Welcome to the Nurture Cottage!

I am writing this blog so that I can share with you how I intend to create my own Nurture Cottage wherever I go, what I did before and what I’m doing differently. And I hope you will find useful ideas to inspire and invigorate your educational practice too.

Last September, as I set up our unusual teaching environment (in an actual tiny two-up-two-down estate worker’s cottage in the school grounds) and began working with my brand new group of students, I could not have anticipated the year ahead of me, nor would I have imagined that I would not still be in my little Cottage now, battling with the low ceilings, cramped spaces and the challenges of staffing more areas and rooms than I had staff for. I had no plans on leaving soon, but life, as they say, comes at you fast, and plans are there to be broken.

Over the last nine months a number of people have asked me about my practice in the Cottage, why we did certain things, why we didn't do others, how I had organised and structured stuff, and on occasion, what was the flipping point of it all?

I don't pretend to have all of the answers, and I am certainly not an educational expert, but I know what worked for us and what I will either totally avoid or definitely do again. And having done it once, I can definitely do it again, but better, I hope, and with less anxiety and fear of the unknown!

Knowledge is only powerful when we share it, despite what the movies say, so that is the purpose of this blog: for you to learn from the lessons I wish I’d known the first time round.

And while there may be a government focus right now on 'catching up' for our young people, after two years of a pandemic, we know that this gap is not only in academic attainment. The systemic and individual trauma of 24 months + will have had a profound knock-on effect for all of us, but for many children and young people, it will have been deeply damaging. Before they can 'catch up' their academic attainment, they need to be emotionally built up, strengthened and given space and time to grow at their own pace.

Hours of tutoring are unlikely to achieve this, but I am confident that with more work like that from the Nurture Cottage, we can help children from all walks of life to flourish, rather than simply survive. And only at that point, I believe we will start “catching up”.

There's no one way of doing things

I am lucky enough to have had the freedom to experiment this academic year, and I have used that age old method of Trial And Error to see what works with my group of pupils.

Plan it, prepare it, try it, evaluate it, and then, crucially, decide if it is working, and if it isn't, STOP! It is often at this point that newer teachers and educators lose their nerve and fear going off-piste. So they don't stop, but keep going in the hope that it will work eventually. Sometimes, I guess, this is a valid strategy, but in my experience, knowing when to stop & then bravely stopping / changing direction as soon as you recognise your plan is not working, is a skill worth developing early on. Plans are, after all, working documents, there to guide and not to be carved in stone.

"But nurture is just all toast and tea and lovely stuff, isn’t it? It’s not really teaching.”

Well yes. And indeed, no. Nurture based teaching and learning does indeed have tea and toast and lovely stuff at its heart. This does not mean that the principles are not also based on neuroscience and core psychological ideas, learning and research, or that it's raison d'etre is fluffy and pointless. Don't underestimate the power of toast either when you’re teaching: how well do you focus when you’re hungry? Shouldn’t we be teaching pupils self-care? Which, incidentally, is usually very much more basic than running a bubble bath & having a spa day: it’s learning to meet your needs both physically and emotionally, valuing your own self. And sharing tea and toast is a very good way to start this habit.

So please, read on, and if you find what I’ve written useful, share with others. Join us at the Nurture Cottage in spreading trauma-informed, therapeutic learning far and wide, and celebrate the power of toast.

Oh and I'll get the kettle on...