Season 1, Episode 6

The importance of emotional intelligence for teachers and educational leaders.

Marie [00:00:00] Welcome, Neil, thank you for joining us.

Neil [00:00:02] Hi, Marie, how are you?

Marie [00:00:03] I’m doing great. Hi, Ben.

Ben [00:00:06] Hi, Marie and Neil, it’s great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Marie [00:00:09] And this is actually a very timely conversation with all the home schooling that’s going on. But I was thinking about emotional intelligence in educators in general and looking at it from a from a layman’s perspective. I’d have thought that in education, where teachers are working with kids as young as five, that E.I. would be a skill all teachers have. What’s your assessment of the sector and E.I. as a whole?

Neil [00:00:34] Look, Marie, I observe having been in schools as a principal and a teacher and also now working with teachers and leaders across the state in Queensland that two things are happening in teaching. The crew actually attracts people, who have a passion for making a difference to young people. And so they know that part of that is building very good, positive working relationships with students and their colleagues as well. So they come in with that intention and knowing that that’s part of their role and often have a flavour for that. The other part is that schools, like other business places, are very highly interactive environments. So not only you are working with students, you are working with your colleagues, the students’ parents, the admin staff and school community. So two things happen there, we’ve got a group of people that already understand relationships and the importance of relationships, but also then a space where you do classically accelerate particularly conversational intelligence, which takes a lot of emotional intelligence there as well. So those two things are already happening and so we find that people are grounded quite well in schools around that. However, I think emotional intelligence is like a staircase where you can keep on growing and continuing to understand how your behaviours affect other people. And we don’t often call out emotional intelligence, we talk about relationships, but actually talking about emotional intelligence and the opportunity to grow those skills, understand the skills and behaviours, practise behaviours can really take us to another space in working with people.

Ben [00:02:06] I can jump in and answer some of that from a data perspective as well. Genos, Marie, has been looking at the levels of emotional intelligence in education around the country for about 15 years now. And what we see in our data is that levels of emotional intelligence, if you like, are fairly normally distributed in education as they are in the general population. So what you do see is people, who need development in emotional intelligence, teachers who need development in emotional intelligence, you see principals and school leaders who do. And you will see they also see those who excel at it. I think what Neal is really getting to and talking about is the fact that in education you have the potential and future of young people in your hands. And that kind of environment is one where emotions are often heightened and easily triggered. And so what I’m very proud of as a parent of children in public education is just how departments of education and independent systems have been investing for about the last 10 years or more in lifting levels of emotional intelligence across the profession. And I think that’s just been fantastic. For levels of stress, it’s been fantastic, for relationships and this relational aspect that goes on so much in education. Neil and his team have been doing obviously a lot of work lifting school leaders in particular.

Marie [00:03:28] Yes, and I noticed, Neil, that you have rolled your emotional intelligence development assessment and development into an overall leadership training programme. Why did you build E.I. into that?

Neil [00:03:42] That’s right, Marie, in all of our baseline programmes, all the way from teachers through to school leaders, E.I. is a pivotal aspect, we know that and certainly looking at some of the research that Ben was just talking about that emotional intelligence has a high correlation with leadership. And we’re not talking just about leadership at a hierarchical level, but leadership in conversations amongst teachers and colleagues and even that dialogue with students. And we actually want to grow that in students as well. So we actually apply it for three aspects. I suppose the first one is that we know that teachers are, as been mentioned, in very complex environments, where there in the people business. Everything that we do as teachers is about students and their growth and development and working with other people to achieve that. So that understanding around emotional intelligence and how that plays a key role in all aspects of our interactions is really important. The second is as teachers move beyond the classroom and maybe take up a leadership role, whether it’s a formal leadership role or just leading their colleagues in discussions that can be very daunting for them. And certainly being able to navigate these conversations and understand how they can engage people effectively, etc.. The third part is the big piece, which is around knowing that we can maximise the performance of other people, by the way, we engage them as a leader and get the best out of people, and then also managing ourselves around things such as wellbeing, resilience, which is important for all of us.

Marie [00:05:15] You mentioned before that you were a school principal, is that right?

Neil [00:05:19] That’s correct.

Marie [00:05:20] Did you have E.I. training before you took on your role or once you were in it?

Neil [00:05:25] I did once when I was in it, and it was probably not called out of as much emotional intelligence. It was a bit more about relationship building. Certainly once we started working with Ben’s team, after I’d moved out of schools and started looking at what are the triggers to help people grow in this space. I really understood emotional intelligence meant something significantly different and had a lot of key competencies that were behaviours on how we go about our business just overall, working with people, whether it’s in good situations, negative situations, managing ourselves, but most importantly, how we engage people to get the best performance out of them.

Marie [00:06:01] I’m very curious now, once you did develop your E.I. and E.I. understanding through working with Genos International, was there anything you kind of reflected back on in your time as a principal and thought, okay, I wish I’d have known this back then, what would you have done differently?

Neil [00:06:17] Oh, look, I think managing self so I was always interested as a principal and I had intuition that to get the best out of people, we need to understand them and empathise with them, work with them, support them, etc. But certainly navigating through the competencies of the Genos piece of work, you suddenly start to see, as many of our participants do, all those elements. And so the element for me would be a bit more attention around managing self, particularly around how you engage behaviours to make sure that your wellbeing is intact and your resilience as possible.

Ben [00:06:52] Do you think, Neil, there’s an opportunity to do more with students in this space?

Neil [00:06:56] I definitely, Ben, and I know you and I have had some early discussions around this. I think this would be a significant piece to have in schools. Schools do put in programmes to help the growth and development of their students beyond academic areas and sporting areas. And I think emotional intelligence will help prepare them for the real world in a much better space of working with others and caring for others as well.

Ben [00:07:21] I’m very heartened by the fact that you see a lot more social emotional development going on in schools now at the student level. But I would agree, I think there’s still a lot of room to go, particularly helping students think about, I think the connection between you said managing self, I think between their own wellbeing and their own education and their own education and their own wellbeing. I see those two things are so heavily intertwined with my own kids. I know they perform best at school when they feel valued, cared for, connected, a part of, you know, a class that’s really got their back and supporting them. And you know, like any kids there are times that doesn’t go on for them. And I see the impact that has not only on their mood and emotions, but the quality of their schoolwork as well.

Marie [00:08:07] Is growth mindset, I notice I don’t know if you guys get these ads, but I’ve been getting a lot of ads online about growth mindset books. Is that kind of in the realm of what you’re talking about?

Neil [00:08:18] Yes, I think growth mindset is a very powerful piece of research to look at and a lot of work around that is done all of the time in our schools. But I think it’s only one element. I think emotional intelligence gives you a broader piece of work; certainly it captures growth mindset, absolutely. But it brings in other capabilities and competencies to deal with other situations as well.

Ben [00:08:41] What we know from a neuroscience of emotions perspective around that Marie is that often you see a fixed mindset when people feel fearful. So if they don’t feel confident, if they don’t feel capable, if they don’t feel good about what’s going on for them, they’re much more likely to slip into what’s called fixed mindset, where you’re using unpleasant emotions by design, sort of focus our attention and consequently can narrow our perspective, limit our interpretation of events. We’ve all done something out of anger that we later regret, and we all know that kind of mechanism. But that also plays out in much more subtle ways. And I think that subtle way is I’m not feeling good, therefore, I’m going to have a fixed mindset around this. It’s not always, but quite often. So there’s a real relationship, I think, between the emotions you’re experiencing and the mindset you demonstrate. And that’s something that very much comes from social neuroscience of emotions.

Marie [00:09:36] Interesting, in the setting of teachers and thinking about your leadership training, Neil, who typically is enrolled in there, I mean, it is leadership training, what kind of levels are involved in this?

Neil [00:09:49] Yes, look, we have a span of programmes, which actually go from beginning teacher work as well. So from beginning teachers to teachers, middle leaders and then up to principal and system leaders. And as I mentioned before, emotional intelligence, the Genos model is pivotal in all of those pieces. So if I go to beginning teachers, we do a lot of work around, obviously resilience and wellbeing. You know, the first couple of years working with students can be fairly taxing for them so making sure they’re equipped in that space. But even just being able to have the dialogue around behaviour management techniques. So emotional intelligence sits behind all of the classic behaviour management techniques that teachers would be using. We don’t often call that out as clearly as we should. So we do a lot of work in that space so they can understand themselves and then understand the students. Then as you go up to middle leaders, there is a lot of work around emotional intelligence in that piece, particularly when they realise that they’ve come out of the classroom into a new role. They’re still working very closely with their colleagues and they’re not sure how to go about conversations, how to engage their colleagues, being aware of the situation from their perspective, so that awareness comes out really obviously in that space there. And then, of course, principals and system leaders are very aware of how they engage with other people and want to continue their growth and their mindset, as you said, about understanding themselves and how to improve themselves and their behaviours when working with others.

Marie [00:11:19] Is the objective when they’re doing this training that they are developing their E.I. skills and leadership skills in general to apply to their colleagues? Is that the focus or is the focus on improving the way in which they lead or work with students or even parents?

Neil [00:11:37] Definitely all of those and school environments are environments where all those pieces happen. I suppose most leaders come in, particularly in the middle leadership, about how are they going to lead their colleagues and really developing psychologically safe environments. So there are good discussions occurring. People feel valued understanding when people aren’t feeling valued, how your behaviours can engage them more so that space, obviously, schools are set up for improvement of student outcomes. So the end game is to support our students’ growth. Our piece of work is around growing leadership ability and helping them understand the pivotal behaviours that form great cultures within their school or their teams. And I think that similarly, when we do work across other businesses as well, the same sorts of behaviours, you want high performance culture, psychologically safe environments where people are feeling valued and getting the best out of your employees.

Ben [00:12:32] If I could jump in there, Neil, what I think at the colleague level, Marie, you see a lot of is helping school leaders kind of draw on one of their strengths, which is when you’re a teacher, you look at the individual learning styles of your students and you start adapting your teaching to best meet those learning styles because when you can present information and when you can help a student through their work in a way that connects with their learning style, obviously you get better results from them. And the same is true with teaching staff so when you recognise this teacher has a high need for control, they need to be able to make decisions for themselves. This teacher actually doesn’t have a high need for control. They have a high need for method. This particular teacher likes the detail and the evidence behind something. This particular teacher over here doesn’t like the concept until they understand more the purpose and the end of the journey. Different staff, in other words, kind of have different emotional needs. And if you understand those emotional needs, like the adaptive teacher, you can be the adaptive leader and start to get the best out of teaching staff by adapting your style to meet the emotional needs of your staff that’s one big application. I think the other one, Neil, that I get a real buzz out of is helping leaders with emotional agility. So, you know, a school leader can be one minute promoting student of the week, the very next minute they can be dealing with a difficult parent over one of the most sensitive topics known to us. Then they can be helping a student through a personal crisis. And then and increasingly, I think, Neil, in this environment, helping staff deal with their own increased uncertainty and stress from Covid. So you see this even in a single day, a lot of what I call emotional pivoting, you know, promoting student of the week, happy times, now I’m dealing with a difficult parent, now I’m helping staff member with their sort of crisis. So there’s this real need to be able to kind of shake off, if you like, the emotions of the situation, reset and get into the next emotional situation, if you like. It is one of those occupations that has high levels of emotional labour and high levels of emotional regulation needed all the time,

Marie [00:14:53]  Ben, from your point of view, you see E.I. assessment and development across all industries, how do teachers fare before their emotional intelligence assessment and development compared to other industries?

Ben [00:15:08] Well, in my opinion, we know that leading and teaching in schools is a high emotional labour occupation and with that are high levels of occupational stress, greater levels of stress. I think the Australian Catholic University, Neil, does a study every year on levels of stress in teachers and leaders in education. And so it is one of those occupations that has elevated levels of things like that in it. And so I think before a lot of systematic kind of learning and development in emotional intelligence, before that, you get people not pivoting as well as they could. You get people, instead of recognising the need, the emotional need of someone, they are getting frustrated by the lack of performance from someone or, you know. And so I think it can bubble up that way.

Marie [00:15:59] So how then, Neil, do educators or schools come to you? So, for example, is there a sign or a symptom that typically appears in a school and the school says, well, we need to develop this area? How does it come to be that they realise E.I. is important in their school?

Neil [00:16:19] Marie, I think there’s a range of things sort of start to exhibit some of those that what Ben was talking about, where culture can be down in the school. Everybody’s feeling a little bit deflated, they’re working hard. They want the best for the students, which, you know, most teachers do, and they can see things off balance and they would normally contact Quelly or anywhere else and ask about how can we get our performance, our culture lifted? The first thing we talk to them about is, you know, emotional intelligence and how the team is working together culturally and those aspects of how they interrelate. And we’ve certainly done a lot of work with schools around that and that’s been a major trigger point to lifting their culture, understanding that they’re not all the same, they operate differently, their behaviours are going to be different and looking out for each other when we’re under stressful situations and avoiding those stressful situations. So often that that’s how it manifests, the other part is that it might just be coming into our programmes for just that normal progression in development of leadership. And they know that they’re fearful for or anxious about some pieces of work particularly around, okay, I’m now in the middle leadership role. I’m not engaging the team as well as I thought I could. I’ve seen other leaders do this well. Once we do the 360 feedback around the Genos piece that really highlights that they can own some of these behaviours. And actually work on them and once we call them out, so you know how I engage those people, value opinions about the people around them, am I doing those pieces? And getting feedback from the teams around them allows them to really go into those insightful pieces, then we can work on them. So one of the biggest aha moments that we have when we’re working with teams is when they’ve got a problem and we look at some of the emotional intelligence competencies that could improve that, that’s significant for them. And so that piece becomes very targeted for individuals or the team about how they’re working.

Marie [00:18:20] Ben, just quickly, for those people, who don’t know what the Genos 360 is, do you want to give a very quick explanation? And Neil, just to clarify, you use the leadership assessment, is that right?

Neil [00:18:30] The leadership assessment, yes.

Marie [00:18:31]  So, Ben, can you explain to those listening, who don’t know what the Leadership 360 assessment is?

Ben [00:18:36] Sure, so our assessment looks at how well you demonstrate emotionally intelligent behaviour, emotionally intelligent leadership behaviour in the case that Neil is talking about. And it’s important in programmes, whether you’re working with school leaders or anyone else, for that matter, because one of the things that the general population suffers from is something called the Dunning Kruger effect. It’s a well-known psychological phenomenon. And it can be explained in very simple terms like this, if you took a hundred school leaders randomly out of the system and privately asked them, how emotionally intelligent do you think you are, almost all of them will say a bit above average. And we know from our data that can’t be the case. As I was saying before, that E.I. is fairly normally distributed. So you have sort of half of us, who don’t do very well in it and half of us, if you like, who do. So people not only in education, but more broadly, systematically over rate or overestimate how emotionally intelligent they are. And what the tool really does is two things. Number one, it really grounds you and helps you understand what your emotional intelligence is like and the behaviours you need to demonstrate more of, or it can give you more confidence. For example, a lot of people with very high levels of emotional intelligence undervalue and underestimate their E.I. so that can give them the confidence to lean into it a little bit more. And in these programmes, Neil, I think one of the things that it does really is it helps personalise the programme. So I might be doing well on some behaviours of self-awareness, but not on others, or I might be doing well on some behaviours of being a positive influence in the way others feel and not on some others. And so it gives people who sit in the middle of, if you like, I think a real opportunity to finesse their leadership, to polish it up, to notice the little imperfections that might exist just on a few things and really work on those as they go through a programme with Quilly and on an organisation like Neil’s.

Marie [00:20:33] The 360 means I’m not just self-assessing, other people are assessing my behaviours, too. Is that right?

Ben [00:20:39] That’s right, you’re getting feedback from your boss. You’re getting feedback from your peers and your direct reports if you have them.

Marie [00:20:46] Sounds scary.

Neil [00:20:48] I was going to jump in and say exactly what Ben is talking about there. It sounds scary but because you’re talking about a set of competencies and behaviours, it’s a non-threatening piece. People take that feedback really well but it gives them the stimulus to be able to build on something that’s tangible. And they really enjoy that so our biggest aha moment is before programme even starts, where we do the 360 assessment with them and then we do the debrief and work out some coaching, some goals through the programme and as Ben said it really individualises it for that person. It’s about them. It’s individualised and then there are things that they can actually target and work on. We work on that growth for the programme that’s the piece where we get outstanding, wow that was a great piece of feedback. It’s the best 360 I’ve done that makes sense to me now about why I haven’t been able to engage this group of people, so on. So it is really a powerful part before the programmes even sort of started.

Marie [00:21:48] Okay, maybe that’s not so scary, perhaps it would be scary if we invited or if you invited parents to provide feedback that would terrify me. Ben, you were going to say something?

Ben [00:21:59] Oh, I was just going to say, I think in schools that don’t perform as well as they could, one of the hallmarks of that I think is not giving and receiving feedback effectively. I don’t know whether you would agree with that. But I think, you know, sometimes, for example, the relationship gets ruptured between the principal and their immediate direct report. Some systems call that an assistant principal, some call it deputy. But when that relationship gets strained, I think things can really unravel a bit in schools. And then, of course, you know, teachers, some teachers have been teaching for 20 years or more and have very set mindsets around how things should be done. And then the Department of Education might say, well, we need to make a change to phonics or we need to make a change to how maths is going to be taught next year that could be a very difficult thing to take a team of teachers, particularly if you’ve got a couple of those very experienced ones like that Neil, wouldn’t it on that sort of change journey. It’s not an easy one.

Neil [00:22:56] Definitely and I think I’ve shared the data with Ben once before. Out of all the coaching that we do across all of our programmes, particularly in that middle leadership space, the pieces that people are after has become the top four goals, are how to engage other people around them. So really listening, how to give feedback respectfully and how to even engage in a bit of coaching, mentoring and all of that takes really nuanced, emotional intelligence to do that well.

Marie [00:23:25] So they’ve gone through the teacher or the school has gone through your leadership training, what are some of the results that the participants have seen? Do you have any great stories that you can share?

Neil [00:23:38] Look, for us, the biggest ones are probably what I mentioned, when people start the programme that’s obviously a highlight and it’s funny that we expect that now. However, probably the more defined pieces are where we work directly with schools around their leadership and it often starts with their leadership team. Then they engage in the emotional intelligence so they now understand the impact on the culture of this school. And then we obviously talk about psychologically safe environments, the school and rapidly often moves to can we run some broader workshops with the whole of the school staff and even sometimes the PNC so that everybody’s engaging in this emotional, intelligent behaviour as much as possible, increasing our awareness of self and others. And that becomes a language and a methodology across the schools that we’re working with and it becomes a baseline about them, okay, now we can build on top of that. We’ve got the relationship starting to come together. So now we can have those powerful conversations on student performance or outcomes without being worrying about going into negative space about each other, but about what we’re talking about so that the student’s performance or the student’s assessment or what’s happening in that classroom. So it really allows them to focus those professional conversations in that space.

Ben [00:24:55] For me, I think it’s, a lot of teachers, who are very technically proficient, a lot of school leaders, who are very technically proficient, get very exhausted from the emotional labour side of the job. Instead of taking the team with them on the journey, they will drive it through or they will just work harder and harder and harder to just make things happen as opposed to stepping back and really thinking about distributing leadership and, you know, getting a school working more effectively. And so for me, I think, Neil, one of the biggest outcomes I see is a lot of people like that who shift from a driving crash through kind of strategy to one that takes people more on the journey and they feel a lot less emotionally exhausted at the end of their own day, going home, feeling better, connecting with their own families and things afterwards. And that for me, is one of the things that tickles me pink.

Neil [00:25:50] And I absolutely have to agree and that’s where that space we call engaging others. So their dilemma is they think they have to do everything, once we sort of expose the notion of a listening world to other people, valuing their opinions, doing all those emotional intelligence pieces, their workload is suddenly released from them and they get more engagement so absolutely.

Marie [00:26:11] So in summary, one of the great outcomes of going through this is that they feel better about the work that they’re doing and feel happier at work.

Neil [00:26:21] Definitely, it just gives them a key to look at some of their behaviours and then interact with people in a different way and that weight can be lifted significantly.

Ben [00:26:34] I think happiness is contagious, just like any other emotion. But I also think that schools that have done a lot of work in this space aren’t, you know, utopia, where all that’s ever going on is the kids are feeling good and the, you know, the staff, are high-fiveing each other. There are still plenty of emotional situations and plenty of emotional stuff going on, it’s just better dealt with more emotionally intelligently dealt with so people are not brushing unpleasant events under the carpet or dismissing each other’s ideas and things like that. You know, they’re just engaging a lot more around whatever’s going on in the school, whether it be good, bad or ugly, in a more intentional intelligent and more kind of emotionally effective way.

Neil [00:27:22] Absolutely and it’s a very careful balancing act or the best situation is where you’ve got strong accountability, but a psychological safe environment and based in the psychological safe environment become this emotional intelligence underpinning that. So that doesn’t mean, as Ben was saying there, that we all have a happy environment, but nothing gets done. It’s really about getting that balance of some good accountability and that professional dialogue to achieve that and high expectations, but going about it in an emotionally intelligent way and causing that psychological safety to optimise that situation.

Ben [00:27:57] And Marie, for all us parents out there, it’s, I think, sobering to sit back sometimes and think about this sort of stuff. I know the school that my kids go to there are six or seven hundred kids there and there’s six or seven hundred different views around the school about how the school should be functioning at the moment. You know, are there enough Zoom sessions? Should we have Wellbeing Wednesday where we don’t actually have to teach from home at all, we can just leave them to it that sort of thing. And I know there’s a lot of varying views. I don’t know about the school your kids go to Marie but certainly plenty of parents with diametrically opposed views on what should be happening or coming into the school at the same time talk about the need for sensemaking and emotional agility.

Marie [00:28:41] We’ve had the same thing. Parents requesting for, you know, a wellness day where the kids don’t have to do any work. And I was like that’s called Saturday and Sunday. But anyway, I’m like, whatever keeps them away from me so I can get my job done seems pretty good to me. Ben, I was curious as to whether there was any recent research into the effects of emotional intelligence in a school environment. Has there been anything where they’ve kind of measured or looked at a school over a long period of time to see the how the leadership or how the teaching staff had changed and any impact that they would have seen either at a management level or at a student outcome level. Has there been anything like that done?

Ben [00:29:22] Yes, absolutely and there’s lots of good research that’s been done here in Australia. But essentially on a longitudinal basis, if you lift the emotional intelligence of a school team, what you see is better student outcomes at the end of the day. If you lift the emotional intelligence of students, you will get better academic outcomes as well. And so there’s certainly that strong research evidence to suggest that lifting levels of emotional intelligence in a school produces better student outcomes. Not only that, it also produces better teacher wellbeing so we see less burnout in the job. We see a reduction in stress-related leave claims. We see improvements in staff engagement and satisfaction with the job. So longitudinally again, you see less teacher turnover. We see less loss of the profession, if you like, amongst staff. So, yes, in fact, we live in a very lucky country, I think, because the Australian government at a federal level is tuned into this. And I saw that the people, who set the standards for school principals have recognised the power of this research and they have made sort of personal and interpersonal skills underpinned by emotional intelligence, one of the things that is required, if you like, as a capability to lead schools well. And what that means for all of us in the general public is schools are, you know, actively developing through organisations like Neil’s and others, levels of emotional intelligence in our school leaders and in our school teachers. And I know a lot of work is also going on at the student level. You know to have that recognition from government, to have that as a standard that we’ve se, I think bodes very well for our country, Neil.

Neil [00:31:15] Absolutely.

Marie [00:31:15] Now, what have you noticed over this kind of pandemic period over the last couple of years? What has the impact been on teachers?

Neil [00:31:22] Teachers have been in a situation where the whole environment has changed significantly. And congratulations on continuing the education of students around the nation in times of where they’ve had to work from home. The students have been at home as well or in front of them with masks on so a whole range of different things affecting teachers. And what we have seen is not just in teachers, but through the whole school communities and their families that resilience and wellbeing piece has been a significant impact on families being dislodged from their work environment so mom and dad that put the pressure back on the family and the students and then back into the classrooms and teachers deal with this all day, day-in and day-out. And as I said, I take my hat off for their wellbeing and their positive nature that they go around supporting the students. So I think what we’ve seen here is Covid has affected us. It’s given us a new normal to be working in but we live in a constant environment of change all the time, whether it be technology and the access to technology the kids have and all the implications around that. And I think that strongly that the glue for us to keep together and supporting each other is around that wellbeing piece and looking after each other. And right underneath that is emotional intelligence, being aware of others, how I’m behaving, looking after myself and working with others.

Ben [00:32:45] I would agree. I think it’s also highlighted to the community generally the important role that schools play in the community and the important roles that schools play in wellbeing. I think those two things have really, you know, come to the fore, the forefront of the public’s mind a little bit more as a, you know, as a result of the pandemic.

Marie [00:33:07] Yes, well, they’ve done an amazing job. I honestly, I mean, as a parent, it’s been difficult. But when I think about what the teachers have to go through, marking online and trying to run classes online, it’s just, you know, really mind blowing to think just how different it is and how hard it must be to teach, especially the really young ones at this time.

Marie [00:34:09]  Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Neil, for joining us. Thanks, Ben, for your insights. It’s been wonderful having a chat. And to any teachers listening, thank you for all that you’ve been doing over these crazy times.

Neil [00:34:22] Thanks, Marie. Thanks, Ben.

Ben [00:34:23] Thanks Neil.