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We hold credentials in how to teach our subjects, and none at all in how to talk to each other. Everyone under eighteen, we were trained for. Everyone over eighteen — the colleague, the line manager, the person we supervise — we were not.

In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Jennifer Abrams: author of five books, a former high school English teacher who now works with schools across six continents, and someone who calls herself not a consultant but a voice coach.

Her move out of the classroom wasn't planned. A job offer in Kathmandu turned down for a boyfriend, a relationship that ended anyway, and a multiple sclerosis diagnosis that arrived at the same time. What her district offered instead was the chance to build a new-teacher coaching programme with no secondary lead in post. That accident became a career.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why "voice coach" and not "consultant", and what her own coach warned people would assume
• Growing up in Minnesota where hard conversations simply weren't had — and why she wrote the book because she couldn't do it, not because she could
• The questions she asks before speaking up: is this educationally unsound, does it go against what we said we were, am I the person to say it
• John Lewis's "good trouble, necessary trouble" as a test for whether a conversation is worth the discomfort
• Why "it's above my pay grade" makes her bristle
• What speaking up looks like in Southeast Asia, and why a concern raised sideways and in passing may be the whole conversation
• Mission statements everyone signs and nobody interprets the same way — and the "view from your window" question she uses to surface it
• What success looks like to her now: not a drafted script, but someone still in the room at three o'clock, sitting with their discomfort a little longer
• Why twenty years of teaching entitles nobody to a coaching career

A practical and unusually honest account of the work that has to happen inside you before the conversation can happen at all.

A huge thank you to Jennifer for her time, her candour, and for a conversation that made a strong case for suspending our certainty a little more often than we do.

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The Common Room is hosted by Joshua Darryl Sussex — it is an independent project, produced in a personal capacity and outside of any professional or institutional role. Views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent any employer, university, or organisation. No guest, organisation, or product featured has paid for or provided any consideration for their appearance.

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