Brazen. Dismissive. Aggressive. A growing number of male students are directing misogynistic behaviour at female teachers, and it’s no longer the exception. This pattern is becoming the norm, and it’s time we talked about what’s really going on.
Behind the disrespect and undermining attitudes lies a broader cultural shift, fuelled by misogynistic messaging - both inside and outside of school walls. This growing pattern of behaviour isn’t just challenging - it’s incredibly concerning, and it’s not just limited to the classroom.
In this episode, teacher Simone Nguyen shares her firsthand experiences with male students in the classroom, from physical intimidation to daily microaggressions. Researcher Dr Stephanie Wescott breaks down how harmful narratives around masculinity are shaping student behaviour - and what needs to shift at every level, from classroom practices to school-wide culture, and why current responses from leadership to policy, aren’t keeping pace.
This episode digs into the structural gaps and the cultural discomfort that let these patterns continue - and what meaningful change could look like if everyone committed to sharing the responsibility in ensuring schools are safe, respectful spaces for everyone.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Topics we explore:
(00:00) What Is The Manosphere
(00:28) The Rise of Misogyny in Classrooms
(02:11) Understanding the Manosphere
(04:43) What It Looks Like on the Ground
(09:09) When Students Choose to Speak Up
(10:44) A New Wave of Undermining Behaviour
(14:22) Advice for Early Career Teachers
(16:50) Breaking the Silence
(19:22) Leadership’s Role in Cultural Change
(20:42) Why Respectful Relationships Education Falls Short
(24:10) Male Teachers as Allies
(30:52) Preparing the Next Generation of Teachers
Warning: This episode discusses gendered violence and sexual harassment. If you need support, contact 1800-RESPECT.
Resources:
Special Guests:
Dr Stephanie Wescott
Lecturer, School of Education, Culture & Society
Faculty of Education, Monash University
Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn or BlueSky
Simone Nguyen
Professional Learning Leader and Secondary School Teacher
Government School, Melbourne
If you’re enjoying Let’s Talk Teaching, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review! You can follow us on Instagram, X and Facebook, and share your thoughts on the show by using the hashtag #letstalkteachingpodcast.
If you’re interested in hearing more about the short courses, undergraduate and postgraduate study options that Monash Education offers, please visit our website.
We are grateful for the support of Monash University’s Faculty of Education in producing this podcast.
[00:00:00] Rebecca Cooper: This podcast is recorded on the land of the Bunurong people of the Eastern Koan nation. We'd like to pay our respect to elders past and present and acknowledge that this land was stolen and never ceded. Please be advised that this episode discusses violence against women and girls that some listeners may find triggering or distressing.
[00:00:20] Rebecca Cooper: Welcome to Let's Talk Teaching the podcast created by Teachers for Teachers.
[00:00:28] Simone Nguyen: I've had girls come and report to me and show me, you know, the receipts on their phone of boys that I teach sexually, harassing them, bullying them, verbatim, quoting things that someone like Andrew Tate has said. 'cause I've seen the articles and they're like, we don't know what to do.
[00:00:44] Stephanie Westcott: Like women should be safe in schools, whatever age they are and you know, whatever level of experience should be able to teach without having their bodies commented on. Or being touched or being physically intimidated,
[00:00:58] Rebecca Cooper: something is [00:01:00] shifting in classrooms. More and more female teachers are noticing it.
[00:01:04] Rebecca Cooper: Boys who are dismissive, more brazen, and at times openly disrespectful. It's no longer just the occasional difficult student, but a pattern and a culture, and it's becoming harder to ignore.
[00:01:17] Stephanie Westcott: I had a student say to me that. She had received a lot of information about how to not be dangerous to a student, but never about how a student might be dangerous for her.
[00:01:27] Stephanie Westcott: Yeah. Okay. And I think that that tells us that the balance isn't quite right. There are young men in schools who will be DB perpetrators when they grow up, and we can start to identify some of the early signs in their behavior as teenagers. And I think part of the hesitancy sometimes from schools is not wanting to associate.
[00:01:49] Stephanie Westcott: This kind of language of domestic violence, perpetrator, misogyny, sexism with young people because they're in a transitional phase in their life where they are figuring [00:02:00] out what's appropriate, what's normal and what's not. But that is also the perfect time to capture whatever is happening and do something about it.
[00:02:11] Rebecca Cooper: I'm Associate Professor Rebecca Cooper, assistant Dean of Initial Teacher Education at Monash University. Joining me today to discuss why this may be happening and what teachers can do about it is Dr. Stephanie Westcott, who researches gender education and culture, and Simone Nen, a teacher who has experienced these issues firsthand and works to support other female educators.
[00:02:37] Rebecca Cooper: Thanks so much for joining me to have this really important. Discussion this afternoon, Steph. Many teachers are seeing these behaviors in the classroom, but might not completely understand the bigger picture. What is the Manosphere?
[00:02:51] Stephanie Westcott: The manosphere is a sort of loosely connected collection of. Men, and mostly men actually who belong [00:03:00] to the manosphere and associated groups, and they're all united around anti-women and anti-feminist sentiments and ideas.
[00:03:07] Stephanie Westcott: So there's a range of groups that fall within the manosphere, including, um, pickup artists in cells, men going their own way, men's rights activists. And although they're distinct groups with, with some distinctions in their ideologies. What does unite them is this sort of need to speak back to feminist progress that they feel is taking from them and to also speak out against what they see as injustices that are, um, perpetuated by the gender equality movement.
[00:03:37] Stephanie Westcott: And in the case of men going their own way to separate themselves from women altogether in the pursuit of, um, a better life because, um, you know, a woman would compromise their quality of life. So how do they get traction? It depends on which group we're talking about. Um, so some of the groups exist only in certain parts of the internet, but their ideas might be seeping [00:04:00] into a broader population or broader audience through social media.
[00:04:03] Stephanie Westcott: So we're talking about in cells, for example. A lot, a lot of their ideas and rhetoric, um, will mostly be isolated to Reddit. But we have also seen incel ideology on TikTok and other platforms. And incel violence also, um, seeps into the real world. Incel have been responsible for violence and murder and mass murder events, but what happens with someone famous and well known from the manosphere, like Andrew Tate, is that the algorithms actually promote his content to boys and young men.
[00:04:34] Stephanie Westcott: So once a social media platform identifies, there's an account belonging to a male. Between a certain age range, that account will receive manosphere content.
[00:04:43] Rebecca Cooper: Alright. And it's making its way into our classrooms. So Simone, tell us about what, what you've seen or what you've observed within classrooms.
[00:04:54] Simone Nguyen: Well, I've been teaching now for over 10 years, and I've [00:05:00] experienced it in different ways over the course of that 10 years.
[00:05:02] Simone Nguyen: So I think from the moment I stepped into the classroom I was. Only what, five years older than my oldest students. And so there's already a bit of a dynamic that you have to work with as a young female teacher. And the behaviors that I experienced were probably, and I feel like I always need to, I forget to say like a bit of a trigger warning here, because often I'll tell these stories quite nonchalantly, and then the reactions I get are quite, oh, that's.
[00:05:27] Simone Nguyen: Not. Okay. Um, so for example, in my first couple years of teaching, I had a student pin me up against the wall after hours and call me an effing liar to my face. Um, when I had politely declined his request to move into my class because there were other factors at play there. Um, and when I followed it up was told that because there were no witnesses, it wasn't.
[00:05:48] Simone Nguyen: Anything they could do about it. Um, I'd had an older student come into my junior class to harass one of the boys in the room, and when I asked him to leave, he screamed in my face and pushed me over and knocked me on the [00:06:00] floor. And when I reported that, I was asked where I was standing in the room, I. And what I did to get in the way of that student.
[00:06:09] Simone Nguyen: So, uh, that was an interesting one. I had, I rarely turned my back to the class anymore because, um, after my first year of teaching, the full year, I remember it was a senior English class and the girls came up to me at the end of the year and told me that they, and obviously didn't feel like they could tell me till the end, that every time I turned my back to right on the board, um, one of the boys, uh, would pretend to masturbate behind my back.
[00:06:32] Simone Nguyen: So that was going on for an extended period of time. Um, a student who, to my face was polite, respectful, um, I wouldn't have even thought, and I think the only reason why the girls spoke to me is then that they were the, one was the daughter of a friend of mine, a of a colleague. So felt the need to come and share that, and stories along those lines.
[00:06:51] Simone Nguyen: I, you know, had a student who was in the incorrect uniform when I asked him to go and change, he just took his pants off in the middle of class. And I just remember [00:07:00] standing there like, no one trained me for this at uni. Like, what do you do? And called a coordinator and they came to the room and he'd obviously pulled his pants back on by that time.
[00:07:09] Simone Nguyen: And you know, I was escorted out of the room, but it became an issue about, you know, it wasn't even my class. I was a substitute for that one. So I was coming into cover for a friend. So that was that one. Those sorts of behaviors were quite, you know, I wanna say. They weren't just common for me. They were experiences that, um, colleagues of mine had also, you know, similar sorts of things.
[00:07:31] Simone Nguyen: Now that I'm older, the experiences are a little bit different. Um, I find it's a lot more of that insidious, undermining behavior. Um, I've had groups of boys, a spouse take rhetoric me in class and asked me to justify my stance. Um, I've been called sexist before. Uh. On multiple occasions because simply for asking a male student to stop swearing in class, uh, I've had senior [00:08:00] boys, uh, continue to undermine my teaching, um, by questioning my marking and, uh, requesting somebody else mark their work, um, believing that the mark that they got was unfair and didn't reflect there.
[00:08:13] Simone Nguyen: You know, their performance. Um, and you know, any student isn't within their right to ask those questions, but it's a particular, it's that same student or small group of students who are doing or exhibiting these same behaviors, talking over, um, explicit teaching time, saying that they weren't taught the correct curriculum or they weren't taught the curriculum.
[00:08:32] Simone Nguyen: I've had girls come and report to me and show me, you know, the receipts on their phone of, um, boys that I teach. Telling them that, you know, sexually explicit things or demeaning any demeaning things. Um, sexually harassing them, bullying them verbatim, quoting things that someone like Andrew Tate has said.
[00:08:53] Simone Nguyen: 'cause I've seen the articles and they're like, we don't know what to do. So what can you do when they [00:09:00] come to you? Listen. Yeah. Okay. And you have to listen to everything. And coming from a place of curiosity, I think is really important. What is actually going on right now?
[00:09:09] Stephanie Westcott: And they choose you to tell, they don't just choose any teacher.
[00:09:13] Stephanie Westcott: Yeah. And I think that girls will pick the teacher who they feel they have a connection with, but who won't dismiss them. So they might sense in your teaching and maybe a feminist orientation. Yeah. So they pick you because they know that you're going to hear them. And not be dismissive, but I remember when I res, when I heard my first, um, disclosure like that from a student about a boy in class, like touching her leg under the desk.
[00:09:40] Stephanie Westcott: This was my first year of teaching and I was so, I was outraged and I thought this was the most like, and it is so serious. And so I went straight to the principal because I was like, this is an assault. Yeah. My principal was like, oh, don't worry. I'll just deal. I'll deal with that. I'll talk to him. Mm-hmm.
[00:09:57] Stephanie Westcott: Mm-hmm. And I was like, oh, that's, [00:10:00] you know, the principal's gonna talk to him, handled that means really nothing, and it meant nothing to the girl who had disclosed that to me. Because her perpetrator is that just then instill in the class with her. Yeah. And doesn't really learn anything. What they learn is, I can do this and I might have to have an uncomfortable conversation from someone who I don't really respect anyway.
[00:10:21] Stephanie Westcott: And then I can just come back into class. So there's no lesson there. And this is something that's pretty consistent. Yeah. Oh, absolute. In our, in our research and in probably any woman who works in a school that you would talk to, that how women experience the school. What they encounter and how they feel about it is not understood.
[00:10:41] Rebecca Cooper: What does your research show from that, Steph?
[00:10:44] Stephanie Westcott: It shows many things depending on what we're talking about, but if we are talking specifically about the manosphere, Simone was describing these incidents throughout her entire career of, of sexual harassment and misogyny, and that has always existed for teachers, for women.
[00:10:59] Stephanie Westcott: There's [00:11:00] research for dating back decades, but in recent years when Andrew Tate became more prolific. There was a shift in how this was experienced by women. So a lot more of the sinister type of stuff that Simone was talking about. So it might, it might not be overt sexism, but it might be gaslighting you saying, you know, something like, miss, you're really angry today.
[00:11:22] Stephanie Westcott: What's going on? And we all know what that's implying. Any woman knows what that's implying. But this sort of very clever way of trying to aggravate women. Questioning and undermining women's authority and expertise. So an under, you know, an underlining belief that, well, she doesn't really know what she's talking about.
[00:11:44] Stephanie Westcott: I need to get a second opinion from someone else. I. And a lot of examples of physical intimidation. So getting up right, really close to women in the classroom or in the yard is
[00:11:55] Simone Nguyen: a really common thing. I had, um, a student kicking my chair repeatedly, um, a senior student. It's [00:12:00] always odd that you'd think it's the younger students.
[00:12:01] Simone Nguyen: It's a lot of the time it, my experiences have been, you know, senior students pushing those boundaries and you just kept kicking my chair. Mm. And when I turned around, well, I was observing a class, I was observing a younger female student, a new, you know, an early careers, um, teacher, and I turned around, I'm like.
[00:12:15] Simone Nguyen: I cut it out, what are you doing? And he's like, oh, I'm making your chair a massage chair. I thought you'd like that. And I had to in a split second decide how am I gonna handle this? 'cause this, this isn't my classroom, this is not my class. It's not, you know, how do I handle this? And I think off the cuff, my remark was, is that something that you do to your own mother?
[00:12:33] Simone Nguyen: Would you kick her chair and, and say that exact same thing the way that you said it to me? And he just looked at me kind of in this blank, kind of, oh no. I remember one of the other, um, another male student who I taught since he was in year seven, um, turned around and laughed and was like, well, that's what you get.
[00:12:51] Simone Nguyen: You know, when you do things like that, she's gonna call you out on that behavior. Which I guess goes back to what you're saying. I am someone who I guess is seen as calling it out, um, as well as calling it in. I ended up [00:13:00] having to have a conversation with that student and I, with a male staff member with me just as backup, which was frustrating, but needed to happen to then follow up and just say, explain why it was inappropriate.
[00:13:13] Simone Nguyen: Which it didn't really, I don't think it really kind of hit the mark. It was like a wallet. I was just joking. So you're just taking, it's just a joke.
[00:13:20] Stephanie Westcott: It makes you a target, I think when students know that you respond in certain ways and that your politics is a certain, a certain way. And women in our research tell us this too, that if you identify openly as a feminist, you're a target.
[00:13:35] Stephanie Westcott: So some women choose to not talk about that openly, um, because they don't want to enter into a debate about the merits of a social movement, about women's rights and gender equity. But in that moment, when you are, when that is happening to you in the classroom, the way that you respond is so tricky because you are a woman who knows exactly what's going on.
[00:13:59] Stephanie Westcott: You're a [00:14:00] teacher in a professional role and there's a young person who's, who's doing that to you and who's learning how to be in the world. Yeah, so it's really complex. It's because it's not like. If that was a grown adult man, the conversation would be very different. Yeah. Right. It's easier to, in a way, respond, but you've sort of first got a, there's an extra layer there where you have to go.
[00:14:19] Stephanie Westcott: Right? Like absolutely, what do I do here?
[00:14:22] Rebecca Cooper: So then what advice do you have for a first year out teacher who finds themselves in a similar situation?
[00:14:27] Stephanie Westcott: Well, the first thing I would say, because this is how I internalized it as a young teacher, I would say. It's not your fault that this is happening to you.
[00:14:38] Stephanie Westcott: It's not because you look a certain way, dress a certain way, 'cause you're friendly and you smile a lot That doesn't invite, um, sexual harassment, and that's not an entitlement that boys have in a school. So I would say that, first of all, I think that's really important because often for young women in schools, how they dress and how they present and how they interact is under such intense scrutiny.
[00:14:59] Stephanie Westcott: [00:15:00] Certainly not the same extent for young male teachers. Mm-hmm. And I would insist to young women working in schools that This is your workplace. It's school, yes. But it's also a workplace. So any conduct that you would expect from a. An employee, an employee, or a colleague in a workplace is what you're entitled to in a school.
[00:15:21] Stephanie Westcott: So if something happens to you, you're entitled to a process where your complaint should go, and it should follow that process. You're entitled to feel heard, and you're entitled to feel like someone takes it seriously. And if that doesn't happen, then. You need to escalate it in whatever way you can in whatever context that you're teaching in.
[00:15:42] Stephanie Westcott: But I think that there's sort of almost a internalized belief that boys are just trying this out. Boys will be boys. You have to expect this kind of thing, you know? And that is a discourse that exists in schools. The sort of, what do you expect or what were you doing? [00:16:00] I think we have to really be firm with an absolutely zero tolerance approach.
[00:16:05] Stephanie Westcott: Like women should be safe in schools, women who are, you know, whatever age they are, and you know, whatever level of experience should be able to teach without having their bodies commented on or being touched, or being physically intimidated or having to explain why they don't like Andrew Tate, who's an alleged rapist and human trafficker.
[00:16:29] Stephanie Westcott: Like, why should women have to enter into those conversations? Like that's, for me, not a reasonable thing to expect someone to have to do.
[00:16:36] Rebecca Cooper: So who can be
[00:16:37] Simone Nguyen: your allies in schools? As an early careers teacher, I wish I'd heard that. I wish I'd heard somebody tell me that it wasn't my fault that I didn't, this is not because I made a classroom environment that fostered this sort of behavior.
[00:16:50] Simone Nguyen: I think the other thing that I learned in retrospect was that I needed to talk more and be more open. With my other, with my female colleagues about my experiences because the moment I did [00:17:00] that, and I didn't do it until I actually left my first setting,
[00:17:02] Rebecca Cooper: right, I
[00:17:02] Simone Nguyen: spoke to, um, colleagues that I, you know, who are now friends and said, this is what happened to me, and it became a pattern.
[00:17:08] Simone Nguyen: There was a very clear pattern of behavior, and I didn't know that until I spoke openly about it. Because you report things in isolation sometimes, um, you know, it might be on an online platform, whatever your school's using. It might be to the coordinator. It might be, you know, the world head of wellbeing, whatever the process is in your particular setting.
[00:17:29] Simone Nguyen: But when it's almost siloed and it's becomes separated, so you actually can't see or spot patterns of behavior, whether it's in a particular student or a cohort or, um, in a particular setting. The patterns get missed and you end up getting a number of staff experiencing sexual harassment, physical harassment, verbal harassment, violence in its different forms, and then suddenly it's only in, you know, looking back you go, hold on a second.
[00:17:58] Simone Nguyen: That was actually quite symptomatic of [00:18:00] the setting or, you know, whatever the culture of the school was at the time. I think being open, honest, and following up. So having consistency in your reporting, but also consistency in the follow up. Like, you know, I'm sure that I've been seen as a bit of a thorn in someone's side every once in a while following up certain things and not even for myself for, so in a leadership capacity, following up for my younger female teachers, for them when they've reported something to me, I've passed it on.
[00:18:29] Simone Nguyen: And when it, I'm not seeing that follow up, chasing it up. 'cause it is important, you know, not letting that student actually back into that room until there's been a restorative or until there's been a conversation with a third party to, you know, allow that reintegration in a safe kind of and supported way.
[00:18:46] Simone Nguyen: I think that there's, you know, a real kind of shift of, oh, it's the teacher's problem, it's your classroom, you deal with it. You know, you're, you're the teacher. You're, you're the adult in the room, so you know, you can just move on.
[00:18:57] Stephanie Westcott: Mm.
[00:18:58] Simone Nguyen: But no, there needs to be that [00:19:00] kind of, you know, that follow on and support.
[00:19:02] Simone Nguyen: And what I would hope is that those people in leadership are talking about it. Have I seen that happening as a teacher and in leadership? No. But I would really love for that to be the open and honest conversations that happen.
[00:19:16] Rebecca Cooper: So what, what would you want leadership to do? What's their role in this? To
[00:19:21] Simone Nguyen: acknowledge that it's happening?
[00:19:22] Simone Nguyen: Yeah. I think it's probably the first name. It, yeah. Name it. Because more often than not, it's considered that student has very specific background. And I absolutely understand that every student has their own, um, you know, histories. And I take that into account in my teaching practices as well. But if you're seeing it across different classes, different year levels.
[00:19:41] Simone Nguyen: If you're seeing it in different, for different teachers, the common factor is that it's your female staff that are experiencing it. The question is, what's there should be questions and I think often these sorts of issues get pushed to the wayside with things like literacy, numeracy, you know, talking about nap plan data, those sorts of things.
[00:19:56] Simone Nguyen: We just still important, we have to talk about them, but when you [00:20:00] wanna foster a healthy school culture, one where your staff feel safe, supported, and can be the best version of themselves. Talking about the safety and wellbeing, health and wellbeing of your staff sometimes requires, and I like we talked about challenging conversations, that it's not that they're challenging, they're just important.
[00:20:18] Simone Nguyen: Talking about what behaviors are happening in the classroom to make teachers uncomfortable and why that might be happening and what we can do as a staff, as a school to help foster that, that isn't just getting man cave in once a year. And going, oh, yep, we're done. Now that's a tick. That box is done now.
[00:20:36] Simone Nguyen: Um, great, great to have them in, but it's, it's not an ongoing, it's not a solution for an ongoing problem.
[00:20:42] Stephanie Westcott: And we have an existing resource for this, which is respectful relationships, education, and that's supposed to be a whole of school approach. Mm-hmm. That is what it was designed for. That is what it was intended for, and that has been mandated.
[00:20:55] Stephanie Westcott: In Victorian government schools by the Royal Commission into family violence that the [00:21:00] Victorian state government completed in 2016. And the reason that that it has been mandated is because it's, it is identified that schools are an important part of primary prevention work. So we're actually looking at, I know it's a really uncomfortable thing to say about young people, but there are young men in schools who will be DB perpetrators when they grow up.
[00:21:21] Stephanie Westcott: We can start to identify some of the early signs in their behavior as teenagers. We know that there's intimate partner violence among young people in their relationships to this and wonderful research being done in Australia on that problem too. And I think part of the hesitancy sometimes from schools is not wanting to associate.
[00:21:42] Stephanie Westcott: This kind of language of domestic violence, perpetrator, misogyny, sexism with young people because they're in a transitional phase in their life where they are figuring out what's appropriate, what's normal and what's not. But that is also the perfect time to capture whatever is [00:22:00] happening and do something about it.
[00:22:02] Stephanie Westcott: So on respect for relationships, education, we've got some data that we've just collected on teachers' thoughts and experiences with respect for relationships. And it's particularly interesting to look at data from Victorian teachers because ostensibly it should be in their schools as a whole of school approach, and it's broadly not, and there's a few reasons for that.
[00:22:26] Stephanie Westcott: One of them is that there's a lack of support and resourcing for training for teachers. To do it. There's also, I think, a lack of clarity around what a whole of school approach actually means. But what it actually means is that there should be zero tolerance across the whole school, and that's from leadership down, that's in policy, that's in, you know, everyday language that's used in the staff room among one another in the yard.
[00:22:51] Stephanie Westcott: It's not just, oh, we don't accept that behavior here at a classroom level. It's like there, this school is part of a community. It's [00:23:00] part of a country that's grappling with a really big problem that's got to do with violence against women. And schools are both a place for intervention when there's problematic behavior and prevention so that young people don't grow up and learn these lessons in more serious ways with more serious consequences.
[00:23:17] Stephanie Westcott: We can actually teach them now, and it is inadequate to invite. Man cave into your or another provider to do a single session. The evaluative work that has been done on those programs demonstrates that a single session approach is not effective, which I mean is is common sense. You know, if you've got a really deeply embedded cultural problem that is reinforced by messages that young people receive on television, on social media, in their families, possibly too, that you're allowed to speak to women and girls this way, that women and girls are beneath you.
[00:23:50] Stephanie Westcott: And that you are superior to them. Having a group of people come in and do a session with you is not going to change fundamental and [00:24:00] entrenched beliefs you have about the world. So that is why respect for relationships was a Zionist as a whole of school approach. So the message is everywhere. It's, it's inescapable and it's unavoidable.
[00:24:10] Rebecca Cooper: So then what advice do you have for male teachers? How can they. Help and support and become allies in this. We've spoken about this previously,
[00:24:21] Simone Nguyen: like, you know, and I've had experiences, I've had, you know, worked collaboratively with male staff in embedding the respectful relationships curriculum, um, designing it to be implemented, you know.
[00:24:32] Simone Nguyen: When did you say that It was initially,
[00:24:34] Stephanie Westcott: the curriculum itself has existed for a long time. Long time, but it was. Mandated in the Royal Commission into Family Violence in Victoria in around 2016,
[00:24:42] Simone Nguyen: so 2016, but only a year or two ago, we were actively designing curriculum to be embedded into, you know, the one session a week we had, um, one period a week that we had to teach, um, our partial care groups.
[00:24:56] Simone Nguyen: And I was and I team teach with a male teacher. That's, and [00:25:00] that's an active choice because the particular group that I was working with had. Strong personalities that needed both a, a female and a male presence in the class. Um, for different reasons. And we got to looking at this curriculum and there were things that I personally felt uncomfortable teaching solely from my own experiences of, you know, that I've, you know, elaborated on.
[00:25:22] Simone Nguyen: Um, and my experiences as, as a teenage girl, you know, from my own youth. And when I voiced those, I guess concerns and my difficulty in enacting those in a space that had both male and female students, it was a very clear divide. If some of my male colleagues that were like, okay, that's just more, you're a teacher now, you can, surely you can just teach it, like move on.
[00:25:44] Simone Nguyen: It's fine. Like you're not talking about yourself anyway. That, that almost like, you know, our personal experiences don't, um, have an impact on who we are as educators, which, uh, you know, is very difficult to separate the personal from the political and what you do in the classroom. And then I [00:26:00] had, you know, my other male colleagues were like, absolutely, let's, what can we do to make this work?
[00:26:04] Simone Nguyen: What can we do to make you feel comfortable? And what then might that look like for our female students in that class and our male students? And how can we make this work in a way that everyone feels safe enough to share their experiences? You know, you're talking about things like sexual violence and that in itself is already so, um, heavy, very heavy.
[00:26:25] Simone Nguyen: But there will be some students that don't take it seriously because of a myriad of reasons. Um, so having a colleague that will handle that in the same way that you would, so having, you know, a male staff member that I work with that is, you know, on the same essential wavelength for want of a better term, is that common?
[00:26:42] Simone Nguyen: Not always. Um, I'd argue as I've moved. Settings I've found, you know, or, you know, worked in, in schools where there are more like-minded, you know, male staff, which has very much changed how I approach and it almost has given me the confidence to know that it doesn't matter if someone goes and asks, you know, my leadership then asks a male staff member, [00:27:00] they'll say, no, no.
[00:27:00] Simone Nguyen: That's exactly how I would've handled it as well, you know, this particular situation. However, there are still some colleagues that I've had, um, who will undermine or say that I'm being too much or too aggressive. Or my follow up in terms of some of these behaviors. I just need to let it go. You know, they're just boys and, and I see it.
[00:27:25] Simone Nguyen: And if you know, and when it's happening in your own staff room and you overhear conversations just, you know, every day that echo some of the things that you hear the students saying and it does, it raises red flags. Um, but then people are products of their environments and you just kind of have to learn how to navigate.
[00:27:42] Simone Nguyen: Those in a way that kind of address, you're almost like you're educating your colleagues at the same time. Yeah. You're modeling. Yeah. So I guess, yeah, you end up modeling what you would expect and foregrounding those, you know, I guess I personally sought out to work with male staff that worked in a similar fashion to me, I knew would be [00:28:00] supportive.
[00:28:00] Stephanie Westcott: One really unhelpful thing to say is, um, say, you know, a woman colleague of says, oh, I'm having a lot of issues with this boy. Don't say, oh, I've never experienced anything like that. It's like, you don't have to wonder why. Really, we know that students present in different ways with different behaviors for different teachers based on a whole set of characteristics.
[00:28:24] Stephanie Westcott: However, what we do know, and it's really consistent in our research, is that women. Women experience sexism and misogyny and sexual harassment. I'm sure that it also happens to male teachers. Mm, it definitely, it definitely does. I don't do any research in that area, so I can't say to what extent, but what you can say instead is, I'm sorry that that's happening to you, and can I support you to do something about it?
[00:28:51] Stephanie Westcott: Because what the woman is hearing then is that you're being believed. And that you don't have to keep on explaining and giving examples to prove that [00:29:00] what you are perceiving isn't, um, imagined and that you are just being a little bit too sensitive about it. Or maybe you're just reading too much into something.
[00:29:08] Stephanie Westcott: So ask the women colleagues in your school how you can help support them. What we also hear is less helpful is stepping in in a situation where a woman is having a difficult situation with a student, and I understand. Why you would do that as a colleague. And I'm sure there are situations in which you have to do that if it's, you know, particularly volatile.
[00:29:31] Stephanie Westcott: But what it can do is reinforce that I don't have to listen to that teacher, I just listen to this, to, to the men because they step in and they're more forceful and they're louder and they're bigger. And that's an authority that I can understand and respect. It can be mishandled. I think in that
[00:29:48] Simone Nguyen: situation.
[00:29:49] Simone Nguyen: Going off the back of that, um, the example that I el with the kicking of the chair previously. My colleague, he wa, he and I spoke about it beforehand and he was like, I'm just here to support [00:30:00] you. Even though, um, he was a staff member that had worked closely with that student, which is why I had him with me, it was, he's like, I'm here to support you in this interaction.
[00:30:08] Simone Nguyen: And it was, in that sense, it was very much having someone there almost as a not to bear witness. And it was for me to have that conversation and to lead and to have it, because I'm like, essentially that person isn't. It was a role of not even being there in that space, just there more as a, to see if anything happened.
[00:30:29] Simone Nguyen: In an ideal world, I wouldn't need to have then pulled a male colleague to support me and I could have had another female staff member or anyone, um, with me. But the reality is I know what the gender politics are here in teaching and it was the best case scenario, I think, for
[00:30:44] Rebecca Cooper: delivering that. Steph, thinking about pre-service teachers and entry into the profession, how could we better prepare them?
[00:30:52] Rebecca Cooper: I think that
[00:30:54] Stephanie Westcott: we need to talk about it, talk about it as a possibility, something they [00:31:00] might experience. So I'm a pre-service teacher educator, and I think because some of my students are aware of my work, they will come return from placement and tell me that they've seen it happen or that it's, it's happened to them.
[00:31:13] Stephanie Westcott: They've experienced it. So I think that in how we prepare students to go on placements and in any way that we would talk about safety and looking after yourself, and workplace expectations and conduct, also talk about the fact that just like in any workplace you might experience things like this and here's what to do.
[00:31:34] Stephanie Westcott: I had a student say to me that. She had received a lot of information about how to not be dangerous to a student, but never about how a student might be dangerous for her. Yeah. Okay. And I think that that tells us that the balance isn't quite right. And I think too, there also needs to be a message to schools in which pre-service teachers are going into and they report it to you because [00:32:00] sometimes I think it's, it's not an ideal response that they receive and.
[00:32:06] Stephanie Westcott: I would hate for that to determine their expectations of what their teaching career is gonna be like because it's, it doesn't have to be that way. It can be something that happens to you once and is shut down and you never experience it again at that school because they've handled it. Or it could be that you're in a school and you know that there is a zero tolerance approach.
[00:32:30] Stephanie Westcott: You know, they're a respectful relationship school. That they don't accept gender based violence and that you know who to talk to when it happens and that it's gonna be dealt with. And that's a safety mechanism that I think women in teaching should feel, um, that they couldn't just expect. It's not exceptional.
[00:32:50] Stephanie Westcott: It's just a normal thing that should be in place.
[00:32:55] Rebecca Cooper: Well, thank you both so very, very much for this incredibly [00:33:00] important discussion. It's really clear that this isn't just a women's issue, but a whole school issue. Female teachers need support. Male teachers need to be active. Allies and school leaders need to take a stand in shaping respectful school cultures.
[00:33:19] Rebecca Cooper: If this is happening at your school, please don't ignore it. Have the conversations, ask for support and challenge the culture because change doesn't happen if we all stay silent. Thanks so much. If you need support, please contact one 800. Respect and always remember that there are resources to support your teaching journey and are all included in our show notes.
[00:33:42] Rebecca Cooper: If you are enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and follow us on Instagram at Monash education. X at Monash Education and Facebook at Education Monash. And tell us what you thought of today's episode using the hashtag [00:34:00] Let's Talk teaching podcast. We are grateful for the support of Monash University's faculty of education in producing this podcast.
[00:34:08] Rebecca Cooper: For more information on short courses and undergraduate and postgraduate study options, head to monash.edu.au/education/learn more. Thanks again for listening to Let's Talk Teaching.