Q&A + Baby

This is white noise in the corridor calming him down.

Today, baby and I faced our biggest professional challenge yet: appearing as panellists at the Teach First annual offsite conference for Teach First employees and partners. This meant two 60 minute Q&A sessions in Nottingham (I live in London) exploring the ideas behind The #maternityteacher Project and achievements to date.  This required a lot of energy, and our smartest pair of shoes, but I found that repeating motivational mantras to myself gave me the encouragement to get up and go. 

"I am the change I want to see in the world," I said to myself when I got into the shower at 6am. Baby farted in his sleep and sighed in a satisfied way. 

"Be 10% braver," I said to myself whilst getting baby up and changed. Baby pooped all over the changing mat three times. Clearly very excited, maybe a bit nervous about his guest appearance. 

"Coffee is always a good idea," I said to myself as I left the house with a Baby Bjorn bouncer frame over my shoulder like Huckleberry Finn's mum, to join the 7am commuters. Baby stuck his tongue out to suck up the tube breeze and dribbled. 

"I am a super woman," I said when my train was cancelled and I approached station staff to request to be re-routed. Baby chewed his whole fist and sicked a little down his chin. 

"Thank fuck I don't have to do this every morning anymore," I said as I put the bouncer frame in the luggage rack and released baby from the sling. Baby pooped loudly and smiled. Achievements come in many varied forms. 

Note: professional shoes.

When we finally got to Nottingham, the panel itself was very exciting, if a bit overwhelming. In true #maternityteacher style, we arrived a million hours early, reconnaissanced the room, set up the bouncer, had a feed and a cup of tea and finished the last chapter of 'Jungly Tales' by gumming it aggressively before the first audience members arrived and baby became an instant sensation.  

Now, here's a tip if you're considering doing a similar event with your baby: your baby is the most beautiful little person in the whole world; he is making an appearance at an event where babies do not usually appear; everybody loves an adorable, smiling baby, and everybody wants to touch said baby.  I'm normally very happy and proud to hand my baby over to other people for cuddles - often I take pictures of him with various professional celebrities - but I was surprised at how worried I was that he would be overwhelmed by all of this attention, and yet at the same time I would have been offended if he had been ignored!  This was probably a projection on my behalf, but something to think about if other people touching your baby is not your favourite thing.

Yes, my baby is PERFECT.

Once I'd calmed down my inner control-mother, I delivered my introduction, realising that I was the only one who had brought notes.  Part of me felt like a school girl rather than a serious, professional person; the other half of me got flustered and distracted when the baby screamed about his wind so was very grateful to have a set of bullet points to follow whilst most of my brain was actually worrying about him.  Use whatever personalised strategies allow you to multi-task in this way, even if they do make you feel like you're laying out your shiny new pencil case on your desk on the first day of school.

After all three panellists had spoken on different aspects of women in leadership, there was an explosion of responses that I am going to have to take a whole day in my pyjamas to process.

Amongst the ideas that stood out was the importance of choice. Whenever anyone starts talking about parenting, discussions become very personal, very charged and very defensive. Am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? Have I met expectations? Am I a good mother? Am I a strong woman? One thing I maybe didn't emphasise enough today was that the inception of The #maternityteacher Project was motivated by fear: I am bad at doing nothing; boredom scares me; I have to build structured relaxation time into my day so that I don't feel guilty; I was deathly afraid of getting post natal depression because of such a dramatic shift in my pace of life. I couldn't find any examples of parental leave that didn't include Baby Jazz or baking, and these things don't float my boat half as much as improving my understanding of 19th century literature or facilitating a session on EAL for trainee teachers.  

Note: engaged speakers, vacantly staring mother.

It was really interesting to see and hear how the idea of The MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher Project was received by a whole range of parents - from those who had told their Mums that they were going to complete PhDs whilst on maternity leave, but had ended up happily lying on a beach for nine months, to those who thought that the responsibility for bridging the gap of parental leave lay in changes to organisational structures, not programmes of 'catch up' like this one.

This raised the question of revolution vs. evolution. Do we need a social revolution that completely changes the way that we perceive parental leave, women and men's roles, and childcare? That makes certain gender-focused events obligatory for men or maternity leave coaching a legal requirement for all organisations? Or will the only effective change be a result of a trickle down effect whereby this #maternityteacher supports and inspires three other #maternityteachers and #paternityteachers who go on to inspire nine more... until eventually there is no need for a revolution because organically, there will be a more even balance in the education system (and who knows - the whole country) between the sharing of parenting and leadership roles?

My personal, and very self-centered response to the evolution vs. revolution question is one of time: I have three months left of my maternity leave and if I wait for a revolution, I'll end up sitting in a classroom three days a week at 52, sipping my bitter coffee, reflecting on the career opportunities I sacrificed in order to raise three boys who were now contributing to the hateful patriarchy.  As it is, I am bored now. I am acting now. I hope to inspire and support now. I'll leave all this talk of revolution to my French husband. 

Another interesting suggestion was that schools are awarded with a sort of 'Gender Equality' award, a bit like an Arts Smart or an Eco Schools Award that recognises the efforts made to ensure gender equality amongst staff and to teach these values to students in schools.  I'd have to get my head around this one and the dangers of positive discrimination and tokenism vs. meritocracy, but I thought it was a creative idea to suggest, which could have some potential. 

A final resounding comment came from the only man in the first session: it had been intimidating and uncomfortable to attend the event as the only man in the room but it had been important, relevant to him and very interesting. At lunch time, he and others who had been at the first session actively sought out other men and said, 'You should go to this Q&A panel after lunch. This crazy woman has brought her baby.'  After lunch, there were at least ten - maybe more - men in the room. They were all interested, they were all engaged.  One of them sadly reflected that he had missed the opportunity for a cuddle, now that the baby was asleep in the sling.

It was so exciting to hear from Team Dad and have my suspicions confirmed: we are all on the same page here. Time away from the office/ classroom to spend with your child: good. Flexible CPD to develop your skills in areas of interest or reflect on career pathways: good. Shared childcare responsibilities that means everyone gets to enjoy magical smiles and dribble: good. Greater equality in educational leadership: good. None of this is exclusive to one or other gender. So encouraged am I by this that I'm changing the name of this Thing to The MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher Project.  It's longer, but The ParentalTeacher Project sounds weird.  I'm also going to keep asking for someone to put me in contact with a male teacher who has completed CPD whilst on parental leave to be my @paternityteacher partner in crime. Are you out there? Do you have Twitter?

Please zoom in to his facial expression here.

Amongst all of this excitement and intense chat, baby was mostly an absolute legend and at all other times he was a baby and did all the normal things that babies do. He got grizzly and needed to be bounced in the sling to fall asleep. He made noises (delightful) as if he were in the Houses of Parliament  during the other panellists' anecdotes. When he got wind and screamed, he had to be taken outside. I think it was too cold and we are not used to cold as it has basically been sweltering since he was born and he has spent most of his life in just a nappy, and he got clingy and didn't want to stay in the bouncer and chew on 'Jungly Tales' by himself. I've since realised that he is in the middle of an angry rain cloud on my Wonder Weeks app, but the only person who seemed remotely bothered by all of this was me. 

I had one brief moment of wondering whether it was all a bit too much and I was a terrible, selfish mother but then the baby massage elicited an enormous fart and suddenly baby was fascinated by his audience again (and then he fell asleep). 

We ended the day a little overwhelmed by all the potential and opportunity and relevance of the project and basically got home and collapsed and made vowel sounds to each other and smiled and dribbled some more. Nottingham is quite a long way for a small baby. Tomorrow we will do a lot of lying on the carpet and we might try to look for Spot the Dog again. We keep losing him. 

School Trips

Team #maternityteacher have just come back from our first family weekend away to the Peak District which was the most fun, and it got me thinking about how awesome parental leave is because of all the flexi-time it offers. On Friday, when all other teaches were in the classroom, baby, Frenchie and I were zooming up the M1 to the countryside, and I thought, 'Gosh, it's great being on maternity leave - I'd never be able to do all of this learning-outside-the-classroom if I was on full teaching timetable and restricted by contracted hours!'

Now, for anyone reading thinking that maternity leave is a holiday, it is not: this was not a mini break, this was a bonafide CPD school trip. Had I been on a full time pay roll, I would definitely have put in an expense claim - that's how linked to my teaching and learning practice this was, as it was inspired by my FutureLearn course, 'Literature of the Country House'.  The course includes excerpts from 'Pride and Prejudice', 'The Sylph' and 'The Mysteries of Udolpho', all which have links to Derbyshire in the form of that dramatic rock that Kiera Knightly stands on in the film; Chatsworth House, home to both Mark Darcy and Georgiana Cavendish (also Kiera Knightly), and Haddon Hall, the gothic inspiration for Ann Radcliffe's 'Udolpho'.

School trips like this absolutely count as CPD for the exact same reason that they count as learning for our students - they bring learning and texts and theory to life and make them so much more exciting; they develop soft skills like determination and organisation and confidence; they inspire ideas to bring back into the classroom, and they provide opportunities that teenagers and teachers both love for awesome, no-inhibitions, dream-fulfilling photos:

I am Lizzie Bennet.  This is her rock.  Jane Austen lives through me etc.

Having returned from this trip, for example, I am now completely convinced that I can accompany a DofE trek, a commitment I have previously hesitated over volunteering for because of a concern that I might not be outdoorsy enough - such things are for Geography and PE teachers, surely?  Well, not any more.

In a previous trip to the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge, I spent about an hour pondering climate change and my insignificance in the gazillion-year-old scheme of things, and am now on the hunt for copies of the letters of Mary Anning, Darwin's diaries, Adam Sedgwick's letters and Thomas Hawkins' 'The Book of the Great Sea Dragons' to create a portfolio of Literary Non-Fiction and Literary Fiction like 'A Sound of Thunder' and 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' to create a portfolio with a cool name like 'Dinosaur Hunters' that will make exam practice feel like a trip to the cinema to see 'Jurassic World'.

One thing, from a parental point of view, that has been really fun, has been basing these trips on whatever the baby is supposed to be doing, developmentally.  There's a point, for example, when babies go into sensory overload, so we went to Kew Gardens to smell (I learnt a lot about bees and want our Science Department to do a trip here), St. Martin-in-the-Fields to listen, the V&A to look at shadows (amazing STEM opportunities) and put our feet in the cold water of the courtyard pond, and Borough Market to eat all the free tasters.  When the baby started to make connections and appreciate patterns, we went to the Tate Modern with my Mum and I wrote a whole scheme of work on Shakespeare, dance and physical theatre.

What has also been fantastic about a lot of these London-based trips (I work in a London school), has been the opportunity to act almost as a travel agent for my Head of Department, letting her know about experiences that I have already tried and tested, and which would be suitable for different groups of students.  As a busy manager, she doesn't have as much time as she would like to get out, discover, research and test drive these school trips, so having someone who will do this for her - and have a lot of fun, cuddles and tea in the process - is a huge bonus for her.

Case Study: Chance Encounters

Kathryn Wright (@kathrynfenlodge), freelance RE Advisor, RE Advisor to the Diocese of Norwich and Lead Consultant for Teach: RE shares her inspiring #maternityteacher experience.

I am writing this blog because I passionately believe that parental leave can be an opportunity for career development and I want to support The #maternityteacher Project. Let me explain why...

Very few people can probably claim that their career took off during maternity leave, but this is what happened to me about ten years ago!  In short, this was partly due to being in the right place at the right time, but also due to the incredible support of colleagues who saw the opportunities that maternity leave provided for flexible working from home.

Ten years ago I had a nine-month old baby, and a toddler running around; I had been an RE Adviser to the London Borough of Newham for a number of years, but had decided to explore other avenues of work to fit better around my family and avoid the long daily commute from to London from Cambridgeshire.

A Chance Encounter

During my maternity leave I started to run a toddler group – slightly out of my comfort zone as I am secondary trained!  However, I required some resources to help me, and whilst searching for these, bumped into an RE Adviser.  She suggested that whilst I was on maternity leave I trained to become a Section 48 (Statutory Inspection of Anglican Schools) Inspector, explaining that I could choose when to undertake inspections so that the commitments worked around my children. I took her up on this suggestion and whilst on the training course met another Adviser who told me they needed a secondary RE specialist to work with schools in Norfolk! My new ‘freelance’ career had begun!

Networking

The RE community is strong and vibrant.  There is probably some kind of network meeting taking place every week for teachers. There are similar networking opportunities for Advisers too, and I decided to pop along to my local group. I was fortunate that my husband was working shifts, so had the children for the morning.  It was here that I met Mary Myatt (@MaryMyatt) who at that time was an Adviser in Suffolk. Mary saw the possibilities and opportunities of my situation and supported me in my early days as a freelancer by opening doors for project work, and inviting me to events to help me network with others. She also always understood the constraints of being a parent, and I never felt pressured.

Flexible Working

Lastly, a number of organisations contacted me during my maternity leave because they knew I would be based at home.  I would have more time to write, apparently! So I wrote articles; I helped prepare a bid for funding; I wrote material for a website; I acted as a consultant for a media organisation… many of these opportunities came about because of the creative thinking of other Advisers in my field – other Advisers who did not have time to ‘write’ because they were in schools had the foresight to pass these opportunities on to me.

Opportunities for All

In my work as an Adviser now, there are a number of ways in which I try to support those on parental leave leave, I think partly due to the way my own career has developed. One of my roles is as Lead Consultant for the distance-learning TeachRE Course, which has many flexible routes and pathways that enable teachers to complete it remotely – perfect for those on parental leave!  If this sounds like the right CPD opportunity for you, then we’d love to hear from you!

One of the aims of The #maternityteacher Project is to provide parents with role models by sharing stories like Kathryn's so that teachers on parental leave can explore different options of CPD that are most appropriate for their circumstance.  If you have a #maternityteacher or #paternityteacher story, we'd love to feature it on this blog!  Get in touch with the #maternityteacher on Twitter - @maternityCPD.

Coaching + Baby

Today, baby and I went to our local family-friendly cafe (hub of NCT reunions and baby massage) to have a coffee with my former Teach First coach and have a coaching conversation about where on earth I'm going with my career and what I should work on to get there.

Coaching conversations are a great form of CPD for anyone, but particularly compatible with the #maternityteacher lifestyle because, other than the content of the conversation and the status of the coach, they are basically like meeting up with another mum or dad for a chat about things that interest you.  Coaching relationships are supportive and non-judgmental and because of this, any decent coach working with you to focus on your professional needs whilst on maternity leave will be understanding of the realities of having an 11 week old baby, and will do their utmost to make you feel comfortable and relaxed during the session.

Both a Google search and my own experience can attest to the manifold benefits of coaching, but it's important to understand the difference between a trained coach and a mate or well-meaning colleague who wants to help by giving you some sound advice.  If you don't have a convenient coach on hand, but have a network of people that you could call upon to provide you with informal coaching, make sure you consider the following before asking for a coaching conversation:

• Does this person have both formal training in and experience of being a coach?  Even colleagues with experience of coaching can get the tone very wrong if they haven't had proper training from a reputable organisation - the line between coaching and mentoring is a fine one, and the subtle art of coaching requires fighting a lot of innate reactions in body language, tone of voice and semantics.  Whilst everyone has to have their first coachee after their formal training, you need to decide whether you are happy to be their pilot run at this stage, especially if your maternity leave is short - do you have the time to be offering this new coach more than they are able to offer you?

• Can this person be objective?  Surprisingly, what makes my coach so effective is that he has never worked in education and is a man.  When I want to talk about school politics or whine about how tough it is to be a woman, what he doesn't do is roll his eyes and agree that there's always a Mr Smith or Mrs Jones in every staffroom, or pour me another glass of wine and agree that we should join forces to topple the patriarchy.  What he does is listen, ask objective questions and get me thinking clearly - he coaches.

• Is this person available during the day?  It's a reality that the bath time routine starts at 7pm and if you're anything like me, you're dead to the world by 9pm (but sleepwalking through feeds and burping at midnight, 2am, 5am and ready to start the day again at 7am!)  Most people are only just finishing their commute at this time, so are unfortunately incompatible with your current lifestyle. 

• Can this person commit to the timespan of your maternity leave?  If you're taking a full year or longer, make sure that this person can be around for a session at least three times a year.  If, like me, you're taking six months or less, you'll want to squeeze at least two sessions into this time, so it's important to arrange dates at the outset to which you can both commit.

• Do you want this relationship to last beyond your maternity leave?  The focus of your conversations will depend on which ideas or areas of your career you want to resolve or develop through the coaching partnership.  If you'd like support with preparing now for the beginning of a new 5 year plan, for example, then your conversations will be different to those you might have if you want the coaching sessions to help you achieve a career goal within three months.

• Try to keep it professional.  Let's be honest: your baby is gorgeous.  His smile lights up the room.  He is so clever and look, so alert and making lovely noises and can you see he's grabbing now and here, if I put him on his front he can show you how strong he's getting - he can lift up his head! ... Suddenly the coaching conversation is completely derailed.  It's difficult, but focus on yourself during your sessions, even if you bring baby with you.  It is highly likely that as you are standing up to go and your productive conversation is over, your coach will linger to coo and cheek-pinch and make all the right comments about how sparky your baby is - because who could resist?!

Now, what about the reverse to all of this?  I personally believe that everyone can benefit from effective coaching, but what if you already have a wealth of coaching experience and training?  How can you develop your leadership skills by continuing to coach others during your time off?  You might want to consider the support you can continue to give your school, or other teachers (a great opportunity to do so has been created by the DfE), but in this case, it's important to understand your coachee's expectations of your baby's attendance.  If you don't have the capacity to leave your baby with your partner, family member or childcare provider whilst you deliver coaching sessions for others, what about a creative arrangement between other teaching parents who also need to bring their children along?  If this is something with which you both feel comfortable and you can concentrate on each other, rather than your children, during the conversation, then it might be a workable solution.

Live Stream

Today, this #maternityteacher made a joyful discovery.  Please keep in mind during this anecdotal blog that despite my incessant Tweeting and blogging, watching me try to navigate social media and many forms of technology is a little like watching your grandmother trying to use a computer mouse for the first time.  ("Right click, Nanny.  Click.  On the right.  With your ring finger.  Right click.")

Imagine me, if you will, doing a mix between ballet, dry ice-skating and aerobics in my living room at 11am this morning, in my pyjamas, to a soundtrack of Paolo Nutini, with a baby attached to me in a sling.  Why would I do such a thing, you might be wondering.  Well, the baby had just had a significant poop explosion whilst seated in the bouncer - that genius piece of equipment that allows me to get on with blogging and Tweeting and researching during the day - and it was now out of action.  Baby refuses to sleep during the day without some form of intense lunging involved, so it was rather resentfully that I swapped my morning coffee with accompanying bouncer for a sling fit work out.

Eventually, exhausted, I sat down to Twitter only to find that the whole world apart from me was talking about ResearchEd. "Oh gawd!" I thought, with severe feelings of FOMO, "The whole world is progressing apart from me.  Interesting learning discussions are happening and I'm sweaty and still in my pyjamas at 11am and the baby has begun to dribble in my cleavage!  Maternity leave sucks!"

But oh how wrong I was.  When I clicked on the @ResearchED1 handle, I saw this magical Tweet:

"What is a 'Livestreamed'?" you may be wondering.  Well, #maternityteachers, I asked myself the same question, and curious beyond measure about what kind of Narnia this digital wardrobe door might lead me to, I clicked on the link and was greeted by this:

This is @daisychristo talking, in real time, about the Ark Academy's research into comparative moderation, and here I was, with a baby, in my living room, with dirty hair and sleep-face, listening as if I were in the Theatre of the Capital City Academy with all the other gazillion CPD-ing teachers. Amazing!

I obviously then had a fantastic morning with the live stream playing on my laptop in the background, a bit like Wimbledon or the Olympics whilst I went about breastfeeding, burping, playing, tummy time, laundry, Tweeting, Googling, drinking cups of tea and performing baby massage on a very disgruntled and windy baby.  "Being on maternity leave is fantastic!" I thought, "You can come in late to presentations without offending anyone; I don't have any marking or planning to do that's keeping me from concentrating on what @PhillippaCcuree is saying, and I'm not sickened by the idea of anything to do with education on a Saturday because I've lost track of what day it is today!  Plus, I have time to really think about lots of big ideas and put them into action.  How, for example, could research bodies mobilise the teachers on maternity leave out there who are not drowning under the weight of their teaching load to contribute to their projects?"

Life got even better at 2:05pm when this chap turned up:

What Teach First ambassador doesn't love a bit of Brett quoting familiar statistics?  Way to reconnect with the mission!

The best thing about Live Stream, I discovered, was that it doesn't just exist for ResearchEd; this chap Leon Cych at least, films loads of education-related events and Teach Meets so that they can be accessed from any remote location with Wifi.  Can you think of anything more compatible with the #maternityteacher lifestyle?

So, here's what I think we should all do:

• Explore further opportunities for live streaming.  If there is a conference you want to attend, but can't, what infrastructure do the facilitators have for creating a live streaming link?
• Learn how to do live streaming with @periscopetv - apparently you can do this with your own smartphone!
• We should all make friends with Leon Cych (@eyebeams) and ask him to partner with The #maternityteacher Project to make all of our live streaming dreams come true.
• If you attend an event through live streaming, you've attended that CPD event! (You just didn't get lunch).  Make sure you include it in your CPD record or on your CV so that you can use it to impress your Principal on your return to work.
• Use social media to record and maximise upon your attendance: blog about your reflections; network through Twitter; follow up on introductions and ideas.

Even better, I have just discovered that ResearchEd is family-friendly, so you have two options for their next event in Washington (!?): get a ticket and put your baby on a plane, or grab a cup of tea and a muslin and access through live streaming!

Networking + Baby

 Phew!  Baby and I have just returned this evening from our first networking event with people we don't know!  We were so excited that our attendance was given the all clear by @WomenEd founder @Miss-Wilsey that we spent the whole day considering which outfits would best convey our professional personas.  We needed something that said, 'high powered' but accessible; informal gravity; a baby of the people, if you will, and eventually decided that Power Dinosaurs was the look we were after.  (Mummy wore a blazer, but didn't quite make it out of the chinos.)

Now, I have a great deal of experience in networking events, from very posh charity fundraisers to casual coffees with complete strangers, so I can say with authority that one great thing about maternity leave is that it provides you with ample opportunity to hone your networking skills.  Almost universally, Mums seek out other Mums in their area, be it through NCT groups, baby classes or by just chatting randomly about co-sleeping during a tram ride, and then they get together and they have coffee.  It's true.  Mums do this on maternity leave.  And when they're having coffee, they're having very pleasant conversations with near-strangers, mostly about babies.  Mums are expert networkers, and because of this, chat invaluable breeze to prospective parents on Open Evening and Parents' Evening.

The mismatch for me, though, was where baby would fit into my professional networking calculations.

• Parent with Baby + Parent with Baby = Networking  
• Colleague + Colleague = Networking  
• Parent with Baby + Colleague = ... totally unprofessional?

I have never seen a baby at a networking event, and I can't imagine that it is a common occurrence around the country, unless that event is specifically about babies or families, but the more I send politely worded emails that waffle in my attempt to articulate my request to bring my baby along with me because I don't have childcare but I still want to be part of important debates and discussions, the more I am met with arms wide open in welcome.  

For those of you hesitating about whether to attend an event with your young baby, therefore, I encourage you whole-heartedly to just be 10% braver and go for it!  Many of the practicalities of doing so are the same as suggested in my post about facilitating workshops with babies - things like timing, settlers, being prepared, knowing yourself and your baby, clear communication and normalising are transferable skills in the #maternityteacher #paternityteacher world - but there are a few things I would add on the back of my experience today:

1. Exit Route: 

Today was the first time that baby was a little grizzly in front of a professional audience.  He'd just had a feed and yelled about his wind.  There was a fairly small crowd at this event so it was easy to get up and leave to respect the conversations being had in the room, but having had to do this today, I'll pay more attention to my exit routes next time, especially in bigger rooms or more complicated buildings.  What I found particularly helpful was access to fresh air and the confidence to wander in and out of the room as he settled so that I could continue to listen and contribute to the discussion.  What I didn't think about was a baby-friendly flat surface, which would have been helpful because all he needed to settle was a bit of a massage to release the enormous shart that came later!

2. Sit Down Stand Up

This event was small enough to be had sitting around in a horseshoe formation, which was great for weary teachers on a Friday night, and for breastfeeding mothers!  Often, however, networking events are stand-up affairs, which, if baby is clingy, gassy or needs to be fed can present problems.  Establishing your presence at an event where you can sit down if need be without being excluded from the conversation, but where you are also at liberty to wander around with your baby in a tiger-in-the-tree pose or to jig up and down as necessary is ideal, so arriving early to scout things out and make requests for chairs or stools is advisable.

3. Buggy Access

To buggy, or not to buggy?  It's a tricky decision.  For many activities, I find the sling highly preferable: it's easier on public transport, it's an almost fail-safe method for getting baby to sleep, it leaves my hands free and takes up no room, but at the same time, it's hot and burdensome, whereas a baby sleeping in a buggy, or happily staring at the lights and contrast on the ceiling leaves you free to have uninterrupted conversations with other adults without ruining your back.

What occurred to me today, as well, as I approached the multi-storey venue with my heavy all terrain buggy, was that many venues are still wheelchair and buggy inaccessible, so you can't just assume that access will be possible.  Whilst this is not the end of the world - buggies can be carried up stairs or bassinets removed - the unexpected need to faff around with heavy lifting can leave you frazzled and distracted before an event has even started.

Thank you once again to @WomenEd for practicing what they preach and including Mums and babies in their discussions about women in leadership.

#maternityteacher #paternityteacher @parentalCPD

Over the last few weeks, a number of events and opportunities have given me cause to reflect upon my approach to gender equality and have a calm chat with my inner angry feminist.  It may come as no surprise that the initial motivation behind The #maternityteacher Project was frustration at feelings of disempowerment because of the biological and social expectations of my new role as a mother, and anger that no-one was having the conversations they were having with me about taking a break, relaxing and making the most of precious moments rather than continuing to forge my way up the career ladder, with men.  "It's not fair," I thought, "It is so tough being a woman!  Nobody understands us and something needs to be done!"

The danger of this frustration, in both my personal and professional life, however, has become very evident since giving birth: I am lucky that I have a very understanding husband who is my greatest ally in the battle for gender equality, but guess what?  He hates the word 'feminism' and shuts down whenever I use it.  Beating my angry feminist drum whilst functioning on five hours of broken sleep a night, therefore, was only going to end in tears.  Instead, I chose to empathise with the difficulties of his role as a man in a working culture that forces most men away from their children and which, through absence, de-skills them in the art of early child-raising until many men give up and let the woman deal with it rather than feel ashamed and frustrated at their own inabilities to interpret their child's cries or put on a sling in a lightening flash.

I therefore gave my husband a break and turned this frustration to my professional life.  Deafened by the booming of my own feminist drum, I planned the meeting I would arrange with my Principal to convince him to promote me in January because of all the remote CPD I was completing on maternity leave.  Instead of planning a conversation that respected the school's hierarchies and involved asking questions, listening and coming up with logical solutions that would enable me to work collaboratively with my leadership team for the benefit of our students, I put together a very righteous plan of attack, fuelled - if I'm honest - by the fear that unless I shouted very loudly and waved my arms around, no-one would notice me.

Thank goodness, therefore, for the magic of coaching, and my awareness that I would need some in order to successfully achieve my #maternityteacher goals.  The first two women I consulted began to blow away the feminist fog with professional, objective questions that encouraged me to focus on my role as a teacher, not my anger as a woman, but it wasn't until I asked for a coaching conversation from a man that the elephant in the room was finally pointed out: "Why are you so angry?" he asked me, "And why do you think you're going to get anywhere taking this anger to a professional meeting?"

Now this was infuriating, but very necessary, and since hearing this I have approached my attempt to define my role upon my return to work with greater diplomacy, less anger and more openness, which has, of course, been more successful than shouting at my Principal for being a man.  On how many occasions, I am now beginning to ask myself, has my perception of inequality resulted in a frustration that manifests itself as unprofessionalism?  Is this frustration, though understandable, the barrier that prevents many women from successfully demonstrating their leadership potential because it pushes men away?

As my husband rightly points out, in our society currently, "Men hold the keys", and even though the exclusivity of this key-holding is a huge injustice, directing the anger at this injustice towards the men who are happily welcoming you through the open door will result in the door being barrel locked and women never getting anywhere.  Calm down, inner angry feminist, I told myself, and start having professional conversations that will showcase and make productive use of all the fantastic CPD you have been doing on maternity leave.

Now, a number of serendipitous events collided at this point in my life:

• A coaching session calmed my angry feminist (above)
• As a calm professional, I had a meeting with my Line Manager about how my maternity leave CPD could contribute to the School Development Plan.  It was very exciting and empowering. 
• I read this article by Teach First's Ndidi Okezie that asked, "When the issue of women in leadership comes up, it often ends up being only women talking to women... Why is this?"
• The baby started agreeing to go to sleep in his cot at 8:30pm so I got a chance to have an adult conversation with my gender-equality-loving husband.
• We had empowering couple-team discussions about gender equality and answered Ndidi's question.
• I began to reflect upon the values of The #maternityteacher Project's and its position in the wider move towards gender equality.

The first problem, my husband and I agreed, was semantics: wording like 'maternity', 'women' and 'feminist' are all very exclusive - men don't feel invited to events, movements or organisations that use this language because it's not 'for them', even if they do believe in gender equality.  "I don't have time for that bullshit," my husband tells me, every time I talk about feminism, and despite 'He For She' type shifts in culture, many men are still put off by the connotations of burning bras and female domination that come with this word.  Even I have fallen into this trap with my use of #maternityteacher and @maternityCPD.  Even though they are in the minority, there are teacher-fathers who take responsibility for the majority of the childcare and also want to complete CPD during their time away from the classroom - and I have inadvertently excluded them simply by referring to maternity not paternity leave, or by choosing the more inclusive @parentalCPD.

For decades, it has been necessary for women to use this type of language as an explicit weapon to fight against entrenched sexism, but has the exclusivity of this language now become detrimental and hypocritical? At the very best, it is confusing: do we want to see more women in leadership and therefore more men in the home?  Do we think that only women should be leaders?  Do we think that women can be mothers, partners and leaders, but that men are a little bit useless at multi-tasking and so should just pick one or two from the list?  Personally - like many feminists - I want gender equality, so maybe we should change our language so that it better matches the values we are trying to communicate?

My husband's second point continued this theme of exclusion: walking into a room full of women, even if the event is relevant and interesting, is intimidating for a man, just like doing the opposite is intimidating for a woman.  Despite invitations and the insistence that men are welcome at events designed to empower and discuss "women's issues", male colleagues still ask me, "Are men allowed at these things?", in part because of the aforementioned exclusivity of the semantics involved, but also because men are often invited as individuals.  The trick, my husband assures me, is to invite groups of men so that not only is there a sense of safety in numbers, but also a culture of working towards gender equality, instead of the myth of world domination by women accompanied by the men who were brave enough to attend the first networking event.

In doing so, groups and movements working towards empowering women would move towards more logical concepts of proportional representation.  The well-bandied percentage of women in educational leadership is that female teachers make up 74% of the workforce, yet only 65% of head teachers are women (36% at secondary level).  Now, I'm no great mathematician, but I appreciate that the injustice here is not in the percentages, it's in the proportional representation: 74% of UK headteachers should be women.  Where my maths does come unstuck, though, is wondering how many men there should be at every woman-focused teacher event?  35%? 26%?  Equally, what proportion of any discussion about parental leave and CPD should be specifically targeted at teacher-fathers if 21% of fathers in the UK are currently stay-at-home dads?

The maths is a little baffling, but the idea is simple: discussions about women in leadership and all that goes with it, including The #maternityteacher Project, should aim for gender equality which, ironically, means actively trying to be more inclusive of men.  The #maternityteacher Project is currently about attempting to be a role model for other parents who - like me - want the choice of using their leave to balance their parenting responsibilities with their continued professional development.  I still cannot deny my assumptions that the majority of my audience will be female - but with all of this in mind, I hope you see a more concerted effort on behalf of The #maternityteacher Project to include teacher-fathers choosing to complete CPD whilst on paternity leave.

If you are one of these fathers, then get involved with our discussion and let me know how we're doing!  If you are still a woman, still a mother, still completing CPD on maternity leave, still interested in using this CPD to continue your professional journey despite your 'break', then help me to reach out to those key-holding men - the school leaders, the partners, the colleagues, the CEOs and the politicians - who will be as essential to your success as the groups of women who will support you.