?
9:19
Speaker 2: I think there is when we start to see education,
9:22
Speaker 2: for instance, as a delivery or a distribution model. So
9:25
Speaker 2: I think that's what was the biggest risk, the biggest
9:27
Speaker 2: damage that was done by in education across heavily lockdown
9:32
Speaker 2: communities like where I am in Melbourne, is that it
9:35
Speaker 2: became a delivery model. Came just here's the content, I'll
9:38
Speaker 2: try and get it through the screen to you and
9:40
Speaker 2: then you've got it. Job done. That's not what high
9:45
Speaker 2: quality education is all about. And what we do know
9:49
Speaker 2: now is we've got And obviously there are books at
9:52
Speaker 2: the moment like Jonathan Heights The Anxious Generation Book, an
9:56
Speaker 2: incredible book that made me think a lot about my
10:00
Speaker 2: parenting as well as my role as an educator, showing
10:03
Speaker 2: us that the proliferation of technology, just because it makes
10:06
Speaker 2: certain parts of educating and growing young people easier, isn't
10:11
Speaker 2: good for them. It's changing not only the way they behave,
10:15
Speaker 2: but who they are. And that's something that I love
10:20
Speaker 2: all our parents, all our educators to get there, to
10:23
Speaker 2: get their heads around it is that we're are building
10:25
Speaker 2: young people for the future, not just trying to get
10:27
Speaker 2: certain things done in their company.
10:33
Speaker 1: I'm talking abot Adam Voyd from Real Schools. He's the
10:36
Speaker 1: CEO and director of Real Schools. I guess you'd call
10:39
Speaker 1: it a consultancy really looking after a couple of hundred
10:42
Speaker 1: schools around the country and helping educators to help kids
10:45
Speaker 1: to feel more engaged, to help students feel more engaged
10:47
Speaker 1: at school. Let's go down this pathway of phones and schools, Adam.
10:52
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of talk over the last year
10:54
Speaker 1: or so and governments successively and successfully removing phones from schools.
11:00
Speaker 1: Kids just don't allowed to have them in most states
11:02
Speaker 1: and territories now in both primary school and high school
11:05
Speaker 1: in the public system at least. What's your take on this,
11:07
Speaker 1: good or bad? And why?
11:10
Speaker 3: So? I'm a convert here.
11:12
Speaker 2: So I several weeks about five or six years ago,
11:15
Speaker 2: I wrote an article that was published in published nationally
11:18
Speaker 2: in some of the biggest newspapers in Australia about how
11:21
Speaker 2: I think we needed to be more sophisticated about mobile
11:23
Speaker 2: phones in classrooms and I think we needed to show
11:26
Speaker 2: kids how to use it for life because it wasn't
11:27
Speaker 2: going away.
11:28
Speaker 3: And I was wrong.
11:31
Speaker 2: So I have done the work that I've done more
11:34
Speaker 2: recently on trying to trying to understand, like I said
11:36
Speaker 2: about the way that these devices, and particularly the way
11:39
Speaker 2: that software that's designed for social media platforms that these
11:43
Speaker 2: kids are accessing way too early, is doing them damage.
11:48
Speaker 2: The work that I've seen many of our schools that
11:52
Speaker 2: we work we do around to be frank complying with
11:56
Speaker 2: mobile phone bands, particularly our secondary schools, is that their
12:00
Speaker 2: teachers and their school leaders are reporting young people who
12:02
Speaker 2: were more present in their learning, more to hark back
12:06
Speaker 2: to a previous conversation, engaged in learning, They're more attentive,
12:11
Speaker 2: they're more focused, and above any of that, they're happier.
12:16
Speaker 2: So they're telling us that the young people are actually
12:19
Speaker 2: enjoying getting a six to seven hour break from having
12:22
Speaker 2: the Mark Zuckerberger's and Elon Musks of the world tell
12:25
Speaker 2: them what they should value and who they should hate.
12:28
Speaker 2: And I think that that's a good thing. So I've
12:30
Speaker 2: gone from being someone who was against a mobile phone
12:34
Speaker 2: band effectively to being someone who's in favor. The schools
12:38
Speaker 2: that have done it best have been the ones who
12:40
Speaker 2: have engaged the kids in that messaging. I know one
12:42
Speaker 2: in Sydney who who had no messaging about the mobile
12:47
Speaker 2: phone band come from grown ups. It was all the
12:51
Speaker 2: students They got a group of them in who were influential,
12:54
Speaker 2: not just as student leaders, and said, how are we
12:56
Speaker 2: going to message this to the community, to us, to
12:59
Speaker 2: our student commit unity, so that they realize that this
13:01
Speaker 2: is going to be good for us and we're doing
13:03
Speaker 2: it together.
13:03
Speaker 3: They did a great job.
13:04
Speaker 1: I feel like that's what education is about.
13:06
Speaker 3: I mean, this is great.
13:07
Speaker 1: I'm likewise, I've had the same evolution. I've flip flopped
13:11
Speaker 1: a little bit, but primarily I've been saying we've just
13:13
Speaker 1: got to learn how to live with this. I couldn't
13:15
Speaker 1: agree with you more. Getting them out of the schools
13:17
Speaker 1: is absolutely fundamental and essential to increased engagement and well being.
13:22
Speaker 1: All right, last question for you, Adam, as we move
13:24
Speaker 1: towards a wrap up, and thanks so much for being
13:26
Speaker 1: so generous with your responses already. There was a study
13:29
Speaker 1: that was published recently and written about in the Fairfax
13:31
Speaker 1: Press about selective schools and life satisfaction. Essentially, the article
13:36
Speaker 1: claimed that parents are pushing their kids into selective schools,
13:40
Speaker 1: but whether you go to a selective school or not,
13:42
Speaker 1: and by the way, for those who are not familiar
13:44
Speaker 1: with selective schools, what that means is there are some
13:47
Speaker 1: schools that specialize in academics or sports or drama, and
13:50
Speaker 1: if your child is a high enough achiever, they get
13:52
Speaker 1: to go to that school rather than the local public
13:54
Speaker 1: school down the road. Life satisfaction no impact whether you
13:58
Speaker 1: go to the fancy hoist toyty selective school or you
14:01
Speaker 1: go to the local public school. That's what the research
14:04
Speaker 1: has found. What's your take on this?
14:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I guess one of the things that I
14:08
Speaker 2: do like is that we're now finally curious about life
14:10
Speaker 2: satisfaction as being a potential has been something that we're
14:14
Speaker 2: trying to set our kids up for while they're at school,
14:17
Speaker 2: and I think it's a good thing to explore that.
14:19
Speaker 2: And so what we do find when we look beyond
14:21
Speaker 2: what are the academic results that they produce in a
14:24
Speaker 2: particular year level, in a particular month of a school year,
14:29
Speaker 2: and stop kind of making schools accountable for that and
14:32
Speaker 2: supporting them only to produce that, and actually say, well,
14:34
Speaker 2: what about way down in life and not just like
14:36
Speaker 2: right at the end of the journey, not just a
14:38
Speaker 2: year or two later, but maybe five ten years down.
14:41
Speaker 2: How satisfied are these young people with their lives because
14:44
Speaker 2: of the education they got and what we're finding is
14:46
Speaker 2: that the longer view that we take, the more we
14:50
Speaker 2: are seeing a return on the investment of time and
14:53
Speaker 2: of money and of effort that a lot of parents
14:54
Speaker 2: are going to for getting that kid into a selective
14:57
Speaker 2: entry school or even an independent or a rive at
15:00
Speaker 2: school early and in their lives. We mostly are acceeding
15:07
Speaker 2: in these instances to some parental guilt, and which in
15:10
Speaker 2: Australia is well marketed. You know, it's really easy to
15:14
Speaker 2: make a parent feel bad about not giving their kid
15:16
Speaker 2: every possible opportunity. But what these kinds of studies that
15:20
Speaker 2: are emerging are telling us is that actually providing our
15:22
Speaker 2: kids sometimes with a really nice level of productive struggle,
15:27
Speaker 2: of being able to be with people who are not
15:29
Speaker 2: exactly like them, even where we've got selective entry justin
15:32
Speaker 2: where they've gone to, say a music school, because they're
15:34
Speaker 2: particularly gifted there. The way to grow that gift is
15:37
Speaker 2: not necessarily to be just around kids who are awesome
15:40
Speaker 2: at music, but to be around and kids and talk
15:42
Speaker 2: to them, Talk to kids who are going to be
15:45
Speaker 2: plumbers and listen to their listen to them about their
15:47
Speaker 2: their music tastes and what floats their boat. Artistically, but
15:52
Speaker 2: being with a diverse group of people is really good
15:54
Speaker 2: for the individual. And there's a lesson here for policymakers
15:57
Speaker 2: around education as well, and that is that we need
16:00
Speaker 2: to make our schools diverse as well. They need to
16:04
Speaker 2: be places where people with all sorts of hopes, streams
16:07
Speaker 2: and backgrounds come together because the world's going to demand
16:10
Speaker 2: that you work with different people to you, and so
16:13
Speaker 2: it's useful this diversity at a scaled level, but it's
16:17
Speaker 2: also useful at an individual level.
16:19
Speaker 3: And I think parents can stop.
16:21
Speaker 2: Feeling guilty about not finding the perfect school for their
16:23
Speaker 2: kid because it doesn't exist.
16:25
Speaker 1: I feel like we've kind of come full circle. Our
16:27
Speaker 1: very first conversation was about the gap widening between the
16:31
Speaker 1: private and public system where the haves and have nots,
16:34
Speaker 1: if I can use that crass term, Essentially, we're not
16:38
Speaker 1: getting the diversification in our education system, and we've kind
16:41
Speaker 1: of landed there again. Okay, Adam, I mean, anyone who's
16:45
Speaker 1: just listening to this conversation can see now why I
16:47
Speaker 1: would rather have two hours with you than fifteen minutes.
16:51
Speaker 1: Really really appreciate your time. If people want to know more,
16:54
Speaker 1: especially educators who are listening to our conversation. If they
16:56
Speaker 1: want to know more about you and the work that
16:58
Speaker 1: you do at real schools, where can they find your
17:00
Speaker 1: what should they expect?
17:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can head to realschools dot com dot au
17:04
Speaker 2: and I'll find out everything as an educator that we
17:07
Speaker 2: do with working with schools. And we work with schools
17:09
Speaker 2: for three years. So some schools ring up and saying
17:12
Speaker 2: they'd like a PD day train our teachers for a day,
17:15
Speaker 2: and our answer.
17:16
Speaker 1: Is no, yeah, that's my job, that's my job.
17:19
Speaker 2: Well, we're locking in and so we help schools for
17:22
Speaker 2: the long term and multitude of different ways. They're supported
17:24
Speaker 2: by an experienced principle. Every school that does it has
17:27
Speaker 2: an experienced principle allocated to them and we're really proud
17:31
Speaker 2: our missions to transform education in Australia and to do
17:34
Speaker 2: what one school at a time.
17:36
Speaker 3: So we're busy, good stuff.
17:38
Speaker 1: Really appreciate your time and thanks for your insights. I'm
17:41
Speaker 1: sure that everyone really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks Adam, not
17:44
Speaker 1: at all, Justin, thanks for having me. The Happy Families
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Speaker 1: podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media. If
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Speaker 1: you'd like more info, check out Adam's website. Realschools dot
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Speaker 1: com dot au will link to it in the show notes,
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Speaker 1: and of course, if you want to make your family
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Speaker 1: happier and figure out how to navigate things just from
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Speaker 1: a purely in the family perspective, check out my website,
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Speaker 1: happyfamilies dot com, dot a u