 Hello and welcome to this episode of the Teacher Toolkit podcast and on this episode I am absolutely privileged to be hosting Joe Dale, obviously I'm Libby Isaac, hopefully you know me by now and we're going to have a really great chat. Now what I'd like you to do Joe if that's okay is to sort of introduce yourself give a little bit background information and you know tell me one one thing that sort of makes you stand out so to speak. Okay well first of all thanks ever so much Libby for this opportunity of coming onto the podcast. I'm a big big fan of podcasts and it's always a privilege and lovely to have a chat with a fellow podcaster so thank you so much for the opportunity. So to start off with for those people that don't know me I'm a former languages teacher I taught secondary school level for three years and then 10 years at middle school level on the art of white which is where I'm living right now and I've lived here for over 20 years now for the last 12 years or so I've been an independent consultant focusing on or the bread and butter what I do is working with language teachers but I'm also doing more and more cross-curricular work so I've been all over the world been to places like Australia, New Zealand, North America, the Middle East, South America, all over Europe before Brexit of course and since the start of the pandemic I've been working incredibly hard doing lots of webinars as well as a whole set of free webinars for the Association for Language Learning known as the tilt webinars tilt standing for technology language teaching and we've done over 140 of those all completely available for free on my YouTube channel and also on the ABL London website and for a fact that maybe people that know about me my first podcast was back in 2006 so I'm very much an early adopter and over the years I sort of fallen in and out of love with podcasting but I'm definitely going through another renaissance at the moment and that's why I've got this really lovely microphone here which is an ATR 2100X dynamic microphone and I should sound really cool even I get right up close to it like this and I sound almost like a DJ like that there we are. Well hey you'll have to give me some tips so obviously we didn't record this but when me and Joe came on the chapters now we did compare our mics so it's definitely something that he's very proud of and absolutely right as well. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you to be a teacher in the first place because obviously this is for all the teachers out there? Of course yeah so I was inspired well essentially my background is my mum my dad are both teachers, some of my brothers are teachers as well so I'm very much coming from a teaching background and at school languages were just something that I was good at as well as maths and so I just went with what I was good at and then as a result of that once I'd done my degree and I also had straight after my degree I had two years in French speaking Canada in Quebec where I was like a language assistant because I wanted to get a bit of experience of what it would be like to have some sort of sort of classroom experience and also I had a year in Montpellier as well as part of my degree to get my speaking French up to scratch and I just sort of fell into it really so first of all I was thinking about being a Teffel teacher and then having had the two years in Canada I then came back and I thought I would do a PGCE I also did a Teffel certificate as well in Canterbury directly after coming back from Canada and then I did a PGCE in Bangor in North Wales and then once I'd done that and I'd had some my two teaching practices I realised that actually I didn't want to be a Teffel teacher I wanted to be a French teacher instead and just went from there really. You're a bit like the ying to my yang so I am absolutely not very good at languages, never helping or maths actually so I'm more of a historian, stroke humanities, English although not very good at spelling that as my mother would tell you but my so my my sister's teacher, my brother-in-law's teacher, my nan was a teacher, we all teach history but my my father-in-law was a language specialist and he was an MFL teacher and he actually he spoke 12 Baltic languages sadly the last way now but he he was in the Cold War because he could speak so many of those languages so um so this is for him as well I'm sure he'd absolutely love to have spoken to you about everything to do with MFL so it's definitely in my family. So as we're talking about MFL I work in the secondary sector so I have been ahead of school and uh like I'm not ahead of school anymore so I've got a really young family and I've got other things to sort of focus on but one of the things that really struck me within that role was we just couldn't recruit well we found it very difficult to recruit for MFL teachers um can you just talk to us a little bit about that especially as we've got Brexit and we've just had the pandemic as well so can you just sort of tell me your sort of insights into that as well that'd be really interesting. Yeah sure I mean I think um unfortunately certainly the national press for many many years has been lots of negative stories around languages and I think that one of the things that I'm particularly proud of uh if not the thing I'm most proud of is um helping to nurture and create the um the the MFL Twitter art in the social media community of language teachers um from from the UK and from um from around the world and the way in which the hashtag has um bought a lot of positivity into the world um for many many years and certainly particularly because of the pandemic the way in which people have come together even more and shared even more and the way in which um for those the tilt webinars that I talked about the the fact that we had all that that feeling of solidarity of all being together say a hundred people all watching webinar at the same time uh and and sharing ideas so to me that's a real success story and uh a silver lining if you like around the pandemic the way in which because all these networks um had been um there for many many many years um the the early adopters getting into Twitter years and years ago and establishing these communities and so obviously with the language one in particular um to me it's it was a it has been a massive boon the fact that we had those communities established already and so that we were able to help everybody straight off the bat and so um I think that's been a really really positive news story uh and in relation to obviously things like Brexit then that will have an effect on the attitudes of young people I think um in fact there was um um an article this week um in the um uh the independent I think it was around the influence of parents attitudes towards languages for their children and any language teacher you know knows that already and unfortunately at parents evenings and things like that you'll hear parents saying all I was never good at languages at school therefore you know why should my son or daughter try at languages um but but teachers in general are very resilient people I think language teachers in particular very resilient and they'll just um come back with something positive and and and continue to promote the value of languages for all different reasons for for cultural reasons for cognitive reasons of um being able to uh uh to to wade off um Alzheimer's supposedly by five years if you if you're a linguist that those sorts of important things like that which I'm sure that um a standard teenager would take on board um as well as uh you know the opportunity to travel now that things are opening up a little bit more um but yeah in the last few years in particular there's been a lot of negative stories around languages but I think that it as long as we keep hitting everybody with positivity then that's all we can do um so in relation to a recruitment um yeah absolutely that's that's been uh the case for a long time now I think that you know language teachers are um are in demand or are scarce being in lots of ways my understanding is when there are there are um jobs advertised for language teachers that there are lots and lots of people who apply as long as it's you know it's a good school of course in other situations my understanding is say for roles of heads of department and and other such uh or maybe director of languages sometimes um it's very difficult to find people to apply I suppose that's the nature of the school in lots of ways so so yeah but I think the most important thing is that we all we all act together we all support each other we're all positive about languages and that's the way forward and then you know forget about all the negative stories it can drive a school if you think about sort of the the culture behind what a school is and and what languages can bring it I it can be at the centre of that and I I've seen amazing things inside MFL classrooms because one of my roles probably should go into classrooms and like some of the things that language teachers do is I'm just like wow like you know they get them repeating things they get them doing songs like you know you get some of the most tricky classes in the whole of the school and they are just absolutely fantastic in an MFL lesson and that's the constant retrieval concert it's just the way you teach and I think I think it's it can be complete magic and you know when we're trying to recruit for them I still really come on like because languages is such an important part of I think session week education and I've always worked in schools you know around sort of deprived areas I suppose or a very mixed match within you know mixed ability like huge range within mixed ability and I think it's more important than ever to you know get them sat round that table if they wanted to with the local private school in 10 years time and to hold a conversation of their own and I think languages holds the key to that or the culture behind it holds the key to that as well so I am a huge advocate. Yeah that's really good to hear because I think in some schools unfortunately the senior leadership team aren't necessarily positive about languages or can actually that this these are stories that I hear on Twitter you know a vocal about saying say in front of a class or I was never good at languages at school etc etc so or sometimes subconsciously think they can give that impression and also a lot of teachers talk about when it comes to the choices they make in year nine about sometimes languages are put up against other subjects so that it actually it's very difficult unless you really really want to do a language then you'll have to then sacrifice something else which maybe you'd want to do instead so I think yeah lots of things are stacked against language teachers but as I said already I think language teachers have worked really really hard and are very motivating and they have to be because they have to keep the students engaged they have to try and teach the lesson as much as possible through the target language and I think they're wonderful but I would say that would matter of course but I also think they're wonderful so in your opinion what what makes or what are the fundamental components for a really effective MFL lesson in your opinion if you had to so I asked her a question you know to Tom Sherrington about this before I've asked it so lots of different people we've done a podcast and you know it really puts you on the spot but if you had to for MFL because if we've got MFL teachers you know listening in and things obviously you're a huge specialist that'd be really good for them to find out and I also told a lot of the MFL teachers that I was doing this podcast now like oh my god ask him ask him okay so yeah if you had to say four or five things what for you makes a really highly effective or just effective MFL lesson okay well I think the first and foremost the most important thing not just for MFL but teaching in general is having a good relationship with the class so you know personal relationships I think is absolutely key you could be the best teacher in the world or be as organised as you know as the best organised teacher in the world but if you haven't got that relationship that rapport with your class and you haven't established a positive learning environment whereby the children feel you know loved or cared for or that you that you have their interests at heart I think that is the most important thing once you've got that established and that's not necessarily easy to do that particularly with challenging classes but once you've got that established then I think well personally I think pace is important to have a good pace as long as you keep the students with you of course at all times I think as much as possible to try and depending on the length of the lesson to try and do at least three out of the four skills maybe even all four skills depending on yeah if it's say an hour lesson then you could try and do all four skills but the most important thing is that you don't sort of just rush through things that you you do things with pace to keep people engaged but you make sure that each activity that you do with them that you know it's nice and meaty that it's it's differentiated that you I would say this of course that use technology sparingly when it's appropriate when it's purposeful when it's effective. Encourage the students to record themselves for say audio or video I think that's a that's a fantastic thing in general to encourage them to produce multimedia in the in the lessons from time to time and to occasionally to to veer away from the textbook I think that's important as well I'm a big fan of textbooks but I also think that it's really cool to be able to plan your own or create your own resources to to try and find things that you know that your class are interested in so you have that sort of personal touch so that if you if you know that for example lots of your class are like a particular football team or like a particular musician then try and get the language to hang around onto onto you know these personalities so things like you know having a picture of someone with a speech bubble but in the target language so making a photo story about about a character so the kids will then feel I think that um you're making it relevant for them you know your your um I know a bit of cool or the fact that the fact that that because it's I don't mean I it's not all about you know edutainment or anything like that but I think that I think that the relationships that you have with the students however you um you nurture those is it's the most important thing and if you get that relationship right then you can do most things I think yeah so I just started a new job and I'm I'm back in the classroom a lot and I'm actually teaching geography and I do a little bit that I'm a historian um so there's that aspect to it but um it's all about relationships so this is my second week um I work I work point six teaching I do other things within the other time but um you know I I can I can do or plan the whizzies lesson of the world think about my pace think about but unless I have those relationships it you know that comes first so that's what I'm working on um and it is going to take me a few weeks because it takes anybody a few weeks if not half a term a terms to get that with some of your classes and once you've got it then you can really play around with it so the fact that you've said that I think a few times within your answer I completely agree because I thank you thank you I'm really rory living living through it again at the moment yeah I also I also think that um that speaking is also really important I think that speaking can lead to lots of other things so for example um when I was teaching I was I took part in what was called the talk project which was around the early 2000s and I got really really into it and I it was it was essentially like a immersive teaching really so I was um as much as possible using only the target language I had lots of grammar posters all over my walls as well as some like cultural posters like movie posters things like that so I would regularly go to to Calais and to this city a lot which is a big shopping mall and and and spend whatever it was 30 euro at the time on magazines and do this like three times a year so I got the latest magazines but having having all those grammar prompts and and verb paradigms and high frequency words and all this sort of thing which is now very popular now with the new GCSE but I was doing it years and years ago and I used to have this this wooden spoon like you know one of those like large sets at like a wooden spoon and a wooden fork I used to go to car boot sales regularly on a Sunday morning and I'd pick up one of those and I would use it to be able to you know point at different verb forms or grammar points and I couldn't imagine you doing this yeah and the kids used to think it was a bit zany but but I think they really liked it and so a lot of the work was through speaking and then translation work and they would they they'd be able to work out that it was all a bit of a game so it didn't actually matter that what they were saying wasn't necessarily you know truthful or that like you know as long as they were able to manipulate the language and say things that were a bit silly that would make other people laugh it was it was cool and and and that was that was amazing so I found that was one of the key drivers in addition to all the all the things we did with technology that that engagement that speaking practice the fact that I could you know encourage them to use the target language as much as possible to communicate in the language and I'm still a big fan of that as well but that that was that was something which I found to be very very effective I think that that can resonate to all different subjects especially as you said you worked cross-curricular quite quite a bit and I think the use or getting the students to talk about the subject use that core knowledge use that target language that's really powerful and I think so I've gone into a new setting and I'm I'm either getting classes that a little bit off the wall or are you know nothing you know I'm not getting much back so you have to really train them you know it's okay to talk about as long as you talk about the target language because that's how it you know goes into your brain that's how you remember it um I think that's really interesting just just uh talking um a little bit to another point because you picked up there what what would your classroom look like now in comparison to perhaps when you started teaching because there's loads about sort of visual classrooms and about what best practice is so what would your classroom first but what would it have been like and what perhaps would it be like now or would it have been the same that's a great question that's a great question okay so when I first when I first started teaching it was probably well in in because I as I said I did my PGC in north wales I then taught there for two years and I didn't have lots and lots of things on the wall I started getting to that whole idea of of getting um you know cinema magazines and music magazines and that sort of thing but it tended to be those sorts of things more than um grammar grammar sheets and and posters and things like that so when I when I went to the middle school um at the end of the 90s my head teacher who I got on really really brilliantly with he um he said to me that he wasn't quite sure about my classroom in the sense that it was very what's the word um busy I think the word was busy it was very busy so I literally covered all the walls right up to the ceiling and um it was a little bit of like a goldfish bowl because on one of the walls there was um lots of glass so he would regularly bring perspective parents along and get them to look in through the the windows so I like covered everything with with posters um but he then he said to me you know um that a little bit later he realised having observed me quite a few times that actually I was very much using the classroom as another teaching aid and that was exactly what I was trying to do so I was trying to do the like the the the the the the grammar ideas um I put them on fluorescent paper as well so they would naturally catch the eyes of the children and I laminated them as well I used to have my keywords yeah there we are I put them so I had the board behind me um and then I had all those fluorescent grammar things um round the side of the board so the children would be then looking at that all the time and hopefully picking things up um in a in a sort of you know um subconscious way and then all like the film posters or have you would be either lower or higher or on the side but all the grammar things which I wanted them to look at as much as possible were right in front of their eyes because I had a horseshoe I'd always had a horseshoe and then the glass as I said the glass um the little windows on the on the side were uh again I would put other sort of cultural things and as well as um children's work of course but but I just thought if I have everything on fluorescent paper that's grammar based then that should catch their eyes and help them to remember things subconsciously that was the idea which I think it did work actually so what what would you do now do you do this I would I would do the same I think I mean I can well I kept I obviously have not been in the classroom now for a few years but I I found uh that having everything really busy like that um was something that works worked for me I think the children uh got used to it really quickly they liked the way in which I would refresh the um the movie posters on a regular basis I would also choose lots of posters which had um a vocab in it that they would need uh say quise shrie I remember we had a poster for the sixth sense with Bruce Willis um the fact that they need to know the um em um um uh structure uh the ccm songs for example and lots of other lots of other um posters I would and this sounds a bit sad but anyway but I would deliberately choose posters because of the fact they had certain words in them which I knew they would have to cover in quise age three and quise age two because at the middle school which is where I really sort of blossomed as it were um that proves there's so many arguments for it again so I know that I know what Oliver Configurio you were saying about this because of the sensory I'm sure yeah I'm sure I know that yeah but actually doesn't it prove to you've got you've got become comfortable in your environment also the students would probably think you know what he really cares about us because he's he's chosen those posters he's gone to France to get them and now he's talking about them and he's teaching through them and he's done that for us to sit here and to have an enjoyable lesson and I think there's a lot to say about that so it goes back to relationships as well so so a lot of interesting things to talk about though isn't it but I think as well in relation can I just say in relation to say power points things like that because I was I remember the head teacher he got the data projector in uh when it was about 2004 I think and he was a I think he was a little bit miffed about the fact that there weren't as many people using it as should have been if anyone at all so I said okay I always love a challenge so I decided to convert all my OHPs into power points which took me quite a long time I remember and then around yeah 2004 2005 that's when I really started using using power point in that sort of way for presenting vocabulary and I it was very much sort of even though my classroom was very busy the actual power point in relation to say dual coding and what have you I it was very sort of stripped back and I didn't have lots of fussy things on the power points but yeah my classroom in general it was it was very busy I must say it's yeah I've definitely stripped back my power points as well so I used to present everything in yellow don't know why it's my favourite colour obviously and and it became a bit of a joke where I used to work and they used to they presented me with lots of yellow things on the left um my power points were so busy they were so colourful like and I've completely stripped it back and I used the dual coding and it does really really work and it works with you effectively but I also like my classroom to me my environment and that has to have my personality in and I have to feel comfortable in it so I also agree with that so just just moving into you mentioned some technology there so talk to me a bit about technology because obviously you are an expert in this field uh you're really passionate about it so how do you use that within your teaching how would you you know advise teachers to use it what talk to us about that okay well I think there are there are two main ways in which you would want to use technology in languages one would be that sort of receptive quizzing uh retrieval practice type of uh web using technology using tools like you know quiz lirt and menty me to inquisiz and those sorts of things the way in which it can encourage independent learning the way in which the children can use a mobile device and can learn on the on the move um in fact recently I was um I was doing what I called a clinic session with a British council which was um I uh I put together like a google form and I asked the people who are going to be coming to the webinar if they can um write me some questions just to break things up a little bit so it's not just like me choosing what the content is going to be but but um I'm actually answering the questions that they put in and one of the questions that came up which I thought was fascinating was around the the use of technology in quizzing tools and the question was do you think that quizzing tools such as quizlet are more about teacher efficiency in other words saving the teacher time through the self-marking types of tools like that or is it more to do with student learning which I thought was a great great question so I of course I asked the emmerfield twitter arty what they thought about this and we had some lovely responses like the algorithm that you get with these sorts of tools such as quizlet um allows the the the student to be reminded of the words they need to work on um the way in which as I said they can work on the on the on the move they can it can promote independence um if they are not particularly organised it can help with that as well in the way that it can send you reminders or in the case of say duolingo um it can send you um remind by email you can go on streaks um to encourage you to carry on with the learning as well as all the other things like the the teacher efficiency efficiency as well but I thought that was really interesting so that would be one side I think of using technology and then the other way as I sort of alluded to earlier is this idea of promoting speaking and writing skills in particular the way in which you can use multimedia to record your voice to make little videos to make animations to make animated gifts to do a collaborative writing and say um a collaborative powerpoint or a collaborative class notebook in a Microsoft environment. I need to come and train me up on this. You know and then and then also I think um that the power of audio feedback is really really good in languages as well so using tools like moat for example I think that something that I've been talking a lot about recently moat is uh some of the the teacher I've been training face to face as well as online have been saying that they were have been using a lot more verbal feedback um as a result of the pandemic than they maybe had done before so I think lots of teachers um they maybe get a bit bored with um always doing the same sort of um uh the same sort of thing that they always love um variety and so in relation to uh let's say remote teaching or hybrid teaching um based on based on the different Facebook groups I'm part of and uh on the Emmaffle Twitter arty they're always looking for you know the next the next tool to look at or my children are bored with Kahoot what's a tool which is like that and those sorts of things so I think that having that variety uh there is is also really important and one of the things um that I think definitely some teachers have been playing with is the idea of verbal feedback so using tools like moat which seem to have really taken off um in the last last couple of years because I had a question from a music teacher who's obviously really struggling with you know how how do you assess the impact how do you showcase the impact without physically doing something for the sake of doing it or for the sake of doing it for offset or an external visitor and so I'm sort of playing around with sort of different verbal feedback tools so is that is that the one that you would suggest at the moment um well I think there's different ways of doing um verbal feedback there's tools like show b as well there's uh with class notebook it's very easy to um record audio and um you could for example have a table whereby you assign different students to different cells on that table uh to do like a live writing um exercise whereby uh you have a table with the students putting their names or the teacher putting their names in different cells they then write their little paragraph uh in another um in another column and then in the third column the teacher's giving uh feedback in real time which could be written feedback but they could give audio feedback as well so then the the student then sees what the feedback is and then responds to that in real time so again I think one of the great things about technology is the way in which it can give um just-in-time feedback or immediate feedback in some cases like if it's a if it's a quizzing tool then uh you can you can be told straight away if it's right or wrong or if it's like say a writing exercise uh the teacher can give written feedback or they could give spoken feedback and then the the child can then act on that straight away so I think that there's different ways of doing it but I think that certainly moat in a google environment in particular although you could use it in Microsoft environment as well with the with the moat's part of the way you can record audio and then post a link wherever you want I think that that seems to be something which has really taken off and I've I've heard lots of teachers saying oh yeah absolutely love moat I'm using it all the time it's absolutely brilliant so it's certainly something which myself and other people have been talking about for years and years the idea of audio feedback or audio QR code for example but I think what moat did really really well is just uh made it so simple and easy to produce uh so mo te mo te and it's and it's it's a chrome extension um and uh the the the first way in which um you could use it was to whenever you get a comment box in docs slides or classroom you get a little purple um circle with a white m in it you would just click on it and then you could give an audio a bit of audio feedback as a comment then they introduced the moat to slides option um which means that you then click on the same uh same icon but um within the slide presentation google slides and then you can record the audio straight within the slide which is obviously for languages brilliant for um uh oracy and and practicing your speaking and then they've done other things like with google forms now you can have the little moat icon in the question so good for holistic comprehension and then in multiple choice you can have each answer can be an audio player uh as opposed to a written uh possible answer so that's so that's that's really really good anything any tool which allows you to um have the opportunity of recording audio as a response or as a um as a prompt I think is is really good for languages for lots of reasons for confidence for pronunciation practice for modelling etc absolutely and I think I think there's there's two things as well with it it's like keeps up with the kids because obviously technology they're going to be surrounded by that's part of their their life isn't it in the future and also I think because because of the pandemic part of what our roles are even more so than it's always been really important but we've got to pick up on those misconceptions that mislearning and I think it can do that really imminently from what you're saying it's a really good way to to be able to identify it you know feedback and then you know move through your teaching because of it and respond to it yeah I I agree with that as well I also think on that point um one thing I noticed a lot at the beginning of the pandemic was there were lots of schools that were saying you're not allowed to do live lessons with say zoom or with um google meter whatever it was that you're using so there are lots of teachers I think who learnt for the first time how to make a screencast even if it was just using a powerpoint and recording some audio and embedding that in the order into the video sorry into the powerpoint and then exporting that as a video clip or if they were using a tool like loom or screencastify the way in which they were learning how they could narrate a powerpoint so it could be used as a as an asynchronous um learning resource almost like like flipping the classroom a little bit I think I think teachers were amazing um it worked really really hard and and I was bending over back to trying to help people and support teachers as much as possible you can imagine I was being absolutely bombarded by questions but I was seeing um on facebook groups you know questions like how do you do a screencast and and there was myself lots of other people chipping in and within a few weeks there were you know say three or four thousand members of groups that were just setting up um around uh uh the with the focus on technology languages so it was it was really really great to see that I thought yeah no I agree and it like like you said it it just completely flipped everything so you know it forced us to do things out of our comfort zone and and actually you know I'm a historian I like to stand at the front and I like to talk about history you know like that's my power that's my knowledge and you know I used to I used to stand by that and now it's come back around that's apparently quite good in the classroom um so so you know being forced to do things more online um you know it was good for me it was good for my skillset but also you know the students really respond to it they absolutely love they love they love it and you know it might take me a few hours to get used to it but then you know bringing that into my my normal day-to-day practice it's definitely the benefits of it so thank you um I think what we're going to do now we're going to do a little quiz so I'm going to ask you some questions so we can get to know you a little bit more and um the idea is to say the answers as quick as possible if you can like there are some that you might want to talk about in a little bit more detail but it's a really nice way to get to know you as well so my first one to you is what's the best educational book you've ever read or the best blog that stands this test of time for you okay well okay well um my favourite um two blogs at the moment are um whatjaneleartnext.blogspot.com which is Jane Bassnet and MFL craft by Esmeralda Salgado um those I've mentioned in many many different sessions that they are those two blogs are the best blogs by practicing languages teachers with with an evidence-based approach so they're absolutely fabulous um and if you're not a language teacher you would still gain a lot from them I think by seeing the sorts of techie tools that they're using um but it with an evidence-based approach yeah so those are my two favourites at the moment honestly do these podcasts like free cpd for me so obviously I could go back in back into my setting and be like right uh nfl teachers did you know um so it's really useful for me so the next one dogs or cats uh cats I think well I've never we've never had dogs I've never lived in a house with a dog um I've lived in in a house with various cats over the years so yeah cats I think yeah is a definite cat man uh why no beer it doesn't have to be either uh beer probably although I hardly drink nowadays um but I've just just recently been doing lots of work in Dublin so I've been having a few Guinnesses but the first Guinness I had a few weeks ago it was the first alcoholic drink I've had in about two years because of the lockdown and everything and I'm not a big drinker anyway but I have had a few Guinnesses now having had a few trips to Dublin working with that European teachers they advised pregnant women to drink Guinness so there we are it's good for you iphone or android uh right great great um I have an ipad but I have an android phone simply because again when I went to um uh Dublin the first time I had to have a phone to have the passenger locator form so I couldn't go unless I had a phone and I wanted to get the cheapest phone I could and I decided to go for an android one and having used it now I do like it but when I upgrade or change should I say when the contract stops I'll probably go for an iphone as well because I'm a bit of an apple what's your dream job if it wasn't what you're doing already um it's probably what I'm doing already I know that's a very boring answer but um I would I would like to do more international keynotes that would be my dream or an extension of what I'm doing at the moment so I would like to do more international keynotes and do more travelling internationally sorry I said I'll come with you uh yeah no problem anytime right what's your biggest regret professionally or personally I don't mind um my biggest regret um that's a that's a yeah that's a hard question that's a hard question um I'll have to think about that yeah what's your biggest achievement my biggest achievement um I think probably helping to nurture the mfl twitter arty because I think that that's had a massive impact on thousands and thousands and thousands of teachers over the years absolutely has I used to work in a very small school and basically one mfl teacher and um they'd find them like they used to work across the trust so there'd be mfl teachers across the trust but it's not the same as having people on the ground with you and the first thing I did was introduce them to your mfl twitter um and that was because the mfl teacher that left previously told me all about it so it's it just it it makes people feel less lonely because there's a lot of schools out there where you are on your own um okay so who do you think I should interview next and why um okay I think if we're talking about someone in the UK I would suggest that I mean Esmeralda Sargada or Jane Bassnet I think are fantastic people um to interview um if we're talking about internationally um I'm a massive fan of Greg Kulawick who is the man behind the term app smashing which he coined back in 2013 the idea of of um using let's say an iPad or that is not a device specific but using um a device to create um different types of multimedia content but pulling them all together with a final outcome so for example uh making a comic strip and then putting that into another tool and making um an audio recording an audio narration of that comic strip and then publishing it to a real audience and getting feedback so very much sort of hitting the top level of the summer model uh if you know if you've heard of that as a as a as a uh an educational technology theory the summer model I think that app smashing for me at the time tied in very much with um the redefinition level the top the top level of the summer model and app smashing so if you do a search on twitter for app smashing in my name you'll find lots of lots of references yeah you can get double ticks for that um when you're on a holiday do you prefer to be a swimmer or a sunbaver uh neither really um um I'm certainly not one of these people that likes to to lie around on a beach I've just never never done that I would want to be uh going for walks um enjoying the uh enjoying the nights whether but going for walks in woods or in fields that that sort of thing I'm much more of an adventurer than someone that sits on on the beach um I do swim but I'm not a big swimmer start a new project where you're doing sort of combining MFL with forest school ah well one one of my favourite things one one of my favourite things on my happy place is going for a walk on the isle of white because on the isle of white uh back in the 1950s um beaching the very unpopular minister at the time decided to get rid of all these um railway lines that weren't financially viable and as a result of that on the isle of white because the word railway lines everywhere they were all turned into a sort of cycle paths which means that on a on a sunny day you can walk as far as you want to walk um in the in the countryside um with the wind in your hair in your hair and have a great great time and listen to a podcast at the same time that's one of my favourite things to do listen to a podcast while going for a walk and just you know taking in the world and reflecting yeah that's definitely one of my favourite things in the world sounds like a good a good piece of advice for a teacher that needs a little bit of a break and sort of massage their well-being as well so my last question uh for for this sort of podcast is what's what was your favourite memory at school or your favourite teacher yeah okay so my favourite teacher at school was my Spanish teacher um and the reason I really liked him it was because of the fact that he was um he was very funny I felt he was very authentic I felt that he was he was being himself he wasn't it wasn't like a facade um and I did a level with him a funny story was when I went to the the grammar school um initially I didn't want to do um Spanish I wanted to do technical drawing instead but because I was um pretty good at French they didn't allow me to do technical drawing they suggested that I had to do Spanish instead and then I went on to do it for a level so he was a real inspiration uh for me and um yeah I just thought he was cool and he would yeah just just authentic and he made me laugh a lot um I think well that's your point isn't it it's all about relationships because I yeah I did history or became a history teacher I mean I failed as a snowboarder so it wasn't my first like thank god my parents said uh I wasn't very good at snowboarding but it was because I liked and respected my history teacher um and I did geography for a level because I thought they were really fun and you know there's more to it than that obviously I really I really really enjoyed in you know their their lessons and it's because they have a relationship with them and that's what it always falls back to yeah I think um so I'm going to do another question even though I said that was my last question just yeah no problem you're an MFL teacher and I'm interested what's what's the best ever trip you've taken students on? Right so when I was at the middle school um we used to go to um a place called San Carlos Guido which is in Brittany and um that was yeah that was the the best trip um um but I I took the the the children on it was absolutely fantastic seeing them go to the market in Matignon for example and actually used their French to to buy a pancake or to um to barter for something whatever it might be to to go to Mont Saint Michel and for them to walk up the the path and to see the abbey and to to get a real sense of you know real language and a real place in context which is part and parcel of what I think language learning is all about so to actually see the children doing that and also the fact that we took some children from let's say more impoverished backgrounds that maybe wouldn't have had that opportunity beforehand the way that that um really I think really helped them and also the way in which you get to know some children in different ways that you that you didn't know beforehand because the fact you're not you know sort of with them in 24 seven and obviously in the classroom and you get to see for example um the eating habits you might get some students who will only want to eat um process food all the time or moan about this and moan about that or you know so and then when you come back to the the school afterwards the relationships that you then um uh uh uh nurtured and benefited from as a result of those trips I think that will last um for a lifetime or the memories that you can create for a trip can really help with the relationships that then you have with the students afterwards as well so that will be my favorite trip hands down I absolutely loved it each year we did it that's really lovely to hear and I think um as I'm sure you agree I think trips are can be everything for a curriculum it can bring it alive and and as you say the memories and the relationships is there's nothing quite like it is there no um oh I think that that sort of comes to the end of the podcast um so thank you so much for your time this evening Jo um I think we've had lovely chat and I've learned a lot about mf3 teaching and uh you've been a fantastic guest which I knew you would be so thank you so much you're welcome thank you and I hope my sound sounded good with my lovely ATR 2100x microphone that's the most important thing my audio quality Libby well we'll we'll we'll we'll make sure we uh we'll give you a feedback on that but I'm sure it sounds fantastic cool so thank you again