What the Lionesses Teach Us About Teaching, Reflection, Resilience and Real Change

Hannah and Lucy turn their attention to the Lionesses, England’s fabulous women’s football team, fresh from their historic victory at the 2025 European Championships. But this isn’t a chat about sport. It’s a conversation about what everyone in education can learn from a team that’s rewritten the story on leadership, resilience and visibility.

With warmth, insight and the occasional moment of exasperated laughter, Hannah and Lucy explore how the success of the Lionesses challenges some of the long-held assumptions about authority, teamwork and identity, not just on the pitch, but in the classroom.

Every wonder, who gets to lead, how systems try to co-opt success stories or how celebrity translates to school?

The conversation revolves around:

❗️The difference between visibility and empowerment: What happens when institutions celebrate women's achievements without changing the conditions they operate in?

❗️Performance versus authenticity: How sport and teaching reward polished performance but at what cost to wellbeing and sense of self?

❗️Leadership that looks different: How the Lionesses model a collaborative, emotionally intelligent approach to leadership and why that matters in education.

❗️Resilience redefined: Moving away from the stoic, suffer-through-it narrative and towards a more relational, supportive understanding of strength.

❗️What we cheer for and why: A look at how public narratives around “winning” and “success” can silence more complex, uncomfortable truths.

Drawing on their own experiences as teachers, Hannah and Lucy reflect on how these themes play out in their professional lives. They talk about visibility as women in education, the pressure to be “always on” and how difficult it is to make space for real rest or emotion in a culture that celebrates grind and grit.

But there’s hope to be had. In the Lionesses’ victory, Hannah and Lucy see more than a feel-good moment. There's possibility, potential. A different way to lead. A different way to show up. And a reminder that joy, solidarity and strategy can coexist, even in systems more often designed to wear you down than raise you up.

Whether you’re a teacher, a school leader, a student teacher or someone simply trying to stay grounded in a high-pressure world, this episode offers an invitation to pause. To think about what kind of stories we’re telling. To ask: what are we really modelling when we step into our classrooms, meetings or staff rooms?

This isn’t about finding all the answers. It’s about to ask better questions.

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