Transforming Classroom Literacy with Lyn Stone

This week our host Ultan chats with Lyn Stone, 'the Taylor Swift of Literacy'. Join us as literacy expert Lyn unlocks the secrets to effective language education.

Learn how Lyn's passion for linguistics and special education sparked innovative methods in spelling and grammar, turning her workshops into must-attend events for educators. Discover what makes her approach to language education stand out as she shares insights on overcoming common misconceptions and the value of understanding linguistic units beyond rote memorisation.

Consider some new strategies for nurturing a love for reading in young students. With Lyn, we discuss the complexities of word recognition and memory while exploring a treasure trove of book recommendations.

Join us for this enlightening conversation, promising a fresh perspective on language education that will leave you eager to implement these transformative ideas.

DWESC are proud to be working with Lyn to deliver innovative CPD/TPL in the areas of Spelling and Morphology. Keep an eye out for future CPD events: DWESC CPD Programme   

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Teachers Themselves is a DWEC original, produced and created by Dublin West Education Centre produced by Zita Robinson.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:18

Fáilte stach and welcome to the Teachers Themselves podcast. I'm your host, Alton MacMahona. This podcast is brought to you by Dublin West Education Support Centre. We're located on the grounds of TUD Talla, serving and supporting the school communities of West Dublin and beyond. Welcome to season three of Teachers Themselves. Episodes this season feature some great conversations with the passionate educators who contribute to your lives as educators and school leaders. These are people who have dedicated their careers to improving the educational outcomes of children and to enriching the education system.

Speaker 2 0:53

How do children, how do people remember words? How do you build a lexicon? And it is not through staring at complete words.

Speaker 1 1:00

So you're all very welcome to the Teachers Themselves podcast. So you're all very welcome to the Teachers Themselves podcast Joining me this morning. I have the very well-known in literacy circles, lynn Stone, and this is our first international podcast. Lynn is joining us from Melbourne, australia. Lynn, you're very, very welcome to the Teachers Themselves podcast.

Speaker 2 1:30

It's a huge pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 1:32

Lynn, our paths first crossed when you were here a few months back in Ireland and we did a session out on the north side. All about spelling, because spelling, morphology, literacy are your passions, it's your expertise, it's what you're good at. But can I bring you back to the start, really, to how did you get into it? When the young Lynn Stone was leaving school, you know, what did she want to do? Did she always have this passion? Or where did you start?

Speaker 2 2:08

Well, look at school, I was always very interested in language and languages. We lived in, my dad was a diplomat, so we traveled around a lot, and so I got exposed to lots of languages, basically from birth. So I really liked that and I kind of had I gravitated towards that. I was lucky to be at a school in primary school where I learned Dutch and French as well as English, just before I even went to high school. And then at the school that I went to in Scotland, that was a boarding school for five years we did French, german, latin, you know.

Speaker 2 2:38

So I've always just really liked the whole idea of language and the structure of language and the differences between languages, and so it was kind of normal for me to go into linguistics. That was just an extension of my interests and hobbies really. But while I was doing my linguistics degree as a course unit within that degree, I decided to take teaching English as a foreign language, as it was called then TEFL, and when I was doing my TEFL studies I realised how much I enjoyed being in front of students and working with students to get them to achieve things, and so those two things mixed together again pushed me on this path of getting into education, using the information that I had about the structure of language. And that's it. That's the origin story.

Speaker 1 3:27

So you went into a kind of a speech and language field and you did further studies in it. So when did you start working with teachers?

Speaker 2 3:36

Well that came from. I'll bridge a little bit of a gap there. I went into special ed, so I didn't go into a speech language, I didn't become a speech language pathologist or anything like that. What happened was when I graduated, I actually found a job in Sydney. I moved straight to Sydney when I graduated and I found a job there in a clinic that did very intensive phonological awareness instruction as well as spelling and reading and writing instruction, and it fit really well with my degree. So so that happened. And then when they left the country, I went to a speech pathology clinic and was taught other things there, and so you know they were two sort of major programs. One was an Orton Gillingham based one, one was called Lindemood Bell, which I don't particularly I don't use or endorse so much. I think there are better things out there, but it was a really good grounding.

Speaker 2 4:25

And I realized though, even with those world-class classical sort of approaches, there were still gaps that my training hadn't prepared me for, and those were for children who really found it difficult to spell. I suppose overall it was about my work came out of being really interested in how it was that some of us could just look at a word and that's it in for spelling forever. And then there are other children and people of similar intelligence who find that really, really difficult. And I couldn't find the answers in my training. So I tried and tested lots of methods and approaches and came up with those and they became the books you training. So I tried and tested lots of methods and approaches and came up with those and they became the books you know the spelling ones and the grammar ones. And so once you write a book, teachers go oh, can you, is there a workshop? So I'm like, yeah, of course there is, and that's you know. That's been like the last 20 years just refining and training these techniques and field testing them in my practice and in classrooms.

Speaker 1 5:29

Yeah, people, when you said you know, people say well, is there a workshop? You know? For those who don't know, when you came to Ireland, was it in October.

Speaker 2 5:38

It was May, wasn't it?

Speaker 1 5:39

Was it May? Oh, yeah, sorry, May I'm coming back in October. That's what it is. You're kind of a good plug. They're all sold out anyway already, which I believe Are they? Yeah, we sold out in a matter of minutes back in May, and somebody described you as the Taylor Swift of literacy. In fact, the tickets were so hard to get. Why do you think there's such an interest in what you have to say then?

Speaker 2 6:05

Well, I think we're all budding linguists. I think, underneath everything, we are naturally primed to be interested in the structure of language. You know, it's survival for infants, for instance, to learn the grammar of whatever language they're exposed to. That's how you survive. So I think we've got this strong instinct to be interested in it. Now I don't think there's enough literature or there wasn't when I was starting out to bridge the gap between that interest and practice, you know. So that's been my life's work.

Speaker 1 6:38

It certainly is drawing attention and lots of praise Just to, I suppose, develop what we've been talking about a little bit more. During COVID you started the Jim Jam Gang, yeah, and people did lots of interesting things during COVID and you threw that up for free in fairness to you and I thought you know that was game ball During COVID. The whole world was at a stop. But Lynn Stone wasn't Just thinking about the Jim Jam Gang.

Speaker 2 7:07

Yeah, look, I did it for myself. It was never meant to be like something that everybody in the world got interested in. I actually did it for myself for two reasons. The first reason was that I missed my students. So at the time I was still practising. I spend most of my time just training teachers now, but at that time I had a caseload and I couldn't see them. So I could see them, you know, for individual Zoom sessions and that sort of thing, but it just, you know, I just felt like I wasn't getting a lot done.

Speaker 2 7:37

So I did it so that we could all get together like we did in person and do these lessons.

Speaker 2 7:44

But secondly, I also did it because we had really, really draconian lockdown measures here in Melbourne For two years. We were basically locked down with a curfew and with very, very strict restrictions on what we could do and a lot of uncertainty as well. And I figured that, well, if I'm going to be locked down and not told when I you know, when I get unlocked again, then I'm just, I'm going to stay in my pajamas, because I like pajamas, and what am I getting dressed for? Right? So if I, if I can only go to the park with a mask on for half an hour a day. Why am I wearing human clothes? I might as well just stay in my gym jams. So did, and then that became really, you know that just sort of swept through um, everybody and and everyone else turned up in their gym jams and, you know, I brought along, we fostered kittens as well, and during that time and and uh, so there was always something to show people and it just it just sort of snowballed from there okay, that's a great idea.

Speaker 1 8:44

That's a brilliant idea. To turn you back to the technicalities of things. Maybe just a couple of questions on it. So maybe you have a vast experience in this field. Can you tell me maybe some of the most common misconceptions teachers have about how children learn how to spell? You know you come across teachers a lot. Now Are there any flags? You say yeah, that comes up time and again. People have the wrong end of the stick there.

Misconceptions in Language Education

Speaker 2 9:10

Yeah, the common misconceptions are basically on two questions and how to answer two questions, and I think if we continue to drive our thinking and our practice towards answering these two questions, we're going to get a lot further. So those two questions are sort of they're the overarching two misconceptions in education that I'm trying to help people to overcome. The first one is how are words built In your language? What are the building blocks of words? How are words built? Are they built just through letters and sounds? Are there other linguistic units that we should be paying attention to? What is it? What is it that builds words? That's the first question, and the better we get at answering that and directing our practice towards that answer, the better deal we get for our students. The second question is how do people remember words? So there's all sorts of theories that go on and all sorts of practices to do with trying to get students to remember words, because that's basically what we want right In primary education we want students to have remembered, not just for instant recognition but for instant recall.

Speaker 2 10:23

We want them to have remembered up to 10,000 words or 15,000 words. It's very hard to put a number on it because it all depends on your definition of word as well, but we're talking about tens of thousands, right? How do they remember that? And that's what drives me and there are misconceptions about that how students remember words, including things like well, if you just give them a list every week to memorize, perhaps then that's how they'll do it, you know. But we know that that's not true, and it's especially not true for children who don't have the neurological architecture where they take to words like ducks to water. You know, like the lucky people on that end of the spectrum, lots of children don't actually aren't able to remember words through one or two exposures. They really have to understand the structure and they also have to get good examples of words, not just random words on this. Like examples, they build schemas and they use mnemonics. That's how good spellers remember words. So we have to teach children to do that, and I think there are a lot of myths. Ok, thanks.

Speaker 1 11:31

Thanks for that, lynn. If you were to tell parents of children who are saying you've got kids who are three and a half right before they start school there's a bit of wiggle room there, you know. There's some cognitive ability, that you know, but yet they're not at school for a while, maybe a year yet. What advice would you give to those parents?

Speaker 2 12:15

no-transcript is reading to them, reading great literature to them. It's wonderful. One of the things I did with my own children because I kind of know a little bit about what they might have experienced or encountered at school was that I did this kind of inoculation of them as well. But you've got to be pretty keen to inoculate them, and when I say inoculation I mean no matter what the method at the school, because I didn't know what school they were going to when they were very young. No matter what the method, I was going to inoculate them to make sure that they could learn to read and write effectively.

Speaker 1 12:52

What do you mean by that inoculate?

Speaker 2 12:54

them. Well, I started working on them with the structure of words and started working on them with their alphabet and their phonics and their morphology and their fluency. Preschool Do they like that? Yeah, time spent with your parent you know where they're focusing on you and, again, professionally, I've been dealing with children for a long time, so I know how to spent with your parent. You know, um, where they're focusing on you and I, again, professionally, I've been dealing with children for a long time, so I know how to not upset them when I'm like when I'm working with them, right? So, yeah, of course they liked it. Um, I've got lots of uh, you know, video and footage and that sort of thing of me teaching them lessons.

Speaker 2 13:30

Some lessons they like more than others yeah but mainly, you know, it was tiny little bite size chunks of stuff. It wasn't right sit down for six hours or anything like that. So, yeah, they did. And I mean again, from time to time they would ask me a question about spelling or about reading, or about a word, and I would go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, linguistics. And they go, oh mom, just tell me how to spell it, or just, can you just give me a short answer, and I'd be like no, and I know that you're getting annoyed at this, but hey, you learned it, didn't you, didn't you? You learned it. Now that you've learned it, you can never unlearn it. So you know, those poor girls never mind.

Speaker 1 14:18

Excellent, excellent. So then, moving on a small bit into school, and I'm, you know, maybe, say, the head of the special ed department in a school, or I'm a principal or deputy principal in a school, of a leadership role there, what are the steps I can take to foster a love of words for the children in my school?

Speaker 2 14:32

well, I think if you're in a leadership position, it all starts with assessment. What does your assessment battery look like? Because that gives you not only it gives you goals to work towards in terms of being able to recognise and reproduce words, but it also lets you know if what you're doing is working. So the very first thing is get a good battery of assessments. That's the first thing. Screeners for the very young children, a good quality spelling test. Make sure that you know how to, or your teachers know how to, interpret things like dictation, which is slightly harder, that you've got good indicators in place. That's the first bit of advice. The second bit of advice is you've got to kind of assess your teachers as well, like what do they know about those two questions? Those two questions how were words built? How do we remember them? What do they know about that? Because there's been plenty written about it. But that would be your starting point getting those questions answered and assessing your students well.

Speaker 1 15:39

And how soon would you assess them? At what age?

Speaker 2 15:41

There are screeners that you can do that reliably. For instance, check for at-risk factors for dyslexia from the age of four. So even before they begin working with print, you can check for early indicators of children who are likely to struggle. So the International Dyslexia Association has a lot of information on that, if that's something that interests your listeners. We don't have to wait until they're actually struggling to make sure that they're getting high quality instruction. Yeah, that is it. We don't have to wait until they quality instruction.

Speaker 1 16:15

Yeah, that is it. We don't have to wait until they're struggling. Yeah, that would be key. You're watching a lot of teachers. You're working with a lot of teachers. Is the teaching getting better?

Speaker 2 16:25

I think the concepts within education are getting better.

Speaker 1 16:28

How do you think?

Speaker 2 16:29

about that. Well, you know, when I first started working with teachers, I can tell you that in a room of 50 teachers, maybe two or three knew what phonological awareness was, you know, and as the years went on, other concepts started to become well known as well. That you know. I've observed over my time things like orthographic mapping, that teachers are beginning to understand the importance of that, Things like cognitive load theory. So the knowledge that teachers, unfortunately, are a lot of the time denied in their tertiary qualifications is becoming quite widespread in education circles.

Speaker 2 17:10

Just through the advent of social media, of being able to use well podcasts and, you know, and the internet, and Zoom meetings and that sort of thing, information is spreading much better. So not only is that bringing about a good upsurge in the concepts that underpin these two questions, but it's also helping to drive out ideas that were attractive at first but certainly not backed by any form of evidence, philosophical ideas about education. So there's two things, you know a raising of teacher knowledge and also a pushing out of ideas that just don't work. So, yes, I think the scene is getting better. It's very, very important, though, to not live in a bubble. So I do try to read everything I can read, whether I agree with the authors or not, and I do try to keep a lookout outside that bubble if I possibly can.

Speaker 1 18:11

Do you learn from listening to teachers?

Speaker 2 18:15

if I possibly can, do you learn from listening to teachers? Well, yes, absolutely. You know again. At first, because I was working in special ed, I saw a lot of children who were really vulnerable and who had been fairly mistreated by the system, and for a long time. At the beginning of my career, I was kind of angry with education for doing this to children. But what I realized, the more that I got in front of teachers and talked to them and trained them, the more I realized actually they're being done a disservice as well. It's not their fault, and there's a lot of these people are there for a call. You know it's a calling for them. These people are there for a call. You know it's a calling for them.

Speaker 2 18:57

And a lot of teachers are quite, you know, into words and really enjoy and love this whole thing about learning words and structure of words and so on. So one of the major things I learned was actually it's much more to do with teacher education than teacher will, that we have things that we need to fight and push out and clarify. So that was one big thing. Secondly, though, what I really love to watch with teachers is them in action. So I have the privilege of going into schools and providing kindly feedback to teachers when I'm doing my coaching of schools, and I'll always find something that I've never thought of before, that they're using or that they're doing. That helps make me a better practitioner as well.

Speaker 2 19:39

I'll give you a firm example of that one. You know how, now that we realize that there's this thing called processing speed and that students have different rates of processing speed, I really only in my practice would be one-on-one or with small groups and therefore I didn't really have to devise any techniques to give students time to process my questions and then answer me. But the things that I saw teachers doing in some of those lessons, you know that think time, using their hand signals to show that they're thinking about it, they're not sure they're ready, all that sort of thing. I learned so much and I've tried to pass that on to other teachers that I've trained. So I hope you know I can spread those good ideas and they're not necessarily mine.

Speaker 1 20:30

Actually, yeah, one of the things you talk about the whale of teachers there. One of the things I was bowled over by back in may time was the amount of teachers who came to that day and they used one of their own personal vacation days, the epv days, or course days. You only get three if you do a summer course and they were using one of them to come to your course. A lot of them had paid the thing out of their own pocket as well as using their day's leave, and I just couldn't get over. You know how brilliant they were to do that. That will that exists to help the children you know in their cares just absolutely so laudable. It's fantastic, fantastic, like.

Speaker 2 21:07

I say it's a calling, and it does really. You know, it really shows up. You can really tell.

Speaker 1 21:22

Exactly, it's the teacher at her or his best. There, you know, it really is Just to tackle one thing with it the rise of technology and now into AI. Does that have a place in your work?

Speaker 2 21:30

Lynne, I dabbled with it for a little while because I like robots, right, I've got a robot car, robot vacuum. I've got a dishwasher that tells me when it's done its cycle, you know. So robots I'm really into. So I tried a bit. I did, you know, I got ChatGPT to do some passages for me and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 21:52

What I've realized right now with technology, with AI and that sort of thing, is one they, first of all, are not at the stage where they don't generate really surreal hellscapes if you get them to generate pictures. So I don't like it anymore. It's a little bit uncanny valley. And then, secondly, the only thing that ai particularly is good for when it comes to writing because I I wanted it to, you know, generate decodable passages for me and and, and you know that sort of thing what I found was ai is not great at the sub word level. So it's it's okay at the word and phrase level, but if you're asking for a specific sentence containing these graphemes or these morphemes, it can't cope. So you know it's not useful to me particularly. Yet the only other use that it had was sometimes when I have to write marketing blurbs. It does that for me because I hate marketing.

Speaker 2 22:49

So, at least I've got someone to do that bit or something to do that bit. But even then you know it's not great. So I know that in high school especially, there's controversy with having essays written by AI and so on, and I hope that all gets sorted out because I can see that it would be useful. But it's certainly not. I don't think it's a teaching tool right now.

Speaker 1 23:18

Yeah, I don't think it's a learning tool either. I was correcting some papers recently, about 30 of them, and it was actually very now maybe we're just lazy to. It was very clear who chose to do it through AI and who didn't. In fairness, the top five, we'll say. If I was to rank them, the top five if there was one or two would have been AI generated, but the top two were definitely personally written.

Speaker 2 23:46

Yeah, you can still tell humans recognize humans. You know we really do. If that last paragraph starts with overall you know you've got it right.

Book Recommendations and Spelling Approaches

Speaker 1 23:55

Indeed, indeed, Just some lighter stuff. Lynne, Are you a reader yourself?

Speaker 2 24:00

Yes, I'm an avid reader. What book are you reading at the?

Speaker 1 24:03

moment or books.

Speaker 2 24:05

I'm reading. I really like the author of Barbara Kingsolver, so I'm reading the Lacuna right now. I've just started it. I recently also read I tend to go by author so I try to read their complete works if I like them and so I read Demon Copperhead, which is a sort of adaptation of David Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver and the Poisonwood Bible. Just loved it. So I'm forcing myself right now to read fiction. I say forcing myself because I do look at it as an indulgence. I read as much sort of stuff about reading and spelling as I possibly can, but what I really love is biographies. I will read biographies till the cows come home. I've gone through the entire Monty Python cast now, and so you know I go through pop groups. It's great.

Speaker 1 24:57

Oh, what pop groups biographies have you?

Speaker 2 24:58

read. Have you read? Well, the smiths, happy mondays. They all, all of those um members I don't well, I don't in the smiths, mar and morrissey have have done their autobiographies happy mondays. There's quite a few. Bez has got a um, you know, a biography. It's great, it's called buzzing, it's really good and uh. And then there's a couple of other members. Sean rider's written an autobiography and he's also written the explanation of the lyrics. I was really into happy mondays when I was a youngster, so you know that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 25:25

If you were to recommend one book on spelling other than spelling for life. Which book would you choose?

Speaker 2 25:31

The seminal book on all of that is the American spelling. Oh gosh, Now I've got the title wrong. It's the American way of spelling. I'm sorry. I'm looking on my bookshelf right now the American way of spelling by Richard Vanesky, but actually it's not that weird. It's actually much more logical. But the good thing about Vanesky's writing and his research is that he was one of the first people to sort of actually put formally put down all of the graph themes in English, and there's a lot fewer. This is another one of those myths. There's a lot fewer than you think.

Speaker 2 26:13

You know we're talking about 75. And you'll see phonics schemes with hundreds, hundreds of graphemes and that's it. It's just not true. So I think if you're going to start on the ground floor when it comes to spelling, you can't go past Fineski.

Speaker 1 26:31

Okay, cool. And if you were to recommend a book to parents to read to their children? So I got a four year old at home. What book should I be reading? Or is it just any book will do.

Speaker 2 26:44

You mean a storybook?

Speaker 1 26:45

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 26:57

There are thousands. But what I used to do when I was bringing up my little girls was I would go to charity shops and I would buy books from there, because you know I had three of them, so that was three bedtime stories a night. So we went, we chewed through some books, right, but I would always look for, as a sort of quick, ready reckoner, walker books it's got a little bear with a candle on the spine and you know that they're going to be high quality books. You know that they're going to be high quality stories even if they're not the ones from your own childhood. So again, it's not a particular book, but as publishers of children's literature, walker is you're always going to be guaranteed a good story and beautiful illustrations.

Speaker 1 27:33

Walker Excellent. We've actually a much underused resource here in our libraries in Ireland and I know that you can borrow X amount of books, I think kids books. I think you can borrow 10 at a time. It's a really great service here and it's much underused. But I know a lot of schools, do you know, march the kids down and get their library card and all that kind of stuff If it's handy if you're in an urban setting, I guess a rural setting is not as handy, but definitely it's a great resource here for parents.

Speaker 2 28:04

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 28:05

Absolutely so. You've dealt with, you know, say, assessment, lots of different tools. There's lots of different training. There's so much online now. It's very accessible for teachers and for parents, for children who have difficulties, for children who don't have difficulties, what would you say to rote learning spellings?

Speaker 2 28:24

Rote learning spellings. Do you mean like the tradition?

Speaker 1 28:26

in Ireland would have been that you have a spellings book, you learn X amount of spellings per night and on a Friday you get a spellings test and the kids can get you know 10 spellings from the array of, say. If they're 10-year-olds they might have 20 spellings during the week.

Speaker 2 28:46

So for the most part is there merit in that?

Speaker 2 28:50

No, we've got in a word. No, there isn't. We've got to go to the, the cognitive science behind this. Right, how do children, how do people, remember words? How do you build a lexicon? And it is not through staring at complete words, through context, through reading and multiple exposures to words. Yes, that is definitely a mechanism that we use, but a list of words and I'm doing a podcast tomorrow, not a podcast, what is it? A webinar tomorrow night called the Best Word List is a Book, right? So multiple exposures in context, really, really helpful for building a lexicon.

Speaker 2 29:25

But you've got to think about long-term and short-term memory. So if you're issuing a list of spellings and that's basically a list of whole words that are possibly mostly decontextualized and not connected to one another and not defined, right, if you're issuing them on a Monday and you're testing them on a Friday, what you're testing is short-term memory. We learn by making changes in long-term memory. So we're not even building the structures that you need to build a lexicon if we're distributing on Monday and testing on Friday. The other thing and this to address your original question the other thing is that some children can learn, they can put words into their lexicon with this method and all of the other reading that they do, by the way. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, because if that's your approach to spelling those who are struggling, won't? It won't make any difference to them. They won't be putting words into their long-term memories at all, and the ones that already could, they were going to. Anyway. They get richer.

Speaker 1 30:28

I won't tell you that Fair point. Speaking of webinars and podcasts, you do one yourself, occasionally called Loves, hates and Passions. What's your greatest love other than your girls?

Speaker 2 30:41

And my dog. Don't forget my dog. Yeah, my greatest love is music. Actually, I think, in terms of what I've always been interested in, it's music.

Speaker 1 30:50

Of the 80s and 90s variety.

Speaker 2 30:53

From everywhere. You know I was born. My parents played music all the time and so I inherited all of their music as well, and they inherited music from their grandparents. So my musical interest goes way, way, way, way back. It's very eclectic. When I was at boarding school, like I mentioned before, I went from the age of 11 to 18 to stave off the horribleness of that experience, because boarding school in the 80s in Scotland right is not a fun time at all. Right, To stave off that I became really into popular music. So I would buy all six of the music papers every week, so Record hits number one, NME melody maker and sounds, and that's where all my money went to and and I would just read them from cover to cover. So and that's how I sort of got into biographies as well.

Speaker 1 31:45

Um, so yeah are you listening to anything in particular at the moment?

Speaker 2 31:50

yes, I'm actually learning, uh, all of the half man, half biscuit songs, I don't know, because I finally managed to get a ticket to one of their concerts. And those tickets, they are like the golden Willy Wonka tickets.

Speaker 1 32:04

Half man.

Speaker 2 32:05

Half Biscuit. I never heard of them. What, oh, you're a treat, I'll send you a Spotify playlist, right? But they're Liverpool-based and the lead singer, nigel. They're very, very prolific, so they've been creating um albums since the 80s. They're very prolific, but the lead singer, nigel, has a policy that he will only he will sleep in his own bed and he will use his own bathroom, right, so they don't tour far away from liverpool. So I I basically got tickets for Sheffield, like they're sold out. But I went onto my Half man, half Biscuit um Facebook fan page and said anyone got tickets for Sheffield? And some really kind guy said, yeah, you can have mine. I'm moving house so I can't go. So I'm coming just before I land in Cork, right, I'll be at that weekend. I'll be at Half man, half Biscuit concert. So I'm now like slavishly learning all the songs I don't know, just in case they come up, because there's nothing like a sing-along.

Speaker 1 33:03

So by the time you meet Dippin' the Daily Down in Cork, you'll be on high dough.

Speaker 2 33:07

Very much so.

Speaker 1 33:08

That's your loves. Now, what are your hates?

Speaker 2 33:11

Ah, okay, are you doing a quick?

Speaker 1 33:12

I'm buying your gears, as they say, over in the States.

Speaker 2 33:14

Are you doing a quick loves, hates and passions thing? Do you mean generally speaking, Generally speaking, anything to do with that? Yeah, animal cruelty, Anything to do with people not understanding animals. And I'm not just talking about people who hit animals or, you know, slaughter them badly or anything like that. I'm talking about people who keep birds in cages. What are you doing keeping a bird in a cage? I'm talking about people who don't understand when their dogs are fearful or need something. You know people who don't understand horses who you know, ride them to death in races and that sort of thing and breed them to death and so on. That, more than anything, grinds my gears. I think okay are you a vegetarian, then I am, but I'm not a vegan.

Speaker 2 34:02

I'm not a vegan and I've been on and off vegetarianism for years. Do you know I went to that my last two years at boarding school was a vegetarian boarding school in Hertfordshire in England it was a vegetarian board, oh my god vegetarian boarding school. So you got in trouble if you ate meat.

Speaker 1 34:18

Oh my God, that's my idea.

Speaker 2 34:20

So I've been on and off meat for a long time, but actually pretty recently. It's just I was sitting on a plane and I got served a chicken salad and I looked at it and went I just don't want, I don't want this chicken. What am I eating this for? I don't even want it and I haven't touched it since. Right there you go. Yeah, all meat.

Speaker 1 34:39

Next is dinner. I'm not a vegetarian, but the thought of an in-flight chicken salad doesn't train them for me either.

Speaker 2 34:45

Oh, it was a nice chicken salad. I mean it was beautiful. It had beans and pulses and a lovely vinaigrette dressing poured on for me. Yeah, it wasn't economy class, elton. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 34:55

Ah, I see.

Speaker 2 34:57

What's the? Difference then I was using my clients. I was using my clients. Anyway, You're not on the phone Bar.

Speaker 1 35:07

Come here. That's your loves, your hates, your passions. Other than literacy, right and spelling and normal thought, your passions are birds.

Speaker 2 35:15

I love birds. Birds are like, uh, they're just my. They're again another very, very strong special interest from when I was very young, um, I joined the young ornithologist club and I learned all the you know, read all the bird dictionaries and because I moved around a lot, um, prior to school, there were different bird life everywhere I went and that sort of helped define and settle me into the new countries and the new places that I lived. So birds were very grounding for me, even though they're sky based right. So yeah, so that just started a lifelong passion.

Speaker 1 35:52

Oh, because the Ornithological society meets actually in the Teachers Club in Dublin City Centre.

Speaker 2 35:58

It's where they meet just by coincidence. That's where all the cool people hang out.

Speaker 1 36:03

That's where the cool people hang out. So look at, lynne, that's us. Thank you so much for joining me this morning in Ireland, this evening in Australia. I hope Melbourne is bathed in sunshine at the moment. As we face into our winter, you're facing into your summertime, is it nice there?

Speaker 2 36:22

No, not really. Oh good, it's a bit cloudy and a bit cold and we had terrible winds that blew down a lot of trees last weekend or last week. But that's Melbourne for you, spring is springing and that that's fine spring is springing.

Speaker 1 36:39

Well, look at the very best. Look, I will see you here in dublin in october. I can't wait. In the meantime, uh, enjoy what melbourne has to offer and enjoy half man, half biscuit in sheield, and I'll see you later. Go raibh míle maith agat.

Speaker 2 36:57

Thank you so much. Such a pleasure.

Speaker 1 37:12

Tune in next week for another episode of Teachers Themselves. If you're enjoying this season, you can go back and find episodes from Season 1 or 2. All well worth a listen. Please don't forget to subscribe, share with colleagues and friends, leave us a review or send us a message. Your feedback informs the show. You can follow us across our social media channels Instagram, twitter, linkedin. Facebook Links are in the show notes. If you have any thoughts on today's episode or suggestions for future topics, you can email Zita here at zrobinson at dwecie. That's zrobinson at dwecie. Oh, and, as always, don't forget to book your CPD at dwecie. Oh, and, as always, don't forget to book your CPD at dwecie. Hop online at dwecie to book your CPD. Míle maith agaibh ar íst. Have a great week. Slán tamall.

Speaker 2 38:08

Teachers Themselves is a DWEC original Produced and created by Dublin West Education Centre.