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Josh Powell Full: High confidence layer down in school can translate into high aspiration. Welcome to the Power Up Universe podcast, where we talk about different ways to help our kids build confidence and resilience so they can feel unstoppable in their lives. I'm your host, Scott Feld. Let's get right to the Power Talk. Welcome to the Power Up Universe Podcast. This is your host, Scott Feld, and I have Josh Powell with me today. And Josh is actually in Chile. I don't have too many international guests. I think you're my second one. Josh, you are the head of school at Redland. And I can't wait for myself, for the viewers and listeners to hear how did you end up in Chile as the head of school at Redland? What's your background and and why that? Welcome to the show, too. I'm glad you're here. Great. well, first of all, thank you very much. thank you for for having me. happy to happy to be here chatting to you. so I I trained back as a teacher in the I trained as a teacher back in the UK up in twenty fifteen, up in Manchester, through the the Teach First program, which is a bit like your Teach for America that that you have. so I spent a while teaching there. I trained as a maths teacher, although I've actually ended up teaching more economics since. I then actually ended up leaving teaching for a little while. I did some work in some consultancy, but I ended up working in education projects there that Gave me more of a view of the guess the management side of things. And so in since 2020, I've been working in various leadership roles in schools. Again, that was mostly in in London, kind of assistant head and then sort of deputy head teacher roles. I'd, you know, I've lived abroad in the past. I spent a year working in in Moscow previously. I'd lived in Spain for a year, I'd done a master's there. So I was I was looking for opportunities to move abroad. And then this opportunity at Redland came up as kind of head of school, a principal. which is my first experience running a junior school as well. So it's been a very exciting opportunity and I'm still still relatively new to it. Yeah, how cool. So you've spent most of your working life then in education and you've definitely worked your way up. Are there certain grade levels that you've worked with more than others or have you worked with all of them? Yeah, I mean I trained as a a secondary teacher. so in the UK system that'll be from year seven. I started working year seven to year eleven, so that would be till grade ten in the US, so kind of grade six to grade ten. but then I actually when I kind of went back into to leadership roles, I specialized more in sixth form, which for us is your kind of grade eleven, grade twelve. So I kind of did a lot of work on kind of university applications, like how to get kids from kind of disadvantaged backgrounds into the sort of top top UK universities and because it was mostly UK universities. but now Redland is an all-through school. So we have kids all the way from pre-K through to twelve. and so that's a new experience for me, the little ones. So you're the head of school for all grade levels now, all teachers and stuff. Well, officially I take the reins of all levels from January. but yeah, I've been kind of hiding that role. At the moment, I'm kind of temporarily just in in charge of the junior school. so that would be pre-K through to Fourth grade. but yeah, from January I'm gonna be the overall kind of principal all the way from like pre K to tw twelfth grade. Are you nervous or excited? or both. Mostly mostly excited. I think if I'm honest, the thing that bit I was most nervous about was the the junior school. I think that's the thing that's been most new to me. Having specialized in seventeen, eighteen year olds I've had to be giving assemblies to four year olds and singing and telling stories and all these things that are very, very far out of my, you know. Comfort is certainly not what I'm used to with 18-year-olds. So is is over already, I think. You're being stretched for sure. This is cool. This is good. Well, a lot of my guests and who I work with tend to be in the elementary school age. They tend to be kind of seven to twelve years old, which is maybe second or third grade up through fifth or sixth grade, right? And then I have had some that work with the middle schoolers. So Now that you are going to be kind of stretching into this elementary school age, what is something that you're looking forward to bringing to that age group, you know, for the first time with you? that's a really interesting question. I think well, as it obviously is the first time we work with this age group. If I'm honest, what we've worked on mostly this year, I think is around consistency in terms of responses to to behavior. I think like a lot of a lot of schools globally, this this Redland saw a dip in behavior post pandemic. there's been a rise in students with special educational needs, which I think historically the school hasn't really seen. Again, I think just to clarify my background is basically entirely in public schools, but this Redland is a private school. okay. So that again is a slight it's a slight difference for me. And again because of that, you know, they've tended to have a certain cohort and so I think you know challenges of seeing more students coming through with special educational needs and how to respond to but more importantly how to kind of predict and prevent certain like negative behaviors. that's really been the focus of this this academic year. Yeah, as if if I was asking that question a little differently, because you have worked with older age groups, if you kind of worked backwards and you saw what issues, challenges, problems that kids have. two, three, four, five years older than maybe that second through fifth grade, what would you then bring to those second to fifth graders to maybe sort of interrupt them or give them some power tools to deal with what's upcoming?
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Yeah, I think I mean one of the main things I've seen there is on the on like the academic side, I would say. So I think stopping the you know what you often see is students coming through to secondary school and I say this as a as a math teacher. You know, without the basic knowledge of their times tables, without the basic, just like the fundamentals of maths, without understanding of like place value, for example. And that applies in reading and writing, et cetera, as well, that they come to secondary school kind of academically unprepared. I know a lot of our talk is gonna be about kind of how to boost students like confidence. but that's that's the kind of like the worst case scenario for when they arrive at secondary school, if you know, if you can't read and suddenly you're confronted by, you know, thousands of words a day, potentially. that's like hugely damaging to these students' confidence. So again, like more on the academic side, what we've been working on is really thinking about like what are the fundamental skills that we need, you know, every every single student to kind of graduate to middle school with. And you know, if 90% of students like meet those kind of requirements, that's that's not okay. Like what are we doing for those 10% of students who haven't met the requirements in like second grade to make sure they can then catch up in in third grade. And I think again as a maths teacher, that's just particularly important to me because if you don't, you know, if you can't ads in first grades, then you're not gonna be able to access second grade, you're not gonna be able to access third grade, you're not gonna be able to access fourth grade. The problem just kind of compounds. So the earlier you can address it, the the better. Yeah, great answer. So well you talked about confidence and that's where we kind of always go here with this. but you're absolutely right. Their confidence shrinks if they feel academically like they're behind. And there's not a lot of motivation, I would guess, to catch up because they're too deep in their own thoughts and woes about I'm bad and I'm never, you know, never gonna be good at math or whatever it might be. So everybody fills out an application to be on the show. You did, and one of the things you talked about is the curriculum and how the curriculum is connected to their confidence. Can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah, I think it's linked to what what I just said a little bit. I think, you know, fundamentally kids kids love getting things right and they love like understanding things. and I think often when kids' confidence falter, it's because we haven't been you know, we we haven't put the right material in front of them. so, you know, either we're kind of we're, you know, potentially pushing them too hard, we're giving them di difficulties, but not the kind of desirable difficulties that kind of You know, research says we we want to kind of stretch and challenge kids, kids with
you know, we're giving them tasks that are too hard that just make them kind of give up and and therefore lose confidence. And I think what's kind of key is what what you also said, it's I think when kids start to say, Well, I am bad at math, I'm never gonna be able to do this after a while, it becomes part of their kind of identity, right? It does, right? And they go around saying it like, I am bad at math. Yeah. Yeah. And I think often I think one of the most damaging things that I've seen. particularly early on in my career in is you see that rhetoric from parents as well. You have you know had a lot of parents evenings where you have the parents saying, Well, I was terrible at maths, so therefore obviously my child is gonna be terrible at math. and so if that message is kind of being reinforced at home It's kind of like, well, does doesn't matter that your mass grade is low because you know that's just what we're like. Like we're we're a bad mass. as if it really was genetic, right? Like I don't know. You can I don't know if that's a genetic trait or not, like like eye color. Yeah, but there's no there's no incentive really to to improve that. and so I think in terms of that, the the curriculum and like the just the material we're kind of presenting to students is so like fundamental that You know, we need to be giving them things that are challenging them, but not things that are kind of overloading their their working memory. because it's you know, when students experience that cognitive overload, that's when they kind of give up. and that's when they begin to lose lose confidence. when you mentioned the parents, right? And the parents want what's best for their kids. And when they say something like, I was bad at math, they they don't they're not necessarily purposely trying to like put their kid down or give them an excuse, I think it's almost like a protection. How would you have the pair how would you support the parents in supporting the kids so that when what you're doing at school can continue at home and there's progress, not forward, backward, forward, backward? Yeah. So I think as you say, I think it comes from a good place. they're trying to trying to protect the child and trying to make them feel less less bad, you know, that you know, they're not a failure, it's not your fault, it's not your kind of responsibility as it were. and so I think I think the really the key really is kind of educating parents as well. So taking those opportunities at, you know, the grade level meetings or whatever it might be. To say like here are some like negative or kind of like myths about maths, and here are some like phrases that we need to avoid as parents, and here's what we can say instead. and being trying to develop more of those kind of, you know, that sort of growth mindset attitude in students. So here's what here's what you you can say. So, you know, instead of we always be bad at maths, it's just like, yeah, maybe I I didn't put enough
effort hidden in maths when I was at school. so you know, let's let's see what you can do if you do put a little bit more effort. Or You know, getting parents to reinforce the message that this is actually important and it's like relevant because that's that's something that children often don't see as well. Yes. and you know, some of these things can be very abstract for children. You know, a constant reframe here in the classroom is like, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? and so you know, if parents can reinforce the message that it's important and valuable as well, I think that has a huge impact because, you know. Parents are obviously kind of role models to children. If parents are saying this learning is valuable, the students are more likely to believe that that learning is valuable. and if you create that culture in the school as well, so all their peers feel that learning is valuable, then you know, it's almost inevitable that they also will will find it valuable. Yeah, much better chance of success if everybody's on the same page, right? For sure. Yeah. Okay, so let's slide over a little bit in I into the neurodivergent child, right? so we've had a lot of guests on the show who work with neurodivergent kids in many different ways. you talked a little bit in your application about how you know, kids with any type of special needs, their confidence might be shrinking just automatically because of the comparison, is the way I see it, right? I'm not like them. There must be something wrong with me. What are your thoughts on the neurodivergent child and what do you guys do? Or what do you do at the school? in terms of kind of building confidence? Yeah, in terms of building confidence, you know, just ass assisting, supporting so their confidence goes up, right? They need to have some successes. and it might be more challenging to have those successes. Yeah. The successes might look different than the successes of a neurotypical child. so how do you assess? What do you do? How do you support? I think is the question. Yeah. For sure. so again, I think a lot or like a big part of it, it can be linked to that sort of curriculum side. And I want to talk a bit more about that because yeah, I imagine you've had lots of guests that talk more about the kind of pastoral side and the and those kind of interventions. But I think the the curriculum is also fundamental for these neuro neurodiversent divergent students. I mentioned earlier about not wanting to kind of overload students and for them to to not overload their working memory and not get them to experience cognitive overloads. and I think what you know the research tells us is that, you know, for for many neurovig neurodivergent students, and by no means all because I don't want to want to generalize, you know, they have more limited working memories, you know, depending on you know, depending on obviously what their need is. and so that makes, you know, that that curriculum planning even
more important in the sense that, you know, we really need to make sure that we're introducing new material in small steps, we're providing that scaffolding. There's that kind of gradual like release of responsibility. So the teachers modeling very clearly first, and then gradually handing over and you know, doing a sort of kind of I do, wee do you do pattern. All these things that are kind of really, you know, the basics of good teaching for like all students, but I think are even more important with new I diver neurodivergent students, because of some of the barriers that they they face. but again, as I say, I I you know, it's we don't wanna kind of generalize about neurodivergent students in general because you know some have you know much larger working memories than other students some you know have a lot of facility with their curriculum there are different kind of barriers that they face and so I think really the key is you know understanding those barriers and that's why they call it the spectrum right we're talking about you know of a a range from you know where they sit and what they need and what their challenges are and and all of that as well. Are you guys I I'm not sure if you were finished there. Did did you get everything that you wanted to say about that there? feel free to to ask your follow-up. yeah, I was just gonna share that I have found a lot of creativity. So in some areas where they might need more help in memory or socialization or handling their own emotions, creativity shows up in a bigger way and confidence can be built from that. And in fact, I have this book here behind me that's being animated by a group of twenty something neurodivergent young adults and they're doing an incredible job on doing that. Are you guys at your school able to support like, you know, the creativity side for all kids really? and make sure that, you know, they're they're growing in that area. Is that part of a curriculum for you guys as well? Yeah. I mean just gonna A little more light because it's got Hey. Well, it's nighttime where you are right now, right? It's late. It's getting there, it's getting there. Okay. Getting into sort of golden hour. Although less less golden in my apartment, sadly. so So yeah, creativity creativity. I mean, as I said, I'm sort of recently arrived at at Redland. so, you know, haven't really had the chance to to alter the curriculum in and of itself, but Yeah. I what have you noticed? From the very beginning, from like pre kinder, you know, the students have opportunities to get involved in music and art and sport. and these are real fundamental kind of pillars of of our school. I think one of the, you know, the main like elements or pillars of the philosophy of Redland is to develop kind of really well rounded students and it's a really holistic education, and that starts all the way from like pre kinder. so though I've, you know, talked a lot about the academic you know, the focus isn't on the academic. That's just one of many one of many kind of pillars. and I think as you said, that allows every student to show their talents, every student to to shine, you know, because their their talents are unique. and that obviously in and of itself is a way of generating confidence because you know even with the best will in the world and the best curriculum in the world, there are going to be some students that don't excel in maths. and they may still have a I might have been one of those, Josh. I might have been one of those students. So You know, that you you don't want that to color their whole experience of school, right? So making sure that they have opportunities where they feel like that they're thriving is is fundamental. and I think that's something that that Redon does does very well. that's great. And we're saying it, but it really is so important to really, you know, i in in Montessori, which is where my son has kind of done his schooling, he's ten now, he's in fifth grade, there's the follow the child. And whether it be Montessore or anything else, I really think follow the child is a really great phrase and a great way to help a kid find what they love, what they can do best. And, you know, there's certain things that you can't just do what you love. You can't just do art. You have to learn math. You have to learn spelling and reading and all that kind of stuff. But I think it can carry over. When we follow the child and they build up confidence in one area, they feel like they can do other things where otherwise maybe they felt like they couldn't. That's the holistic you're talking about, right? potentially, potentially. you know, I think you know, I still like to think that we can get, you know, n all if not nearly all students to like love maths if we, you know, sequence that curriculum right, if we teach the lessons right, if we're kind of using the right approach and the right and the right resources. And I think we wanna show students, you know, the intrinsic value and the intrinsic joy in each subject, as opposed to kind of, you know, you know, teaching them mass through art or through music or whatever. I think, you know, the ideal is to show every to every student that math can be beautiful in some way. but that's obviously a challenging ask. I think it's very bold. I think it's beautiful and it's cool and it yeah, I think it is it is challenging, but I I love that you see it. And that's kind of the way that she wanted to be, which is really cool. How did you how did you become a teacher? Why, why teacher? Was this like always you were 10 and you're like, I want to be a teacher, or or what happened? No, I think initially I came to it almost through sort of politics really. my like undergraduate degree was in politics, philosophy, and economics. I'd always been quite kind of politically aware. and I think what I really cared about the most was was social mobility. and, you know, making sure that, you know, everybody had a kind of
fair chance in life. And so I think that quite naturally led me to education as the real kind of engine of social mobility. And that's how I, you know, view education. I think actually, if I'm honest, I think without the this kind of teach first program, I probably would not have got into teaching. Cause initially I wanted to pursue a career in policy. I thought that's maybe where I could help the most. but I guess I felt a bit you know, I didn't really respect all these policymakers that I felt were in a kind of bubble and had never actually been in a classroom since I was sixteen. Right. and I didn't want to be one of those. So I think the idea of this program that it was just two years and I would get the kind of on the ground experience in a, you know, really rough public school, which is exactly what I What I got, you know, I felt like I would get a, you know, a proper understanding of what the system's actually like from the inside. And that would give me more kind of authority as a as a policymaker. and that's partly why after that experience I left and did a I did a master's first in economics, because I wanted to develop the kind of hard skills to get into that policy career. and you know, thought I was maybe gonna pursue a PhD. and I realized after about two weeks of my master's that I did not want to pursue a PhD. I was not cut out for that. and that again was sort of the start of a of a journey that led me back to the the classroom. Yeah, amazing. What do you love most about what you do? I think for me, what I love about school leadership is the kind of balance between getting to work on these kind of big kind of like strategic questions that I think you know are helping kind of like the hundreds of children I have in the school or in previous jobs to be able to work on things that you know maybe can impact on like thousands of children's lives across like a network of schools. So I think that what I'm doing is really high impact. But yet sort of simultaneously I've had like my classes and I can on a Monday afternoon I can go to the classroom I can teach economics and I can have those like personal interactions with students and I can really like see see the impact of my of my work as well. and I think, you know, school leadership is really kind of precious and valuable in that respect that you can, you know, have maybe some like wider influence, but then you can also have those like individual relationships. and those like see those aha moments at the at the same time. And so I think the kind of juxtaposition of those two is really beautiful and valuable to me. I love that. I love that. We could leave that as your last words or is there anything else that you would like to share with the viewers and listeners before we sign off today? Anything for parents that you think that they should know? Other teachers, other administrators? I was just thinking again from the the confidence perspective, and again because most of my the experience is in sixth form, or a lot of my experience is in sixth form. So grades eleven and grade twelve, which you said you've had kind of like less less professionals in that area on the on the podcast. I'd be interested to talk with that about that a little bit because one kind of, you know, concepts of addressed a lot in those roles is sort of like aspiration. and I think, you know, I think there's a clear progression, right, where, you know, l high confidence, lower or down in school can translate into high aspiration and low confidence lower school can translate into into into low aspiration. Yeah. and obviously other factors feature in in that as well. But I think, you know, a large part of the roles I did in sixth form trying to help students apply to to, you know to top universities, et cetera, was you know convincing them that they're like worthy of these of these top top universities and these top jobs, et cetera. And I think particularly, you know, in more sort of disadvantaged communities where potentially, you know, they don't they don't know anyone as like a doctor or engineer or whatever. Right. you know, to to say I wanna be a doctor or I want to be an engineer is can be quite like bold and quite almost like kind of clastic in a way. Like yeah, like I want to be a superhero. I want to be a dragon. Same thing. Whereas there are some schools you go to, you know, normalism at you know, Redland where I am now, like if a student says I want to be an engineer, I want to be a doctor, that's that's completely normal because lots of students go on to study that every every year from the school. so I think, yeah, that link between like kind of confidence and like aspiration, and thinking about how we can translate, you know, high competence in the classroom into into high aspiration for for kind of their future life beyond the school. I think that's another really interesting kind of meaty topic to get into. Yeah, I love that so much. Maybe you're gonna have to come on again and we'll go deeper into into that one. But I do know that now that you're going to soon in January be working with these younger kids that you can put some input into them because it can be a growing belief in themselves. So that when they get to that point where they are doing college applications or really seriously thinking about what they want to do, they might have that deeper belief in themselves that they can actually do it. So it can start early. Yes, college. Yeah, same thing. It's a we get it. We get it. We get it. Yeah. We get it. man. Well, thank you so much, Josh, for being on the show. You've given us a world of knowledge. I had to talk Josh into being on the show. We probably messaged like 10 or 12 times. And I kept trying to say I need you on the show. I think you're gonna bring some good stuff. Turns out I was right. You brought some really great stuff. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for being here. And everybody, thank you for watching and listening, the Power Up Universe podcast. We'll see you on the next episode. Well, that certainly was powerful as always. Thanks for joining. And remember, we all together can make a difference for our kids. They're counting on us to help power up their lives. See you next time, right here in the Power Up Universe.