Today I went to the @WomenEd Unconference in Reading. I was really excited. We got up early and ran for a train and took Le Singe Bleu with us for luck and company. I’d spent three weeks tweeting and spreading the news and ensuring everyone had all the details about my session, which was going to be A Hit, and I was all ready with my iPhone and Live Streaming app. I even asked if there would be a bigger space available because I had a feeling there would be a real rush of attendees at my session. At the registration, there was lots of buzz and coffee and bacon sandwiches and everyone was nice to me because I had a baby (and have you seen him? He’s gorgeous).  He even got his own name badge with a Microsoft logo on it.  No baby has ever been cooler, or more professional. In the opening speech, people shared testimonials about being 10% braver and I made a joke about not being able to stand up to share because I was breastfeeding. The crowd were loving me and I even got quoted on Twitter. I rushed out of the opening to get baby set up in my little break out room. I stationed him by the door so he could form the welcome committee for the swarms of people who were going to arrive to support this important movement. “I am a social change agent!” I thought. “I am doing an important thing!” Then I waited. Some women came and chatted to me about their children and cooed over the baby. They said I was very inspiring and brave to have come with the baby and that my presence with him was important… and then they went to their own sessions. I waited. Other sessions around me filled up. I waited. Sad face emoji. Nobody came to my session. Luckily I had a baby to cheer me up so I sat down and asked him what I should do and he said something along the lines of “ga-aaah-ah!” because he’s developing consonant sounds at the moment, and so we got up and went to benefit from great CPD from other people… with a baby. I obviously chose all the sessions to do with parents and teaching and was blown away by the relevance and importance and groundbreaking nature of all these MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher ideas. Here is what I learnt, or what was confirmed to me throughout some very intense networking conversations, in lieu of a focused workshop: 1. The MTPT community exist, we just don’t know about each other yet. There are lots of women (can’t find any men!) completing CPD whilst on maternity leave. I have met them. Some of them have cuddled my baby. 2. The MTPT community hide their light, either because they don’t realise they’re doing CPD (“I just got up to date with the new spec”) or because they feel shamed by the dominant social narrative that suggests that parents on leave should focus on parenting (“I always introduce myself as a ‘bad mother'”). … so wait a second… if there were all these MaternityTeachers hanging about, why did none of them come to my session …? Well, through some fairly mind-blowing conversations with people, I learnt even more: 3. Even the specialists from big institutions like the IOE and the Future Leaders Trust (there were a lot of Doctors at this event) have no primary data about teachers and parental leave. This is something to do with a School Workforce Census and the number of hours worked by school employees, but apparently this data is not collected consistently and everybody seems to have other, more pressing things to worry about. 4. Women and men who aren’t pregnant don’t realise how relevant the project is to them, the part they play in the wider MTPT conversation and how they can inspire, empower and support others. At lunch time, baby and I found a quiet space to unwind and spend some time in deep analytical thought.  This is quite hard on my current sleep schedule, so we got down to floor level and had some great eye contact and gurgling call and response which was empowering because this baby is my number one fan and believes in me and my zany ventures and picks me up when I have setbacks with what really is a winning smile. A few key comments from throughout the day started to float together in my sleep deprived brain: when I asked her about statistics and data on teachers on parental leave, Dr Emma O’Brien told me I had a doctorate thesis on my hands; when Hannah Wilson of WomenEd heard me wondering whether the project was needed, she told me it was ‘groundbreaking’; I heard that a MAT had just received funding to pilot research into women and had decided to focus on maternity leave; Carol Jones remarked that this was not a project I could launch and sustain on my own; my husband reassured me in response to my deflated text that the project had a direct impact on peoples’ lives and was universal and timeless. He is a poetic and ever-empowering man, but I think he is right: exactly because at the moment, there is a big black void where parental leave starts. No one seems to know anything about what teachers do when they’re away from the classroom, and no one seems to be asking. In fact, even after a crack team of educational researchers discussed these missing statistics in a flurry of acronyms in the Twittersphere, we still haven’t figure out how many of the 74% of teachers are currently, or have been on maternity leave to begin to even understand the scope for professional development and learning. Because of this, when you start talking about parental leave and CPD, everyone sort of looks surprised… and then makes a ‘huh!’ sort of face. So, in short, no one came to my session because this whole MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher idea is really new and really exciting and no one really knows what to do with it, or how they fit into it at present. Thankfully, the WomenEd Unconference was fantastic and allowed me to meet what feels like a billion amazing people who I have seduced with the idea of The MTPT Project. If you, too, would like to be a part of this ‘groundbreaking’ exploration, please join us on the 24th October or the 12th November.  There are a lot of things that I can’t do alone, and even though half the country don’t think so, I still believe that we are better together.