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The Still Human Podcast is for teachers, leaders and school staff navigating the realities of working in education today.
Hosted by Julie Liddell and part of Edwin People's wellbeing and culture offering, this podcast features thoughtful conversations with teachers, principals, psychologists, authors and education leaders exploring what matters most: leadership in schools, staff culture, workload, burnout and sustainability.
Each episode focuses on supporting the people behind the roles, because thriving educational communities start with looking after the humans within them.
Still Human delivers training, workshops and strategic support for staff wellbeing and thriving cultures. Edwin People provide strategic leadership and HR services that help schools and multi-academy trusts grow confidently with people-centred solutions. Both part of the Edwin group, we work together to positively impact the lives of young people.
Learn more at www.stillhuman.co.uk and www.edwinpeople.co.uk
Julie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Still Human Podcast, conversations about leadership, culture, staff wellbeing, and how we create schools where people can truly thrive. I'm your host, Julie Liddell, and today I'm chatting to Kat Howard. Kat is Executive school Improvement Lead and curriculum and assessment lead at Windsor Academy Trust and Chief Executive Officer at Lit Drive, a charity that supports subject specific professional development for English teachers in the uk.
Julie: Previously, Kat has held roles in school and trust wide improvement, as well as leading regional and national professional development at scale. Kat contributed curriculum content to the Reformed NPQ Leadership Suite and served as council member for the Chartered College of Teaching. She's also a trustee for education support, advocating for teacher wellbeing and professional development, as well as a regional ambassador for the maternity teacher, paternity Teacher Project.
Julie: Kat is the author of Bestsellers Stop Talking About [00:01:00] Wellbeing, a pragmatic approach to teacher, workload, and co-author of Symbiosis, the curriculum and the Classroom with her coauthored book, along with Dr. Arlene Holmes Henderson Reviving rhetoric due to be published in 2026. It was really lovely chatting to Kat.
Julie: We often quote from her book, stop Talking about Wellbeing and also have it on our recommended reading list for our training. During the discussion, we talked about workload, communication, change management, as well as the importance of understanding your own sense of meaning and purpose, your sense of identity, both within and outside of the classroom, and the power of connection.
Julie: Before we start this episode, I have a little update to share with you all from our next season. The Still Human Podcast will become Edwin Talks, a broader education led podcast, exploring the people, ideas and conversations shaping education. Today, we are really looking forward to bringing you more conversations, more perspectives, and plenty of interesting [00:02:00] ideas to think about.
Julie: So if you've enjoyed The Still Human Podcast, make sure you stick around as we'd love to have you with us for this next chapter.
Julie: Hi Kat, thank you so much for joining us here today.
Kat: Hi Julie. Thanks so much for having me.
Julie: So it's really wonderful and, and maybe it's for context, I think we'll tell people this episode won't go out until the new academic year, but it is actually the summer holidays and it's not just the summer holidays for Kat and I, it's pre-holiday.
Julie: So we've both just had a conversation about where we are in terms of our re energy, but we've gotta go for Aren. We cat.
Kat: Yeah, we've, we've already agreed to glue all of our remaining brain cells back together for the conversation, so,
Julie: so we'll see where we go. So I wonder, Kat, you started out in banking and you are now an executive school improvement lead with so many more hats and titles in between that and that you wear now.
Julie: So talk to me about your path. Tell me [00:03:00] about your, your career journey.
Kat: Yeah, so I reached the end of my A levels a little bit, kind of, um, I suppose like disengaged from education at that point. Um, I'd found a levels quite difficult and, um, lots of my friends were already engaging kind of higher education and I didn't feel like that was the place that I was at.
Kat: So I, I joined, um, a high street bank for a number of years and ended up relocating to be part of a flagship project where they're really big national project around kind of staff induction. And learned a lot during that time about things like, uh, resource costing and how you do that with the staff workforce and how you start to draw out kind of impact measures of retaining staff over time and some of the contributing factors towards that.
Kat: So it was a really interesting period for me. And I learned a lot about, you know, how you drive or, or reduce staff turnover and, and particularly kind of entry, entry into the [00:04:00] profession in finance. During that time I did some voluntary work with, um, a local primary school, and I used to go out and read to their primary school children every week.
Kat: And I had a really interesting experience. That is the pivotal point when anybody asks you why did you become a teacher? I had lots of implicit indicators in my childhood of making registers and teaching my TED leads and all of that nonsense that teachers go through. But I paid absolutely no attention to that and went in banking anyway.
Kat: And I, I, yeah. And so I, I had this day where I was reading to a boy called David and we were reading a book about the zoo and we came to a picture of a zebra and he didn't know what the zebra was. And then we had a whole conversation where, well, I said, it's a bit like it's a, looks a little bit like a horse, like a stripe horse.
Kat: And then he didn't know what a horse was either. And it was just such an eye-opening conversation for me because I thought, how is it that we are sat in the world that we, we are in and the country is a first world country and I'm sitting with a [00:05:00] child who doesn't know and hasn't had a lived experience that he doesn't know what horse is.
Kat: And so for a long time I kind of, I, I carried on volunteering and I pursued going back to university to study English literature so that I could become a teacher. So that was very much the, the reason that I went back to, to study, but very much a primary practitioner. And it wasn't until I kind of had the experiences that I did through, um, my degree and continuing to volunteer that I actually looked at secondary teaching and ended up being an English teacher as a result.
Kat: So it, it really all started my kind of, my want to teach was, was probably bred of, of that particular moment. That, and the fact that I had such a haphazard secondary education myself, that had it not been as haphazard, I probably would've stayed and studied beyond day level and engaged with literature. I remember going, I remember a results day for what I got my GCSE results.
Kat: The only thing I ever loved was, was English literature. Uh, it [00:06:00] was the only thing that I really, really engaged with in school. I, I did okay for everything else, but English Lit was absolutely my bag. And I went to sign up for English A level, and the, the teacher that I'd had for the last two years said, well, this is not for you.
Kat: And I said, well, what do you mean? And she went, I just, I just think you'll find it too tricky. And I signed up anyway. Um, but that really stayed with me as an experience because it almost gave this early indicator that I wouldn't be capable of something. And so that coupled with significant gaps around our teaching just because of the nature of the school that I was at, just really galvanised me to want to make that experience less variable for children.
Kat: I think both through that experience of reading, but also just that experience of feeling a sense of success, I think, and some, a teacher's ability to be able to turn a moment of curiosity into something that you can be highly successful at [00:07:00] and motivated by and passionate about and interested in. So that's kind of how I ended up falling into teaching.
Kat: I've worked in lots of different schools, mostly high areas of deprivation. That's really important to me. It's part of my personal moral compass. And I've worked all over the country and, and with head teachers, head teacher development, leadership development, curriculum development and, and kind of falling into that area of expertise.
Kat: But that's very much, yeah, how I ended up coming to be in this profession in the first place. 'cause I just think that. Irrespective as to where a child is, they should get a really good deal. So yeah,
Julie: love that. And I can see more now, that link between you, you, you kind of experience in banking around that, as you say, that retention and that kind of keeping people in the profession and see very much how that ties up to some of the, the work that you've done as well around, you know, or, or within the education sector.
Julie: I think, didn't I read in the beginning of your book that you tried to leave teaching twice, but nobody would let you? [00:08:00]
Kat: Nobody would let me. So I tried to leave in my training year and my, my incredible tutor, uh, Victoria, um, Elliot, she's actually at Oxford University now, um, was like, no, you can't, you can't do that.
Kat: And then I tried it. That was in the January when everybody wants to quit and then I tried again in the April and she said, well, it's too late now. You're almost done. So, um, and, and, and that, yeah, so actually three times, 'cause I then ended up just after I came back with my, after having my second child and, and tried to quit and, and somebody was like, no, no, you can, you can just stay here and do three days instead of, instead of four days.
Kat: And, and then see how you feel and I'm sure you'll feel better. So these people are single handedly, uh, serving the retention strategy for the uk I think with a, with a dismissal of letting anybody leave.
Julie: Yeah, I love that. I love that as a strategy. Nah, you can't do that.
Kat: Not yet.
Julie: It's brilliant. So within all of this amazing [00:09:00] kind of journey you've offered offered four books, but the one I would like to focus on is the one that you published back in 2020 I think it was.
Julie: Um, and, uh, I kind of bought it at the time and, and I've read it from cover to cover, um, and several times since we often quote from it, we recommend it, um, as a great text. I would argue that it was slightly ahead of the curve in terms of what you were talking about, but that book was Stop talking about Wellbeing.
Julie: Can we start with the title? Because I think it is a little bit provocative. I think it could read as a little bit anti wellbeing, yet that's not really what the message is, is it? So why did you write it? What were the experiences that led to you thinking we need to rethink about the way that we talk about wellbeing in schools?
Kat: Yeah. Two key. Aspects. The first was coming from finance and coming into education and finding just some of the [00:10:00] oddities of working in education. Absolutely wild. Coming from an organisation serving the private sector that obviously had heaps more money than the education sector. But what they did have was a really robust HR process.
Kat: And that was, you know, what's our induction curriculum? How do we retain staff? Because that's really important because people that stay longer are better at their jobs. How do we time, cost particular strategies before we implement them? How do we have to put an entire business case together before we go, oh yeah, we need to implement this thing.
Kat: Let's go. And then arriving to education and, and just feeling like none of those, none of those aspects existed within implementation. And you just kind of rock up on in September and find out that you're doing loads of extra stuff. And that's how it was framed, even if sometimes it wasn't extra stuff.
Kat: So I found that shift quite interesting and insightful and a, a learning point, I think. So I wanted to try and capture that and also share some of my learning. I think from working in the finance sector with the [00:11:00] mindfulness that we don't have as much money as a private, um, corporate organisation. So how do we do that?
Kat: How do we make that work as a strategy for, well, for, for workload and looking after, um, looking after teachers and leaders in our schools. The, the second bit for me was around some of the well-meaning workload related initiatives that I had lived and breathed through, particularly my early years of working in education.
Kat: And I remember going along to a meditation morning where you would, you know, meditate in the hall, um, to a lovely audio while you had children walking past the outdoor window kind of banging and staring and laughing at you. Or we would, you know, we'd have cakes every Friday, which would be absolutely lovely.
Kat: But then a marking policy that demanded that I make sure that I mark 180 books every seven days. And there was just this constant friction [00:12:00] of, we we're trying to teach, we're trying to treat people really kindly because we really value them. And it wasn't quite landing because it was in contradiction of so many other policies.
Kat: And that really culminated for me. Um, and I talk about it earlier on in the book around, you know, experience and miscarriage in the workplace and the policies that weren't there to support that at the time and support my, my workload and wellbeing, but also some of the contradictory policies and practise that were taking place at the time that actually made that experience really, really difficult as a teacher, as an educationist and as a person trying to, you know, trying to manage a, a significant life event.
Kat: So those two things really kicks me into force of, you know, how do I capture this and share some really. Positive stories around how we can support teachers in schools where we think about workload as the driving force and the key indicator of impact of some of those initiatives, rather [00:13:00] than how people feel.
Kat: Because people will feel really good if they can live their lives and spend time with their children and their loved ones and do all the things that they love doing. And so if we've got policies that are creating significant amounts of workload, preventing that they could be the best case in the world on a Friday, but they're definitely not going to make me feel better about my life in isolation.
Julie: Yeah, there's a, there's a few things in there, Kat, I wonder whether could I pick up on that kind of personal story because you, you include it in the book and you include several personal stories, and I think that lived experience is what makes it a very relatable book. So you talk there about that experience of that, you know, that that deeply personal life event for you and the difference between policies and how that's experienced.
Julie: Can you just, uh, are you happy to explain a little bit more about that and your experience around that?
Kat: Yeah, absolutely. And I think like anybody listening who, who you know, is either gone through that experience or had somebody close them, go through that [00:14:00] experience will have some understanding and sensitivities around what it's like, what I.
Kat: Found is that there was a leadership team kind of, who were battling up against attention of doing the right thing for, for people. And, and I think this is what's lots of school leaders face in terms of tension, doing the right thing for people, but also trying to manage a workload and the needs and demands of other stakeholders, whether that be parents or other, other senior teams governors.
Kat: And there are so many kind of, you know, key stakeholders contributing to what we do in schools that I think that experience was just, um, yeah, those tensions in, in action. I don't think anybody ever deliberately goes into work to make somebody feel anything less than incredible at their job. But I think what inadvertently happens when people are under significant amounts of pressure [00:15:00] is that that pressure permeates into, um, other colleagues, um, experiences.
Kat: And I think that a lot of what we feel when we feel workload, stress or wellbeing and some of the perception data around teacher workload and teacher wellbeing is it is just a permeation of leadership stress significantly, leadership stress. We know that head teacher, the role of the head teacher is, you know, one of the most significant stressor and that disseminates through a, a staff workforce unintentionally.
Kat: So, and I think for me, you know, that that experience was channelled into a really lovely piece of work where I worked in partnership with the MTPT to create a miscarriage policy that schools can now use free of charge. So, you know, something beautiful came outta that, but I think it, it, yeah, it did really highlight for me, people are working under significant amounts of stress and lots of the things that we're talking about are a physical manifestation and demonstration of, of that stress and how [00:16:00] do we all support each other to just yeah, be really good human beings to each other when, when there's a significant amount kind of of pressure on schools, I think.
Julie: Yeah, and I think it's interesting, you know, when you talk through that and I think about my own experience and it was very similar kind of, you know, having, um, some time off work for a miscarriage, but walking back into a situation where basically the work still needed to be done and because of the skeleton structure we were working on at the time, there was nobody else to do it but me.
Julie: And we couldn't move many of the deadlines and the expectation was just huge. What I walked back into and, and a little bit like yourself, you know, that leadership stress kind of was very palpable around that, you know, what still needed to be done regardless of where I was and what I'd just come back from.
Julie: Um, and certainly has shaped the work that I do and my kind of thoughts and feelings about how we need to be doing wellbeing, as it were. You know, it's different from policy [00:17:00] to reality. So thanks for sharing that, Kat. And when, when I kind of read this book. A sort of, did you, did you write it with two audiences in mind?
Julie: Did you write it for the individual and the organisation?
Kat: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think that, um, definitely now having worked in system leadership for a long time, I'm really mindful that head teachers and senior leaders of the linchpins of our organisation, if things are important to them, they're, they're important to everybody.
Kat: They, what I didn't want to do is create a winch fest of a book, right? I didn't, I didn't want us to come together and read, read the, those experiences and those examples, and then somebody come away as an individual reader and say, well, my score doesn't do any of those things. And I, you know, like, I've not been changed as a result.
Kat: That would be, that would be awful for me and say what I wanted to do alongside shining a light on some of the challenges that I think are really unique to school and, and staff workload and wellbeing [00:18:00] is alongside that, is presents some solutions of how different people are making it work. And so the flexible working chapter is a really good example of that.
Kat: You know, I wanted to talk to people who were, um, kind of on the wind down to retirement, people with caring responsibilities for their parents. The mortality age is increasing in the uk and that's going to become more of a pertinent issue for everybody, but particularly teachers, given the fact that we're held to a 39 week annual schedule.
Kat: We don't just take annual leave when we get tired like lots of other people. But I wanted to make sure there were tangible examples of what schools and leadership teams could do to support their teams in a way that also, dare I say, drives improvement. Um, because if you've got a stronger, healthier, happier workforce, children are going to get a better deal in the classroom.
Kat: That's just a, a, a natural consequence, I think, of looking after, looking after staff. So, yeah, I wanted to make sure that people were able to take something from it that they could translate [00:19:00] to their own setting depending on obviously where they're at in their own journey, um, around teacher workload, teacher retention, teacher wellbeing, and even just thinking about what those numbers look like in a setting as a starting point.
Julie: Yeah, I, and I really liked the end of every chapter is those kind of reflections that I think, again, work on an individual level or work within a kind of organisational context as well. Don't there? So you've got those kind of references of case studies, but you, and this is how it could work, but also those personal reflections and I think that's what makes it really practical and yeah, useful, as you say, wherever you are in kind of, um, your stage of the journey.
Julie: Um, one of the ideas that I think comes across really, really strongly, and I think it's maybe's where we are getting to in the conversation around wellbeing, is the way that you describe wellbeing more as the end result rather than something that we provide. I think one of your [00:20:00] lines was wellbeing's not something we can pick up in the supermarket on the way home.
Julie: And it's not like just a byproduct of individual choices. But it is that leadership and organisational culture. Do you think we've got a better understanding today than when you wrote the book? Do you think we've moved on?
Kat: I hope so. Yeah. I, I actually, I think I put a LinkedIn post to Mark like the, you know, number of years and I think where we've moved on as a sector and try and capture some of those milestone success points, you know, where talking about retention, lots of schools and trusts have that as part of their, their KPIs and impact that they're measuring themselves against over, you know, how strong is induction, what an induction curriculum looks like, rather than having, you know, you're in for one day, you've got your login and you've had your, your safeguarding training and seen the IT acceptable use policy see you in September.
Kat: So I think we are getting better at that. And there's lots and lots of schools and trusting incredible things around staff [00:21:00] induction, um, and making it really clear to staff. Um, I think it's, you know, scoping, scoping your school in the book, make it really clear to staff what you stand for and what type of organisation you will be like to work for.
Kat: I dunno, if you've come across Andy Wolf, he always talks about, particularly the younger demographic of teachers coming now and saying, what will my life look like if I come and work here? What will the quality of my life be like? And that's so important. We, we know from the CIPD workload report that they release every year, that gives you a good index for the first time in living.
Kat: History, quality of life is more important and flexibility is more important than money like. So I do think the tide is changing for us. I think there's definitely still work to do around showing what that looks like, but I think that. You know, especially around flexible working, that was unheard of. It was almost a model that, oh, we just can't work with that in education because we have some children in some classrooms at dedicated times.
Kat: So flexible working is [00:22:00] not for us. And now I think lots of schools and trusts have realised that as an English specialist, this really speaks to me. We have a highly feminised workforce for teaching, but particularly English teaching, if you want to keep good teachers, you, you have to work out how to keep them through the, the trickiness of navigating parenthood and coming back and, you know, working out who you are as a, as a person, as a professional person after having that time out.
Kat: So yes, I think that we've made some headway. I absolutely think there's still work that could be done there. Um, but I think we're developing examples all the time of, of how that can look and, and organisations getting really good at sharing practise. You know, Dixon's run their nine day fortnight trial.
Kat: There's lots and lots of work going on in that space for us to understand well, instead of just assuming that we can't do it, what could it look like? How can we be quite dynamic in our thinking as a sector, I think, which is exciting.
Julie: Yeah, I think so. I think it's that it's, as you say, I [00:23:00] think it's, we've got to keep sharing and, and showing people, don't we that lived examples.
Julie: It was all that work with the F ones and the flexible working ambassadors, just to speak to your point on the flexible working, and I've heard so many good experiences, but I still come across the, the kind of mindset, it can't be done, it can't be done in this school. It can't be done because, so, you know, I think it's where we share that good practise, isn't it?
Julie: And, and we can keep doing that and highlighting that. Um, I just wanna pick up on the, this idea of, um, this highly feminised workshop, uh, workshop. See, look, there's the one brain cell coming through. Um, this workforce, you, you mentioned there about identity and maternity, but you actually wrote this book, um, stop talking about wellbeing when you were on maternity leave.
Julie: Is that correct?
Kat: Yeah, I mean, it just makes me tired thinking about that now. So, yeah, so my, uh, my second child, I dunno what I [00:24:00] was thinking. Uh, my second child, we were renovating a house, so I couldn't really do anything in the evening. 'cause I was normally just, we were living out of one room. And so what I would do every night is sit down for an hour and I would always write a thousand words.
Kat: And if they were rubbish words or brilliant words, it was anybody's guess. But I would always write a thousand words every night, um, until the book was done. And somebody says to me, you do that, you know, and, and in, in a year you've got a book, uh, in a half a year. Sorry, you've got a book. So. Yeah, that was kind of my intention.
Kat: I'd always sit down, do half an hour of just kind of research and reading and then write my thousand words and we ended up where we ended up. But for me, I think the book, was it Ted was my second child, I'd been through the process that many women go through of having a child of just work, like coming out the other side and you're like, who am I?
Kat: And does my brain still work? Um, am I still capable of, you know, adding value in an adult space that isn't just going to playgroup [00:25:00] every Wednesday and having a chat about whatever, you know, vegetable you've like mashed up or what vegetable your child will or won't eat, or you know, what milestone they have or haven't hit.
Kat: And I just wanted to find a way to continue to engage my brain with some of these things that were important and, and leverage the thought time as well. Because, you know, you speak to lots of teachers and leaders that like, I can't give deep thought to something until I've got the head space to do it.
Kat: And sometimes school. Working in schools doesn't allow you that thinking space, or we work at such a rapid pace, we're 180 miles an hour that you kind of hit the holidays. And almost like I talk about it in the book of like this holiday fatigue, you spend the first two weeks just working out who you are as a person again.
Kat: So, you know, for me there's huge sentimental value to the book because not only was it to share something with the sector around what we might think about or, or what we might do differently around looking after [00:26:00] teachers, but it was also my way of just keeping my brain working, uh, uh, you know, at a time where I was kind of figuring out how to be a parent again, uh, you know, with my eldest being nine years old.
Kat: So it definitely been a while for me to kind of remember how to get to grips with that. So it was my way of, I suppose, like, yeah, just, just staying engaged with a profession that I really, really loved.
Julie: Yeah, I love that. It's interesting because I was talking to somebody a few weeks ago, a fairly new teacher, well he'd been in, in the profession four or five years, and he was talking about actually teacher identity and trying to learn who he was as a teacher, but actually that identity sheds doesn't it, in various different guises, like as you said, you were trying to understand who you were as a parent, again, understand who you were when you weren't at work, and then, and that is actually what, what we do have to always be reassessing and, and reevaluate.
Julie: And it's just interesting that that kind of idea has come up a few times recently. I think it's just a really interesting idea to explore
Kat: you change as a [00:27:00] person. So I'm a very different parent and I've got three boys. Um, I had max 14 months after Ted, and, and I'm a very different parent to the younger two than I was going through the process at like 27 with, with my eldest, but I also wasn't a, wasn't a teacher when I had my eldest, you know, I engaged with the MTPT project who are incredible charity and do some really amazing work.
Kat: I was receiving coaching, fully funded coaching during that maternity leave. That really helped me kind of get the confidence to put that book together and. A lot of that going back is almost, you feel like you, everybody else has just kind of operated for a year without you. And there's that kind of like up my most vulnerable probably feeling like, well, does it make a difference whether I'm here or not?
Kat: 'cause you've all just like continued and everything. The world has kept turning and you know, what's, what's my contribution coming back in? Whereas with my third child, I was much more assertive and clearer in terms of where I could add value. So [00:28:00] my youngest went to the department for education to have a conversation around curriculum about four weeks old and almost got his nappy changed on a boardroom table 'cause we, you know, couldn't work out where else to, to change him in the, in the DFE offices and you know, and he came along to moderation meetings and he came along to every departmental meeting that was running during maternity leave.
Kat: Um, so that I could carry on attending those as as, because I was in a lead practitioner role at the time. So, and it's different for everybody because there are some parents that rightly so want to just, you know, switch their brain off and dedicate that time in all its entirety to their children. And there are some people that do still want to engage in some degree.
Kat: And it's working out as a, I suppose as a school leader, how you support somebody with some of those conversations before they go on maternity leave or paternity leave to help them navigate that period of time in a way that's comfortable for them and, and will like lead to them coming back in feeling [00:29:00] good and rested and like they've done a good job of both being a parent but also like how they, to what degree they want to engage with the workplace during that time.
Julie: Yeah. And I love what you say there about, and particularly around that first time of going back, I do think there's a sense of like feeling, right? Actually I wasn't as important as I thought I was.
Kat: What do you mean you kept teaching children without me?
Julie: Who knew this could happen.
Kat: People have done this before and after me.
Julie: Well it's definitely so to explore, isn't it? So in terms of kind of one of the central themes that comes through in the book is about that workload, isn't it? And we know that workload is one of the biggest drivers of staff wellbeing. We also know it's one of the reasons why people leave the profession and I think.
Julie: Sort of historically maybes, we've been better at getting people to focus on becoming more resilient and kind of coping as opposed to tackling the work that's [00:30:00] making people feeling well in the first place. So I wonder whether, could you speak to that at all? Could you share your thoughts with, with us around maybes what we need to be doing around law?
Julie: Do you feel like we've shifted at all in that conversation? What are your thoughts?
Kat: Yeah, I mean, it's a really busy time for schools at the moment. We're going through such a significant period of reform. Um, you know, we're, we're just through the first year of a revised inspection framework. We've got the implementation of a new national curriculum coming up.
Kat: We've got a statutory reading test. There's lots and lots of change I think, ahead for schools and trusts at the moment. I think there are three things that I'd probably talk or tend to talk to school leaders about. I think the first is around, um, perceptionist reality. And that can be a bit of a tricky place to navigate, I think, and get comfortable with it.
Kat: As a leader, when you're in school leadership, everyone wants to tell you that everything is fine and you won't always get the honest truth, but, but it's really helpful to lean into listening to [00:31:00] those people that are telling you something isn't quite working or something isn't quite what, you know, something's a bit tricky or there's a pinch point.
Kat: Listening to those people is really, really important. And finding opportunities, I think to be able to engage with your staff workforce to get an understanding about what their lived reality is like because it will be different from your own. I used to work with a head teacher who met with every member of his team, every member of of staff in the autumn for 15 minutes just to hear how was last year?
Kat: Um, what are you excited about or nervous about for this year? And what professional development do you need? And that's hugely powerful, not just in terms of knowing your team, but also getting a sense of some of the patterns and trends and maybe where you've implemented something that you think, oh, I did an absolutely brilliant job of that and it's maybe not landed in the way, or it's mutated in a way that you didn't anticipate.
Kat: So I think that perception is reality is really, really important. Um, because you need to have a [00:32:00] baseline to know what people are struggling with and where the particular pinch points are. I think the second bit is around communication. I think that we work in such a time, poor. Sector that there is sometimes a need to, I need to get everything out.
Kat: I mean, it's very, very Armageddon sometimes at the end of term where, you know, it is like, we're not coming back in September and so everybody tries to communicate everything in the last week and then you end up having to recommunicate it because of the lack of rental. So I think that how schools can think really intentionally about their communication to staff, how they, you know, I, I worked with the school a little while ago who wanted to really invest in middle leadership development and make sure their middle leaders were empowered to run strategy for their team to manage workload.
Kat: They were doing a big piece around feedback and marking, and when asked the question around. Well, how do you communicate with this group of people? And they say, oh, we, we run a 15 minute briefing once every six weeks, once every half term. And I said, well, that's, you know, you, [00:33:00] you've gotta start with the mechanisms.
Kat: Like you've gotta start with where are you going to bring people together? And, and to tell them what, like how are you going to develop this bunch of brilliant human beings to develop your, your teachers? So that communication piece isn't just how you communicate, but h how are you bringing people together?
Kat: And, you know, I speak in the book about working parties are a really good mechanism to do that. If you've identified a particular area, I don't try and do everything. Pick a particular area that your staff perception is telling you is difficult for them and drive a, a kind of task and finish group. That means that you've got lots of people kind of around a persistent problem, working collaboration on that.
Kat: I think the final piece that is very pertinent at the moment is around change management. I think we have a habit unfortunately in education where we go, this new thing is coming, so we're just going to like the picture of the stones on the beat. We're just gonna put that on top and we're going to see if it stays.
Kat: Instead [00:34:00] of having a think about like what needs to be removed from the pile of stones, what's the thing that actually we feel is really well embedded or we've been really successful at that we can probably just put a pin in next year and everything is going to be about, um, about the new thing or the thing to make sure that it doesn't feel overwhelming.
Kat: I, I talk to leaders. We, we do a lot of rise work in kind of Windsor economy trust, and I talk to a lot of leaders around what's your strap line for next academic year? Because that enables you to say to your staff, I've said this is our strap line. So for example, we, we've talked a lot in the summer term with our leaders around best September ever.
Kat: So everything has been about the best September we've ever had. What's your strap line for next academic year? Because if you are talking about anything outside of that thing and that priority, it enables your staff to hold you to account and say, actually you said that was the most important thing.
Kat: It's really powerful because it means that everyone has a collective sense of purpose and it means that you can [00:35:00] mitigate against lots of crazy new things coming down the line over the academic year. And most importantly, I think it helps you not look too silly when you say, on the 1st of September, this is the most important thing, and then by January you're almost having to say, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, that was, this is the more important thing.
Kat: Instead it just holds everybody to account and it gives everybody a shared understanding, a shared language of the thing that you want them to give their attention to and therefore drive resource and people's time in, in the right place. Um, so yeah, that'd be kind of, I think my advice. To school leaders at the moment who are thinking quite carefully about workload.
Julie: Yeah, I love that. And, and I've worked with a lot of schools who kind of implement that key tweak, ditch sort of activity as a collective. And I think that in order to then bring out whatever that strap line or focuses again, is just that kind of collective sense of purpose, isn't it? Whilst [00:36:00] recognising that everything can't be important.
Kat: Yeah. And I think like, I mean, we're huge at Winslow Academy. Trust about collaboration, co-construction, inclusion are our two golden threads of our strategy. And but you have to make that tangible in terms of what that means for people. And so I'll always talk to my team around what does this look like for an ECT?
Kat: Like, view it through the lens of a new to organisation teacher. So coming to work for us, but they may have been a teacher for 15 years. 'cause that's, that's got a nuance to itself or a new teacher to profession. Think about the cognitive load of those, those two key pocket demographics of staff. If it feels unmanageable for them, we've not got it right.
Kat: We we're asking too much of people. So it is always a nice way of just keeping yourself in check when there's a real danger to come in every half term and go, right, I've had eight hour's sleep a week. What, what, what new thing are we going to do? It ke it keeps that in check, I think. And yeah, and just keeps things [00:37:00] manageable for people and predictable.
Kat: I think the one thing that we're, again, not always very consistent on is predictability. Uh, you know, you want to come in on a Monday and know what your workload looks like and that you can get into a rhythm and work with that around your own caring responsibilities, your own life, the things that you want to do so that you actually have a life instead of.
Kat: I'm coming in on a Monday and I don't really know what meetings I have, what demands might be placed upon me, what deadlines I have that someone's going to give me a deadline on Thursday for the Friday. And that's, that's really tricky for people to navigate.
Julie: Yeah. 'cause I think there's so much, isn't there that happens within the classroom or happens whatever role you're working in that can't be controlled and isn't predictable due to human behaviour.
Julie: Like, you know, emergencies will happen, safeguarding instance will happen. A child, you know, there'll always be that. So I suppose, you know, what you are suggesting is to keep that for one of record, that framework, that skeleton, that actually that remains predictable and in control. And [00:38:00] then that allows for that variation, doesn't it?
Julie: That inevitably is gonna happen throughout each working week. I think that's super helpful to kind of summarise it under those kind of three key areas. Uh, and obviously you speak to kind of a lot of that in the book. One of the other things that you talk about in the book, and it's fairly early on, it's encouraging readers to connect with their why.
Julie: Why is it important to start there?
Kat: I think schools rightly so, are very, very different. I think we have a real diverse mix across the education sector about the type of school that you, you might work with and for. And that's, you know, from down to, I have particular friends and colleagues who work in faith schools because that's something that's very deeply connected to their sense of purpose, you know, their, their spiritual purpose.
Kat: But equally so, you know, I was saying before, I, I will always work for schools that serve significant levels of disadvantage because of the fact that I feel quite strongly about. This idea of parity of education. But schools have very different mission statements [00:39:00] and very different intentions for the, the communities and, and, um, and the, the children that they serve.
Kat: Rightly so. I think finding and every school is not for everybody, and that's absolutely fine. So I think there's two aspects there. One is how schools can communicate who they are, what they stand for, what they think about curriculum, what they think about workload, what they think about the type of people that they want to work, um, at their school.
Kat: The more explicit they can be with that, the better for teachers to then consider what's important to them and how that's going to fuel them. I suppose in terms of like being really fired up to come to work every morning, if you, if you align your, your sense of purpose, your, your moral purpose, your spiritual purpose, whatever that may be with the organisation that you work for, you are going to feel far happier because otherwise what tends to happen is that somebody might not have a clear sense of that come and work at a school and it's not the [00:40:00] place for them and it, and, and that that's absolutely fine, you know, but the, the, the cleverer we can be about working out what's important to us and that informing our decisions about where we want to work.
Kat: Everywhere I work understands that I have three children and I'm really unapologetic about that. And I'm not going to say sorry for not going to a meeting at half past four because I have children. Uh, I'm, I'm just going to say I, I need to do that thing. And so that's really important to me. And so the people that I work for and with all understand that and, and understand that that's, that's deeply important to me being able to be successful and I'm successful in my role because of those people understanding that and, and aligning with, um, yeah, with my sense of purpose.
Kat: So I think figuring that out quite early in your career with the nuance that it will change as your life changes, as you get older and you, you change as a human being is a really helpful starting point to working out where you want to work. I think there's a bit of a mad [00:41:00] rush in ITTI definitely remember kind of coming in after Christmas and it was a, do you have a job?
Kat: Do you not have a job like Rush from, from the ITT cohort And I. Almost wish that somebody had delivered a workshop around like, what kind of place do you want to work and how are you going to figure that out? And when you are walking around a school, what might you, what might you ask of the person showing you around and what do you want to know and how long have the teachers been there?
Kat: And how come, what, why, why have they stayed working there for the longest serving? And that gives you a really good sense as to the type of face that you're going to be working for.
Julie: Agreed. And I think that there's kind of work to be done as the individual to understand those values, isn't it? There's, there's kind of more of that self-reflection.
Julie: Um, and I certainly know that the book that I, I feel like I'm giving it a shameless plug again, but the book I just contributed to chapter two. There is a chapter, I can't remember who wrote it. I wanna say race snake, but forgive me if you're listening, whoever wrote it and I'm, you know, not incredible, [00:42:00] not crediting you, but she does a chapter around choosing the right school for you.
Julie: And I think for, as you say, a an early career teacher, because I think the danger is if you are in such a rush to get that job is not recognising that not every school is going to be the right fit. That doesn't mean being a teacher or working in education is not the right thing. And I think when we're, you know, we know there's quite a mass exodus after two or three years for early career teachers and, and maybe if we could get more people to recognise it's about finding the right school as opposed to thinking you don't wanna work in education.
Julie: And as you say, that's okay, that's okay to want to work in this environment, not in that environment. But then it also falls on the school, which I think you said earlier, doesn't it, about being very clear, what are our values? Yeah. This is what's important.
Kat: Yeah. And I think your strongest schools will have really well implemented exit interviews where they find out [00:43:00] information from those colleagues leaving about how well that's communicated, but also what they, what they might have a kind of blind spot on, I suppose in terms of, again, coming back to pinch points, calendars, what that lived experience was like for the teacher.
Kat: There's a friction there sometimes in terms of like perception is reality, but you know, understanding what that reality has been for um, an ex team member of staff is quite insightful sometimes in terms of changing practise and, and drawing those themes together over time. So it's interesting data I think for a leadership team.
Julie: Yeah, I think it's also interesting to do stay interviews and work out who are the people that stay in y because I think that helps with the sense of understanding the culture and what the school's all about, doesn't it? And then to be able to, to reinforce those messages. Yeah, definitely think so. Um, you know, we had a quick chat before we started and um, you said that you thought if you were writing a version two of [00:44:00] this stop six years on, firstly it will be shorter.
Julie: Um, but that's just 'cause you've got even less time than when you wrote it. If, if there was a stop talking about Wellbeing 2.0, would there be any new chapters? Is there anything that you'd take out? What are your thoughts?
Kat: Yeah, I, I think my time, so at the time I was a lead practitioner, uh, in a local school, a school that my son then went to actually afterwards.
Kat: Um, and I hadn't yet stepped into senior leadership, so, you know, I re I remember my most disparaging review was like, this is just like having a go at senior leadership teams. And I, I found that really interesting, but I kind of reflected on that in terms of, yeah, I haven't, you know, I haven't yet embarked into senior leadership and trust leadership, so I'd probably think about that and, and, and think about how I would position some of the learning of the last however many years and kind of applying that, because I think there'd probably be [00:45:00] something around like how you create a workload strategy.
Kat: I think that's something that I've probably gained from working with schools and trusts since that time. In terms of like end to end project, how do you, over the course of a 12 to 18 month period construct that, what are some of the things that you think about how do you get a good baseline? Because this isn't really like publicly available data, so how do schools think about capturing internal baseline data and, and just like surveying staff over a period of time that isn't common set to practise.
Kat: So probably around something at strategic level that would support leadership teams. I think there's also something in there around sensible implementation. Um, I think when you have a senior team of maybe eight or 10 leaders who have all got their own remits, their own priorities coming together in July to plan for the year ahead, there's how do you create a sense of commonality so that when you go out as a team, you are not creating inadvertent consequences of [00:46:00] actually this thing is competing with this other thing and this other thing and this other thing.
Kat: And for the teacher it feels like, oh my gosh, I've got eight new things that I need to think about next year instead of how do we like create a strategy that's really sensible and speaks to everybody and everybody understands their role in it. So yeah, definitely something around creating a workload strategy, um, how you do that really well.
Kat: And yeah, something around implementation and change management. The other thing that I'd really want to do is just capture all of the case studies that I think that, you know, or some of the brilliant examples that we've got over the last six years because yeah, I definitely think we've made some real headway there and I think how we can share that and just engage teachers and leaders with some of that, um, exemplification so they can think about what it looks like in their setting, um, and just shine a light on some of the organisations that are doing brilliant work in that area.
Julie: Cash, I can feel book number five. [00:47:00]
Kat: I I, I, I have a meeting with a publisher tomorrow about something else entirely. You already asked this question and, uh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm not sure my children would forgive me or, or my house if I signed on to anything, but yeah, I definitely, I definitely, I think I said before.
Kat: We obviously started recording Jean, like, um, stop talking about Wellbeing was like my fourth, my fourth child and lit drivers is my fifth child, which, you know, it's the book that I was earlier on in my career as a writer and it's probably the one that even though it has huge sentimental value, is very, very different to how I would write it now.
Kat: So it's probably, I'm probably gonna have to come back to it at some point because it will niggle at me otherwise. Um, so maybe, maybe when I'm thinking about retiring, um, but I'll see what I can do.
Julie: Well, I don't wanna take anything away from this original edition though. 'cause as I started, you know, and said it's brilliant, the, the takeaway.
Julie: Anybody [00:48:00] who knows me knows what I'm like and, and offend of Stick and post-it notes all over books. But, um, I've literally got them on every other page as I've shown you and waved it in your direction. So yeah, even with, without those kind of little tweaks, it doesn't take anything away from it being a really relevant, still really current book.
Julie: And I would argue still ahead of its time to where we are in the education space, I still think we've got a lot of sort of work to be done and, and this book could be part of, of that picture, I think for, for organisations. So a couple of things that you've talked about there, Kat, that I'd just like to, um, pick up on before we finish one, um, lit drive.
Julie: So you said Lit Drive is your fifth child and talk to us about Lit Drive. Tell us what it is and in, in some ways, maybe it's how it also is speaking to the wellbeing conversation.
Kat: Yeah, it was like a spinoff, uh, for, so because I decided that I just wasn't busy enough during that maternity leave, the other thing that I [00:49:00] did was found Lit Drive.
Kat: Um, so Lit Drive is a charitable organisation that supports the subject specific professional development of English teachers. It was derived from a group of incredible English teachers who wanted to share exemplary practise, not as the way to do it, but one way that you could do it. And so we started as a resource bank and we've grown now to a significant degree of serving thousands of English teachers across the country with subject specific pd.
Kat: Um, we worked with a number of leading organisations, British Library. Um, we've worked with office previously in terms of their research, um, their subject research series. Uh, lots of other people, um, poetry by our NTPT or University per Pearson. So lots and lots of people around how we can bring just really good quality exemplification to English teachers.
Kat: The strap line, we're just moving into our new five year strategy. Our previous strap line was better balance. So very much aimed at how do we help reduce the workload for English teachers. We know it's a highly feminised [00:50:00] workforce, English teaching, but also the marking and workload that comes with English teaching.
Kat: And the fact that I will often speak about, I can work 15 years in education. I could still walk into a school to teach in September and and be given a curriculum for English of books and texts that I've never taught before. So there's a nuanced English teaching I think that's quite pertinent to workload and.
Kat: The thing that we try to do at Lit Drive is not just provide exemplification, but also really solid subject communities so that people can learn from each other, make friends with other English teachers, hear about the common challenges that they're going through, and you know, and let other people know what, how they're tackling those challenges as a way to, yeah, support the profession.
Julie: It's that reducing workload, it's collaboration, it's all of the things that feed into good wellbeing, isn't it? So it absolutely is part of that whole conversation. It sounds absolutely brilliant. I love it. And my second question would be, can you tell us just a little bit [00:51:00] more about your other, your other books, are they Children's six, seven, and eight or are they, do they not reach that, that status?
Kat: Well, so I, I wrote, I co-authored symbiosis, my second book during lockdown, uh, because stop talking about Wellbeing came out and we had the book launch in the February and then we went straight into lockdown in the march. So it was lovely 'cause it was just connecting online with so many people that were sharing their experiences of reading the book.
Kat: But yeah, obviously wasn't the ideal. Um, but, you know, a really interesting time for us all and sharing some of those reflections was really lovely. So, yeah. So then Clara and I wrote symbiosis, the curriculum in the Classroom, which was a book around empowering teachers and leaders to engage with their role in curriculum.
Kat: That curriculum isn't something that's done to teachers, that it's the very bread and butter of, of why they came into teaching in the first place because they love their subject and want to, and somebody did that for them as a teacher. So passing that on. Um, and a big part of that book [00:52:00] was around professional development and the role of the teacher, as you know, we called it, you know, you are the steward of, of the curriculum.
Kat: You are the person that's deciding when that child is 30. And someone says like, what, what is design and technology at school that you are defining what their experience of that was? Um, you know, and so that's huge. That was the best thing in the world about teaching. So yeah, that was, that was absolutely fab.
Kat: And Claire's very dear friends, made it very, very easy, um, to, to kind of, uh, navigate a very dyslexic English teacher through the, the co-writing process. Um, and then I contributed, this was a really, you know, career defining moment for me personally. It was absolute privilege, uh, contributed to borough's curriculum in a changing world with some incredible people that I've admired all my career.
Kat: And got to write a, a chapter for that, celebrating 50 years of Berra, which was just, you know, that blew me away when I was asked to, to [00:53:00] do that. And then finally, I've, I've just, um, I've got, um, reviving rhetoric, uh, book coming out next month with the brilliant Dr. Arlene Holmes Henderson, who is absolutely incredible.
Kat: Um, professor over at University of Durham. Really deeply involved with Classics for All, and we've put together a bit of an argument and an implementation plan for leaders around why rhetoric is really important at the moment to teach children and how. In a world of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, being manipulated through the multimodal press that we currently have, how English teachers can really support with that through and, and wider school.
Kat: So we look at lots of case studies for primary and secondary to make sure that our young people are eyes wide open to some of the ways in which they will potentially be manipulated through some of the attacks and speeches and, you know, individuals that they, that they [00:54:00] encounter through, um, through their life and how they can, by demystifying that process, make really informed decisions about who they vote for or who they endorse or you know, who they're, who they're interested in, who's valuable to them as, as kind of standing members of society.
Julie: Sounds brilliant. It sounds essential reading.
Kat: Thank you. Yeah, I'm really, really proud of it. Arlene's incredible. So
Julie: yeah, excited to read that one. Um, brilliant. So amongst all of that, Kat, I've got two final questions. My last one is, what do you do for your own wellbeing? What does that look like?
Kat: Yeah, so I swim loads.
Kat: Um, uh, my health wasn't great kind of late last year and I used to run a lot and I can't really run as much anymore. So I've got into swimming. I'm currently swimming 21 miles in June and July for mid cancer. Um, so I've just hit 16 miles I think with a little bit to go. So yeah, all go. I've got 11 days.
Kat: Um, so yeah, I swim a lot. I open more to swim a lot. Um, I suffer with migraines a [00:55:00] lot, so that just is like the ultimate antidote of just throw me in cold water. So yeah, I'm an absolute nightmare with my partner. I'm constantly sending him swimming apps of like, where you can just find random rivers to swim and all sorts of places, or dragging him to a reservoir or, yeah.
Kat: So, yeah. But he's, you know, he is fully on board now. He's, he's as enthusiastic as me. Um, so I tend to do that a lot. I read a lot. I don't watch a lot of television, so I tend to, yeah, just, um, write and read a lot. Um, and probably, yeah, just, just quite introspective. I think I'm always quite interested to work out what I've learned and surround myself with really clever people so I can learn.
Kat: So yeah, you're, for me, water more than most of the time, so
Julie: it, yeah, it's clearly that love of learning is absolutely ingrained in you just from everything you've said from your career journey and is still there. You can see how much it lights you up and you get excited by it and, [00:56:00] um, it's wonderful and wonderful that you are using it to give back to education, you know, using it in such a positive way.
Julie: So thank you for all that you've contributed. I'm sure there's still loads more to come, Kat. Um. We always ask our guests the same question to finish with. And that question is, um, just a little piece of wisdom. Just say whatever comes into your head. But if you could offer or suggest one kind thing that our listeners could go and do for themselves today, what would it be?
Kat: I think connect with somebody that you haven't spoken to in a while, because I think that, I was having a conversation earlier on today and somebody said that reading a book or sharing a book has become more and more of a political act because we're so in our phones, watching other people live their lives on YouTube, Netflix, everything else like this.
Kat: Kind of like passivity of, of like learn, you know, uh, engaging with watching other people live their lives and [00:57:00] do other things. Finding the time to be present in the moment and, you know, giving your time fully to another human being is an act of benevolence, I think. Not just for you, but for that person as well, whoever that might be.
Julie: Love that Kat. That's gorgeous. Being present, connecting, but being fully within that connection and arguably that's exactly what you've done this morning. Does that sound a bit cheesy? But it is. You've kind lent into it and we really appreciate it. I really appreciate that.
Kat: You've helped me tick the box today, gv by connecting.
Julie: Yeah. Honestly. Um, thank you so much. Thank you for giving your time at the end of a busy term. I hope the next few weeks involve throwing yourself into some lakes and we look forward to reading your new book when it comes out as well. So exciting times. Lovely. Thank you so much, Kat.
Kat: No, thanks so much, so much, Julie.
Kat: It's been a real [00:58:00] pleasure.