Sean Bellamy

0:05 So welcome to the Leadership Passport. I'm excited to chat with my guest today, Mr. Sean Bellamy. Welcome, Sean. Hi, Kevin, good to good to be with you. Yeah, thanks so much for joining me. We're really looking forward to our chat today. So I guess by normally I would introduce people in this setting, but I wonder if you can take a bit of time to introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about what you do and and where you do it and and why you do it, because it's fascinating. Yes. So, so I'm either I've either found I've either found the perfect job and spent a lifetime doing it, or spent most of my life completely unemployable.

0:48 It's really difficult to tell sometimes. 39 years into Sam's school. Yeah, 39 years. Like, I sat in the garden on the announcement of the closure of a really incredible alternative school called Dartington Hall, which if your listeners want to find out about, has got the most intriguing past set up by billionaires from America. Married a Yorkshire farmer and they decided to develop an education in Utopia. And I get, And this was back in 1927 and I arrived as a completely green, completely idealistic and probably at that stage probably had done about a month teaching in my life. I arrived at this school in 1985 thinking this is going to be just the most amazing start to my career. And within 2 terms, its closure was announced because tragedies occurred in financial mismanagement, as is often the case with particularly private schools, and particularly those that rely upon a particular population of people to join. And this school was full of the children of poets and film makers and bohemians.

1:57 And it seemed to me incredibly exciting, having been a Cambridge scholar, very excited about looking at alternatives in the world, didn't really mind where my career was going. This was just, this was just a great opportunity. And suddenly the opportunity was torn away. But as a 23 year old, I didn't really empathize what it felt like initially to be a 13 year old who'd been in that school since they were eight, boarding and it was their home. And two teachers around me was so traumatized by the closure. They said, at least what we've got to do is gather these children and take them through their education. So there was a sort of ethical, moral component to this, that that schools should not be taken away from children.

2:38 It wasn't their fault. And I was sort of seen as the battery pack, 2324 years old, completely full of energy and mad ideas. We all remember it. And they should have had me on board as the person they could put the the starter leads to if things were a problem. And I could do history and sports and geography and all sorts of stuff. So it seemed very exciting. So we sat in a garden with 14 young people and we designed a school. And it might be the first time, it could be the first time in in history. But a school has been designed deliberately with children. Often schools are designed with children in mind, which is very lovely because it's better than designing schools with grades in mind or or sort of keeping governors happy.

3:23 This was definitely about designing it with children when we spent a year. And the reason it's called Sans S&S is because one of the founding teachers used to write little secret letters to us because the the school we were coming from wanted the school to end and not resurface. They didn't want the phoenix rising from the ashes. So we would have to do these conversations a bit secretly. So he'd write to Sean and Sabella, which became his wife, said, well, that's as good a name as any for a school. So that definitely strokes the ego, doesn't it? So the school is named after me and another founder, Sean and Sabella, all very nice. And I was at that stage in my life when definitely ego was much more important than it is now. And the children fundamental to what they said. And it began with a really interesting comment I remember from a 13 year old girl.

4:15 She said, why aren't schools based on common sense? She said because the schools, the school, she'd come from another school before she came to Dartington. She'd been there for a year and Dartington seemed sensible. And she said, I'll give you an example. It doesn't make any sense that children wear a uniform when the staff don't. Because if it's about pride of place, why aren't the staff proud? If it's about connection and community, why don't we all wear it? Why doesn't the head teacher model it by wearing the jacket, the tie and the hot weather and the jumper and not take it off when it's too hot to cope? All that. And we began with this conversation around, OK, then what else is common sense?

4:57 And being on first name terms for them was made common sense because they didn't think anyone had the automatic right to superiority, that this was something you definitely earned and you didn't need to earn it, whether Mr. or Mr. title. So for me it was like ground breaking and fascinating and I was often out of my depth because I'd been conventionally educated at grammar school then to Cambridge, hierarchy and status mattered, not exposing your weaknesses. A teacher mattered because I thought it was it would lose me authority. I was really thrown in the deep end by the incredible wisdom of these people. But what I was exposed to was that there is wisdom in the minds of very, very young children.

5:39 And it was that wisdom combined with our experience, which led to SANS beginning in 87. And now 38 years later, I'm still there. I do lots of other work, but I'm four days a week teacher, one day a week nominal head, which is an intriguing thing when we look at management, which I'm sure we're going to explore. That's sort of where I found myself. So that's probably a really sort of helpful introduction as to where I find myself a lifetime on in the same school. So for those people who might not be familiar, where about geographically are you located and how many kids do you have at the moment at the school? So we're in a place called Devon, which is the southwest of England, and we're very close to a beautiful wilderness called Dartmoor where you can find wild ponies and otters in rivers.

6:29 So 5 minutes from the school which is in a rural town of about 10,000 people. We have amazing wilderness and rivers and beaches, really utterly beautiful. The town itself was a was a tin mining town so it's got quite an industrial feel to it. It's quite dark and gloomy and we have a huge truffle fronted property with an acre of garden that bang in the middle of town really. So the children can go out for buying sandwiches and coffee and teenagers particularly to go off and escape the building. And we have 75 children and it that's about the size we we stay at. The most we've been is 85.

7:11 When we started, we were 21. And it seems to us when we got all our adults together, a community of about 100 to 120 liberal teaching assistants and things like this, this seems like the ideal community size. And again, for anyone, you sort of shared a little bit about how the school started. So for anyone who's not familiar with it currently, how do you describe it to people in a sentence or two when they say, what is this school? What is it all about? Who you know, who are you as a school community? How do you describe it to them in simple terms? So I think the the phrase I tend to use most is it's somewhere between a dysfunctional family and a university.

7:55 That would be the atmosphere. So it's considers itself democratic. But I think a better word would be a school that listens and another word you would perhaps understand if you in the educational pilots would be relational. I think you'd recognize all those things, a relational listening, democratic school. And we can go into what democracy means in our particular context. But I think the best is you walk in and you feel like you're walking into a family setting, a huge community family. 11 year olds are doing things that sometimes 17 year olds get to do, and 17 year olds are hanging out with 12 year olds playing frisbee. And the idea of that, you know, the thing that you've got in common is your age. 11 year olds should hang out. 11 year olds definitely doesn't exist at all. So I want to go back to a, a moment you you shared before sort of 40 years ago, it seemed like you had quite a traditional schooling, grammar school, Cambridge, you said. But then, So what drew you to something very different and on a different track?

8:57 So one of the things I was doing at Cambridge, and if your readers know a little bit about the Cambridge Boat Race, the Oxford in Cambridge Boat Race. So I was a very committed role. I'd done trials for those boats, wasn't good enough, but was very much a committed role. And so when I chose to be, to train as a teacher, I found a university that would do, would help me develop my, my, my rower and I had an idea to be a sports teacher or a sports coach. And tragically, my, my sports, my, my rowing coach died the year I arrived and I was sort of thrown into a spin because now I didn't know what I was doing. I was training to be a history teacher, but that was a sort of pretense really what I was, was hoping to be a sports coach, go to a top event, go and do maybe a PhD in sport and then finish up there. So I changed my direction, did lots of rock climbing, canoeing, sailing, things like this alongside pretending to be a history teacher and couldn't find a job because I wasn't really interested in being a teacher, although I find myself now in the lifetime in teaching.

10:04 But my history coach, my history tutor said I think I found a job that will fit you. And he sent me the application for Dartington Hall School. And then I finished up turning up mainly through laziness, because I hadn't obviously chosen to apply for 100 jobs like young teachers do. I, I was just waiting for some magic to happen. And the magic was my history tutor finding a school that he thought might match my personality. And I realized, and I wrote, I wrote a poem when I was 17, which was very mocking of exams. And I was, and I was actually suspended from my school, my grammar school, because this bit of my rebellious nature was beginning to surface.

10:48 I got into much more trouble at 17 than I did at 13 and I found Cambridge. I felt like a tourist the whole time. And really I haven't found my tribe. And I think what I've done at Sam's, thanks to this history shooter who guided me towards Dartington, I've actually both found and made my troll. I've found a place that resonates with both my activism, my anti authority. There's a sort of zeitgeist that I have around this. So I think of sort of aligned those things to a lifetime and created a school where the arts and politics matter and conversation matters. And children are encouraged to sort of find their both their rebellious and their free spirit and not just rebellion in one of those which just sort of for the sake of it, where they can find a way to express what matters. And I think I felt I'd been denied it quite a lot of money. So going on with that then, so when people hear kind of about or the concept of a democratic school or things of that nature where things are a lot, a lot more self-directed by the students themselves, they sometimes imagine something that's very loose or unstructured and informal. How?

12:01 How do you guys define it in practice? So one of the first things that adults assume when they come through the door and they hear that there's this thing called choice, and they find that some of them terrifying. The idea that children should be able to choose what they study because their first reaction if they've had a bad experience at school is I would choose to do nothing. If you gave me the choice of the 13 or I would avoid all those things that I hated, which was the everything that Pink Floyd talked about in, you know, the sarcasm in the classroom and all that. Yeah. So another brick in the wall. If that was the experience they're going to project onto their children that what they will probably do is nothing. And it is true that there is often a bit of a reset where children learn to unlearn from their experience of previous schools.

12:49 And so they do sit in trees and they do play a lot, irrespective of their age. The thing that's fundamental to us is that when you put your hand on a door and enter a room out of choice, my experience has been that the brain lights up in a way which it doesn't. If you're coerced now, it doesn't mean that there aren't amazing children all over the planet. You can go into coercive situations and still tap into their genius. They understand that teachers care and want to take them on a fascinating journey, of course. But I see lots of children find that they can't. They then become actors. They begin to behave like some pupil that they imagine in their head. In other words, they're not really present. The child that's acting the pupil is present. So for us, the risk is worth it.

13:34 Now, what does that risk look like for some children? It's three weeks playing on a swing for some children, and the most extreme cases, and we shouldn't base our schools on anecdotes, but there are children who spend a very, very long time not going to many classes at all. There's one girl in particular who spent three years doing all her education by sitting at lunch tables, talking to adults, talking to friends, playing music, reading books, and barely went to a class. And at 14 decided that she wanted to be Cambridge Scholar as well and started to work at 14, got all her exams, got the best day levels at her local college and went straight to Cambridge on a scholarship. Now she's a rare anecdote and we shouldn't base the school on those because that's not really a true story for most kids.

14:21 If you're surrounded by passionate, caring and loving teachers, choice is easy because you hear on the Grapevine that Sean's psychology classes are really cool to go to and you don't hear shouting, you don't see anything that's fearful. All you're left with is your personal fears in your baggage you're carrying about. Oh my God, I'm rubbish at Mass. But then you hear that Nathan's lovely and he makes everyone feel really capable, but it doesn't mean that we're going to massage children into all choosing. Otherwise that would be like a cult, you know, say, oh, this school's around choice, but everyone's in class. It wouldn't be working if everyone was in class because we've then managed to do something else, which is to play the same game that other schools do, but with a different form of coercion. So I like the fact that when a school inspector comes to Sam's and says, Sean, the attendance in your psychology is not very good.

15:18 And I'll say, but ten of the 15 children are here. And she says, well, that's only about 66% attendance. And I say, no, that's 100% attendance. And she goes, I don't really understand what you just said to me because 10 chose to do it. Five are doing something else. But the ten who come, that's 100%. And the fact that and the fact that five aren't here for me is a celebration because if all 15 had come, they didn't want to, that would be a problem. But the ten who said they would are amazing. So there's something between that there's like. It also is also true to share that there are days when those children who you think are amazing at coming don't turn up because they're sitting on a sofa having a chat about something just as important.

16:03 Well, they've gone downtown to have a sandwich. And you've also got to deal with that because choice opens up those risks. That the sandwich is more appealing than my psychology class. That's a bit that's going to stretch your ego. That's a That's a pretty good sandwich, by the sounds of things. So what? What would a typical day and week look like at the Sand School through the eyes of a student? What? What's happening on a typical week? Yeah, OK, maybe we should. Let's let's pick a couple of students. So we've got, and these are slight, slightly extreme.

16:44 So apologies for again, it feels a bit anecdotal, but it's quite nice to show the sort of extremes. So we have a young girl who's 13. No, she's faulting now and for the last year she's been coming in with a teacher very early 8:00 because she practice piano. She's she's taking herself from Grade 1 to grade 181212 months. She practices constantly. She goes to all her classes because she loves the scaffolding of classes. She's plays every lunchtime. She plays a game with friends like Werewolf or they do card games. At one stage there was a sort of mad passion to do backgammon, which all sounds very esoteric and clever, right?

17:25 But just really playful. I got to learn backgammon with her and she slaughtered me for months and months. She would have a very conventional, it wouldn't look very different to a very aspirational child in an elite private school. But none of this is being, she's not being manoeuvred into any of this is purely from her passion and choice. And she goes to classes because she loves them. She's also very clear and critical about other things going wrong. And then at 4:30 she's absolutely shattered and she goes home with her mum who's one of our school administrators. So she has like the ultimately conventional, looks like I say, very aspirational young private school student and very happy.

18:10 If we go to the other extreme, we'd have someone who'd come in and maybe help me cook in the kitchen because I'm making biscuits first thing. And then 10 minutes into that goes, I can't really concentrate on making biscuits. Sure. And I need to go and play outside and they'll run down to the climbing wall and they'll spend an hour in the climbing wall and then they might do one or two classes before lunch. But they're very sort of physically like they need to move around a lot. Maybe it was one of our very neuro diverse kids spend lunch time playing football on the sports court and then the afternoon might not go to any classes or might hang out in woodwork all afternoon, running in and out and doing bits, maybe turning a ball by the end of the afternoon.

18:51 And they'd look like more like an adult who would have very long periods of time committed to something like woodwork. Or if you're doing pottery, you don't stop pottery cutters a bell just as you're about to get to the key bit and we don't have any bells. So we have children who have very, very organised lives and children who have much more chaotic lives which fit the rhythm of their bodies. Quite hard as an educator to encompass all that. But they have a sort of the sort of polar opposite and in the middle, lots of children doing lots of the very conventional timetable. I just also true that from we had a Ukrainian refugee join us at the age of 11 and decided to learn all her English by not going to English but by going to all my history and psychology classes.

19:42 And so I was 11. She would be in every class, but I don't start teaching psychology till kids are 14. So she'd just hang out with all 1456 year olds. So she would do 3 or 4 psychology classes a day. So that's possible. And she's obviously now fluent and she's clearly very good at psychology, but it's very unpredictable and trying to. And The thing is that if you're running an ordinary school, it doesn't mean that all those magic things don't happen. Because they do in sort of strange ways. It just happens that we created an environment where they happen much much more. So what happens then if when conflicts arise, particularly if they're between students or between students and staff, or there's a fundamental disagreement on something, how, how does that get worked through?

20:35 I think that's, that's a really cool question because things have changed dramatically since we started the school. The constitution we wrote in 1986 so we could start in 1987 was that the school meeting was the head teacher and it was accepted by the Department of Education. So the powers normally held by governors and head teacher are held by the school meeting, which is all the voting members of the school, all the staff and children. So things like expulsions and staff discipline would happen initially in that small meeting of everyone. It might have been explored elsewhere, but the dishes making happened there. Then I went to a school called Sabri Valley back in 199192, which is an intriguing alternative school in America, and they had a thing called Judicial Council, which was a much, much more intimate gathering of children who handle everyday behaviour issues.

21:26 I came back and suggested that it would be much more interesting and and develop better skills if the children were involved in these more intimate conversations with people when behaviour was a problem. So ever since then we've had our school council and they would deal with daily issues. They do get some training in conflict resolution, nonviolent communication, it's very informal, but they would be coached by us. And then once you've got the school council meeting, two of those experienced counsellors would stay on and act as a mentor to the new groups coming through. So there's this historical cycle that people have experienced how to work with conflict and behaviour.

22:07 Now since that started, the last five years we've had an evolution of Department of Education guidance for us as well as every school. And so now children wouldn't be allowed to be involved in making a final decision on expulsion. So although they can still help monitor behaviour, that now would have to go to a panel of adults. But the school could advise us that they'd reached a point of no return with the student. Everything but that. Everything but the expulsion can still be dealt with by a group of 6 skilled children who'd been voted to handle it. And they would also be part of handling conflicts with adults.

22:48 And the deal would be that every adult, an adult has a mentor which would help them navigate a complex issue where the children were happy with them. And every child has a tutor who's obviously welcome to be in the room when the school cast were talking to them. But yeah, we've had 30 years of young people helping manage behaviour in the school. And we do have everything from children breaking our drug and alcohol rule, you know, older teenagers who take real risks, right down to everyday bullying to petty theft. All those things happen. They tend to be generally to do with people being unkind to each other.

23:29 But we they've had to deal with, you know, everything from, you know, illegality through to extreme bullying. And so are there any non negotiables, whether that's in relation and to behaviour or just in relation to general structures and processes? And if there are, who decides them and and why? Yeah. So there's the the drug and alcohol rules are non negotiable. So if you're in possession of or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, then you will be immediately suspended for a week end of. And then the school would make a decision with parents about whether it makes sense to return. And the way we've tended to work for all these years is an understanding that once a child's reflected, anything else starts to look like revenge. So there would, there wouldn't necessarily even be a punishment after suspension.

24:23 Although if a child's done something which has harmed the community, then often they would be offered the opportunity to decide for themselves with that council what they could do in terms of community service to pay back into the community and rebuild relationship. So that all the children know that they've not just reflected, but the reflection takes a physical form, be that cooking for a week or doing extra tidying or maybe doing some mentoring with younger kids or being a climbing wall instructor. Other than that, apart from we have a code of conduct as adults which is not negotiable and it's you know, obviously following safeguarding principles which is non negotiable.

25:03 So even though we'd be a school which values relationship, the the fundamental safeguarding principles that control every school still exist in every progressive school across the country. Other than that, there's a rule that says you have to take your shoes off if you walk upstairs to protect the carpets, if you eat lunch you have to wash up. Everyone has to tidy up once a day. And if you don't, you might find yourself as an adult or a child sitting in front of school council explaining why it is that you think an 11 year old is doing your tidying for you. And that's pretty hard. If you're a 55 year old teacher and you're sitting in front of a group of six kids, say you need to explain why that phone call at 4:15 was more important than the Hoover. If you can convince us that the phone call was utterly essential, it had to be done, then we're fine. But if you just decided to, you're going to have to talk to us.

25:57 I think that's really cool. Have you been called in front of the school council before? Well, the most dramatic was I don't often, but there was, well, recently I've had a thing where I've, I've been teaching this thing called project, which is an amazing self-directed study which you can either produce an artifact, be it a cake or a dance or a piece of clothing or write a 2000 word essay. And both myself and my fellow teacher overmarked it. We we thought we had these amazing projects. And when it came back, everyone had been marked down and I had to answer to the school council. You know how I'd managed to get my markings so wrong after 40 years teaching because they were like, kids won't want to come to your class if they want to do a qualification and you don't know how to market or you over market. Could you just take us through this because we want to go back to the school and say it's fine.

26:50 Sean and the other teacher have learned that lesson and there's an explanation. And that was really good. I felt like I'd already learned my lesson once I saw the grades, but really helpful for students to go. It isn't that we want to tell you of. We want to be able to get back to the school to say that they can have confidence that you will be able to mark their work in a way which reflects how well they've done. That was that was, that was good. That's a nice example. But the most dramatic was 10 years into Sands when I was about to become a dad for the first time. I wasn't sure whether I should stay because I didn't know whether I could parent all these children and parent my own children. And I, I decided to be a nomadic teacher.

27:31 I decided that what I would do for some strange illogical reason that I would then move from, I'd move and teach in any spare space and children had to find me. It's utterly stupid idea, but it was more that I should have lost my center. I was like spinning as like a dad and I was thinking uncle and I didn't really know what I was doing. I was what about 3510 years into teaching thought that I wouldn't be able to do Anyway, The children called a school meeting and I was asked to sit in another room while they talked about me with the other staff. And then a teacher came and said the children would just like to know this. And I said I was waiting for something really terrible. They said the children want to know why you don't love them anymore.

28:13 I said I do. And they said, well, it doesn't look like it. It looks like you're not paying attention to them. You're unavailable. You've, you've become like the shadow in the school and what they're thinking is you don't care anymore. And how much do you care? And if you don't care, they say you should leave. So I went back into the meeting and explained how much I cared and, and sort of tried to share where I was in my life, which was amazing to have the opportunity to be that vulnerable in front of the group of kids. Now, new movements in the law have meant that that would be more difficult because what would happen now is if a group of children called a meeting about a teacher, if the teacher wasn't able to deal with it, they would use the grounds of constructed dismissal.

28:57 They would argue they're being bullied out of the school. I didn't see it like that. I, you know, obviously as one of the founders, I see myself as, as like something the children can practice their voice on. And I have enormous faith that they're not doing it from a place of being vitriolic. They were genuinely concerned and had to find a way to verbalize it. So I was really happy to be going to experiment upon me, but that's not the case of all our staff. And it would be very difficult, I think teachers in other schools to think that fifty children had gathered, called a meeting to talk about them. I was really, I was felt very vulnerable, but I felt very relieved. I had a chance to communicate and they were able to share what they saw.

29:40 So yes, it's I've been there for me, it's very healthy. Doesn't mean it's not daunting because it really is daunting to answer to 11 year old, but proof of the democratic structure and I really want to keep working on that because it's very easy to lose it. There's sometimes I think perhaps there's a misconception of the types of kids that do well or thrive in an alternative school environment. Perhaps it's kids with behaviour problems or academic challenges of some sort. What? What kinds of young people do you see that tend to thrive at the Sand School? Yeah, I would think that if we were to try and break it up into the sorts of children who come, we have a lot of children who feel invisible in bigger schools. They feel unnoticed.

30:34 It doesn't mean that teachers aren't trying really hard, because they really are, but the scale of bigger schools means that their needs aren't met. So we have children who are often very neuro diverse, super capable, super talented, but there isn't space within the neurotypical structure of giant places and weird. It's weird isn't it, that the bigger a place, the more inflexible it can be. So they need somewhere small, which has got lots of flexibility. So a child who needs to move around a lot in the classroom, they can do that in my room because eventually the kids would go, hey, Ben, you've had your 10 minutes pacing of the down like a lion. We've reached the point where we can't focus now, but we get it. And he goes, oh, that really helped me settle myself.

31:15 So and small classes. So children who are drawn to something that's small, more intimate. So sometimes they're running away from. So it's push pull factors, isn't it? So with the the pull factors are parents have heard about the school and are committed to democratic philosophy. That would probably represent 1/3 to half our children who are everything from neurodiverse to neurotypical, but they're drawn to a democratic relational school. But the other half are children who definitely have the sorts of learning needs or anxiety or carry with them some trauma, family situation. But a lot of our children might be adopted or fostered. And so the nurturing small atmosphere is one that's going to then allow them to flourish like kids would flourish in other schools because it's not as if our grades at the end that they're, they're perfectly good.

32:08 Some years they're amazing, but they're amazing because that cohort would have incredibly talented, able children and they would have done equally well in a state school or other independent. The difference is that we would probably say that most children would say that every day they were happy, whereas you might get to the end of Independent School or state school experience and say, well, I got my grades, but not a lot of that was very good. And it wasn't very playful and it wasn't very joyful. So yeah, 5050 mix. But children who've been traumatized by life in different ways really flourish in schools that have got a relational heart.

32:48 And it doesn't mean that the children who'd come with almost all the advantages of amazing, amazing family, lucky life situations, you wouldn't know which child was which, which is I think probably one of the great indicators of success. You would look in a classroom and you wouldn't know all these scruffy kids, some of them in their pyjamas, you know, you just wouldn't know. And I think that's testament to what we're able to do. And how do former students reflect on their experience once they leave the Sand School and graduate or go on to other things? So one of the one of the questions that's very often asked by by parents when they come when their children are about 11 or 12 is this all looks very nice, but it doesn't look like the real world. So what happens when they move on at 17 to a higher college to sixth form?

33:43 Because won't they have been so sort of nurtured that they won't be able to cope? And actually it's sort of, it's a fair question that if you brought up in a loving atmosphere and then you go to a school which where the adults haven't really got time for you, it would seem that it might be quite a traumatic transition. And actually for our children who carry who've carried the most trauma in their lives, some of them do find the transition really, really complicated because they're not noticed in the same way. And adults don't really have time to to talk to them in the way that they're being used to the luxury of being in a small school with lots of adults who are genuinely interested in young people's lives rather than just teaching their subjects.

34:24 So definitely it's true that some really struggle from from this dysfunctional family university style setting into the into the bigger, wider world. I think it's really fair. And I think that that would be a sort of Fair criticism that you can't actually coughen them up enough. And one of the challenges that people throw at us is that, do children instill a sort of grit in themselves? If you're in a school where there's choice, do children not choose to sort of walk away from the most difficult bits? And don't you need someone to hold them through it so that they do make the tough decisions? Because if they can choose to walk away, won't they? And that's true that some do, absolutely. But the vast majority of kids, because we offer things like Duke of Edinburgh, we do like real dramatic adventures where some of them find their that grit. And we do have teachers who are so passionate about their subjects, they don't let children off the hook. The difference is the way to get them through the difficult stuff isn't through coercion and fear and and fear of shame. It's finding a different mechanism to get them to face, you know, this is going to need 3 hours tonight. How are you going to do it?

35:37 What are you going to do to actually get through and finish this essay on time? But I think the underlying thing about about your question, which is absolutely right. Do schools like this help children develop deep resilience and grit, even if they know that they're loved and cared for? Yeah, the proof's sort of in the pudding. And some of our children definitely leave softer than the world requires. Have you had the opportunity to, you know, you mentioned 39 years there now the opportunity students that have graduated perhaps 10 years, 15 years, 20 years ago and follow up the the later in life of the they've had a broader experience and and time for a reflection on those formative years. What's that been like?

36:24 Yeah, so of about the thousand children have been through the school, there's about 400 and 5500 still in contact on a big on big Facebook groups. So I still know a lot. So one of our students from the very, very first year I met in the pub 2 Sundays ago. I met him when he was an 11 year old boy into 16 schools before he joined us and he now has a teenage son and he talked with complete love of his experience of the school. And we were a bit more chaotic in those early days. And I think that it's fair to say that some of the children, the atmosphere was much more playful and chaotic and organic than it is now.

37:05 I think we've, we've grown up with, we've grown up with the school. So we passed our teens. The school is no longer a teenager now it's a sort of grown up and it feels like it. But I have lots and lots of young people who have gone on to Cambridge themselves. So you know, I was saying that I met a 51 year old in the pub 2 Sundays ago who's one of our first pupils. He came when he was 11, had been to 16 school before he joined us. He was there with his old teenage son, talking with complete love and fascination of his experience of the school. But we were, we've grown as well. The school has grown.

37:46 It's gone through its childlike, organic, crazy phase. It's gone through its teens in the sort of 90s and in the 90s. And now it feels like it's a grown up school which has still got driven by those deep principles. So we have children who are two of our kids, one Michelin stars in the in the restaurants they set up. We've got kids who've gone to Cambridge and Oxford, kids have gone to Bali and sold T-shirts, children who are really just happy married couples doing, you know, everyday lovely jobs. I think the difference would be, and although lots of our children move into performing arts and are self-employed and move into creative arts, that's not true of all. And some have gone to the military and into the fire service and police service. So it's not as if it's this is a school which is anti authority in that way.

38:30 The difference would be, I'm pretty sure, but they're doing something they're passionate about and they've they've developed some amazing skills of communication in critical, sort of critical thinking. Yeah. About 500 kids still in contact. The oldest student I've taught because I was 20. They were 20 when I was 23, when I started teaching Dartington. So then now 60, which doesn't even seem possible that I could have taught someone who's 60. That doesn't make any mathematical sense. Yeah, and I'm off to London tomorrow and I'm going to go and watch one of our ex students who was the very, very first person on the admissions book called Jonathan Allen, who's a professional musician, going to go watching in London, perform, still mates, have a beer together.

39:15 And I think that's like a really nice indicator that, you know, they're still in my life. I'm godparent to some of their children. I'm teaching the children of the children I taught. That's going to, yeah, make you feel a bit old. Old Yeah, if I get through to the teaching the grandchildren, then I reckon it's time to hang up the boots. Yeah, perhaps, perhaps. So look, a lot of people might be listening to this, working in more traditional schools, whether that's schools, head teachers, educators, whoever. And they're like thinking, well, that all sounds great. But so if there was, you know, something meaningful or a meaningful step or something they could take and say, well, look, what's one thing that I can do today in high school that works in your school?

40:09 Either gives kids more choice or more flexibility or have more say in things. What what, what could that be? Yeah. So I work in, I work in quite a lot of state schools and this thing you've got to be really careful of. I would go in 1520 years ago and we'd do these sort of workshops in democratic structures and then you leave and you've you haven't created anything that can be embedded in the structure of the school. It will make a difference because all those other cultures are. Are there fundamentally in opposition perhaps to what you've introduced? So I sort of gave up on trying to walk in like some sort of dead poet society teacher and entertain kids with ideas about voice and choice. I think it's I think it's more interesting to offer thinking tools because every teacher ever met. Sometimes they're more passionate about their subjects than their children, but most are actually passionate about children and more children grow.

41:06 So one of the tools Ioffer people I'll share 21 is that if you were to imagine either your classroom or your school is like a planet and the surface of the planet could be what your classroom looks like. Mine looks like a mixture between a jungle and a classroom. And the surface of the planet matters because that's and the children are imagine the like their moons or satellites orbiting it. But the thing that holds them around you is not what the plastion looks like or how slick your lesson is. Yeah. It's the gravity that's created by the core. And you have to ask yourself what you bring as a sort of gravitational feel that holds children.

41:50 And if you use fear and shame, it still looks the same. They keep spinning around the planet. But if you use interest in them and joyfulness and excitement and some of it's unpredictable and you take them on a journey, at the heart of that, the gravitational field at the core of yours, is that it still looks the same. And then the black holes, which is sort of outside that, you know, their hunger, fighting with your boyfriend, Ria, with your mum and dad, all that stuff which pulls children into the black hole. Your gravitational field might just work well enough to hold them. As I say, they both look the same. They feel really different to children.

42:31 So that would be one thing like what you want to have as the core. But when you walk into a space, and that also means that the your surface of your planet can be pretty bare because there are some schools that just can't afford to resource their children the way that I would be able to fill my room. And the other is for teachers to consider the three capitals in a triangle, informational capital, which I have loads of now, but eventually when senility kicks in, my informational capital will start to drop dramatically. Then I have my cultural capital, which is my understanding of the school I'm in. And if I combine my information on my cultural, I can deliver the information in a way which suits the culture. And then underpinning that, the other bit, the triangle is my Personal Capital, my belief system, my care for children, my ethics.

43:19 And at some moment, a teacher will have those in like a magic synergy. And in the middle of that is the relational classroom when your cultural capital, information and Personal Capital all resonate like at the same frequency. And it's like working on all of them. And most teachers will have, you know, you might be in conflict with the culture you're in. You need to work on that. You might find your informational capital is poor and the children know you don't know your stuff. Yeah. And you just let your ego go and go. I really don't know my stuff and they've seen through me. Right. So work on your informational capital. And if you walk in, haven't had a row with your partner, open the window before you drive in and let it out. Work on your Personal Capital.

44:01 And again, it's not. And I think those things are honouring the children at the centre of of our work. And that's all I'd say. Is that finishing? We're nearly over. I'd like to like just as a story, I have a girl I work with about cystic fibrosis, and she knew she wasn't going to make it probably to 23. And so for her, every day in the classroom was life. So it wasn't any good me saying if you do this, it'll help you be a more successful searcher. This is going to help with your retirement plan. This is going to be about marriage and children. So every day was precious. And so for her to give up an hour of her life to be with me in a history class was a precious gift she was giving me.

44:46 And I hold on to that when I have kids walking, knowing that at Sands they could be doing something else. So they're honoring me by saying, will you take me on a journey that's worthwhile because I'm giving up an hour of my life. And maybe, and I know that children in other schools are coerced into or have to, but if we had that as a way in our heads that we should honor the fact that they're the hour they're with us. For this young girl with cystic fibrosis, every hour's pressure, she could be kissing her boyfriend in the car park. That would have been. That's going to be so much more exciting than Sean's history class. I'd better make the history class damn good to honor the fact that 12 year olds deserve to be the best 12 year olds they can be rather than excuse our behavior by saying this is helping you get to be 19. Trust me, if you do this, you'll be a successful 23 year old. Maybe we should just let go of that and maybe embrace the rhythm of the children and go to be 15. We should really honour what that is. Fantastic.

45:48 So a couple of quick questions to to finish up on now, Sean, if you don't mind. So what's your favorite book? The Wizard of Earth Seed by Ashley Lillard Gwen. I'll explain why. Shall I explain why very briefly? Yeah, please, please. I thought it was my favorite book when I at 10 years old, I was in an advanced readers class at primary school and was allowed to sit in the head teacher's office with about six to seven kids, all very elite, that we could just read for two hours, which was that, Oh my God, this is heaven. And I read Lord of the Rings and all the fantasy books and June and all that as a very precocious young person. But there's something about Wizard of Earthsea which got me.

46:29 And then I realised as a teacher much later that the way that Ursula Quinn describes magic is that you need to understand the name of a thing before you can change it. And that is my go to formula in my head that unless I understand the real name of the child, you can't be involved in the act of transformation. And we all know as educators what we mean by the real men. Yeah. And suddenly I realized it was my favorite book of all time because it it described the magic that I think we can do in the classroom, which is understanding the names of the children and then helping the rock become the flower or the flower become the rock because it sands these very delicate, lovely flowers. We need to help them develop the grit, you know? So that's my favorite book and I it's one of those books I go back to in the summer holidays and reread and I'm lying on the beach completely exhausted and it takes me back to being a precocious 10 year old.

47:28 A leader, past or present, you admire and why. So I practice something called Qigong every day, and the founding father of Qigong is a guy called Lao Zu, and quite a lot of things like Hippocrates and others. It's probably many, many philosophers and thinkers whose work has been attributed to Lao Zu, but he has a one of the sayings in Chidong is Wuwei, which means effortless action. And a little bit like in Chariots of Fire when the person leaps over the hurdles with the champagne glasses on the top, that's the most, that's the most revolting version of effortless action, right? Because it comes from who knows what, a sense of privilege and and superiority.

48:14 But there's something about if you're if you're living your life in harmony with your intention, then the effort you put in is more effortless because you've found you've found your groove. And I think that I think, yeah, I may have found the groove or as I say, become unemployable. But where effortless action is something which I think children also when they're in in the presence of it, it's really inspiring. It's that passionate teacher who's just in the the flow of the three capitals. And there are days when I feel still at 63, that I've I found my Wu way. And finally, best piece of advice you've ever received. Right, yeah, from my dad, My dad, he said, and this is about living in the world we live in.

48:57 But one from my dad and more from my dad said you only need as many chairs as you've got asses. And my granny said, my granny said to me, you'll never feel unless when you realize that the only time you realize you've enough is when you realise that less than enough is more than enough. Very good, very good. Well, I think that seems like a, a good place to leave it. So thank you so much for for joining me today. Sean, I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, enjoy the rest of the day. Yeah, thanks so much for listening to the episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe, like, follow, et cetera. Drop a comment below to let me know anything you'd like covered in upcoming episodes or suggestions for future guests. You can also connect with me on Instagram and LinkedIn.