 If you tell a young person so many times over and over again that you're aggressive, you're aggressive, you're aggressive, they will become aggressive. They didn't really understand where I was coming from. And the thing that bothered me was they didn't try to understand. I literally just felt voiceless at the time. I felt a little bit depressed. I could see myself voiceless around with me. I think I'll call for compassionate education. Matters now more than ever because we can't afford to keep on losing people. I shouldn't do that. Didn't she just never exclude them? No, if you've got a student you should keep a hold of them. I've been excluded like 30 times easily. The first time I got excluded I was 7. Wow, 7 is really young. See, I was writing. The lead of my pencil was snapped. So I got up and I took a pencil from the teacher's desk to carry on my work. But it was seen as an issue. Maybe because I was doing it. But I didn't quite understand. See, I got sent out of class and I felt like I had a meltdown. I mean, I think I got excluded probably around the same age when I was in primary school. Yeah, just like sent out of class and made to go to a separate area. Particularly during the core classes. I kind of had an impact during English. I was always, like, disruptive because I found it difficult. I found school to be quite oppressive, even as a young person. Because I was often excluded from school. So I think it was because of my special educational needs and my learning disability. I've always struggled with my actual handwriting, like making it legible. So I always struggled with that. So it kind of was confused as me being a bit slow. So the teacher, rather than actually trying to help me and be patient with me, she was just like, yeah, I can't deal with it. You're just doing this on purpose. And obviously back then that was back in the early 2000s but obviously the knowledge of disability wasn't as prominent as it is now. I think it got to a point where I preferred being at home. So I just asked for, on occasion, six weeks worth of work just to do while I was excluded. And I would do it well before six weeks. So I just ended up having to watch Mother She Roat all the time. I used to watch that as well. I was scared that I used to watch Mother She Roat as well. I kept me going. The first time I got screwed it was in the year seven. So I was like 11 years old. And I think the same as well, just in terms of, I was something different. They never experienced before. And they just, yeah, the same reason just sought to screw me and keep me out of class. And that's why in the year seven or eight I was screwed a lot of times because I didn't have to adjust to the system and they just thought I was someone special in it. So, yeah, that was my early experiences. I felt school, my experience of it was, they didn't really understand where I was coming from. And the thing that bothered me was they didn't try to understand ever. If I was dealing with mental health issues, when I was dealing with mental health issues they didn't do anything to help. They didn't offer me support, counsellor, therapist, nothing. That's a bit crazy and that's sad to kind of know because, yeah, I feel like some people have the experience of school where they just don't care about the young people. It's more about just getting the work out. And that kind of makes you question the intentions of the school and if they actually really care for the children. I feel like they just kind of put everything into one heap, one category as bad behaviour. Whether it's learning difficulties or just, you know, being unable to express yourself, you know, in the appropriate way. Yeah, exactly and really and truly what is the appropriate way. Yeah, systems just to, like the school system is very rigid, like so rigid. Like there's not really much room for, like, expression. The most of the problems were obviously I was dyslexing to never do that to I was in second year. So when I was saying that's moving or that's shaking, they would always say, ha, ha, he's on drugs and then I would get in my hassle and stuff like that. It was hard. It was always hard because I would come home and it would always be, oh, he's just been bad again. I feel like the teachers understood you or they felt like there was anything that, you know, you had at that time that teachers didn't understand or tried to, misunderstood in any way, kind of thing. No, the teachers didn't try to understand. They only tried to understand their way of thinking. They didn't understand my way of thinking. Sometimes it was in my fault. Sometimes I would be just asking the teacher a key-set question again and I would say it again and again and again. The teacher would think I would take the mickey. I felt quite angry, quite frustrated, but at the same time I felt quite down, like I felt a bit depressed, saying to myself, what's wrong with me? They don't think about the long-term effect, do you know what I mean? And teachers don't realise that our lives are basically in their hands. All it takes is for them to just exclude us or to speak to us badly or to be, I don't know, just put us down all the time. All it takes is that to just ruin us. If I was in the classroom and because I've got ADHD that sometimes I would need to move, they would see it as me causing a problem. I would explain to them how it affects me, but they would see it as an excuse of, Stefan, you're making an excuse. You just want to get up and go somewhere where you shouldn't be. So I really think there's a difference between teachers and people that just come to work just to get paid. Because if you're coming to work to just get paid then you're not going to care about the job itself. A teacher teaches a child no matter what way he learns. Schools are forgetting that. We're not just there academically. This is where we spend the majority of our time and we should be able to grow as a person. If you tell a young person over and over again that you're aggressive, you're aggressive, you're aggressive, they will become aggressive. If you tell them over and over again that you're a leader or you can do this or you can do that, they will start to believe it in themselves. You have to be very careful with the words you use with young people because it's so impressionable that they will become what you say. And then you find people struggling further down the line trying to get into university, not being able to go to the university you want to go to just because of a situation. Just simply as a minority, we have to work harder. It's a known fact, there's a stigma around it, but it's a fact. You have to work harder to get to where you want to be in life. As women you have to work harder to get to where you want to be in life. So just not getting that extra boost or that boost of confidence while you're in school or that extra support. Other things more difficult. Growing up from a kind of minority background you're made to feel as though you should be grateful for services that you receive that you're actually entitled to. We're all entitled to an education. So no, you shouldn't be made to feel grateful for somebody doing their job. Was there ever one teacher that's ever been there for you? I think when I got to university, that's when Papa got help, but in second school I'll say teachers that kind of maybe were in the local area, maybe like teacher assistants. So some of them even saw some teacher speaking negative towards me like Jolyffin you're not going to do this. I remember one time where teacher said something like Jolyffin's never going to let's say become this and that and then I remember my English teacher at the time she came to me and said Jolyffin don't let anyone say that to you. You know you can do anything. Say I'm going to forgot that tool today because she just took maybe three minutes out of her time just to say Jolyffin don't let anyone say that to you. That just needs to be a massive cultural change in the training around teachers. There needs to be more funding in like SCN departments, mental health support, support for like pastoral care, support in the classroom for teachers because I get like a teacher's job is not easy, I get it. The thing that the girl said about the SCN department is really true because my brother has autism and ADHD and when he was misbehaving in class and everything they always used to send him out, send him home and it took five years for them to diagnose him so you can imagine he wasn't even like getting the right help that he needed. He was just being classified as a bad child. It took ages before they could then move him to a special school but if you think about it a lot of these kids don't go to special schools. And that's kind of like an example of the system failing children. He was getting excluded from year four so imagine going into secondary school like your whole perspective of teachers will just be so low because you just don't understand how you could be treated that way for having a need that is not your fault. Like autism you just have that, you don't have a choice that is how you are and being downgraded because that's how you are is just the worst thing ever. The classroom environment in itself was very hostile towards me which is why I felt like the exclusion was highly unfair because I think I got punished on my reaction to the hostility rather than them trying to come to an understanding as to why I was acting where I was acting. I remember when I started at my new secondary school and I had a TR and he gave me the wrong timetable and because I was going to my right lessons he put me on report and made me have to go and see him every day so at the end of every day you have to get him to sign it and I took it but I never went to him and then because of that he put me on isolation and because I wasn't going to the isolation he started giving me the weekend detention and it was just like never ending like my mum didn't understand the whole thing like no one understood like there's just no one you could go to to get to be on the same page with you and understand like you are the one that made the mistake you gave me the wrong timetable I was new I was going to my right lessons so I could get my grades for my right classes you made the mistake but I'm the one being punished it's just always their right it's never maybe the young person is right My brother's exclusion affected me more than my own exclusion he had troubles the troubles came to our door it affected my education because instead of going to college I was staying home to make sure that when these people knocked nothing bad was going to happen and stuff like that but then that also led down to him being more involved with like police and stuff which meant I had to be more involved which then in the end resulted in there being an argument which meant I became homeless When I was a school for three weeks I was just being in the streets parks like places where you shouldn't be and seeing people who you shouldn't be at that time because if you're not in school where else you're going to be and what teachers don't know that leads to groomers so groomers wait for kids outside school outside school and wait for them to get kicked out and that's what they pray on so you say you made new friends outside school you say the wrong friends the wrong friends and that's because you got a student from school yeah it was because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time so I should have been at school should have been learning I should have been doing what I should have been I needed to do but I didn't have the chance to I think a compassionate education system it would look a bit like a kid can go into a school and you can feel safe in talking about his problems to whoever you can talk to you can feel safe in knowing that he's not going to be judged he's not going to be labelled It's going to be the last thing I would do I would find out the whole story I would have them in the classroom take them at that period let them calm down let them do their work in the school and then if they're settled down they're all resolved then send them back to class Education should be more inclusive for everyone and students that need more support should be given more support before alternative provision With young people I don't think young people are hard I think if you can find the right way to speak to them and the right way to express your caring for them they'll actually comply Just having basic empathy like for the young person trying to understand why they're acting like that because as you said there's always something else to it Further training needs to be put in place for these teachers and maybe just listening to young people and getting their perspective on how they feel the school should be run or they should be dealt with as young people It's going to be a complex issue and we have to look at personal support and we have to look at teacher training and we do have to look at resources but I think the main thing that's easy to do is just talk to a kid see where they're coming from because these teachers a lot of them can't really see our struggle and it's not their fault but I think they should try and make a conscious effort to see where we're from and see what problems we have to deal with and it can start from there Teachers just need to look at the young people they're teaching from an empathetic point of view as humans not as just a caseload or a file or just another disruptive student they need to kind of just use their brain and their common sense to understand what might be happening with these young people or why they might be seen as disruptive To be respected is asking the bare minimum to be careful is asking the bare minimum I think that when employing teachers the expectations need to be high because I don't think it's possible for a teacher who doesn't have a caring heart or a caring mind to just be a teacher I don't think all it takes is a degree