Sep 12, 2026 · 46 min · 9 segments
Reflecting on a lovely message received from a former student, Matt and Femi discuss what it means to believe in our students and how that belief plays out in our actions and behaviour.
yeah so firstly that meant a lot to me to get that email as it would to any teacher just to hear from an ex-pupil I I must have taught her in year 9 and 10 and then I left that school and This was a pupil who was, is bright.
And I would say at that time could be quite lively.
Yeah.
And what happened was, but, you know, as so often the case, never...
I never had any problems with her in maths.
And she would say things like, which I took as a compliment.
Sometimes we'd get to the end of the lesson, she'd say, oh, is it finished? Oh, that's
good.
Like,
normally I'd spend the whole lesson watching the clock and waiting for the lesson to be done.
But maths just flies by.
And so things like that, which I'd take as a compliment, meaning they were engaged.
But at that time, she was quite...
She's one of those students who had quite strong, you know, beliefs about certain things and was not shy in letting teachers know about that.
And what that would result in is with some teachers struggling to handle that and she would get sort of uncalled, you know, reasonable amount.
So she'd sort of say like, what's the point of this? Yeah, what's the point of
this? No one else is
doing it.
Yeah.
You know, if she thought something was boring, I think she'd quite often let the teacher know.
When
are we ever going to need this?
Maybe, yeah.
I would say I just want to make sure that I don't paint a very negative picture of her, because I actually kind of welcomed students speaking up for what they think, and I thought she was great for that.
And in many ways, I think that's why we had a good relationship, was like...
yeah so firstly that meant a lot to me to get that email as it would to any teacher just to hear from an ex-pupil I I must have taught her in year 9 and 10 and then I left that school and This was a pupil who was, is bright.
And I would say at that time could be quite lively.
Yeah.
And what happened was, but, you know, as so often the case, never...
I never had any problems with her in maths.
And she would say things like, which I took as a compliment.
Sometimes we'd get to the end of the lesson, she'd say, oh, is it finished? Oh, that's
good.
Like,
normally I'd spend the whole lesson watching the clock and waiting for the lesson to be done.
But maths just flies by.
And so things like that, which I'd take as a compliment, meaning they were engaged.
But at that time, she was quite...
She's one of those students who had quite strong, you know, beliefs about certain things and was not shy in letting teachers know about that.
And what that would result in is with some teachers struggling to handle that and she would get sort of uncalled, you know, reasonable amount.
So she'd sort of say like, what's the point of this? Yeah, what's the point of
this? No one else is
doing it.
Yeah.
You know, if she thought something was boring, I think she'd quite often let the teacher know.
When
are we ever going to need this?
Maybe, yeah.
I would say I just want to make sure that I don't paint a very negative picture of her, because I actually kind of welcomed students speaking up for what they think, and I thought she was great for that.
And in many ways, I think that's why we had a good relationship, was like...
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