[Intro Music]

00:00:08:27 – 00:01:01:05
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated in every classroom in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series two of the Diverse Educators podcast, we have ten episodes. In each episode, our co-hosts, Mahlon Evan-Sinclair and Jess Boyd, will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:05 – 00:01:19:00
Jess
Hello and welcome to series two of the Diverse Ed podcast. I’m Jess Boyd and I’m a former head of music and currently writing my PhD in culturally relevant pedagogy. I work in initial teacher training and I also run an open access community music project.

00:01:19:28 – 00:01:39:20
Mahlon
And my name is Mahlon Evan-Sinclair, and I’m the founder of Educating While Black podcast, and I’m currently the director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at a girl focused school in Toronto, Canada. In this episode, we’ll be talking to Matthew Savage from the gender reassignment chapter. So, Matthew, can you introduce yourself to the audience in one sentence or so?

00:01:40:18 – 00:01:57:09
Matthew
My name is Matthew. My pronouns are he / him. For many years I was a school leader in the UK and internationally, and now I’m a consultant, trainer, speaker and coach and also critically for this conversation, the proud parent of two trans adult children. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

00:01:57:29 – 00:02:12:27
Jess
It’s great to have you. Okay. So to kick us off in our chat, can you tell us a bit more? You alluded to some, but could you tell us a bit more about the intersections of your identity and how that kind of contributed to what you wanted to write in this chapter?

00:02:13:24 – 00:03:05:08
Matthew
Well, that’s not going to be an easy answer either, is it? Because when one delves into intersectionality, it’s a complex ocean. I’m a wheelchair user myself. I have a disability, which means I’m unable to walk and probably won’t anymore. And my wife and children are of mixed heritage. Both of my kids are queer, trans and neurodivergent, so I think our family’s something of an intersectional soup really. I now lead DEIJ coaching and training to schools across the world through the lenses of disability and gender identity. I wrote the chapter itself as the parent of then one trans child and as a school leader who had tried and often failed to lead a trans-inclusive school. So that was what led me to write the chapter for the book in the first place.

00:03:06:06 – 00:03:35:22
Jess
I think that’s probably the most human definition of intersectionality I’ve ever heard. That was gorgeous. And I just tried to write some notes that intersectionality is an ocean of complexity. I really appreciate that. Thank you for painting that picture. I think intersectionality as a word is still quite new to people, and it sometimes sounds so like, you know, academic or it’s like a term that you. Yeah, Yeah. Thank you for framing like that.

00:03:36:11 – 00:06:03:11
Mahlon
No, I agree. I think there’s a level of, intersectionality is typically looked at as just a list of things that I am versus how what I am interacts with where I am and who I am at different contextual points. And I think by even just how you introduce yourself, your own identities, the identities of the family that you have, and then also the identities that you’ve had in the context of the work that you’ve done. Like I feel like hopefully people are now starting to, with this season, percolate the ideas that intersectionality isn’t static. Some things are far more globally understood as a similar experience, regardless of where you are, but some things are a bit more, they range in terms of that, the context of where you’re at. And I think one of the things that kind of stood out to me from that, the chapter and perhaps the way how you went about writing the chapter, two intersections stood out to me was obviously one was around gender and the other one was around age. And I guess age sometimes can be looked at differently within intersectionality as ageism against those who are older. But I guess I was looking at it from the idea of what are the responsibilities of those who are power holders, right? So there’s an age range at which we have the most power around those around us. And it was interesting to think about what age was allowing you to do, where your children were concerned or the child you wrote about specifically in the chapter and what freedoms, what doors you opened up, what opportunities you, in the power that you had with regards to age, was able to advocate and ally and support them in. And then now I’m thinking about what the age conversation might look like now that they are of age as well to do legally some things that the law says that, you know, adults are allowed to do and younger people can’t. And what that looks like when the younger person knows who they are, and the age limitation, that’s kind of where intersectionality comes in. Where, how is age preventing me from showing up how I want to show up. So thinking about the roles that you’ve had as a headteacher in some of those schools as well, I wonder how all of those sorts of experiences and interactions and exchanges meant for the sort of strand in the chapter at large, the actual focus that you wanted to write about and the things that you wanted to bring out. Could you speak a bit more about what do you think was missing or what did you want to highlight with regards to what you wrote about in your chapter?

00:06:04:15 – 00:09:18:17
Matthew
Wow, that’s quite a question. I’ll do my best with that one. I think so much of the area of DEIJ is about power isn’t it and it’s about where does the power reside, why has the power resided there, for how long has it resided there and what can we do about it? Right. And I think certainly as parents of gender nonconforming children, we didn’t get that right. We, I think, clung on or tried to cling on to the power that we had as parents and tried to protect our children from having too much power themselves in forging their own identities. So I think certainly there was an interesting function of age in establishing and maintaining those power dynamics. And I think as a school leader, I think school leaders worldwide would like very much, if they are honest, to retain the power, not necessarily through any tyrannical urge, but in order to control the outcomes of that institution, in order to maybe even protect, safeguard that institution and everyone within it from things that might harm them. And so I think there is definitely a power dynamic there as a leader of a school, that I’m the adult and I’m the adult most in charge, and I want to kind of retain my power to protect you from the things that might happen to you. And forgetting that some of the things that might happen to me as a child in that school need to happen to me as part of my assertion of my own power and my own destiny, I don’t know if that answers what you were alluding to there. But I think there absolutely were power systems and structures that I didn’t challenge until later on in my journey as the parent of trans kids and as a leader of schools whose leadership has to be informed by what I’ve learned from parenting as well. So, yeah, definitely been aware of that. And as I see my own kids now, I mean, they’ll always be kids to me, right? And they’ll always need me and love me and there will always be that close bond. But they’re adults now. And, you know, as as any parent of a 20, 21, 22, 23 year old will say, there is a struggle for me in allowing them to make their own mistakes, too, for their own identities in case they get it wrong. So even now, I’m constantly wrestling with how to occupy a benign position in terms of them wresting control over their their own destiny. And I think as a school leader, absolutely, that was a journey on which I was very, I was unconsciously on and then consciously on, the more I found out about all of these things. Does that answer your question to some extent?

00:09:19:07 – 00:09:48:02
Jess
It does. It does. It really does. And again, respond to the just the ocean of intersectionality. Your chapter contribution is very much based on the story of your son, but not based on the story of son. And you were quite clear around that at the beginning and it was fascinating. Can you tell us a bit more about the frustrations around this protected characteristic that you wanted to focus on as you were writing.

00:09:50:01 – 00:11:13:13
Matthew
Absolutely. I mean, the frustrations of this particular characteristic are enormous. And I think it’s fascinating and also depressing to me how much things have changed since I wrote that chapter, certainly within the UK, how much things have got worse for anyone who’s exploring a divergent gender identity or questioning their gender. You know, the climate is so much less safe now. It’s so much scarier. It’s so much more oppressive, so much more filled with hate. So I think the challenges are more, it seems, every day, every week, every month, and every year. I suppose what I was trying to explore and I think what everyone in that section was trying to explore is the idea of gender or a gender binary being a deconstructable construct, and that being an essential fact with which for us to wrestle, I think we were all writing also about what inclusivity actually means. And I often say that a school that is not inclusive of every single human inside that gate is inclusive of none of them. So the idea of unconditional inclusivity, I think, was something we were all trying to explore…

00:11:13:22 – 00:11:21:25
Jess
Matthew, you’re dropping bomb after bomb after bomb every sentence. And I’m trying to write notes. Can we just backtrack? That was epic.

00:11:21:25 – 00:11:22:11
Matthew
Sorry.

00:11:23:02 – 00:11:31:16
Jess
I love that. Tell me again what you just said about, oh, say that phrase. If we’re not inclusive of everyone, we’re not inclusive of anyone. Love it.

00:11:33:01 – 00:15:09:00
Matthew
It’s unconditionality. And that came up a lot in the chapter, I think, and I talk about a lot of this in my work, the idea of love. I don’t think we talk about love enough in our role as teachers and in schools and just as our kids in our schools need to know that they are loved unconditionally, that they have value and worth that is not contingent on anything. So as a parent, that’s fundamentally my belief that I cannot love my wife or my children if there are conditions attached to that love. And I think we found this a very, very painful kind of learning through the experience we had with my mother and her relationship with my son. That when Jack had come out, it was very difficult learning experience for my mother, and in the end she decided she wouldn’t learn. And she said to my son on one occasion, as long as you pretend that this is who you are, no one will ever love you or ever find you attractive as long as you live. And it seemed to me that that was the epitome of conditional love. Right. I do love you, but as long as you’re this or as long as you’re that. And I think one of the things I was trying to communicate in the chapter in my wider work is we have to remove conditionality from the equation, be that in terms of gender identity, but also in terms of any characteristic and in terms of any child in our schools, we’ve got to remove that conditionality. And that was something I wanted to get across in the chapter, certainly. The challenges that trans and non-binary kids face today, well, settings and curricula are remarkably cis normative, and that’s a massive challenge that they’re faced with. They’re overwhelmed with this this wave of cis normativity the whole time. And that’s a massive challenge because it’s constantly othering them, it’s constantly stamping them down and saying you’re not normal. They’re faced with the ubiquity of gender binary, again, almost insidious everywhere. It’s saying that there is this binary, you’re not this, you’re not that, you must be that and vice versa. And I think since the book was, since the chapters were written, the book was published, I think the specter of a new Section 28 looms ever larger. And with, you know, I shared in my own networks recently that the troubling kind of juxtaposition of a relatively small number of people signing a petition saying that schools should be able to teach about LGBTQ+ identities in schools and the massive number of people who signed a petition saying that they shouldn’t. I know this is just people signing petitions and it doesn’t necessarily reflect wider society, but I fear the imminent resurgence of a new Section 28. And I think kids growing up in the UK today certainly fear that. So I think those are probably the main challenges that a child inhabiting this characteristic would feel today.

00:15:10:15 – 00:19:42:02
Mahlon
There’s a lot there, there’s a lot there, and I really want to respect how much you drew from personal story to spotlight to exemplify. You also spoke a lot about, you know, other people’s kids and the idea of when other people’s kids are in your care. You know, the unconditional love that is often just reserved for parents, a kid of biological standing. But what you’re also suggesting here is, I might not be your biological parent, but in this space, the unconditional love that you need in this space is still something that I’ve signed up to give you. When I signed up to teach. And I think that that’s really important to keep bringing home because it’s one thing to talk about safeguarding and it’s one thing to talk about wellbeing, and it’s one thing to talk about these sorts of terms and the actions with it. But I go back to your point, you said before about power and who holds it. You have the power as the adults in that space to be unconditional with how you choose to go about demonstrating love for all in your school. And if that love is because the safeguarding safety net means that I have to demonstrate a level of compliance, or if the wellbeing thing means that I have to demonstrate a level of interest, they’re not the same as unconditional, they’re conditional on the facts of not getting caught out here and also demonstrating just enough that you’re doing something here. So I think from what I’m picking up, from what you’re saying, it’s the idea of where is the balance of the scales, where does it need to be reset so that those who are in a position to enact and do act versus those who are in a position to receive, they’re at the best chance of receiving positive affirmation versus conditional on the grounds of as long as you tow the line of whatever the space is, we will give you space. And it’s interesting now I work in mono sex school, which is fascinating, I call it, I say that I work in a girl focused school because not everyone in the school identifies as female. Not everyone in the school identifies with a gender, for that matter. And I think it’s, you know, what you just said about like the the binary that exists. It is also fascinating seeing it in a school which nominally doesn’t have the other, quote unquote binary gender within it, how it still can fall victim to the tropes of what a good young girl should be and how a good young girl should act, and those sorts of attitudes. And I think one of the things that’s fascinating to me when we intersect that, for example, with another identity, you call it race and perhaps call it disability, perhaps call it socioeconomic status. It’s also interesting what things are put on young girls in a school like mine to perform femininity, to perform, conform to gender ideals. What that is asking of them. And then you add on the learning that a school is supposed to give them. It’s like what actually is the lesson here is it English or is it how I’m supposed to be dressing, is it physical education or is it how I’m supposed to be performing, I don’t know how it’s supposed to run in a feminine, but not masculine, but in a performing but like it’s very discombobulating. So from everything that you’re saying, I can fully understand why it’s hard for a kid in school to try to make sense of themselves within the confines that the school gives them. While at the same time, as you said, those of us who come through the system and don’t understand ourselves or others as much, they are the ones that are perhaps recreating a sense of, because difference is so difficult, I actually just wanted to go back to being black and white and binary. So the specter of a renewed section 28 that you speak of is on account of perhaps some of us not getting the message that trans people exist, people exist, people don’t exist in one way or the other. They arrive in all different spaces. And us in education, our job is to give them the full extent of range of them to be themselves versus shutting it down and saying it can only be this or this. So, sorry, it really personally hit me as much as professionally in terms of what you were saying. And I think the importance of that really just needs to be highlighted.

00:19:42:21 – 00:20:35:13
Matthew
Well, you’ve used words like conforming and performing, and I do think we send lots of mixed messages to kids. We want them to conform. We want them to be uniform. We want them to be the same as others. We want them to turn down the volume or the lights on anything about them that makes them different. But at the same time, we want them to perform. We want them to do better than their peers, better than last year, than they were yesterday, etc. And that’s a massively mixed message as well. In the academic domain, I talk a lot about the tyranny of performance and performativity and the importance that any of us, adult or child, should be able to know, say and believe each day I am enough. And I think that is missed out so often too often, including with kids who are questioning their gender identity. So I would totally agree with you without a doubt.

00:20:36:17 – 00:23:26:00
Mahlon
Thanks for that. There’s, in the chapter, you give like a page, you said it’s like a handful of tips, but in fact, you give a page of great tips. And I wanted to pull out some of them to talk about with regards to where a person listening to this, you might be in an educational setting. Some of the ones that stood out to me as examples of key takeaways that they can enact with the power that they may have in their schools. So one was around the idea of, the best schools have a board completely aligned with their guiding statements. So I get that not everyone has access to their board or choosing their board or assigning some of their selves to the board. So I’m going to add that to one of the other tips where you say set aside meaningful time for expert training. And in this particular setting, it’s talking about gender and sexuality. But I also want to bring that broader inclusive of gender and sexuality. So sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression and how that is showing up in your school with regards to other things. So for example, are we using gendered language? We had a, we were talking to someone the other day on this podcast around the notion that I need a couple of strong boys to help me move tables or ones that I’ve heard myself, which is, you know, your handwriting is very neat for a boy, I’m quite surprised. Or your uniform should be a bit more tidy for a girl verses, you know, your shoes are very scuffed. Were you playing football? Like there’s a certain things that we just throw out there that we believe are innocuous. But they have ricochet effects on the kids that we’re supposed to be in charge of. And I’m thinking that, you know, those on the board who may have ingrained, board of governors, who may have ingrained, entrenched, very different experiences, maybe in the places that they work, this might not be something that’s obvious to them. That flippant language that you use in your boardroom or in your setting at work actually will have an impact for younger, more impressionable people. And that was one tip and then the other one that came through was around the idea of, as you’ve already alluded to, language that we use and that we use to learn and teach, read, communicate those are still systemically gendered. Silent semiotics of cis normativity abound throughout both campus and curriculum. And I think again, it’s things like you know, your toilets, boys toilets, girls toilets, ladies, gents, those sorts of language that we just use. What does it do to not use them? It’s not a big ask. It’s actually quite easy to find the different word, like the function of the kid in the school is a student. So you could just say students instead of boys and girls. How will be able to move beyond some of the perhaps binary ways that we find ourselves to be? And so I was wondering if those two takeaways or any others like what would the importance of sharing some of these tips with the reader of that particular essay.

00:23:27:05 – 00:27:15:16
Matthew
I think when I refer to the silent semiotics of cis normativity, I think we need to interrogate our own thought and language. So the tendrils of that gendered language, which, you know, probably are infiltrating so many aspects of our thought and practice. And so I absolutely think that language is, it’s critical, sometimes it’s really simple things. You know, lots of schools will have some sort of democratic or quasi democratic system whereby there’s a school council or school government. And at the top of that will probably be two student leaders. Right. Do you call them head boy and head girl or do you just call them head students? Does it matter if they are both girls and cis girls, etc., etc.? You know, and simply changing from head girl head boy to head student is a tiny, tiny change with massive, massive impact. And I think if anything else, in terms of the tips, what I was trying to do is share tips that aren’t that difficult because sometimes this can seem such a complicated, heated domain. But I think that, you know, the tips that I was sharing came from my time as the head of a school in the Middle East where the socio cultural context was immensely complicated. And if I could do some of the things that we did in that school then any school in the UK could do this, right, the fact that we were able to introduce a non gendered uniform in a school where that was incredibly controversial, we didn’t do it with a fan fare and we didn’t announce right now look at our new non gendered uniform, right? We just reviewed the uniform and the new uniform wasn’t gendered and it was also really cool and comfortable and the kids liked it, right? So I think what I was trying to get across is that these things aren’t difficult, but they, they need intent and I think that’s critical. So much I said earlier of all of this is about power. The whole book is about power, where it resides, where it needs to be challenged. And there are centuries of that power and transgender identity challenges that power, right. So we can feel easily scared because we don’t feel comfortable when these centuries old power structures and dynamics are challenged and seem to be shifting because it’s insecure and it’s the unknown. But staff training then, as you alluded to, is absolutely critical because we don’t know what we don’t know. And there are so many adults working at schools, just they’ve not spoken to a trans person. They’ve not listened to a trans person’s story. They just don’t know what it feels like to live in this world as a trans and non-binary child. They just don’t know. So without training, how are they going to know? And so that training, I think, is so, so important. We can’t just assume that the adults will catch up. I think that when my son came out to us, he kind of assumed that we were just going to catch up. We wanted him to slow down so that we could catch up. Obviously, what we learned in the end was neither of those things were possible, right? So what we have to do is, we have to go and read. We have to go and listen. We have to go and learn and we have to find out the stuff that we didn’t know. So I think staff training is really critical in that regard as well. Definitely. So again, those would certainly rise to the top of the tips from my point of view as well.

00:27:16:24 – 00:27:43:04
Jess
And so if you had to drum a drum and call people to action further, what would an inclusive education system look like in yesterday, ten years time and yeah, what would you love to see different in schools to make things more inclusive by all that we’ve been talking about and your definition of inclusivity?

00:27:44:04 – 00:32:06:00
Matthew
Well, we as teachers need to be advocates and allies. In order to do that, we need to be informed, like I said before, the sort of mantra or mission of the work I do in consultancy is that every child has a right to be seen, be heard, be known and belong. Only if they can belong will they thrive. And that’s what we’re aiming for, thriving for all unconditionally, right. So the teachers as advocates and allies in the school, they need to learn themselves, they need to listen, they need to challenge, they need to advocate and they need to drive the change that’s necessary in the school. Now, in terms of what that school might look like, I’m an almost obsessive fan of the book Street Data by Safir and Dugan, which was published during the pandemic, and it’s looking at a system of equity transformation, as they call it. And what the two writers there talk about is how essential it is that we find and we choose the margins in our society and the society of our school. We find them. We choose those people who are inhabiting the margins of our community. Okay. And how do we do that? Well, I would argue you do that through what Nora Bateson would call warm data. You try and find as many different warm data points to find out who is on the margins, even if you didn’t necessarily realise that they were. And then with intentionality, you do something about that. And what I would advocate is and this would apply to any of the characteristics, to be honest with you, you apply that street data approach to listen. You apply nuanced and sophisticated ways, I’ve been working with a school in Stuttgart recently on listening circles and a really, really rich process of listening circles to get the stories of those kids on the margins. And when you do that, you find out that, with using design language, you find out what their spikes are, what are the things that are spiking them, what are the things that are pushing and keeping them on the margins. And what are the things we have been doing unintentionally but complicitly to push them to the margins? And then, this is where the real magic happens. Once you know where the spikes are, together you design the curb cuts. I deliberately choose a metaphor that applies to my own life in a wheelchair. You find ways of cutting that curb such that the marginalised group get a better and a happy life, but that everyone else benefits from it as well. I was at a school, one of my clients in the Middle East recently, and I was waiting to be met at the gates and there were steps and there was a ramp to get up to the main entrance. Obviously the ramp was there for people like me and the steps for everybody else. When I was sitting there in my chair watching, every single person who arrived at the school went up the ramp, right? We prefer a slope and we prefer a ramp. So curb cuts are creating those design features, adaptive, intentional design features that are going to enfranchise and demarginalise the marginalised, whilst ensuring everyone else wins too. Yeah, and that’s, Safir and Dugan talk about what they call the equity transformation cycle. So we find the spikes, we design the curb cut, and then we constantly iteratively review whether those same kids are remaining in the margins or whether we have brought them in. And I think it’s a system, it’s a process, but it’s not that complicated either. It just comes through. I want to hear your story. Right. And once I’ve heard your story, I want to find ways to make your life better. It’s as simple as that. And that’s what I think the you know, the truly inclusive school would be the one that finds and chooses the margins and then creates curb cuts to move the centre to the margins rather than constantly expecting those on the margins to find a way to get to our centre. I don’t know if that answers the question?

00:32:06:00 – 00:32:09:28
Jess
It solves the issue more than answers the question.

00:32:10:21 – 00:34:22:02
Mahlon
I was going to jump in, because literally like you say Jess said already there’s like gems that you are dropping. But I think the clarity of just your voice is important for people to be able to hear and rewind and listen to again and listen to again. And it’s yeah, you more than answered the question, put it that way. It’s also fascinating, you know, the whole idea that we’ve got these days, not these days, but how semantics and words can sometimes just reinvent the thing that’s already there. So universal design for learning. I’m not against it. I’m fully for it. And it’s exactly what you’re speaking about, right. The whole idea of the ramp versus the stairs, having a ramp does not take away anyone’s utility of using the stairs should they already have the need or wish or whatever else to have used those stairs in the first place? But what I hate, and this is the binary of which you’re speaking to, is by adding a ramp, now you have people complaining about, well, what is the point of the stairs if the ramp is now there the two can’t coexist. We have to have one or the other that like the sort of binary choice of by including more somehow some people are getting less. That is not what we’re talking about at all. By calling students in a nominally girl focused school like mine students does not take away their ability to choose the gender or affirm the gender or be affirmed in the gender that they have. It does not reduce any of those things. So sometimes the fight is one that people make up, but it’s a very strawman situation. So I think that example of what you just talked about, the ramp is a really visible example. The ramp helps everybody. It does not dissuade or take away from or reduce anyone’s, prior if they had the utility or the use or the need or the ability to use the stairs, go ahead and do what you were doing. But the ramp actually allows all of us to make use of this space in the way that the stairs was only allowing some of us to make use of this space before. So don’t begrudge the ramp by constantly talking about how the stairs were a feature of the building beforehand. It wasn’t a feature because I don’t know what’s inside a building because I couldn’t get in in the first place because of the blasted stairs.

00:34:22:07 – 00:36:41:21
Matthew
The other caution I would add there though, I think what you see too often is the the ramp being designed because the able bodied person thinks that it would be a really good ramp, without actually asking the disabled person what the ramp needs to be like. I use as an example of this, if you go into an airport terminal. I go to lots of airports every month. You’ll see signs saying there’s an accessible bathroom. Yeah. And there never is. It’s like a mirage. It’s the cruelty of hope I think because you get there and whilst the bathroom inside may be completely accessible, the door itself is a heavy hinged handle door. And so every time I have to ask a member of the public, can I go to the toilet, which is something I shouldn’t think I should have to do. Right. So I think you’re absolutely right, like you’re saying. But in order to design that ramp, people need to ask the disabled person and in order to make our schools truly trans inclusive, we have to listen to the stories of the trans and non-binary kids in our school and beyond so that we can construct something that enables the centre to move to them. The other thing I thought of when you were talking, just then I suppose maybe bringing it to a close in a way, we haven’t taken some sort of Hippocratic oath saying we’re going to do no harm, right? But we sort of have like when we joined the teaching profession, we pretty much promised that we would do no harm. And also, you know, if you take safeguarding away from it being a tick box activity and people doing this course, etc., what is it? It’s protecting kids from harm. And I think sometimes the conversation around trans inclusivity in schools misses those two concepts. It misses the fact that at our very core, we need to do no harm to our trans and non-binary kids and we need to protect our trans and non-binary kids from as much harm as we possibly can. And I think when we look at it through that lens or that prism, if you like, it becomes simpler as well. I suppose it just doesn’t need to be as complicated as perhaps it’s made out to be. I think it’s far simpler than it would seem sometimes.

00:36:42:07 – 00:36:42:27
Mahlon
I love that.

00:36:43:10 – 00:37:01:04
Jess
I love it. Matthew, thank you so much. Your wisdom to be able to, like you said, make things not sound complicated is a true gift. So thank you for contributing to the book. Also, sharing with us and for the work you do. It’s very powerful. I’m excited to connect with you and quote you more often to people…

00:37:01:29 – 00:37:08:20
Matthew
Can I quote you saying I had wisdom. Can I tell my son later tonight that somebody said I was wise.

00:37:08:29 – 00:37:10:05
Jess
Tell him that another teacher said it.

00:37:10:05 – 00:37:11:03
Matthew
He doesn’t think I’m wise at all.

00:37:12:26 – 00:37:35:00
Jess
I think the wisest thing that, I mean there’s a bunch of notes I’ve taken, it’s the listening, isn’t it? It’s the listening to the stories and centring the stories. Like you said, asking the margins. And it is a pivot. It’s a huge pivot. And so, yes, you can tell your son I approve of your wisdom, but thanks so much for sharing.

00:37:35:13 – 00:37:44:14
Mahlon
We’ve been Mahlon Evans-Sinclair and Jess Boyd and Matthew Savage. The co-hosts and guest of Season two of the Diverse Ed podcast. See you next time. Bye

00:37:45:02 – 00:38:03:14
Hannah
[Outro Music] Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Ed podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think, so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.

00:00:08:27 – 00:01:02:25
Hannah
[Intro Music] Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated in every classroom in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series two of the Diverse Educators podcast, we have ten episodes. In each episode, our co-hosts, Mahlon Evans-Sinclair and Jess Boyd, will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:03 – 00:01:17:16
Mahlon
Hello and welcome to series two of Diverse Educators podcast. My name is Mahlon Evans-Sinclair and I’m the founder of Educating While Black podcast and the director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at St Clement School in Toronto.

00:01:18:29 – 00:01:35:12
Jess
And I’m Jess Boyd. I’m a former head of music and currently writing my Ph.D. in culturally relevant pedagogy. I work in initial teacher training and I also run an open access community music project. In this episode, we’ll be talking to Hugh Ogilvie from the age chapter.

00:01:36:13 – 00:01:50:16
Mahlon
So welcome, Hugh. First thing, could you introduce yourself to the audience in about one sentence? That kind of gives a flavour as to who you are and how you’ve come to be, both in the book and on this podcast.

00:01:51:16 – 00:02:17:01
Hugh
Okay, So my name’s Hugh Ogilvie. I’m a teacher of English in secondary school in Oxfordshire, and I became a teacher in 2015, that’s when I started my training. And I had before then been a criminal defence lawyer for about 20 years in London and in Devon, and I started my teacher training whilst in Devon.

00:02:18:08 – 00:02:32:24
Jess
Amazing. Thanks so much. So we’re going to dive into a series of questions now. And to kick us off, could you maybe describe what intersections of your identity inspired you to write the contribution towards the book?

00:02:33:10 – 00:04:31:00
Hugh
Okay, so I’m now in my mid-fifties, or getting to my mid-fifties and I got to a stage in my previous career as a lawyer where I became a bit disillusioned. I wasn’t enjoying it quite so much for lots of different reasons. There’d been cuts in the legal aid money that was being paid to firms and the firm I was working for. We’d gone from the heydays of being quite successful when I worked in London. I moved to Devon for family reasons and then when I was there within about two or three years, I suddenly found myself working part time and I thought, What do I, What do I do? So I, I kind of, I don’t know, I just had a really hard think about it and thought, do I want to, do I want to, I thought initially I could maybe teach about the law, and I realised that I actually wasn’t passionate enough about that. So I then thought, what was it I really have enjoyed the whole of my life, and I realised that it was English as a subject. And after I left school, I was, and since, even up until the present day, I still write, I write for fun, but I also write and have stuff published on websites, mostly about music, but I’ve written about film as well. And then four or five years ago, I started a blog which I shared things through on Twitter, and that was partly about pedagogy, partly just, you know, covering issues that I thought were relevant to my teaching and just sharing my love of the subject, really. So I think it was looking back and thinking, what has inspired me in my life, and literature always did, my teachers did, particularly towards the latter stages of education. And that’s what put me in that mindset where I thought, right, I’m going to give it a go. And so the reason I became involved in the book is because obviously I made that decision in the middle of my career to retrain in a totally different discipline to the one that I came from.

00:04:32:02 – 00:05:53:08
Mahlon
What I really like about the answer as well, and also, you know, the themes in your specific chapter is the idea that you kind of come back to this theme a lot about perception and perception of self, perception of others, perception of the work being done by oneself, and then also the perception of that I guess others would have of you in that context at that time doing the job. So it always feels like there’s a bit of a vis-a-vis like me versus this or me and this and the constant shifting environment that happens of perception. And I think it’s quite fitting to what you’re speaking to with regards to age as well. The idea of what does perception afford when added to age or maybe the other way around? What does age add to perception. [Hugh – Yes, absolutely] That’s the other way round. And I just wonder how the sort of the whole chapter of age within Diverse Ed, the book, the manifesto, sorry, I wonder how that was themed across the board. When you look back at the chapter at large, the age chapter, what were some of the different themes that you wanted to pull out as a collective? And then also perhaps the theme of your own specific essay within it? What were some of the highlights that you wanted to really pull out with regards to maybe this idea of perception, how perceptions change with age and also how others perceive age in different environments?

00:05:53:16 – 00:07:21:08
Hugh
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I mean, if I talk about it generally, we came together, we had several meetings and there was quite a broad spread of age and I know one of the contributors was described as the oldest NQT in Westminster I think it was. And he teaches history and I think he’s older than me. I mean, I’m old enough, but he was, he was not, so I think he may have been five years or so older, but I mean, age is relevant to some extent. But I think with him, he was just talking about, he wanted to talk about his experience of being an older teacher in general terms. There’s the teachers who’ve been teaching for a long time who are regarded as older teachers. And there’s the teachers like me who start at a later age. And certainly my initial perception of that and my worry when I first thought about retraining as a teacher was, would I be accepted? Would I actually be too old for it? And I remember reading around the subject at the time, this was five or ten years ago, and and I realised, in fact, that no, I’d read that there were teachers who were becoming teachers 10, 15 years older than me. So that made me feel better about the whole process. But it was really about, I think about, yeah, how one might be perceived as a new teacher when you start it at an older age. And this sense that when you start in older age, you should almost be expected, there should be an expectation that you would have that authority, you’d have that experience, which would make the whole process easier for you. Whilst for me, in fact, the opposite was true.

00:07:22:23 – 00:07:37:12
Jess
Thank you. And so when as a chapter team, when you started to flesh out what the different chapters were going to discuss, what kind of key challenges and frustrations came up in discussion before you kind of divvied out the writing.

00:07:38:21 – 00:09:21:23
Hugh
There weren’t actually that many frustrations. I think it was, I was quite impressed with how many people there were and how the chapter was divided up. I think, just thinking back in the book, I think there must have been about 10 or 12 people in those meetings, and I was quite amazed at how many sub chapters were able to be created just from the idea of age as well. And I think it was, so it wasn’t just about age as in how old you are, but it was age as in it could be somebody who was in their twenties or thirties could be somebody who’s in their forties or fifties. And I think the idea about age was it was just interesting how it was approached. So we got things such as age diversity. I think this idea, I think I touched upon this earlier, this idea of why are experienced teachers no longer valued. That’s very much, that idea of when you get to a certain level, if you’ve reached the upper pay scale and you haven’t got any additional responsibility in that kind of thing, how are you treated in that way? And I’m kind of in that situation now. I’m getting towards that, it will take me another three or four years and I’m thinking to myself, Do I want to have additional responsibility or do I just want to be the best classroom teacher that I can be? And so there is that sort of conflict as well, because I’ve got only a certain number of years until I am required to retire just because of my age. And I won’t have taught as long as some of my contemporaries. But I want to carry on teaching, you know, for as long as I physically can because I just enjoy it. I just enjoy it as an intellectual discipline as well as a pedagogical kind of framework within which to develop yourself as a person in a classroom who’s trying to kind of impart knowledge to students and enthuse them in different ways.

00:09:23:12 – 00:10:53:17
Mahlon
There’s like two things that come to my mind when when you express those points. One of them is I think I was trying to think about what’s another career progression or another experience that people have in life that is akin to what you’re speaking to. The idea that the older you get in chronological age, what does that equal to the perception of experience that you should be able to walk into something with? And so I’m going to put myself on blast. I don’t drive. I’m in my mid to late thirties and me now being a novice driver on the road, if people were to see me with an L plate or see me, you know, learning to drive, there might be a certain level of expectation as to what should someone of my age know how to do on the road? How confident should someone of my age be on the road? Like why am I learning to do this now? And that sort of perception and kind of back to what you’re speaking to about my perception of where my skills should be, you know, the perception that people might have of where my skills should be, and then what does that do for the whole environment with regards to you know, my ability to develop my skills as a driver on the road, if all of these perceptions might be a bit misaligned. So that was kind of one thing that was going through my mind, but also what’s another way of making the point clear to the listeners perhaps about what you’re speaking to, the assumption that when you are older in chronological age, the assumption of you should already have this in your back pocket, so you know how to deal with certain things. Yeah, why would you, right?

00:10:53:17 – 00:14:15:14
Hugh
Exactly, and, you know, certainly behaviour management was a big eye opener for me. I mean, because in my previous career, you know, I had no formal training in being an advocate, as, you know, being a lawyer who would stand up in court and try and persuade magistrates to do this, to do that, to release this person, to not send them to prison, and so on and so on. But, you know, I had, I knew I had a background in, I was well read, you know, I’d done writing. So I was able to express myself, certainly in writing. And then when it came to, I remember when I decided to change from being commercial lawyer to a criminal lawyer, I realised that that would entail me having to speak a lot, which actually I never really minded. But I remember when I first read the very first trial that I did in the Magistrates Court, this is a long time ago now back in the late nineties, and I remember going in there and doing the trial, having had no formal training really in how to be an advocate. I just kind of, you know, I just talk to the people and prepared my case and I went in and I remember it was really good because this, this barrister, young barrister, he was around the same age as me at the time. He approached me afterwards. It was my first trial which I won, which is great because it didn’t happen very often. And he said to me, he just complimented me on how well I’d done, and I then realised and I thought, wow, so actually I can do this. And I think I’m someone who has always been modest about my abilities. I know that I can do things, but it took me a while. And, you know, even in the ensuing years, I’d have months where I’d go without winning or have really bad results. And it wasn’t because of me necessarily, because it’s often because of the client that you’re representing or the way that the evidence is presented or whatever it might be. And so it took me a while to kind of get hold of that, but I became more and more confident. And then coming back to what you were saying, this idea of stopping doing that and then going into a classroom environment and thinking, you know, I should be able do this, because, look, I’ve been presenting to people the whole of my life. My whole career has been about persuading people to listen to me and understand my point of view. But the thing I realised pretty soon was that the environment in which I was working was an environment where people treated each other with innate respect and there was no sense of you stood up and people would listen, okay. And then I went into the classroom situation and realised it wasn’t quite as easy as that. And that’s where I think I found it a challenge. And that was and I thought that, coming back to a point you made earlier, both of you were saying, I think that with my age, I thought that actually there would be that sense of people looking at me, oh, yeah, you know, he knows what he’s talking about. But in fact, I think I began to feel like I didn’t know anything about how to present information, which was very strange because I’ve been able to do that even without having, you know, with a minimum of preparation. I could just talk about somebody who I just met half an hour before and say, this is this person. This is why you should give them this result. This is why you should release them on bail. And because of this, this, this and this. And you just get used to doing it over and over again. But each time you have to do it in a slightly different way. And so I thought, yeah, I’ve got that, all those skills. They’re all there. And then when I first started teaching for at least the first couple of years, it was quite a shock to me that those skills didn’t seem to really be working for me. The life experience helped, but the skills I had to reform, almost start fresh, it was like being reborn in some respects.

00:14:16:09 – 00:16:32:29
Mahlon
But I think that’s there, you know, when we talk about intersectionality and the idea that what makes for an intersection is how society, through its institutions or through its structure disadvantages an aspect or multiple aspects of a person’s identity. And what it sounds like you’re saying is the idea that it wasn’t you that was wanting to flex with the times or switch up or kind of be, you know, understood that I’ve got a background of skill and I’ve got a background of experience in this area, but I also recognise that coming into this new concept or this new space, I’m going to have to start from the bottom or start from a lower place than I assumed that I was at before and build myself back up. And it kind of leads into perhaps, you know, some of the key questions and recommendations that you made. One that kind of struck out that stuck out to me was the idea about what resources are on offer for mature trainee teachers to provide clear structure when starting out. And I think that that’s one that is interesting to think about. What new younger teachers who are new to the profession gets, right? There’s almost an element, as I distinctly remember, you know, being told that and also advising trainees of a younger age. Because you’re so close in age to the students you’ll be teaching, you need to create firm boundaries and you need to be super clear about how do you go in, in the classroom to get that respect from early doors. And that’s something that there’s a bit of messaging, strong messaging that goes into that. And I remember how it was when I was training some of the older teachers for a program, Now Teach, and that didn’t seem to be the same messaging in the same way. Some of that messaging was a bit more, they’re just, not that they’re going to automatically respect you because they’re older, but you shouldn’t need to go in as hard as some of the younger trainees to get the same level of respect. But it sounds like in your question that you’re asking that resource of, okay, so maybe if not that, then what. And so what does it look like to treat age as a wealth of knowledge and expertise because of age? Recognising that they may not have the same level of knowledge, and expertise in a specific domain that might be new.

00:16:33:13 – 00:19:07:00
Hugh
Yeah. I agree. I agree. And that’s what, that’s how I felt when I first started. I felt like I kind of knew nothing about how to teach. And I remember it took me, I can, I’ve had conversations about this with fellow teachers that, you know, when you first start out and depending upon the environment in which you find yourself, the teacher that the school that, you know, preparing a lesson took hours, preparing starters, took hours. And I get, I think to myself, I used to prepare a whole case within a couple of hours and I’d be fully conversant with it and understand it. I’d be presented with, just for example, as a duty solicitor, I might go and have to represent ten people in a day, people I’ve never met in my life. I’m given a set of papers. I look at them. I’m like there’s the case, go and speak to them, ask them the stock questions, get the information, and then think about how can I use that information to the best of my ability? How can I persuade this district judge, this magistrate mostly? I mean, if it’s in the Crown Court, the case has already gone to some extent anyway, to some level. And, you know, you get used to it and you’re in a situation where you use a phrase, it’s like water off a duck’s back. You’re sort of in in that zone. You get on with it. But then when I started teaching, it was the added layer of, yes, I have the experience of life and now I use that experience. Now I’m seven, six, seven years into my career where I can hold a room just by giving an example of one of my previous cases that I might have dealt with or even talk about other things I did volunteering when I was in my twenties with homeless, with a homeless charity, with a drugs charity and so on. And these are all this is all the experience now I can impart and I can bring it into lessons. And it’s never planned specifically. It just becomes part of what happens. Yeah. And that’s now where the experience that I thought I could use at the beginning and found it very difficult to use. I can now use that experience without even thinking about it and it becomes just a part of what I do. So I guess it is even a part of my pedagogy in a way and it’s helpful with PSHE lessons as well because, you know, I can just talk for 5 or 10 minutes about an experience I’ve had with students, which maybe a younger teacher, and this is no criticism of younger teachers might not have the capacity to do because I’ve got that wealth of experience. And again, that’s not me being arrogant, it’s just me talking from a perspective that I’ve managed to, you know, put together over a number of years just because of the things I’ve experienced in my life.

00:19:08:19 – 00:19:34:09
Jess
I love that. You’re standing in your identity, aren’t you? And you know, sharing the value in that. So you’ve alluded to it slightly, but could you share a bit more about some of the key takeaways that you really wanted to emphasise for the readers and also kind of the, your commitment to the manifesto? So what kind of actions did you want the readers to take away after reading your chapter?

00:19:34:09 – 00:22:19:06
Hugh
The key takeaways. So I spoke about the fact that being a mid-life career changer, you need support. Perhaps more than might first be thought, especially with things like planning, schemes of work and delivery. And I mean, this is just this was my experience. Now, if I’m being totally honest about it, looking back, I, I don’t know. I may have just not approached it in the right way, but I felt that I was just, apart from a few of my well, in my initial teacher training, I felt that I was left to get on with it. Not because of my previous experience, but I think they expected me to know what to do to some extent. And I was also in a situation where and this is very different in my current school, so the trainees, my current school, we have schemes of learning, we have shared lessons and everyone teaches the same thing, but you’re allowed to put your own stamp on it. Okay. When I trained, I went in. There were basic schemes of work, if you can call it that. But pretty much I had to design lessons from scratch from beginning and that meant I had to do everything, the research, often learning things I knew nothing about. And I enjoyed that course, but what made it stressful and difficult was the fact that, yes, I had support, but I found it difficult to kind of access or use that support in the right way. And so one teacher I remember who was the assistant head at my first school, he was really helpful with me and he kept giving me help and I didn’t seem to be improving. And then when I left and went to my second school, they took a different approach with me. And although it still took me a while to get to that stage, I felt like the support I was being given was much more organic in a way, and much less prescriptive to some extent. But I had to deal with being on cause for concern and all these things happening with me. And that was very difficult for me to deal with because I thought coming back to the idea of age, I thought I should be able to do this. But I found I wasn’t able to do it initially and it did take genuinely it took me my PGCE year and my first year as an NQT. They’re now called ECTs but at that point it was NQT and it took me those two years to get to a stage where I began to feel confident enough and actually think that like I am doing a decent enough job here and where I think then as I kind of when I referred back to my last response to you was talking about the way I’m able to bring in my experience now. That’s when I began to feel like I could say those things and bring in that information, which I couldn’t prior to it, because I was so nervous about making sure I was just doing the lesson correctly, you know? So I hope I’ve answered that in the right way.

00:22:20:02 – 00:23:03:05
Mahlon
No, you definitely have there’s something in there that you said in the chapter that I just kind of want to pull out as a quote, and then ask a question off the back of it. But you make the case that, like in some cases, mature students are less likely to achieve QTS status than younger counterparts and up to two and a half times more likely to withdraw than trainees aged under 25. And I think that’s pretty much what you were alluding to right there. The whole idea that had it not been for a second school, taking a second chance and you wanting to push through the initial inertia of what is going on, why is it not sticking, you might not be still in the profession, right?

00:23:03:12 – 00:26:24:14
Hugh
That’s right. And this is the thing I think I also referred to in my chapter and this is what kept me going because I don’t refer to it here, but it probably, you know, you can see it underneath the surface, but it got to a stage in well towards the end of it so that the midpoint, so I start in September and it was actually, you know, within the first two months towards the end November. And I had a really bad moment where I felt like I couldn’t do it. And it was the closest I’ve come to feeling genuinely depressed. It was a moment of depression. It was a very intense moment of depression which passed. But then as you said, I went to the second school and I was given extra support. And however it worked, it seemed to work for me. Still difficult. But then it was this idea, what I thought about, I thought about resilience, and resilience was really important to me even in my previous career, because you see, I’ve almost kind of changed career two times because when I did my initial training as a solicitor in my mid-twenties, I didn’t get kept on, I wasn’t kept on by my firm. I decided I didn’t want to do that sort of work. But then I was kind of stranded for a couple of years and then I became a criminal defence lawyer and I had to get a qualification to become a duty solicitor. And they gave you a very rigorous interview. You have to kind of give lots of information to them and they give you case studies and you have to kind of give advice there and then in front of this table, six people who ask you lots and lots of questions, and I found it really stressful. I didn’t get through until the fourth time. And as soon as I got through, I felt better. But I kept going because I knew this is what I wanted to do. And so 20 years further on with the teaching, even when it got to that stage where I felt like I couldn’t do anything, I just could not do anything, it’s almost like I’d forgotten, I didn’t understand how to teach, really. And so I carried on. I carried on. And then it got to the stage where I thought, I can do this. And I still had setbacks and still kept going. And then I was very lucky in my my first main school, I had an unofficial mentor, a younger teacher who just kind of took me under her wing. And she said, right, this is what you need to do. Keep it simple. I realised that I’d been overcomplicating things, right? And I started to keep it more simple. And now I know what I need to do. I’d been knowing what I needed to do for the last three or four years. But every time I teach, but I also reflect upon everything I do, you know, whether that’s the way in which I’ve managed behavior in particular lessons or the way in which I kind of put the idea across, or did I explain it in the right way and then maybe I’ll reflect upon that and try and do it differently the next time. And I think that comes down to resilience, but it also comes down to adaptability. And I guess because of my age, that may be something that is to my advantage. I don’t know, because I think everyone’s able to adapt. But my whole attitude to life is very much I want to continue learning. And by being a teacher and becoming a teacher, that’s allowed me to continue learning. And so it’s a constant journey which I’m on, which is a great journey because I feel like I’m always striving to improve. I’m not putting too much pressure on myself, but I’m every single year I want to do something better. And it’s not just about what the results that the students achieve. That’s obviously important, but it’s actually about how I feel about myself, whether I’m kind of progressing as a teacher, really, as as a practitioner.

00:26:25:05 – 00:27:27:06
Jess
And as a human. I had to take some notes there. There’s something. Really. I really appreciate what you said about self reflection. I think things are so fast paced, right? And my favourite takeaways from reading your chapter was a combination of how you open the chapter saying changing career at any stage in life comes down to perceptions. And I thought that was quite a great word. And then you went on to talk about the curse of imposter syndrome. I really, really appreciated hearing you talk about that from a male perspective, because often imposter syndrome, you know, is a woman’s issue. And then you talk about kind of bouncing between being an expert, then a novice, then back to emerging into an expert. So if as we start to wrap up, if you could pull on those themes a bit more and if you had to make the education system more inclusive somehow for the protected characteristic of age, like what would that look like?

00:27:27:29 – 00:27:30:20
Hugh
Oh, gosh, what would it look like, it’s quite difficult.

00:27:30:20 – 00:27:31:19
Jess
No pressure.

00:27:32:00 – 00:34:52:26
Hugh
Yeah, it’s okay. I think because one of the perceptions to me of teaching is that people come in at a young age and then they look to teach for a few years and then they look to climb the ladder, whether it be pastoral, academic or then leadership. Okay. And I remember when I was a lawyer, I never craved leadership. I was encouraged by other people to go for things. I never wanted to do it. And as it turned out, the circumstances were such that I made a good decision in that respect, because the people I was working for were not the right people, okay? And then I went to, the last job I did before I moved to Devon, I was in a firm where there was no opportunity for me, it was an established firm, it wasn’t going to happen. That was fine. It was just because I had to move from my previous place because it had become quite toxic in that respect. And then when I went down to Devon, I joined a place and there was a possibility of me, you know, becoming a leader within that quite small firm. But again, there were problems there, financial and so on. And I so I moved on from that. But obviously coming into teaching. It’s a different environment because you’re kind of funded by the government and obviously the strikes that are going on now are all about the fact that people are not paid enough and terms and conditions and so on and so on. And, you know, I come from an environment where I was working 60, 70 hours a week as a lawyer, and I worked weekends, I worked nights sometimes. Sometimes I worked 16 hours a day. You know, it was crazy at times. It got a little bit better towards the end. But the hours that I work as a teacher are I’ve always referred to it rather than a tidal wave, it’s like a tsunami. It never stops. It keeps going. It keeps going. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, because actually you have the breaks. Now, I know I’m not really answering your question here, but I sort of am. But I think it’s the idea that, you know, due to the importance, the important thing I think about teachers coming from other professions, particularly my profession, which didn’t seem to align very well with English literature, I did English literature, A-level. I didn’t do it as a degree, I did a law degree. So I came in with that feeling of, oh my God, I’m going to teach English, but I haven’t, am I qualified enough? So that was the whole, and that’s where the imposter syndrome situation comes from. And I know that when I was training, I trained with people of a similar age to me, and I remember a few of them were in similar situations where they felt like they just didn’t know enough and they felt like they were not, I wouldn’t say sidelined, but I think they felt, I think the imposter part came from the fact that they were older. And I remember I would be sitting in lectures with students who were 20 years younger than me. You know, I didn’t feel out of place, I didn’t feel like I was this kind of old codger in the corner, not at all. It wasn’t like that, but I think that having a sense of acceptance for people who want to change careers at whatever age it should, it should be something where there is no question about it. But I think looking back to my takeaway, there needs to be a way of harnessing the experience from an earlier stage. And I felt like that wasn’t done for me. I had to kind of almost like bring it out of myself over time. And now, as I said earlier, I’m in a situation where I can use that experience almost on a daily basis, whether it’s having a conversation with a student about a career choice or I chatted to two boys the other day who I teach English in year 12, and they were asking about law. And I said, well, this is what I did and these are the things to think about. We had a good chat. Okay, that’s made me think about it in a different way. And then I was able to talk to some students a few weeks ago in my tutor group who were a bit disillusioned and they were kind of bit detached and they weren’t engaged with their studying. And I gave them a kind of mini chat about how I’d gone through difficulties when I was studying and things like that. And I was able to just say that with ease with drawing on all my experience. And I think that’s important. And again, this is not in any way denigrating younger teachers because younger teachers, what they have, I suppose, is they have all that stuff in their heads. They’ve just been to university and so it’s all fresh in their minds and they’ve got a different approach to it. And maybe there’s a different sort of energy there. But I think for me now, I feel like I have a level of confidence which I think needs to be kind of nurtured in some way. But I think also the teacher, teacher trainers or the schools need to understand that when someone comes in, they can’t, they won’t necessarily be brilliant straight away just because they’ve had that experience. And this kind of brings us full circle to what we talked about at the very beginning, this idea that, you know, when you start a new career, you’re not going to be brilliant straight away. And you have to I think, people have to acknowledge that. And I was humble enough to acknowledge that. And I think everyone else has to be humble enough to acknowledge that. I’m not seeking to blame anyone. You know. But I did feel like I felt adrift. I felt lost to begin with. But now I feel much more confident as a teacher. But I think because of the experiences I’ve had as an early career teacher, as an older person that has given me, that’s made me more kind of honest and humble so that when I see other people struggling, I can go, okay, I’ve been through this. I know what it’s like. Even though, you know, I’m surrounded by lots of very experienced teachers. And I did, I have taught with people who have done a similar thing to me as well. And some of them have left the school, some have gone on to do different things. Some completely left education. But it’s something that I want to carry on doing until I can’t do it anymore just because I love it. And it feels like a privilege to me, I guess. And you know, and it feels like, you know, it does sound to some people it feels like a privilege and an honour, because I do have this thing where I kind of pinch myself metaphorically most days and go, I’m really allowed to do this. Well, I just stand in front of students and, you know, talk about literature that I love. And I think, wow, you know, that is a real privilege. I think that maybe sometimes we forget that actually teaching your subject is something really exciting and, you know, and it’s just something that I’m just so lucky to be doing. And I’m glad because if I… sorry… I didn’t think I’d do this [Mahlon– It’s ok, this is important. Jess – This is human], if I, if I’d given up, like I could have done and I don’t want to, I’m not somebody who gives up, if I sort of when I struggle and given it, if I, if I stopped and not carried on with it, I’d have regretted it. And I think it’s the same going back to what I was talking about with my, you know, previous career when I was, when I wasn’t getting where I wanted to go. And it felt really difficult. I was making hundreds of cases not going anywhere. And you kind of go, what can I do? What can I do? But you see I’ve got to carry on. I’ve got to carry on. And then you get through it and then you reach that sort of plateau. And then from there you start to sort of climb up and develop and become better and better. And again, I come back to the point I made about you’re never kind of fully formed. You’re never, never the finished article, but you can strive to get better with time. So apologies for the tears.

00:34:52:26 – 00:35:06:25
Jess
No, don’t apologise at all, Hugh. Thank you so much for your insight. So. So yeah, bit of goosebumps there. And generally thank you for your contribution to this conversation and the wider conversation on this. I think it’s special and important.

00:35:07:07 – 00:35:07:24
Hugh
You’re welcome.

00:35:08:28 – 00:35:24:18
Mahlon
We’ve been Mahlon Evans-Sinclair and Jess Boyd and we’ve also been Hugh Ogilvie as well. And we are the co-hosts of season two and the guest of season two, episode one of the Diverse Ed podcast. Thank you for joining us and see you next time.

00:35:24:18 – 00:35:40:28
Hannah
[Outro Music] Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Ed podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book: Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.