 not a pro at this. Right. Here we go again. Right. Three, two, one. Hello everyone. This is Ross at Teacher Toolkit, the most influential blog on education in the UK. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Effie Teacher Fabian Darku. Fabian has recently blogged on Teacher Toolkit, although not for some time and we hope to change that. Fabian is a Effie teacher working in the south of England. I'm going to ask Fabian to say hello and give us a little bit more context. Fabian, how are you? I'm good. Thank you. Good evening, Ross. Yes, good evening and thanks for thanks for joining me. Tell listeners a little bit more about what you do. Okay, so I'm a further education teacher in the southeast of England. I work at a place called West Hearts College in Watford and I've been an Effie for I'd say probably nearing eight years or so now. I've got some experience in secondary education, but Effie is primarily my area where I work now. So I qualified as a teacher in 2008 and yeah, the time is absolutely whispered by so I've probably had a split, as I was saying, in terms of secondary education for half of my career, and then the second half has been further education. So it's a number of roles that have been further education. So primarily it's as a sports lecturer. So I teach on various courses, such as BTEC level two, level three, sports science. And I'm also a teacher trainer. So I've worked with different potential and prospective teachers. That's something that I've started fairly recently. And I'm also a teaching and learning leader within our college as well. So I try and split myself up between all three of those roles. You're a busy man. Having at least done the teacher training still and the teaching and learning lead in formal formal life. It is a real privilege to do that kind of work. How do you balance I guess that imposter syndrome where you've got to be at the cutting edge of all the stuff that's going on, filter that share it with your staff, nurture other people's voices as well as just your own ideas. Yeah, definitely. It's definitely something that as you say, it's definitely a privilege. The role of been working with a group of maybe 10 or so teachers in that cohort for teacher training. So if I'm honest with you, it's also myself learning from them because you almost pick yourself in the position that they were in. So at the start of my career, there was certain things that I wasn't too sure about and from listening to them, you hear about their worries, their concerns, their the things that they're confident about or not so confident about. And it's always good for me really to learn different things because like everybody else who've had the pandemic and I'm coming to terms with ed tech and how it is playing a part in education now. So sometimes different members of staff will have different opinions and it's really good to kind of get my teacher training hat on and learn from them as well. So for me, it's been a learning process in that sense as well. I'll come back to that. Give me a snapshot of life through COVID at the college and where you're at now. Okay, so here with the past two or so years, it's just been as I'm sure many of you guests have said before, it's just been a time like no other. We haven't experienced anything like this in terms of the uncertainties in terms of the unpredictability and just come into terms with us having to get used to ed tech at the moment. So I remember quite clearly building and just finding out within the next week or so that there might be a closure. So we quite quickly learn to use things like Microsoft Teams and different different things. I think we were already on the canvas system, but then we hadn't really had much use of Microsoft Teams. So we just had to obviously adjust very quickly to that and get used to it on site and then within a week or so we were off site and I think that was pretty much it for that academic year. I think from the March until the July. What's the kind of mood or the landscape now for you? Yeah, I'd say it's a lot better in terms of all members of staff know how to use a lot of different programs such as Microsoft Teams. We we do feel more confident with it and I feel the students are also a lot more confident with what they're doing. So we know how to the typical things like sending messages to groups and doing the lessons online, having things like breakout rooms within the classes as well to make things as interactive as possible. So it's it's definitely been them getting used to it and and us adjusting to it as well and just making them understand that it's new for everybody and just to obviously bear with us and try and enjoy lessons at the same time. But it's it has been a very difficult period for most of us in terms of just just knowing our classes. Do we do we structure things the same way as we were previously in terms of the starter of the lesson and how to how to capture learning in the middle of the lesson. So it's it's just knowing what works best and what I found is that just from being online, you realize that the dynamic completely changes. So whereas something will work in the classroom, you'll have a task in a group of four and then you'll get online and then it's hard to get a response from some students and it changes it. So I'll probably pop back to this conversation on this particular topic, but I guess one last question before we move on is one thing that really struck me when I moved away from my full-time job in a school to working with teachers in all sorts of contexts was just the breadth and depth of what happens in colleges. And I guess more importantly, well, not more importantly, life as you know as a teacher on Twitter, there is often certain ideas that are more popular or certain ideologies that are promoted. But once you move away from the bubble of social media and actually go into lots of different settings, you realize that, you know, marking or whatever particular strategy might not work with four-year-olds or vulnerable students in an FE college when they're studying hairdressing or a level 2 course. Could you give people listening who might not be familiar with an FE setting or at least since they last went to college, the depth, the breadth, the range of subjects that a college like West Hearts provides? Yeah, so list off a range of subjects, perhaps. Yeah, no, so I think you've you've mentioned some really good ones there. So we do have things like helping beauty. We've got sports, the area that I work in. You've got typical departments like business. So it's a massive school and business. They've got so many students and her countless members of staff as well. You've got you do have the provision for GCSE, such as English and maths. So we don't really do science retakes here in terms of GCSE, but maths and English. We do have a large number of students that are retaking their maths in English based on them not getting the results they needed or results they wanted the first time around. We've got things like public services and science. So people that want to join the the police or armed forces, there's courses for them to get into. And I think what West Hearts College tend to do quite well is they just we try and look at things like the career prospects and try and cater those courses based on what people want to do in real life. And we share an office with the travel department as well. So they tend to have trips to certain places. I think it's been a bit tougher the past couple of years because of COVID. I know they did a trip fairly recently. They've taken the students away and they've given them a real sense of what it feels like to be in the industry. And I think for me as a teacher, seeing things like that and going to places does make a massive difference to the students learning and the students engagement. So it's not always something that is possible in every school or every college, but I feel that the learners tend to get the most out of their experience when they are going out there and doing things. It does make a massive difference to things like attendance as well. Sure. And I guess just on the note of teachers on Twitter like yourself, how do you translate some ideas that you think might be popular, but how do you stitch them back into an FE setting and then disperse them under your teaching and learning lead as the teachers in your hairdressing department here and beauty, the social sciences, the engineering classes, the maths and English retakes. That's a challenge. I know that's a challenge. How do you tackle that? How do we do that? I think the answer to that is probably with great difficulty. We're we're all still learning and especially with the pandemic, it's it is very hard to to capture every single department and to capture the needs of every department and the needs of every learner. So we've got what we do in sport might be completely different to the music and production department. So they will do things differently to us and I've just been speaking to some department here and beauty department today and I've seen how they do their their tracking system is quite quite different to how we do ours. So I think the main thing is to it's just us understanding that we all do things differently and understanding and just respecting others ways of doing things because we've all got the same goal. We've all got the same end goal and as long as the students progress is getting monitored and getting tracked even though there's slight differences. Sure. Yeah. And you know, give us a sense of how many, you know, teachers support staff does the college have and how many students just gives a bit of context. Right. In terms of support staff in terms of things like student well-being. Yeah. Just general population of, you know, how many people work for the college I suppose. Oh, wow. Oh, in terms of numbers, I'd say if you get a typical maybe secondary school because of college because there's so many courses and we've got courses that will be a full-time course may might be on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Yeah. Part-time and virtual. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say it's definitely the hundreds. Yeah. So many numbers there for people, population. How many students have you got? Or is that hard to put you think? I'd say in the thousands even. I don't know the exact number. I guess if you did a teacher training day, how many people would be in the room if you did a whole staff day? A whole staff day. Wow. That you would might normally lead like, you know, you started the year in set or end of year. What would you do? I don't think we've actually been able to do it as a whole staff because there's so many different staff. So sure. Plus Covid's got in the way. Yeah. The challenge is huge. I think is what we're trying to explain. Yeah. Okay. Let me switch topics. So I want you to think back. Let's start off with when you were 16. Could you describe your 16 year old self to listeners? Wow. Okay. So my 16 year old self, I was somebody who was fairly studious. I've always had a love of things like English and sport. So at age 16 as a lot of 16 year olds want to do, I wanted to become a professional football player. So I've been quite privileged to have been scouted by a Premier League team at the time. And I've been named the team or you're not allowed. Not sure. Not sure if I can name the team. It's not a very popular team at the moment. Still in the Premier League. They're still in the Premier League. Okay. Do you pound to somebody or perhaps? All right. Let's move on. Okay. So you were you were obviously into get into your football as well as you know your school. So what happened? Yeah. So it's just one of those situations where my body completely broke down. I was having so many knee injuries and back injuries and hamstrings and quad issues just mainly to do how my body was aligned. It just wasn't quite working out. And I just thought I'm not going to make it as a professional football player as much as I felt I would love to. And I felt I had a certain amount of talent but my body just could not cope. So because of my love for sport, that's when I discovered that things like A level sport was available at the time. So I moved quite swiftly on to that and stayed on to study A levels in sport and English and history and general studies. And it's something that gave me the foundation to study sports at a higher level to agree. And were you the kind of kid that got your homework in on time or were you always needing a reminder or two? Right. I would say the homework was probably in on time. But if quality, if my parents are listening to this, they'll have to be honest and say there's there was many occasions where I'd be up crazy hours of the revolving there. Yeah. What happened after A levels? What happened next? Yeah. So I moved on to study sport and leisure management at degree level at Brunel University. So I did that over a three year period. Yeah. And then I decided to stay in sport in terms of studying sport. And I did a two year masters in sport and culture. So I just wanted to continue with that love of sport. And I was more of the essay writing type. And I was into the sociology and the different theories. And I think that that two years studying the MA was a real eye opener. And I took it really seriously and did my best on the course obviously. And yeah, I just saw it as a quite a big thing. So where did the teacher conversation happen? Who was it? When did it happen? Yeah. So after I think while I was studying that particular masters I was working part time in retail. So what happened is from studying and from working part time in retail, I moved on to full time. They offered me some management opportunities. And I did that for a few years and about maybe five years or so. And I think I just got to a time when I loved the people I worked with, a fantastic team of staff. But I just realized that there was there was more that I felt like I could do in terms of education. So I think it was actually a conversation with my mom on one of the weekends. And I think she just said, what would you like to become a teacher? Have you ever thought about that before? And it just popped up. I was probably caught in the whirlwind of retail. And yeah, I started to look it up and I realized there was something called the TDA. I think it's teaching and development agency or training development agency. And they were running TASTA days in secondary school. So I just wrote off to them or contacted them through the website. And then they found me a school to go in for the day. And funnily enough, when I went in for the TASTA day, I really enjoyed it. And I felt I could feel that it was it was definitely my passion. And they had some roles available as a cover supervisor. So they were impressed with what they saw on that particular day. And I was impressed with them. And I just put the application in. And yeah, it was lucky enough to get. So there you go. So the rest is history. So I'm assuming that was about 2006, 2007. That was 2007, 2008, I think that was. Yeah. Yeah, it's a cover. And then you said you started in secondary and then you did the switch. That's right. So started off after that particular role, they had some GTP roles available. So it was on the graduate teacher program. So for anyone that's not aware of the GTP, they place you in a school for a year. You train on the job in the industry that you obviously choose. So for myself, it was in the PE department. I worked with them. You had a really, really good mentor at the time. And we had I had an external person that would come and do my assessments every term and do the observations. And just pick some really interesting points in terms of picking my practice apart. So it's really good. And I put you in the corner. What would you say are the pros and cons of secondary versus FE or if there are any and what have you liked or disliked about both? It's talking to my current students about the other day. I said, did they find it strange that they address us by first name in FE? Because here I'm known as Fabian. But in a secondary education, I was known as Mr. Darku. So it does have a strange feel to it. And I think because I was in secondary first, I was always known as Mr. Darku. And then I go to I went into further education. It was Fabian. It's for some, it's quite a difficult thing to adjust to. And you think do they respect you as much because they're using your first name and does it make a difference or does it make them feel more comfortable with with you as a as a person guiding their learning? And I'm still not sure at the moment. I think some students adjust really well to it and maybe in FE, I think some maybe not quite at the peak of their maturity and still maturing. So I feel maybe for some it's still better to have the more formal route. Yeah. No, it's an it's an interesting question right there, isn't it? What difference does it make to outcomes? I suppose is a good research question. Right. Let me switch topics again. Let's I want to talk you're a black man. I want to raise the profile of racism, diversity and education. You know, my career was always in London, you know, secondary schools and surrounded by, you know, not an extortionate diverse teaching team, but in some schools more than others, but particularly at leadership level, often the white man leadership table, white woman at a rarely diversity right at the top. What are your thoughts on you know, diversity in education if we narrow it down to diversity in FE sector and maybe where you were in your general thoughts? I know there's a big questions. Let me just let me just get get some of your immediate thoughts on the challenges and some of the things that we can do. Yeah. I think it's something that is obviously come more to the forefront of the media and education in the past few years. We've had issues with George Floyd and I did hear one of your previous guest speaking on the issue not so long ago and I feel in terms of diversity is something that is it's absolutely crucial in terms of moving forward and progression and being just recognizing that we are all different and I think it's not just necessarily me as a black male or I just think every type of element of diversity needs to be recognized so in terms of ability, disability and I feel we need to have everybody's voice heard. So I feel it is really important to get everybody at the table to have these conversations on issues of race and diversity and inclusion and equity. I think the more issues and the more the more we have a range of people sitting at the table having these discussions it does. I guess the question is always the nature of the role model isn't there? I guess I've got a two-part question who is your role model and do you kind of see a pathway where being the school leader is a possibility for someone in your shoes? Wow, I mean in terms of role model I wouldn't say I think it's more of a question that I was probably better at answering as a kid. I think I used to get asked that question a lot as a kid and I'd say right, John Barnes football player I guess my point is there a role model for you within education and I fear that it's going to be quite at least from a diversity perspective a black male school leader although there are some we know the numbers are in terms of proportion to the number of people from diverse backgrounds the numbers don't stack up so I guess that two-part question a more of a difficult question I'm not expecting necessary an answer but have you got a role model within education and is that pathway that's something whether you want to be the leader of the college or not but do you think as a black man with all the kind of potential system issues against you that is and these are big questions Fabian so there's something I'd like to maybe discuss in a future conversation with you but I guess it's you know just on picking these difficulties that we have across our society but I think we also need to discuss them within our education system because they are prevalent too Yeah, I do agree with you and I think with what you asked me about the role model question I've got different role models within education I would say I wouldn't necessarily pinpoint one person as a role model because they're black as I am but I would definitely say there's different people that I look to in different ways and I'd say they're role models to me I'd definitely say somebody like Ronaldo Lawrence who's one of you Yeah, yeah, no Ronaldo he's not on our podcast so he's a piece of junk He's fantastic in terms of ed tech and he's very motivational so in terms of role models in education he's definitely someone I look up to and someone like Alice in the Room and he offers lovely little video shorts every other day like that Yeah and what about pathways and opportunities and you know maybe not just in your college without you know limiting it but do you see that you know potential future leaders like yourself have a clear ladder of opportunity within education or should the DFE do more? Yeah, I would say the main starting point for myself as a black male or I would say that you have to make yourself open to starting with yourself and bettering yourself I could maybe think of certain things that might have happened in my career or in my life and I could be quite bitter about those things but what I try and do is a more positive thing these days I look at every single area of weakness that I think I might have to do with my knowledge or whether it's to do with ed tech or whether it's to do with ways that I might conduct myself in my practice I start with those elements first and I always try and make myself open as an educator I try and speak to everybody I try and learn from every single department that I can and I just try and not look too much at the issue of race even though it is a key issue and it has been a key barrier for many people like myself I definitely say that looking forward to the positive and pushing yourself forward and feeling any gaps that you feel you've got in terms of your career progression and your training is something that can be a good starting point to help yourself to get noticed as well and me personally I'd say I'm one of those people that is more into the teaching and learning side of things I love learning about ed tech it's not necessarily that I would want to go into the leadership of the college or be a head teacher of a school it's something that I'm undecided about but I know at the moment my passion is to maybe excel in something like what I'm doing all the roles I've got to try and bring the next generation of teachers through and just make a real difference with ed tech in the classroom so I guess on that note you know observing our interactions on social media and that you're listening to radio shows and blogs and all sorts give people a sense of the information you're soaking up as a CPD leader and how you filter this because I know that I profited as a CPD lead being given the time and the remit to gather this information and I benefited from it that the challenge is making sure other people do so a two-part question where do you go to for all your sources and how do you balance all that and how then do you filter the right things back through to your staff? Right, I think I'm someone that the library staff in our college seem to know me quite well I'm always in the library I'm a bit of a geek in that way so funnily enough it was one of your books that I picked up a few years ago Well, you're definitely not a kid There's nothing wrong with you Yeah, so it's the the teacher toolkit book and yeah, it's I've learned a lot from books like that because it breaks things down and something I liked about reading a lot of your books is that you're very honest so you don't say things like what we need to do to become perfect teachers you actually flip it the other way around and say there isn't really a perfect teacher Yeah, look at all these mistakes Yeah, we can't mark every single piece of work that we attend to and you've admitted and I admitted once I paid my sister-in-law to mark my exam papers I know so it's us admitting that the waste of money and time because I had to go and double check her work because she's made one or two mistakes we're still like good to talk to you Yeah Okay and then how do you you know and I know you listen to all the radio shows Yeah as well and so then how do you filter this into you know material that you share with colleagues Yeah, so funnily enough it's just through things like Twitter right I would say something that I use towards the latter part of my career I haven't I didn't really use it when I was in secondary education although I know of many in secondary and primary that are on Twitter and they they're on the whole edgy edgy Twitter thing and they share knowledge and I would say myself I look for a lot of things through educational sources on Twitter and I just tend to share those through tweets really. So I just will see something on Twitter or I'll listen to teachers radio station such as teacher hug radio and then I'll I'll listen to a show and then I'll it's almost like it is CPD to me really and it is something that I've been thinking about quite a lot in terms of things like that are not recognized as official sources of CPD or it's not recognized as things that are you know direct influences on our appraisals as teachers but I would say and I know the radio stations will you know test to this I'm I'm someone that I'm someone that can just listen to these stations for hours and hours and learn different things and engage in the conversations no matter what they're about behavior management or ed tech or representation and I would say the past year in particular from listening to teachers radio I've definitely probably learned more CPD in terms of any time in my whole career just from that as so there you go big up to teacher hug radio hmm and definitely definitely is impacting me positively now I want to I want to mention that this terrible world word called marking we know that drives teachers crazy in all sorts of settings I'll stick my neck out and say in FE settings to but maybe set the record straight is that true or not true from your perspective who I would say I'd even argue it's more the case in FE as well because sometimes we do have the larger groups of students always a large group but we might have well similar to secondary schools up to 30 30 students in the class and the assignments are very very detailed and very they're very long so we might have one particular piece of course work for the students and it might be 70 slides on a PowerPoint and us having to go through that and read each of the slides and put comments on on the relevant sections it can be something that if it's done in the way it's maybe expected to be done it could take all day really to mark one such so how does someone you know teaching a learner lead it in your college context how do you approach your marking policy do you allow the individual departments to have their own method or is that is there a whole school how college policy there is a whole college policy in terms of the marking that needs to be done and then normally we'll have the verification procedures so we'll have the SV so quite similar to what's SV I need to check for the standard verification so right okay just for listening and for my own benefit the same type of procedures that that exist as well so you might have a group of 20 learners and then maybe five pieces of work might need to be sent off for external verification where an external body will look at the pieces of work and doing what conducting our courses in the way they should be so it's quite similar to to secondary in that sense yeah I was familiar with the term IVs so okay so marking drives teachers crazy in all types of context I guess at the neck the kind of final question on this particular theme is in your role you know CPD I don't know if you're doing observations across different areas too but you know what what are your insights from you know walking around the college in terms of marking do well mark in general classroom observations how you widen your own lens from being a sports teacher popping into hairdressing in beauty to engineer and and then seeing how you do something in one subject this is a real insight I've learned from my travels is as a designing technology teacher when I go and talk about XY strategy it won't work with a year one people in a drama lesson so you suddenly realize the world of education cannot have one method it requires many many different ways of doing something I guess just just I'm picking your insights and your experiences on a range of different topics and feedback and observations what what is the kind of things that you see in your role right so I would definitely say I am someone that likes to walk up and down the floor so it's a so in our building at the college and I tend to I walk around anyway in terms of just stretching my legs and for for well-being as well I don't like to be cooped up in the same office all day so just from walking around the corridors I'll see different things that will go on and from doing the the famous magpie and they call it I'll I'll look through you know one particular window and I'll see something and I'm I would definitely sound the type of teacher that doesn't mind speaking to other departments and I'll I might see that same teacher in the corridor and I'll say oh I saw something really good in your lesson what was it I saw something on a particular PowerPoint and then we'll just share good practice that way so definitely from walking up and down the corridors I tend to pick up a lot of ideas on on ways to ways to conduct lessons different tools to use different methods of getting students engaged in a particular lesson some people get the students to work in pairs others will work in the islands and the groups so yeah I think it's it's something that we just need to maybe open ourselves up a bit more in terms of not be so closed off in terms of our own departments and just not be afraid to to just venture out really and I'm quite lucky because some of my lessons are in different areas of the college so I might be inside I might be within the department and it's next all to where my lessons taking place so it's quite easy for me to speak to the members of staff there and to yeah to pick their brains on particular ideas as well yeah sharing is caring isn't it and definitely I guess what what advice then would you give to maybe another teacher in your college who's not got your role who's you know like let's say maybe 90% committed to a teaching time to everyone has very limited time to walk around the college maybe also not bothered about looking on Twitter or listening to a radio how would you as a CPD lead address someone who needs a bit of help needs a bit of inspiration but doesn't have the time or inclination to go and find something yeah it's more to do with setting up regular meetings so it's just touches on another area that I'm quite big on as well so the whole idea of reflection and reflective practice so um anyone listening they may have heard of the rate reflection that I tend to use so I have spread that quite widely across some of the blogs I've produced for different sites but the rate stands for reflect so I'll look at a lesson and I'll just reflect on what's went well or just different things that have happened in that particular lesson then I'll look at the achievements so what achievements have the learners made or what achievements has the teacher made to facilitate the learning and then I'll look at the things that haven't gone so well and I'll look at addressing targets so the T is target setting yeah and then the E is probably the most important knowing how to enforce and evaluate those targets so I use it for myself I've used it over a number of years now just in thinking about things that happen in the classroom on a day-to-day basis and even if I don't always write it down um in terms of a log I'll always think in my head right what what happened in the particular lesson there what was what was good what the the great little meh it's a great little methodology in the acronym rate is a really a great method for I guess making that memorable like you said you used it for years yeah so I've written those down re really good top tip there now we're recording this video and audio so there will be podcast listeners listen to this who can't see us but you're I'm I'm gonna throw loads of quickfire questions at you Fabian so you can't pause or hesitate I'm gonna see if I'm gonna see if I'm catch you off guard But for people listening, you're dressed very smart. Do you always dress that smart for work? Right, funnily enough, I was dressed in my sports gear earlier and just did a quick change of what I'll... I just want to say the smartest PE teacher in the world. What do you wear in a dress down Friday? Funnily enough, we don't have dress down Fridays. Yeah, I always have my tracksuit for school. In your wildest dreams, if you had a dress down Friday, what would you go to work in? Dress down Friday, wow. It'd probably just be some kind of t-shirt and jeans and smart shoes. I don't really dress that one. OK, next question. What's on your desk, what you're working on? Ooh, in terms of work or...? Yeah, work, please. Work focused. What's your next big-to-do list? OK, big-to-do list. I would say it's working on some of the targets as part of the rate for maybe one of the groups I'm working with at the moment, just trying to improve. Practice in areas that they need to improve as individuals. OK, thank you. What book are you reading at the moment? I have picked up one that's from yourself recently, 60-second CPD. I think you could be my number one fan. Thank you very much. What would be your piece of advice for a secondary teacher considering moving to FE? Ooh, I would say that they need to understand that there is a big difference in terms of people aged 16-plus, not always knowing exactly what they want to do as their long-term career, even though at 16 we're led to believe that we should know what we want to do at that age. Yeah, believe it or not. It takes a lot of convincing. So on that note, what was your 16-year-old career, the footballer, or was it something else? Yes, it was. Right, OK, easy one there. Right, OK, finish this sentence. If I was Education Secretary of State, I would. I would ensure that CPD is more far-reaching in terms of teachers' radio stations, in terms of content on sites like Twitter, just to capture the full range of conversations and cooperation and collaboration that takes place on things like EdTech. Yeah, I'll follow up on that question. If there was a way of recording all the extra CPD that we do for ourselves on Twitter, for example, or the radio, what would be your brainchild idea for recording that? What would you suggest? It has to be something that is modern. I would say tracking something like that can be quite tricky, because how do we know exactly what constitutes CPD? You could say having a conversation with somebody's CPD, but yeah, they could be listening to this rubbish podcast and thinking, right, that's an hour of my CPD for appraisal time. Yeah, I mean, there's so many... It's a tough one, isn't it? It is a tough one. It's like knowing where to start. Right, well, let's revisit that. We'll come up with a million-pound invention scheme. Now, footballer aside, teaching aside, what's your next dream job if you had that abstract off-the-wall choice? What would you want to be? I would say the type of job I'm looking at is probably something that hasn't even been created yet. We'll sometimes hear of... We speak to our students and we'll say that you're... We're training you for jobs that don't exist yet, and I'd probably say it's something similar to myself, really. I'm trying to venture out into so many different things, like video production for some of the acronyms I'm creating. Give me three words that your students would use to describe you and your teaching. I would say committed, honest, and, that's two words, hard-working, maybe persistent. Sometimes they feel like they really give up. If we had 24 hours in Watford, where would we go? What would we see? What would we do? You would have to come to West Hearts College, see some of the good practice that's taking place, and hopefully catch up for a tea or coffee. And another question. If we had 48 hours in Acra, the capital of Ghana, where would you take me for a bit of a good cultural experience? Well, it would have to be somewhere where there's good food. So many places I can't pinpoint one particular place. Somewhere where you've got good kebabs. I'm a lover of meat at the moment. Maybe one day I'll go vegan, but at the moment I tend to like kebabs in Ghana. Yeah, really good. Excellent. Who would you recommend I interview next and why? Ooh. Some of the people, you've actually interviewed them already. I was mentioning Ronaldo and Lawrence, but I'd definitely say there's someone that I... Nazi Hardy Laundris. That's her Twitter handle. Not sure if that's her full name. Sometimes people switch their names around. But yeah, she is really good at the whole EdTech thing. And I'll see you around. Right, we'll have to send you our details and we'll hopefully connect. Now you said you worked in retail earlier. What's your top tip for me getting a bargain? The top tip would be to speak to people that work in retail to find out when the sales are starting and they can tell you what's going in the sale, what's not going in the sale and then you can queue up, you know, 6am before the main customers get there. Sure, I'll use that. And we're always wanting the bargain, especially with all the energy prices today. We're all looking for ways to save a few pounds here or there, aren't we? Okay, where can listeners find out more about you, you know, books, websites, Twitter handles? Okay, so at the moment, I think more for wellbeing. I do things like producing the blog. So I blog for Nexus Education. So I've been very blessed to receive a second national award nomination, second year in a row for blogging. It was on the pandemic. I also write for Rise Magazine, a new teaching magazine started by Kat Couchy amongst others as well. Yeah. And I've also blogged for yourself. You have, and hopefully you'll get me back on soon. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, so now I'd love to get back involved with the Blogs for Teacher Toolkit. I've produced some on things like teacher confidence, reward systems, role models for the teacher toolkit. Oh, well, when we get back up to people, I'll have you back on for short. I forgot to ask, what position on the football field? It was a striker, yes. I was trying to bang the goals in and... All right, but which one's more dominant? Ooh, I was predominantly right-footed, but I remember at the age of 12, our coach pulling us to one side saying, right, we all have to learn to use our left foot, so we spent an hour all just kicking our left foot. Well, I'm left-footed, so I had to do the opposite, learn on my right. Right, I've got one more obscure question, I guess, just for the current state of affairs, but what's your take on Chris Stock and Will Smith? Yeah, funnily enough, because I've got my head in the books most of the time, and I'm a parent of two, and my husband is quite a busy time. I didn't actually know about the incident until I got into work, I think it was yesterday, and one of my colleagues said, oh, have a look at this, have you heard about it? Yeah. Will Smith and Chris Rock, funny enough, of two people I've always looked up to, I've purchased the DVDs and things like that over the years. I was surprised to see that it happened, but I was saying to some of my colleagues that everybody has their breaking point, and I think for Will Smith that just was his habit. Yeah, I shared with my wife and thought he's definitely suffering, he's definitely having a moment and erupted there, and I think Chris Rock just obviously touched a nerve, but yeah, it's a tricky one, isn't it? It's a tricky one. Okay, my last big question, what would you hope to be your legacy? I just want people to remember me for someone that cared about the students' education and their welfare and their well-being. So I'm not necessarily someone that is, even though everybody wants to progress in life and in their careers, I'm definitely someone that's always put the students at the forefront of what I'm trying to do, and then once you realize that you do that, everything else often will fall into place really, because it's the backbone of everything. We work in education, so the key thing has to be our learners. So I have had some really nice comments from ex-students over the years, and they've said things like, I'm doing my master's degree, and I remember when I was at college and Fabian helped me a lot to find a university place. I hear from quite a few students saying positive things, so it is one of those intangible things really. As teachers and educators, we realize that we can't always measure the impacts we have directly, but we always will have, hopefully, a special place in the heart of the people we teach, and it can last forever, and yeah, it's just amazing how quickly time goes. It doesn't feel like 20 years ago since I was at uni, and time just flies, and you'll always remember your teachers, and yeah, I always remember my fantastic teachers that I had, and you remember the great ones, you remember the not-so-great ones, and you just remember them all. Yeah, there you go. It was your mum to thank for getting you into teaching, wasn't it? You don't look at day over 20, Fabian. Yeah, can maybe double that. So thank you, Fabian. So there you go, folks. Award-winning, sports football kicking, you know, sports science, teaching and learning lead. Mr. Enthusiastic. Award-nominated. Art regressed. Brilliant, Fabian Darkin. Fabian, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the invite, Ross. Really appreciate it. It's been great to connect with you properly, and I can't wait to see you getting blogging on the site again soon. Thanks for your time and all the best. Thank you so much, Ross. All right, bye for now.