Anita McCurdie: It's hard not to be inspired speaking with Adam. He speaks directly to many of the friction points in education, but what I love most is he's not just identifying the challenges. He's committed to transforming education one school at a time. And he's built an incredible team around that mission. It's impossible to narrow this conversation down to just a couple of takeaways, but these two things stood out to me. Schools are not there to extract better data points from young people. They're there to build better people. In this episode, Adam Voigt joins the conversation as we explore some of the real friction points we're experiencing in schools at the moment. We look at behavior, data pressure, individualized plans, and the growing complexity schools are being asked to hold. Adam shares that the issue isn't around care or effort. Adam, welcome to the Right Now Podcast.
Adam: Thank you Anita, I'm delighted to have been invited. I'm looking forward to a good yarn.
Anita McCurdie: I am really excited to have you here with us today. I know that you're incredibly busy at the moment and I'm really mindful of that. You're on a real mission and I am really inspired by your mission as are many colleagues of mine who have reached out to me over the years actually and said you have to read this of Adams. You have to watch this of Adams and now I'm watching everything you're doing and reading everything you're doing because I am so motivated and inspired by the work you do. Firstly, his point about language as culture, when we're all reinforcing the same messages about respect and relationships. It helps create the kind of school culture we're striving for. Secondly, his challenge for us to step back from the growing focus on data and ask a bigger question. What kind of people do we want young people to be when they leave school? And what skills do they need in order to contribute meaningfully to society? It's clarity around purpose. What follows is a conversation around culture, language, and what it means to build better people, and what it would take for us to stop talking around the edges. And I just want to start by asking you, what sort of inspires you to do this work and what continues to motivate and energize you each day?
Adam: I think, like you mentioned Anita, that having a mission that's worth kind of putting your energy behind is the thing that keeps getting me out of bed every day. Our mission at Real Schools, and even when I go back to Real Schools being kind of just me and a little bit of admin help, the mission was to transform education in Australia and to do it one school at a time by helping them develop a culture that serves all the stakeholders, you know, and makes their lives better.
Anita McCurdie: This brings us to the end of the series. Thanks so much for listening, sharing, and supporting these conversations. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might find value in it too. And thanks so much for being here.
Adam: Even now that we've been able to build a team here at Real Schools with 13 former principals and a team in the background as well doing everything they can to make sure they can do great work in our partner schools, the mission's still the same. It's that we want to change the whole thing. We want to help us get priority right. We want to help us bring purpose back to teaching. We want...
Anita McCurdie: Mm.
Adam: teachers to not only be able to reclaim the craft and be seen as professionals, but also get the benefit of great practice that actually has them at the end of the day go, you know, this is why got into teaching. Because I think there's just too many at the moment that are getting to the car at the end of the day and putting their hands, if not their heads, on the steering wheel and thinking, this is not why got into teaching. And I don't think teachers are looking for a guarantee that every day is going to be sunshine and unicorns. I think what they're looking for is practices that align closely with why they became teachers. And then they're kind of happy to have some interesting stuff happen along the way, because we know about teaching is you can do the really good work every day and still have a bad day. And teachers shouldn't be beating themselves up over that. That should be the funny story that they tell at a barbecue. ⁓ we're in a highly variable environment. want teachers to know that there'll be good outcomes and bad outcomes, but they can take their focus and obsession off that and bring it back to good practice. I think that's this liberating bit that, you know, I think if we get an army of liberated teachers who are out there just really obsessing about practice, we can. We can change the whole thing.
Anita McCurdie: Yeah, I- I absolutely agree. That idea of coming to the profession wanting to make a meaningful difference is so true. Coming back to priority and purpose and being seen as professionals. Every educator I've worked with really loves the craft of teaching and they are there to teach and inspire and really want to lead young people to be inspired with their learning as well. And there's some friction points along the way. And I love that you are trying to address some of those at the moment. a lot about culture and I know that any school we walk into really believes in culture. I just want to hear from your perspective. When you see schools that kind of have it right, it's going well, everyone's kind of got a real sense of working together on the same page, what sort of things are you noticing?
Adam: I would say the first thing I notice is that they've got pretty much an agreed definition of what they mean by culture. know, I often do this thing where if I'm speaking to a room full of principals or even a staff of the same school, put your hand up if you think the culture of your school is important. And everyone does. Like you said, everyone believes that the culture of the school is important. ⁓ But then I say, who'd like to come out the front and tell everyone what the correct definition of school culture is? And everyone puts their hand down. But I like to point out also that if I gave everyone in a room of 200 people a post-it note to write down any definition of school culture, I'd probably get 200 different definitions, but I'd get heaps of credible ones. So think we're obsessing about trying to get school culture
Anita McCurdie: Mmm.
Adam: right and it's stopping us from adopting a useful definition of school culture. So we say that culture is just to use language that we teachers are familiar with, you know, it's a collective noun. And so it's a collective noun for behaviors. So the behaviors that flood into your school demonstrated by the three key stakeholder groups, your staff, your students and your parents, the sum total of that, that's your culture. Schools that get the culture game right. and not necessarily trying to get rid, because there's two kinds of behaviors, the behaviors that we love, that we encourage, and there's the behaviors that we're currently tolerating. And schools get the culture game right, I'm not trying to get rid of the tolerated behaviors. Like nobody wants perfection, it's actually boring. One of the great parts of teaching is that no two days are the same. Kids are unpredictable and they do pretty weird stuff sometimes.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Mmm.
Adam: So to the staff and so to the parents. Schools that get it right have not only agreed on a definition like that, but they have a way that sits between the currently encouraged and currently tolerated behaviors that allows them to, whenever something comes along that's problematic, to be able to move it from the tolerate pile to the encouraged pile effectively. And there's way too much that teachers are being asked to do that doesn't change anyone's bar. Nobody becomes more responsible because they made a responsibility mural. ⁓ Waste of time and it doesn't work. And so therefore it's not only effective, it's efficient. It's got to be quick. There's got to be simple, small changes we can make that help us inch our way towards building the kind of young people that we'd actually like to work with. And a culture without a way that it's committed to its culture is a culture where the...
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: the cultural tail is wagging the cultural dog. And that's where I think leaders have got responsibility to say, no, we're going to grab this. The culture is our responsibility.
Anita McCurdie: I'm interested when you talk about language as culture and I'm interested to know from your perspective what are some of the really powerful language shifts that schools can make to genuinely young people with relationships and behaviour?
Adam: It's funny though, the whole language is culture thing is been ingrained in me by the ⁓ Aboriginal people that I've worked with who have left me with a conclusion that when I go and look at all of the research that's around the world around ⁓ culture, that I've landed on something that ⁓ think is irrefutable and that is that if you want to change the culture of your school, you can't change it without changing the way that the chiefs speak. know, language is culture. You're not changing culture unless you're changing language. And so we help schools with a series of four language shifts. One of them is what we call a stored response, which is just for those moments that we get kind of emotional at schools. I don't know, do you reckon, Anita, do reckon schools are often emotional places? When I get emotional in a classroom, I say some really strange and destructive stuff from time to time.
Anita McCurdie: They sure are. ⁓
Adam: So it's preparing ourselves. What is it that gets you off track? What is it that gets you making relational capital withdrawals when you should be making deposits? What is it that gets you ranting? What is it that gets you damaging relationships? What is it that gets you distracting the rest of the class when you should be in great instruction and then preparing for it? So I've got one that's, I get really emotional when kids continually call out and interrupt me. and I can all of a sudden be on some weird rant at you and Aida about how you've been told to pay attention and you just love being center stage, don't you? And nobody's learning anything right now. So I've got this one sentence, is, I kind of recognize that most kids that call out are doing it because they're seeking attention or regard in some way, their currency is eyeballs and words. Once I need to stop that, I'll give you a hand and half a second of eye
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Mmm.
Adam: I'll say, unfortunately Anita, I can't listen when people call out, but I can listen to you. And I'll just say, then look at a kid elsewhere on the table. Yeah, because of the way you're sitting right now, that's awesome. I really appreciate it. Is there something you want to know about adding fractions? And like that kid's freaking out. But this isn't for him, that's for Anita. To let her know that this is how you get my eyeballs and words. And I've had teachers tell me that just the use of that sentence.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Mmm. Mmm.
Adam: has reduced the calling out in their classroom by 70 % and drastically reduced the amount of talking that the teacher needs to do. ⁓ The problem is, of course, that in a lot of outcomes obsessed schools, the next conversation is, yeah, well, what are you going to do about the other 30 %? But a process or a practice obsessed school ⁓ will kind of smile and say, how cool.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Yeah.
Adam: Well done. Is there anything else you want to work on? Yeah. Yeah. So that's an example of one of the language shifts that can make a significant difference. Even though when people hear about it, feels insignificant. It's taking small language shifts to scale that makes all the difference.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. Yeah, that's noticing the behaviour that you're wanting more of as well, isn't it? elevating that so people think, ⁓ that's how you get noticed, really. ⁓ you speak about effective statements as well? That's something that's really stood out to me in your language.
Adam: Exactly. ⁓ When you talk about that it feels irrelevant and insignificant, that's effective statements. So an effective statement is a word of affect. So it's not effective, it's affective. so pretty much all an effective statement is say what you were already gonna say, but chuck a feelings word in. That's it. So when a kid drops a piece of rubbish, instead of saying, pick that up, we'd say, I need a disappointment to see you do that, put it in the bin.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Mm. Mmm. Hmm.
Adam: unless you're a sociopath, you heard the word disappointed quite loud. And that's activating both the neo and frontal cortex of your brain where we process language and our limbic system where we process emotion. And you just got some valuable information that you should keep in mind the next time the impulse comes to drop rubbish on the ground. And schools don't realise sometimes that when I say that's all it is, teachers sometimes tell me I could do hundreds of them Well, if you just got 50. Now in a staff of 40 people, that's 2000 daily reminders to the student body. That's 10,000 a week, it's 100,000 a term, it's 400,000 a year. They change. They build their empathy, compassion, self-regulation muscle when the culture reminds the people growing in it 400,000 times a year that your conduct, positively and negatively, does affect the tribe. and you should think about that. And when we get kids who actually think about that before they act, so many teachers tell me that kids don't think before they do things, there's no gap between impulse and action. We get kids who do have a moment of thought, ⁓ they make better decisions.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. It's that similar messaging that they're getting from everywhere as well, isn't it? And that's really important. And I love the idea of developing young people's sense of empathy and self-compassion and as well, because ⁓ they're skills that we want for them be able to take out into our society ⁓ I'm really interested to when you speak about what the purpose of schools And I'm wondering if you could share with us your views on that at the
Adam: Yeah, it's funny, I think that's that conversation about what's the purpose of our schools, what are they there for, is long overdue for us to revisit. What do we actually want our schools to be there for? And I think our parents would answer that they want it to be places that our kids learn stuff and that they become good learners as well, because we know that they're gonna have to learn on the job, the world's changing really quickly. And then the second thing that our parents tend to ask for is that first to help turn them into a decent citizen. Some social skills. So I think that we've lost that purpose. I think that we have forgotten that schools are not there to extract better data points from young people against their will. I think we've forgotten that our schools are there to build better people. And we need to, we are going to need people who are more capable in the future. We know that things like on the other side of this great AI interruption, we know that when we look at the state of our people now and the spiralling rates of mental health issues, of neurodiversity, of trauma and the challenges that young people are increasingly facing, and I haven't got an educator anywhere who tells me they think that's about to slow down. It is time to stop and say, of young people are we building? What are the strategies that will allow us to get the young, build the kind of young people that we wanna hang out with, work with, teach, ⁓ even one day be colleagues with? What kind of dispositions do they need? And then how is that evident in our strap plan? How are we taking responsibility for that? And I think we've been so short term in our thinking around that. We think about how we can get this kid to do the right thing now because we need to improve our year seven suspension rate. We're not thinking about what happens to that kid in five, 10, 15, 20 years time. If we just pile the pressure on him now and not immerse him in a culture that says, hey, we do have high expectations of you, mate, but your conduct is not a condition of you being a member of this tribe. You're ours. Yeah, and we're here mucked in on you becoming the best version of yourself. I think that's that purpose-driven stuff that teachers really want to commit to anyway. And I'm sad that we've stopped talking about it enough as a priority of our school system.
Anita McCurdie: I think you touch on a few things there, the increase in focus on data and also ⁓ the of just having our kids come to school and have that real love of learning, that sense of belonging in the space. Yeah, there's just so many layers to that as well, isn't there, with ⁓ the and the demands and the complexities within our classrooms as well. ⁓ I know I speak to educators, they feel like ⁓ teaching has so different ⁓ in the last 10 years. And that's why I think I'm so drawn to your work because you bring so much back to how can we just turn up together ⁓ with a purpose that we just want to build better people. What ⁓ have you in the last 10 years that has helped you to navigate real schools the direction that you have?
Adam: Mm. I've noticed that there's, because of the pressure, like you said, Anita, to produce outcomes that are not purpose-connected in some way, that are kind of system-level outcomes that are often used to try and brag in competitive systems. know, that it's created unhelpful narratives at the local level in schools. So one of them is I hear that a lot of teachers, and I was exploring this the other day with one of our partner schools at Cananook Primary School in Victoria, tell me that I'd love to be able to do this, but I struggle for time and I, because I've got so much of the curriculum that I need to get through. And like I'm good friends with the principal there, Michael Block, who's an outstanding leader. And I knew I could leverage it. I looked at him and I said, did you tell them that?
Anita McCurdie: Mm.
Adam: And he was like, what? And I said, did you tell them that their job is to get their kids kicking and screaming through the curriculum? And he said, no. I said, did you tell them they can't invest in building important dispositions in these young people like respect, responsibility, and dignity? And he went, no. And I said, I looked at the teachers and said, what are you talking about? And they had this moment where they went, I think we're all just saying it.
Anita McCurdie: Yeah. Mm. Mm.
Adam: You know, I think we're feeling so much pressure, often externally of the school, that we're associating the leaders as being people who are applying that pressure, and it's creating this story that isn't true. You know, and so when we stopped and I said, could we agree that the job of a teacher is to design educational experiences for young people where they either make progress... academically, where they grow as people or where their self-image of themselves as a decent person or a good learner is likely. Can we all stop and go, that's the thing we should be responsible for? And that's the thing that if we're to put pressure on ourselves for it's that, it's the designing of those experiences. And yeah, there was this odd release of pressure in that staff room when we went, ⁓ We don't have to pile the kids into a sack and kind of drag them kicking and screaming through the curriculum hoping some of it sticks to them. That's actually not our job at all. ⁓ cool. Cool. I think we need more conversations like that to happen in schools.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think every teacher, they ⁓ really motivated to young people's academic skills, ⁓ their ability to write, ⁓ you know, maths, ⁓ there is such desire ⁓ amongst educators to grow good people as well. And we can feel really torn between demands of the and the assessments and ⁓ what's in the media. I think being really, really clear and having those conversations about how are we collectively showing up together, present for that kid in front of us, that's what matters, isn't it? That's what parents want, that's what kids want, that's what educators want. So it almost needs to be a real conversation. ⁓
Adam: Yeah. does, it's time to talk about even the, like I'm all for data, I wanna know what's happening in my classroom. But if the point of the data is to take it and always say it's not good enough and to always raise the bar, at what point do we say, you know what, I'm not sure that targeting our year ones being fluid in Shakespearean interpretation is necessary if they absolutely hate literature.
Anita McCurdie: Mm.
Adam: And if their teachers are miserable because they always feel they're short of the data point we expected of them. And if we pay no regard to the context of their school by grabbing their schools and app land data and throwing it into publicly published league tables. Now, if we were constantly sending this message to teachers, we won't say it out loud, but we're constantly sending a public, a media, a political message to these teachers that says you're not good enough. You're the problem. So every time we see the lead up to an election, we hear politicians talk about we're going to invest in teacher quality and teacher performance as though that's the problem. And it's not the problem. I haven't met a school yet where I would say, you know what the problem is here? The teachers aren't trying hard enough or long enough. So it's time to notice that and stop doing what's popular.
Anita McCurdie: Mm-hmm.
Adam: and start doing what's in the long-term interests of building some young people who are kind of at risk now to make sure that they don't end up in horrible relational, familial community dysfunction later on.
Anita McCurdie: Yes, it's so true and I think, yeah, I've certainly felt the weight of that as an educator, know, trying to do everything and, you know, trying to deliver the curriculum really well and trying to meet the demands and trying to individualise the learning plans for every student in your class and I know that you speak to that. That is one of the things that one of my colleagues reached out to me about. Do you want to just talk to that ⁓
Adam: Yeah. ⁓ so think what's under this conversation is that we need to have a conversation about the competing forces ⁓ collectivism versus individualism in schools. I'm getting all deep and meaningful on you now, ⁓ ⁓ think that it shows up at a really practical, cold-faced kind of way, is when you talk about schools, ⁓ classrooms have individual plans for three quarters of their kids.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm, love it.
Adam: And I've met a teacher yet who wants to argue with me about the fact that if you've got three individualized plans for three quarters of your students, you've got none. Nobody's getting individual care when everyone's getting individual care. That's not how it works. So we've forgotten that schools, shouldn't be in a compare. And this is what happens when the evil force of competition is allowed to enter our school system, is that parents starts treating schools transactionally.
Anita McCurdie: Yeah.
Adam: they start rocking up to the front, the foyer of schools going, here's my kid that I'm enrolling with you. He has 27 needs that I need you to fill. And they're treating the school like a vending machine. I want you to go and press B6 and give him that one. And then I want you to press C14 and give him that one. And schools in a competitive environment feel the need to promise that. will fill all these needs, even though there are kids lining up behind this other kid in the foyer who have also got 27 needs. There's partly why, like I mentioned before, teachers are always feeling like they're not enough. Because you can't deliver on that promise. ⁓
Anita McCurdie: It feels like a collision of forces as well, doesn't it? Because you want to be able to deliver. And when I speak to families, I do feel this real tension because I think they really want the best for their child. Like I want the best for my children. People come with so much emotion to education. And ⁓ think as an educator, sometimes you feel like you just want to give everyone everything, but you just don't have.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, you don't have the tools, we don't have the model, you know. So where schools, for instance, we've got alternative ed models that can be more individualised, they're awesome. They're doing busy schools in Queensland, Hester Hornbrook in Victoria. They've got the resources, they've got the people, they can deliver an individualised program and it's great. But what we've got in our mainstream schools is a collective system. And so what we need is kind of, instead of vending machines, parents need to know that their school is a campfire.
Anita McCurdie: No.
Adam: If you put your kid in our care and you encourage them close enough to the fire, they'll get warm. And they'll get most of what they need most of the time to be hugely successful in life. And the rest will be up to them and you. Because I think one of the problems we've got is when we take this individualised approach. We don't leave room for kids, am I allowed to speak really plainly in either, is that okay? We need to have room for kids to leave schools being a bit shit at things. Well, you don't need every gap filled. It was okay that I left primary school horrendous at playing the recorder. I didn't need remedial classes at lunchtime. It's all right for us to have a bunch of things that we suck at.
Anita McCurdie: Absolutely. Hmm No. Yeah. Mmm.
Adam: You know, and it's not the fault of our school system. You know, it's because I'm a unique human being with things that I'm not bad at. And I've got some stuff that I am bad at and get over it.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Mm. Yeah, just keep just trying everything and you're to be bad at a few things ⁓ yeah, I ⁓ absolutely ⁓
Adam: Yeah. So yeah, I think that's part of the conversation about like what are our schools for is once I think we realise this thing about building good citizens and building better people is really important. I think we start to then creak open a really uncomfortable and unfamiliar kind of door here around in a mainstream education system. How can we be good for the collective? How can we put the greater good first? And that includes our staff. in our schools, because there are models that can support that.
Anita McCurdie: And I think there's a lot of conversations around families as well. They want the best for their child. But as you say, in a mainstream schooling environment at the moment, it is really hard to make everyone happy.
Adam: It is. When you use that language Anita, which is so true, that parents just want the best for their child. And then if we actually stopped at that point and explored that fraction, if we just said, what kind of kid do want? We're not gonna say a kid who is within three data points of the expected benchmark for a student at that age in numeracy. We're gonna say, I actually want a kind kid.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Yeah, back to your point before about you want them to have empathy and compassion, to be in good relationships with other people, to feel connected, to feel a sense of belonging, like... Mmm... Mmm...
Adam: I wanna be a team member. I want them to have friends. want them to have a partner one day. I want them to have the ability to approach a potential partner one day, get knocked back, and have friends around them who pick them up and tell them it's okay. You're gonna be all right. I want them to have real life experiences. I want them to get out and explore the world. These are the things that parents deep down want. We've been tricked.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Move on. Mmm. You
Adam: into thinking that we want kids who are brilliant academically. We just want them to be happy, safe, independent, good people.
Anita McCurdie: And I think the village, you know, as we previously know, is kind of under pressure. People are working more, people are under a lot of pressure. And when they come to school, there is that kind of heightened And, ⁓ not really sure how as schools we can communicate in a way that ⁓ I guess... sets boundaries around what we are
Adam: Yeah, so there is like an opportunity and almost a responsibility on schools to start speaking about the things that they know matter. Because what happens then is that the people in the village start to change their reference point about what they expect of the school. Because if the expectation in the village is that, as for a parent, that you'll fill all 27 gaps, then I'm going to put pressure on you to do that. And when I can't...
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: I feel like the pressure isn't enough on you. I'll bring someone else in. It's so bizarre, isn't it Anita, that we can have schools who are told we're going to bring a psychologist in to help you with this young person who needs extra help and the school goes, ⁓ my goodness no. Because what they know is that the psychologist is going to give them another 27 things that they're supposed to do.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. That's right. Well meaning, but yeah.
Adam: You know, so we've totally lost track of this whole, we're all in this as a village, because if we did, psychologist would be saying, school, how can I help? and school would be saying to parent, hey, what can you tell me about your kids so that we can do this more effectively? You know, where would you like us to start? Not here's 20s, here's my menu of things that you are now responsible for. So we stopped talking about like how we, we stopped talking like a village. And we started.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: approaching each problem and each conversation as though we're in competition to get most of our needs met. I actually don't even like the conversation of needs, you know, because I think it distracts us from talking about what we want. Yeah, and even though our common, our contemporary language is that the needs feel more important and urgent than once, I actually think people are motivated to chase the things they want.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: you know, not the things they need, there doesn't need to be a data driven justification for wanting to build good people. We just want it because as a community, we want that. You know, and so let's get in behind that. Yeah, yeah.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. And it's important, yeah, in how we show up collectively. Yeah, it's a really uncomfortable conversation and I'm grateful that you've been able to speak to that. appreciate, again, you bring clarity to the experience and the that, you know, we're experiencing. I'm interested from your perspective, if you were to look, say, 10 years in the future, you look at AI, you look at technology, look at just, society being under a lot of pressure. Where do you think we need to be placing our attention at the moment? And where could it potentially look like?
Adam: I think we've got to get better at discriminating. think we've got to get better at kind of going, what's a good question? What's a, you know, and what's a rubbish question? And I think that one of the things that we know that this whole, for instance, like you mentioned, AI interruption that we're experiencing now, we know that it's fraught and it's full of change and it's full of weirdness. And we're all sitting around trying to work out what chat GBT should do and what it shouldn't do and what we want it to do and what we don't want it to do and what's scary and what isn't and fake imagery.
Anita McCurdie: overwhelming isn't it? It just feels like so overwhelming. Yeah, how do we best use this? We're not using enough, using it too much. Yeah.
Adam: Yeah, but I think what we know, what we can predict with some level of confidence is that it's going to gobble up a lot of performance reliant jobs. But the jobs that we don't want a bot doing, we don't want a bot looking after our two year old in childcare. We don't want a bot looking after our 90 year old Nana in the nursing home. ⁓ want people doing that. ⁓ So I think, yeah, exactly. So I think the jobs that during COVID, during lockdowns in places like Victoria, that we went are there essential? You the human jobs, that they were still allowed to go to work. It was the hedge fund managers that were allowed to go home, that had to work from home. You know, people that are paid millions of dollars to do something that does not contribute to society one thing.
Anita McCurdie: Good people.
Adam: that just makes already rich people richer. I think that I see a future where the essential jobs of 2020 all of a sudden actually become essential, if we're going to build a school system that's relevant, then we've got to start building young people who are ready for that future, who have the skills to understand the anxieties of a mum dropping off her two-year-old at childcare.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. Hmm.
Adam: and understand the anxieties of someone dropping their parents off ⁓ into a nursing home and be able to work in partnership with real, flawed, emotional people. I think they're going to be the winners of the future and I think we need to get busy building them. My suspicion is that when we do, we'll actually also address some of today's challenges. Like I mentioned around mental health and around the... general incivility that we're seeing in the community at the moment. And I think that will translate to improved behaviour ⁓ our schools as well. So I think that by ⁓ of stopping and going, what do want our schools to be? What kind of future are we likely to be preparing our kids for? ⁓ if we start to do that work, I think we'll get short term and long term wins, ⁓ that's what good policy should be written for.
Anita McCurdie: ⁓ absolutely. When you look at curriculum, when you look at classroom design, what do you think could be the potential changes there?
Adam: I really worry at the moment that we're so prescriptive around classroom design and instruction that we're removing from teachers, not just the responsibility of planning, like I said, designing for great learning experiences in the classroom, but I think we're removing their professionalism, ⁓ qualifications to do that. ⁓ I think that contributes to the community kind of thinking teachers are just glorified kid herders. you know, they're just organising stuff, they're just, you know, working out, you know, how to get the kids countered to get on a bus for an excursion to the swimming pool, you know. And that's not... We need our profession protected, you know, which means we need to trust our teachers more rather than prescribe more to them, And I think that's a really important step that we need to take here to make teaching, again, a viable, aspirational... job for young people in the community. Because by the way, I reckon teaching is going to be one of those essential professions in the future. we might some exceptions and I know there are some advantages for kids who are neurodiverse and ⁓ around the use of technology deliver education where ⁓ they might otherwise not go a mainstream classroom. But it just ain't good for our kids to be having the curriculum delivered to them down a screen. ⁓ en masse. It's terrible for
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: the best is going to happen in the future, I reckon, in the company of ⁓ a really clever, ⁓ well-qualified, passionate, lit-up ⁓ who's going to design you to have experiences that grow you as a person and as a learner that are just right, that are, you know, not too hard, not too easy.
Anita McCurdie: Well, I think about my own experience in as a student. I think about my kids' experiences. they are drawn to that teacher that lights up the classroom, that does something, a little bit different within the constraints of the curriculum that just make their eyes light up and think, wow, I hadn't thought of it that way. We spoke about this today. ⁓ This is really fun because, that ⁓ behaviour. It improves that sense of belonging as When you have teachers who are really, as you say, showing up and designing and crafting lessons that are really engaging. ⁓
Adam: funny that like, yeah, we don't talk about that enough. that, like, who's the best teacher you ever had? Yeah, and so when I ask people that, there's usually, they can bring up a mental image in their mind's eye of a teacher that, know, every time on my podcast, we open it by asking the guest who's your favourite teacher and why. And there's a thread that runs through every response. And it's so old, it's to be ancient, but still so true and relevant now. And that is that the best teachers are firm and fair. And so start there.
Anita McCurdie: Firm and fair, a little bit quirky at times, know themselves and just have that real spark of energy Yeah. ⁓
Adam: Yeah, there's so much room. So much room for personality in that. You know, we don't have to prescribe the personality out of education. You know, we just need to help teachers be firm and fair with the young people so that they become positively memorable, not negatively memorable. Because, you know, we've all got a picture that comes up when I ask who's the worst teacher you had as well. And it's usually someone who is absent of one or both of firmness and fairness. It's a good starting point.
Anita McCurdie: It is definitely a good starting point. From your perspective, I know that you're about to go around Australia on a really big tour with your real schools, building better people. What is your hope? What is your ultimate goal? If you could get to the end of that and just be like, that landed, what would be your hope be for that tour?
Adam: I think my hope is that the school leaders who come to the Building Better People project, that they leave, using that word that I said before Anita, they leave liberated. That they actually know their influence, that they're not compliance machines. That they don't have to be ⁓ working absurd hours doing non-purpose work. that there is scope within their own school to say we're going to have our staff lit up by freeing them to build better people, the young people, and to just trust that letting them do that will probably produce better outcomes. We're so obsessed with outcomes that we forget that the way to help people achieve a good outcome is put them in a good state.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm.
Adam: rather than just constantly have them feel that voice hitting their ear constantly that says, better, do faster, do more. You actually just put them in a good state to perform. They will. They will. That's why I many of our schools who are implementing a restorative way of building culture are also recording such amazing academic results. Just get the people right.
Anita McCurdie: Yes. It goes hand in hand, doesn't it? But I love the way that you're starting with just like liberating people just to bring back that real human element in schools because it's so incredibly important. I've heard you say before, we are sort of the last bastion of being able to, can you speak to that, It's just so. ⁓
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I reckon we're the last upstream institution. So I reckon we're the last, if we look at the kind of like, I look, I'm so worried about our boys, you know, and who they're becoming and the kind of the fact that we've become so nervous. You know, I spoke to three teachers in a primary school recently, male, young graduate teachers in a primary school. So they're rare and I'm trying to look after them because we need them. You know, and I asked them, said, do you know how to talk to the boys about how to be like a decent young man?
Anita McCurdie: That's it. We need them.
Adam: And they said, don't have a clue. We don't know how to do that. Now in the gap, we're getting the Manosphere emerge. So we're getting people who say, I'll talk to them. I'll talk to them in such a way that I can monetize them as they end up getting a credit card. So thorough exploitation by turning our beautiful young boys into creepy shitty men.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Adam: who don't know how to build and sustain a relationship or work with others because they think the whole thing is some rat race, ⁓ ⁓ need to trample everyone who dares to get in their path. And it's not the way that people authentically succeed. ⁓ ⁓ really worried about that. ⁓ so my ⁓ is that we can focus on that. ⁓ we can say, how do we step in when they're in their formative years?
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. Hmm.
Adam: so that these vultures don't have the vacuum to use. do we actually, stop being scared, stop being too worried to talk about what actually installs responsibility in young people, ⁓ stop booking speakers and painting murals and having awareness raising days for bullying because we're all already aware that bullying's ⁓ a problem. Now what? know, what are we going to change? And I think
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Mmm.
Adam: with kids declining in terms of say sporting participation, in terms of being out in the street and playing with their friends in the afternoon, with them kind of retreating to screens and the online world, I think schools are kind of still, we've still got them 30, 35 hours a week. So we're kind of the last barrier between our kids turning into awful consumers when they say that a job ⁓ just more important than ever. ⁓
Anita McCurdie: It is more important than ever. I am so incredibly inspired and uplifted by everything you're putting out into the world at the moment. And I really believe that collectively, we can all show up feeling liberated, inspired, enthused, but also really clear as well, which is, I really believe that that is what you are providing in education at the moment, real clarity to come back to purpose and...
Adam: Yeah.
Anita McCurdie: alongside that, you know, it's so practical. This is what you can do tomorrow. This is what you can say when you're heightened. Make sure you're ready with your response. So on so many levels, I'm so grateful for the work you do. Thank you so much for being here today.
Adam: Thank you. I really appreciate that Anita and again, thank you so much for the invitation. It's been lovely to chat.
Anita McCurdie: You too. Thanks, Adam.
Adam: Thank you Anita, I'm delighted to have been invited. I'm looking forward to a good yarn.
Anita McCurdie: I am really excited to have you here with us today. I know that you're incredibly busy at the moment and I'm really mindful of that. You're on a real mission and I am really inspired by your mission as are many colleagues of mine who have reached out to me over the years actually and said you have to read this of Adams. You have to watch this of Adams and now I'm watching everything you're doing and reading everything you're doing because I am so motivated and inspired by the work you do. Firstly, his point about language as culture, when we're all reinforcing the same messages about respect and relationships. It helps create the kind of school culture we're striving for. Secondly, his challenge for us to step back from the growing focus on data and ask a bigger question. What kind of people do we want young people to be when they leave school? And what skills do they need in order to contribute meaningfully to society? It's clarity around purpose. What follows is a conversation around culture, language, and what it means to build better people, and what it would take for us to stop talking around the edges. And I just want to start by asking you, what sort of inspires you to do this work and what continues to motivate and energize you each day?
Adam: I think, like you mentioned Anita, that having a mission that's worth kind of putting your energy behind is the thing that keeps getting me out of bed every day. Our mission at Real Schools, and even when I go back to Real Schools being kind of just me and a little bit of admin help, the mission was to transform education in Australia and to do it one school at a time by helping them develop a culture that serves all the stakeholders, you know, and makes their lives better.
Anita McCurdie: This brings us to the end of the series. Thanks so much for listening, sharing, and supporting these conversations. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might find value in it too. And thanks so much for being here.
Adam: Even now that we've been able to build a team here at Real Schools with 13 former principals and a team in the background as well doing everything they can to make sure they can do great work in our partner schools, the mission's still the same. It's that we want to change the whole thing. We want to help us get priority right. We want to help us bring purpose back to teaching. We want...
Anita McCurdie: Mm.
Adam: teachers to not only be able to reclaim the craft and be seen as professionals, but also get the benefit of great practice that actually has them at the end of the day go, you know, this is why got into teaching. Because I think there's just too many at the moment that are getting to the car at the end of the day and putting their hands, if not their heads, on the steering wheel and thinking, this is not why got into teaching. And I don't think teachers are looking for a guarantee that every day is going to be sunshine and unicorns. I think what they're looking for is practices that align closely with why they became teachers. And then they're kind of happy to have some interesting stuff happen along the way, because we know about teaching is you can do the really good work every day and still have a bad day. And teachers shouldn't be beating themselves up over that. That should be the funny story that they tell at a barbecue. ⁓ we're in a highly variable environment. want teachers to know that there'll be good outcomes and bad outcomes, but they can take their focus and obsession off that and bring it back to good practice. I think that's this liberating bit that, you know, I think if we get an army of liberated teachers who are out there just really obsessing about practice, we can. We can change the whole thing.
Anita McCurdie: Yeah, I- I absolutely agree. That idea of coming to the profession wanting to make a meaningful difference is so true. Coming back to priority and purpose and being seen as professionals. Every educator I've worked with really loves the craft of teaching and they are there to teach and inspire and really want to lead young people to be inspired with their learning as well. And there's some friction points along the way. And I love that you are trying to address some of those at the moment. a lot about culture and I know that any school we walk into really believes in culture. I just want to hear from your perspective. When you see schools that kind of have it right, it's going well, everyone's kind of got a real sense of working together on the same page, what sort of things are you noticing?
Adam: I would say the first thing I notice is that they've got pretty much an agreed definition of what they mean by culture. know, I often do this thing where if I'm speaking to a room full of principals or even a staff of the same school, put your hand up if you think the culture of your school is important. And everyone does. Like you said, everyone believes that the culture of the school is important. ⁓ But then I say, who'd like to come out the front and tell everyone what the correct definition of school culture is? And everyone puts their hand down. But I like to point out also that if I gave everyone in a room of 200 people a post-it note to write down any definition of school culture, I'd probably get 200 different definitions, but I'd get heaps of credible ones. So think we're obsessing about trying to get school culture
Anita McCurdie: Mmm.
Adam: right and it's stopping us from adopting a useful definition of school culture. So we say that culture is just to use language that we teachers are familiar with, you know, it's a collective noun. And so it's a collective noun for behaviors. So the behaviors that flood into your school demonstrated by the three key stakeholder groups, your staff, your students and your parents, the sum total of that, that's your culture. Schools that get the culture game right. and not necessarily trying to get rid, because there's two kinds of behaviors, the behaviors that we love, that we encourage, and there's the behaviors that we're currently tolerating. And schools get the culture game right, I'm not trying to get rid of the tolerated behaviors. Like nobody wants perfection, it's actually boring. One of the great parts of teaching is that no two days are the same. Kids are unpredictable and they do pretty weird stuff sometimes.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Mmm.
Adam: So to the staff and so to the parents. Schools that get it right have not only agreed on a definition like that, but they have a way that sits between the currently encouraged and currently tolerated behaviors that allows them to, whenever something comes along that's problematic, to be able to move it from the tolerate pile to the encouraged pile effectively. And there's way too much that teachers are being asked to do that doesn't change anyone's bar. Nobody becomes more responsible because they made a responsibility mural. ⁓ Waste of time and it doesn't work. And so therefore it's not only effective, it's efficient. It's got to be quick. There's got to be simple, small changes we can make that help us inch our way towards building the kind of young people that we'd actually like to work with. And a culture without a way that it's committed to its culture is a culture where the...
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: the cultural tail is wagging the cultural dog. And that's where I think leaders have got responsibility to say, no, we're going to grab this. The culture is our responsibility.
Anita McCurdie: I'm interested when you talk about language as culture and I'm interested to know from your perspective what are some of the really powerful language shifts that schools can make to genuinely young people with relationships and behaviour?
Adam: It's funny though, the whole language is culture thing is been ingrained in me by the ⁓ Aboriginal people that I've worked with who have left me with a conclusion that when I go and look at all of the research that's around the world around ⁓ culture, that I've landed on something that ⁓ think is irrefutable and that is that if you want to change the culture of your school, you can't change it without changing the way that the chiefs speak. know, language is culture. You're not changing culture unless you're changing language. And so we help schools with a series of four language shifts. One of them is what we call a stored response, which is just for those moments that we get kind of emotional at schools. I don't know, do you reckon, Anita, do reckon schools are often emotional places? When I get emotional in a classroom, I say some really strange and destructive stuff from time to time.
Anita McCurdie: They sure are. ⁓
Adam: So it's preparing ourselves. What is it that gets you off track? What is it that gets you making relational capital withdrawals when you should be making deposits? What is it that gets you ranting? What is it that gets you damaging relationships? What is it that gets you distracting the rest of the class when you should be in great instruction and then preparing for it? So I've got one that's, I get really emotional when kids continually call out and interrupt me. and I can all of a sudden be on some weird rant at you and Aida about how you've been told to pay attention and you just love being center stage, don't you? And nobody's learning anything right now. So I've got this one sentence, is, I kind of recognize that most kids that call out are doing it because they're seeking attention or regard in some way, their currency is eyeballs and words. Once I need to stop that, I'll give you a hand and half a second of eye
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Mmm.
Adam: I'll say, unfortunately Anita, I can't listen when people call out, but I can listen to you. And I'll just say, then look at a kid elsewhere on the table. Yeah, because of the way you're sitting right now, that's awesome. I really appreciate it. Is there something you want to know about adding fractions? And like that kid's freaking out. But this isn't for him, that's for Anita. To let her know that this is how you get my eyeballs and words. And I've had teachers tell me that just the use of that sentence.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Mmm. Mmm.
Adam: has reduced the calling out in their classroom by 70 % and drastically reduced the amount of talking that the teacher needs to do. ⁓ The problem is, of course, that in a lot of outcomes obsessed schools, the next conversation is, yeah, well, what are you going to do about the other 30 %? But a process or a practice obsessed school ⁓ will kind of smile and say, how cool.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Yeah.
Adam: Well done. Is there anything else you want to work on? Yeah. Yeah. So that's an example of one of the language shifts that can make a significant difference. Even though when people hear about it, feels insignificant. It's taking small language shifts to scale that makes all the difference.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. Yeah, that's noticing the behaviour that you're wanting more of as well, isn't it? elevating that so people think, ⁓ that's how you get noticed, really. ⁓ you speak about effective statements as well? That's something that's really stood out to me in your language.
Adam: Exactly. ⁓ When you talk about that it feels irrelevant and insignificant, that's effective statements. So an effective statement is a word of affect. So it's not effective, it's affective. so pretty much all an effective statement is say what you were already gonna say, but chuck a feelings word in. That's it. So when a kid drops a piece of rubbish, instead of saying, pick that up, we'd say, I need a disappointment to see you do that, put it in the bin.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Mm. Mmm. Hmm.
Adam: unless you're a sociopath, you heard the word disappointed quite loud. And that's activating both the neo and frontal cortex of your brain where we process language and our limbic system where we process emotion. And you just got some valuable information that you should keep in mind the next time the impulse comes to drop rubbish on the ground. And schools don't realise sometimes that when I say that's all it is, teachers sometimes tell me I could do hundreds of them Well, if you just got 50. Now in a staff of 40 people, that's 2000 daily reminders to the student body. That's 10,000 a week, it's 100,000 a term, it's 400,000 a year. They change. They build their empathy, compassion, self-regulation muscle when the culture reminds the people growing in it 400,000 times a year that your conduct, positively and negatively, does affect the tribe. and you should think about that. And when we get kids who actually think about that before they act, so many teachers tell me that kids don't think before they do things, there's no gap between impulse and action. We get kids who do have a moment of thought, ⁓ they make better decisions.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. It's that similar messaging that they're getting from everywhere as well, isn't it? And that's really important. And I love the idea of developing young people's sense of empathy and self-compassion and as well, because ⁓ they're skills that we want for them be able to take out into our society ⁓ I'm really interested to when you speak about what the purpose of schools And I'm wondering if you could share with us your views on that at the
Adam: Yeah, it's funny, I think that's that conversation about what's the purpose of our schools, what are they there for, is long overdue for us to revisit. What do we actually want our schools to be there for? And I think our parents would answer that they want it to be places that our kids learn stuff and that they become good learners as well, because we know that they're gonna have to learn on the job, the world's changing really quickly. And then the second thing that our parents tend to ask for is that first to help turn them into a decent citizen. Some social skills. So I think that we've lost that purpose. I think that we have forgotten that schools are not there to extract better data points from young people against their will. I think we've forgotten that our schools are there to build better people. And we need to, we are going to need people who are more capable in the future. We know that things like on the other side of this great AI interruption, we know that when we look at the state of our people now and the spiralling rates of mental health issues, of neurodiversity, of trauma and the challenges that young people are increasingly facing, and I haven't got an educator anywhere who tells me they think that's about to slow down. It is time to stop and say, of young people are we building? What are the strategies that will allow us to get the young, build the kind of young people that we wanna hang out with, work with, teach, ⁓ even one day be colleagues with? What kind of dispositions do they need? And then how is that evident in our strap plan? How are we taking responsibility for that? And I think we've been so short term in our thinking around that. We think about how we can get this kid to do the right thing now because we need to improve our year seven suspension rate. We're not thinking about what happens to that kid in five, 10, 15, 20 years time. If we just pile the pressure on him now and not immerse him in a culture that says, hey, we do have high expectations of you, mate, but your conduct is not a condition of you being a member of this tribe. You're ours. Yeah, and we're here mucked in on you becoming the best version of yourself. I think that's that purpose-driven stuff that teachers really want to commit to anyway. And I'm sad that we've stopped talking about it enough as a priority of our school system.
Anita McCurdie: I think you touch on a few things there, the increase in focus on data and also ⁓ the of just having our kids come to school and have that real love of learning, that sense of belonging in the space. Yeah, there's just so many layers to that as well, isn't there, with ⁓ the and the demands and the complexities within our classrooms as well. ⁓ I know I speak to educators, they feel like ⁓ teaching has so different ⁓ in the last 10 years. And that's why I think I'm so drawn to your work because you bring so much back to how can we just turn up together ⁓ with a purpose that we just want to build better people. What ⁓ have you in the last 10 years that has helped you to navigate real schools the direction that you have?
Adam: Mm. I've noticed that there's, because of the pressure, like you said, Anita, to produce outcomes that are not purpose-connected in some way, that are kind of system-level outcomes that are often used to try and brag in competitive systems. know, that it's created unhelpful narratives at the local level in schools. So one of them is I hear that a lot of teachers, and I was exploring this the other day with one of our partner schools at Cananook Primary School in Victoria, tell me that I'd love to be able to do this, but I struggle for time and I, because I've got so much of the curriculum that I need to get through. And like I'm good friends with the principal there, Michael Block, who's an outstanding leader. And I knew I could leverage it. I looked at him and I said, did you tell them that?
Anita McCurdie: Mm.
Adam: And he was like, what? And I said, did you tell them that their job is to get their kids kicking and screaming through the curriculum? And he said, no. I said, did you tell them they can't invest in building important dispositions in these young people like respect, responsibility, and dignity? And he went, no. And I said, I looked at the teachers and said, what are you talking about? And they had this moment where they went, I think we're all just saying it.
Anita McCurdie: Yeah. Mm. Mm.
Adam: You know, I think we're feeling so much pressure, often externally of the school, that we're associating the leaders as being people who are applying that pressure, and it's creating this story that isn't true. You know, and so when we stopped and I said, could we agree that the job of a teacher is to design educational experiences for young people where they either make progress... academically, where they grow as people or where their self-image of themselves as a decent person or a good learner is likely. Can we all stop and go, that's the thing we should be responsible for? And that's the thing that if we're to put pressure on ourselves for it's that, it's the designing of those experiences. And yeah, there was this odd release of pressure in that staff room when we went, ⁓ We don't have to pile the kids into a sack and kind of drag them kicking and screaming through the curriculum hoping some of it sticks to them. That's actually not our job at all. ⁓ cool. Cool. I think we need more conversations like that to happen in schools.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think every teacher, they ⁓ really motivated to young people's academic skills, ⁓ their ability to write, ⁓ you know, maths, ⁓ there is such desire ⁓ amongst educators to grow good people as well. And we can feel really torn between demands of the and the assessments and ⁓ what's in the media. I think being really, really clear and having those conversations about how are we collectively showing up together, present for that kid in front of us, that's what matters, isn't it? That's what parents want, that's what kids want, that's what educators want. So it almost needs to be a real conversation. ⁓
Adam: Yeah. does, it's time to talk about even the, like I'm all for data, I wanna know what's happening in my classroom. But if the point of the data is to take it and always say it's not good enough and to always raise the bar, at what point do we say, you know what, I'm not sure that targeting our year ones being fluid in Shakespearean interpretation is necessary if they absolutely hate literature.
Anita McCurdie: Mm.
Adam: And if their teachers are miserable because they always feel they're short of the data point we expected of them. And if we pay no regard to the context of their school by grabbing their schools and app land data and throwing it into publicly published league tables. Now, if we were constantly sending this message to teachers, we won't say it out loud, but we're constantly sending a public, a media, a political message to these teachers that says you're not good enough. You're the problem. So every time we see the lead up to an election, we hear politicians talk about we're going to invest in teacher quality and teacher performance as though that's the problem. And it's not the problem. I haven't met a school yet where I would say, you know what the problem is here? The teachers aren't trying hard enough or long enough. So it's time to notice that and stop doing what's popular.
Anita McCurdie: Mm-hmm.
Adam: and start doing what's in the long-term interests of building some young people who are kind of at risk now to make sure that they don't end up in horrible relational, familial community dysfunction later on.
Anita McCurdie: Yes, it's so true and I think, yeah, I've certainly felt the weight of that as an educator, know, trying to do everything and, you know, trying to deliver the curriculum really well and trying to meet the demands and trying to individualise the learning plans for every student in your class and I know that you speak to that. That is one of the things that one of my colleagues reached out to me about. Do you want to just talk to that ⁓
Adam: Yeah. ⁓ so think what's under this conversation is that we need to have a conversation about the competing forces ⁓ collectivism versus individualism in schools. I'm getting all deep and meaningful on you now, ⁓ ⁓ think that it shows up at a really practical, cold-faced kind of way, is when you talk about schools, ⁓ classrooms have individual plans for three quarters of their kids.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm, love it.
Adam: And I've met a teacher yet who wants to argue with me about the fact that if you've got three individualized plans for three quarters of your students, you've got none. Nobody's getting individual care when everyone's getting individual care. That's not how it works. So we've forgotten that schools, shouldn't be in a compare. And this is what happens when the evil force of competition is allowed to enter our school system, is that parents starts treating schools transactionally.
Anita McCurdie: Yeah.
Adam: they start rocking up to the front, the foyer of schools going, here's my kid that I'm enrolling with you. He has 27 needs that I need you to fill. And they're treating the school like a vending machine. I want you to go and press B6 and give him that one. And then I want you to press C14 and give him that one. And schools in a competitive environment feel the need to promise that. will fill all these needs, even though there are kids lining up behind this other kid in the foyer who have also got 27 needs. There's partly why, like I mentioned before, teachers are always feeling like they're not enough. Because you can't deliver on that promise. ⁓
Anita McCurdie: It feels like a collision of forces as well, doesn't it? Because you want to be able to deliver. And when I speak to families, I do feel this real tension because I think they really want the best for their child. Like I want the best for my children. People come with so much emotion to education. And ⁓ think as an educator, sometimes you feel like you just want to give everyone everything, but you just don't have.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, you don't have the tools, we don't have the model, you know. So where schools, for instance, we've got alternative ed models that can be more individualised, they're awesome. They're doing busy schools in Queensland, Hester Hornbrook in Victoria. They've got the resources, they've got the people, they can deliver an individualised program and it's great. But what we've got in our mainstream schools is a collective system. And so what we need is kind of, instead of vending machines, parents need to know that their school is a campfire.
Anita McCurdie: No.
Adam: If you put your kid in our care and you encourage them close enough to the fire, they'll get warm. And they'll get most of what they need most of the time to be hugely successful in life. And the rest will be up to them and you. Because I think one of the problems we've got is when we take this individualised approach. We don't leave room for kids, am I allowed to speak really plainly in either, is that okay? We need to have room for kids to leave schools being a bit shit at things. Well, you don't need every gap filled. It was okay that I left primary school horrendous at playing the recorder. I didn't need remedial classes at lunchtime. It's all right for us to have a bunch of things that we suck at.
Anita McCurdie: Absolutely. Hmm No. Yeah. Mmm.
Adam: You know, and it's not the fault of our school system. You know, it's because I'm a unique human being with things that I'm not bad at. And I've got some stuff that I am bad at and get over it.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Mm. Yeah, just keep just trying everything and you're to be bad at a few things ⁓ yeah, I ⁓ absolutely ⁓
Adam: Yeah. So yeah, I think that's part of the conversation about like what are our schools for is once I think we realise this thing about building good citizens and building better people is really important. I think we start to then creak open a really uncomfortable and unfamiliar kind of door here around in a mainstream education system. How can we be good for the collective? How can we put the greater good first? And that includes our staff. in our schools, because there are models that can support that.
Anita McCurdie: And I think there's a lot of conversations around families as well. They want the best for their child. But as you say, in a mainstream schooling environment at the moment, it is really hard to make everyone happy.
Adam: It is. When you use that language Anita, which is so true, that parents just want the best for their child. And then if we actually stopped at that point and explored that fraction, if we just said, what kind of kid do want? We're not gonna say a kid who is within three data points of the expected benchmark for a student at that age in numeracy. We're gonna say, I actually want a kind kid.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Yeah, back to your point before about you want them to have empathy and compassion, to be in good relationships with other people, to feel connected, to feel a sense of belonging, like... Mmm... Mmm...
Adam: I wanna be a team member. I want them to have friends. want them to have a partner one day. I want them to have the ability to approach a potential partner one day, get knocked back, and have friends around them who pick them up and tell them it's okay. You're gonna be all right. I want them to have real life experiences. I want them to get out and explore the world. These are the things that parents deep down want. We've been tricked.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. Move on. Mmm. You
Adam: into thinking that we want kids who are brilliant academically. We just want them to be happy, safe, independent, good people.
Anita McCurdie: And I think the village, you know, as we previously know, is kind of under pressure. People are working more, people are under a lot of pressure. And when they come to school, there is that kind of heightened And, ⁓ not really sure how as schools we can communicate in a way that ⁓ I guess... sets boundaries around what we are
Adam: Yeah, so there is like an opportunity and almost a responsibility on schools to start speaking about the things that they know matter. Because what happens then is that the people in the village start to change their reference point about what they expect of the school. Because if the expectation in the village is that, as for a parent, that you'll fill all 27 gaps, then I'm going to put pressure on you to do that. And when I can't...
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: I feel like the pressure isn't enough on you. I'll bring someone else in. It's so bizarre, isn't it Anita, that we can have schools who are told we're going to bring a psychologist in to help you with this young person who needs extra help and the school goes, ⁓ my goodness no. Because what they know is that the psychologist is going to give them another 27 things that they're supposed to do.
Anita McCurdie: Mm. That's right. Well meaning, but yeah.
Adam: You know, so we've totally lost track of this whole, we're all in this as a village, because if we did, psychologist would be saying, school, how can I help? and school would be saying to parent, hey, what can you tell me about your kids so that we can do this more effectively? You know, where would you like us to start? Not here's 20s, here's my menu of things that you are now responsible for. So we stopped talking about like how we, we stopped talking like a village. And we started.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: approaching each problem and each conversation as though we're in competition to get most of our needs met. I actually don't even like the conversation of needs, you know, because I think it distracts us from talking about what we want. Yeah, and even though our common, our contemporary language is that the needs feel more important and urgent than once, I actually think people are motivated to chase the things they want.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: you know, not the things they need, there doesn't need to be a data driven justification for wanting to build good people. We just want it because as a community, we want that. You know, and so let's get in behind that. Yeah, yeah.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. And it's important, yeah, in how we show up collectively. Yeah, it's a really uncomfortable conversation and I'm grateful that you've been able to speak to that. appreciate, again, you bring clarity to the experience and the that, you know, we're experiencing. I'm interested from your perspective, if you were to look, say, 10 years in the future, you look at AI, you look at technology, look at just, society being under a lot of pressure. Where do you think we need to be placing our attention at the moment? And where could it potentially look like?
Adam: I think we've got to get better at discriminating. think we've got to get better at kind of going, what's a good question? What's a, you know, and what's a rubbish question? And I think that one of the things that we know that this whole, for instance, like you mentioned, AI interruption that we're experiencing now, we know that it's fraught and it's full of change and it's full of weirdness. And we're all sitting around trying to work out what chat GBT should do and what it shouldn't do and what we want it to do and what we don't want it to do and what's scary and what isn't and fake imagery.
Anita McCurdie: overwhelming isn't it? It just feels like so overwhelming. Yeah, how do we best use this? We're not using enough, using it too much. Yeah.
Adam: Yeah, but I think what we know, what we can predict with some level of confidence is that it's going to gobble up a lot of performance reliant jobs. But the jobs that we don't want a bot doing, we don't want a bot looking after our two year old in childcare. We don't want a bot looking after our 90 year old Nana in the nursing home. ⁓ want people doing that. ⁓ So I think, yeah, exactly. So I think the jobs that during COVID, during lockdowns in places like Victoria, that we went are there essential? You the human jobs, that they were still allowed to go to work. It was the hedge fund managers that were allowed to go home, that had to work from home. You know, people that are paid millions of dollars to do something that does not contribute to society one thing.
Anita McCurdie: Good people.
Adam: that just makes already rich people richer. I think that I see a future where the essential jobs of 2020 all of a sudden actually become essential, if we're going to build a school system that's relevant, then we've got to start building young people who are ready for that future, who have the skills to understand the anxieties of a mum dropping off her two-year-old at childcare.
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. Hmm.
Adam: and understand the anxieties of someone dropping their parents off ⁓ into a nursing home and be able to work in partnership with real, flawed, emotional people. I think they're going to be the winners of the future and I think we need to get busy building them. My suspicion is that when we do, we'll actually also address some of today's challenges. Like I mentioned around mental health and around the... general incivility that we're seeing in the community at the moment. And I think that will translate to improved behaviour ⁓ our schools as well. So I think that by ⁓ of stopping and going, what do want our schools to be? What kind of future are we likely to be preparing our kids for? ⁓ if we start to do that work, I think we'll get short term and long term wins, ⁓ that's what good policy should be written for.
Anita McCurdie: ⁓ absolutely. When you look at curriculum, when you look at classroom design, what do you think could be the potential changes there?
Adam: I really worry at the moment that we're so prescriptive around classroom design and instruction that we're removing from teachers, not just the responsibility of planning, like I said, designing for great learning experiences in the classroom, but I think we're removing their professionalism, ⁓ qualifications to do that. ⁓ I think that contributes to the community kind of thinking teachers are just glorified kid herders. you know, they're just organising stuff, they're just, you know, working out, you know, how to get the kids countered to get on a bus for an excursion to the swimming pool, you know. And that's not... We need our profession protected, you know, which means we need to trust our teachers more rather than prescribe more to them, And I think that's a really important step that we need to take here to make teaching, again, a viable, aspirational... job for young people in the community. Because by the way, I reckon teaching is going to be one of those essential professions in the future. we might some exceptions and I know there are some advantages for kids who are neurodiverse and ⁓ around the use of technology deliver education where ⁓ they might otherwise not go a mainstream classroom. But it just ain't good for our kids to be having the curriculum delivered to them down a screen. ⁓ en masse. It's terrible for
Anita McCurdie: Hmm.
Adam: the best is going to happen in the future, I reckon, in the company of ⁓ a really clever, ⁓ well-qualified, passionate, lit-up ⁓ who's going to design you to have experiences that grow you as a person and as a learner that are just right, that are, you know, not too hard, not too easy.
Anita McCurdie: Well, I think about my own experience in as a student. I think about my kids' experiences. they are drawn to that teacher that lights up the classroom, that does something, a little bit different within the constraints of the curriculum that just make their eyes light up and think, wow, I hadn't thought of it that way. We spoke about this today. ⁓ This is really fun because, that ⁓ behaviour. It improves that sense of belonging as When you have teachers who are really, as you say, showing up and designing and crafting lessons that are really engaging. ⁓
Adam: funny that like, yeah, we don't talk about that enough. that, like, who's the best teacher you ever had? Yeah, and so when I ask people that, there's usually, they can bring up a mental image in their mind's eye of a teacher that, know, every time on my podcast, we open it by asking the guest who's your favourite teacher and why. And there's a thread that runs through every response. And it's so old, it's to be ancient, but still so true and relevant now. And that is that the best teachers are firm and fair. And so start there.
Anita McCurdie: Firm and fair, a little bit quirky at times, know themselves and just have that real spark of energy Yeah. ⁓
Adam: Yeah, there's so much room. So much room for personality in that. You know, we don't have to prescribe the personality out of education. You know, we just need to help teachers be firm and fair with the young people so that they become positively memorable, not negatively memorable. Because, you know, we've all got a picture that comes up when I ask who's the worst teacher you had as well. And it's usually someone who is absent of one or both of firmness and fairness. It's a good starting point.
Anita McCurdie: It is definitely a good starting point. From your perspective, I know that you're about to go around Australia on a really big tour with your real schools, building better people. What is your hope? What is your ultimate goal? If you could get to the end of that and just be like, that landed, what would be your hope be for that tour?
Adam: I think my hope is that the school leaders who come to the Building Better People project, that they leave, using that word that I said before Anita, they leave liberated. That they actually know their influence, that they're not compliance machines. That they don't have to be ⁓ working absurd hours doing non-purpose work. that there is scope within their own school to say we're going to have our staff lit up by freeing them to build better people, the young people, and to just trust that letting them do that will probably produce better outcomes. We're so obsessed with outcomes that we forget that the way to help people achieve a good outcome is put them in a good state.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm.
Adam: rather than just constantly have them feel that voice hitting their ear constantly that says, better, do faster, do more. You actually just put them in a good state to perform. They will. They will. That's why I many of our schools who are implementing a restorative way of building culture are also recording such amazing academic results. Just get the people right.
Anita McCurdie: Yes. It goes hand in hand, doesn't it? But I love the way that you're starting with just like liberating people just to bring back that real human element in schools because it's so incredibly important. I've heard you say before, we are sort of the last bastion of being able to, can you speak to that, It's just so. ⁓
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I reckon we're the last upstream institution. So I reckon we're the last, if we look at the kind of like, I look, I'm so worried about our boys, you know, and who they're becoming and the kind of the fact that we've become so nervous. You know, I spoke to three teachers in a primary school recently, male, young graduate teachers in a primary school. So they're rare and I'm trying to look after them because we need them. You know, and I asked them, said, do you know how to talk to the boys about how to be like a decent young man?
Anita McCurdie: That's it. We need them.
Adam: And they said, don't have a clue. We don't know how to do that. Now in the gap, we're getting the Manosphere emerge. So we're getting people who say, I'll talk to them. I'll talk to them in such a way that I can monetize them as they end up getting a credit card. So thorough exploitation by turning our beautiful young boys into creepy shitty men.
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Adam: who don't know how to build and sustain a relationship or work with others because they think the whole thing is some rat race, ⁓ ⁓ need to trample everyone who dares to get in their path. And it's not the way that people authentically succeed. ⁓ ⁓ really worried about that. ⁓ so my ⁓ is that we can focus on that. ⁓ we can say, how do we step in when they're in their formative years?
Anita McCurdie: Hmm. Hmm.
Adam: so that these vultures don't have the vacuum to use. do we actually, stop being scared, stop being too worried to talk about what actually installs responsibility in young people, ⁓ stop booking speakers and painting murals and having awareness raising days for bullying because we're all already aware that bullying's ⁓ a problem. Now what? know, what are we going to change? And I think
Anita McCurdie: Mmm. Mmm.
Adam: with kids declining in terms of say sporting participation, in terms of being out in the street and playing with their friends in the afternoon, with them kind of retreating to screens and the online world, I think schools are kind of still, we've still got them 30, 35 hours a week. So we're kind of the last barrier between our kids turning into awful consumers when they say that a job ⁓ just more important than ever. ⁓
Anita McCurdie: It is more important than ever. I am so incredibly inspired and uplifted by everything you're putting out into the world at the moment. And I really believe that collectively, we can all show up feeling liberated, inspired, enthused, but also really clear as well, which is, I really believe that that is what you are providing in education at the moment, real clarity to come back to purpose and...
Adam: Yeah.
Anita McCurdie: alongside that, you know, it's so practical. This is what you can do tomorrow. This is what you can say when you're heightened. Make sure you're ready with your response. So on so many levels, I'm so grateful for the work you do. Thank you so much for being here today.
Adam: Thank you. I really appreciate that Anita and again, thank you so much for the invitation. It's been lovely to chat.
Anita McCurdie: You too. Thanks, Adam.
