"I'm talking too much and I'm not letting anyone else speak, and that will be impacting students all the time in my classroom. It's not just the students' oracy; it's mine too. And the staff in the room. That was my epiphany."

Louise Pickering is the Head of Social Sciences at Weavers Academy, part of the Creative Education Trust.

Louise admits to having been someone who taught how she'd been taught to teach... until a chance meeting at a conference led her down an oracy rabbit hole from which she's never surfaced. (Much to the benefit of her students.)

In this episode Louise shares:

* How a student gained a distinction through being taught in an oracy-led environment.

* How oracy would have helped her in her social situations during her academically successful school life.

* How oracy benefits her as a neurodivergent adult.

What really stood out for me was how Louise looks at the need to bring oracy into the learnings of teachers and educators to help them help students.

(As someone who coaches presenting techniques, this really made me think.)

It's a fascinating conversation with a guest who really opens up the landscape in terms of how oracy fits into education and life beyond the classroom.

You can find Louise Pickering on LinkedIn: Louise Marie

Louise was also a brilliant first-time host on Teachers Talk Radio recently.

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If you'd like to appear on Oracy And Beyond, you can email me: Al@OracyAndBeyond.com

Or you can find me on LinkedIn too: Al Booth

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Oracy And Beyond came about after talking to people about my idea for a podcast workshop for schools.

Having learned more about oracy I, like Louise, fell down an oracy rabbit hole and the oracy-led podcast workshop Your Podclass was born.

I was a shy schoolboy, who grew into an unconfident teenager and young adult. All I wanted to do was be on the radio but I lacked the self-confidence to do that until I was in my mid-20s.

As a former commercial and BBC radio and TV presenter, Your Podclass has been set-up with a focus on creating equity for all young people and help them understand that their voice is equal to anybody else's.

To discuss bringing my workshop to your setting, visit YourPodclass.com

#Oracy #Education #Empowerment #StudentVoice #Presenting #TeacherTraining #Coaching

Shouldn't you two be back at school? Hello, I'm Al Booth and this is Oracy and Beyond, the podcast where I talk to experts, to educators and to anyone who just celebrates and is passionate about the equity that can be brought about through Oracy.

That's how I got on this journey. I'm a former child, teen, young adult who is incredibly unconfident and shy but always wanted to be a presenter and then somewhere along the line, it happened. And then I learned about Oracy and I was like, that is why this is so important so everyone can have that same journey. But without the shyness, hopefully, if we can get there first, it's an epiphany that is shared by today's guest, Louise Pickering. She is the head of social science at Weaver's Academy. She comes at this with her own epiphany moment and through the psychology of what Oracy is. She talks openly about her borderline personality disorder and how Oracy, in a day of emails and age of emails, how that can be more of a challenge, but one that she's accepting and actually how us adults can embrace it as well. I'll tell you more about how you can be a guest, but for now, enjoy Louise.

Oracy and Beyond. Louise, thank you so much for coming on.

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a privilege.

Really looking forward to this. So we start as always with the first question. What is the beauty of Oracy for you?

That's such a big question. I think the beauty of Oracy for me is it lies deep within the idea of student voice and also staff voice and empowerment.

So if we're thinking about what Oracy is, it's not just a verbal communication, it's all the non-verbal communication we're doing, it's about listening and truly listening, it's about writing, it's about speaking, and if we are giving staff and students the tools to be able to do those things effectively what you're essentially doing is growing expression and you're growing a voice deeply rooted in that is the idea of then students being able to articulate how they feel about things, what they think about things, their lives, and that is really empowering and that's one of the reasons that I kind of went into teaching about 16, 15, 16 years ago was because I wanted students to feel empowered and I think Oracy is one of the biggest tools that we can focus on to kind of really support that idea and make it a reality.

I keep coming back to this thing of RSE as equity. Yes. I love that.

Yes, I mean at Weavers, our whole ethos is deeply rooted in the idea of equity. So our ethos is pride, things like pride, respect, independence, but actually the main thing underpinning that ethos is the idea that we would like to plug the gap.

We have some students, you know, that have been born into certain situations or experiencing certain life experiences or have had adverse childhood experiences and everyone's come from different backgrounds, but not everyone has started life equally and that's not fair. And I think the whole motive behind lots of schools, not just ours, is we want to kind of plug that gap. Students deserve a really good chance at life and they deserve to be able to grow and find out who they are and who they want to be and have choice and options. So yeah, I really resonate with your idea here about oracy and equity being deeply intertwined.

So you say you're in teaching 16 years, but you told me about your epiphany, obviously related.

Yeah, so our Creative Education Trust hosted, or Nimish Ladd, one of our directors of education, he hosted one of the research eds recently in October and he hosted it in Milton Keynes and he invited obviously lots of different speakers doing lots of different research and just so happens over lunch I sat with an oracy consultant called Simon Day and we were having lunch and I said to him, oh, you know, lovely to meet you, what do you do? I'm not sure about what talk to go to after lunch and he said, oh, I'm an oracy consultant and I was like, oh, what's this? Like, I have no idea. Educate me. And he said, come on to my talk in the afternoon. It was inspirational. There weren't many dry eyes in the house. He spoke from the heart and he explained his own personal life experiences with oracy, his experiences at school, which he was really generous to share with us. And it kind of made me reflect on my own classroom practice. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not allowing my students to express themselves. I have fallen into that trap, embarrassingly enough, talking all the time and thinking that subconsciously that my voice is the most important and it isn't. And my students haven't had the best learning experience because I've just focused on the teaching part and actually haven't focused on the learning part thought, how are they actually learning?

Are they actually learning to speak? Can they articulate? And it was when having conversations with a principal, John Hunt and our CBDL lead, Sally Burtby and Lindsay Underwood about how we can close that gap and what I can be doing in the classroom. And I kind of did some research into oracy and found out more about what it was and how I can bring that into my classroom. And because exactly, as my principal said, if they can't write it, they can't speak it, how can they write it? If they can't write it, how are they going to achieve in their exams? How are we going to improve their outcomes? And of course, when we're talking about outcomes, we know it's not just assessment outcomes. It's so much more than that. It's about growing well-rounded students and students reaching their potential and being who they want to be. But of course, the primary focus of schools is their academic outcomes. And so here I was thinking, this is a bit of a revelation. I'm talking too much and I'm not letting anyone else speak. And that will be impacting students all the time in my classroom. And it won't just be their assessment outcomes. I kind of went away and had these conversations and did a bit more research and thought, actually, there are things there are really small changes that I can do and work with the staff for them to kind of consider these changes to allow students to speak more. But to then also then think about my own communication and how that's impacting what's being received by students. Am I thinking about my intonation? Am I thinking about my positioning in the classroom?

Am I talking at top speed, which I like to do from time to time? So it's not just students, obviously, it's also mine and the staff in the room. So yeah, that was my epiphany. It was somewhat embarrassing in all honesty.

But I think it was needed. I was needed for the students.

Did you say it's embarrassing, but I think A, you don't know what you don't know, and B, you know, it's not like it's not just you, is it? It's kind of, that's the way teaching has been done.

I only speak as an outsider, you know, a former pupil, slash child, and now a parent. But it's not well known, it's not talked about, and certainly outside of school, and it seems, as you just said, really, not a great deal in school, hasn't been.

No, it's ironic, isn't it? We're not talking, we're not talking.

Yeah, it is, though, isn't it? And it's so strange because the epiphany thing, once I heard about Oracy, and I hadn't heard about Oracy at the start of this year, and then all of a sudden you go, oh, gosh, yeah, that would have changed everything. That would have changed my school career.

You know, and that's when we talk about equity, because I got diagnosed ADHD this year. So that was probably my thing in terms of where equity would have helped me, where Oracy would have helped me.

But it's everyone. It's everyone, isn't it? And so I don't think you can say you're embarrassed. And, you know, out of the two of us, I'm not the psychologist, but you can't be embarrassed because you can't know what you don't know.

No, I think it's one of those things. I think I had the embarrassment for five or ten minutes. I'm very much a problem solver, so I'll be like, right, I've done this. Let's not fester on this. I'm not going to ruminate on it too much.

And now this is something I need to action, because I think in education, it's so easy to have, you know, really interesting discourse and to kind of delve into the research. And that is really important to be evidence informed, but we need to action something. And it needs to be relevant to our context and to our students and to our staff. And so I think I didn't want to dwell too much just on the research and just on the conversation. I wanted to make something tangible for us because that's what the students deserve and that's what our staff deserve.

I mean you can have a hundred cookbooks but if you don't make the recipe you're still going to be hungry.

No, I've never heard that one before, I like it. I've lit-

I've literally just made it up and I feel very pleased with myself.

I love that for you.

Okay, so let's go on how do you copy how do you copyright sayings? So let's go on from post epiphany then can you think of a time when Oracy has made a difference to one of your your children

to think all the time. We've just actually had, we've just done student voice at school, we do regular student voice and we have things like student panels, it's not just surveys, we have students that come in and talk to us. And actually, particularly the year 10 psychology class that I've been working with strongly on this, came back and gave some really lovely feedback, which was wonderful. So it is having a day-to-day impact and I think it is about that.

But if you ask me to think about one particular situation, I had one of my, again, my year 10 psychologists, a girl come in and she said to me, we're doing an assessment and lesson and she said, Miss, randomly, I've got some news. Oh my gosh, what's the news? And she was like, I've got a distinction in my English speaking. And I was like, oh my God. They all in my year 10 psychology class, they all work really hard. They're wonderful. But I think confidence and growing a voice comes for everybody. And I think she'd had that moment where she'd found that confidence and she'd found it in English, who are also part of the oracy team, as well as in psychology. And I said, come back at lunchtime and I want to read your speech and I want to listen to you reading it. And she was like, okay, fab. So she literally gave up her lunch hour. She came running into my room and she was literally like, Miss, look what I've got. I've got it. I've got it. And I was like, yes, sit down, read me this speech. Honestly, there was loads of, it was about psychology, which is one of the reasons she wanted to tell me. And obviously she knew I was, I was leading on oracy in the school, but she was just so proud. And the English teachers worked really hard with her on this. So we kind of read it through and she was just so elated like her face had lit up. And like I said, she'd given this lunch hour to talk to me about it. And I said to her, I was like, do you mind if I anonymize this and post it on LinkedIn? And she goes, Oh my God, are I going to be famous? But she was just so proud. That really touched me. And I know it really touched her English teacher to know that seeing the difference, because like I said, the difference is every day. And we don't see it as much because obviously when you're with the students every day in lessons, you grow with them, don't you? So it isn't a big surprise. And there's something to do a wondrous presentation. But if you rewound to the start of my year 10 year this year, and I then thought jumped back to where they are now. And I asked my students to give presentations or even just to articulate answers in class, there would be such a vast difference. And that was one of those moments where she'd had a check in at English where she'd done her English speaking. And that was just such a beautiful moment for her and for me and for her English teacher.

Yeah, that's wonderful. And when you were saying before actually about it's not just encouraging children to listen and to communicate and to talk, you were saying it's where you are in the room and the language you use. And I think about that now with my children, you know, I'm not a teacher, but from the parent point of view, how you can encourage it. And you achieved.

I know she achieved a distinction, but you achieved because you helped put it in place.

It was lovely because I think we're building on it this year. So that project originally started out as part of my SLT certification project, which was being led in school. And I was then thinking, I was, you know, having that conversation with the CPGL lead this year, and she was like, where would you like to take this? Because we've done this pilot project with English psychology and history, primarily because they were subjects that had extended writing. We wanted to see how we could directly impact assessment results as well as get qualitative stuff and student voice, you know, alongside the quantitative data. And I was thinking, I was like, where do I want to take this? And like, I know I want to continue this because this isn't a one stop shop project. This is meant to be something where it's actively changed my practice. I know it's changed the practice of my ROC team members. And I know that our trusts are now really focusing and have been focused in the past couple of years on ROC is one of our key strands.

Just thinking about where we want to take some, we're thinking, OK, I know I want to delve more into the research behind it so that it does become more evidence informed. And so we are then partnering next year and kind of taking part with the Twinkle and Camtree ROC based inquiry into schools. And I think there's a number of schools around the UK doing that. And that will then hoping that the ROC team will then grow at our school. And so it kind of spreads a bit further than these three departments. And it grows organically. And it is being embedded into what we're already doing. We already were focusing on things like modeling, the I do, the we do, the you do. And ROC tied in really well into that modeling because, of course, it was the I do, the teacher narration, the metacognitive strategies, talking them through the misconceptions, moving into the we do, allowing students to then kind of talk, ask more questions, help us complete the answer, and then guiding them essentially into that independent practice that you do aspect. So it's already deeply embedded for us. And we're weavers are really keen to make sure that everything you do is sustainable and it's growth. We don't just do it for one year and then park it. We do it because we've researched it, because we believe in it, because we believe it's going to make a difference. So therefore, it's then we're going to continue with and grow and learn from. I think that's really exciting.

So let's reflect back on when you were at school then, is there a moment that you can think of that stands out where you think actually had I already been practised at my school that would really have helped?

or cards on the table. I'm not writing this off as a teenage thing, it's not because it's a life experience thing. Hearts were kind of difficult and I found it really difficult to express myself and to articulate how I felt about things and what I needed. And because of that, there was a lot of frustration for me. And I was lucky in the sense that it didn't impact my exam outcomes or my academic outcomes.

But whilst that was thriving, my personal life wasn't because I wasn't able to articulate things properly to my loved ones. And there were breakdowns in relationships that are healing now, which is lovely because people are taking the time to heal them. But I feel like there are so many times where I wish I would have known or how to express myself better and how to process feelings first and then come back. And to be honest, that's something I'm still working on. There are times when you know, my emotions get the better of me. It's a lot rarer now, but it's about processing those, regulating, understanding them and sitting in them and then actually having the tools to express them, to work through them. Because I think if you can't express your feelings and your emotions and your needs, it builds and it builds and then it out pours somewhere, it explodes onto other people and it's not fair on other people. So I think in terms of school, of course, it would have helped with things like presentations or university interviews, that kind of thing. But in my personal life, I think I would have thrived more had work been explicitly done on RSE.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And we're going through that with with my son, he has big emotions and you kind of step away at nighttime when everyone's finally gone to bed.

And we don't do this every night, you know, we're kind of better at it now, but in the in the early days, it was like, oh, it's because he hasn't got the tools. He doesn't, he's got this inside him and he's still young and he's still learning to use a knife and fork and tie shoelaces, let alone, you know, work with stuff that as adults are still trying to get our heads around. And yeah, and and obviously it allows that doesn't like you say, the communication, the sort of I'm feeling this. It's a lot easier said than done, ironically.

It's also, it's really lovely, I'm not a parent, but I work with students a lot, but it's a very different experience. It's lovely to hear you sharing yours and about thinking because obviously as educators, we talk about it in the classroom and we're very lucky at our school that our parents are very, very supportive and we have great communication with them.

So it never just stops, the buck never just stops with school. It's always then parents are like, what can we do to support this at home? What can I do to make my child's life better? Oracy, it's not just confined to a classroom. It's everything in life. It's my relationships with my children. It's my relationships with my friends and my family. Because that's the whole point of school, isn't it? It's meant to be a microcosm of society. We're not just passing exams for the fun of passing exams. We're meant to be teaching, the core crux of it is teaching life skills and empathy and oracy is that. It is generous listening. It is active listening. It is interpreting that and thinking about your response and how you're communicating that response. And Dr. Bate is really grand, but I think the world would be a much better place if we could improve communication between people because the conflict would reduce. And before you know it, we've got teams of problem solvers and peacemakers and world changers in a really positive way.

completely. That is precisely it.

If there's equity, maybe the the shy, unconfident people have fantastic ideas how to unite the world. And it's the ones who aren't afraid to share their thoughts. And it's kind of there needs to be that balance and debate and listening and understanding each other's opinions and thoughts. And yeah, that goes as being a parent to my children, to being a partner, to being a friend, and why I loved your answer.

Because you're not just saying, oh, there was a time I didn't get through maths. Well, I'm sure you did. You're very clever. I'm thinking of my own experience.

I had to work really well at maths.

but it's not all about the academia like school is about relationships isn't it and you leave school and then you've got this whole world which is a big one that you're being trained for so that's where it all comes in you know yeah Michelle Windridge she was the first guest and obviously in Beyond was saying oh she was getting emails from students in text speak and you know and it's just I don't use the phone and yeah it's a real thing

Yeah, that's really interesting though, because there are so many times that I've realized I've fallen the trap of doing them, like I send an email. No, I need to go and find the person, because that's a conversation that needs to happen in person. Particularly if there's one where there needs to be an open discussion about something or I'm welcoming views on something. So therefore email just doesn't do it and I'm neurodivergent.

I have BPD and actually that also affects how I interpret things like emails. And so therefore there are times when you're thinking maybe written communication isn't the answer. So many times I get emails from colleagues or from friends if it's personal email. I'm not sure I've read that properly. I can't gauge the intonation from the way it's been written. So therefore there's a misunderstanding, there's a miscommunication, it becomes something where somebody's upset about something and it would just be so much clearer if maybe I thought don't send an email. It's not a right method of communication. Go and find the person and if particularly if I'm going to have a conversation where I know a staff member might be uncomfortable, I need to think about where I'm having that. Is it a neutral space? Are they comfortable? Have they had a drink? What's my body language doing? Am I firing loads of questions all at once and it feels like the Spanish Inquisition? And I've got to listen to what they're saying and I've actually got to either paraphrase it back so they know they've been heard. There are so many things that we think about with Oracy and we're all doing it subconsciously. We just don't necessarily declaratively consider that we're doing it. But if we then start to declaratively consider we're doing it, we can then do more considered deliberate practice in the classroom. And even with staff as well, equally as important, giving them room to grow their voice. The more you actually think about it and give time to it and you give credence to the idea, the more effective strategies we can get from it.

Oracy and Fionn!

I think when it comes to staff CPD with Oracy, there needs to be an appreciation that if we're going to improve and grow Oracy with students, we also need to invest the time in doing that with our staff first. And I think you have to really know your staff and know your school and know people as individuals. What are their strengths? Where do they want to grow and improve with regards to their own Oracy? Is it for them, is it more verbal? Is it more written? Is it comprehension? Is it listening? We need to work with staff first.

And I think so often we've wanted to CPD and we just think, let's jump straight to what we can do for the students. But there needs to be a consideration. Actually, staff are also humans, and this is their career, and they also want to grow. And they also deserve a voice. And they can't really be effective in building opportunities in Oracy for students if they don't understand it themselves because they haven't really harnessed it for themselves. So I think what I would hope to see in CPD, and this is something I've discussed with Simon Day, the Oracy consultant I've been working with, is we do need to focus on stuff. And there is so much that we could help staff with as well. So things like giving presentations or hosting meetings that may be slightly uncomfortable. Things like conflict resolution. But even when you talk about things like communication and emails, there are so many things that even with HR meetings, there are things we can be considering to improve. And once we've been able to do that for ourselves, or we kind of start that that growth journey with ourselves, we are then better equipped to do that for our students because we know what has and hasn't worked for us.

We've also put ourselves, there's been a deep level of empathy, because we've had to strip this back. It's not just you're a teacher, this is you're a human. What are you good at articulating in different forms of expression? What do you find uncomfortable to do? What would you like to work on? Where would you like to grow? And then there becomes this deep-seated appreciation, this is building me. If this is building me, imagine what this is going to do when I do this with a class of 30. And it's that thought, that's where you're going to get the buy-in with things like Oracy. It's not just this is a CPD initiative, this is workshop. This is improving you as a person. And this is actually going to help you not just at school in your career, this is actually going to translate into your personal life. And seeing that and experiencing it for yourself, that's where the buy-in comes from.

I think that's what's so important about this is Oracy in action. We had the conversations and we were learning about it and we were like, oh my gosh, yes. How can we expect students to do this if staff can't do it effectively? And if staff can't do it effectively because there's no buy-in, where are we going to get the buy-in from? We've got a vision, how do we get the buy-in?

And it's so often the case isn't it when you want someone to do something, whether that's a colleague or a friend or a student, whatever, you can tell them until they're blue in the face to do it. People have to live it, people have to go through it themselves for it to matter.

And if something doesn't matter, we're not going to do it. Or we might do it and we might just roll through the process, but it doesn't mean anything. If it doesn't mean anything, you're not going to have the full outcome that you want.

yeah absolutely or you don't have that understanding of why that cog is is there and you just you have to turn it but why are you turning it you know and why where does that lead to and that

Sorry, that got quite deep quite fast.

No, it didn't. No, because that was brilliant.

Like I say, it's not an angle I'd thought of or considered, which is brilliant. It just keeps growing, doesn't it? Right, let's get to your question. This comes from Caroline Hudson, who is my last guest, and she has asked,

simply a change of lens. Yeah, so I think it's about saying to staff, it's not changing resources. It's not spending hours changing physical things. It's just about reflection.

We already do so much of that as practitioners. We're already thinking, okay, that lesson didn't work so well. Why didn't it work so well? But this is where it comes into the lens. Why didn't it work so well through the lens of oracy and communication? Ah, my explicit instruction wasn't explicit. I didn't physically display this instruction on the board. Students didn't have a chance to absorb it, to comprehend it, to then be able to carry out and action it. So it's not about adding to workload. It's just about changing the way that you're reflecting on your own practice. Now, because we all know when we leave a lesson whether something's been good, whether it's been effective, we can go around and ask the students, what did you learn? Show me what you learned. Where was your growth? But in actual fact, we then go and reflect on it. And we often think about it as we talk about it in terms of assessment outcomes or from the quantitative data aspect. But there's so much more to it than that. And we can be thinking actually, qualitatively, did my students come out feeling like they were a changed person? And that's always been the driving force behind social sciences.

That's one of the most lessons thinking how have I inspired that student? What change are they going to action in their own life or someone else's life to make the world better? So we're already doing the hard work, I think, in the classrooms. We haven't got to change resources. We haven't got to have necessarily really, really lengthy discussions. You can in-build it really well into instructional coaching, which I know lots of schools are doing at the moment.

We're just in starting our instructional journey. Building it into those conversations that you're having fortnightly with the staff that you're going to observe. Talk to me about the oracy in your classroom. Do you feel the strong parts were in your lesson today? What were the strengths of you and what were the strengths of the students? Have they comprehended it properly? And okay, so then they do their turn and talk and you get some students that don't even turn, they're just talking. So you've got two students sat side by side like this. And you're like, when in the world, when would that happen? They're just one turns to face one and one person just say, oh, slumped. No, no, no, that's not respectful. That's not going to be an effective communication. And so with things like structured turn and talk, you can allocate out roles to students and a lot of teachers are already doing this. So it's like one person will be describing a concept or a theory using keywords and you give them the sentences that they will write in their next activity or that they will write in their exam.

So they learn to say, for example, in psychology, one theory that is biological that tries to explain human behavior is the criminal personality theory by Isenck. And then you basically, you give them that as the sentence start and they fill it in. And you then say, okay, however, one criticism of this theory is. So they don't just turn around and talk about Isenck's theory in general using their own words.

You'd give them the sentence start is that they will then physically write with. You also then give them the aspirational vocabulary and they choose the bonds that they want to use. So there was an element of autonomy there. There is choice, there is ownership. And so then you then give them the time allocation on the board and you say, okay, you have five minutes to do your role. And then what I'd like the other partner, the other person, the partner to be doing is during that five minutes, you're going to actively listen. So if there are bits that you don't understand, you're going to ask for clarification. If there are keywords they're not using, you're going to write them down and at the end you're gonna say to them, what keywords did you miss that you could now include? And you give them questions and they are essentially acting as the critical friend. And so then you build this activity routinely. So it's not just a turn and talk or not turn and talk, just a talk. They're actually then communicating. You've given them the tools to communicate. It's not just have a conversation about this off your pop. It's like, we've talked about it. We've had the conversation. Now here's how I would like you to have the conversation. And you do routinely stop it. You know, after your five minutes, your 10 minutes, they've had a chance to do both. You then ask them and you give them clear success criteria. Talk to me about your communication. It becomes their subconscious thought process of, oh, I'm not just talking about psychology. I'm not just criticizing psychology. I'm not just being a critical friend. I'm also being an active communicator. We take it for granted that we know how to have a conversation. But even adults, I occasionally have the occasional conversation where I think, oh, I've done a really bad job. Or I've really miscommunicated. Or I've let my emotions get the better of me. And, you know, I feel temporary shame about it. But then I have to try and fix it again because it's an ongoing life journey.

Only yesterday I started saying something I was like do you know what I've for long enough not enjoyed cashew nuts And I think they've been underrated and then as I was saying I was I'm so sorry This is the dullest thing I've ever brought up to talk about and like exactly is he just I'm so sorry I need better chat

The thing is, if you talk to me about cashews, I'd be like, do you know you can do great paleo diets with cashews?

Oh, okay. Well, there you go.

I was just talking to the wrong person. Okay. Finally then, because you've been brilliant, but unfortunately all good things come to an end. What is the question that you would like to ask our next guest?

I've been looking at Oracy, I think, through a very pragmatic lens up until this point. There's been some research into it that I've kind of delved into.

My question for your next interviewee would be, what do you think has been the most poignant piece of research to date regarding Oracy? And what does it tell us about what we should be doing in schools?

Thank you. Before we go, because you are a psychologist, can you ask me if I've ever heard of Pavlov's dog?

Oh, do you know, I knew of your Pavlovian question. Have you ever heard of Pavlov's talk? Hmm, rings a bell. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, I'll give you that. I thought of...

that about 10 minutes into the conversation. I was like, I'm storing that up there. Great. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you and listening to you. So thank you.

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely to be able to talk about the stuff that I love doing and the stuff that apparently my students love doing, so thank you so much, Al.

I absolutely loved that conversation with Louise. I was talking in radio, commercial and BBC radio, that every time you play a song, you have to come off the back of it and go, I love that song, even if it was, I don't know, Cascada, I don't know where that came from. Actually, I quite like Cascada. She was Fun Pop, yeah, someone else. But that was a genuinely brilliant, really insightful conversation.

And fair play to Louise. After that, she opened up her a bit more about borderline personality disorder and whether she should have mentioned it. And of course, it's a free-form. But I'll talk openly about my diagnosis of ADHD in February. And that stemmed after a diagnosis of depression and anxiety. And the reason I mention that now is because not having the confidence to talk openly and being in these friendship groups where I really wanted to speak, but I just felt so shy. And whether that was a friendship group or whether that then went into sixth form or into work, just wanting to be a radio presenter and not having that confidence to say that, that all stemmed and added to the depression and the anxiety.

And it turns out it might have been ADHD related all along. But this isn't about me, this is about everyone else. This is about you. And it's certainly about helping young people find their confidence and their voice and bring in equity to Oracy, which is why I love this.

It's also the reason I've set up your podcast. It is the Oracy-led podcast workshop that I bring into schools to talk to young people and more to the point, to hear from young people. And now, haven't spoken to Louise, probably to work with educators, leaders and teachers as well. You can drop me a line, albooth@yourpodclass.com. And if you want to be on this very podcast, find me. I'm on LinkedIn, albooth. I am also at alyourpodclass.com. Another thing we're told in radio, don't go away too many addresses and stuff, but hey-ho, I'm not on the radio now, I'm doing a podcast. Speaking of next guests, person to ask the question set by Louise is Peter Munroe. He uses Oracy in science teaching. He is brilliant. Join me next time when we'll listen to Peter.