Frontline Boys: What Teachers Really See In The Classroom

29:22Elliott:you're welcome anyway moving on tell us what lands like if you ever you had conversations with boys in your classroom about misogyny, about racism, about the things that they're polarizing, things they're hearing online, where you've said things that you thought that's got through, that's landed with them.

29:39Machel:Yeah, so I'm a big fan of within a school context, there's definitely room for punishment, right? In so much as you can't operate a school without a behavior system of some sort, right? So I'm not going to pretend that there shouldn't be sanctions for certain things in school. but when it comes to things like misogyny and pervasive influences particularly from social media etc i always think there's more to be gained by treating it as a learning point rather than i don't see what punishment is going to achieve in that regard now obviously sometimes it's so heinous you have to but it's more so about trying to unpick for that young person but why because they more often than not they don't know why all they know is that's what i heard do you see what i mean so there's more to be gained from a conversation you have to almost say to them explain it to me let me hear what you have to say let me that doesn't mean let me agree it just means let me hear break it down for me why you think whatever you've just said is a valid thing to say and then you've just got to meet them this is a phrase i'm currently using a lot in school.

30:52Machel:You've got to meet that young person where they're at. Because the high and mighty approach of, no, this is what you must believe, and this is this, and that's absolutely heinous, and you shouldn't be saying that. Yeah, that can work. That's not going to necessarily change anything. That's not going to make them think that they should have other views or consider other views. I think you have to meet them where they're at to understand how they even got there in the first place and that's got to be your start point in trying to to break things down and I still still believe naively or not and from all my experience in schools I still believe that young people it is easier to talk about to a young person about difficult issues than it is to an adult right because a young person is more willing to hear alternative viewpoints

31:45Will:do you get time to do that like i you're busy that's just also a vice principal you got a lot of responsibility you got a lot of stuff on your plate do you have the time in the day to actually

31:57Machel:have those meet you where you are conversations the reality is no but for things like that you basically have to make the time and take the loss elsewhere and try and chase your tail when you've lost whatever time you needed to do what you actually needed to do because because sometimes when you have those kind of topics come up, difficult topics come up, you can't afford to let it, you can't, like, that's too big, right? You can't afford to let it just go by because silence is complicit, right? If I stay silent and don't say anything, I'm giving you permission to believe that that's par for the course and that's normalized and we don't need to question that.

32:40Machel:and a group of seven boys laughing about something that is misogynistic is my silence is giving them acceptance that oh well sir was there he didn't say anything I mean you can't afford to say I

32:53Joeli:don't have time you have to deal with it yeah um yeah definitely agree with all that um just to add as well like no what what boys don't like is when they feel like stuff is being aimed at them you know almost as a criticism because there is quite a comprehensive sort of statutory program as part of our PSHE like we cover a load of stuff that we never did at school my PSHE lessons sort of okay it was a long time ago but it was so basic it was so you know daft stuff like you know flying kites next to power lines and stuff that never actually turned out you needed to know in the first place like the the program of stuff that we do now is it's pretty wide-ranging and there's a lot about consent there's a lot about misogyny there's a lot about those kind of things that boys i think sometimes feel like they're being relentlessly hit over the head with and made to feel guilty when they don't subscribe to those views and they don't see themselves like that um so i think that's what kind of doesn't plan in terms of like finding time to have those conversations like i think you're absolutely right michelle that's what you need to do you need to make those boys who need to know it realize that like you know that's someone's mom someone's sister someone's you know like the way you feel about your family that's your speaking about somebody else's mom that way like anecdotally i'm an english literature teacher and we teach a there's a play which is like a sort of mainstay of the curriculum called an inspector calls you may you may well have done it at school yeah yeah still there right still cracking on with that but what I've noticed is that it takes much more unpicking nowadays to in the last five years if we're talking about a sort of shift negatively I have to spend much more time unpicking why the treatment that the main character receives as a result of her being a woman is not fair is not acceptable is a sign of how society needed to to change it used to kind of feel like it was a fairly obvious message now every time i teach it i'm maybe i'm just becoming more aware of it but there's a certain kind of resistance where it's like certain boys are like well but why didn't you just do this and there's a bit of like pushback against it that requires a little more time

35:16Elliott:just reflecting on adolescence and the way that sort of exploded across the uk obviously the tv program and loads of people were then like wow is that really what it's like in secondary schools and I remember loads of teachers being like yeah that's really what it's like in secondary schools now and parents being really shocked by that and other people being really shocked by that like is that what it's like is that what it's like in your secondary school Michelle?

35:42Machel:Yes so I watched adolescence the part that I that resonated with the part that resonated with me the most from that series was everything related around funnily enough like there was that scene with something about what these emojis mean and what that signified and I remember watching that scene thinking yeah that that that sounds about right because these kids are in their group chats and their snapchat groups and their whatsapp groups and whatever it is that they're on and or kids are just getting added to groups just randomly. That's what this generation is doing. They're just adding each other to random groups of people and then things are just flying back and forth.

36:24Machel:That is 100 % correct. So when adolescents were showing that, I was like, yeah, that checks off. That's definitely a thing. And your average parent, if they went into their child's TikToks, Snapchat, WhatsApp, whatever it is they're doing, and this is a clarion call to all parents, You think you've got control over your child's phone? No, no, no, no, no. You've got to deep dive into that phone and see what groups they're really in, right? And if you went into those groups, I think the average adult would look at it and go, what on earth is all this? What does this even mean? What is going on here, right?

36:59Machel:so that aspect of adolescence I thought yeah that's spot on the obviously the the extremes of it no I don't recognize that and that doesn't mean it's not that doesn't mean it doesn't exist though because we had the incident in Croydon last year I think it was where do you remember that and so obviously that is something I can't try and pretend that that's not something that's going on I haven't seen things like that but I there's obviously enough in the news to show us that there are some, unfortunately, there are some boys, young men taking that to the extreme. I thought adolescence was timely, but I am going to be a bit critical in that once it came out, there's a lot of knee-jerk reaction and that's not helpful.

37:45Machel:And I think this is what Will is alluding to as well. There was a lot of knee-jerk reaction and immediately it felt like, right, schools, you need to go and do all of this stuff with young people. And my take on it was, no, parents you need to go and do some stuff with young people because it can't always be school come up with a program some bolt-on program and try and address this issue in the next 48 hours and that's how it kind of came across after after adolescence came out yeah how many assemblies do

38:17Joeli:you think we got in the next month yeah you know someone knocks up a quick assembly just to tick that problem off that stop everyone panicking about about adolescence because i mean i did the same thing exactly i watched it and i was like oh my god is this real is this this thing about the 100 emoji and all that you know because i just use that to mean 100 i agree i don't mean it to mean anything else and so yeah i know some kids are really online some kids are you know super online and they even they're even getting a kind of accent i don't know know if you've noticed that but um you know you get you get a certain sort of type of kid who you can just tell they are a really super online person and you know but a lot of them aren't and i dug around you know the the whole you do you use these emojis is 100 mean this and they're no i use that to mean that i agree 100 i didn't even know that was a thing so i think it did have a load of dramatic license i thought it looked so awful you know in adolescence that secondary school when they went into it and you know that scene where um they're walking through the school and the kids are all sat there every single kid's watching video the teachers are bored everyone's miserable in this sort of concrete awful kind of place and i was like it's not that bad right it's it's you know yeah yeah i mean that was a huge amount of dramatic license it schools are still places that full of like you know joy and and wonder yes they've got their fair share of like bad stuff but i did think that was a bit of a caricatured sort of presentation of the reality and much as the the fears that it raised are real and the things that we need to deal with I don't think it warranted full on panic stations in the way that it seemed to cause.

40:12Elliott:Okay, that's good. That makes us feel a bit more relieved, I think.

40:19Will:Today's podcast episode is sponsored by Kauru Kids.

40:24Elliott:When my kids were younger, I never considered getting a nanny. It just seemed like something posh people do, something completely out of reach, certainly for me. But times have really changed. And with nurseries, childminders and wraparound care, costs can really mount. And just imagine, imagine the peace of mind of having one person who your kids love, who you can rely on implicitly to look after your child in your home. Someone who can handle school pickups, help with homework, sort dinner and help the kids wind down. So you can finish your work guilt free and come home to peace and serenity.

41:04Elliott:and be totally present with your kids. If I was to have another baby, which, you know, I definitely won't be because I bought a dog instead, I would be considering nannies as an option. The flexibility, the simplicity, having one person you can fully trust.

41:22Will:I hear you shout out to the dog parents, me included. I need that in my life now. Coral Kids has full and part-time nannies that can work when your family actually needs them. Their nannies are vetted and trained and they work all across the UK. So they will be where you are at. So why not have a look at their website? KORUKIDS.CO.UK. It is free to search and you can see what the cost difference is and whether it's a good fit for you. KORUKIDS.CO.UK. That's K-O-R-U-KIDS.CO.UK.

42:06Elliott:If you could wave a magic wand and change the education system so it better support the boys, particularly boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, what would you do, Michelle?

42:18Machel:Okay, so if we're going to say the education system, what I would do is when I first got into education, there was a lot more money floating about, right? And what I mean by that is schools would have interventions that they could run that wasn't self-funded or created by the school itself with resources that they don't actually have, right? You could have a counsellor within a school or something akin to a therapist within a school. You could spend money on taking out, let's just say, for example, disadvantaged boys on a specific intervention that may raise their aspirations. You could get some boys on, for example, vocational interventions and courses because they just work.

43:09Machel:It wasn't that they weren't academic. It was just that they had specific interests in other things. I remember when I first got into teaching in the early 2000s, it wasn't unheard of for a group of boys to be able to go to like a motor mechanic workshop near the school and work on some skills around that. those things don't exist anymore the funding for schools is basically zero we can we can barely afford staff much less intervention for for for for young boys right so the reality is money money is actually the answer and if it's not going to come through the education system then things have to be funded outside of schools how many youth clubs do you have in your local area right basically none there's not there is and this is why when will was talking about working men's club well let's extrapolate that down to young people where can they go where they go is let's stand outside mcdonald's there's nowhere to go right there and that clubs cost money right so even if you say why don't they get into their local football club swimming lessons this that and the third everything costs money and there's not much subsidies for disadvantage in this case boys to access things so and this is why right at the beginning of the podcast I made that point about I feel like schools have become universal services where it's like come on schools come up with something go into that into that magician's hat and just come up with something yeah that will help um will help these disadvantaged um pupils so I do think a lot of we have to find a way to reinvest in public services whether that's us within the schools or whether that's other mechanisms outside of schools to support disadvantaged boys and communities.

44:58Joeli:Yeah, again, I couldn't agree more. I think community stuff for kids doesn't exist other than if your parents would pay. You know, my daughter plays football and they keep this set up. It's unbelievable. They have immaculate strips. The guy does like opt-a-stats for them after a big game. It is so professional. It's unbelievable. but it costs a fair bit you know it's becoming that it's it's left behind so many kids who like when i was at school would have just played for their local like club and it was free and it was you know done on a voluntary basis and it was a bit of ramshackle but it was much more inclusive than it is now so i definitely think there's like a class element and you're absolutely right in this changes since my time you would get the sort of placements you would get the guys who weren't entered for going to be entered for English Literature GCSE because they're doing a different qualification in something where they're on a placement in a construction company two days a week and that was a much better system for them because it's not like the sad truth is they're probably not going to pass their English Literature GCSE but they're forced to sit it and they're forced to endure the lessons that they really find difficult and much as my department and all teachers are doing their best to include all of those kids there is a point where you sort of think is this the right thing for them to be forced down this pathway of doing this really academic you know gcsc which they don't have any personal interest in that they can't really see the value in it other than they need to get one of their english's to get onto the college course which is the thing they really want to do and it's just a bit of a sort of attritional relationship that doesn't really do anybody any good where if we could offer a more tailored solution to match kids passions and talents and beliefs and what they what how they see their their future lives being they're going to engage more um because you know since i guess it was during the gov era where it became right we need to shift the focus back onto the academic everybody needs to do this if you fail it you're going to do it again you need to you need to get your maths your english your science to do anything at college and you're going to keep resetting it even if you're after 18 which must just be humiliating and and kind of absolute torture being put through that same course time and time again until you get it um I just can't really see the point in that so I think that would be something that would make a big difference if if I had a magic wand but also like schools to be just be a bit quicker to adapt to the world you know schools are in loads of ways it's all behind the times you know we are still making kids write stuff in exercise books and carry like rulers and pencils around like they did not change in a hundred years and like you know the world is changing so fast and ironically it's a thing that we are sort of told to prepare our kids for prepare our students for you know this rapidly changing world and yet at the same time we're making them copy out the date and title and underline stuff so that Ofsted are impressed about how neat your exercise books are and it's like guys come on like this it's it's an outlier it's not really how the rest of the world is anymore yeah because a lot of the school day you know much as we all try to make our lessons engaging and interesting with the range of activities and the mix of discussion we're going to improve our kids or see them we're going to teach them how to argue and you know use logic and the reality is you know so i teach 40 40 lessons of fortnight so i'm like you know 80 contact time and a lot of that i can't get around the fact a lot of that is kids sitting in rows quietly i explain some stuff and then give them a task to do and it just feels like is this the best way you know much as a good lesson is is a joy and a privilege to teach there are some naughty ones where you're like right we're just gonna have to sort of get through this it just feels like it should be in the modern world of you know technology and the way things are there's got to be a better way and schools need to get better at being more agile reacting more quickly and suiting the needs of kids more maybe kids are just changing maybe the nature of childhood is changing and rather than just sort of agonizing about that we need to change the way we educate our kids to to fit that um because it does feel really old-fashioned

49:33Elliott:the way we do it i don't think it's gonna change anytime soon though because the government doesn't exactly look like it's ahead of the curve either with much i mean you're still teaching my son said he's learning lord of the flies next year was like yeah i did that 30 years ago what gives you hope let's talk about something positive what gives you hope about about boys

49:57Machel:what gives you hope about the future of boys so i still believe that first day when every kid comes into every boy comes into secondary school bright eyes big school etc everybody in there has hope about the future every single child without fail has hope for the future and then it's about how do we nurture that so that they don't lose hope it's a chance for the slate to be wiped clean nobody knows you what went before went before anything is possible so i whether naively or not i still always believe in the the virtues of every young boy i come across and that they really want to be the best version of themselves now everybody goes on a different path from there some slide quickly some slide later on some just exponentially go on a growth mindset journey and they do brilliantly right but what I do know is that nobody comes in wanting to fail I believe that every young person wants to succeed every young boy wants to succeed and as long as we hold

51:07Elliott:on to that we've got a chance yeah thank you well yeah um the first week of year of september

51:16Joeli:with the year sevens is a it's a it's a nice time when you see them um they kind of there's that's all this really is a bit sad actually it was a graph about how much kids self-report their enjoyment of their education and like basically how much they enjoy school i think it kind of it peaks in year six and then like year seven is like a kind of a slight decline and then year eight is huge slump and then it kind of bumps along the bottom for year nine year nine and then there's this like really slow kind of like gradual incline towards towards the end uh i just thought that was really sad when i saw that graph because it's like i'd love to see that year seven enthusiasm first week in september positivity just sort of if just cling on to that a bit a bit more if we could, if there was a way we could do that, you know, that would make things, things better.

52:02Joeli:But what gives me hope is, you know, you watch adolescence and you, you, you listen to the, the discourse and the crisis of masculinity and, you know, I've got, got two daughters and it is terrifying, right? If that's, if that's all that you focus on it, it is terrifying. And those, those concerns are real. They're, they're real things. They're real problems that we're going to have to face up to but if I then apply that to the boys that I see every day I don't see it you know the boys I see every day in loads of ways as they ever were as we were when we were boys still the same kind of ridiculously enthusiastic funny quirky obsessed with sports statistics and and sensitive and kind and just such a diverse cast of characters that I struggle to connect the sort of I don't want to say the word like hysteria but the the kind of panic I don't I don't see it every day you know I see boys who fill me with hope because they're they're going to be good men and there's loads of really really great boys who are going to go on and be fantastic men and you know I I'm not not overly concerned thanks I do feel hopeful after that

53:16Elliott:Thank you. And I know there are some good stories in here, stories of stuff that's happened in classrooms, stories of like a boy who might have moved you, who might have changed the way that you teach, who might have surprised you in some way. Would you be willing to share an anonymous, obviously, we don't want to give away their names, an anonymous story with this or something that's happened to you in the classroom? Yeah.

53:44Machel:So interestingly, when you made contact to say, can you come on the pod a couple of weeks later? And before I tell this, the point of the story isn't to say, wow, look at me. It's more to point towards why I hold on to hope around what the impact we can have on young boys to become good men. And I got an email from a former student of mine. So this student must now be like in their mid-twenties, which means I must be old. They're now in their mid-20s. And they sent me an email. Obviously, I won't read out the person's name, but I will just read an extract from it because I think it's quite pertinent to the question that you just said, right?

54:25Machel:So they've put in here, I know I didn't get good grades at school and I know that things were quite troubled for me when I was at school, but I just wanted you to know that I've managed to still succeed in life somewhat. And I do think it's because of those like you who helped me when I was going through a lot of the trouble I was facing. I want to thank you for all the efforts in helping me through those years, despite how troublesome and annoying I was sometimes for you and others. It's people like you and other teachers that have meant that where I am now wouldn't have been possible without you continuing to stick by me.

54:59Machel:I'm not saying, aren't I brilliant? Not at all. But my point is, it goes back to that point I'm making about hope. not everyone's journey is linear he that that person who sent that email had he was i think he suffered bullying he had massive identity issues around himself and truth be told probably hated school right but now he's in his mid-20s and he's come full circle to to where he's at in his journey and he's able to reflect back and say you know what it was it was like snakes and ladders in school but thanks to some of teachers like yourself and others who didn't give up on me I can reflect on how that was important for my journey and I get hope from that right yeah

55:43Elliott:shows what a massive impact teachers really do have like I you know I remember teachers from secondary school who had an influence on my life too and you must have felt very proud when you

55:54Joeli:received that email so you should well yeah um I think it's really helpful to have like a a bit of a delay on your kind of feedback that you get from kids because quite often you get you get with kids and this is actually mostly boys being a bit stereotypical but you might have battled with them for two years and they've never done their homework and you've had them put out the class and you they've not shown any interest whatsoever and then you bump into them like oh man you bump into them like after school that a year later and they're like oh sir i loved your lesson but they are really I really enjoyed your English lesson.

56:30Joeli:Yes. Thanks for that. You didn't smile for two years. But thinking of like a specific example, I mean, I've had kids who inspire me. You know, there's so many stories that stay with you, like sad ones and, and, you know, just kids who've made an impact, not necessarily on the way that I teach, but just, it gave me, and I thought it was a really good example for the other kids as well. And it was, I used to work in South Tyneside, which, because it had a, housing available would take at the time when there was quite a lot of unaccompanied um afghan kids arriving and england they were getting taken there because there was suitable accommodation so i had this kid turn up my class one day in my form class in year seven and he's a little afghan boy and he'd been sort of on the road for like seven months and he had no way of contacting his parents they'd sort of just paid for him to be taken to the uk four attempts to get in um turned back at dover eventually got in then he got dumped in the middle of london and just left and then he'd been picked up by you know various authorities passed around from pillar post and he'd ended up with a foster family in south tineside where i worked and then he just rocked up in my form class day one zero english had not been to school really you know for a long long time and before and nothing like the the place he found himself and i just saw this kid and i just thought what are you gonna do like you're so lost you don't even have you can't even speak english how are you gonna do this this is secondary school this is you're going straight into lessons where they're talking about pretty difficult stuff how is this gonna work for you like and you know the point of The story is that it did, you know, he silently sat for a couple of months and just learned enough English to start accessing the curriculum.

58:24Joeli:And then he started making friends and then he started joining clubs. And then by the time he left in year 11, he was like this sort of legendary figure that the community kind of welcomed, that everyone loved. He was like, he had amazing comic timing. He was like, he'd come obsessed with cricket. He was becoming a really good cricketer. He was doing every club possible. He was volunteering for every sports team. he was working really hard and I think he was such a great example like for me because if that had been me I would have just like given up and thought this is impossible how am I going to do this but he'd managed to find his feet in this like really bewildering situation and I think it helped some of the other kids realize you know all the stuff that they were taking for granted and all the opportunities that school can give you and all the hard work that adults put into Jamaican school a place where people can find their thing and and achieve and and take stuff from for the rest of their life and you know he was just like uh he was a pretty inspirational guy so yeah I'll take that one what a story how old was he he joined in year seven and then he he went all the way through so he left in year 11 do you know what he's doing now no idea that was left that left that authority don't go back to that neck of the woods anymore so I don't know

59:41Elliott:but you know something good huh love it thank you thanks guys that was really insightful really interesting really depressing i'm gonna say at points thanks but also hopeful and gave us a lot of food for thought yeah as well yeah really great stories as well so thank you for joining us on the to be a boy podcast no problem thanks guys thanks for having us

1:00:15Will:You've been asking Abercrombie kids for baby and toddler clothes, and they finally delivered. Introduce your little one to a collection full of mini looks with major cuteness, from rompers and bodysuits to cute dresses and matching sets, all in sizes newborn to 5T. Meet the newest member of the Abercrombie Kids family for the smallest members of yours. Shop new baby and toddler in the app and online.

1:01:07Will:Browns. Order McDelivery or in the app to save time. Pricing participation may vary cannot be combined with any other offers.