This week I started a new job in a new school. I work in alternative provision / pupil referral units and as always, I work with an unpredictable and diverse cohort. Many of them have additional educational needs, and all have social, emotional or mental health difficulties. You can be sure too, that trauma and attachment will present significant issues. So when I first go into a new group, I like to have my favourite tools to hand, as it really helps make those good initial connections.
As a new teacher, I remember watching in awe, as experienced colleagues would meet a class for the first time and, unprepared, with little or no planning & resources, they could capture the attention of the pupils and teach a fabulous, interesting lesson. It’s like magic to watch a really good teacher create focus, engage individuals and weave a spell over their class. Of course, it’s not magic, it’s a mixture of many things: learning, training, practice, trial and error (and we learn the most from our most disastrous teaching experiences of course), inner belief in what you’re doing, but more often than not, it’s charismatic storytelling.
But I digress.
How do you start working with kids you don’t know, who mostly don’t like learning or school, and who you can assume won’t be interested in a new adult? How do you begin to establish positive relationships and make constructive connections?
Well, it’s difficult actually. You cannot just walk into a pupil referral unit and start teaching a lesson, like you would in a mainstream school. If you’ve worked as a supply teacher, you’ll know that this is also difficult, as children are not usually keen on unfamiliar adults trying to tell them stuff.
So you hope for the best, and prepare for the worst: you can assume that a normal lesson may not happen, even if you’ve planned it and because you don’t know these children yet, you arm yourself with lots of irresistible resources.
First of all, however, before you can be interesting, you need to be interested. Be interested in the children, sit alongside them and notice them. Notice how they sit, where they look, how they move. Listen to what they say, notice who they talk to. Model the pro-social behaviour you want to see, by introducing yourself.
I always say my name & who I am (“I’ll be teaching here now most days, you’ll see me a lot”) and ask them their name. Doesn’t matter if you forget a name - ask it again. It’s another chance to model the repair of an awkward social situation: “I’m so sorry I’ve forgotten your name! Remind me, I I have a brain like a sieve!”
As soon as you spot an interest of theirs, dive in. It doesn’t matter if you know nothing about it, just be interested and get them talking. Making encouraging noises, nod along, and say things like, “well I can see you’re an expert on this…” or “Wow, you’re definitely the person I’ll have to ask about…”
You may feel as though you’re faking it, but it is easy to be sincere, if you genuinely want to make that connection. It really doesn’t matter if you give the impression that you too absolutely can’t get enough of information about whales, or Lego or motocross, when really you couldn’t care less. It’s not lying, it’s modelling a positive attachment framework, listening and giving positive responses to a child’s opinions.
It’s remarkably powerful, giving someone your attention, even just for a few minutes.
Sometimes however, I’ll find myself stuck in an endless conversation with a child, who has delightedly found an audience for their special subject, as happened this morning. I was being told at length about Minecraft and the relative merits of its many different soundtracks.
In fairness, today I was pretty interested, and we had a look on YouTube to see which tracks we liked- I had no idea that Minecraft even had soundtracks, so it was a useful learning moment for me. (Reminded me of Philip Glass and Brian Eno, if you’re wondering)
However, after fifteen minutes, I needed to be doing something else, like teaching a lesson, so I needed to diplomatically change track. So I suggest that we should switch off YouTube and get ready for lessons.
“Oh but I just want to show you this other one. The next video is better, it’s got my favourite music in it.” (Child keeps scrolling on the smart board)
And I know this is to avoid ending our chatting and distract me from A Lesson. But I’m not going to simply say no, even though I am going to divert the subject. So I do the ever-wondrous-when-it-works positive no response:
“I really want to see that video too! Right now we need to get ready for maths though, so let’s watch it at lunchtime when we can both really enjoy it, ok? I’m so glad you told me about Minecraft music! I’m amazed! It’s so good!”
Today this worked. Another day it won’t. But today this child didn’t hear “no”, they heard “we will do it, just not now”. And we did look at the video together, not at lunchtime (as we both forgot), but at the end of the day. I remembered we had agreed this and so I reminded him - and that’s important. If you say you’ll do something, try your hardest to always do it.
Which leads me to: only promise what you know can be delivered. Children with attachment difficulties, those with trauma experience expect always to be let down and are hypersensitive to rejection, so it’s even more important to make sure that as far as possible, what we say is what we do.
But I’ve digressed again. I do that, I’m afraid. Bear with, bear with…
The photo at the top of this post shows a brilliant little set of story dice, from Flying Tiger. I think they cost £3. I always take them to every new class and school: I’ve used them from reception to sixth form, in mainstream, with SEMH pupils and in specialist SEN settings. They are brilliant, unbreakable (they were thrown across my classroom just this afternoon) and simple.
I start by rolling them on the table and model a sentence or two. I talk through my choices, wondering which image to start with, who is the protagonist, what happens first, how does everyone feel? And they can be rolled one at a time, all at once, over and over, you can take it in turns, do whatever you want.
This student, who I had been advised was unlikely to engage with me in any learning yesterday, (he certainly was reluctant) had not seen story dice before. Apparently he hates English and writing, but he absolutely loved playing with the dice. For an astonishing 40 minutes, he and I told stories about “our amazing hero” and his love of a nice cup of tea, his demonic cat and the spooky bus that kept driving past, but was really just a pencil drawing of a bus. I kept expecting him to get up and walk out the room, bored, but even when I was thinking, “dear god please let this story end”, he kept rolling the dice and telling me the next chapter. It was delightful.
Telling a story is a basic, primal instinct. Every child needs the power to tell a story. To do that they need words. We can teach the words and phrases, and we can model the telling, but giving children the story-telling space is essential. It doesn’t need to be work, or written down: it needs to be part of that connection with another person, someone to be present at their storytelling.
Playing this kind of game gives a child space and a platform to tell a story, silly or serious, and it can be the start of a narrative dialogue between adult and that child.
I love joining in with the stories: it’s important to react, to feedback responses to the story arc, to help develop the plot or character. I love going along with even the most ridiculous or silly narratives:
“So our amazing hero is in his caravan, eating breakfast when the cat comes in and shits on the table”
“Oh for goodness sake! No wonder he’s cross! Flipping cat. Gosh. Nightmare!”
“I know. He’s so angry. The cat has made disgusting footprints everywhere, look.”
“No! Not on his secret spy papers?? How on earth can he save humanity now? I cannot see how he’s going to get himself out of this tight spot: shall we roll again? I blooming hope we can solve this!”
Much nodding and “oh yes!” and very serious consideration of whether or not we could use a spellbook to just magic away
the poo prints. (We could and we did)
Ending the story, much like a blog post, is up to the storyteller. Tricky. Sometimes it goes on and on, and sometimes it just ends.
Like that.
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