 Welcome to Pookey Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, why do teenagers grunt and how can we engage them in learning? And I'm in conversation with Adele Bates. What that means is that I've had juice poured on my head at work, I've been whacked by a skateboard and I have taught a year seven 11 year old people how to read their very first word. So I support school leaders and teachers and teaching assistants and of course more recently homeschooling parents and carers as well to empower the young people who have behaviour needs or who are identified as having SEMH so social emotional mental health issues. I'm the forthcoming author of Miss I Don't Give a Shit which is due out later this year and I'm a TEDx speaker 2020 which of course means we're under may and you know it'll happen when it happens. There's a swear word in the title of your book Adele how daring of you. Don't tell my mum though that's the thing. Tell my mum. So the title for today's episode though I fear we may fear feel I'm sure we'll go many places but we're starting with why do teenagers grunt and how can we engage them in learning. So tell me make a start on this massive question. Okay, so there's a direct answer to that which I will get to but I have to tell you about something that happened to me two days ago made me very enraged and then afterwards I thought that's okay. I've been talking to Pookie about teenagers in a couple of days time. So, and I am going to name and say the town that it happened in because I'm hoping that we can instigate change. I'm currently staying in Dorchester. So if you are sitting there and you're working listening to this and you work for Dorchester Council, please fill this out. I was in the local park and it's beautiful. It's one of those Victorian ones with a bandstand. We are this is being recorded during lockdown in the UK. So there are very few places for young people to go. The schools are closed and lots of other spaces are closed. And there were some teenagers there. And from my perspective, someone who works in proof so people with thorough units or alternative provisions or special schools, particularly with young people with behaviour needs. From my point of view, these teenagers were like little rabbits, like really not doing anything. They would say please and thank you when you walk past. And they just happened to have their skateboards and their bikes. And maybe they were rolling a little bit, but they were not near any old people or babies or anything. They were being very respectful. And then out of nowhere, this very angry park attendant came out when, Oi, you should be having your skateboard. Get out of the park. I started having to go at them. Then I can't help it. My poor partner. She's always telling me off for this. But anyway, and I went up to him and I went, oh, gosh. And do they have a skateboard park? And he said, no, it's closed. And I said, oh, that's really sad, isn't it? Where else could they go? And of course he couldn't answer me because there is nowhere else for them to go. And I'm not blaming that parking attendant specifically here. That's not the intention of this story. But I just think that is such a good example of how teenagers are just faced by discrimination and prejudice all over the place in our society. And then when we start to unpick the question that I will get to about grunting. Let's start there. Let's start in the context of the world of these young people. What is it like to be a teenager right now? Well, what it means is if you happen to have your skateboard and your foot, you're going to get that kind of aggression. And I just wonder if I had my skateboard, would I be treated in the same way? And I know that I'm not. But things changed once I was perceived to be more adult in my kind of look at my identity. And there's all sorts of other examples where that can come through. There's a wonderful book by Jay Griffith. It's called Kiff. And it's all to do with the landscape, the kind of environments that we have available for our children and our young people now. And where they're allowed to be safe. And this is the other thing that concerned me because I thought about those teenagers. Because it's the kind of thing I worry about. And I thought, well, where are they going to go? And the thing is, if we if we shut them out of the communal spaces that are supposed to be safe and open and, you know, lit when it gets darker, etc. Where are they going to go? They can't go to the skate park. They can't go to the park. It's locked down. The schools aren't open. So they're going to go, what, down the back of an alley, down of car park, down at, you know, and suddenly the risk to them becomes so much higher as well. So that's the kind of big, that that story just, I think exemplifies so much to me in terms of this question around teenagers and why they grunt. Would you like to add in there or should I go through to the actually answering the question. I mean, I think, yeah, I certainly and something I would like to unpick more through the episode is the idea about teenagers being misunderstood and whether we, yeah, whether we almost create a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy sometimes. Or just sometimes we just neglect to realize that you know what they're pretty awesome, a lot of them. Yes, exactly. Absolutely. So, from the one side, we've got the kind of environment, the context that teenagers are living in. And then on the other side is all the wonderful biological changes that are happening in the internal landscape for a teenager. And for my book, I've been doing some research research rabbit hole into this a bit deeper and I've just been so fascinated and and excited by it because the neuroscience is backing up what I already knew in the classroom, which is always it's always good when it works that way isn't it. So, when we look at a teenager's brain, it was thought in the past that a teenager's brain was just simply a bigger version of a children's brain, or a smaller version of an adult's brain. But it's not the case. So the developmental stage of your brain when you are a teenager is different. And if you know just a little bit of how and why which I'll share in a second. It just makes communicating with teenagers so much easier and engaging them in learning so much easier. So, I will say this is something you really want to know more about the person that I found that I've really got so much from is Dr Dan Siegel. He's got lots of YouTube videos and a fantastic book called brainstorm. And so what he explains is that the the part of our brain to the limbic bit which is at the back here. That's the part that's connected to our amygdala and is responsible for all our emotional responses, the fight, flight, freeze, etc. And this part in the teenage brain develops before anything else. So they are by their brain is biologically wired to be on alert, essentially, and there's a really fantastic reason for this. This is similar in all mammals. And the reason for this is because you spend your, you know, and I'm going to talk now about, let's say, a child who has a secure childhood. It's different if you've obviously faced adverse conditions. But if you've had a kind of secure childhood upbringing, you've been, you've been dependent on a primary caregiver. And part of the process of becoming a teenager is to become independent. And in order for that to happen, we have to start fending for ourselves. And so it's actually really clever that the brain does this first, because it's keeping us safe. Because for the first time, you know, we might be going down the town on our own. And my parents are there. So we need to be more alert and looking after ourselves in a way that we're not used to it yet, because before that the primary, another adult would have gone with us. So in one way it's fantastic because it protects us. But then it also explains why when you say to a young person, what do you mind taking your coat off at the start of the lesson, you can be, you can be based by. It's because that part of their brain is looking for things that might be harmful. And so their reaction to you as the adult, just asking them to pick up that. For me, it was my dad always telling me to pick up my bag out of the kitchen and take it to my bedroom. I can remember doing it. But the reason is, in the teenager's brain, you are that sabertooth tiger, or there's a potential that you could be. And so the reaction is bigger. And then equally, just to make it even more wonderful, the front part, the prefrontal cortex and this part of the brain, which is responsible for logic and reasoning. And things like imagining yourself in somebody else's position, or analyzing or reflecting all of those kind of skills. It hasn't developed yet. And so there's this, you can see that that misbalance, or no, that's wrong. That's suggesting something's wrong. I'm wrong. That's suggesting something wrong. Let me think of a better way to put that. There's a wonderful, there's a wonderful development that is top heavy on one area very much in order to keep teenagers safe is is the thing that often comes forth as their reputation to us. And I think that is partly then why we have this discrimination, why we have this stereotype, why we have like us to put you that fulfilling prophecy. And then it's really hard to get out of that. It's really hard to pick under the surface of that. And so the grunt that you might get, there's lots of other reasons as well and we can go into it if you're interested, but in general that that grunt that kind of is is that reaction. That very biological reaction that needs to happen. I mean, and I haven't even touched puberty. Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Okay, so basically, if I'm understanding you're saying that we see this because their brains are wired to kind of almost give like a fear response that the world is quite a scary place to their brain right now. Everything is a potential threat. And so we're seeing like a big reaction when, yeah, so they're a little bit more emotionally dysregulated maybe. Yes. Yeah. I suppose to our eyes, yes. So, okay, so does this happen at the same age and stage for everyone that can happen earlier or later and are there things that we can do to make that more livable with both for us and for them because that can't be, it can't feel very nice. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, it happens anywhere between 12 and 24. Oh, which is interesting, which is this is why it is different from puberty in that sense. And unfortunately, there's some hideous statistics from the world's health organization about the largest causes of death in the West for teenagers is risk behavior, and this is connected to this piece around the need in the mammal at that stage to create independence. So they are, they're testing boundaries more than they ever have. And they're testing boundaries in a way that is different from adults because when we test boundaries we've already got history of testing boundaries so we can still gauge we've got experience. And we can connect with our prefrontal really easily. A lot of us, you know, in general, and, and so we're able to make kind of educated guesses whereas a teenager, you're doing it for the first time and you're finding out if getting drunk and going up on the scaffolding is a good idea. How are you going to find out you're going to go and try it. And so, yeah, that kind of risky behavior unfortunately can be very, you know, have severe consequences. I don't remember what your question was pookie how we can support us. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the really good thing that I learned is that whilst young people are looking for independence at this stage. It's from the primary caregivers that they're looking for independence. So this is a fantastic, really brilliant opportunity to introduce other adults. And so it's a great time to look at things like mentoring or buddying or unofficial ones. Yeah, so it might be that the cousins get involved or that, you know, it could be very official. There could be some kind of scheme in your sporting club or whatever. And this is something that I really advise to parents a lot as well who are worried about things like sex and drugs and rock and roll and how to talk to their teenagers about it. Sometimes I say, well, are you the best person to do that? Because at this time they're trying to get, you know, they're trying to separate themselves from you and create their own identity. You might not be the ideal person to have a conversation with. But actually, if you know that, but you know they get on really well with, you know, their uncle, your brother, how about this, you know, you can kind of orchestrate situations with that. And it also explains to me as a teacher why sometimes I can work with a young person in a classroom and have a great time with them. And then we get to parents and carers evening. And the parents and carers sit there and go, we don't know what's happened to our child. What's happened to them? They never talk to us anymore. And I'm thinking, you know, and obviously I don't say it out loud because you don't, but you're kind of thinking, oh, I find it's cool, but it's because of that is because I will be another adult out of the primary care give a childhood home scenario. And so what they're doing that stage is looking for different ways of living. And part of that process is also obviously criticising the way they have lived. And that might be why there is a lot of negativity or aggression towards home, because they're kind of going, I mean, I remember when I found out that I always got 50p for a tooth from the tooth fairy and then I found out my friends got a pound. It's a small thing. It's been very disbursed in a long time, haven't you? But is that the thing of kind of going, what you always thought was the way. Actually isn't it? And then there's a whole world to discover out here. And I think one of the things that we can do as adults support these young people is to offer opportunities for them to explore that in safe ways. And because actually there's Dan Siegel talks about if there's opportunity, whether it's in their learning or social activities or whatever it is, that they can do some novelty seeking and some exploring a different identities and approaches to life. If they can do that in a positive sense there, then they are less likely to need to go to the gangs. Because you probably have noticed, but they're also at this stage, we can understand why some very vulnerable young people, when they're looking for that other adults or other adult role models, why gangs kind of come in there. I mean, there's some of the kids that I work with, they are hooked by the gangs from about the age of eight or nine. And I think the gang members, they're clever people and they know that certain young people who don't have a secure upbringing in particular, not all, but young people at that stage as they're coming into that puberty and brain development stage, they're looking for the things and then, oh, there's this really cool bloke and, you know, he's giving me the latest iPhone. You never did, you never gave me the latest iPhone parent blah blah blah blah and you can kind of see how that can play out. So, yeah, it's creating those opportunities and teenagers are so creative and can be so positive because they don't see the boundaries in the same way as we do. And, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence we've got people like Gretta Zernberg who's kind of going, why are we not getting this right? He's awesome to be fair. Yeah, absolutely phenomenal. And, you know, she's not the only one. There's young people, I used to do in one of my mainstream schools run the Amnesty International Club and they just didn't see the boundaries that I saw as an adult. And they would just be like, well, that's not right. Can we contact the Prime Minister of Egypt? And I'm kind of going, let me work out how that might be possible. You know, they have this amazing ability to really re-envisage what the world could be. And I think that if we can kind of get on the back of that and enable them to do it, they have the opportunity to make really positive social change. That's true and it's one of the things I find myself reflecting on quite a lot at the moment is actually what a phenomenal generation we have coming up through right now. Like, I feel like, I don't know, they seem to have a thirst and a capacity to make things happen somehow that feels unique to this moment in time and maybe it's not and it's maybe to do with my age and things that they are interested in. I don't know, I just, I find myself incredibly in awe of a lot of really quite young people who are just doing amazing things. And then you think about, you know, Kevin the teenager and that stereotype of what we're meant to be teenagers like and it's just not my experience actually at all. No, it's not mine. And you know, even some of the young people I work with who let's say stereotypically people would think are the worst behaved, you know, the least kind of engage with society. Most of the time I find that that doesn't come from them. They have a thirst to make things different and to, to make the world better and to connect with people. But, you know, the kids that I work with a lot of the time have, have been given that label ex colluded and guess what that does to your self esteem. And I think I wonder there if there's a kind of, I don't know how one resets that but you know I, as you know, have two daughters so they're in year six at the moment so they're slightly younger of the two times 11 next week. And honestly, ever since they were tiny babies so they were first, you know, when I first have both of them, they were six and nine months old so I was nine months old when Ellie joined family at six months old. And even at that age people were saying to me, Oh, you're going to have two teenagers at the same time imagine what that's going to be like. And it was almost like people were preparing me for this really awful time. And what I and maybe I'll swallow my words when they become teenagers and I'll be proven totally wrong on this. But what I've actually found to be my experience with my children is the older they get the more brilliant they are they are turning into fantastic young women, like every child, they have their moments. I have my moments too, but they are inquisitive and wonderful and brilliant and there's so much about them that's great and I can't really see why, just because at some moment they will become teenagers that should change. I really do feel it is something to do with their place within society. So another. Another kind of little social experiment that I do is if I am in a new place and I'm lost because I often am and I don't have the internet on my phone because I'm actually from the north. What did I was doing great expectations once and a kid actually said to me, Mr you from this time expectations time anyway I don't have the internet on my phone. And so often I'm wondering around a place getting lost. And if I can, I will ask directions from a teenager every time if I possibly can because people don't ask them. You know, and if they're hanging around the streets all day, they usually know the streets really well. So it was this fantastic experience I had in Worthing, where there was a couple of lads hanging out and it was, you know that bit where it's, it's slightly warm so all the teen boys take their tops off. Oh yeah. Trying to do the hard man thing and they're kind of standing there trying to do the hard man thing with these cans but they weren't beer they were like, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, the drinks. Yeah. Oh those monster ones. Oh yeah. So, you know, I suppose, and I do get it if you don't work with these young people, I can see why that exterior might be intimidating. And I come from the place of, well, let's let's connect with them and see what happens. So I went up and I could see they're like, why, you know why she come to talk to us. She's going to come and tell us off that that's going to be their initial initial thought they're coming to tell me. I'm a bit lost. I need to get here. Can you tell me? I know you're not supposed to do this because they cringe, but he was so cute. His little chest puffed up and he was like, oh yeah, yeah, you need to go down here down here. But you could see because I had asked him, I'd put my trust in him. He was the expert in this situation. And none of that was made up either. It wasn't like some kind of weird learning exercise. It was like, I genuinely need to know where I'm going. And then the most beautiful bit at the end, he said, but actually, you know what, I don't want you going down. It was probably, it was like middle of the day, but he went, I don't want you going in that subway. It's just not safe. I wouldn't want you to go there. And he said, and I'm not just saying that because you're a young woman, I would say that to a big black man as well. I was like, bless him. Not only is he looking after me and looking out for me, but he's also slightly aware of sexism and racism. He didn't know very well, though, did he? Because I'm betting you were like, I'm going down that subway then, mate. But it was just this again, just this beautiful example of, if we connect with them as human beings, nine times out of 10, look what happens. I mean, there are so many stories like that where I can think of where I was doing a training once, it was around inclusion. And a participant shared with me that she was once going down the street, it was night. And she said she was walking along the path and there was this gang of teenagers coming boys as well, coming towards her. And she was feeling quite scared and intimidated and it was a hooded, they were all black boys as well. And she was going along and she was getting intimidated. She was just going to cross over. When she realized one of the boys was her son. So I mean, there's so many layers in there because obviously we've got racial issues in there as to why black boys would be deemed to be more intimidating than white boys in some circumstances. But we've also got this massive thing she was scared and then it was her very own son. It was such an incredible experience for her because she just realized how strong media society prejudices were affecting her to make her in that split second be scared of her own son. It's amazing how you can have moments like that though that really flip your thinking. It reminds me of a completely unrelated moment but it comes to mind of at one point when I was very ill with anaerobicity at one of many points. But I had that whole body image issue of you know that's very stereotypical thing about looking in the mirror and see someone who was grossly overweight when in fact I was very underweight. And actually for me it was never about weight that I did have that sort of distorted view of how I looked. And one day I was walking along and I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window but I didn't realize it was my reflection. And one of the things I spent a lot of my time doing was just looking at the people around me and noticing their weight, and I noticed this very thin ill looking person in the reflection in the window and the moment that I realized it was me. It looked completely different. And it was a really important moment for me because it made me realize that what I was seeing wasn't true and I guess maybe for that mum seeing this suddenly you're like oh this is fine I know these people they're my people this is okay. Yeah, yeah just clips of thinking doesn't it. But, yeah, that's, wow that's incredible so so if we judged our teens less, or if we assumed the best in them rather than the worst which is maybe what we're thinking we're doing. Do you think it would make a difference to how they actually behave. Yeah, because the the lads who gave me directions. As I walked towards him his body language was getting ready to defend himself. That was clear. I could, I could see that he was getting into like oh what's she going to tell me off for. And I gave him an opportunity to, you know, created a platform in which he could do something positive. And he's Sean, you know he absolutely Sean and I see that with my kids in the classroom as well, really, really simply. They, okay so they come in and they haven't got their tie on and they've forgotten their pen, and this that the other foot you know what it's the first time they didn't get the lighter out and try and set like my book. Which is useful when you're teaching English not to have books that are on fire. So I think there's that saying and I don't quite know where it comes from maybe you do what you appreciate appreciates. No I don't know where it comes from but I like it. I just find that to be so true and I think the other one that I really like to talk about in the book is Kim S Golding's approach of connection before correction. And I learned a training back in the days when that was allowed physically in London. And I was coming back. Honestly, I do spend my days on public transport trying out all my theories of teenagers. On the public on the train and it was the time when we had to wear masks and this lad was doing the classic mask on the chin thing. And the teacher and we couldn't help but kind of twitch a bit because he wasn't following a rule. And so I experimented with Kim Golding's approach this correction connection before correction. And I thought if I just say to him your mask is not right. I mean he was much bigger than me. That's the other thing I think about teenagers often they can be like a foot taller than you arms and legs everywhere. And I thought there's no point in doing that I do not I do not want any conflict that's not my intention here. I want to help keep him and all of us safe in this carriage. So I started off he had a school uniform on. So I said, Oh, are you from this school that I just done the training at and he said oh no no that's down the road I'm from this school. I said all right okay. I had a meaningless little chat about that. And then all I had to do was go for the purpose of those of you listening and not saying this. My hand is showing the action like just to lift your mask up action. And I went oh yeah yeah and pulled it up. Again, that's just another example of how connecting with him first, then enabled me to just just help him guide him and do to follow the rules that were in place at the time and I mean put that in an education setting in and it's it's simple and I think this is the other thing. I'll get my soapbox again, because I think that teenagers are learning. They're not adults. And the real challenging thing is sometimes they look like adults. And sometimes, depending on how they've developed physically, we might mistake them for adults and and put the same expectations as we would on adults. Yeah, they're still working things out. They're still trying things. I mean, most of us did stuff as teenagers that we wouldn't do now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so I just don't quite understand sometimes why we're so on the other hand like let's say toddlers right toddlers scream and shout you can tell I'm not early years toddlers scream and shout right and if you see a toddler screaming and shouting. They're on the street and you might feel very sorry for the parent you might kind of walk away because it's a bit loud, but you've kind of got this understanding that they're probably teething or they're hungry or they're tired or whatever like small kids it seems to be allowed to do that in general. And yet when a teenager screams and shouts, there's this, there's this kind of like expectation that they should know better that phrase I really I hear that a lot in schools and I really hate it because they should know better. They might have been taught better at some point but clearly at this point they need to be reminded because their children and their learning and their developing and surely it's our jobs as the adults who support them to do that. And sometimes I mean I was done again on a bus and there were these young lads and they were, I don't know how much your lads are in here but they were using the C word a lot. And very loudly in that kind of teenage oh he's a flipping and you could see everyone getting really really uncomfortable on the bus so I turned around and just went, Oh, did you know you're using language that's a bit naughty and there's there's some young kids over there. And immediately they were like, Oh, oh, yes, sorry, sorry, sorry, yeah, yeah, don't, don't say, don't say that. And they, they stay and what's the word they kind of regulated their own language. They didn't need me to tell them off they didn't need me to be aggressive. They just needed me to remind them of the social etiquette of being on a bus in public. I wonder if that's a bit about the, you know what you were saying before about kind of size and appearance though because I'm not suggesting for a moment that raising children is like raising dogs. However, we have little dogs. And I think we haven't tried as hard with training them not to do things like jump up or bark as we would have done if we have big dogs because I think when a big dog jumps up then that's really a problem and people are scared by it and stuff. When you've got a little dog and they do it, it's irritating, but it's kind of harmless isn't it and I think maybe that's the thing, you know, with the again with the toddler versus the teenager there might be reasons that but actually it's kind of scary if a big kid is big and loud and yeah and and Alex in that way. Similarly, my, my daughters have a friend whose older brother has Down syndrome, and it was always a challenge when they wanted to play with him because he was several years older than them, but what was about the same level in terms of play when they were younger so you really wanted to play with them, but because he was not a five year old he was a 14 year old, he wanted to play five year old games and rough and tumble, but he was massive. And so we had to work really hard to make sure that that wasn't kind of scary. So there's something just about literally the physical shell maybe and the actions not matching up isn't there. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And then there is that whole thing I mean I see it more in general in boys myself but there is this thing about it's like the arms and legs grow before they realize and so it's like they can't quite control them. They can't quite control the limbs in quite the same way. I think you're absolutely right. I think there is, there is a physical thing and you know, we are all going to have our biases. And I guess that a bias that looks at something or someone that is bigger than us. I imagine there's a very human instinct in there that we have to override. Yeah. You love teenagers you spend your whole time working with the kids who everyone else is crossing the streets to to to avoid and it's not like, you know, you're right at the sharp end and a lot of your work on you think it was a 17 years you've done in, well across all different kinds of school and settings. Why, why do you choose to do that Adele because there are loads of different ways that you could earn your key and working with are more interesting children is probably a harder way. You know, yeah. Well, my first career I was an opera singer. And really. Yeah. So I was an opera singer for eight years. And I did. I had an interactive opera piece right so I would go to spaces that aren't usual opera places like bars and pubs and a drag night and somebody's bathroom and I would do interactive opera. And it was really like working in spaces that people weren't really aware of the etiquette or like what opera is supposed to be. And I usually you could be sitting having your dinner and then I would just come up and wobble in your face. And usually people thought I had a microphone. But I did that a lot and there's something I do enjoy being in spaces where where there's that kind of maybe like pushing of expectations and and experimenting with what's allowed and what's not allowed and things like that. And then I got to a stage with the opera where, because I also did what I call straight opera as well like being in and being in the theater and being on stage. And I just wasn't enjoying it anymore there was just alongside it always I taught so I'd always talk about learning arts and I'd worked in by this stage already I worked in pupil referral units, alternative provisions, etc. And I always ended up teaching forming arts but I was supposed to be always kind of went that way. I discovered this gorgeous crossover of the energy and the, the natural skills I have to hold a space and to hold a room safely translated so easily into the alternative provision and school space. And then on top of that, even when I worked in mainstream, I would notice that a lot of the young people known for their behavior was sent to me to come and do the drama class or come and do the whatever we were doing, screaming and being trees I didn't know what we're doing. And, and I just started to find that actually these girls were completely completely crossed over and especially I mean I used to do opera nights where I used to sing and they used to be stag parties in. And actually, I'm sorry, but a load of drunk stags and teenagers behavior from this. But the difference is in one of the spaces I'm a teacher and it's my job to be a role model to help them to learn how to access society in a more positive way. In another area, I just got my bum pinched and I would have to deal with that. So it was like, actually, I want to be in a space where I can, I can create change, and where I can engage in social change and, and because I'd always kind of done this teaching, and I'd always kind of attracted like I attracted but I was attracted to working with the young people with behavior issues. I think also there's an energy thing there. And I am much more comfortable when I'm working with young people who express outwardly, even if it's completely extreme, I can hold that a lot more naturally than a child that goes inwards. And I mean, I've learned, and of course I do that, but it's not naturally where where my, you know, my best skills lie. And so I just got more and then I just found like I started doing more and more teaching and enjoying that more and more. And then the final bit was when I did an opera, it had 30 women in, right, 30 sopranos, never do it, very, very catty atmosphere. And there were two women who were supposed to be, one of them was the main part, one of them was the understudy, but the costume department could only afford one dress. But one of the women was larger than the other one, and it was just ridiculous. And they, they had this full on shouting match, they were in their mid 30s. And I sat there and I just went, What I want to do with my life is be able to be a person who can affect positive change. And in this scenario right now as another member of the cast is not my place to get in the middle of these grown women who, in my opinion to better. And so that was a real turning point where I just thought actually what I'm doing in the schools, I'm enjoying way, way, way, way more. And I just love holding these safe spaces for young people to, and I think it goes back to what we're saying at the start about teenagers is allowing them to be in a space where you know what sometimes they do need to get angry and that's okay. Or they do need to get angry. And that's allowed because anger is not a bad thing in itself, and to be able to hold these spaces and then on the other side. And I think the reason that I became freelance and started doing a lot more public speaking on this is because I also enjoy motivating others and inspiring others to and and encouraging and empowering others to get you know what, you know, you can do this too. It's kind of magic trick here, and I love doing that as well so as me mom would say I like to bang my drum. And so, yeah, bang my drum for a minority that's that experiences discrimination and yeah, I'm away. And you seem to have fun with it as well I mean I always really love. I feel I'm missing out on it a bit at the moment because there's not so much face to face but your insults of the week. They just really make me chuckle and I just love your ability to go, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm an expert in this. Here are some ideas. Oh look, it's when child was really cruel. Or, you know, often they're quite funny actually aren't they and they're not even necessarily intended to be unkind but it does make me chuckle. They are funny. If you're listening you don't want to talk about so on over on Twitter I'm at Adele Bates Z and we have a hashtag in sort of the week do come and play along. So for example, one of my favorites is I was working with an autistic people and she arrived in her taxi and her key worker was away, which of course can be a very challenging kind of changing routine. And so they said someone in Stafford said oh do you mind going picking her up so I went down to the taxi and did my whole hello, welcome to school. It just was like not having it close the door again. And I so I had to kind of get to wind down the door at the window. And I said okay you know I'm sorry someone's not here and I know that's that's not ideal I know that's not normal. Is there anything wrong with with walking up with me what what would be wrong with that, to which she replied your face. And it took me 45 minutes plus two extra members of staff. I was walking the drive from the taxi. But you know it's because in her world, something was already wrong. And why should you know she didn't feel safe. And, you know, I completely understand the why of it but just in that moment. And I did have to go well unfortunately that's the one thing I can't really do much about. And I was like how about if I if we walk up like this and I pulled faces to see if it would help but apparently that was unimpressive and don't be so cringe. So yeah, those are the kind of insults that I managed to get into how many characters are you allowed on Twitter now 140 no. Now I think it's 286 days we can write an essay basically it's. But yeah, if you have any insults. Well yeah my children do it without meaning to mostly I think I don't think they realize sometimes the burn, largely about age. This is one of the things that I'm finding now my children are getting a little bit older, I consider myself to be relatively young because many of my peers are older than me. But I mean obviously that would make them not my peers, you know what I mean like a lot of people that I work with I've usually worked with people who are older than me professionally. And so I consider myself relatively young and I'm younger than most of my children's friends parents. However, as far as my children are concerned I was you know conceived at the time of dinosaurs. And yeah they they find it hilarious when I talked to them about my childhood and how things were then. Yeah, but you know that's. I talk often about gifting mistakes and how when we're brave enough to share our mistakes with other people it means that they don't have to make the same ones but and yeah and sometimes I think it's important for us to laugh at those two. My most recent mistake was. Yeah, my most recent mistake was yesterday. This isn't in any way helpful in terms professionally but I think sometimes we just have to realize that we're all really struggling just to manage each day at the moment. I made my breakfast smoothie so a lot of smoothie because it's me my husband and one of my daughters all have the same smoothie every day for breakfast at the moment we like routine in our house. What I realized was that the new smoothie jug that we bought has a completely removable bottom so you can clean the blades great for keeping it clean, not great when you filled everything up, and then you lift it up to put it on the machine and there's no bottom in it. And it just went everywhere I just stood there with this jug in my hand, and we're in that we're just about to put the house on the market so we're trying to keep it all pristine. And I'm just there and there's just carnage in the kitchen and we just laughed, you can't sometimes all you can do is laugh so. And I think in the same way, like your insult of the week reminds us that you're human and that this stuff happens to you too and I think sometimes we have to remind people that yeah there's the stories that we share and the professional persona but we are we are human too. I have some questions that came in. It's a whole. Sorry, go on. We're on a delay. I think you can say. Sorry, I think we're lagging slightly on my sorry. No it's just going to say it's a whole chapter of my book where I cover how to not take it personally. When you're faced with behavior that is challenging you as the adult. How can you not take that personally and it's exactly for that reason and I think underneath the frivolity of sharing hashtag and sort of the weekend, you know, it's fun. And underneath that is is support for one another. And I think that is absolutely integral because I can definitely still go into a space and for whatever reason and not be able to hold the challenging behavior that's coming towards me. Maybe it's something that triggers me personally maybe it's something that this human person is experiencing that is so extreme. There's all sorts of reasons but I think underneath that insult the week is kind of hands up. It still happens like and it always kind of does. And I think especially for early career teachers that's useful to hear. As in, I don't have to get it right. There's no one way to behavior, which is something I'm advocating hugely at the moment. I feel that there's a certain rhetoric around behavior in education that if we all just do it this one way that everybody will be fine. And if everybody just high expectations is often kind of flung around and sometimes it's using a really useful way and sometimes it's like, well, as long as you keep your high expectations, then the children will behave. You know, and I think that that that really kind of overtly saying things still go wrong. And that's part of it because if behave if there was one way to support behavior in teenagers or younger children. We just sorted it by now and our prisons would be empty and nobody would be excluded and there'd be no detention. And the joy for me and the frustration is that there isn't one way. And I think on top of that something I'm just going to mention before we go into your questions is I've been exploring this idea as well. You know the whole thing. Don't smile before Christmas. When it comes to behavior in schools, people often say to me what do you do you think that's right and I say it depends who you are. I'm like Smiley McSmiley. And if I wasn't smiling before Christmas, the kids would know that was something was wrong. However, I've got colleagues who were totally like composed straight people like that. And if they smiled, it wouldn't it wouldn't be authentic it wouldn't be right. And so it really depends on who you are. And I think the way that we support teenagers and the way that we support behavior is to do with how we are and how we're comfortable as well. So the way that you might support teenagers, the way that I might, it's going to be different. And that's okay. We can't all be the demon headmaster. We can't all be Mary Poppins. I'm trying, but we can't. And I think it's interesting recently, when I've been hired to support schools. I'm getting a lot of feedback that they want a woman in, because a lot of their NQTs are young women. And they want to learn that behavior is unique. You can, you can support really extreme behavior. In, you know, you don't have to be an older man, which is kind of the image that is held around education, you know, older bin naughty, send them to the head, that kind of thing. So yeah, I'm exploring that at the moment in a project of my own behavior and you looking at different people with all different characteristics and how they approach behavior. And, you know, I want to know what's it like to support behavior, if you're going through the menopause, like, that must be really different. I don't know about that. So I'm trying to introduce to people, what is it like as a black teacher supporting behavior during a global social movement around Black Lives Matter. How, you know, all those kind of different characteristics that we might bring to ourselves, I think they all affect it as well. So much, so much to think about. So we're coming to the end, but I've got some questions that came in on Twitter, which I'm going to ask you. I'm going to kind of quick fire away is my thinking, partly because my diary is ridiculous and I know yours is too, so we're going to do this. So, Graham Chatterley asked, do you sit them in rows and make them look at you? If that is useful for the particular thing that you're doing on that particular day that works for those particular children, then do it. If you're just doing it out of habit, or because you don't know what else to do, then I would consider, actually, let's kind of rework this and look at what is useful. If they're doing group work, not that useful. If they are doing, if you're dictating something that they've got to write down, then maybe it's more useful. It depends on the situation. I couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. I'm not very good at that ever. I don't know that. Anyway, I think that's a great answer. Thank you. Next was about how can we support teenagers who feel lonely, aware that loneliness is very common in this age group and a risk factor for mental health problems. That loneliness is also stigmatizing in younger age groups, although the stigma may have reduced slightly due to COVID. That's a great question. I think it's from the Loneliness, I'm going to say, Association or Society. Loneliness and Health Network from UCL, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. I think the first piece here is letting teenagers know that it's kind of a normal human thing to feel lonely. It's one of the things that I wish that someone had told me. There's a few emotions that I wish people had told me. It's about anger, but that's another thing. But to first of all, know that it's not just them. By role modeling that, you know what, I felt lonely at this point, or I'm feeling like COVID is making, you know, lockdowns make me feel really lonely and isolated. So first of all, just identifying it so that it normalizes it. Now, not to say normalizes it so that it can become a really regular thing, get over it. But in a way that they know that it's not just them, because I think the annoying thing about being lonely or feeling isolated is you do think it's just you. And there's very little to compare to because you are stuck in that world of isolation, whether that's physically or whether that's just in your mind. You know, you could very much be in a group of large people, but still feel isolated. And so I think sharing experiences of that, I think especially since the restrictions we've had during COVID. I think that vocabulary is coming out a bit more with young people, often before it was associated with older people. And so that would be my first step. And if we're going quick round, I'll leave it there, but yeah, that would be my first. Sounds like a whole nother episode. The next question is from Kevin Hewittson who asked, how through interpreting behavior, can you build effective learning relationships? And just to warn you that he wrote the book. If you can't reach them, you can't teach them building effective learning relationships. I kind of feel like maybe he needs to come on and another episode to answer this question more fully, but what's your view on that? Yes, read his book. So I think we've touched on this quite a lot. So it's about it's about connecting with them and engaging in their world, building that relationship with them. We haven't even talked about building relationships explicitly yet, but building an environment of safety so that the learning can just kind of extend from that. If we start from you need to learn this and you need to do this, or remember, remember that part of the brain is going, hang on, here's someone telling me to do something that either I don't want to do, or I'm scared I might fail with, then what am I going to do? I'm going to put my defenses up. So it starts from creating that safe space, creating that connection, creating that relationship and then building from there. I like that. I like that. And then finally, Stella asked us, this isn't a question really, but you might want to come back on it. Can you remind parents that teenagers moping around is usually a normal thing, and they'll eventually go out of it? And I guess my question off the back of that would be, at what point should we be worried? Because I think individual families sometimes don't know, like sometimes I think we over-assume that what we're seeing is just adolescence when it might be depression, for example, but then sometimes we go the other direction and we end up kind of labelling something that's just normal. It's so hard, that line, isn't it? And it will also be dependent on the young person and the situation and your context, because what looks like depression in one situation will be different in another. So my suggestion is keep the connection, keep the line of communication. And for teenagers, that might not look like how it looked when your kid was a child. So as a child, you might have been able to go, okay, we're going to talk about this and this is what's appropriate and this is what's not, or you might have been able to have more of those conversations. And if a teenager is closing and moping and cutting you out of their world a bit, find other ways to keep connected. So whether that's, even if it is, daft things on WhatsApp messages or things like that, even if it's your own child, it's keeping that connection, even when it feels really thin. So that if you are concerned, you've got a way in, whereas if you put it off completely, then it's really, really hard to go in and try and connect when what you want to talk about is the addiction to drink. That's quite a big, heavy topic to take, whereas if you've always kind of, if I don't know, there's a TV program that you actually both watch or, you know, you're still keeping these little connections here and there, then when you need to talk about bigger things, you've already got your foot in the door. That's great advice. What, what thought do you want to close with Adele? What thought do you want to leave in people's mind at the end of this episode as we close? I think it's, I'm going to, I'm going to give you a dare. I'm going to double day your back to think about a situation in which when you see a teenager next, maybe just see how you can make a connection. And it might be as simple as you smile at them. That can be massive. That can be absolutely massive for a teenager. And, and I'm not saying they're going to come back at you with gleaming fun and unicorns. But just see if you can connect positively with a teenager in your life. Because I think there's a real opening piece we can do that that could really help them feel more accepted in society and then help us play the world with their ability to see past boundaries that as adults we