July 29, 2025 • 21 mins
They talk a lot about culture in schools/education.
What’s really driving teacher burnout, student disengagement, and poor behaviour in schools? In this compelling conversation, I’m joined by Adam Voigt—former principal, education thought leader, and founder of Real Schools—to explore why culture, not curriculum, is the true heart of great education. From phone bans to shocking increases in sexualised behaviour, we unpack the most pressing issues in today’s classrooms—and how families can play a vital role in shaping school culture for the better.
KEY POINTS:
- Why phone bans work—and the student-led secret to getting buy-in from kids
- The disturbing rise of sexualised behaviour and harassment in schools
- Teacher burnout: why it’s getting worse and how to turn it around
- How shame, not badness, drives poor behaviour—and what restorative practices offer instead
- The 3 consistent challenges teachers face: student behaviour, workload, and parent interactions
- Why building school culture is the most powerful thing a school can do
- How culture improves outcomes for students, teachers, and parents alike
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“We need to reclaim how we work—not just the classroom. When schools focus on culture, every stakeholder benefits.” – Adam Voigt
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Restoring Teaching by Adam Voigt – Free eBook, audiobook & print-at-cost version
- Adam’s organisation: Real Schools
- Happy Families resources for families and schools: happyfamilies.com.au
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Be a culture builder at your child’s school. Ask the principal or teacher, “What’s our school’s culture—and how can I support it?”
- Talk to your child about phone use—and help them practice face-to-face connection at home.
- Model respectful behaviour, especially around teachers. Show your child that respect is foundational, not optional.
- Challenge inappropriate content and conversations early. Don’t wait for school to step in—your voice matters first.
- Share Adam’s book with your school’s leadership team. It’s a small gesture that could shift the culture in big ways.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Adam Vot is a repeat visitor to the Happy Families podcast.
Why because he's one of the most sensible, one of
the most interesting, and one of the most pragmatic voices
when it comes to how we engage with schools as
parents in Australia. If you are a parent or a teacher,
this is one of those must listen interviews. Stay with us,
(00:27):
good day and welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Real
Parenting Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
My name is doctor Justin Coulson and I'm absolutely wrapped
to have the CEO and founder of Real Schools operating
in more than three hundred schools around the country. Now,
Adam vod with me to talk about the things that
apply to us as parents, but also the stuff that
affects teachers. We're going to be talking about phone bands
(00:48):
in schools, overt sexual behavior in schools, teacher burnout, and
also a new book that he's got out that is
available for every teacher in the country. I think you're
going to want to listen to this conversation. There's so
much good stuff to discuss. Adam, Thanks for being with me.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
My pleasure, Chastam, we have an injury like that, mate,
I'm happy to talk for hours.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'll try and keep it.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Sure, you're a tvcifer, stay, You've been on all of
the big shows, and people keep on ringing you because
you've got so many sensible things to say. Let's start
with what I think is probably a bit of a
softball one, but it's worthy of conversation because not every
school system is on board yet, but essentially state run schools,
government run schools around the country have unanimously over the
last year or two gotten on board with banning telephones
(01:30):
in school settings. So from nine to three, no telephones
if you're at school in a public system. What have
you seen in terms of the results around this.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
First of all, the results are undoubtedly a win. So
that doesn't mean that it's one hundred percent win, and
it doesn't mean that it's without problem being able to
tackle something like this. But when you consider where we
came from, but almost universally across the country, we thought
it was impossible to.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Ban mobile phones.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I actually write an article that was published in the
Age about six years ago where I said, I think
that we just have to accept that every kid's going
to walk around with technology in their pocket, And then
had to write another one about twelve months ago where
I confessed my wrongness, where I had to say that
this is actually the evidence is it's just having too
much negative impact on our young people. The evidence is
(02:20):
that they need a break and that school is a
great time to be able to get that break. So
the challenge is how do we do it? And I
think if we looked at the spectrum of where it's
worked and where it hasn't.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
We would see that there are schools that it's worked.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Okay, there's a handful of schools where it hasn't worked,
and there are schools where it's worked exceedingly well and
exceedingly well in terms of it being reported positively by
all stakeholders, especially the kids. And so you know, when
I look at schools that have done this really well,
I think about one of our partner schools in Western
(02:58):
Sydney whose principal really clever guy. And when the directive
came through, because that's how it landed, we will ban
mobile phones. His first step was to bring in his
student leaders and he asked them to all bring a
friend who they considered to be one of the cool kids.
And he told this group of kids in his office,
none of the communication around this mobile phone band which
(03:21):
we have to do, none of it is going to
come from me or from our staff.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It's all coming from you guys.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So you tell me how do we get this done
with parents, with staff, and with kids in a way
that has us all feel like we've got ownership of it.
And he's one school. That's one school that I would
say is like at the very pointy end of schools
where this has worked well and where his students are saying,
we love it.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
That's such a great story. I love the student led
empowerment there. Adam, My read of whatever research has been
released indicates that there's been a seeming reduction in bullying.
There's more more high quality concentration happening, and better learning
happening in classrooms. Academic achievement appears to be on the up.
All of these things are being pushed onto this school band.
(04:10):
What else have you seen in the data? And is
there anything that's sort of really worth celebrating across the
board even though it's not a resounding success everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, I think the thing that's worth celebrating is the
first steps. So I don't think we should think that
this is going to dramatically improve naplan or ATR results
or anything like that. But I think that what we
can do is say that we can have real confidence
given the research. Why people are Jonathan Hyde and Sherry
Turkle and Genequenji and people who have all been saying
for years that this is actually changing young people in
the wrong direction. That I think what we should be
(04:41):
excited about is what happens to the students who say,
in year seven now and when they get the next
six years of practice being in the company of other
people face to place, rather than staring downwardly at a phone,
when they have postures in their life that they practice
that don't look miserable. If you think about the way
we look justin when we look at a phone, we
(05:03):
actually strike a pose of kind of putting our chin
down to our chest, which is the pose you make
with your body when you're miserable, when you're sad. But
when you think about what you look like when you're
actually talking to another person, we take a more happy
disposition when we're doing that. And so I think there's
incredibly while yes, I think we're seeing some green shoots now,
(05:24):
which we should be happy about. I think what we
should be happy about is the kind of young people
that will develop in six years time if they get
all the practice they need about being in that awkward
argie bargie sometimes uncomfortable, often happy conversation space with other people,
the kind of young people they'll turn into, which is
that's what I'm more excited about.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, I love that. I want to pick up on
another tech issue here. In fact, there's a couple of
different places we could go, but I want to talk
about sexualized behavior in schools. This is in the news
every other day. It's kids from let's say grade six
through usually to about grade ten, and it's unfortunately almost
always boys. Collective Shout and Advocate Organization for Women and
(06:07):
Girls released a report recently called the Sexual Harassment of
Teachers Report. Teachers across the country are saying that they're
being subjects to explicit and inappropriate comments and groans and
moans from boys as young as grade four and grade five.
We're seeing stories constantly about grade five, grade six, grade
(06:28):
seven boys, eight and grade nine boys who are setting
up chats and they're sharing racist and misogynist and anti
semitic memes, and sharing child abuse material and hardcore pornography.
I mean, the stuff is it's toe curling, it's breath taking,
that the world's gone this way and that our kids
so young are being so affected by it. In terms
(06:50):
of this sexualized behavior in school, what are you seeing? Firstly,
to the degree that you're comfortable sharing, But secondly, and
perhaps the bigger part of this question, what are we
supposed to do about it?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, it's that's that's second part of it is probably
the big question, because I think, like you justin I'm
seeing I'm seeing big problems, and I worry not only
like you said, boys are overrepresented in this data, and
also boys who you know, the boys that are not
they're not They're not just our kids who typically struggle
at school.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
There are our kids in those you know, what we.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Might call exclusive or elite schools, you know, who have
all the advantages but still falling for this kind of
I guess moral decay in the way that they're in
the way that they're being built. So I get concerned
for them because I think, what kind of young man
do you turn into? If you think early that that
at a formative stage that that's okay, or that it's
(07:47):
not only okay, but it's advantageous. And then I systemically,
if we don't do some take some action on this,
then I think that we put our workforce in schools
at enormous risk. So we will already have a national
teacher shortage crisis in the vicinity of thousands of teachers
that were short to run the program. Seventy five percent
(08:08):
of Australia's teachers are female. And if we create a
situation where we're driving them out of the profession at
a time that they have options, they can go and
do something else, you know, where they're not going to
be attacked by this.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I've got to jump in on this for just a sec,
just on that workforce issue. Writing this book about boys
at the moment, and the latest start that I've seen
coming out of the universities is that now for every
ten girls who graduate with a degree in education, there
are only between two and three boys men graduating with
degrees in education. So the numbers are getting worse, not better.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yep, on both sides of the gender of the gender equation.
Because the one thing about this kind of whether you
call it toxic maxculinity or anything else, is that. What
it does is it sexualizes the workforce. So it means
that we see teaching as a female job. So our
males don't want to get the barbs at the pub
about you know, what, are you a kiddy? Or you know,
(09:01):
when you're working with women all day and all that
kind of stuff. They don't want to get that, so
they're discouraged. But on the reality side of it, we
can get women entering the workforce as teachers who very
very quickly go hey, this isn't a workplace I'm safe in,
This isn't a workplace that's good for me on out
And so as parents, I think we're going to go, okay,
ask your question justin what are.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
We going to do about it?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, and which for me is about going all
the way back to saying how do we raise better kids?
How do we raise kids with this capability to understand
that their behavior has impact positively and negatively on other people,
which means building for them a healthier relationship with the
shame of that comes when they do something wrong. So
(09:44):
what we see in kids typically is is kids who
respond four ways negatively when they do the wrong thing.
They often either attack other people, so they not my fault,
I blame someone else, They attack themselves. I think every
teacher's heard a kids say I'm stupid. Way of making
it static and they can't improve, Yes you can. We've
got to hold that optimism for them. Sometimes they withdraw.
(10:06):
So we see this in all the stakeholders in schools.
Every teacher's seen a kid who makes a mistake throws
their book on the ground and storms out of the
classroom because they just can't handle the shame of falling short.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
But every teacher also was thought about chuck and asiki
after a bad day, and a lot of parents have
thought about not shown up for a parent teacher interview.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Absolutely, in shame, we just go like a puff of smoke,
We disappear.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And there's this avoidant behavior which goes to this overly
sexualized behavior that we're seeing in young people a lot
of the time as well. They just don't want to
feel the shame, so they do something else that kind
of distracts them or numbs them from that feeling. They're
all counterproductive. So what we need at a very early
age is for young people to see and recognize that
feeling of falling short, you know, either by their own
(10:53):
doing or just for who they are, and to respond
to it productively. So teaching young people to resolve the
shame of all in short, rather than to do something
negative with it. It's the long handser, but for me,
it's the only way we build kids who are capable
of resisting the urges that they're currently falling for.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Adam, let's switch this to teachers for a moment. For
the last several years, there's been a lot of noise
made about teacher burnout, more teachers wanted to leave the
profession than ever before. I'm not seeing this receding in
the data. I'm actually seeing it accelerating. Teachers being sexually harassed,
teachers being exhausted, more demands being placed on teachers in
terms of the system, the curriculum, the schools, and parents
(11:38):
expecting more of them as well. Number one, what are
you seeing? And again the follow up is how do
we arrest this decline?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Really interesting when you look at the teacher well being
data out that's out there that there's nothing all that
new in it. We've known for probably twenty years or so.
The top three it begins pacts on teachers. Number one
is student behavior, so how they can handle young people
who are changing and their strategies aren't working anymore. The
(12:08):
second one is workload. We made teaching so much about
compliance and less about actually just creating a young environment
where young people grow. We've even't teachers no time to
just talk to and get to know their students. And
then the third thing that stresses them is issues with parents,
and it's driving them out of the profession. Teacher's got
a brief window at the start of COVID where, due
(12:30):
to lockdown's parents were going, oh my goodness, I didn't
know teaching was this hard. I really appreciate the teachers,
but when the kids went back to school, it got worse.
So it's like we PopEd that bruise, and that worries me. Well,
worries me just as much now is that. I had
a conversation with the politician recently. You said, I just
think that when it comes to solving the teacher shortage crisis,
(12:51):
we're probably going to have to.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Rely on AI.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And for me, removing the social realm from what we
view quality learning to should be something that frightens everyone
with a kid. So we need to actually take on
this monumental task. And we talked about mobile phone bands.
We can do monumental tasks. We need to take on
this monumental task. Say, how do we create an environment
(13:17):
where we value education in our country for our kids,
not just my kid? How do we take the competitive
nature out of it? How do we get it focused
on building good young people for the community, and thereby,
how do we make it a job that is aspirational
to young people in is ten or eleven and twelve
(13:37):
who are making decisions about what they want to do
at YUNI.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So I'm serving you up an opportunity to plug what
you do at real schools on a platter. Here it's
an unscripted, unplanned question. But as I'm listening to what
you're saying, so much of this feels like it comes
down to culture, and culture really does come from the top.
It comes from the leadership. Your work is all about
changing culture. It's all about leadership. Do you see the
same levels of staff attrition, same levels of b and out,
the same stresses in teachers who are working on culture
(14:05):
through the work that you do, all the work that
others do in terms of building stronger cultures and making
schools feel safer and better for people.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Almost a silly answer, nap.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, the schools that do the culture piece right get
benefits for all three stay colder groups. So we've got
a school that we work with, Clarence High School, don't
mind mentioning them in Tasmania, and they've been working with
us for about eighteen months now, so they have not
they had an issue around they wanted to work on
student engagement. One of the outputs that they thought they
(14:36):
could get around it was improved student conduct and behavior
in the school and they thought that one of the
measures of that could be their student suspension data. Now
they've done nothing about changing the threshold for suspension in
that school, so the kind of a watermark for what's
a suspendable offense in the school has not changed. But
eighteen months down the track, sixty percent drop in suspensions, right,
(14:59):
So this is a clear indication that they haven't made
it harder to suspend. They have a sixty percent better
behaved student cohort because they said it's time to work
on the culture and to actually think about the way
that we're interacting with young people and working with parents
to try and get somewhere on it. Then I think
about a school that we've got a new South Wales
called Bermer Public School, so primary school, and the work
(15:22):
that's been done there on building a culture that benefits
the teachers is outstanding in this school. So they now
have a situation where the National School Improvement Partnerships and
Curtin University researched and studied the school and the data
that came back to them about how eighty seven percent,
ninety seven percent, one hundred percent of the staff making
(15:46):
statements about the fact that they feel safe, nurtured, comfortable
at the school that they have no intention to leave
the school. Now comparative to the profession as a whole,
anything that is above ninety percent, and typically for that
is so far above the standard curve, it's ridiculous. You know,
(16:06):
they're not hunting around for teachers. They've got teachers.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Ringing up and saying can we come and.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Work at this school because you know, we've heard the stories,
this is a productive place to work. At the same time,
their NAP plan results are through the roof. You know,
their parents satisfaction data is amazing and their kids but
when surveyed are telling us that the number one thing
that they value about this school is rule clarity. So
(16:33):
this isn't This is a school that basically said, forget
the lists of rules, forget the control stuff. This is
a school that said, let's create an environment where kids
innate goodness can kind of come out of them.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And it does.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And so this system of control and prevention that we're
constantly asking teachers to take on. You know, when I
saw another statement of the paper the other day from
politicians saying it's time for us to crack down and
claim the classroom, I.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Was like, it's going on here.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
You know what, are we some tyrannical leader of a
authoritarian leader of a country trying to take territory off
an enemy.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, no, one.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
We need to reclaim the way we work, not the ground.
You know, work the right way. All benefit, all stakeholders
will benefit. We've got to support teachers to find that
way working.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So when you say this, here's what I'm hearing. You
said that the three biggest challenges that have been consistently
showing up for the two decades student behavior, workload and parents,
and by working on culture, students start to behave better,
which is it's not going to get rid of all
workload issues, but it's going to free up more capacity
so that you can do the work that needs to
be done. And parents aren't going to be on your back.
Why because the kids are actually having a good time
(17:45):
at school. They're glad to be there. So by working
on culture, you get a positive outcome. And yet it's
just so hard to shift culture for so many.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Schools because I guess they don't realize. First one, they
don't know how what culture is. So when they know,
I asked school leg I ask a room full of
five hundred principles, you know, who thinks the culture of
their school is important?
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Everyone puts their hand up.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
And then I'll say, put your hand up if you'd
like to come out in the stage with me and
tell everyone what school culture is.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And so a lot of go down.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So we've got to get clear on what it is,
you know, and we just call it a we just
call it a collective now for behaviors.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I just keep on coming back to this idea of culture.
I mean, the whole conversation really is centered around creating culture,
whether it's around technology, whether it's around sexualized behavior, whether
it's around teachers feeling good or feeling burned out, and
even dealing with parents who can sometimes be pretty demanding
and add a lot of pressure to the lives of
teachers and principles. Let's wrap this up with your treatise
(18:43):
on culture. The new book is called Restoring Teaching, How
working restoratively unleashes the teacher within Adam. You've generously made
an offer to every teacher in Australia. Walk us through
the offer about the book and how it can help them.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
So it's a second edition of something that I wrote
a few years ago. We've definitely upgraded and updated it
to reflect some of these modern challenges that teachers are
facing at the moment.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
We've given it a lay to ten thousand teachers.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
And at the moment you can get a print copy
at cost for us. But there's also an audiobook and
there's nothing weird a justin I don't know if you've
done this then, sitting in a booth and reading your
own book for three.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Days and nine times. I've done it nine times.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, as you find all the typos that you were
convinced weren't there.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, And there's an audio book on audiobook and e
book available completely for free online for any teacher who
wants to read it. We've got Our mission as an
organization at real schools is to transform education in Australia,
which means that we need to be there for any
teacher and this is our way of being there for
them without.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Them having to put their hands in the pocket.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And I get emails all the time from teachers who
say that one a had recently the teacher who told
me that reading it kept during the profession, and.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I'll take that. So the big aim of the book.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Is to to teach teachers this restorative way of working.
And then the second big aime of the book is
to restore the respect that we have for the teaching
profession through giving teachers access to exemplary practice.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, and if parents want to have a look at
it because they're fascinated by the idea of a sortive
practice or what you're talking about, it's available on your website.
So we'll link to that in the show notes and
hopefully some teachers can take advantage of what I think
is an extraordinarily generous offering. I wish, I wish I
could give my book away to every parent in the country. Unfortunately,
my publisher would not.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Want of the joys it.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I'm one of the joys of going self published on
something like that, Justin is that we get to we
get to make these kinds of decisions. So yeah, and
it's really important to us. And so for any parent
out there who might be interested, they can feel very
free to go and get themselves a free copy and
to even drop it into at their local school and
ask if they'd like to have a look.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
That's a great way for a parent to be generous. Adam.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Every time we talk, I walk away feeling real short
and hopeful about what education can be and how things
can work out really well in schools. It's such a
mixed bag in some ways. It just feels like a lottery,
a principal lottery, a teacher lottery on a day to day, months, month,
and certainly a year to year basis for so many families.
And I feel as if you bring a lot of
sense and sensibility to what is often considered the impossible profession.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Thanks so much for the chat, my pleasure, Thank you
very much.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Adam Voyd is the founder and CEO of Real Schools
and the author of Restoring teaching. Like I said, we
will link to that in the show notes. I always
find these conversations so valuable and so helpful. The Happy
Families podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media.
Like I said, check the show notes for everything we've
talked about in relation to Adam and his work. If
you'd like more info about making your family happy, I
(21:43):
have visitors at happyfamilies dot com, dot a u
Adam Vot is a repeat visitor to the Happy Families podcast.
Why because he's one of the most sensible, one of
the most interesting, and one of the most pragmatic voices
when it comes to how we engage with schools as
parents in Australia. If you are a parent or a teacher,
this is one of those must listen interviews. Stay with us,
(00:27):
good day and welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Real
Parenting Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
My name is doctor Justin Coulson and I'm absolutely wrapped
to have the CEO and founder of Real Schools operating
in more than three hundred schools around the country. Now,
Adam vod with me to talk about the things that
apply to us as parents, but also the stuff that
affects teachers. We're going to be talking about phone bands
(00:48):
in schools, overt sexual behavior in schools, teacher burnout, and
also a new book that he's got out that is
available for every teacher in the country. I think you're
going to want to listen to this conversation. There's so
much good stuff to discuss. Adam, Thanks for being with me.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
My pleasure, Chastam, we have an injury like that, mate,
I'm happy to talk for hours.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'll try and keep it.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Sure, you're a tvcifer, stay, You've been on all of
the big shows, and people keep on ringing you because
you've got so many sensible things to say. Let's start
with what I think is probably a bit of a
softball one, but it's worthy of conversation because not every
school system is on board yet, but essentially state run schools,
government run schools around the country have unanimously over the
last year or two gotten on board with banning telephones
(01:30):
in school settings. So from nine to three, no telephones
if you're at school in a public system. What have
you seen in terms of the results around this.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
First of all, the results are undoubtedly a win. So
that doesn't mean that it's one hundred percent win, and
it doesn't mean that it's without problem being able to
tackle something like this. But when you consider where we
came from, but almost universally across the country, we thought
it was impossible to.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Ban mobile phones.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I actually write an article that was published in the
Age about six years ago where I said, I think
that we just have to accept that every kid's going
to walk around with technology in their pocket, And then
had to write another one about twelve months ago where
I confessed my wrongness, where I had to say that
this is actually the evidence is it's just having too
much negative impact on our young people. The evidence is
(02:20):
that they need a break and that school is a
great time to be able to get that break. So
the challenge is how do we do it? And I
think if we looked at the spectrum of where it's
worked and where it hasn't.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
We would see that there are schools that it's worked.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Okay, there's a handful of schools where it hasn't worked,
and there are schools where it's worked exceedingly well and
exceedingly well in terms of it being reported positively by
all stakeholders, especially the kids. And so you know, when
I look at schools that have done this really well,
I think about one of our partner schools in Western
(02:58):
Sydney whose principal really clever guy. And when the directive
came through, because that's how it landed, we will ban
mobile phones. His first step was to bring in his
student leaders and he asked them to all bring a
friend who they considered to be one of the cool kids.
And he told this group of kids in his office,
none of the communication around this mobile phone band which
(03:21):
we have to do, none of it is going to
come from me or from our staff.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It's all coming from you guys.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So you tell me how do we get this done
with parents, with staff, and with kids in a way
that has us all feel like we've got ownership of it.
And he's one school. That's one school that I would
say is like at the very pointy end of schools
where this has worked well and where his students are saying,
we love it.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
That's such a great story. I love the student led
empowerment there. Adam, My read of whatever research has been
released indicates that there's been a seeming reduction in bullying.
There's more more high quality concentration happening, and better learning
happening in classrooms. Academic achievement appears to be on the up.
All of these things are being pushed onto this school band.
(04:10):
What else have you seen in the data? And is
there anything that's sort of really worth celebrating across the
board even though it's not a resounding success everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, I think the thing that's worth celebrating is the
first steps. So I don't think we should think that
this is going to dramatically improve naplan or ATR results
or anything like that. But I think that what we
can do is say that we can have real confidence
given the research. Why people are Jonathan Hyde and Sherry
Turkle and Genequenji and people who have all been saying
for years that this is actually changing young people in
the wrong direction. That I think what we should be
(04:41):
excited about is what happens to the students who say,
in year seven now and when they get the next
six years of practice being in the company of other
people face to place, rather than staring downwardly at a phone,
when they have postures in their life that they practice
that don't look miserable. If you think about the way
we look justin when we look at a phone, we
(05:03):
actually strike a pose of kind of putting our chin
down to our chest, which is the pose you make
with your body when you're miserable, when you're sad. But
when you think about what you look like when you're
actually talking to another person, we take a more happy
disposition when we're doing that. And so I think there's
incredibly while yes, I think we're seeing some green shoots now,
(05:24):
which we should be happy about. I think what we
should be happy about is the kind of young people
that will develop in six years time if they get
all the practice they need about being in that awkward
argie bargie sometimes uncomfortable, often happy conversation space with other people,
the kind of young people they'll turn into, which is
that's what I'm more excited about.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, I love that. I want to pick up on
another tech issue here. In fact, there's a couple of
different places we could go, but I want to talk
about sexualized behavior in schools. This is in the news
every other day. It's kids from let's say grade six
through usually to about grade ten, and it's unfortunately almost
always boys. Collective Shout and Advocate Organization for Women and
(06:07):
Girls released a report recently called the Sexual Harassment of
Teachers Report. Teachers across the country are saying that they're
being subjects to explicit and inappropriate comments and groans and
moans from boys as young as grade four and grade five.
We're seeing stories constantly about grade five, grade six, grade
(06:28):
seven boys, eight and grade nine boys who are setting
up chats and they're sharing racist and misogynist and anti
semitic memes, and sharing child abuse material and hardcore pornography.
I mean, the stuff is it's toe curling, it's breath taking,
that the world's gone this way and that our kids
so young are being so affected by it. In terms
(06:50):
of this sexualized behavior in school, what are you seeing? Firstly,
to the degree that you're comfortable sharing, But secondly, and
perhaps the bigger part of this question, what are we
supposed to do about it?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, it's that's that's second part of it is probably
the big question, because I think, like you justin I'm
seeing I'm seeing big problems, and I worry not only
like you said, boys are overrepresented in this data, and
also boys who you know, the boys that are not
they're not They're not just our kids who typically struggle
at school.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
There are our kids in those you know, what we.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Might call exclusive or elite schools, you know, who have
all the advantages but still falling for this kind of
I guess moral decay in the way that they're in
the way that they're being built. So I get concerned
for them because I think, what kind of young man
do you turn into? If you think early that that
at a formative stage that that's okay, or that it's
(07:47):
not only okay, but it's advantageous. And then I systemically,
if we don't do some take some action on this,
then I think that we put our workforce in schools
at enormous risk. So we will already have a national
teacher shortage crisis in the vicinity of thousands of teachers
that were short to run the program. Seventy five percent
(08:08):
of Australia's teachers are female. And if we create a
situation where we're driving them out of the profession at
a time that they have options, they can go and
do something else, you know, where they're not going to
be attacked by this.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I've got to jump in on this for just a sec,
just on that workforce issue. Writing this book about boys
at the moment, and the latest start that I've seen
coming out of the universities is that now for every
ten girls who graduate with a degree in education, there
are only between two and three boys men graduating with
degrees in education. So the numbers are getting worse, not better.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yep, on both sides of the gender of the gender equation.
Because the one thing about this kind of whether you
call it toxic maxculinity or anything else, is that. What
it does is it sexualizes the workforce. So it means
that we see teaching as a female job. So our
males don't want to get the barbs at the pub
about you know, what, are you a kiddy? Or you know,
(09:01):
when you're working with women all day and all that
kind of stuff. They don't want to get that, so
they're discouraged. But on the reality side of it, we
can get women entering the workforce as teachers who very
very quickly go hey, this isn't a workplace I'm safe in,
This isn't a workplace that's good for me on out
And so as parents, I think we're going to go, okay,
ask your question justin what are.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
We going to do about it?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, and which for me is about going all
the way back to saying how do we raise better kids?
How do we raise kids with this capability to understand
that their behavior has impact positively and negatively on other people,
which means building for them a healthier relationship with the
shame of that comes when they do something wrong. So
(09:44):
what we see in kids typically is is kids who
respond four ways negatively when they do the wrong thing.
They often either attack other people, so they not my fault,
I blame someone else, They attack themselves. I think every
teacher's heard a kids say I'm stupid. Way of making
it static and they can't improve, Yes you can. We've
got to hold that optimism for them. Sometimes they withdraw.
(10:06):
So we see this in all the stakeholders in schools.
Every teacher's seen a kid who makes a mistake throws
their book on the ground and storms out of the
classroom because they just can't handle the shame of falling short.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
But every teacher also was thought about chuck and asiki
after a bad day, and a lot of parents have
thought about not shown up for a parent teacher interview.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Absolutely, in shame, we just go like a puff of smoke,
We disappear.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
And there's this avoidant behavior which goes to this overly
sexualized behavior that we're seeing in young people a lot
of the time as well. They just don't want to
feel the shame, so they do something else that kind
of distracts them or numbs them from that feeling. They're
all counterproductive. So what we need at a very early
age is for young people to see and recognize that
feeling of falling short, you know, either by their own
(10:53):
doing or just for who they are, and to respond
to it productively. So teaching young people to resolve the
shame of all in short, rather than to do something
negative with it. It's the long handser, but for me,
it's the only way we build kids who are capable
of resisting the urges that they're currently falling for.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Adam, let's switch this to teachers for a moment. For
the last several years, there's been a lot of noise
made about teacher burnout, more teachers wanted to leave the
profession than ever before. I'm not seeing this receding in
the data. I'm actually seeing it accelerating. Teachers being sexually harassed,
teachers being exhausted, more demands being placed on teachers in
terms of the system, the curriculum, the schools, and parents
(11:38):
expecting more of them as well. Number one, what are
you seeing? And again the follow up is how do
we arrest this decline?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Really interesting when you look at the teacher well being
data out that's out there that there's nothing all that
new in it. We've known for probably twenty years or so.
The top three it begins pacts on teachers. Number one
is student behavior, so how they can handle young people
who are changing and their strategies aren't working anymore. The
(12:08):
second one is workload. We made teaching so much about
compliance and less about actually just creating a young environment
where young people grow. We've even't teachers no time to
just talk to and get to know their students. And
then the third thing that stresses them is issues with parents,
and it's driving them out of the profession. Teacher's got
a brief window at the start of COVID where, due
(12:30):
to lockdown's parents were going, oh my goodness, I didn't
know teaching was this hard. I really appreciate the teachers,
but when the kids went back to school, it got worse.
So it's like we PopEd that bruise, and that worries me. Well,
worries me just as much now is that. I had
a conversation with the politician recently. You said, I just
think that when it comes to solving the teacher shortage crisis,
(12:51):
we're probably going to have to.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Rely on AI.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And for me, removing the social realm from what we
view quality learning to should be something that frightens everyone
with a kid. So we need to actually take on
this monumental task. And we talked about mobile phone bands.
We can do monumental tasks. We need to take on
this monumental task. Say, how do we create an environment
(13:17):
where we value education in our country for our kids,
not just my kid? How do we take the competitive
nature out of it? How do we get it focused
on building good young people for the community, and thereby,
how do we make it a job that is aspirational
to young people in is ten or eleven and twelve
(13:37):
who are making decisions about what they want to do
at YUNI.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So I'm serving you up an opportunity to plug what
you do at real schools on a platter. Here it's
an unscripted, unplanned question. But as I'm listening to what
you're saying, so much of this feels like it comes
down to culture, and culture really does come from the top.
It comes from the leadership. Your work is all about
changing culture. It's all about leadership. Do you see the
same levels of staff attrition, same levels of b and out,
the same stresses in teachers who are working on culture
(14:05):
through the work that you do, all the work that
others do in terms of building stronger cultures and making
schools feel safer and better for people.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Almost a silly answer, nap.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, the schools that do the culture piece right get
benefits for all three stay colder groups. So we've got
a school that we work with, Clarence High School, don't
mind mentioning them in Tasmania, and they've been working with
us for about eighteen months now, so they have not
they had an issue around they wanted to work on
student engagement. One of the outputs that they thought they
(14:36):
could get around it was improved student conduct and behavior
in the school and they thought that one of the
measures of that could be their student suspension data. Now
they've done nothing about changing the threshold for suspension in
that school, so the kind of a watermark for what's
a suspendable offense in the school has not changed. But
eighteen months down the track, sixty percent drop in suspensions, right,
(14:59):
So this is a clear indication that they haven't made
it harder to suspend. They have a sixty percent better
behaved student cohort because they said it's time to work
on the culture and to actually think about the way
that we're interacting with young people and working with parents
to try and get somewhere on it. Then I think
about a school that we've got a new South Wales
called Bermer Public School, so primary school, and the work
(15:22):
that's been done there on building a culture that benefits
the teachers is outstanding in this school. So they now
have a situation where the National School Improvement Partnerships and
Curtin University researched and studied the school and the data
that came back to them about how eighty seven percent,
ninety seven percent, one hundred percent of the staff making
(15:46):
statements about the fact that they feel safe, nurtured, comfortable
at the school that they have no intention to leave
the school. Now comparative to the profession as a whole,
anything that is above ninety percent, and typically for that
is so far above the standard curve, it's ridiculous. You know,
(16:06):
they're not hunting around for teachers. They've got teachers.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Ringing up and saying can we come and.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Work at this school because you know, we've heard the stories,
this is a productive place to work. At the same time,
their NAP plan results are through the roof. You know,
their parents satisfaction data is amazing and their kids but
when surveyed are telling us that the number one thing
that they value about this school is rule clarity. So
(16:33):
this isn't This is a school that basically said, forget
the lists of rules, forget the control stuff. This is
a school that said, let's create an environment where kids
innate goodness can kind of come out of them.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And it does.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And so this system of control and prevention that we're
constantly asking teachers to take on. You know, when I
saw another statement of the paper the other day from
politicians saying it's time for us to crack down and
claim the classroom, I.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Was like, it's going on here.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
You know what, are we some tyrannical leader of a
authoritarian leader of a country trying to take territory off
an enemy.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, no, one.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
We need to reclaim the way we work, not the ground.
You know, work the right way. All benefit, all stakeholders
will benefit. We've got to support teachers to find that
way working.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So when you say this, here's what I'm hearing. You
said that the three biggest challenges that have been consistently
showing up for the two decades student behavior, workload and parents,
and by working on culture, students start to behave better,
which is it's not going to get rid of all
workload issues, but it's going to free up more capacity
so that you can do the work that needs to
be done. And parents aren't going to be on your back.
Why because the kids are actually having a good time
(17:45):
at school. They're glad to be there. So by working
on culture, you get a positive outcome. And yet it's
just so hard to shift culture for so many.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Schools because I guess they don't realize. First one, they
don't know how what culture is. So when they know,
I asked school leg I ask a room full of
five hundred principles, you know, who thinks the culture of
their school is important?
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Everyone puts their hand up.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
And then I'll say, put your hand up if you'd
like to come out in the stage with me and
tell everyone what school culture is.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And so a lot of go down.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So we've got to get clear on what it is,
you know, and we just call it a we just
call it a collective now for behaviors.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I just keep on coming back to this idea of culture.
I mean, the whole conversation really is centered around creating culture,
whether it's around technology, whether it's around sexualized behavior, whether
it's around teachers feeling good or feeling burned out, and
even dealing with parents who can sometimes be pretty demanding
and add a lot of pressure to the lives of
teachers and principles. Let's wrap this up with your treatise
(18:43):
on culture. The new book is called Restoring Teaching, How
working restoratively unleashes the teacher within Adam. You've generously made
an offer to every teacher in Australia. Walk us through
the offer about the book and how it can help them.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
So it's a second edition of something that I wrote
a few years ago. We've definitely upgraded and updated it
to reflect some of these modern challenges that teachers are
facing at the moment.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
We've given it a lay to ten thousand teachers.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
And at the moment you can get a print copy
at cost for us. But there's also an audiobook and
there's nothing weird a justin I don't know if you've
done this then, sitting in a booth and reading your
own book for three.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Days and nine times. I've done it nine times.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, as you find all the typos that you were
convinced weren't there.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, And there's an audio book on audiobook and e
book available completely for free online for any teacher who
wants to read it. We've got Our mission as an
organization at real schools is to transform education in Australia,
which means that we need to be there for any
teacher and this is our way of being there for
them without.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Them having to put their hands in the pocket.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And I get emails all the time from teachers who
say that one a had recently the teacher who told
me that reading it kept during the profession, and.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I'll take that. So the big aim of the book.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Is to to teach teachers this restorative way of working.
And then the second big aime of the book is
to restore the respect that we have for the teaching
profession through giving teachers access to exemplary practice.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, and if parents want to have a look at
it because they're fascinated by the idea of a sortive
practice or what you're talking about, it's available on your website.
So we'll link to that in the show notes and
hopefully some teachers can take advantage of what I think
is an extraordinarily generous offering. I wish, I wish I
could give my book away to every parent in the country. Unfortunately,
my publisher would not.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Want of the joys it.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I'm one of the joys of going self published on
something like that, Justin is that we get to we
get to make these kinds of decisions. So yeah, and
it's really important to us. And so for any parent
out there who might be interested, they can feel very
free to go and get themselves a free copy and
to even drop it into at their local school and
ask if they'd like to have a look.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
That's a great way for a parent to be generous. Adam.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Every time we talk, I walk away feeling real short
and hopeful about what education can be and how things
can work out really well in schools. It's such a
mixed bag in some ways. It just feels like a lottery,
a principal lottery, a teacher lottery on a day to day, months, month,
and certainly a year to year basis for so many families.
And I feel as if you bring a lot of
sense and sensibility to what is often considered the impossible profession.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Thanks so much for the chat, my pleasure, Thank you
very much.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Adam Voyd is the founder and CEO of Real Schools
and the author of Restoring teaching. Like I said, we
will link to that in the show notes. I always
find these conversations so valuable and so helpful. The Happy
Families podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media.
Like I said, check the show notes for everything we've
talked about in relation to Adam and his work. If
you'd like more info about making your family happy, I
(21:43):
have visitors at happyfamilies dot com, dot a u
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