Episode 199: A look back at our Community Event

So welcome back to another episode of the School of School podcast. And I am so fortunate to be here with my co-host. We are calling ourselves the dream team today. Adam, how are you?

It's good. I'm really good. I'm really good. Thanks, Robin. So single co-host today, singular, just the two of us. We're allowed to hold the fort for a day. So we're hoping that nothing sort of drastically falls apart without Andy, although Nick's sort of waiting in the wings just in case he needs to step in and yeah.

Just in case, yes. Nick is our producer who's silent in the background, but hey, it would be, it could, we could have him on. He would be just an excellent, anyway, Nick, if we need you, you're there. So, but hey, you know, I just, I'm kind of still on a high. We were at our community event and you were there and I was there.

and we didn't have to do much. We kind of sat back and got to enjoy the day. And while I'm still on this high, thought, hey, let's talk a little bit about the event and just reflect on the day itself. And I'd love to hear some of your takeaways from it because I certainly have a few. So do you want to start?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think whenever we attend these sorts of events, I think it just reminds me of the importance of having them. And I think you're right. So often, people may not know this, but often, certainly with Maths — No Problem! events, I'm usually involved in them. I'm doing something, and you have a completely different focus. So to be able to attend the event alongside lots of other people and to take part.

In the format that I thought worked really well, was keynote speakers at the beginning and the end, and then three workshops that were just expertly done and learned a huge amount. And I think having that, I always think whenever I go to something like this, I want things that challenge my thinking and keep on sort of recurring in my head day after day after day after it finished.

So even with the keynote speakers, so having Lynn McClure, know,

sort of responsible alongside her team, but she spearheaded the Enrich program amongst many other things she's been involved with Cambridge Mathematics for a long time and a very long list, which is of course recognized with an OBE. Her beginning and her sort of keynote speech, I love the fact that there was participation involved even though it was like an initial keynote, know, like being able to start with that.

And I think prompting those ideas that you then took into a workshop, it was really lovely because for each of the workshops, were high participation, really different, Michael and Maurice really focusing on just unpicking problem solving in context in classrooms. And we had Lou and Helen really focusing on sort girls' attainment and problem solving and being really mindful of that. And Andy Ash with his...

with looking at his research based on structuring lessons and how we organise our lessons and how we think about that. of course finished with Sue Gifford, who in my eyes is, I've got this upper echelon, know, of so many people fit in it though, it's never just one person at the top. But in terms of early years education, you know, simply put, she's a world expert. So I think being able to

listen and learn with some participation, then fully participate and then to sit back and take in what Sue was talking about to finish off, thought was just, it was wonderful. It was really, really good.

Well, let's go back to the beginning with Lynne because I agree, you know, usually the keynote comes on and especially the first one and you're sitting and you're, you know, awake, you've just had your coffee and you're listening and this was such a nice change up from that because

I didn't know she was going to have us being so interactive during her talk, and it really worked. And like you said, it set the tone for the rest of the day because from there on in, moving from workshop to workshop, was constantly participation and engagement and..

You could feel that energy, I think, in the room when you were in those workshops. And then when we'd have a break in between, I could really have conversations with people about what we had just experienced in the workshop. And so I continued this engagement with people. I found it of such value.

And just the conversations I was having with people, they obviously did too. And I thought it was interesting because by the time we got to Sue Gifford at the end of the day, mean, people were...

Usually, you spend a day at an event and the energy kind of starts to dwindle after lunch. And I really found with Sue, I mean, she's so engaging. I can't take anything away from her. I mean, she's just...

full of knowledge and presents in such a fascinating way. But that said, I felt that the energy stayed high throughout the day. And someone commented, well, you know, you know, it's been a success when the room is still full. You haven't lost any participants, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. There's no early sort of excuses.. to make the early training and all that sort of stuff. I think like as a takeaway, if anyone's listening, and there'll be lots of people, certainly, if you work in education at some point, you're going to be training other people, right?

But I think that we can apply this to the classroom too. Is that I think that where people might say, you need an icebreaker at the beginning or whatever else. Sometimes those icebreakers, they're not necessarily connected to the content.

And I think when Lynne, you know, and she's got massive expertise, I mean, in terms of education, problem solving, all those sorts of things, she probably, there's more experience in her little finger than most people have, you know, their lifetime of trying to gather that sort of experience. But I think it's a reminder that one of the most important parts to me is that you get to know other people.

So you get to consider education outside of your context with colleagues whose all of the context would be unique. And I think that when you've got keynotes that are dropping in participation activities early in the piece, but it gives us a chance to also get to know people on the table, right? So there's not a minute wasted because you're effectively getting to know people in the context of what.

you know, is being spoken about. And I just think it's a, it seems so simple, but again, it's just picking up and saying, right, for those people that are doing things like this, or you're thinking about coming along, things like this do, because first of all, if you're doing it, it's a reminder that this approach, this making sure, let people do things, you know, let them understand that in the context of participation.

So we're not just talking at people and expecting them to understand every word that's said, give them a chance to actually fall back on something and go, do you know what? Yeah, right. that makes sense now. Or to have those conversations that we want to replicate in schools. Because ultimately, that's what we want, right? Is you take it back to base and hopefully have that same approach where we discuss practice, we discuss these ideas, where we think about those things. And so I think just a very small takeaway, which is...

Like I said, a tip for anyone doing training or anything like that. Very simple, but really, really effective.

It kind of sparked now my memory when I was, it was in between one of the workshops and I was speaking to Jack, little shout out to you Jack, but he's a newer teacher. I think he's been at his school now and he's in his third year. And he said, yeah, like this was the first opportunity I've had to attend something like this and kind of get a new, like get some new insights, new perspective on the work I'm already doing and you know, being able to.

have these conversations in between because a lot of that, it's those short conversations in between the actual workshop or presentation that you may really even get the most value out of and make a new connection. I've had people reach out to me since the event asking, say I’ve met this wonderful person, they were at my table

I'd love to reach out to them, know, can you connect me with them? And I thought, yeah, like, isn't that great? I mean, how, maybe they wouldn't have met in any other context.

yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think what Jack said, again, I'll just reflect back on how it was structured and how it was done. We've got some really clear areas that are quite challenging. Like Lynne talking about, I took away the sort of subtleties of some of the questioning that we use, the way that we structure things and the impact.

Just to give you an idea, initially, the problem was that she basically had some dominoes and said, have you got a full set? It would be very easy to be cynical at that stage, which I think part of me was to go, I don't even play dominoes. I don't even know what a full set is, right? So at that point, you've kind of dismissed the task. But this was the beauty of it, is that you have those moments that go,

I see what you've done. So basically you start doing it, you realize that there is a pattern with it. And when tables were working together, it became quite obvious, or at least there were approaches that were discussed. And I think in each of these situations, we're being challenged on our regular classroom practice, just regular education. And I think within all of that, like I came away from Louise's and Helen's session,

thinking about those biases towards or against girls or some of the things that need to be considered. Now, I've got a daughter and I've taught many, many girls and some of these things, just think we need these reminders and we need to be able to discuss them in the context of sessions like that with colleagues. Because I think if we don't discuss them and we don't have an opportunity to, I don't know, put the language to an idea.

to kind of talk through what that's like, then it's really easy to look at something and go, I look at Lynne’s problem with the dominoes and I look at it, I don't even know what it is, I'll dismiss it. I won't even engage with it. But when you're put in that situation, you start to realize it's nothing to do with the dominoes. This is about the power of giving an instruction that leads to that, so on and so on so on.

I think there's so much value in this type of a day where you are...

to actually be put in the situation where you're having to go through the process, like, suddenly I'm...

I'm the student here, I'm thinking through and do it. It's such a great reminder to all of us that you never stop learning and you never, you don't know it all.