 Hello, everyone. This is Ross at Teacher Talk at the most influential blog on education in the UK today. I'm delighted to be joined by Cat Howard, Assistant Principal at Dunstan School in Northampton. Good afternoon, Cat. How are you? Hello, I'm good. Thank you, Ross. Thank you for inviting me along. Well, the reason I've got in touch is your wonderful book, which I've got in my hand. And I know you have a second one, which I failed to pronounce correctly. So we'll talk about that in a moment. But let's get straight to business. Tell our listeners what this book is about in particular. It was looking at how sometimes we might approach wellbeing in a little bit of a tokenistic, well meant, but token tokenistic fashion in schools and actually how we can look at the systems and creating the the correct conditions for teachers to feel a sense of empowerment and feel fired up and, you know, in just a general sense of wellbeing, about coming into coming into work every day. But as a result of, you know, workload reduction rather than kind of one size fits all wellbeing strategies sometimes that we see in schools. And it's I particularly enjoyed it from from at least the social media perception. A lot of people have really enjoyed all the strategies and all the case studies. Could you unpick maybe one of your highlights of the case studies of the people that you worked with? Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's a funny it's a funny way that I came about the role that I'm in now because I originally interviewed Sam, our head at Dustin before I got the job there. So as a result of wanting to look at the way that doesn't have approached workload reduction. So one of the ways that we approach it as a whole school is we have a workload charter where we commit to staff several different systems that we actually have put into place to make sure that we are really mindful of workload. So things like making sure that we hand over a significant amount of time for CPD because we want people to not feel isolated and we want people to be able to have conversations around their subjects and around teaching and pedagogy because we all know that that's what keeps us really engaged and really enthusiastic about being in work. But in order for those things to take place, we need to make sure that the time is given to do so and that we remove any barriers to that. So things like we have email embargoes. We don't send emails that weekends or holidays. We have a real kind of whole school approach in that we do daily messages, which is where all of our kind of key communications are centrally collected and emailed out once a day to reduce on reduce email communication. We really encourage face to face conversation. And if anything, we had kind of prior to covid had an increased meeting time with the premise of if you don't need the meeting, don't have it for the sake of having a meeting, but actually people need opportunities to meet and have conversations. So those are a few examples. I talk a great deal in the book about communication generally. I think emails are the death of the conversation almost in schools. And I think that we use, yeah, definitely. And we use email in such a funny way in education because it's it's really it's not necessarily because it's the most effective way to communicate, but it's almost conversation. So I think school leaders really need to be mindful of making sure that people have opportunities to talk to one another because that's what gets the really meaningful gritty work done. And actually those conversations are what build relationship. Sure. And so covid has your school responded, you know, with the kind of workload well being issues over this last six months. Yeah. So. We have we essentially just wiped everything from the calendar that wasn't absolutely necessary. So things like any external reviews or any kind of QA or any meetings that were taking place that we didn't necessarily need to have any kind of connections to data because we know data is in flux at the moment and with where children are and actually just take it back to the nuts and bolts of what do we need in order to make sure that teachers can go home as soon as the day is over and that we put that emphasis back on CPD. So we've really kind of cleared the calendar. We use whole class feedback as an approach as a whole school institutionally. Anyway, so we've really put the emphasis on that and making sure that things like remote learning work, any work that's submitted via remote learning. We we still continue to use the whole class feedback sheets, which really reduces and we've also said, you know, don't don't take marking home, don't take marking out of the building. If you're doing whole class feedback, it should only take you 20 to 30 minutes. So, you know, don't don't take it home with you and let it sit in the corner of your house staring at you all week and or in the boot of your car thinking about it and then, you know, bring it back to work because we all know that's what we do with it. But I think there's so much to be learned from and we're kind of in conversations about what can we learn from this period of time to remove systems that, you know, if we've gone this long without, we don't need any more. And I think that's going to be the, yeah, the silver lining. But I can put you on the spot. What's the one thing that your schools speculating on potentially getting rid of if there was not bringing back? Well, we've kind of handed it over to the staff. So our plan is to we have one to ones with every single member of staff in the building at two points in the year. So we've had it earlier on. But part of that conversation is how are things going in Covid? And also later on in the day, just after Christmas, we'll be putting a survey out to say, you know, what what lessons have we learned? What have we taken away? Really simple things like we've got staggered start for students coming in in the morning and we meet them all at lineups. It makes it really easy for tutors to hold students to account when it comes to uniform expectations, because you've got the presence of SLT there. And it's things like that that actually make those conversations that sometimes can be really, really time consuming as a teacher or a tutor in school. That we just, you know, have made, I think, so much easier. But part of that conversation, I think anything that you change whole school level, it needs to have is that dual narrative. You need to make sure that you're including teachers at ground level that are going to be impacted by those decisions before you start looking at what you do or don't bring back. So it's probably a very roundabout way of asking and answering your question. But it needs to be. Yeah, the teachers need to be involved in that. As you know, I've been fascinated with workload for many years. What context for listeners? Can we just rewind, you know, give us a little insight into your leadership journey and what inspired you to become a school leader? And I guess, where did that workload issue or passion from you stem from, I suppose? So you're back. Yeah, so I used to work in the financial sector for a number of years in the retail section of a high street bank. I was I oversaw recruitment and retention. So essentially, my job was to measure how many people are coming in and how many people are leaving, because it was incredibly expensive to train people. And it was, you know, so it was really expensive if we trained them just for them to go somewhere else. And so it was really about kind of how do we look after stuff? I then decided to retrain as a teacher and went back to university and and then went on to do my PGCE and then worked in a number of schools and and found it really interesting that when I looked around for people that I did my PGCE with, how many were left after about four years and then five years and then six years and what was impacting that and having some really kind of unfortunate conversations with with colleagues and friends around toxic schools and around that kind of loss of humanity. That I think that when systems are under pressure, that that's how school leaders perhaps may react as a result of pressure being projected onto them as well. And I found that really interesting, but also really frustrating because a lot of the systems in schools didn't really seem to make sense. We have a lot of systems in schools where the left hand isn't talking to the right hand. And so you find that particularly with when you've got a healthy that have got a particular agenda, so the behavior guy. Or what do you think that stems from? Do you think that stems from offset forces, lack of finances or lack of maybe leadership training? Yeah, see, I've had this debate with Tom Rogers previously, who is quite happy to put it down all to offset. But I don't necessarily think that's the case. I think that we could really do with learning from. And Mary might does this very nicely as well, learning from other sectors and their experiences of how to train people in, you know, HR operations of the art of having difficult conversations, but still building relational trust. So things like that are really, really important. We could do far more of that, I think, in teaching. Because if you what happens is that you become a school leader because you're really good at teaching, not necessarily because of all the other operational stuff that you also need to be really good at. Learn on your feet, so to speak, isn't it? Make a few mistakes and not too much collateral damage. What's your, you know, including Covid, I suppose, but what do you get out of being a school leader? I love being school leader. I think I'm really excited. I'm really privileged because I oversee professional development and as part of our performance management model, this year after running a pilot last year, we're now we've got coaching as an integral part of our performance management. So we're no longer measuring outcomes or data and stuff, form their own goals. And then they take those goals, they own those and take those through with coaching conversations that we protect time for those coaching conversations. I find that, yeah, well, no, it's fantastic. And it's fantastic to be part of that process and part of those decisions. You know, so I'm bringing in coaching as part of the performance management policy was really important to me. And I'm, you know, very lucky that I have that autonomy. But I think that, yeah, that's the best part of enabling people and stuff in schools to have conversations about how things are going away from accountability, away from this sense of judgment of actually, as you said, about mistakes, of making it completely acceptable to make mistakes or getting better. Is there a mistake that you've made that you, you know, we've all made them? What's what's a clanger that you've made that you regret and you hope to never? I'm I make mistakes every single day. I share an office with two people that could give you an insight. Yeah, every single I think we all do that, don't we? Especially when you're managing people or you're going through change management. I think that if I look back over to I had a role in a previous school quite early in my career of literacy coordinator and it's that thing. As soon as you're given some sort of responsibility, I think at learning point in your career, you just want to change it all and make it all your own. And I think that would be probably the biggest mistake that I've made is not sitting back and thinking about what's working and building on that. And sometimes I think, yeah, we're very keen to reinvent the wheel when there's there's plenty to be learned from. I think listening more or definitely. It's in terms of with all the, you know, Covid aside, all the things we're doing remotely at the moment. What where was your teaching and learning strategy going at the moment? You know, the retrieval, the cognitive science aspects of learning. What are your school priorities in that regard? Well, we've done a great deal of work on curriculum over the last two years and whole school curriculum. So we are our school improvement plan is doing the same, but even better. So every year we're building on the successes that we're building on the strengths that we have. And so it was whole school curriculum. Then we were looking at subject curriculum. So this year it was all going to be about kind of mapping across the curriculum, making sure that we've got kind of concepts mapped out the way revisiting information, our classroom routines are really, really strong because we have several institutional approaches to that. So I would say that our kind of our focus now is making sure that our subject curriculum, particularly because we're an all through school, particularly at those transition points. So we've got our first lot of year six through this year. So key stage two to key stage three, key stage three to four, four to five that those transition points are really well mapped out. No, I am my son before, you know, so listeners will know, I've left London after 30 years. My son was in an all through state school three to 18. And what I loved as a parent was seeing him being immersed with the teachers in different aspects of the key stages and him being exposed very early to secondary school life, you know, the older kids, bigger classrooms. Is that the kind of structure you have in your own set up? I assume it is. And do your teachers mix over the key stages in some places? Yeah, so our department work very closely with the primary in their primary curriculum. So we have a secondary specialist that puts the primary curriculum together and goes over and works with the primary teachers. We have our language specialist working in primary school on a regular basis music teachers, PSHE, that sort of all through curriculum. And so it is really nice and really beneficial, you know, I feel very privileged to be able to to walk over to the primary and learn from them. And I also think having worked in secondary experience where you don't have that luxury, I think we can sometimes underestimate what primary school children are capable of. And so seeing that is actually very eye opening for our teachers. A colleague at Cambridge, sorry to interrupt you, but my colleague at Cambridge is researching all state schools and she's discovered that those schools don't have that year six to seven transitioned it for obvious reasons. So I guess there's huge benefits of having an all through school. But your point on what you can learn from the other side, so to speak. That's something I've seen on my travels. Give me a couple of things that you have learned from the primary classroom. Yeah, so I mean, I used to go in a in a previous role, I used to go regularly to moderation meetings for year six, which is, as I say, really, really eye opening. The other piece of work that we did previously was to create a transition unit for core subjects so that they almost do half of the unit up to the end of year six because you have that weird dead time in between the sats and the summer period. Yeah, I can do it. Ensure that, yeah, that children remain motivated is to carry out half a unit and then they bring that work with them up to the secondary. So it becomes this seamless act from one from one phase to the other. And it also enables your teachers to work collaboratively as well, that you've got secondary and primary having those conversations together to map out what that might look like. Now, you've got a new book. I'm going to try and pronounce the name. Symbiosis, symbiotech, symbiosis. So I haven't got my hands on a copy yet. I have seen it circulated on social media. Give everyone the kind of 30 second lift pitch. What's in it? It was a seed of an idea from Stop Talking About Well-Being, where I wanted to talk about how important it is to teach a decent curriculum as a teacher. And so what Claire and I wanted to do is put together a handbook for leaders of curriculum, so senior leaders, subject leaders and the classroom teacher, which I think we underestimate how much they are a contributing factor to a decent curriculum and talk about the underpinning principles of what makes a high standard of a quality curriculum and how we go about doing that in schools. Now, can I push you in the corner and could you give me some of the kind of key terms or hallmarks of a good curriculum? Yeah, I think that you need to have an understanding of knowledge structures and you need to have an understanding of the nuances of the subject. So I can't come into a school and say, right, OK, this is how good this is what good curriculum looks like, because actually a high quality of curriculum in maths is entirely different as a hierarchical subject to a high quality curriculum in English. So the book almost acts as a guide as to, OK, how can senior leaders, if we go back to well-being and workload, how can senior leaders remove everything and communicate curriculum as a priority? But I'm hand over that autonomy to subject leaders because you need to be an expert of the subject in order to put together a decent curriculum. But as a starting point, I think as a subject expert, you need to know your subject and you need to understand what the kind of the threshold concepts of your subject are. And then you need to understand how that kind of maps itself across a sense of progression so that you're not repeating content as we've sometimes seen when we, you know, kind of flirted with the company, he says three is two year, three year curriculum, back and forth. But also that we're we're enabling students to re-bump into those concepts rather than just doing the same stuff over and over again. So I know Claire, I haven't had the chance to catch up with her yet. How how how did you meet Claire and how did you end up both writing a book together? Yeah, it's a joke, our friendship is incredibly weird, but we met at a team English conference very, very briefly. And then I was doing some work with I was kind of putting together Lit Drive, very early days of Lit Drive and asked Claire if she would like to be involved as part of the senior team to run the network side of things while regional events. And we got to know each other from there. And so we've probably spent far more time talking over Zoom than we have actually in real life. So we make a we make an effort of twice a year of making sure that we go down to London and have lunch and and drinks. But yeah, it was just kind of these back and forth conversations of being really interested in how lots of people know the watts of the curriculum, what what might be on, you know, if I'm an English teacher, what might a good English curriculum look like, but not necessarily how to go about it or how to involve the team in that process as well. And actually how empowering that can be for teachers. So yeah, an odd one. No, really fascinating, the curriculum discussion. Now, Claire, when I want to once I pass the 20 minute marker, then throw loads of quickfire questions at you so you can't pause or hesitate and my plan is to kind of catch you out. So I'll start off easy. And what what what project are you currently working on in school? In school, I want to evaluate our coaching process. I want to make sure that stuff feel really confident in knowing what a coaching conversation looks like. So that's my priority at the moment. OK, what does symbiosis mean? Symbiosis is this interaction. So this kind of this this intrinsic connection between one thing and the other. So it's making sure we're not talking about classroom practice as detached from curriculum. The third time I got it right. OK, what book are you reading? Sixteen years. What book are you reading? And I am reading Evaluating Professional Development by Thomas Guskey and I'm listening to Hamnit for my book club, my very geeky book club on Twitter. And what's your top tip to your NQTs during COVID? Make sure you get enough sleep. OK, your own well-being advice to yourself? Have Sundays off always. Never say yes to something on a Sunday. That's a good one. I like that. I use I use Saturdays and piece of advice for a teacher curious about research. I would say get yourself on to research at home. It's a starting point. That's an interesting look. Also, have a look at what learning scientists are doing, because that's probably going to be integral to your practice. Yeah, they're very, very good. What's your biggest or most proud achievement? Writing two books in a year. Yeah, ridiculous. Take what's your secret? I struggled to get one out. My children don't sleep. So what is your secret? There's the question. What's your secret? Yeah, no, not sleeping. So OK, now I'm assuming teaching is your dream job, but what is that off the wall, a curveball career that you would have loved to have done? I would like to. I'd really wish that I'd learned piano. We had to get rid of our piano a couple of years ago, and I didn't go around to teach myself properly. So, yeah, that would be the dream. OK, who would you recommend I interview next and why? Oh, that's so hard. I would say that you should interview Dave Goodwin because just for the fact that he's so northern, I could listen to him talk about practically anything. However, his knowledge on graphic organisers is out of this world. So I find him really interesting to listen to. OK, where can listeners find out more about you and connect online? I am at says miss on Twitter. I also blog at says miss dot wordpress.com and I fit about doing stuff with LitDrive so you can find that out at LitDrive UK or www.litdrive.org. My final question, Kat, is what do you hope to be a legacy? People not leaving teaching would be really nice. That makes me really sad. So that would make my day. That would be a really interesting one. I'd be curious to know how many people are still in the classroom when I qualified, actually. But yeah, as we all know, the attrition rate is pretty shocking, isn't it? One question I didn't ask is, you know, how many years people people that send a DM saying, how many years have you put in so I'm on my eighth, I think. Yeah. OK, so you get into the itch, the average lifespan of teachers in England's 13 years. So fingers crossed, fingers crossed. But I'm not done yet. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure to chat with you. I can't wait to find out about more about your new book, Symbiosis. That is very fascinating description of how it all connects together. And for people listening, stop talking about well-being. It's a fantastic book to really inform some of my thinking in terms of teacher work and well-being. And I wish you all the best. Can't look forward to the third book. Lovely. Well, no. Take care. Take care.