How To Create Positive Whole School Behaviour Change with Gavin Oattes

How To Create Positive Whole School Behaviour Change with Gavin Oattes

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Summary

Creating positive whole school behaviour change can feel like swimming upstream. But what if there was a basic formula for achieving success?

In this episode, we speak to Gavin Oattes, who's worked with some of the biggest organisations in the world on personal development. He reveals the process he uses with schools to drive positive change - starting from the school's core values all the way through to student behaviour change in the classroom.

Gavin's Tree of Knowledge website: https://treeof.com/

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Show notes / transcription

Gavin Oattes  0:00  

You'd think it would be the most natural, easy conversation in the world, you know, to get in a room as a staff and talk about all these wonderful things that we could be and should be and can be doing in our workplaces. And yet, it's weird how it can be a sticky, uncomfortable, awkward negative conversation. But I think you know, if we all remember why we went into education in the first place, you don't want education to pay a mortgage, and you don't want education to be a millionaire. That's not going to happen. You go into it to make a difference. I don't believe there's any other reason to do it.


Simon Currigan  0:28  

Hi there and welcome to Episode 32 of school behaviour secrets. My name is Simon Currigan. And I wouldn't receive two certificates from my mum telling me I was a very special boy. And it's still what gets me through the dark times. I'm joined here as ever by my co host, Emma Shackleton. Hi, Emma. 


Emma Shackleton  1:24  

Hi, Simon.


Simon Currigan  1:25  

Right Emma, I've got a question for you. In a recent survey, what were the top three answers for why people got into teaching?


Emma Shackleton  1:34  

I feel like I'm on Family Fortunes. Okay, top three answers for why people got into teaching. Okay, I reckon I've got this number one has to be they've wanted to make a difference. Number two want to work with children? Number three, the salary and the perks? No, just kidding. Number three, maybe because of their love of their subjects. I'm thinking about secondary school teachers in particular with that one.


Simon Currigan  1:59  

So you missed out easy access to post it notes. The real answers are, they wanted to make a difference to children's lives. Yeah, they thought they would be good at it a love of the subject and a desire to work with young people. So not bad at all.


Emma Shackleton  2:13  

However, we do know that many teachers become disenchanted with the job. And that disenchantment can spread very easily across the work environment.


Simon Currigan  2:22  

I guess the thing is, we need to work out how to get teachers fired up again. So they're having a positive impact in the classroom.


Emma Shackleton  2:29  

And that, as luck would have it is the subject of this week's interview with Gavin Oattes. We'll be exploring how do we not just on an individual level, but at a whole school level, keep that fire burning, and recruit and employ people who are going to create positive behaviour change around the school, not just for the adults, but for the pupils as well. And how can they sustain that change?


Simon Currigan  2:54  

Before we get to the interview? Please share this episode with your friends and colleagues who might also benefit from the strategies that Gavin is about to share with us. And the good news is that it only takes 10 seconds just open up your podcast app, tap the share button, and your app will help you to send a direct link using the communication platform of your choice.


Emma Shackleton  3:16  

And now here's Simon's interview with Gavin Oattes.


Simon Currigan  3:20  

I'd like to introduce you to our guest today. He's Gavin Oattes and we're going to be discussing what practical steps should we as adults in the classroom be taking today to secure our students success in the future. Gavin's the managing director and owner of Tree of Knowledge. Tree of Knowledge have worked with some of the biggest organisations in the world. And Gavin is now regarded as one of the most talented and sought after speakers regularly delivering keynote speeches at conferences and exhibitions around the world. But not only that, he's also an award winning comedian, a best selling children's author and former Young Entrepreneur of the Year and he says his inspiration all comes from where he began his career, primary school teaching. Gavin welcome to the school behaviour secrets podcast.


Gavin Oattes  4:03  

Thank you very much. And I noticed that said there former Young Entrepreneur of the Year which would suggest that I am no longer a young entrepreneur, thank you for having me really, really delighted to be here.


Simon Currigan  4:14  

So we're gonna speak today about legacy and getting success in the future. You say our job as educators is to turn up every day and make things better than we found them. And that's how it's like important work. But it's also one of those things that you can walk away from, and it can feel like it's difficult to act on. So if we want to do that important work, where do we start?


Gavin Oattes  4:33  

With ourselves, I think and our own thinking and our own being all starts with us. And can I just say very quickly though, to your listeners, just so that everyone knows that we're doing this while Scotland are playing the first game in the Euros for the first time in 20 odd years. So I'm excited but I'm not watching. Anyway, back to your question with ourselves. I think the first question for me it not just an education, but in any line of work, any profession, any industry. The first question is do you want to be here? Do you actually want to be there? You know, you we need to really know why we get out of our bed in the morning. You know our why or purpose, whatever you want to call it, because it is about how we turn up every single day. If you, your listeners, if you think about the greatest educators, greatest teachers, great support workers you ever had as a kid in school. Yes, they taught you great stuff, but it was so much more than that. They saw you, you know, they saw you, the heard you, they valued, they got you, they nudged you when you needed that, they lifted the excitement, the light fires in your bellies. But in order for any individual to be able to do that, you know, and to truly turn up make the biggest difference possible, then, well, you know yourself that requires a huge amount of energy. It requires a huge amount of effort because you are giving and giving and giving all day long. But the reality is there's some people in the classroom who don't feel like that. So I think to go back to that initial thing you said about being educators and turning up every day and doing the best we possibly can. I think it absolutely starts with as an individual. You know, I quite often talk about my first ever placement as a primary school teacher, and I was 18, terrified and excited. This was the dream for me it was all I ever wanted to do. Mom was a PE teacher and my brother's teacher, aunts and uncles actually, they're all PE teachers thought about doing PE but switched subjects at the last minute. And I always remember my first experience in a staff room. It was a Monday morning, it was about quarter past eight. And at the time, the word I remember using on the phone to my mum and dad to describe it was it just felt a bit grumpy. And I remember thinking, why would any workplace feel grumpy on a Monday morning, you've just a two days off, you must account for this job, you must have signed a contract that you take the money every month, but surely, surely, you rock up absolutely buzzing because it's the greatest job in the world, right? And I had this moment where I thought about leaving. Now that's based entirely on other people's moods, other people's conversations, their energy or lack of the tone of voice, some of the faces will know those people, the ones that just have a face, and it ruins other faces when it's there. If it ruins them when they're not there as well. Then all of a sudden, as I thought about leaving, everything just changed very, very quickly with introduction of one member of the team. And this was a woman who was one of the classroom assistants course one of the most important jobs we have in the world of education. And this woman just floated in like Mary Poppins, you know, practically perfect in every way if I can quote the movies and the books directly. It was like she had rays of light coming out of her face.Ive now gone slightly Roald Dahl  all of a sudden. But what I noticed was the shift in mood and mindset and conversation like the tone lifted, the energy shifted, people smile, people relax, and I'm thinking you've not even opened your mouth. All you've done is turn up. How do you get to a point where you just need to walk in that door. And this is the thing that happens. And I just remember standing again, I want to be you. I want to be Mary Poppins. It wasn't a thought I had ever had before. But I was ready,  18 years of age, to channel my inner Poppins. And I remember in that moment, it kind of threw me back to being in school again.  I was only 18 straight out of school. And I was thinking about all the adults I've met along my journey as a kid and all I could think of was my Mary Poppins. But for every Mary Poppins there was a Mr. Banks if I can stick with that theme. I'm sure all your listeners are familiar with Mary Poppins story. If not, let's go goodies and baddies. Let's be clear, Mr. Banks was not a baddie. He was actually a lovely man who loved his family a lot. It's just he worked in a bank and he was surrounded by not very pleasant people. And he's knackered, we'll let him off. And I just remember thinking about these people, your Mary Poppins that those individuals whose legacy it's more than just a teacher, they saw you. But the exciting thing for me about these individuals is that they have lifelong lasting impact. It doesn't matter how many years ago, you were in school, think about them now, and you feel something and they made that happen. Unfortunately, the flip side of that is your Mr. Banks, again, doesn't matter how many years ago, you in school, you think about them, now you feel something and they also made that happen. And that's not particularly cool. But the point I was going to make was this idea of straight back into the classroom, all of a sudden, the staff room Monday morning, all of a sudden, I'm back to being 18 years of age, I've been thinking about all my teachers, I'm looking at my Mary Poppins. And all I could think of was the old Maya Angelou quote that most people won't remember what you say most people won't remember what you do, but they remember exactly how you made them feel. And I just stood there and thought, That's why I'm here. This is why we do what we do in education or job is to turn up our job is to be Mary Poppins. Our job is to have rays of light coming out our face. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's difficult, but that's what you're signing up for. And if we're not prepared to do that every single day, then we need to be rethinking our careers.


Simon Currigan  9:18  

So the story of Mary Poppins Mr. Banks learn to bring out something inside of him that had been suppressed and squashed by working with all those sort of dour faced bankers. If you're in a school at the moment where you feel that the general mood is being brought down and you want to bring out this Mary Poppins, is this something that we can only do naturally? Is it something we can learn? Is this something that we need to do to bring out this warmth and sunshine, that that's gonna help us connect with the kids?


Gavin Oattes  9:42  

In my business, The Tree of Knowledge, that's this is not a sales pitch for your listeners, but that's what we do. So if we can do it, now, I think it's fair that sometimes an outsider can sometimes do it better. I don't mean that those in the school or the workplace can't do it. I think sometimes when you're an outsider, you can see things that perhaps those that are there would like to say, but maybe feel they can't, because they're conscious that they don't want to step on toes or upset anyone, and so on. So it's interesting because quite often were brought in to deliver. I mean, it could be anything from our 45 minute keynote conference to a half day workshop at an inset day or a two day programme, or whatever, part of that process is to facilitate those really exciting, because they are exciting conversations about bringing that voice, that mood, that tone, that imagination, that creativity, whatever you want to call it to our workplace. I think people have to be willing to have the conversation, you think it would be the most natural, easy conversation in the world, you know, to get in a room as a staff and talk about all these wonderful things that we could be and should be in can be doing in our workplaces. And yet, it's weird how it can be a sticky, uncomfortable, awkward negative conversations. But I think, you know, if we all remember why we went into education in the first place, and you don't want education to pay your mortgage, well, it helps. And you don't go into education to be a millionaire. That's not going to happen, you go into it to make a difference. I don't believe there's any other reason to do it. I do believe that some people have lost sight of that, because it's a difficult job. It's stressful. It's exhausting. And if we're exhausted, then were stressed, bit anxious, especially off the back of the last 12 to 15 months that we've all had, then actually sometimes getting around a table to discuss our why or purpose, what lights a fire in our belly before we can even go and do that for the kids. Sometimes it's hard, because let's be honest, this last year, for example, it's not been fun, it's totally doable. But people need to be willing to have the difficult conversation that maybe needs to happen, that maybe clears the air or gives us that permission to cut all the let's call it red tape all the nonsense that we have in our workplaces that so often gets in the way, because we're people. And the biggest problem we have in our workplaces is people.


Simon Currigan  11:46  

There's some interesting research that I saw about the impact of negative people actually, and researchers took a plant a person and put them in a work environment. And they were deliberately negative deliberately engaged in negative gossip, to see what the impacts of that would be. And that one negative person in a team had a huge impact. And I'm wondering about how do we engage in those conversations about the way we interact with others, the impact that can have positively or negative on the rest of the team? Because ultimately, we do all come together, teachers, T.A.'s, and we are a team, to lift the kids together. It's not the work of an individual. So how do we have those conversations, perhaps as a senior manager, or set the tone in the right way?


Gavin Oattes  12:26  

I think it's one of those ones where there's not a one size fits all, I think for a senior manager or a senior leader in any workplace, again, not just in schools, you know, this is where your relationships are so important. And I also think that it's where you're going to have your key people who are able to have this conversation, because it's not always like the head teacher, for example, you're actually sometimes the worst person to have that conversation is the head teacher. And alternatively, some things they're absolutely person that should be leading that conversation. But in terms of how you do it, like, I don't think there's a one size fits all. I think the important thing is that you just have the conversations again, you know, running inset days for so many types of schools, primary secondaries, community schools to campuses for three to 18 years of age, you know, we have so many weird and wonderful conversations. And sometimes it starts with the most ridiculous thing. I will never forget the day when I was asked to come in and do almost like a challenge versus opportunities type conversation with a whole team, there was about 60 members of staff in the room. And it was as simple as we need you to come in and say, right, what are the problems, just go for it get it out in the open. And again, you know yourself if maybe the head teacher or another SLT team members who have said that, people are going to hold back, some people will let rip, but some people hold back. But I remember thinking how nervous I was, even though I'd been doing this for a long time. It's not something we're asked to do regularly, more often not we're coming and doing really fun, exciting stuff. But that is that wee bit of me was thinking this is quite fun and exciting for me. And I said, well, the problems, let's go for it. Just tell me everything that's wrong right now for you as a team, because if there's issues for you as a team, how can we get it right for the kids? There was that awkward, really awkward silence. And it was awful that you could feel it. It just made me want to be elsewhere. But then eventually somebody went right, I'll start No one said anything if they were to intervene, oh... it was that kind of feeling. And all of a sudden, this lady went right, see her? I'm turned and looked at this woman and I was like, Oh, my goodness. And I was like, Yes. And when she doesn't wash her teaspoons!


Simon Currigan  14:14  

Straight down to the important issues.


Gavin Oattes  14:15  

Yeah. And I was like, is that it? she doesn't wash up teaspoons? But what came out the back of that conversation? I think it was a real learning moment for us all there. If there  is an issue for anybody, no matter how small it is. If it's an issue, then it's an issue, you know, and if you have let something go six months, a year without just saying it like just say like, do you mind if you just wash your teaspoons please? Maybe a wee bit awkward, but youve just got to say it. And I think have you ever read a book called Legacy by James W Kerr? Right I recommend it to all your readers only after the read mine though. It's all about the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. It's not about rugby. It's about high performing teams, and why you do what you do. It's essentially about things like kindness, respect and humility values, all the important stuff and they have these wonderful Mauri mantras that they live by, and one of them translates into English. It's stab me in the front. And I love it 'Stab me in the front'. That's the idea. We're not seeing eye to eye. You tell me. You don't like how I'm doing things. You tell me. We can be best friends, but you feel I could be doing something better. You tell me. Nonetheless, tip toe-ing around for six months because you know what it's like as adults in the workplace. It's so uncomfortable. It's so awkward to be able to have these real conversations. But if you're three and you're in the nursery, you just get it dealt with. I remember my first placement in a nursery standing in the sandpit one wee boy says to the other,  we're not best friends anymore. And the other wee guy says I know and walked away. That was that Simon, nobody got upset. Nobody cried. No one had to go home unwell, beautiful moment came seven minutes later, wee guy comes back said you want to be best friends again? To which he replied, Yes, I do. Let's dig and then they went. But adults, we seem to at times be incapable of having I'm sure to call it a difficult conversation. It's not even difficult to just get in a room have the conversations. Why? Because it's not about you. You're not in education for you. You're in education for our young people. You're in education to leave a legacy, youre an education to make a difference. You turn up every day to make it better than how you found it. What you leave behind is most important. And you cannot do that if you're wrapped up in your own head, worrying about stuff that you shouldn't be worrying about.


Simon Currigan  16:19  

I'd just like to take a pause for a moment and say that if you're finding this podcast useful, then you're going to love what we've got waiting for you in our inner circle programme. The inner circle is your one stop shop for all things behaviour. It's a comprehensive platform filled with videos resources from behaviour inspiration to get you unstuck with classroom behaviour. We've got training resources on de escalation, supporting kids with anxiety support strategies for conditions like autism, ADHD, and PDA. practical ways of helping pupils deal with strong emotions, assertive behaviour management techniques for managing the whole classroom, setting out your classroom environment for success, resetting behaviour with tricky classes, and more. Our online videos walk you through practical solutions, step by step, just like Netflix, you can turn an inner circle subscription on or off whenever you need to, with no minimum contract. Plus, you can now get your first seven days of inner circle for just one pound. Get the behaviour answers you've been looking forward today with inner circle, visit www.beaconschoolsupport.co.uk And click on the inner circle picture near the top of the homepage for more information. 


I'm thinking as a senior manager and I've been in this situation where I've had to manage a number of very strong adults. And sometimes they find it hard to separate the idea that we can have a professional disagreement from a personal disagreement. 


Gavin Oattes  17:51  

Absolutely. 


Simon Currigan  17:51  

We can argue about the way we teach the curriculum, whatever it is, but some people have the idea that if you don't value my idea, you don't value me as a human. 


Gavin Oattes  17:59  

We're not friends anymore. 


Simon Currigan  18:00  

It's toy's out of the pram, and I'm walking out and never speaking to you again. How do we get past that? Then how do we create a climate where people feel safe enough and confident enough to engage in those conversations that are going to move us along?


Gavin Oattes  18:12  

I think that's where your values come in. But your core values of the school your personal values, yes, that will always come into your this is where you're if we're all on the same page with why we do what we do here. You've got your vision, your purpose, your 'Why' as a school, but you also have your values that underpin all of that, then that's where the personal stuff shouldn't come into it. Like actually you don't have to be friends, you don't have to support the same football team. You don't have to be into the same music, you can have different upbringings, different faiths, different everything, you don't have to agree with anything. But if we're on the same page as to why we are in the building that we're in, doing the thing that we do, then, for me, that allows us to get beyond that issue, I guess that you're describing there. And I've seen it happen in schools and and businesses, you know, we get our values, we spend a day breaking it all apart, and what do they mean, but then we go Cool, let's put them on the wall. Yeah, and we put them on the wall, or on a banner at the front of the assembly hall or on our lanyards, and that set of values are in place, we're rocking it. And then we never do anything again about it. And so many schools and so many businesses have made that mistake, whereas our values should be felt they should be heard. They should be seen in every decision that we make every action that we take. And I think if we can get that right, and that takes many, many conversations, many team meetings, many, many exercises, activities, discussions with the wider community that the children get them involved then I think allows us to tell in my experience, get around or get over those difficult conversations that allow us to see the professional opinion versus the personal


Simon Currigan  19:45  

 I see a lot of behaviour policies and stay with me because it is relevant. I see a lot of behaviour policies that have pages and pages of if your child has x respond with y. If Zed happens do ABC and I strongly believe that like you say these are schools that have got their core values, put them on the wall. But actually, they're not living them day by day. Because if your core values are embedded, and everyone is kind of bought into them, those core values tell you how to react. If you've explained them to the children, the children understand why you're reacting in the way you are. Yeah. So how do we embed those values, not just with the adults, but with the kids, because everyone needs to be on the same page to feel like they're part of a family pushing in that, you know, one direction,


Gavin Oattes  20:24  

I think you're absolutely right, if I could give you an example of my own organisation, and what we did a long, long time ago, and revisit at least twice a year with the team, Our vision is to inspire the world, simple three words inspire the world. And it used to be a huge, big paragraph of jargon nonsense. That basically mean we want inspire the world. And we were like, why we're not just saying that it's so much more exciting. And then we had our values, which are learning innovation, fun, excellence, and passion. That's great. It's lovely. But for me, what sets below that is your behaviours. And we literally sat as a team for a couple of days, maybe 15, or 16 of us, actually, maybe a wee bit less, maybe 12, or 13. The first time we did this, and we asked the question of each other. So if you take our value of learning, as an example, what do we expect from each other? What does that mean? We came up with a definition of what it meant. But then we started to explore what does it mean? What does it look like for you now that our colleagues, what does it mean for our clients, and so on, and so on, we had that discussion. And then we took it to the clients, because I've got this thing in my head about onstage and offstage. And it's the same in a school like onstage, you're in front of the kids, in front of the parents, you're on social media. Offstage, you're behind the closed door essentially. But in business that's behind the scenes, it's your sales, your admin, all that sort of stuff. So we went to our clients and said, Well, what would you expect from us under the banner of learning, and innovation and fun, and excellence and passion. Some of our conversations with schools, it's the same, like ask the kids for me as your teacher or your support workout or classroom assistant, or whatever it may be. If we had a school value off collaboration, what does that mean to you? What would you expect from me as your teacher? How would you expect me to act and behave? How would you expect me to speak to you? And then of course, we can ask the kids, what do we expect from you, as the young person, I will be going out to the parents, I will be asking them the question. But of course, the staff should be having these conversations themselves. And I firmly believe, again, we've run so many sessions with schools and businesses that we start to shape our behaviours. And then we can be held accountable. Because, you know, for me, whether you're a teacher, a chief executive of a global brand, whatever, if you put your name, and you agree that you're on board with these values, and you're on board with the behaviours that are set, and then you don't do it, you don't live up to it, we should be able to then sit down and have a conversation as to why you are not living up to the values of the school. And I think that's really important that people should be held accountable for their behaviours and their actions. And actions in education. I don't think there are enough if I'm being honest.


Simon Currigan  22:50  

I wouldn't read I'm gonna paraphrase, I'm going to get this wrong, but the right school values, attract the right kind of staff like a magnet, and they repel the wrong sort of staff like dog muck, essentially. 


Gavin Oattes  23:01  

Oh, yeah. 


Simon Currigan  23:02  

So maybe there's an element of that here, how we communicate and people who are looking to come on board with our team that helps us sift the right in inverted commas, right kind of people. And there might be people that would succeed perfectly well in an organisation with a different set of values.


Gavin Oattes  23:15  

And what you'll find as well is after a while of doing this kind of stuff is certain people will leave and it will be the ones that you want to leave. When I went into teaching, I started out 2001 I graduated, I did the four Year Honours Degree in primary school teaching. At that point, I was hugely involved in the stand up comedy world. And to the point where I was now thinking, actually, I need to make a decision here. And actually, I chose to stand up for a while. And it took me all over the world for about a year and a half. When that all imploded like all great rock and roll stories went horribly wrong, an awful experience. But anyway, I found myself going back into the classroom, and falling back in love with education in a way that I wasn't expecting. I thought I'm going to go back to a bit of supply teaching that stand in teaching for a couple of months, and then it's back on the circuit. But actually, I got so back into and it was because I had a head teacher at the time, a lady called Fiona Wardle, best head teacher I've ever worked with who was all about the values and all about the behaviours. And I hadn't experienced that. And there was one or two individuals in that staff room who hated it. They hated it. Why? Because they couldn't just hide. They couldn't just do the bare minimum, and leave it half past three on the bell every single day and rock up at five to nine every single day because it didn't fit. And because Fiona had it so right in her systems and processes and her communication and just her manner. It was so for the people it was so outwardly looking at there was such a sense of togetherness. It was beautiful. These people struggled, which I couldn't believe I was thinking how can any human struggle with this? but the reality is and I've mentioned or alluded to this earlier on, there are some people in education that shouldn't be there. I think we should have a lie detector test every single year. Do you like kids? Yeah. agghh!, no you don't you just lied, get out. Y'know, people actually will end up looking for jobs elsewhere, because it's almost two together.


Simon Currigan  25:09  

So if you're a school leader, or a head teacher listening to this, and you've got a culture that you want to change, what are the first couple of practical steps? What are the concrete things that you start doing? Because this is long term work, you're not going to change everything overnight, you're not going to carry everyone with you. And you are going to do some thinking through Where do you get this process started?


Gavin Oattes  25:28  

So I mentioned the challenges and opportunities process early on, there's a couple of ways you can look at this, I think get around the table, cause the problems literally write them up on the screen or the board, just everything you could possibly imagine. Just get all out there doesn't matter how silly how big, how small it is, just get it all out there. But at the same time, what I would like to do after that with everyone is say, write down that park it for a second. What are the opportunities? Like, What are the actual possibilities here? How good could this be? You know, if this was perfect? If you had a magic wand, what would it look like? What would it feel like? How would it work, literally write it all up all up on the board. That's one starting point. Or you get your great big goal, if you like whatever this dream image is that you have for your school, write it up on your screen, and then you know with that the centre of everything talk about how all the problems that could happen with trying to achieve that because any big goal is going to bring problems whether that's changing people's mindsets, people leaving lack of funding, whatever it might be, but then explore Well, how do you mitigate that as a team? How could we stop those things from going wrong? Then get stuck in about that? And then you start to look at Okay, so what would good look like we then got it right? And then lastly, what's perfect. And it's interesting, because when you get too good, I think what happens is people think great, but good, not great. So what's the next step? Perfect. The next step, what does that even mean? What does that look like? I mean, there's all sorts of processes, you can put in place all sorts of records that you can keep, but for me starting point, just what's wrong? Another option, of course, is you could do this for the school, and individuals in groups imagine are starting from scratch, this school doesn't exist. blank canvas does not get a name. It's not a vision. We've not got a single child on the roll yet design it from scratch, literally start again. Or what does the dream colleague look like? design the perfect teacher design the perfect colleague get as silly as creative as you want. But again, it's about being brave enough just to put it out there. Because if we don't just see it, we're never going to make it better.


Simon Currigan  27:17  

Gavin, if people want to help with this, how can they get in touch with you? Or find out about your resources. What do you have on offer?


Gavin Oattes  27:22  

Well, best way to get in touch with me. I mean, there's lots of ways emails, good Gavin@treeof.com. That's treeoff.com. There's also a website www.treeof.com. And then email  happy@treeof.com you're more than welcome to pick up the phone. But in terms of our resources. So we spend a lot of time working closely with schools, again and businesses on this stuff. best thing to do is to get in touch basically to jump on a bit of a zoom or teams call. And can I get stuck in a bit What is the challenge? What is the problem? and we'll come back to you with a proposal around that. But that's why we have Tree House, which was born out of COVID Tree House is our online learning platform with a key focus on our own health and well being but it covers so many wonderful topics, always linked back to health and well being and our thinking and things like that. But you know, when the schools closed, we had a bit of a panic as you can imagine you're when 70% of your business relies on schools do we lost 150 events in 72 hours. I don't mind admitting there was tears, there were sleepless nights. But we just thought we need to do something now that's going to be able to help young people through this awful scenario. But not just young people, the staff. So we created treehouse, so we have primary, secondary treehouse, and it's for staff as well, basically, well, there's about to be over 100 modules on each side of the platform, every module is about 20 to 30 minutes long. It can be done at home independently can be done kids working together and partners or groups, they can be done with the teacher at the front of the room. And then there's the staff section as well. fun, interactive, exciting, £500 a year, super cheap. And it's yours to do as you please with but again, we have all these wonderful experiences that can come in, in person, or virtually to support it. So yeah, I hope that answers that question.


Simon Currigan  28:58  

Yeah, that's brilliant. Thank you very much, Gavin, thank you for being on the episode today. We really appreciate you being here. And I'm sure we will all learned a lot about how to encourage change, and get people to show up with the right attitude. So we get the best for our kids.


Gavin Oattes  29:10  

Thank you very much. It was an honour and I'm sure I'll meet lots of these listeners on Twitter. There's another place where I'm coming across so many amazing people. So you'll find me on there as well. But no, thank you so much.


Emma Shackleton  29:20  

That interview sounded like it was lots of fun.


Simon Currigan  29:23  

It was Gavin's a really smart, intelligent guy who communicates with a lot of passion, and a lot of humour too. I really enjoyed it. And if you want to know more about Gavin and his company Tree of Knowledge, I'll put a copy of the links he mentioned in the show notes.


Emma Shackleton  29:37  

And if you want to have a whole school impact without breaking your school's training budget, did you know that you can get our inner circle for schools programme for only £23.99 per month. That means you get unlimited access to all of our inner circle materials for all of your staff on subjects like de escalation. anxiety, classroom management and much more for only £23.99 per month.


Simon Currigan  30:07  

We often say that behaviour management is a skill, not a topic that you learn overnight. And I believe what inner circle does is it gives you training that's affordable to benefit from the drip drip drip approach month after month, so people could learn and increase their skills over time, rather than struggling to remember an information dump, delivered during a traditional one hour training session.


Emma Shackleton  30:30  

If that sounds good to you, head over to our website www.beaconschoolsupport.co.uk  and click the Buy Now button to see all of our products and click on the inner circle for schools option. We'll also put a link in the show notes. Next week we'll be asking the question is class technology, things like interactive whiteboards, undermining classroom management, and I know that there'll be strong opinions on both sides of this debate.


Simon Currigan  30:57  

If you don't want to miss that episode, you've got two options. You could arrange a meeting with a spy mongoose through the dark web one who specialises in industrial espionage and bribe it. With an all you can eat snake buffet to hack our security and release the episode plan. Or you can open your podcast app and hit the subscribe button or in Apple podcasts. That's now called the Follow button. pressing that button tells your podcast app to record the podcast automatically so you never miss a thing. And for the sake of a week, I'd go with the podcast option.


Emma Shackleton  31:29  

That's all from us today. We'll see you next week on the next episode of School behaviour baby secrets goodbye


Simon Currigan  31:36  

Bye


(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)