Through the Pivotal Blog, we are publishing in full "Views from the Bridge" a book about the Bridge Project in Chesterfield.
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Get up to date before you begin this chapter.
We have already published the following:
Project Headlines and Foreword
Chapter 3
Breakfast and Good News
From Boxall M, revised by Lucas S (2002, 2009), Nurture Groups in Schools. Principles and Practice p36. London: Sage Publications
From the moment children arrive on the site, they need to be "held" in a network of support. This goes beyond the level of general supervision...The first contact with a familiar and reassuring presence is the beginning of systematic and reinforcing support throughout the school day.
I take "held" to mean brought into close contact, gathered into a safe place, rather than in the detained sense of the word.
What would you do if a young child were scared, extremely anxious, panic- stricken in fact? I would hold them close if they were mine, until that fear and tension eased.
Nurture children are "....untrusting and insecure, lack confidence and have low self esteem". What must such a child think and feel on arriving at school each day, faced by a thousand (or more) children and adults, all of whom seem to be perfectly happy to come to school and who go about their business very confidently?
Think of children you have met who might need some form of nurturing support and picture them in school first thing in the morning. Do they arrive very early and find some quiet corner to stand in? Do they avoid eye contact and fail to respond to any greeting? Do they wait in close vicinity to the staffroom to lessen any threat?
They may avoid problems by regularly arriving late. Often the register class or morning tutor group is the kind of start to the day that some pupils dread as it can be an unstructured period of time. Register to be taken, absences to be dealt with, whisk the class off to assembly - all these take the focus and attention of the teacher, meaning it is difficult to achieve the stated social aims most schools espouse for form or tutor time. In this session you may find insecure pupils sitting very close to the teacher for moral and real support. Some youngsters just avoid registration or tutor time altogether but are quite happy to report to a year head, showing that punctuality isn't the issue.
"They need to be held in a network of support... a familiar and reassuring presence."
SEN teams know this. They know their charges need a welcoming place in school for them to make a confident start to their day and therefore each morning they provide a familiar room staffed by familiar faces.
At the Bridge Project, the young people arrive at the breakfast room and are greeted by the staff. Breakfast is provided every day as routine:
Food is a vehicle for basic learning experiences...It is something they want...the first time eye contact is established...and the only situation where they are motivated to wait ...adults are seen as giving people. They see themselves in relation to the giving people, begin to get a sense of being attached ...
Boxall M, rev Lucas (2002, 2009), Nurture Groups in Schools p74-75 : Sage Publishing
The Bridge dining area is quite small and the large central table means the seats are very close to the wall and when they are all occupied it is tricky to walk around the outside. This means that everyone needs to share in passing food and drinks around. The staff model the kinds of behaviour they want to see, "Jack would you like a drink? Would you please ask Russell if he would like one/ Jack here's Russell's drink, please pass it to him." It is difficult to ignore the others when sitting at such close quarters.
Orders are taken for lunch and this provokes a discussion about choices and eating habits. The rota for preparation and clearing up at mealtimes means every youngster can act as provider and be praised for it, "Great peanut butter and jam sandwiches, mate." The rota of all the food related duties for the week displayed alongside the full timetable of activities is an important source of predictability for young people who often lead chaotic lives.
Staff note who is responsive to the needs of others, who doesn't seem to notice anyone and who eats less or more than their share. One lad who regularly grabbed as much food as he could seemed to be meeting a psychological need rather one born of hunger.
Ask any teacher who has taken pupils on a residential experience about the modern family's eating habits. In my experience it has become less common for families with teenagers to eat together. Many young people eat fast-food balanced on their knees with their fingers. When you ask them to use cutlery or wait for others to finish before leaving the table you are met with bemusement. This regularly practised Bridge event encourages the pupils to sit for a while with the adults and their peers and engage in conversations which let them see that others have feelings and needs not too dissimilar to theirs.
As the Lead Teacher takes the register, he addresses each young person by name and asks them to make eye contact as they answer. "Establishing and maintaining eye contact is very important, for in making eye contact, they acknowledge the possibility of a relationship." Boxall M (2002 rev 2009). He was also quite successful in encouraging a smile from the youngsters.
He could of course, with such a small group, just quietly note later who is present and who is not. However, routines and rituals like register-taking can convey meaning beyond the mundane, particularly in this setting. Calling out the name of someone who is not present reminds everyone that the absentee is still a member of the group and gives an opportunity to explain the absence, "Is Pat here? Oh, of course, he has a meeting at school today." This lets those present know that absences are noted, absentees are missed and that the staff keep a good account of what is happening in all of their pupils' lives. In short, their attendance and non-attendance matters.
After this each pupil is asked for some good news but before this session gets under way the group is asked to rehearse what is going to be required : good listening, not interrupting, not talking over someone else. Asking pupils to list these expectations rather than simply telling them has more impact as being able to articulate these rules of courtesy implies that the pupils accept them (although they do forget!).
At first many find this "Good News" session very difficult. They don't want to expose themselves to the others, finding talking in any public forum difficult. They genuinely believe that no-one will be interested in them - so they "stonewall". By just not answering they have found that they can maintain silence longer than any teacher and most adults can tolerate. A teacher coached to maintain pace in mainstream lessons cannot afford to let the lesson grind to a halt in the face of a reluctant pupil who will not speak. The other pupils become impatient and the teacher is tempted to provide the desired answer or allow a frustrated fellow pupil to answer. The best we pace-minded teachers do is to "throw an easy question" to the shy. Those who do not want to answer know all this and simply wait for any of their "get out clauses" to be invoked.
At the Bridge there is time and the young people know "good news" will be asked for every day. The teacher will wait but he will also encourage and lead the conversation. Often he helps by bringing in information he has learned previously from the youngster.
"Any good news?"
"Nothing really."
"What did you do last night?"
"Nothing much."
"Did you go round to your mate's?"
"Yes."
"Play on x-box?"
"Yes"
"What was your best score? Did you beat your mate?"
"Yeah - he's rubbish. I got to level ?????"
Now we are off and whilst not exactly running we are at least in motion. With skilful questioning techniques and patience the pupils grow to believe that they are important enough to be listened to and that they have something to say.
For Billy in particular, waiting for his turn and not butting in when others were talking was very tough. He was one of those impulsive kids who when something occurred in his brain just had to get it out. It was the kind of behaviour that often got him into trouble in his school. Teacher would be explaining something tricky when Billy would blurt out something irrelevant. This only had to happen a few times in the lesson - and an hour's lesson is a long time for a Billy - for him to be put outside the class, "to take time to think about his actions."
As this would be repeated several times each day and would be picked up by the school's incident log, Billy, it would be decided, would have to spend increasing time in the "Seclusion Room" (or similar) to learn the error of his ways. Missing the next lesson meant his eventual return to that class would be even more of an issue as he had missed the class-work and had lost any continuity
In the Bridge, the problem could be tackled every day. When he did interrupt Billy was reminded of the need to wait his turn. When he did he was praised, "It was good when you waited there. I could tell you wanted to tell us something."
That sounds so simple.
It isn't a case of criticising classroom teachers or school inclusion staff. It is a matter of constructing the circumstances where you might be able to tackle whatever the issue might be. In Billy's case, impulsivity and lack of awareness of others.
Mainstream lessons are incredibly complex. How do you take a certain portion of a body of knowledge and impart it to a group of mixed ability young people who all have their own preferred learning styles, motivation levels, and levels of confidence in their own ability to learn and likelihood of their success? Add to that the pressure on teachers to pay close attention to the shape and structure of the lesson, the need to share with the pupils the outcomes for this lesson within the overall direction of travel for the course of study. Oh, and be firm but fair, able to give and take a joke and make the lesson interesting. An "outstanding" lesson is a tour de force and takes a huge amount of plate- spinning skill. A lad like Billy is a real impediment to its achievement for the teacher and for the other pupils.
To succeed with lads like Billy, the variables needed to be reduced and the circumstances managed in such a way that success or progress was at least possible. The "Good News " session had no content to be taught. The only skills to be imparted were those of waiting your turn and listening. There weren't thirty other pupils to attend to.
The three Bridge staff knew about Billy's impulsivity and they worked on it as a team, in the same ways across the whole day. This saturation approach gave the opportunity and the time to make improvements with Billy - which gradually they did. In school, the dozen or so teachers that Billy infuriated and frustrated each week had little chance of responding in a concerted way.
From that slow start of dragging good news out of young people who don't believe they have any, one lad who had had issues with personal hygiene grew in confidence to the extent that one day he shared his good news that on that day he was wearing a clean T-shirt and trousers and that his dad was going to buy him new shoes.
It was significant that this lad who had often been teased about his appearance could openly share that in front of a group, some of whom had previously made comments about his appearance. He showed how comfortable and safe most students grew to feel during good news once they have conquered that initial fear.
Charlie lived between his mother and his grandmother's houses, choosing to move from one to the other when he had a falling out, usually over the removal of his X-Box as a punishment. But his grandmother grew seriously ill and this showed in Charlie's growing depression.
One day his good news was that he had seen Grandma at the weekend and that she was a lot better. The change in his body language and his lightened facial expression told just how much this had been worrying him.
Others used mobile phone photos to tell their good news. Alex, the cheeky guy who acts the class clown and makes faces to get everyone to laugh, showed everyone a picture of his newly born niece. Kenny, a six-foot plus lad, showed a picture of his new puppy and Terry the bike he had built.
Where else could a fourteen year-old lad share the news and the joy that he had a new puppy?
Given that all of the Bridge's young people have had some interruption to the nurture we all require as we grow, it is probable that family circumstances have meant that interest in such events has not been shown.
At junior school at "Show and Tell" it may have been the case that these children came to believe that they had nothing of value or interest to show or tell anyone else. They hadn't been to Disneyland, nor did they own a multiplicity of technological gadgets. When asked on Monday morning to write about their weekend, they may not have known where their parents were. They may not have known who their parents were. Perhaps they -for themselves - came to the opinion that they had no good news worth telling or perhaps some other children told them, "That's not very interesting. You're boring"
The Bridge workers contributed their own good news as did visiting adults, letting the youngsters realise that this is normal behaviour. Adult good news included holidays, trips to pop concerts and pride in their own children's achievements. One told of the pleasure of simply sitting outside on a sunny summer's evening, giving the youngsters permission to revel in and report on the relatively mundane.
Parents quite often feel the need to compensate with cash for the lack of time and interest they have been able to show. In company young people often engage in competitive boasting about holidays or material possessions. It was significant that when discussing likely Christmas presents which included all of the possible high-end high-tech gadgets the group members might receive, one lad told the group, "I am getting £50."
"Is that it?" he was asked.
"Yeah. My mum and dad came into a bit of money so that's what I'm getting to spend how I like."
The others accepted that for this lad, this was a big deal.
From this session where the young people are listened to and made to feel valued they "...are launched into their individual activities from the Home area. This is where personal contact with the adults has been established."
"Within the structure provided by routine and organisation is a complex web of experiences that builds up trust and sense of adults' caring, and leads to attachment and a wish to please. Discussion of feelings and behaviour becomes relevant...."
Boxall M, (2002,2009)
From the positive starting point of breakfast and good news the work of the day continued.