Through the Pivotal Blog, we are publishing in full "Views from the Bridge" a book about the Bridge Project in Chesterfield.
We are publishing this book in chapters. Every week a new chapter will be uploaded to the blog. So make sure you bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you have questions for the authors, please contact us and we will pass them on.
Get up to date before you begin this chapter.
We have already published the following:
Project Headlines and Foreword
Chapter 7
Chapter 9
From Intuition to Method
The Bridge Management Group wondered who would want to work full-time with challenging young people on a two-year secondment from their own work. But there were applications and the selection group appointed a very young teacher to the post along with two experienced teaching assistants (TA's). Having focused more and more on teaching and learning in my later years of headship I was pleasantly surprised to find that this new "Lead Teacher" already employed many of the techniques I had been developing with staff in training days and through coaching. More than that, and more importantly, were his attitudes and his people skills. He seemed to enjoy the company of the troubled youngsters who came to the Bridge and dealt with them in a non-judgmental way. At the same time he could be firm when required without making the young person feel that he was criticising them. Rather he made them aware that it was their behaviour he was unhappy with and not them as people.
One such technique is "take up time" when for instance you tell a couple who are engrossed in playing a game that you need them to change activity: "We're going to change in five minutes." I had noticed over the years how irritated pupils could be when teacher tells them to change from one activity to another just when they were enjoying what they were doing. From memory, I think these occurrences were more prevalent when teachers felt that Ofsted inspectors liked to see "pace" in lessons.
The Lead Teacher always made strong eye contact, always used the pupils' names and very often thanked them to let them know he had noticed their good behaviour, being clear about exactly what he thought was good. When there was an issue that needed improvement he managed to turn it into a positive action rather than pass on a negative command or comment, e.g. "That was excellent listening being showed there. Let's all do it as well as Jim" rather than "Don't do that" or "Stop doing the other." He showed a good sense of humour and was ready to tell stories against himself showing the pupils that he didn't take himself too seriously. An excellent memory for small details, incidents and stories pupils had told him served him well, convincing them that he listened to them and valued what they said.
The TA's brought to the project a lot of experience of working with individual SEN pupils and with small groups. That work had given them an insight into how such pupils need individual responses and work tailored to their needs, not to mention a lot of patience. They were skilled at listening to young people, showed a lot of empathy and could respond in a non-judgmental ways. Both had a caImness of approach born of their previous work and life experiences, although they were a little anxious in the beginning about just what sort of pupils would arrive. One had had a variety of previous jobs - for example employing her personal skills in customer care - and she had been working in mainstream school with small groups of pupils. She had also managed a programme where older pupils mentored younger ones.
In addition to her work in schools, the other TA had been fostering youngsters for years as well as helping young people in supported lodgings, which gave her a valuable understanding of the lives of young people. As well as working with individuals and groups she took on the role of managing the meals in the Bridge, a vital part of the nurture experience.
I think all would agree that the TA's had more life experience than the teacher!
I have drawn this quick sketch of the skills and personal qualities of the Bridge staff to help the reader understand and appreciate the journey these three core members in particular made over the course of the first eighteen months of the project, aided as they were by the support, supervision, training and feedback from members of the management group. They made an excellent start and quickly reached a high standard, not least due to these personal attributes.
They all worked very hard to get the project up and running, from ordering furniture and equipment, drafting policies and identifying teaching resources to explaining to schools and others just how the project would work and how referrals could be made. In a fairly short time after their appointment the Bridge Project opened in June of 2011 with four pupils.
Over the first autumn the team - in an ad hoc way - developed their house style and their working methods. They reviewed and informally discussed their individual and team responses to the young people. In addition, they incorporated contributions from two trainee youth workers who provided music and art experiences for the pupils.
in February 2012, with the active support of the staff, the management group carried out a formal review of the work of the project. (see Chapter 8: Assessment) It involved checking all the documentation, reviewing the data collected on the pupils and observing all the team members at work. The outcome was that the Project was judged against Ofsted criteria as "Good" in all the four main sections.
The most compelling evidence that the standard of provision was good stemmed from the observations and the pupil data. In what schools had identified as a troubled and challenging group of pupils, attendance had improved, fixed term exclusions had reduced by a significant amount and there had been no permanent exclusions at that stage. (see table in Chapter 8)
Drawing on those personal qualities, experience and life skills described above, the team was reaching a good standard and the young people were benefitting.
Following the review, the Lead Teacher and his line manager drew up an improvement plan in which his self-generated target was to achieve an "outstanding" judgment in the next review.
Despite the "good" standard it was noted that staff were not always consistent in their responses to the young people, particularly when they were being irritating or challenging, so achieving better consistency of approach and response became an aim. Boxall Profiles (see Chapter 8: Assessment) were completed on entry for every young person by their school but it was felt that staff were not making full use of these. The team had established a supportive nurture environment in a generalised way but were not planning and reviewing rigorously enough for individual pupils. Help and advice also needed to be given to the youth workers to help them pass on their skills in music and art.
Observations
Most schools carry out observations of staff as part of performance management arrangements. Knowing that these will be recorded and will count towards pay matters, teachers sometimes pull out their "party piece" lesson to impress their line manager. Sometimes it is only when exam results come in that a discrepancy between performance in observations and actual results attributable to the individual teacher show a gap. Most teachers can turn on a decent lesson, but some don't sustain a high level and in the long term this shows in mediocre results.
In the Bridge the aim was to improve and to sustain improvement so an absence of threat through any formal judgment of competence was seen to be key. The Lead Teacher observed each TA and they in turn observed him and, importantly, each other. Whilst there was a proforma to structure the observation feedback any notes taken were passed to the one being observed to do with what they wished.
Following the review, the observations focused on the use of positive language and giving specific and targeted feedback to pupils rather than general comments. Adults can be quite parsimonious with their praise and often are quite unspecific when they do give it. Silent acceptance or a muttered, "Good" were changed into specifics like, "I liked how you held back from making an unhelpful comment there. Well done.""It was good the way that you waited for your turn."
At that time there was a new combination of pupils who were beginning to misbehave regularly. It was a potent combination of kids! Staff realized that they needed to work together even more effectively than they had done hitherto and that consistency of approach was very necessary in the face of this challenging behaviour. The observations were part of the planned response to these developments but also aimed at raising standards in the long term.
Solution circles
The staff would talk together at the end of most days to share their successes and frustrations but this talk was unstructured and, although a natural human reaction to the stresses of working with the young people, ultimately unhelpful as little changed.
Solution Circle meetings were initiated to manage more effectively the discussions of the problems posed by the group in the Bridge at that time. They were held once a week at the end of the day and had a consistent structure. One element was to focus on one or two individual pupils, assessing their difficulties and problems using a red, amber, green approach to register the level of concern. Possible solutions were discussed and a plan of action agreed upon. One example was when two boys were sparking off each other with disruptive behaviour. It was felt that whereas one lad seemed to know when to stop the other kept on misbehaving despite the signals that he should desist. Each was much better without the other so, session by session, their week was carefully planned to minimise their effect on each other and the rest of the group. When they were working separately a member of staff would work with each on positive strategies to counter their inability to work productively together. However, working together was allowed as a reward for improved behaviour and enabled the lad who couldn't recognise the stop signals to stop to learn from his friend who could. The new strategies were written into the daily plan and where appropriate into an Individual Education Plan (IEP) and helped the boys to settle down.
At times the focus in Solution Circles centred on particular times of the day that were a concern - like the washing-up after breakfast and lunch. That led to the development of "Star Points" for helpful behaviour and these were incorporated into the reward scheme.
As a result of reviewing afternoon activities, the whole timetable for the day was changed to good effect. Anyone working in schools recognises that behaviour after lunchtime can be a problem and can affect the tone of the rest of the day. Look at the number of schools which have adopted a long morning/short afternoon pattern to the day as a response to this problem. At the Bridge one of the most concentrated pieces of the daily work - pupil circle time - was arranged for the slot right after lunch when concentration levels were poor leading to dissatisfaction on the part of staff. The Solution Circle identified this as a problem and planned changes.
Individual Education Plans
IEP's were not at this stage being used consistently or often enough so a section of every Solution Circle meeting was given over to the generation and review of IEP's for each young person. Although pupils were making progress in the Boxall Profile strands it was felt that the IEP's should become the vehicle for ensuring the focus was kept tightly on progress across all the strands. Each week, in turn, each youngster's Boxall Profile was checked and the areas for improvement identified. Targets to improve these elements were generated, written into the IEP and reviewed on a regular basis, it being the responsibility of one member of the team to ensure that they were scheduled into the cycle of Solution Circle meetings.
The young people were informed of their targets as were the whole staff team. Every day at breakfast time the targets were displayed on the wall and attention drawn to them by the Lead Teacher. At the start of every session throughout the week the pupil was reminded of the target. The Lead Teacher's daily planning identified teaching materials which would also help the achievement of individual targets. At the reflective time at the end of each day, the youngsters were asked whether they thought they had met their targets and if so, how. Quite often others helped by saying whether they thought their colleague's target had been met and why they thought that it had. Reward points were allocated at this daily session and could be amassed to win small items like posters, calculators or more prized rewards like shop gift vouchers.
So the team who were delivering a good standard of provision by the February of their first year of operation by dint of their personal qualities, hard work and enthusiasm built more method into their work and by so doing raised standards even further. By observing each other they raised their performance to a consistently high level. The Solution Circle meetings gave them the opportunity to focus on problems and issues, and taking a rigorous approach to IEP's built method into their intuitive approach.
In the second major review the assessors judged the provision to be outstanding, again, a view formed through observations and strongly supported by the evidence of the pupil data, including improvements across the Boxall Profile strands.
In the summer of 2013, after only two years of operation the Bridge Project was awarded the Marjorie Boxall Award for the quality of the work. The project may be used as an example of good practice.