The day you plant the seed...

I'll Be There For You

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 14:38:27 GMT

The importance of positive relationships and effective communication.

As many of you will know, I do a variety of things to support schools in my constant mission to best meet the needs of our most vulnerable children. The joy of my job is that I am not constrained in one area of work, and I move between various passions of mine to try and help support schools as best as I can. I have to say though that there are some common themes that run like a thread through everything I do. It felt helpful therefore to capture these themes and share them.

Anyone who has ever heard me train will know that if they were playing training bingo, the easiest win would be to have a square with the word ‘Relationships’ in it. If I earnt a pound for every time I said the word relationships to schools, then I would be one very rich lady! Positive relationships are, however, genuinely fundamental to everything I talk about. They are the main driver for change when we think about improving culture within a school. They are the key to better supporting children with their needs and behaviours that may feel challenging. They are the difference between an open, transparent, and therefore safer culture. And they are the key to keeping children safe. If we invest time, money, and effort into building positive relationships across all aspects of school, I truly believe that this has more impact than anything else you might consider.

“Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows."

-Ben Stein

So, how do you know if you have positive relationships in your school and what can you do about it? I think that the greatest test in term of considering the adult relationships in schools, is whether people are honest when they make mistakes and/or whether they ask for help. In a school where staff feel valued and supported, they understand that this does not mean that they know everything, that they can do everything, and that they will never get anything wrong. There is a culture of team, a passion for ongoing development, and an appreciation that we are all always still learning.

If staff feel isolated, unsupported, or scared to admit that they have made a mistake, this fosters a culture which will only ever lead to reduced confidence and less effective practice. Likewise, if staff feel unable to challenge decisions, that changes are made without consultation, and that their opinion is not important, then the likely outcome is a reluctance to embrace new ideas. This results in a ‘them and us’ mentality and so new ideas or initiatives, whether good or bad, are instinctively met with resistance.

In terms of children, the more I can get to know the children I work with, the more I sincerely care about who they are, what they have experienced and what their lives look and feel like, the more I understand them. I am more likely to spot if something is not okay. I am more likely to see behaviours in the context of what they are communicating. I am more likely to have children who trust me. I am more likely to be able to work with that child to be happy and successful. Any time we spend building positive relationships and connections with children is time well spent. The initial impact can be happier, more regulated children. It can lead to a reduction in behaviours that are difficult to manage. It can mean improved attendance and children who want to be in school. The long term impact therefore can be children more able to regulate, more able to be successful and reach their potential. As ACE’s research demonstrates, it can even mean reduced changes of long term health problems. Positive relationship building is imperative for our children who are the most vulnerable, however it is beneficial for every single child.

“Safety is not the absence of threat; it is the presence of connection.”

– Gabor Mate.

We can also assume that if we are just nice to people, that this on its own will create positive relationships, or that if as a leader I make popular decisions this will always lead to me being popular. Building positive relationships needs to be more purposeful and explicit than this. Particularly as a leader, its important to think about where people are coming from and what experiences are they bringing with them, what their needs are, and how we are bringing them along on our journey. This comes back to things like having a clear vision, being clear about priorities, and recognising where we are on that journey. If we are a new leader, it is about looking forward, however we must acknowledge what has happened in the past too. Even if we are not where we want to be, it does not mean that everything that happened before today was bad and it should therefore just be dismissed. By doing that, we also dismiss everyone who was part of the past, which makes it much harder to take them forwards with us.

When we try too hard to be liked, we can also end up making decisions that may be popular, however they are not necessarily the right decisions. When we think about leaders that we respect and admire, we are often looking for someone who makes us feel safe. We may not agree with everything that they make us do, however we trust that they know what they are doing. Thinking back to our childhoods, which parent acquires the most respect; the one who lets us do exactly as we want, or the one who provides boundaries and expectations? The first may be more popular in the moment, the second creates a sense of safety and stability. Similarly, we can mistake consultation with being irresolute. Again, if we look to successful leaders, they do not make decisions in isolation, and without the views of those that the decisions will impact upon, however they also understand when they need to be decisive. Too much consultation or negotiation can feel like a leader does not really know what they are doing and can reduce that sense of trust and safety. I might not entirely agree with your decision, however as the leader I want you to make it and if I have some understanding about the thought behind it, I will likely give it a go - I might even learn something!

“No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship.”

– Dr James Comer

Which leads me on to my next most common theme, effective communication. Look at every serious case review or equivalent over the years, and a definite area of learning and therefore a key recommendation, will always be around improved communication. Whether this is multi-agency, with the family or within an organisation, it’s always there. Likewise, whenever I have been asked to investigate grievances or complaints, there is always learning that can be gleaned around more open and honest communication or similar. If you have disgruntled staff, parents, or children, its generally because something is happening or has happened and they do not know about it, understand it, or appreciate the reason for it. Again, even if we do not agree with something, if it has been communicated to us in a way that we can see where it has come from, then this often reduces anger, frustration, and anxiety.

When I deliver training around difficult conversations or conflict resolution, what I am always actually delivering is effective communication training. Conflicts and complaints are often fundamentally linked to a lack of hearing, understanding and/or caring about the other person’s perspective or viewpoint. If we can take a moment to consider something from the opposing or an alternative perspective, and then communicate with this in mind, we will be less likely to encounter resistance or argument.

The other aspect of poor communication that I respond to frequently is actually a lack of communication. This is usually unintended or unintentional, however a lack of information will often lead to difficult situations that may have been avoidable. Human nature is that if we have limited information and gaps within that information, then we make up the bits we do not know. Furthermore, human nature and past experiences often mean that if we are not being told something, we assume it is because it is bad news. If you therefore infer that there are to be changes in staffing, and I know nothing other than this information, chances are that within a short amount of time people are talking about job losses, additional work, or reduced pay. The reality may be the exact opposite!

If as leaders we feel that we do not yet have all the facts, or decisions have not yet been made, we can tend to wait to communicate until things are certain. However, this can sometimes cause unrest and anxiety, which may be unnecessary or is simply worse because of the anticipation. Particularly in schools, where we often have well established and sophisticated grape vines(!), a little bit of information can be dangerous. The mutiny is already prepared for battle before we have even shared what is happening, and this means that the rebellion may still happen even if what is being proposed isn’t even that bad! It feels counterintuitive, however it is often better to share what is being considered and why decisions cannot be made yet, rather than pretending there is nothing being considered. As a member of staff, I am more likely to feel part of the final decision and that something is being done with me, rather than feeling that I am irrelevant and that something is being done to me. This in turn creates a more trusting environment and culture.

“Culture is how employees’ hearts and stomachs feel about Monday morning on Sunday night.”

- Bill Marklein.

How do you know if you communicate effectively? In my experience this results in two-way communication, where people feel able to ask for support, raise concerns and there is a sense of togetherness that is over and above issues that may arise. There is a reduction in those gossipy grape vines, as there is no value in them. If I can find out what is going on by just asking, why would I need to rely on unverified sources of information? There isn’t a sense of ‘them and us’, more a sense of ‘us against the world’ – a feeling that we can accomplish anything as long as we do it together. The two things must go hand-in-hand though, effective communication is much easier if we have a foundation of positive relationships, and we develop positive relationships by consistently communicating in an open and honest manner. If we try to do either superficially, then we will not succeed.

So, what difference do positive relationships and effective communication make? Well for me its all about trust, feeling connection and creating a sense of belonging. If someone is interested in building a relationship with me, then these actions evidence that I am valued and that I matter. There is an investment in me, thus I am more likely to invest back. If I am communicated with in an open, honest, and transparent way, then these actions evidence that I am part of the team, my feelings and opinions are relevant, and I truly belong. It doesn’t therefore matter whether I am a member of staff, a child, or a parent, I am being made to feel that I am part of something. There is no ‘them and us’ there is just a ‘we’. Creating a feeling that we can achieve, we can develop, we can even overcome obstacles and that we will do it all together is much more likely to lead to success, than people individually feeling that they have to fight their battles alone. This does not mean that you will be a school that has no issues to deal with, however it does hopefully mean that you are more likely to resolve those issues and come out the other side all the stronger for it.

“I’ll be there for you, ‘cause you’re there for me too”

– The Rembrandts

A Window on Ofsted

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 18:09:40 GMT

As a coach, I support many Headteachers and SLT from all sorts of schools and at all different stages of their journey. Inevitably Ofsted is often a topic of conversation as you would imagine. It is always there, like a dangerous undercurrent lurking just beneath the surface. It can, as we have tragically seen with Ruth Perry, have such a devastating impact on individuals, schools and therefore children. The question around whether Ofsted inspections are fit for purpose is not a new one, so how on earth has it had to come to this?

For those who work outside of education, it is hard to explain the debilitating affect that Ofsted can have on people, it is hard to appreciate how something allegedly designed to support schools often succeeds in achieving the exact opposite. You might imagine that the worst part of Ofsted is the inspection. In my experience, I believe that this is a fallacy. The worst part for many is the anticipation, which for some schools can, and has gone on for years. For others, the balloon bursting following an inspection and the subsequent fallout creates the most stress or anxiety. The irony being that this fall out can even feel significant if the outcome is okay. Add to that the delay between the inspection and a report being published, and the fact that during this time the Head has the knowledge of an outcome without being able to share or discuss this with anyone, and that can be a lonely place to be.

I passionately feel that the anticipation is crippling – never more so than when covid meant that the Ofsted window became so vast that it was simpler to say which schools weren’t in it. How unhealthy that an SLT spends each and every week not breathing until Wednesday lunchtime waiting for the call, and then from then onwards worrying about what more they need to do before the following week. A cycle which is relentless and exhausting. How dangerous that schools could easily fall into the trap of putting so much effort into preparing for Ofsted, that once they have been, there is no energy or momentum left?

The big question we have asked for years is what difference do these inspections make and who for? The longer I spend supporting schools, the less I feel that I have a positive answer to these questions. What I do see is schools getting swamped by Ofsted preparation, SLTs in danger of forgetting what schools should be focused on and Heads trying to keep realistic about what it is genuinely possible to achieve and evidence. I see great Heads struggling because they are genuinely focused on children and making a real difference to communities, and I see leaders flourishing because what they are adept at is putting on an impressive performance. I am not being judgemental here; I am simply pointing out that I am not sure Ofsted achieves what it is intended to.

The new framework came with some positives, and I have seen some more understanding inspections recently, however it is nowhere near enough. Inspections are still undertaken by individuals who come in with their own knowledge, awareness, experience, and agendas and this can significantly impact on the focus of an inspection. As with anything there are some fantastic people who inspect for Ofsted, however they are limited by the systems they work within, and there are some inspectors who appear to miss the point. Positive reports are rarely as positive as the verbal feedback for example, as the template for the report places limits what can be included. I have supported schools where I have some real concerns about aspects, yet an Ofsted inspection has seemingly stroked a superficial surface and found nothing untoward. Equally at the other end of the spectrum, I work with schools who are fundamentally child-centred, go way above and beyond for their families, and yet spend their entire inspection having to justify academic progress and knowing that there are unspoken limitations to how highly they will ever be rated. This breaks my heart.

In the current climate, some of our best schools are constantly torn between doing what they feel is right, and doing what they can justify to Ofsted. There are schools who invest hours in just ensuring that children are safe and ready to learn before they can teach anything – there is often little or no recognition for this. There is still that fundamental lack of understanding, that children must be happy and safe first before they can learn and make progress. Schools who focus on this are doing what they need to, however Ofsted inspections do not feel designed and thus rarely recognise the impact and importance of all this work. It is often impact that is hard to evidence, quantify or measure.

So, what would I do? Do schools need to be inspected? What would actually help and make a real difference to schools and children? I believe that schools do need external eyes, someone objectively looking at what they are doing and why. However, I believe genuine impact and progress is made when the person doing the looking has a level of investment in the next part of the journey. I think there needs to be much greater awareness of what our schools are responding to on a daily basis, and real recognition that phrases such as ‘school readiness’ means a whole plethora of things depending on which school you are referring to. I work with schools where school readiness means that the child can read and write a bit, compared to schools where it means that the child is not wearing nappies and has any speech. It is not that starting points are lower, it is that starting points are almost incomparable.

I work with secondary schools where their list of vulnerable students who need extended transition, just to support their initial attendance at the school in Year 7, is so long that it would be easier to talk about who doesn’t need it, and this might be down the road from a school where they are on a daily basis responding to parents placing unhealthy and unrealistic pressure and expectations of their children to exceed. Our schools are so different, and they must be and need to be for all our children to succeed. This I feel is not adequately reflected in Ofsted judgements.

How frightening is it that a Headteacher can feel so judged in an inspection that lasts a matter of days, that they feel unable to go on? That everything else that they have achieved, any differences that they have made and any children that have benefitted from their existence is worth so little.

Anyone who works with me appreciates that I have high expectations and I am certainly no pushover. If I visit a school to review their safeguarding or similar, I aim to leave no stone unturned and I will always come from the perspective of what could you do even better. However, I do this because children deserve that, none of what I am passionate about for the purpose of ticking a box or trying to make the school look good. I am all about sustainability not sticking plasters. I always try to acknowledge and respond to the specific circumstances of the school, and I aim to leave people feeling empowered and focused, rather than feeling undervalued or deskilled. Challenge and accountability are not about being ruthless and uncompassionate, in fact I think this does way more harm than good, and often means barriers go up making it harder to see what is actually going on. There are very few people that I come across working in schools who aren’t trying to do their best, so this is always my starting point and only assumption. We can then work together to identify good practice and discuss areas for development. I hope this approach feels very different to schools compared to an inspection, as when reviews are coming from the perspective of a supportive tool, rather than feeling like an opportunity to catch you out or trip you up, which is how Ofsted has sometimes been referred to, the process is entirely different. The former surely creates an openness and transparency that is much more helpful, rather than the game being about how you paint the most positive picture.

Also, when I visit, the accountability for the process is in many respect two-way. I am clearly holding the school to account whilst I’m there, asking questions, looking at evidence, speaking to children, however this is not one-sided. If I make a recommendation, I always have to be prepared for the “and how do you suggest I do that?” question. I can’t just say something is not good enough and then walk away. Listening to Ruth’s sister saying that her sister’s vocation was summed up in one word perfectly captures this point. Ofsted make a judgement and then leave. They don’t have to deliver the long awaited report to staff who have dedicated their time and effort, they don’t have to see the faces of teachers who feel responsible, they don’t have to respond to angry parents or panic about the impact on future numbers and what this does to the budget. I feel invested in schools that I work with, as I want them to improve, I want them to progress, I want them to invite me back to show me what they have achieved. I have rarely worked with a school where the same inspector has ever gone back, so why would they feel any investment after they leave?

I wonder if somewhere in these thoughts is a potential start of a solution. Perhaps the idea of an inspection is outdated. For me an inspection suggests something not just objective, it portrays a sense of detachment. I think to truly understand a school you have to take the time to understand the community it sits within, the unique challenges that it faces, and the journey it is on. The ‘snapshot’ that an inspection allows does not give the time or focus for this to be viable. I wonder what it would look like if the people employed to have an objective eye into schools, were local to the school and attached to a school for a period of time. I wonder whether this investment would mean that rather than a school feeling like an inspection was being done to them, it would feel more like a review of their practice was being done with them. I wonder whether this would mean that the process genuinely improved practice for the people that actually matter, and that there would be real benefits for children, and all children not just those best placed to succeed. I wonder whether Ofsted would then make Headteachers feel supported, valued, and empowered, rather than making them feel like Ruth Perry. This has to be the time for change, we cannot continue with a system where an Ofsted Report can feel ‘deeply harmful’ and leave a family mourning a death. My thoughts go out to the family and school community of Ruth Perry.

Boys will be ...

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 16:39:56 GMT

Why are we all talking about Andrew Tate?

So why are we all talking about Andrew Tate? This name comes up so much when I'm talking to schools about PSHE, sexualised behaviours, misogyny and everything to do with boys really. We know that guidance out there is saying don't talk about Andrew Tate, the reality is all our children are. So, what is the fascination?

As a girl of the late 70s and 80s, I was fortunate enough to grow up in an era surrounded by messages telling me that as a girl I could perhaps be anything I wanted to be. I then had girl power and feminism, and what this meant was that I genuinely believed I could have it all if I wanted it. I could be a wife, a mother a homemaker. I could be a strong independent businesswoman, who was dependent on nobody but myself. I could therefore be anything in between or a combination of any of the above. This didn't give me a script or a plan, it gave me something much more powerful. As a girl growing up in that decade, I felt like I had endless choices. In recent times however, I have been thinking about my male counterparts. Suddenly for boys it was perhaps a little less clear what the gender role of male should look like. If women could do everything and no longer needed a man, then what was their role? Did they have choices?

Men and boys used to being central and in control were suddenly having to budge up a bit and let the girls in. This might sound naïve, because still today our male dominated structures and systems in society suggest that some of this shift remains somewhat superficial. I think therefore that the boys of my generation did okay, maybe even ‘business as usual’. How about the boys who are growing up now though? What I see is certain boys that are attracted to the belief systems of someone like Andrew Tate. He is rich, powerful and has status, traditionally things that prove that you are successful, especially as a male. He is therefore quite compelling if you are feeling a little lost in the world. His outrageous statements and shocking misogyny maybe don’t sound that shocking if you're not quite sure where you fit.

Grooming and radicalisation target vulnerable people and gradually and subtly shift mindsets. They are processes which promote a sense of belonging and a shared purpose for those who maybe don't feel like they do belong. It provides role models for people who haven't got great role models elsewhere.

Research tells us that there is a problem in our schools. Lots of our boys are struggling. We see disappointing academic outcomes and boys who are less interested in studying at higher levels. We also see increased concern around boy’s mental health and male suicide rates. We have boys displaying aggressive and challenging behaviours, and now what we're seeing is increasingly worrying attitudes playing out as misogyny. From inappropriate language to more concerning sexualised attitudes and behaviours. When I provide training about sexualised behaviours, we always talk about unmet needs. We have to acknowledge that many of our boys are demonstrating and communicating that they have unmet needs.

I wonder about the boys growing up being told that girls rule the world, and this being accompanied by a cheer, however those boys knowing that if they were to state that boys rule the world that would definitely attract challenge and criticism. Maybe our boys struggle comes from trying to understand what a boy should look like. It can be hard for a boy to like classically deemed stereotypical things, because if you’re obsessed by football and fancy girls, there is a presumption that this means that you can't be emotionally literate, and academically ambitious.

Misogyny is one of the biggest concerns of most, if not all the secondary schools I work with, and this as with anything is now filtering down to our younger children. From casual comments on the corridor to genuine hate language against females. It feels like we have gone back in time. The term toxic masculinity is often used and whilst its intention is to highlight the negative aspects of how a boy can behave, I wonder if by using the word toxic alongside the word masculinity it begs the question of what masculinity should look like. It feels as a society that we are getting really good at telling boys what they shouldn't be, it makes me wonder how much we're telling boys what they can be and what choices they have. I wonder if some of the fascination in Andrew Tate is that he is providing answers to these boys. I would hope that we all would all agree that the answers he is providing are unhelpful and dangerous, but what if he's the only one providing answers. If a child is looking for a role model and if a child is looking for ways to belong and if somebody provides both those things, that is incredibly attractive. It is important as schools that we have no tolerance for misogyny and hate language towards girls. It is also important that we don't inadvertently blame the boys for everything. We have to question if they are using this language and displaying these behaviours - what are their unmet needs and how can we better meet them? This is the only way that they stop looking for answers on their own and end up with Andrew Tate.

We understand in schools that children need role models and aspirational people that they can identify with. We have come so far in ensuring therefore that we include women, individuals from black and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, individuals who identify as LGBTQ and this is so important and so inspiring. I wonder if in doing this we ever forget the boys who would consider themselves to have none of these protected characteristics. The boys who have absent fathers, or fathers who don’t provide healthy role models. The boys who grow up with fathers who have lost their role in the world due to the closure of mines or changes in industry. As with everything, children these days seek so much information about who they should be or could be from social media, gaming and other online platforms, it no wonder we’re all talking about Andrew Tate.

So do I have the solution, unfortunately not…yet! I am fascinated by this topic and genuinely believe that it is our generation that have the responsibility to ensure that the fallout from the essential empowerment of some groups, isn’t the disempowerment of boys. If this happens or continues to happen perhaps, then to me the very least we see is boys who struggle to achieve and struggle to become successful, and the very worst we see is boys trying to claim back power and status through aggression, violence and the need to make other groups subversive.

It makes me think of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and the quote of a Commander:

"Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some." (Margaret Attwood, Chapter 32)

So, if you work in a school I ask you to check you PSHE curriculum, review your inspirational people books or displays and reflect on your responses and conversations with boys. I ask you to think about the male role models the children encounter and think about whether they provide choices of what a positive male could be like. I ask you to acknowledge and reward positive behaviours and teach emotional literacy, thinking about some boys as needing to be a targeted group. I ask you to continue to challenge inappropriate language and misogyny, however invite discussion around this so boys feel able to express their views and opinions in a safe environment. I actually ask you to continue to talk about Andrew Tate and acknowledge that the end to the statement 'Boys will be..' depends on what we teach them.

The Train Crash Analogy

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 12:31:00 GMT

Who are the children we don't know about?

We all know the analogy… you are tempted to go to the people who are screaming for help and who superficially appear to have the most serious injuries. However, what we should do is look for the people who are silent, check that those who look okay don’t have even more severe internal damage. I passionately believe that sometimes we need to apply this analogy to schools and safeguarding.

I spend lots of time providing safeguarding supervision, conducting safeguarding audits, and generally supporting schools around children that they are working with for all sorts of reasons. Of course, I am not suggesting that we ignore children who are on Child Protection Plans, children who are looked after or those children who exist on all sorts of vulnerable lists, because that is literally what I have spent my entire career shouting about. I am however, always interested to know how systems in schools support DSLs to know who they don’t know about. This is when I am reassured that safeguarding systems are genuinely robust. I feel we also have to have this same philosophy for SENCO roles, and other pastoral roles, as the same logic should be applied. What about the children who aren’t screaming? What about those children and young people who’s strategy for survival is to become the wall paper?

It is so easy for children to go under the radar, we know about the ones where there are other services involved, and a key part of the school role is doing their bit for these children and also holding other services to account. In reality though, these children should have regular reviews, meetings, plans in place that means that there are defined points in time where we are checking what is going on for them. What can happen however, is that we spend hours and hours talking about these same children, and hours that don’t necessarily result in any further actions or impact. The danger is that we get so embedded and embroiled in their story, that we don’t take a step back to ensure that our involvement is actually making a difference, and whilst ever we are in this child’s story, we could be oblivious to someone else’s. The importance of Safeguarding Supervision is that it should provide an opportunity to reflect on what’s going well, what are we still concerned about and what needs to happen next. It should also provide an opportunity to consider children who maybe aren’t talked about quite as much.

When we think of the large secondary schools, and the number of children who walk through their doors, how on earth can we know about every child. The worry is that we don’t know about every child. Every child deserves to have someone checking that everything is okay. Some children have developed phenomenal strategies to cope with the most adverse circumstances, and this means that they never scream for help, or even politely request it. We only need to consider some of our Young Carers to appreciate the resilience and ability of some children to deal with inordinate amounts of pressure, responsibility and emotional stress, yet they turn up for school each day and present as if they are no different to their peers. Consider those children with really serious medical conditions who manage their daily tablet taking and constant risk assessments, and never complain or cause a fuss. These are the children who we could easily miss. Not to mention those children suffering daily abuse and trauma that have not been, and may never be, discovered. Children don’t necessarily break and tell someone; they are perhaps more likely to get more adept at coping and thus the likelihood of discovery actually reduces over time.

It makes me think of a piece of work I was involved in a few years ago, which involved the development of a First Day Calling Procedure for school. This is fairly embedded across schools now and is something I obviously always ask about when completing safeguarding reviews. For anyone not working in education, in a nutshell this is the procedure schools follow when a child is absent and is about ensuring that if the school have not heard from a parent or carer to explain the absence, we keep checking until we know the child is safe. Now understandably majority of schools prioritise those children who are known to be vulnerable when following their procedures, and you can see the care and logic behind this. I, however, always feel compelled to remind schools, that First Day Calling Procedures came about due to a number of incidences involving children and families that would not have been considered vulnerable. Families that would have been on no-one’s list. I raise the point that these families not contacting the school about their child or children being absent was unusual, and therefore at this point that should have been a flag of vulnerability. They became vulnerable in that instant.

Now I fully appreciate that the people who work in pastoral roles in schools are already overwhelmed, pushed to capacity and ridiculously busy, so I am not just trying to add to that workload. I am however passionate about doing all we can to move safeguarding systems from being reactive to proactive. Every serious case review, learning review or similar talks about the need for better communication, often between agencies, however this is a learning point for anyone working with children. The most robust, safe and proactive safeguarding systems in schools are supported by a child centred culture and ethos. They have nailed having a team approach, where key people communicate regularly to share information. Safeguarding does not rely on one DSL and a Deputy, it is intrinsic in all staff, and thus however big the actual ‘safeguarding team’, there is a genuine team approach. Of course, no one person can know about every child. However, someone in every school should know about every child, so our job is to work out how that is possible.

How are we checking on the children who aren’t screaming and who have no superficial injuries? Are there any children that no one really knows about? How do you know children are coping? Who will notice if a child’s vulnerability changes in an instant? Are we professionally curious about the children we work with and what their lives look like? How do we ensure that we notice the children who are trying really hard not to be noticed?

“Sometimes the best hiding place is the one that’s in plain sight.” Stephanie Meyer.

Our safest approach to keeping children safe has to be one of almost conscious incompetence, we have to assume there are children we don’t know about. It is not good enough to say it could happen here, we have to assume its already happening. This can be a scary place to be, which is why our pastoral roles need to have their emotional wellbeing prioritised. I often talk to DSLs about the children that keep them awake at night, I know a truly devoted DSL is kept awake worrying about the children that they haven’t met yet. So if after reading this, we all ask our class teachers, our form tutors and our pastoral staff who don’t we know about, maybe one more child will get rescued from the train wreck?

Best Adventure Ever

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 20:45:14 GMT

So today marks the first-year anniversary of my business and I could not be happier with the decision I made all those months ago. Was it scary? – terrifying! Did I think I could do it? – sort of, about 75% of the time?! Has it been easy? – nope although sometimes easier than I imagined it might be. Was it worth the gamble? – every time!

I have worked with over 50 schools across the country, 5 Local Authorities, 3 Music Services and a number of support services for schools. I have done training, coaching, audits, reviews, consultations and combinations of all of the above. I have worked from home, worked in schools close to home and travelled miles. Every single day is different, every day is interesting.

I have been fortunate enough to have incredibly supportive family and friends around me, who believed I could do this probably way more than I did. I have also been fortunate to have worked with some fantastic people, some of who I knew before and some who I have developed incredibly positive working relationships with, and I feel like I have known them forever.

I have learnt so much about myself, which sounds cheesy, however its true. I have also learnt lots about other people. It is only when you take a leap of faith that you see who really has your back. People have been amazing, and not necessarily the ones that I thought would be. There were those that I knew I could rely, and then there were others who blew me away with how supportive they were. l am genuinely lucky to have developed such a network of dedicated, passionate and kind people.

The hardest part for me has been the finance stuff – how much to charge created endless debates, sometimes with other people and mostly in my head. Its hard to quantify knowledge, experience and support and put a value to it, however I have realised that people understand that too and are happy to pay for a good service. Its also hard to have to think about finance when you have always been an employee, and it takes more time and headspace than I appreciated. I’m definitely a ‘work in progress’ here!

The easiest part has been embracing the opportunity to do work I am passionate about and genuinely enjoy, without having to clarify how its part of my job description or remit. My ‘job description’ changes frequently and that is such a luxury. I do however have to work harder at saying no – because in the beginning you daren’t say no to anything! The last few weeks leading up to Christmas were crazy because I had far too much booked in, and I need to manage that better. I am a sucker for trying to squeeze someone in if they need me!

I guess I am writing this as a reflection on the last 12 months, and also to help anyone who is considering any sort of change right now. It is the classic time for resolutions and life changes and so I hope reading some of my thoughts might be helpful, provide some nuggets of inspiration or put you right off. Whichever it is its good as long as it’s the right decision for you.

So, what would my top tips be? Not necessarily for running your own business (still have to pinch myself when I write that!), just top tips for making a significant change in your working life. These are things I think, advice I was given or things I have learnt along the way…..

If you can make a change and it means that you get to do things that you enjoy and are passionate about on a more frequent basis then it is definitely worth considering.

There is no such thing as a risk-free choice, so which risk is the most exciting?

Don’t leave in anger, leave because you can do better work elsewhere – for you or for others.

You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, and success is a completely subjective measure.

Work out what you actually need to earn, not what you currently earn or what you need to fund your current lifestyle. This doesn’t mean be tight or unrealistic either, however it definitely took some pressure of me in the early days.

Know who you can lean on when things are tough, especially if you are leaving employment and going solo. My husband and Mum particularly deserve medals for listening to my worries, concerns, random questions, worst-case scenarios, celebrations, rants etc etc

Develop a new group of ‘colleagues’, obviously this will happen naturally if you’re moving jobs, however if you are setting up on your own, you need people who you can talk to who get your work world. I have the most amazing team of ‘colleagues’ who are really like the Avengers without the costumes!

If you are going to make a change, aim for better work/life balance not worse. Even if you like the job more, I think you will regret the change if your family, friends or emotional wellbeing are sacrificed.

There is no such thing as a safe job, I think we all know this after the past few years. So, don’t stay in one that you hate because it feels safe – it might not be, and the safer choice might be to jump (for someone fairly risk averse I had to really force myself to embrace this concept).

Nothing has to be a permanent choice. If you set up on your own and it doesn’t work out as expected you can get another job or do something different. If you move to a new job and its not as you hoped, you can move again. I am not being flippant, and obviously you have to consider your financial position, however realising that setting up on my own didn’t have to be a ‘forever’ thing, made me realise it was worth a shot.

Know what you’re good at and what you can offer, and then make sure that your niche is not too niche. Work out what is transferrable to other areas and spend time investing in good quality training that will help take you beyond your current skill set.

Listen to all the advice, then choose what is relevant to you. People were so helpful and insightful, and I needed to hear it all. I will be forever grateful to anyone who gave me their thoughts on my business in the early days and I continue to take advice at every opportunity. It is then important however to be discerning about which advice you follow and to what extent.

Don’t look back. My journey so far has been so exciting because that is exactly what it has been – I keep moving forward and seeing where it takes me next. Am I doing now what I thought I would be doing 12 months ago? – yes, no and sort of. However, I was limited by my own expectations then, whereas now I have accomplished things that I wouldn’t have ever set out to do. Some of my favourite pieces of work have started with neither the school or service or I really knowing what they needed, working it out between us, and then ending up somewhere even better.

And finally, be yourself. I realised early on, that trying to do things like other people wasn’t going to work for me, because I am not them. I had to work out where I was different and use that as a positive rather than see it as a failing. Anyone who works with me I think will agree that I say it as it is. I am honest, open and challenging, however always aiming to be supportive, progressive and impactful. I don’t do things for the sake of doing them, and I am not the person to call if you want a tick in a box. I am passionate about developing others, whether that is through training, coaching, consultation or reviews – and not because I know everything, it’s because I want to find solutions and help people do the best job they can, for the children they work with. And it all comes back to that, I knew that from the outset that my values had to be my focus. If I was going to set up on my own, then there was no point if I was going to spend time doing work that compromised my values.

So here I am one year on and my plan for the future is to keep doing what I’m doing. I aim always to be supportive, be curious and be kind and here’s to that being my business plan!

#besupportive #becurious #justbekind

Child in Mind

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 16:37:28 GMT

With it being the first few weeks of the new academic year, it has predominately been all about Safeguarding for me over the last week or so. I know staff who work in schools are ready each year for their annual update and depending on the quality of the training they have received previously they approach this with I am sure a mix of déjà vu, anticipation and maybe a little dread if they have been used to an impersonal online course or dread to think, a not very inspiring trainer!

For the majority of us who deliver this training, we likewise battle with how to ensure our sessions are novel, engaging and re-motivating, because we are so passionate about what we do, and we want to leave people passionate too. My worst-case scenario is thinking that people have sat through a session with me and their only thought being as they leave the room – ‘thank goodness that’s over for another year’. My job is to inspire, to ignite and to help people reflect on what they will do differently this year. My aim is that I indirectly help as many children as possible to be that little bit safer (or ideally completely safe) as a result of something I have said in that INSET day or during that Twilight session.

So, how do I motivate myself to do this year after year, and how do you ensure that Safeguarding remains a priority, and that you and the people you work with never lose that momentum? For me its all about having that child in mind. It’s remembering those individual stories that potentially haunt us because we could have done better or remind us that we do make a difference, and sometimes both of those things in equal measure.

I have many ‘stories’ that I tell in my training, but they are not stories they are children, those children who I carry with me because they ensure people remember that we are not just talking about data, research, reviews and statistics. Each safeguarding issue exists within guidance because it has happened to real children and has had a devastating impact. It is so important that we never forget that. I change their names and slightly alter their circumstances to ensure these children remain anonymous, however what is important, is that in my head they are real, and I can see their faces, and remind myself that this is for them and all those that come after.

My most important story is about a little girl that we will call Nora. She is not my most important story because I did something amazing, and I am sure she doesn’t even remember me. She is also not my most important story because our response to her was either perfect or dreadful. She is my most important story because she taught me so much. She led me to where I am now and made me realise what a difference I could make.

I met Nora when I was a young and naïve Primary School Teacher. I was full of enthusiasm and determination, what I was not full of was quality training or experience of anything to do with safeguarding or child protection. I had received limited input (maybe half a day) within my PGCE, and that was about it. I had been told that Nora was a bit of a handful, although not really in the challenging behaviour sense, more because she was a little needy and demanding. There are some interesting indicators right there. If only I knew then that the first question I should have been asking myself was ‘I wonder what is going on for her that makes her so needy?’. Now I would know that needy means 'in need' rather than attention seeking. Instead, I was focused on how to ‘manage’ her behaviour, which surprisingly I didn’t do very well!

I very quickly however became very fond of Nora. She wasn’t my favourite or anything so unprofessional, she was just a child who I felt needed me or needed someone and at times she could be so receptive to the smallest things, that she fascinated me. Again, my gut was telling me so much, if only I had understood how important it was to listen to my gut. I had taught Nora for perhaps a term before I had the first insight to what was going on for her and it blew my mind.

We were doing a circle time about jobs; it was linked to our topic, and I thought a nice way to introduce the idea was to ask the children what type of jobs they did at home. How they maybe helped out their mummy or daddy or whoever they lived with, or things that they did for pocket money. Some of my children were quite shy and so rather than telling us the job, you had to mime it or act it out and then other children would try and guess what it was. Lots of the children did cooking, dusting, gardening – the type of things that I was expecting. It then got to Nora. Her mime was brilliant, so brilliant that my conscious mind would not let me accept what I was seeing for a good few seconds. Her mime was her filling a syringe and preparing a vein so that she could then inject what was in the syringe into someone else. I really hoped that there was a medical explanation for why she was doing this….. I instinctively knew that there wasn’t.

It felt like an eternity before I took action, I am since reassured by the timings that I must have reacted quicker than it felt. I was totally in swan mode now – my head and voice were somehow calm when below the surface I was in freefall panic, and I was paddling like crazy to keep afloat. I thanked Nora and explained that I thought she was maybe doing a very grownup job that the others may not be able to guess and asked if I could guess later. We then moved on to the remaining children who could have quite frankly mimed anything as I was just willing the lesson to be over so I could ask for help. I have never felt so far out of my depth, or so convinced that what I did next was crucial.

As I am sure you have worked out, Nora’s job at home was to prepare her Mum’s heroin. I didn’t ask her properly about it I don’t think, as I am sure there were a few leading questions in there. I rather clumsily did establish that this was the tip of a rather large iceberg that we knew nothing about. Nora was 7 years old. She was the person in her house who got her and her sister up and ready for school. She was the person in her house who fed them, with whatever she could find – raw eggs were a particular speciality. She was the person in her house who was worried that she might go home from school and not be able to wake her Mummy up. She loved school, because it was the only place she could be 7 years old.

Nora was eventually fostered by a very lovely lady, after I had had a crash course in referrals to Social Care, Section 47 investigations, Child Protection Conferences and Core groups. I learnt so much about the systems and processes with Nora and as much from what was done well as those things which even in my naivety I could see could have and should have been done better. I saw first-hand how much Mum had been let down, it was that scary and inevitable cycle of abuse and neglect that we see so often. I will never forget how shocked and guilty I felt that despite everything she had done to Nora, I felt sorry for her too. She was also just a needy and demanding child, even though she was at least ten years older than me at the time.

I came across professionals that I had so much respect for and learnt so much from, and I came across those who taught me how never to be when working within safeguarding. I saw how processes sometimes helped and sometimes hindered, and I started to make the link between the guidance and the legislation and the actual children it was there to protect.

I learnt the most however from Nora. I learnt that I wasn’t the hero in this story. She did not see me as saving her, she saw me for a long time as the person who turned her world upside down. I learnt that most children still love their parents, even if they have harmed and neglected them. I learnt that Nora was perhaps always going to struggle to trust adults now, as she had told me something that she felt safe to share and the result was that her and her sister no longer lived with her Mummy. I learnt that a 7-year-old child is more incredible than you would ever imagine, and I began to understand a little about what resilience actually looked like. I also learnt that I had to hang in there. It took a very long time however Nora and I parted on amicable terms. I wish I could meet her now and hear her reflections on that part of her life as I bet, I could learn even more. I also learnt that I did the right thing, even though Nora didn’t see it this way, and that might be the case with so many of the children I was to come across in my career. I learnt that you have to have hope that one day they might understand and be thankful that you did what you did, and that these ‘rewards’ may never come or if they do they might be a long time coming.

When I saw this quote years later, it was Nora that immediately sprung to mind:

“A child that’s being abused by their parents doesn’t stop loving their parents, they stop loving themselves.” – Shahida Arabi

So, when I am writing, creating and delivering safeguarding training, I always have Nora in mind. I see her face and hear her voice and aim to help one more Nora through every member of staff that listens to my training. I ask that when you are thinking about safeguarding you likewise have a child in mind. A child that reminds you why recording that incident is so important, a child that prompts you to take a concern seriously, a child that drives you to make a difference every day. I am so grateful that I met Nora when I did, without her knowing it, she shaped the following 20 years of my career and continues to influence what I do now. She teaches me to constantly reflect, I know so much more now than I did then, I understand so much more about why and how she behaved as she did, I would hopefully do so much better were I to meet Nora today and that is why I do the job I do. If I can give people their ‘Nora moment’ as early in their career as possible, and ideally before they come across the actual child, maybe they will do a slightly better job than they may have done otherwise.

And as always, the way we spot those indicators, signs or symptoms of abuse or neglect is knowing each of our children really well so we can see when something is not okay and wonder what is going on for them. The key to safeguarding as with so much of what we do in schools is to be curious and to just be kind.

Learning to Surf

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 09:44:56 GMT

I spoke in my podcast last week about change, mostly focussing on adults and how we deal with change, or how we can help others to do so. I provided some Top Tips, and they got me thinking about children and the changes they face and how they cope with them. Of course, when we think about change for children, we are often considering the impact of transitions. There are the big obvious transitions, like moving from Primary to Secondary, but also the little ones, maybe just moving from one activity to the next, or from home to school. Transitions and change can be huge trigger points for many children, and how we anticipate and manage them can make a real difference.

Change is stressful, transitions are scary. Our ability to cope with change is a really personal thing, it depends on things like whether our basic needs are met, our experience of previous change, how well supported we feel and the context around the change. Our ability to cope will alter dependent on how big we perceive the change to be, how much we are enjoying where we currently are and how we feel about what is coming next. I talked in the podcast about the importance of communication and guess what, this is just the same for children. As with anything I ever talk about, having a positive relationship with the child, and understanding what they need is imperative to communicating effectively about change. The more we can help them to understand what is happening, the more likely they are to be able to deal with it.

Now some changes or transitions are easier because we know that they are coming. If a change is expected, we have an opportunity to prepare, plan and manage it. As we face the end of the school year, I am hoping that transition is a word that is on the tip of your tongue and a common theme in lots of the work you are doing with children in school. Obviously if the child is facing a school move, this is a much bigger transition, although even for those children just moving up a year the transition can still seem huge. As with adults facing change, children are instinctively thinking about what they are going to lose, and we have to ensure there is lots of discussion about moving forward and the positives that they will gain going forward.

Clearly the pandemic and bubbles are not very conducive in planning transitions, however we can’t let this become a barrier to ensuring we capitalise on the opportunities we do have for planning and preparation. I am also conscious that bubbles appear to be bursting everywhere, which I am sure is causing lots of disruption to the best laid plans. We have to be mindful that if children are isolating, they are not forgotten, and that if they are missing discussions or activities around transition, they have the opportunity to access these virtually or at a later date.

With all transitions we have to be guided by the child and how they perceive it. It may not seem like a big change to us; however, we can’t assume that this is the case for the child. If we consider a child on the autistic spectrum for example, we have to understand that the stress and anxiety around even the smallest of changes can be significant. We have to appreciate that this stress can become a behaviour trigger, whatever that looks like for each individual child. As I have talked about in previous blogs, this trigger could then lead to fight, flight or freeze, so we may see a child becoming aggressive, we may see a child refusing to do anything, we may see a child becoming really withdrawn and disengaged. If we can anticipate the change and plan for it, then we stand a chance of reducing the stress and thus reducing or even eliminating the resultant behaviours.

So, when we are dealing with expected changes or transitions the key, as you may have guessed, is planning and preparation. How can we maintain some of the consistency, structure and routine that the child needs, whilst also facilitating a transition? We also need to consider how the child is feeling and what is behind those feelings. We need to use our emotion coaching techniques here to model how we might feel and then deal with the change. It’s a time for compassion and being curious. It may seem silly that a child really strongly reacts when you ask them to finish one activity to be ready for the next, however we have to consider how it felt for them, from their perspective. What if you were doing something that you really enjoyed, and that you were really engrossed in, so much so that you are not thinking about anything other than the activity you are doing? What if someone then told you to stop, without any warning? There are a number of ways you might respond, you might ignore them because you want to finish what you are doing, you might even say no I’m doing this, you might get angry because you have to stop, you are less likely to just calmly stop. This is why warning children that the time for their current activity is coming to an end is so important.

There are some great and simple strategies for this. Depending on the age of the child, time reminders can be helpful, so just saying things like ‘In 5 minutes I am going to ask you to put your pens down’, or ‘You have 5 minutes to complete the paragraph you’re writing’. For younger children, you may need to focus less on time, however let them know what the expectation is. For some children their anxiety about the change is worrying that they haven’t finished what they are doing. It may be therefore really helpful for these children to hear ‘You have time to finish the sentence you’re writing and then we can come back to this piece of work tomorrow afternoon if you have not quite completed it’. Thinking about children who need more visual cues having a sand timer or an electronic timer on your whiteboard can be helpful. Tell them that they are coming to the end of the activity and if they look at the sand timer they can see how long is left. Visual cues are so useful for so many children.

I love a visual timetable, and often we have them for individual children, or just for very young children. They actually work well for anyone who has a more visual learning style, or where language is more difficult, or where sequencing is a challenge. They can work well for all ages; older children could be supported to create their own that they keep in their planner for example. Whole class visual timetables are also a great idea – especially if it can be someone’s job to remove the activity that has just been completed – everyone can see what is happening Now, Next and Later. We all feel better when we are clear about when break will be or when we can eat lunch! A visual timetable can reduce anxiety and distraction, and it can also stop the child asking endlessly when its home time!

Visual cues are fabulous for planning larger transitions too. The loveliest example I ever saw was in a Special School where they were preparing a child to begin swimming lessons in a different location to where they were used to. This was causing huge anxiety, and staff were so keen to get her excited about it because swimming was an activity she adored. Staff used the strategy of Social Stories. They had compiled a book of photos which had been commenced weeks before the change was planned. They had started by putting in pictures of the journey and the new pool and then put little bits of information around the photos which answered the questions the child had asked. Over the weeks they then took pictures of the child experiencing the change, for example one of her ready to leave her school with her coat and swimming bag, one of her on the bus, one of her outside the building and so on.

They were really small steps, and this was all they focused on each week. The child had seen the journey and then could see her making it. My favourite part was that they had then made a duplicate of the book, so the child had one at school and one at home. The child could use it to see that the change was possible, to ask any questions and to visualise herself making that change. By the time the child went swimming at the new pool it all felt really familiar to her. She was nervous however in an excited way, rather than a refusing to go, aggressive, meltdown type of way. It took time, planning and preparation, however by investing prior to the change, managing the change went smoothly, and actually other changes that occurred after this went more smoothly too. The child had learnt and understood that she would be supported through any change, and that she was capable of accepting change. With older children these types of strategies could move to visualisation techniques. Using NLP techniques such as anchoring for example could really help a child to deal with a change that they feel anxious about. Transitional objects are great too. So having a teddy that the child takes from home and that sits on the teacher’s desk in school, or the pen that a student ‘borrows’ from their form tutor that they have to return at the end of the day, or the book that the teacher lends the child to be returned after the Summer holidays. They help children know that someone is keeping them in mind.

So, that’s all lovely if you have lots of time to plan and prepare, but what do you do about unexpected changes, as these are the ones that really throw children, whether they are big or small. Yet we know in schools there are often disruptions, things that happen out of our control and that shifts to routine are sometimes unavoidable. Firstly, we still need to think about planning and preparation, this time not for a specific event, but preparing the child or young person for any change. One of the best things we can do here is role modelling and again using those Emotion Coaching techniques. As professionals we often hide our feelings and certainly, we manage them in front of the children we are working with. This is of course appropriate; however, the downside is that they are not seeing that we have these emotions too. Verbalising what is going on our head can therefore be really positive, ‘I had planned to do Maths first this morning, I have just heard we have assembly now. I was feeling a bit frustrated about that, and I’ve had to take a few deep breaths. I have thought about it and realised that I can make doing Maths after playtime work just as well though, so I’m okay now.’ Adding in these small anecdotes can help children see that feeling an emotional response to change is okay, we can model techniques that they could use, and then we are demonstrating that we can survive change, and that it can be a positive thing.

We can coach children ahead. So, when a child has their learning brain engaged, we can talk them through how they feel about change, what strategies they use to cope with change, and introduce new things they could try. When unexpected change occurs, we can use these previous conversations to support them through it, ‘I know that change makes you feel unsettled and mad, I wonder if you are feeling like that now. What can you do to feel calmer? Remember we talked about counting backwards from 10 to help slow your breath.’ Transition routines can also be helpful, and if these are in place for planned transitions, they can also then be used for unexpected change. They are usually very simple and just something familiar that the child can hold on to, when other things feel disorientating, ‘Put pencil down, straighten shirt, take a breath, ready for what’s next.’ Take cues from things that the child already does and let them identify their own little routine, ensuring that it’s a routine that is unlikely to need to change. These can be so simple that no one else would even know that they were doing it and can move with the child as they get older.

It's also important that we celebrate success. When a child has successfully managed a change - tell them and make a big deal of it. Children and young people who struggle with change need tangible evidence that they can do it. Take a photo of them successfully doing something differently than they are used to, preferably with a massive smile on their face (or on yours!). The next time a change is about to happen, show them this evidence that they can get through this, and they will be okay. Keep pieces of work that they completed with a supply teacher and that were really good. You can then visually demonstrate how they responded to a change, ‘Remember when you weren’t expecting there to be a different teacher, and then you coped really well and did this amazing piece of work.’ Point out the strategies or skills that they used, make a point of emphasising things that they did which are good skills to develop, ‘I loved the way you noticed that assembly was going to be at a different time, and you just took a really deep breath and smiled at me to let me know that you were okay.’

Finally, I think it’s important that if children feel a change is coming from nowhere and being forced upon them, like of all of us we may demonstrate challenging behaviours because we are just trying to claw back some control. As I discussed in the podcast, taking control is a positive response to change so we need to remember this for children and young people too. Actually, the instinct to take control is a good one, however unless we manage that response it could lead to problems in a school setting. So when change is occurring, we need to provide children some limited choices so that they feel like they have some control over the situation, ‘When you go outside at break today you have to go to a different area, would you like me to come and find you to take you to the new area or do you want to choose a friend who can meet you and go with you?’ Allowing someone to feel like they have choices can be empowering and this then reduces anxiety and stress. They are not avoiding the change, however you are giving them some control on how to manage it.

I love the quote by John Kabat-Zin that says,

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

We can be tempted to try and eliminate change from children and young people’s lives, especially for those who find this particularly difficult. The danger however is that this is not what happens in the real world. The last few years have been a sledgehammer of a reminder that change, and sometimes unexpected and mind-blowingly huge change happens, and sometimes there is nothing we can do about it but manage through it. The more we can build our children’s resilience and provide them with support and strategies that they can employ when change happens the better. Being able to respond positively to change and transitions is a powerful strength, and one we need to equip children with before they go into the world. I actually think that so many of our children showed incredible resilience and the ability to respond and be flexible to change over the past couple of years – maybe they can teach some adults a thing or two!

So when preparing children and young people for change, plan and prepare, role model, be compassionate, be empathetic, be curious and just be kind.

#learntosurf #becurious #justbekind #becompassionate

Imposter Syndrome

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 28 May 2021 16:56:54 GMT

I have spoken with lots of people over the past few weeks around anxiety, pressure and ‘Imposter Syndrome’. In general, these have all been people who no one would imagine would feel any of these things, yet the reality is that most of us do sometimes. It was amazing to me the first time I realised that I wasn’t the only one that suffered from Imposter Syndrome, and it was even more incredible to discover that you’re really the exception if you don’t!

I love that idea that one day we will all get found out, I sometimes imagine the chaos that could ensue if we all got found out on the same day! The reality is that we all have a part of us who is that much younger self, who yearns for the lack of responsibility, sense of freedom, that when we had it, we didn’t appreciate enough. It feels ridiculous to that younger part of us, that we now have other people dependent on us and that we’re meant to be the grown-ups. Whether that is as parents or in our working lives or both, we have a sense that we are ‘winging it’ whilst everyone else seems to know what they’re doing.

There is nothing worse to feed Imposter Syndrome than comparison. Imagine something that you do on a fairly regular basis, and then imagine that you had no-one to compare yourself to when doing that thing. Whether it be parenting, teaching, training, making tea, playing football – well anything really – how much more enjoyment may we get out if it, if we just did it to the best of our ability without comparing ourselves to anyone else. Take singing, I love singing. I have always loved singing, from always being the backup singer to my sister in the back of the car, to singing in musicals, to singing to my children as babies. Am I a good singer? Well, my husband describes me as enthusiastic (and I think we all know what that means). So, am I a good singer? – well when I am on my own in my car with the windows firmly closed – I am awesome. However, when I am singing alongside others, maybe not so much. I am suddenly conscious of whether I’m off key, whether I’m as good as they are, I wonder how they hold those notes and when did they actually breathe. I forget to enjoy it and I just start to compare. Now as I am not Madonna (or someone more relevant in 2021), it doesn’t really matter, and my family just have to put up with my singing whether they like it or not. I can still enjoy it in the privacy of my own home or car and I won’t be appearing on BGT any time soon. However, what if this was a key aspect of my job? Or something that really impacted on my life?

The problem with today’s culture is that comparison is everywhere and this for me is a vital part of why Imposter Syndrome is even more profound a feeling today than in the past. We can literally google (other search engines are available) anyone doing anything and thus compare ourselves to them instantaneously. We rarely just enjoy doing something, because even in our search for learning to grow or develop that skill, we inevitably come across loads of people doing that same skill and often better than us. Our children are growing up in a culture of constant comparison and that is genuinely concerning. If we are thinking about a resilient child, with self-belief and ambition, then these comparisons can be inspiring, challenging and drive them to do better. However, if we consider the child lacking self-belief and self-confidence, then suddenly these comparisons just give me another reason to stop trying.

NLP talks about people being either ‘Internally Referenced’ or ‘Externally Referenced’. In really simple terms, you, perhaps lucky ones out there who are naturally and strongly Internally Referenced know within yourself when you have done a good job, you are able to provide your own motivation and you may even have difficulty accepting other people’s opinions. If, however you are Externally Referenced then you need other people’s opinions and without them you may find it difficult to assess how well you are doing, and you may need someone to tell you that you are doing a good job. Now neither is wrong and these are the extremes and as with most things a healthy balance of both can be useful, however when we think about the influence of comparisons then it is obvious to see that those of us who are more Externally Referenced can fall into the trap of not trusting in our own abilities or talents really easily. That doubt can creep in because the external sources that we are comparing ourselves to are telling us that we are not as good at something as someone else, or indeed anyone else.

Social Media and online videos or images only exacerbate this further, as often we are not even seeing a true comparison. We compare ourselves to an image that for all we know may have taken 3 hours to perfect, is filtered within an inch of its life and is taken from that perfect angle. I was watching some stunts that these YouTubers had posted with my son the other day, and I felt compelled to emphasise that whilst these stunts were indeed impressive, there was nothing about how many times they had practiced them, how genuine they were, or how they had been edited to look just right. A quote that really resonated with me when thinking about all this is:

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”

Steven Furtick

The random glimpses we get into each other’s lives tell us absolutely nothing about what’s going on for them other than the bit they wish to share in that moment. This is true in general, never mind in the virtual world. Comparisons are made by children and adults about what we should be aspiring to, based on stories, images and films that have been shared or posted by people entirely because they want to tell someone or want someone to see them. There are parts of all of us and our lives that we less readily share and certainly not with strangers, and often these may be the parts of ourselves that we are less happy or confident about. It’s no surprise then, that we see others and wonder why they don’t have the problems that we have, of course they have, they’re just not telling you that bit.

So, its reaffirming sometimes to share our insecurities, our vulnerabilities and our areas where we lack confidence. Not only because it will help someone else to see that, but the chances are also we will get someone sharing back. It’s important for our children to see that we have these doubts and areas where we have less confidence too, and then for them to see us take on the challenge or have a go anyway. Despite being British, it is okay to share our accomplishments and successes too, and especially those that have happened by overcoming an obstacle or a moment of panic maybe?

If you are suffering from a bit of Imposter Syndrome, take a moment to separate your feelings from the facts. Think about the evidence you have that you are more than capable of doing whatever it is your thinking about. Chances are you have done it or something similar before with some success, and chances are you’ll succeed this time too. Accentuate your positive attributes, what do you feel confident about right now? what is going really well? Also take a moment to consider how other people see you, how would they describe you and what complimentary things would they say? Whatever you are about to face, someone believed you could do it because that is why you are here. If it is work related think about how you were asked to do the presentation, meeting, session – whatever it might be. Usually, we are asked to do something because someone has seen something in us that makes them think we can do a good job of it. Remind yourself of what they saw. I think the other thing that can help is preparation. The more confident you feel about your knowledge base, the more confident you will feel in the moment. Trust yourself to know the stuff that you know.

In terms of our children, we can’t stop them seeing and making these comparisons, however what we can try and do is build their ability to more critically assess what they are seeing, rather than just critically assessing themselves. We need to talk to children about the fact that what they are seeing may not be real or may be manipulated and then they can hopefully respond to it more appropriately. Likewise, as adults we have to model this too. We need to be mindful of how we talk in front of them – if we are constantly comparing ourselves to others and putting ourselves down as a result, then so will they.

So, although many of you reading this may be heading into a half term, return after the holiday trusting that you are in the position you are in because you absolutely deserve to be there. Don’t compare yourselves to others, unless it is to help you grow and learn. They won’t do it like you, because they are not you. They may appear to be more confident and capable, although chances are their younger part is screaming ‘Imposter’ at them sometimes too. Remember this for yourself and also when supporting or working with others – if they are Internally Referenced, they will really appreciate and may even need your positive feedback, and if they are Externally Referenced, they will take the bits they need and will still be grateful that you gave it anyway. At the end of the day, we’re all just pretending to be grown-ups, so let’s help each other with that through being supportive, being curious and just being kind.

#becurious #justbekind #impostersyndrome

A Faster Horse

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 14:59:50 GMT

Following on from my blog last week about reframing special educational needs and disability, it got me thinking more and more about the idea of aspirations. In the different roles I have had, aspirations or the absence of them has been a key theme, and one of the most fundamental barriers for many of the children I have worked with. Right back when I started teaching, I worked in a school where it felt that children had really limited aspirations perhaps due to their circumstances and the beliefs of the community at that time.

I remember doing a Geography lesson regarding the comparison between an African village and a Town or City in England. Now this school was 20 minutes away from Nottingham City Centre, and so I naively began my lesson talking about Nottingham and asking the children to think about what was there, the features and so on. I immediately realised that this was going nowhere, and when I then asked the children how many of them had visited Nottingham, 2 children out of my class of 35 raised their hands. I realised I was making huge assumptions about how able these families were to travel to their closest city, and therefore how much harder it was for these children to imagine a world beyond where they lived. It struck me that the contrast between where they lived, and Nottingham was going to provide as rich a discussion as comparing where they lived to an African village. That 20-minute journey may as well have been thousands of miles away, and this unwittingly meant that these children and indeed their families had understandable limits on what felt achievable for them.

Furthermore, when discussing what the children wanted to be when they grew up, apart from a couple of exceptions, all the children named jobs or careers that existed within their community. They all named jobs that someone they knew did. Now obviously we all consider our futures when we are children, based on what we know and have experienced at the time. However, what was remarkable to me was that these children were 8 and 9 years of age, and their ambitions were so practical. I had no astronauts or prima ballerinas, there were no popstars or pilots, it was like they had already put limitations on their dreams. I remember getting excited as one boy said footballer, so I zoomed in and asked him a few more questions. He explained that he wanted to get good enough to play for a nearby semi-professional team so that he could play football and get paid, but for his real job he thought he would work in the local factory.

Now please don’t think I am being snobbish or judgemental here, and I am not suggesting there is anything wrong in wanting to do the job your Dad does or follow in your Mum’s footsteps. Success and aspirations come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and I not suggesting that some are more valid than others. It just felt too soon for these children to be even considering the practicalities around the job they would do, and I wondered what they had heard, felt or experienced for them to have got there. As a school, there was a real sense that part of our role was raising aspirations and allowing the children to believe that anything was possible, however those lessons really highlighted for me that the starting point or the obstacles in place to them really believing that were very different to what I had anticipated.

Going on to work in Youth Justice, I came across so many incredible young people. The boy who was capable of writing a brilliant script, the boy who hacked my phone when I still had a brick, the girl who was such a beautiful artist and the list goes on. Yet if I think about what careers they all aspired to, they all generally revolved around mechanics, labouring and hairdressing. Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these careers, and success for many of the young people I worked with was them achieving these roles. My concern wasn’t the options they chose, it was the fact that they felt the options were so few, and that these options often had no bearing on what the young person actually enjoyed or was good at. More than this the adults around them also bought into these limited options, again without really considering how right they actually were for the individuals in front of them. These children needed a positive future to aim for even more than their peers, yet sometimes those limited aspirations led them to think that their current lifestyle was much more exciting than anything they were working towards.

Whilst working with the Virtual School, we were passionate about ensuring that schools and other adults supporting the children looked after we had the privilege of working with, encouraged aspirations and applied no assumptions or limitations on what the child was capable of achieving. We were keen to celebrate some of the amazing successes of young people who went on to University or who followed their dream, not to claim any of that success but to highlight that anything was possible. We also knew that research backs up the fact that high aspirations for a child can increase the child’s chances of success. Burley & Halpern (2001) in their review of the literature and Shin (2003) when looking at distance learning all found a significant positive relationship between high aspirations and school success. So, logic would tell you that having limited, or negative aspirations has the opposite effect. It potentially all has the danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe the child can’t do well, thus the child does not do well, and I now have evidence that the child can’t do well…. and on it goes.

A friend shared some quotes with me the other day and one that feels very apt when considering our roles as educators is:

“If I accept you as you are, I will not help you. However, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of being, I help you.”

Goethe (1749-1832)

It links to my blog last week and in previous weeks, where labels are so often used to understand children and their needs, however in the wrong hands or with the wrong perspective those labels can become like a millstone around the child’s neck. It can be useful to know that a child is looked after, so that we appreciate that they are coming to us with experiences that may impact on their thinking, behaviour and presentation. However, if we use that label to assume that the child will be any less able, any less intelligent or any less capable of success, then it us that is placing a barrier in front of that child. We are placing a ceiling on their potential, and that is not okay. If we instead imagine what the child could be able to achieve, focus on their strengths, feed their passions and be inspired by their dreams and ambitions, who knows how important we become on that child’s journey to success.

Also, if we encounter children who are limiting themselves, it is our job to show them what they can achieve and what is possible. It is easier to join them in their comfort zone and not challenge those perceptions. Billy Elliot would have been a pretty rubbish story though, if that dance teacher had just turned round and said, ‘Do you know what your dad’s right, boys like you don’t dance’. We have to allow children to see beyond their current situation and to realise that they are not limited by what those before them have done. Especially in the world we live in now, where we have no idea what future jobs could even look like, we have to encourage our children to be curious, want to explore the world and look for opportunities.

I also like the quote from Henry Ford that just shows why we can’t let any limits that children give themselves stop us in being aspirational for them:

“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”

If children see limited options, then we need to give them unlimited experiences. We have to provide opportunities for them to see and imagine more. We have to be mindful that our aspirations are not theirs and that we may need to do a bit of exploration too. I think it is hard in schools as children are surrounded by adults who have chosen to work in schools. If I am a child that finds school difficult, that aspiration certainly does not fit with me. I had a fantastic discussion with some very likeminded people this week where we discussed the need to have working musicians spending time in schools to inspire children to want to make music. Likewise, we considered how amazing it can or would be to have scientists inspiring science lessons, and authors inspiring writing. Making those connections between the lessons in school and the real adult world can make such a difference to children who are trying to work out where they fit and realising the breadth of where a subject can take them can put a whole new slant on that subject.

So, my wish this week is that we are curious when talking to children about their futures, and if we spot a child who has already put a cap on their success, we remove that cap and show that child what they are capable of. We remain aspirational for every child; we are not held back by labels and diagnoses and we do everything we can to ensure that the child is not held back by these either. We have to be wary of being judgemental and preachy, because some of the factors that limit children’s knowledge and experiences, such as finances, are real, so how can we overcome those? We spend plenty of time in adulthood being practical and cautious, children need to spend longer dreaming, imagining, exploring and feeling like they can do anything – in fact maybe we all do!

Help the children you work with find their dreams, be kind, be curious and be aspirational!

#justbekind #becurious #afasterhorse #beaspirational

A Different Way of Looking at the World

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:57:56 GMT

The best thing about being an Education Consultant is the variety of work that I am doing from one day to the next. Not only is this exciting and stimulating; it also allows you to link concepts and ideas across areas that may otherwise not occur to you. As an example, I am currently working on a number of Inclusion projects, was also putting together some training around children who had experienced trauma and am in the process of further NLP training. I therefore had lots of jargon and terminology in my head linked to inclusion, was putting together activities around understanding the biology behind trauma, whilst I was also using my headspace to consider the impact of reframing. I love the idea and power of reframing.

Reframing, as it would suggest is looking at something differently. Its not looking at the world through rose tinted glasses, however it is realising that when something happens, we attach meaning to it. We can choose to add a different meaning to it or put it in a different frame.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

William Shakespeare

When we think about this in NLP terms, it can really help change our perspective on something and potentially help us to deal with situations much more effectively. For example, rather than thinking ‘I am too old to try something new’, reframing it to think ‘I could bring lots of experience to this new activity’.

Likewise, I have advised lots of people working with children who have experienced trauma to see their behaviour through a different lens, and in essence this is exactly the same thing. Rather than thinking ‘That child is always looking at ways to be disruptive’, thinking instead ‘What does that child need to stay more focused’. When working with children it can really help to separate the child from the behaviour and see that the behaviour is just communication. It helps us think about what we can do, rather than focusing on what they won’t or in most cases can’t do.

The idea of reframing therefore is something that I try and apply in both my personal and professional worlds, however it struck me that it isn’t often a discussion we have when talking about inclusion and considering children with special educational needs. I did read an article that talked about outdated language that we have previously used regarding children with special educational needs and disabilities, and like others who read that article it made me question the language we use now and whether one day we will realise that lots of that isn’t ideal either. Hence me considering reframing in this context.

As I’m sure many of us do when thinking about something these days, I grabbed my phone and using my preferred search engine typed in ‘children with special educational needs’ or words to that effect. What immediately caught my attention were the number of negative words that jumped out from the first couple of pages; ‘struggle’, ‘challenge’, ‘difficulties’, ‘problem’, ‘coping’, ‘concerns’ to name but a few, and trust me there were many more. I then consciously looked for more positive words and I found a big fat zero. Obviously had I clicked on the links or looked further I may have found some, however it made me think that as a parent if I had just been told that my child had special educational needs how easy it would be to stick a huge negative frame around the whole thing. I would have to actively and consciously search to look for the positives, and that’s really sad.

The thing is, our education system is totally built around a perception of the average child, and I believe perception is entirely the right word. When I deliver training around which children could be classed as ‘vulnerable’, once we go through the list most people are left considering a handful of children in their classes who don’t come into this category. Even when we consider what constitutes special educational needs, schools will vary so much regarding who is on their register, because we are comparing children within a very specific context. A child who needs lots of additional support in one school, may manage just fine with a tiny bit of support in another. It all depends on demographics, class sizes, relationships and the list goes on…

Our mainstream education system also considers passing examinations as the marker of success, and it is these examinations that open doors to each next step in our system. Now I am not entirely against exams, however what I do worry about is that we have just this one marker of success. As a trustee for a Music Service, we have recently been talking lots about progression routes, and again the traditional measure of how good someone is at music comes from assessments and grades. Yet I wonder how many of the most ‘successful’ musicians we can think of have ever been asked what Grades they have achieved if any. This is not saying that those assessments and grades aren’t important or relevant in some fields of music, however what this clearly exemplifies is that we can be successful in areas of music without them and there are other ways of measuring our progression and ability.

The same is clearly true in society, yet we somehow know this fact and still choose to ignore it. Let’s think about some successful people we know in all sorts of fields; Steven Spielberg, Jamie Oliver, Cher, Sir Richard Branson, Beethoven, Stevie Wonder, Michael Phelps, Ryan Gosling, Tim Burton, Jerry Seinfield…. A seemingly random list of people who have all excelled in their relevant fields, yet all people who would be classed as having a special educational need. According to the information out there these people have dyslexia, sensory impairments, ADHD or Autism, they would all have been children who in school may have required additional support, or in many cases found school difficult because no-one identified that they just needed some additional support. However, what they have all demonstrated is that this alleged ‘need’ didn’t stop them being successful and actually and way more importantly, many of them claim that their ‘need’ was actually what drove them to be as successful as they are.

Which brings me back to reframing… Who on earth decided that there was only one way of thinking, learning or problem solving? Why do we imagine that there is always a right answer, and that there is only one? I have said it before and I will say it again, we are often far too focused on teaching children the right answers, rather than focusing on teaching children how to solve the problem and I guess this goes one step further than that. If you are dyslexic you are used to being told that you may find reading and writing more challenging, however how often are you congratulated for your ability to alter and create perception, how often do we spend time developing that ability to see patterns or connections, how much do we encourage others to embrace that vivid imagination. All of these are common attributes of dyslexia, evident in some of the famous people I referred to earlier, yet I bet majority of us only think about what a dyslexic may find hard to do when we first consider the term. I don’t think Steven Spielberg was ever told that he couldn’t win those Oscars until he got all his spellings right!

I use the example of dyslexia as it is one example that many of us will have had some experience of however similar examples could be given for all the ‘needs’ I mention here and all the ‘needs’ and ‘disabilities’ we often refer to. It really makes me think about these terms and how helpful they are. It is interesting that we are so focused on what we can’t do, rather than what we can. I love this quote:

“What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school, but a different way of looking at the world and learning.”

Chuck Grassley

Where would we be if people didn’t view the world differently? How would we evolve and invent if there was only one right answer? It seems to me that we need to reframe our education system because instead of celebrating children who view the world differently, we instead just spend many years telling them what they can’t do. In some this drives ambition and a desire to be successful in spite of that, however for how many is it just easier to believe what they are told. How many children put a ceiling on their own potential just because they don’t entirely fit the ‘mainstream’ views of success?

I like the idea put forward by Elaine S. Dalton when she said;

“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.”

If we always do what we’ve always done, we will always get what we have always got – isn’t that what they say? What we need when we think of some of the huge issues the world is facing right now, is people who think differently. People who aren’t constrained by the right answers because they are imaginative and creative enough to know that there are more answers that we have just not found yet. Thinking about climate change as one example, surely, we need people who can visualise solutions, who can’t be pressurised to think in a certain way, who have incredible attention for detail and will spot things that others will overlook. Interesting that these are all attributes not tested in SATs but are often attributes observed in people with autism.

I could go on and on about this subject, however I think you can see my point and it brings me back to reframing. Let’s be completely radical here and consider whether maybe children don’t have special educational needs or disabilities, maybe the way the world and particularly our education system is set up just creates these needs and disables certain children. I am not being flippant here, and I am not suggesting that we remove support, what I am posing is the question of whether we frame things in such a way that we focus almost entirely on the negative. It then takes incredible parents, skilled and passionate teachers, ambitious coaches and most of all remarkable children to turn those negatives into positives and go on to reach if not smash potential and be successful.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to see what could happen if we viewed these ‘conditions’, ‘needs’ and ‘diagnoses’ (again all negative words), as positive from the outset? It’s not about ignoring the differences, it’s about seeing difference as a good thing. As I said in a previous blog ‘normal is boring’ (whatever normal is).

So next time you encounter someone who see things differently to you, rather than assuming that either of you is right or wrong, maybe instead consider what you can learn from each other. The next time a child gives you a completely bizarre answer to a question, before saying ‘no, that’s not quite right’ maybe ask them to explain how their thinking got them there. The next time you are working with a child with a special education need or a disability, see the child first and be curious about how they see the world, rather than assuming they need to see it like you. If we all approached difference as something positive, we wouldn’t even need to talk about inclusion. It would all be so simple if we remembered to just be kind!

#justbekind #becurious #normalisboring #adifferentwayoflookingattheworld

Our Little Secret

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 11:56:21 GMT

Safeguarding has been at the forefront of my mind these last few weeks, particularly in terms of abuse that takes place outside of the home, but in places where our children should be safe. I am sure many of you watched the documentary ‘Football’s Darkest Secret: Survivors of child abuse tell their stories’ which included some of those survivors talk harrowingly about the abuse they suffered, as captured within the long-awaited ‘Sheldon Report’ published in March 2021. Likewise, there was the recent Whyte report following over 400 individuals making complaints regarding the world of Gymnastics. It is tragic that these individuals are only feeling able to come forward now and tell their stories, and their bravery is incredible.

What is even more tragic is if we pretend that this is a historic problem that isn’t happening right now to a child somewhere. As someone who has been involved in Safer Recruitment training for a number of years, it still astounds me how powerful the training is, and how much it makes people think. It is not because its is gratuitously shocking for the sake of it. It is because the content is shocking. Children do get abused, and it happens in our schools, our sports clubs, our religious groups, our scout groups, our music lessons, and the list goes on. And that is shocking to hear and to accept. Wherever we have children, we have adults in positions of power, and thus there is the possibility of abuse. I know I sound harsh, depressing and cynical, however that’s the reality and part of the problem can be not acknowledging that.

If we don’t accept that abuse taking place within our organisation is a possibility, then we aren’t doing enough to protect the children in our care. We have to assume the worst and then we can start to put measures in place to reduce the risk. We have to remember that abusers very rarely look like abusers – because what does an abuser look like anyway? Abusers look like football coaches, dance teachers, priests, nursery nurses, gymnast coaches, guide leaders…. they look like everyone else, except that they then have a uniform or a context that we imagine guarantees that they are safe. At this point however we are trusting that the organisation who employs those individuals, or allows them to volunteer with them, has done all they can to ensure that this is the case.

And no, I am not just talking about DBS checks! They have their place and serve a purpose; however, they are one very small part of a much bigger responsibility that organisations need to understand. DBS checks as a start off only tell you what someone has been caught for. They tell you what someone has already done. They cannot predict the future, nor guarantee that someone has not just been really good at getting away with their abuse. I am talking about everything you do as an organisation to employ the right people in the first place, right through to keeping your organisation safe on a day-to-day basis. I can’t possibly say everything I want to (that’s why proper Safer Recruitment training is a full day of training!), however I guess I wanted to take a few minutes to maybe provide a bit of food for thought.

If you run an organisation that works with children (or vulnerable adults for that matter) – and that doesn’t matter whether you’re a huge secondary school or a tiny charity then thinking about the adults who work or volunteer for you, how they came to you and what their responsibilities are is so important. A chilling quote from a Child Sexual Abuser, is a stark reminder of this:

“We’re really good at what we do, so do whatever you have to, so I don’t get across your barriers.”

We unfortunately can’t 100% guarantee that we will never have someone working or volunteering for us that won’t harm children, however what we can and must do is make it really difficult for them to get through the door, and then as easy as possible for them to get caught if they do something wrong. I often relate this to the burglar alarm. The idea is that when people first got burglar alarms, if it went off then everyone would come out of their houses to see what was going on – it was a powerful deterrent that probably guaranteed you didn’t get burgled. As more and more people got burglar alarms however, we got so that one going off is just annoying, rather than us running to the sound. So perhaps this is less of a deterrent. However, what we still don’t want to be is the house with no burglar alarm, because that still makes us the easy target. And thinking about this analogy linked to the subject matter of abusers, we probably want to be the house with the most high-tech burglar alarm, plus some security lights, electric fences and CCTV!

We can’t deny that there are people in this world who want to harm children, we can’t do much to prevent them working elsewhere, what we must do is all we can to deter them working for us. That starts with the job advert and goes right through to having a culture which is open and transparent. It's also important to remember that just because you are a small organisation or club, this doesn’t make this less of a concern it should make it more of one. If I want to abuse children now, I am heading to the place that asks the fewest questions and that I imagine is the most trusting and the least cynical. I probably won’t apply for that job with the advert that mentioned safeguarding right at the top, however I may just start being really helpful at my local community run group, move to being a volunteer and then get a job through my stellar reputation and everyone talking about how helpful and pleasant I am. You get the point – abusers have often spent years having to overcome barriers to get to that one child who they can target, and who they know won’t tell anyone. We have to be ready to keep putting more barriers in the way.

If you are a parent, or again work with children, we need to talk to children about this. Obviously not to terrify them, nor to mean that they don’t trust anyone or discourage positive relationships. However, we can have open and honest conversations with them about the adults they encounter and have discussions about the fact that we are not just talking about ‘Stranger Danger’ when we are talking about them keeping safe. The facts are that much more abuse is carried out by people that children know and trust than by strangers. Yet we tell children to be wary of strangers and don’t tell them that sometimes they have to be wary of people they know too. It’s those conversations about if something doesn’t feel right then tell me (or someone). If a child is telling you that they have extra jobs, or time with a teacher, coach, or any adult away from everyone else, ask more questions and gauge their reaction. It’s not about teaching your child not to trust anyone; it’s about teaching the child to also trust themselves and their gut instincts. If they feel uncomfortable or that an adult is making them feel frightened or asking them to keep ‘our little secret’. It’s about us as adults being curious and ensuring that the child understands that they can tell you if something is not okay.

Unfortunately, abusers send out their fishing nets and then choose to target the fish least able to swim away. An abuser is not going to target the child who is confident to speak out, if the child next to them is unlikely to say a word. It’s sad but true that the abuser wants to get away with what they are doing, so that they can do it again. The more we can create environments where children feel able to talk, and the more we can encourage our children to feel safe to share their feelings, then the fewer the fish that can get caught in that net.

This is the most serious blog I have written, but one I feel so passionate about sharing. The truth is that those of us who have been involved in the world of safeguarding and safer recruitment for a long time, were not at all surprised by the content of either the Whyte or the Sheldon Report. We know that people still don’t allow themselves to imagine that people in these positions would use them for such horrible reasons. The majority of people who choose to work with children do so because we want to help and support children, the last thing we want to do is harm them. It’s not surprising therefore that we don’t want to accept that the person sat opposite us in the staffroom or changing room could be capable of anything so awful. We unfortunately have to have this little bit of cynicism however and remember that:

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”

(Edmund Burke)

If we are not willing to believe that people who our children admire or respect could harm, then of course our children will not believe that they can. They will be more likely to let them put them in situations that make them feel uncomfortable, and they will be less likely to tell anyone. They will keep the secret, maybe until they are adults when its too late to stop the harm for them or the next person.

As always, we need to create environments that are open and transparent, where positive relationships exist so that children feel able to tell someone if they are not okay, and where we feel able to show curiosity, kindness and compassion (with a little bit of cynicism!).

#justbekind #becurious #becynical #ourlittlesecret

Take a Breath

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:50:59 GMT

As schools have returned and there is talk of next term and next year, inevitably schools are beginning to focus on their future plans. Some of these are around picking up plans where Covid stopped them in their tracks, and for others it maybe that the pandemic has shone a light on something that needs to change, or at least provided the impetus to make a start.

I can be a bit of a ‘bull in a china shop’ when I want things to change. I am absolutely the type of person that says come on then, let’s get on with it. I find it frustrating when people want to dither too much, as I generally find that I learn more by having a go, than I do trying to weigh up all the options before I start. And if I start thinking about it too much, there is always the danger I’ll head into overthinking it! I think it also comes from working in institutions or organisations where you know that there are going to be a million hoops to jump through before you can get anything done, so I feel I at least need to push forward the part that I am in control of. I have however learnt over the years, that whilst this attitude genuinely comes from being hardworking, optimistic and solution focused, it isn’t always the best strategy! The more passionate I am about something, the more I have realised that I need to take a breath and not jump too far too fast.

In more recent times I have taken on new challenges and been desperate to get going with changes, only to discover that there have been metaphorical speed bumps in my way slowing me down. Initially this only served to make me feel frustrated and like I was less in control, however I guess with age and experience I have learnt to do the best with what I have got. So rather than just being annoyed, instead I chose to use this enforced time to take that breath and take a step back and really look at what was in front of me. When managing a team, it encouraged me to get to know the individuals better, and genuinely consider what they felt the next steps on the journey to be. I have always loved learning from those around me, however it reminded me to really listen and consider what everyone was saying and truly hear the complete diversity of viewpoints. In my current venture, having to work my notice forced me to take a breath and this made me go out of my comfort zone and ask for help and advice, even in areas where I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed it, yet of course I did, and I learnt so much. It meant that once I did get started, I was more ready and less frantic!

For many, Covid hindered progress on plans already underway, or delayed things even getting started. Schools are now looking at their plans from a year ago and wondering how on earth to pick up the pieces and get going again. I think the temptation is to panic to try and get things back on track, with Ofsted potentially commencing inspections in the Autumn Term, and that general expectation that things may be more normal by then, the pressure returns to be on it with strategic plans. From this, albeit luxurious, position of being on the outside looking in however I think we all need to just take that breath. We all know that in an interview, we feel the pressure to answer the question the minute the last word of it has been spoken by our interviewer. We all also know however that if we pause and really consider the question before opening our mouths, the chances are we may actually come out with something that makes more sense and is a much better answer.

If Covid is viewed merely as something that came, stopped things happening as we thought they would, but then we return to exactly where we were as soon as we can, then I think we are missing something. I think that we have to look for the positives from this pandemic, otherwise all the loss and tragedy really was worth nothing. As individuals, and as organisations, we surely have to be curious about what the pandemic has taught us and take the learning from that. We may have had fantastic plans prior to Covid, but surely this last year must have shown us how we can make them even better. We may have struggled, found things really challenging, and suffered, however haven’t we also adapted, been flexible and grown? If someone had told you a year ago what was to come, how many of us would have imagined we would come through the other side and accomplish things we never thought possible along the way. The legacy of the pandemic in schools has to be that now more than ever we are talking about vulnerable children, wellbeing, mental health and thinking about how we can teach and how our children learn even in the most bizarre of circumstances. Many of our schools have rediscovered their importance within communities and are now seen as a place of safety and compassion. What would be sad, is if we lost all that in our desperation to return to how things were before.

For me, the greatest lesson that has come out of the pandemic is the importance of others. As someone who passionately bangs on about the importance of relationships, I am still thankful that over the last year I have truly realised how vital it is to have people around me who support me, care for me, and have my back when the going gets tough. Even setting out on what appeared to be a lone journey, has emphasised that I cannot do it on my own, and if I did it would be less successful, less rewarding and a million times harder. It has taught me that even the best laid plans need others to contribute, shape and challenge ideas and then the result is way better.

The brilliant quote that inspired me this week is

“’Which is more important,’ asked Big Panda, ‘the journey or the destination?’

‘The company.’ Said Tiny Dragon.”

James Norbury

So, I suppose what I am saying is that rather than panic to dust off those old plans and get going with them again, take a breath and take the opportunity to hear those around you. Reshape those plans in light of what the last year has taught us and make them even better. Covid gave us a forced period of reflection, where some parts of all our lives were put on hold, let’s not just pretend that all didn’t happen, otherwise what was the point? We have certainly all been forced to deal with the fact that things don’t always happen as we intended, and all good plans need contingencies, back up plans and regular opportunities to review and reassess.

Make sure that your plans involve the people that they are about. For any new strategy or plan, without those around you being invested from the outset, at best you risk that it wouldn’t be sustainable and at worst you will have people working against you from day one. A great strategy reflects the voices of all the key stakeholders, whether that be a vision across an entire Multi-Academy Trust, a new plan within your school, or even just something new you’re trying to do at home! Without the people, its just words.

We are brilliant in education at hearing the latest buzz words, being pressured to adopt a new shiny intervention or placing unrealistic demands to change things in a term that would really take a good few years. These ideas may be incredible; however, we often don’t give them a chance to have any impact before the next great idea comes along. So, let the lessons from the pandemic be, to take a breath, listen to the voices of those involved, and create realistic and sustainable plans that will really make a difference and give them a chance to work.

And give yourself a break - of course your school isn’t on track or where you expected it to be by March 2021 – no one is where they expected to be in March 2021 but maybe that doesn’t have to be all bad, and maybe by March 2022 you will be in a whole different and better place not just despite the pandemic, but maybe in some ways because if it. Be kind to yourself, you've got this.

#becurious #justbekind #relationships #takeabreath

Thank You Schools

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 13:36:02 GMT

As we head towards the weekend, I can imagine there are going to be many that are feeling exhilarated, exhausted, and everything in between. Its so lovely to have seen so many lovely things written or recorded by schools, talking about welcoming their children back. It’s fantastic for children to hear teachers excited to have them back in school, and where teachers or schools have gone that extra mile with balloons, banners and bunting celebrating the return. There has been a sense of making this work together, especially with the carrying out of lateral flow tests for example, where staff and volunteers have commended the mature and sensible attitude of the children having to do something, which to be fair is pretty horrid. Likewise, children have recognised that staff have helped make this better by being kind, reassuring and organised.

I haven’t heard too much talk of the dreaded ‘c’ word – saying this in education at the moment is like saying Macbeth in a theatre – however I definitely have seen evidence of calm, empathy and kindness. I am sure this is not the case everywhere, but I am tentatively optimistic that irrespective of political speak, schools have actually got their priorities sorted. My hope is that these approaches last and leave a positive legacy that has long been needed in schools. If schools approached every week as if children were returning from unknown experiences, and that they therefore may need some added support, some curiosity and a focus on building strong and positive relationships, what benefits may we see?

The pandemic for all the negatives has shone a light on all the research and science that proves that having a key adult in school, who ‘gets you’ and takes the time to develop that rapport and understanding, can have a significant impact on so many vulnerable children. We know that children who have insecure attachments or who have experienced early adversity and trauma need relationships to heal. We know from the biology that we can develop and strengthen connections in the brain, that allow a child to begin to emotional regulate in order to make navigating the world more feasible. I talked about this in my blog around Captain Tom, about being that one person who for a child makes a difference, and I genuinely don’t think it needs to be that complex.

Many for example, talk about the impact of really simple things. The difference it makes when you greet the children at the start of the day and ask them how they are. The difference it makes when maybe as a peripatetic or supply teacher you make it a mission to learn all the children’s names as quickly as you can. The difference it makes when you notice a child who is trying to make themselves invisible. The difference a thumbs up makes to a child having a tricky moment. The difference when you look for opportunities to praise rather than looking for behaviours to punish. These are all things that take conscious effort, however importantly in a world of restricted time and money they cost neither.

Just take a few moments to imagine someone who you regard as important, and who you respect, in your work or personal life, taking a second to notice and acknowledge you. Making an active effort to tell you that they have seen you – whether this is recognising something positive you have done, or just thanking you for something you always do. If you were having a bad day, just consider whether this would maybe make you feel just a little bit better. I think it might. I also think when later on something challenging happens, you remember this in your head to remind you that it isn’t all bad. It doesn’t even matter necessarily what was said or about what, its just warming to feel that you matter and to realise that someone would care if you weren’t there. We all need this, and sometimes really blatantly! I love the quote:

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

And this is so apt for how adults in school have made children feel this week.

So, my blog this week is short and sweet. It comes from a place of excitement and optimism that we are having some really important conversations in education right now that in my view have been a long time coming. We are perhaps beginning to recognise that the value and success of a school is not only measured in academic attainment. Most importantly we are understanding that a focus on care and nurture isn’t mutually exclusive from a school that is aspirational, successful and respected. The irony is that the ‘fluffy side’ of teaching if we get it right, is the bit that can make the most difference and have the most significant impact. It’s common sense. If you attend training, and you’re having a horrendous day, the trainer is disinterested and the environment is unwelcoming, how much do you learn? How many of us attend training (back in the real world), and the first thing we talk about afterwards is the food (or lack of these days). This isn’t because the food is more important, it is an indication of how the training made us feel. Did we feel nourished and cared for, or did we feel like a bit of an afterthought?

I therefore want to end the blog with a thank you. Thank you to all those headteachers, deputy heads, teachers, teaching assistants, learning mentors, lunchtime supervisors, caretakers and anyone who works within a school, who this week focused on making the children feel welcome, happy and safe. If some learning took place then brilliant, if the children got to the end of the week feeling good about being back in school, even better! The learning will come. If as a parent your school has done this well, please tell them. They need to hear the positive stuff too, and then they will pass that positivity on to your child.

If as an adult in school you approached this week differently and looked at the children through an altered lens, because you were more likely to be coming from a position of empathy, don’t forget that, it will make a difference every week. If for children, particularly those who are vulnerable, each week can feel like a fresh start, a new chance to get things right and an opportunity for them to be different, then genuine change is possible. If you have been that one person who this week made a child feel better, about the situation, about themselves and about their learning, then thank you. You have planted a really important seed.

Remember to take some time to rest and look after yourself this weekend. If you don’t, you can’t do it all again next week! (It was also World Sleep Day today apparently so I’m guessing we all have some sleep to catch up on). And I hope you get a ton of that compassion, empathy and kindness back, because you did it, you survived the week, and you deserve that recognition.

Thank you to all the adults in schools who helped our children survive this week and every week.

#justbekind #thankyouschools #relationships #becurious

Calm Not Catch-Up

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 17:19:49 GMT

As the 8th of March comes speeding towards us like a freight train with no brakes; parents, children and teachers are caught in a whirlwind of anticipation. Whether you are the parent who is concerned or worried about your child returning, or the parent who is marking the days off with glee, the time seems to be flying by as we approach the date.

For schools, there is likewise a tension. So many schools are desperate to see the children again, welcome them back and do the job they are really designed for, but with this too comes worry. Staff are not vaccinated, secondary schools have to be prepared for lateral flow testing and increased mask wearing, and who knows what state children will be in when they come through those doors on Monday morning. This all comes in the midst of talk of catch-up, a phrase that as you know I am not a fan of, and that’s putting it politely!

I really think that we could get this so wrong if we don’t get our priorities in the right order, and I know that majority of the education professionals I have spoken to agree entirely. The pressure isn’t from the schools, its from the pressure being put on the schools, and that dreaded Monday morning call from you know who (Ofsted – if you don’t work in schools) can still come – don’t even get me started! So, the temptation, even if you don’t think it’s the best way, is to immediately begin to focus on and panic about academic attainment, and trying to work out where the children are, as compared to where you expected they would be, based on….

Well that’s my first concern, based on what exactly? Are we comparing the children to where last year’s cohort were at this point in the year? - An entirely different set of children, and where they actually were was about to go into the first lockdown. Are we thinking about where these children should be based on where they were at the start of the academic year? - Well, they were just coming out of the most bizarre 6 months of our lives and trying to remember what school was all about. Are we comparing where these children are to their peers? - Well given the whole country, never mind beyond that, is all in this same complex and unprecedented situation, this likewise seems a dead end.

This is why the notion of catch-up is a fallacy. It suggests that we have something to catch-up to, and as I have previously said it ignores any additional skills and attributes that our children have gained during lockdown, that wouldn’t normally be expected, and certainly therefore would be unlikely to come out in assessments. It also assumes that assessing where children are, and planning to move them forward, isn’t something that teachers do already. It seems to overlook the fact that this is in fact what every decent teacher does every single day. Assess, Plan, Do, Review, this is the bread and butter of teaching. By talking about catch-up it almost suggests that teachers assessing where children are is a new concept, and that adjusting their teaching and curriculum accordingly is a revelation.

But, more importantly than any of that, comes back to the fact that attainment shouldn’t even be at the top of our priority list. Schools are going to, once again, feel like a real life ‘Spot the Difference’, with many things seemingly familiar but with a whole load of new rules that everyone has to get their head around. Not to mention that everyone has developed new habits, children and staff alike. Children have to return to sitting at desks, rather than lounging on a sofa or crowded round a kitchen table, everyone has to get properly dressed - in shoes and everything , all a sudden the teacher is a real-life person rather than a screen, and you can no longer mute your pupils with the click of a button. These changes are significant, however much we joke about them, and we know majority of people struggle a little bit with change, and for some it entirely rocks their world. Just pretending everything can go back to ‘normal’ is not only ridiculous it is unrealistic and risky.

Children who struggle ordinarily in school have not magically disappeared, and the things that they find difficult are only going to be exacerbated with constant change. Add to this those children who prior to Covid-19 were generally emotionally regulated, now having had their world turned upside down and increasing numbers of children for whom lockdowns have revealed abuse and neglect; we are left with even more children who are likely to need additional support just to get through the day. If we ignore this fact and try and get things back to ‘normal’ as quickly as possible, and put pressure on academic achievement, these children will just find school harder. We will not see catch-up, we will see increasingly anxious children, presenting with increasingly challenging behaviours. This will lead to stressed and overwhelmed staff that are struggling to cope. What we will create is not increased academic attainment, but instead increased exclusion figures and increased numbers of teachers leaving the profession. A profession where staff retention is already a concern, and a profession where not enough is done to support wellbeing. We need to be able to offer our children a calm and reassuring adult, not an overwhelmed and exhausted one.

“When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, its our job to share our calm not to join their chaos”.

L. R. Knost

For me, teachers should feel reassured and supported to believe that their job over the next few months is to welcome children back to school, and to help them to feel happy and safe. Teachers need to be supported with their wellbeing and given the opportunity to breathe after months of everchanging demands and priorities. Like a town after an attack, our schools need the chance to rebuild their communities and get used to being together in a safe space again. They need a chance to reflect on everything that has occurred and celebrate coming through what we all hope is the other side. Children who struggle to deal with their emotions, need to be reminded that school is a place that can help them with their potential feelings of anxiety and fear. We have all had a taste of living in fight, flight or freeze over this past year, so we have an opportunity to be more empathetic then ever with children who always live like this. My fear is that we waste that insight, as we default back to ‘normal’.

So, my plea with this blog is that we don’t focus on catch-up, we instead focus on calm and we focus on connections. Children need to have those positive relationships re-established, and to understand that there is time to worry about academic attainment, but it isn’t right now. Children are hearing all this talk about catch-up and they themselves are worrying that they have fallen behind and that this will impact on their futures. This doesn’t need to be the case. Children who survived the World Wars were not generations of academic failures, and we still talk about the strength and resilience of those generations. Likewise, parents need to support their schools in inviting their children back and feel relieved that learning has returned to schools, trusting that their children are in safe hands.

Teachers are best placed to assess what children need and when, in terms of their education. So why don’t we, for once, let them do their job, without unnecessary and unhelpful pressure? Let us take stock and appreciate the positives that will come out of this pandemic for many of our children. Teachers may be fascinated to learn what some of their children have learnt during lockdown, and lots of it won’t have been delivered via Teams, Oak Academy or Purple Mash! It would be amazing if teachers actually felt that they had the time to be curious and explore the learning that has taken place. So, in my optimism I would like us all to agree that we just focus on approaching the 8th of March with curiosity, compassion and kindness (and we never use the phrase catch-up again!).

#justbekind #calmnotcatchup #becurious

Spectrum of Normalcy

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 15:58:33 GMT

This week a number of projects that I have been working on come under the large umbrella term of ‘inclusion’. This got me thinking about what that actually means. Often in education we use it about children with special educational needs, in society we might think about people with disabilities and the Black Lives Matter campaign have brought ethnic diversity even more into the spotlight. If you feel different compared to others, then I guess you would think about inclusion in relation to the part of you that makes you different. What is it that makes you feel not included?

The definition of inclusion is ‘the act of including or the state of being included’. So, if we are looking at inclusive practice, we have to be considering how everyone can be and feel part of whatever it is we are creating. I get frustrated when people talk about inclusion as if it’s something that they need to just add on to what they are already doing. A token gesture or a slight tweak. I captured this in a meeting the other week with the rather eloquent phrase ‘it’s more than just adding a ramp’. A recent podcast also made me consider what ‘Black History Month’ says about how much we value black history if we are suggesting that it is all covered in one month a year.

Sometimes the need for inclusion is obvious; whilst the ramp reference was me being facetious, there may be occasions where inclusion is needed for accessibility, literally. It may be that an event is not inclusive because a person with a physical disability cannot enter the building, and that providing alternative ways to address that issue solves the problem. However, the point I was making, is that it is often and generally about more than that. It’s also interesting to think about this from the other perspective. A recent episode of ‘Grand Designs’ featured a man in a wheelchair who was on a mission to build a house that properly met his needs. He explained that his current house ‘disabled him’. This is so true as - spoiler alert – once his new house was complete, and he could get around and access everything he needed with ease, he was no longer disabled once in this environment. So, thinking about this in the broader context, the more inclusive our environments are the less we should notice the things that make us feel different.

The previous roles I have had, often involved working with or on behalf of children where the need to be inclusive may be less obvious, and this is where I have found that the true definition of inclusion can get lost. Take for example a child who is looked after. They thankfully don’t have a label stuck to their forehead and physically there will be nothing to distinguish them from anyone else in their class. The things that make them different may be known about or not and may make their needs very different or not. However, the importance of them feeling part of their school or class, having that sense of belonging is paramount.

So, what does inclusion mean for children like this. Does it mean that every teacher needs to know that they are looked after? Does it mean that every adult in the school needs to know about their past? Does it mean that everyone needs to know who they are? I really hope not. I believe that if inclusion is genuine then the need for labels should become less not more. If our systems are set up to ensure that everyone can feel like they belong, then we shouldn’t need to know what it is that may otherwise make them feel different. If we sat down to watch television and each channel was showing programmes specific to the age range we were in, it would mean that everyone had something to watch. So that would seem pretty inclusive. Now imagine if everyone in your household was in a different age range to you. You could watch the television, but only on your own, or maybe in a different room and you would have to tell everyone how old you are. Maybe not quite so welcoming. What if also all the channels were free except the one for your age range, or your channel is only on at very specific times. All of a sudden, it’s all feeling a little less like you belong. We could argue that the television is still catering for everyone’s different needs and there is a recognition of diversity, however I think we would struggle to claim inclusion.

The other barrier to true inclusion in my opinion, is when people get caught up in everything being fair. Now don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting we should aim for things being unfair, however it again comes down to what we mean by this. It is fundamentally summed up by the Equality vs Equity debate. Although both can be said to promote fairness, equality achieves this through treating everyone the same regardless of need, whereas equity achieves this through treating people differently depending on need. A respected colleague and friend of mine explained this to me really well when she described thinking about it in terms of going to see your Doctor. Equality would mean that we all went to see the Doctor and they gave us all the same treatment; however, what if I went with a broken arm, the lady next to me had pneumonia and the man across from me had an ear infection? Equity would be that we all went to see the Doctor, and they gave us all treatment, however the treatment was different depending on what our health need was. Inclusion needs to have real regard for equity; however policies and procedures often get us caught up in equality. We think that for something to be consistent and robust, it also has to be exactly the same for everyone. Is this actually true?

Coming back to thinking about those children who are looked after. If we know that a child really struggles to manage their emotions (see my previous blog about the biology behind the behaviours), is it ‘fair’ that we apply exactly the same behaviour policy or system to them as we do the child stood next to them? We are comparing a child who has suffered abuse and neglect to one who has always lived with a nurturing parent, developed secure attachments from pre-birth and has had appropriate ways of managing emotions modelled to them throughout their life. Their needs we could argue are entirely different, yet we are attempting to deliver the same treatments. What we then get is a clash within the school, because we have those that understand this difficulty and try and make exceptions, going against those trying to instil consistency and rigour to the policies, and the problem is that neither are wrong.

I had a conversation with a senior leader within a school, where they were very proud to show me their revised Behaviour Policy, along with their exceptions book. It was an incredibly comprehensive policy and they had genuinely considered all the circumstances and the children who may need to have the policy adapted for them. It was all written with the best intent however it makes you think about how we write policies – if we know that there are going to be exceptions before we even start, how effective is the policy? Maybe we should start by writing the policy for the exceptions and work backwards – perhaps that would be more inclusive?

“It is not inclusion if you invite people into a space you are unwilling to change.”

Muna Abdi

Inclusion also has to be real. It is okay to have a policy that refers to homophobic language and behaviour not being tolerated, however if the LGBT+ teacher feels unable to be open about his or her sexuality for fear of recrimination from fellow staff, teachers or parents, then once again we are making a gesture that does not bear out in the actual ethos and culture of the environment. For true inclusion we have to start from the point that we are all different, the ways we group people together are just to make things easier for ourselves and are somewhat arbitrary. If tomorrow someone told you that you could only spend time with people who had the same colour eyes as you, you would think that they were being ridiculous. If you walked into a restaurant that said it only served people who could play a musical instrument, you would think it was absurd. Yet we accept other divisions that are just as bizarre, and instead of just getting rid of them, we emphasise them in our efforts to make places more diverse or more inclusive.

“Don’t tolerate me as different, Accept me as part of the spectrum of normalcy.”

Ann Northrop

I believe that inclusion is creating a space where everyone is valued, respected and made to feel like they belong. If we know that we are an exception, or that something has been tweaked or adapted for us then this might make us feel even more different. We need to understand that there is no such thing as normal, and if there was, normal would be boring! I appreciate that I am posing lots of questions here rather than solutions, but I feel strongly that we don’t just make tokenistic gestures for all the wrong reasons, as that really doesn’t feel like progress. I guess in an ideal world, we can go anywhere and what we are, what we look like, or any labels we might have wouldn’t define us or dictate how we can access what is going on.

Maybe we should just all try a little harder to be more accepting of everyone and enjoy the fact that difference is interesting. Instead of avoiding conversations because we are afraid of saying ‘the wrong thing’, we should ask more questions and be more curious. Talking about our individualities will help us all understand, grow and learn. We will then be closer to real inclusion and will treat everyone with more empathy and kindness.

#justbekind #becurious #spectrumofnormalcy #normalisboring

Statistics are like bikinis

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 15:03:43 GMT

We are approaching the end of half term and again discussing the potential return to school for all children. We all know the talk will inevitably come back to that worst of all phrases in my opinion ‘catch-up curriculum’. I find it so frustrating on many levels and actually feel it simply adds pressure where no one needs it, least of all our children. We have educators who have been having to plan, teach and engage children, children attempting to access education and learn and parents supporting their children’s learning, all in a way they have never done before.

I appreciate that there are concerns for the most vulnerable children, and they are obviously my ‘cup of tea’, and I don’t deny that for many children they may not have had the best, if any meaningful educational input over recent weeks despite people’s best efforts. However, at the other extreme we will have children who have completed excessive education over recent weeks, as they will come from households that have really responded to all the anxiety around how far children are falling behind.

My concern is that our education system is built on the presumption that outcomes and impact are measured in data. My belief is that this should not be the case. Data is a contributory factor that gives us one quantitative indication of how we are supporting a child in their education is working or not. I have always felt that a child being happy to go to school, excited about their learning and proud of their achievements is the greatest indication of whether a school is meeting their needs and helping them progress. This was easy to say from the side-line, the potential tension arose when as a Virtual School Head I still felt that this was the greatest indication, yet this was not how the value or success of a Virtual School, nor any school is ‘measured’ by most people.

Do not get me wrong I am not saying that I do not believe that a child’s attainment and progress are not important, and I am as anxious as the next parent to see my children’s school reports to see how they are doing as compared to expected levels. I more importantly however want to see that they are making progress and that they are still keen to learn. My measure of a good teacher at parent’s evening is not how well they explain the levels, it is always how well they can demonstrate that they know my child. I want to know that they ‘get them’ and are therefore keen to help my child reach their potential. As a Virtual School Head or any Headteacher, the data concerning the children on your school roll is the thing that you get asked the most about. However, for me and for so many excellent Senior Leaders in education that I have worked with over the years, they would much rather tell you about the actual children themselves and their stories of the important things that they have accomplished. Sometimes this may be about attainment and progress, however sometimes the incredibly journey that they have made cannot be seen in the levels, the numbers or the percentages.

Just think for a moment think about the child whose parents have never really supported school attendance, and for who school was not a pleasant memory and so their feelings towards education are either ambivalent or negative. This child has a lack of routine and boundaries at home and has never learnt to emotionally regulate. This child finds school overwhelming, frightening and confusing. The teacher who has this child in their class finds this child challenging and distracting and so, to meet everyone’s needs initially, the child spends majority of any school day outside their class, with a Teaching Assistant one-to-one. In the first term, the majority of the Teaching Assistant’s day feels like they are just trying to stop the child climbing the walls (literally), running off or hurting someone. The Teaching Assistant is constantly looking for danger, because that is where the child is. Its stressful and emotional for both and little learning is achieved. Ad-hoc and rudimentary attempts to ‘assess’ the child and determine how good they are at Maths and English seem to indicate that surprise, surprise this child is significantly below expected levels.

This is a skilled Teaching Assistant however, who works well with the Teacher and between them they spend a lot of time considering and planning how to best meet this child’s needs. They have understood the priority in the first term was building a relationship and helping the child to feel less hypervigilant in school. They know that this the only way that this child will ever be able to access their learning brain. So, by the next term the child is beginning to access some learning with the Teaching Assistant. She is able to encourage some small bursts of learning in creative and imaginative ways, and the child is able to demonstrate that actually he is much more able than people realised. She is a tad frustrated that some of his best learning is difficult to evidence, as it is him calling out number bonds as he bounces a ball around the sports hall in an effort to regulate, or doing some phonics whilst commando crawling across the floor. However, she persists, and there are those small periods of engagement and concentration where the child is accessing some work at the level of his peers. Whilst he is still regarded as below expected, it is felt that this is less so than before. According to the data this child is closer to expected in terms of attainment and has made progress.

By the third term, the adults have continued to work as a team to support the child. They now have built really supportive and trusting relationships with him, and he knows that they have his back. He still finds school quite overwhelming, but he is less frightened and there are lots of strategies in place to help him find it all less confusing. The aim is for the child is to spend increasing amounts of time in his class with his peers. He is managing this most days for some period of time. He is managing to not always need his Teaching Assistant sat with him and he is making friends. He does need lots of sensory breaks, and by the afternoon he is often really tired and so can find this time in school more challenging. When his work is now assessed, because he is working more independently it varies quite significantly in terms of the quality and whilst sometimes it is sitting at just below expected levels, other times there is a lack of evidence, therefore it is regarded that the child is working below expected.

The data therefore tells us that the child continues to not be doing overly well in terms of attainment, and sadly there has been no progress this term. The reality, as I hope you can see, is an entirely different story. This is a child where progress from the first to the third term is phenomenal. This is a child who has a school that understands and is responding to his complex needs, and the result is that the child is beginning to see school as a huge positive in his life. This child has made friends and for some of the time is managing to cope with these relationships and function within his class. In terms of getting this child prepared for surviving in the real world, the progress that has been made is incredible. This is a child who now has some understanding of strategies he can use to help him access his learning brain. This is a child where the actual impact of all this amazing work may not be seen in data for years to come. This is a child who now has a chance of surviving mainstream education and achieving some qualifications. Without these interventions however, the only data that this child may have ended up on is exclusion figures. These are the stories that people working in education actually want to tell, rather than publishing or discussing data, that merely tells a part of the story (and rarely the most interesting part!).

So, when I think about ‘catch-up’ it also makes me sad that we are not acknowledging some of the vital skills that some children will have developed over lockdown. Their learning being different, creative and away from school, has brought new opportunities that may just hold them in good stead for the real world. We have got primary children who without the formality of the classroom, and with parents often working at home too, are having to work independently. They are beginning to realise that sometimes they have to motivate themselves or things will not get completed. We have got primary children who can now log on to a computer, check their emails, look up their schedule for the day on their calendar and then access a learning platform to see what their work is for the day. I don’t know about your experience, but my 10-year-old certainly couldn’t do that prior to lockdown. Children have learnt that they have to set alarms to remind them about their class reading, or double check emails to make sure they are clicking and pasting the links correctly. Fantastic life skills that are genuinely useful in the real world.

My eldest child who is in secondary school has particularly amazed me. Not simply because of the quality of her academic work, but at her attitude. She has always been conscientious and a hard worker, however I had never appreciated how good she was at problem solving and her determination is reassuring to observe. When faced the other day with a dilemma, instead of giving up because the sheet would not print in the format it had been sent, she had worked out that she could screen shot it and print it and thus complete the task. I know adults that I have worked with in the past who would not have got to that conclusion, and who would have chosen instead to wait for someone else to fix the issue. We hear time and time again, that because we cannot possibly know the types of jobs many of our children will do in the future, because technology is moving so fast, we need to equip our children with transferrable skills that will make them successful in roles that don’t even exist yet. I feel reassured that my daughter with her problem-solving skills is on the right path, and I don’t think either of us would have felt quite the same about that had lockdown not occurred. The unique situation presented problems that needed fixing and often no-one knew how to fix them. In school, children trust that the teachers can fix anything!

There is also learning I have undertaken. Despite my knowledge about sensory systems, and the fantastic work of people like Sarah Lloyd (google BUSS model to find out more). I have been forced to adjust some of my thinking about how children learn. I know from the work I have done with Sarah that some children will struggle to sit still as we expect them to do in school, and I understand why. Despite all this, as we first contemplated home learning as a family, we all found ways to create the chair and desk scenarios that ‘looked’ appropriate and made it feel like we were doing this working from home lark seriously. As time has gone on however it all looks a little different. I would find myself looking anxiously at my son, slouched on the sofa with his pad on his knees, thinking about how he was possibly going to write neatly in that position. I would find my daughter huddled over on her bed, wrapped in a blanket hoodie, and my instinctive thought would be, how on earth is she concentrating like that. And then I would see the incredible piece of writing my son had produced or see the considered answers my daughter had given to her science assessment. It turns out that our children being comfortable was sometimes way more important than whether they looked traditionally ready to learn. My son was marching round the room the other day working out his personification and they are some of the best sentences he has ever written.

It made me really consider some of the things we do in school and why we do them. As the corporate world moves further away from people being tied to their desks, with hot desking, breakout rooms and café spaces. With the introduction of standing desks, desks with bikes and even desks with sleep pods, why on earth are our places entirely designed for learning and creativity not changing too. We watched the film ‘The Internship’ the other day and it really made me think. If Google gets that its employees will be more solution-focused and creative with an environment that includes sensory stimulation and also places to be calm and retreat, it’s not surprising that these same things work in schools. Thinking about my role as Virtual School Head, it was amazing in the first lockdown to see children thriving when learning at home. Without the pressure of going to school and all that meant for them, they were calm and felt safe and could therefore access their learning brain. And the most surprising part – they really wanted to!

My fear then is that instead of learning some of these valuable lessons, and instead of thinking about the good stuff that may just have come out of this, we will instead just focus on catch-up. We will return as quickly as possible to our traditional approaches and things that actually some of the people in schools know don’t work. We will do all this because I believe we are more driven by data than children. Surely the role of schools should not be producing data, surely the focus and the measure of success should be whether it is producing children that will be successful as the adults of the future? I worry that we will scrutinise that data, focus entirely on what is not there, and miss the point. A quote which genuinely makes me smile:

“Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

Aaron Levenstein

Let’s ensure that the focus when our children return to school is ensuring that they are happy and safe. That they have chance to enjoy the social aspects that they have missed out on, and that time is dedicated to building up those trusted relationships that actually make all the difference. The data will only tell us a small part of the story and focuses on our need to teach children the answers, when for me we should be teaching our children how to solve the problems. Let’s not talk about catch-up, please let’s reassess where we actually are and start from there, because in some respects we are in an entirely different place, and the learning journey took a huge diversion. If we talk about catch-up we ignore all this and go back to the point on the journey we were at over a year ago and that would be such a waste. What our children need on their return to school is curiosity about their learning and kindness to help them settle again.

#justbekind #statisticsarelikebikinis

No Man is an Island

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 10:00:54 GMT

After my blog last week, I had a couple of people commenting that sometimes when you try and help children or young people, it can make them angry or aggressive. This is true. Working with many of the young people I have encountered over the years, has proven this to be the case over and over, and it feels like we should just give up. It makes us feel vulnerable to be putting ourselves out there, only to feel daft or hurt when we are met with rejection. However, these are exactly the children we need to persist with.

We all know someone who can be in danger of sabotaging their own relationships, particularly romantic ones, and often this is because subconsciously there is a temptation to reject before you get rejected. Particularly if you have been hurt before, a survival instinct, an act of self-preservation. Imagine now that since being born you have encountered rejection, and from the person or people who are supposed to love you unconditionally. If your own parents reject, abuse or neglect you, then why on earth would you trust that anyone else is going to treat you any better? So, in just the same way, these children can reject before they get rejected.

We see it in schools, where for the first time ever there is a someone going above and beyond to help a child who has always struggled before. There are strategies in place, understanding teachers and adults around them, and seemingly everything needed for the child to feel safe and succeed. There is sometimes a ‘honeymoon’ period, then out of the blue the child appears intent to destroy it all. Determined to throw all that hard work right back in the face of the people trying so hard for them. It can be soul destroying. It is, however, often a necessary part of the journey. For the child, all this support can make their internal instincts go haywire, as it all feels a little bit too good to be true. So… they panic and press the self-destruct button before anyone else can.

Our instinct at this point is to pull back. We feel so deflated, that its natural that we just want to give up. In addition to this of course, we are playing our own game of self-preservation here too. The reality, however, is that we are then doing exactly what they expect us to do, and we have reconfirmed to them that this will always happen. This is why working with vulnerable children can be so emotionally and physically exhausting. We always have to be the adult, the bigger person and the more resilient one. We have to try and teach them that their instincts are wrong. Convince them that some adults will stick with them and have their back, however much they try and push us away. Foster Carers and adoptive parents can also experience the same issues, and that can be so heart-breaking to witness and of course experience. What these children most need when they are pushing us away, is for us to refuse to move, for us to continue to be there for them, and to offer them some kindness and compassion. So easy to say, extremely hard to do. Especially when sometimes you have to do it repeatedly to get that breakthrough.

I fully understand why this can be difficult for schools, they have many children to meet the needs of, not just this one. When you can though, and when I have seen this in action, the rewards are incredible. Schools also often worry about how this looks to other children. If they see this one child ‘getting away’ with this behaviour, then they will all start to push those boundaries and see what they can get away with. For me this can depend on what it is they are seeing. I am also not suggesting that children are allowed to ‘get away’ with behaviour that is risky or dangerous, they actually need the boundaries reinforcing not removing. It is how you do it that is important. If from the outset we are viewing the behaviour through the lens of all behaviour being communication, we consider not just how to stop the behaviour but what the behaviour is trying to tell us. We also start to move away from punishment being the only, and probably least effective, method to change behaviour. If a child feels like they belong, have some positive relationships with the adults around them, and have people who can help them regulate their emotions, we can positively influence behaviour by teaching the child alternatives, rather than just taking away the only method they currently have to cope. So maybe if other children are seeing this, what they see is that this is a school where the adults get us, we all belong however difficult we may make that to be true, and if I am in a really bad place, rather than rejecting me this school will help me through that. An African proverb captures this perfectly:

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

So, there will definitely be children and young people who test your kindness, your attempts to build relationships and your empathy, to the limits. You will face rejection and you will get your hard work thrown back in your face… Where do I sign up, I hear you ask!! However, the children that do this the most, are absolutely the children who need you the most. They just don’t know it yet. Coming back to that biology, their brain architecture hasn’t had the benefit of lots of positive attachments, providing them with the neural pathways that help them deal with these new emotions. We need to provide that repetition so that more effective pathways can build and develop, which in time replace the not so great ones. These children remind me of Will and Marcus in one of my favourite books by Nick Hornby, and the subsequent film ‘About a Boy’, hence the title of this blog:

“No man is an island.”

(John Donne, 1624)

(not actually Hugh Grant or Jon Bon Jovi as he claims in the film)

This is a story where all the key characters are trying to survive life without the need for other people, yet all discover that actually it is all much easier, safer and more pleasant if we are not alone. Surprise, surprise – I love a story that shows us that relationships are key to everything, and that showing this to a child in distress is so important. Many vulnerable children have learnt that the only person that they can depend on is themselves. They fear getting close to anyone and someone has to show them that relationships are a good thing. If we don’t then what is to stop them growing up to be adults not dissimilar to Will. Whilst Will is somewhat charming in his dysfunctionality as an adult, maybe because he has the luxury of money, unfortunately, this dysfunctionality is much more of a concern in real life. This inability to have positive relationships, can lead children to become young people at risk, or adults that struggle in society. We need to break that cycle with as always, empathy and kindness.

#justbekind #relationships #nomanisanisland

Just a Smile

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 11:14:53 GMT

Dedicated to Captain Tom.

I can’t actually believe that I am writing my fourth blog, and I have not yet written about the importance of relationships. Those who have worked with me in the past know that in any training, meeting or conversation I have, if I can get in there the importance of relationships then I will, repeatedly and loudly! It seems so obvious to say that we need other people, however another person in the right place, at the right time can literally save us.

The training I have delivered over the years, often focuses on signs and symptoms. Whether that be indicators of safeguarding concerns or discussing how the impact of early adversity may manifest itself in a child’s behaviours. Its vital that we understand what we are looking for, and understand what we may be observing, however what we all really want to know is what to do next. We talk about the ‘So What’ a lot in education. I can see the child is struggling to manage his emotions, I may have some understanding of what has caused that, but so what…. what am I meant to do about it? And what difference will that make?

Unfortunately, we often jump to referrals. Who can I pass this problem on to, because right now I am feeling a little out of my depth? It is a natural instinct because we can’t possibly be experts in everything. As I mentioned when discussing children’s mental health, there will be instances where referrals are necessary, and we need to get specialists involved. However, is that where our job ends? The problem with making referrals is that they sometimes take ages. Even if they don’t, they may result in a one-hour session once a week, and in majority of cases the specialist intervention will be time limited. In the meantime, and once the intervention is over however, we are still here. Likewise, we search for explanations, labels or a diagnosis. We believe that once we have a label then it will ‘fix’ everything. It doesn’t. We still need to have a relationship with a child, to truly understand what that label or diagnosis means for them, and only then can we begin to offer the right support. If we don’t get the label we were expecting, but we have spent time working with the child, building a rapport and listening and observing what is working, we have lost nothing.

If we have a child in front of us and even suspect that something is not okay, what we can’t do is nothing. Doing nothing never solved anything. There has been countless research in all the fields that I have worked in, all trying to discover that magic elixir that will definitely work. We focus so heavily on the type or content of interventions, whether it is in response to offending behaviour, children who have experienced trauma or children who are vulnerable to exploitation. The point is we already know what makes a difference. The research all backs it up. The one crucial thing that a child needs that either prevents them from harm, reduces the harm or helps them to escape and begin to recover from harm, is at least one positive relationship. One relationship with someone who genuinely cares, takes an interest and makes them feel like they are not alone.

A recent report called “It was hard to escape”, looked at 21 cases of children who had been seriously harmed or even killed due to exploitation. The report’s aim was to look at the commonalities between what had happened to these children and use that to inform better practice going forward. I am obviously oversimplifying here, in terms of both the background to the cases and the findings of the report, but the one thing that really struck me was the power of having a positive relationship. For many of the children who survived their ordeal, there were critical moments that become a turning point for them. The point was however that someone needed to appreciate that this was a critical moment and be there. Likewise, the report reflected on the importance of these trusted relationships, and the importance of having relationships-based work. I actually think however that we sometimes over complicate the issue.

I agree we need relationship-based interventions, but actually we just need relationships. And the problem with relationship-based interventions is that we contrive the relationship. If we have a child who is working with a Social Worker, we expect the most positive relationship for that child to be with the Social Worker, but what if it isn’t? What if they just don’t click? I have the uttermost respect for Social Workers and there are some incredible individuals out there genuinely making a difference to children’s lives every day. However even the greatest Social Worker in the world cannot possibly get on with every child they work with. Likewise, when I worked in the Youth Offending Team, sometimes you just couldn’t connect with a young person you were working with, and then someone else would come along and make it look so easy to get them to open up. The reality is we don’t all get on with everyone else, and we can’t always predict who our best connections are going to be with.

I always mention this when doing Safeguarding training. Its all well and good having a brilliant and extensively trained Designated Safeguarding Lead, who knows exactly how to respond to a child telling them something. In reality, if the child is going to tell someone something difficult, they are going to tell the person that they feel most comfortable with. In a school, that is often the Teaching Assistant, the Lunchtime Supervisor or maybe the Caretaker. We can’t make the child feel most comfortable with the best trained person. We have to train everyone so that they are all ready to respond. This is true for every aspect of life. If we want to help our children, whatever their circumstances may be, we need them to have a positive relationship with someone. In an ideal world everyone would have that with someone at home or in their family, a parent, a foster carer, a grandparent. Sometimes though that is not enough or because of the age of the child that relationship has become more complex. Our children therefore need positive relationships inside and outside their household and as many of them as possible!

As adults we end up with a whole variety of relationships, and often we rely on these for many different things. Our childhood friendships, because they can be more simplistic, we don’t have to provide the back story because they were there. Our newer friendships, maybe developed through partners or neighbours, which are exciting because they know who you are now, and you perhaps have lots of things in common. We have our work colleagues or friends, who know a different side of us again and may share our passion for the work we do or perhaps just understand the tedium of our day to day. You get the point. We will go to different people depending on what our needs are, or on who will understand best what is going on for us in the moment. For our children they have yet to develop all these different relationships and can often just feel like the people they are ‘supposed’ to talk to just don’t get it.

I think if we work with children in any context, we have a responsibility. The responsibility is not that we have to have a brilliant relationship with every child, or that we always have to know what to do, it is simply that we try. It may just be that because we made that effort, it is us that they feel the most comfortable with, and therefore it may be us that they can come to in in their hour of need. We can perhaps be the person who is there in that critical moment. If you talk to adults about how they felt about school, beyond the general loved it or hated it – the conversation will then inevitably turn to the teachers or staff. The ones that made our life hell, or if we’re really fortunate the ones that supported us, inspired us and maybe even saved us. Let us all try and be that person.

So, if you know a child is struggling, reach out. Let them know you’re there if they need you. Just saying hello to them each day can show that child that you notice them. Giving a child a smile or a thumbs up can let them know you care. Telling a child that you are looking forward to seeing them tomorrow, will tell them that they are in your thoughts. It’s not mind blowing or magic, its simple and we can all do it, and maybe that’s the point.

I think its only fitting that this week’s blog remembers a true legend that we lost this week, and he sums it up perfectly.

“I’ve seen first-hand how a little kindness and compassion can make all the difference to people of all walks of life, and on different stages of their journey. The squeeze of a hand, a wave or even just a smile can make the world of difference to someone’s day. And that’s free for everyone to give.”

(Captain Tom, 2020)

#justbekind #captaintom #justasmile

A Torch in the Darkness

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 11:23:06 GMT

Next week is Children’s Mental Health Week for 2021. From 1st February until 7th February. This is always an important week, where we should pause and remember that whilst our children’s academic success, sports prowess or artistic flair may be things we care about, none of these should take precedence over their mental health and wellbeing. This year I think it is even more vital, as we know that some children are struggling with the current situation caused by this pandemic. How do we know they are struggling? Because we all are. To some lesser or greater degree, we are all finding this diversion from the norm tricky to manage at times. Whilst some people ‘cope’ with it better than others, it is probably more realistic, that for all of us, some days are better than others.

We all need our support systems more than ever right now. I am not suggesting that suddenly we need to be worried about every child’s mental health. As a wise person said, ‘we are all going through the same storm, but we are all in a different boat’. However, what we probably should be doing is ensuring that we are doing everything we can to boost wellbeing. Providing opportunities to do things that make us all feel better. I love the fact that this year’s theme is Express Yourself, as with all this focus on home schooling, we can get caught up in the academic subjects, as they are much easier to do through online learning. Children of all ages do need to be encouraged to get creative and maybe even play a little! Any maybe the adults need to join in too. We will all be better at supporting our children’s wellbeing, if we as adults are feeling in a good place to start with.

Many schools have Mental Health champions, or first aiders, or people who have received increased training around mental health and wellbeing. This was a welcome addition to specialisms recognised in schools. Much like safeguarding however, where there is a Designated Safeguarding Lead, this doesn’t mean that all the adults that work with children don’t have some responsibility for keeping children safe, and the same has to be true for mental health and wellbeing. I think it’s also important to remember that whilst interventions may be necessary, mental health is like physical health, little things can be really helpful too. Somebody suggesting that we take the stairs rather than the lift can make a difference, and it proves that we don’t all have to be Joe Wicks to have a small impact on someone’s physical health. It is no different for mental health. What can we do to make that little bit of difference?

The phrase mental health scares us! It immediately sounds like something that we need to be a specialist in, for us to be of any use. One of the most frequent questions I have had to respond to over the years is ‘what if I make things worse?’. That sense of responsibility can be unnerving, and we stop thinking as a human being and feel like there is this other world of knowledge that we can’t access. It feels like in this world lies all the answers that will make things better, and it’s not accessible to us. Now don’t get me wrong, there are children who need specialist intervention, and I am by no means minimising the incredible work done by so many amazing professionals out there working in the field of mental health and therapeutic services for both adults and children. I do however believe that we can all make a difference and that avoiding doing anything, and actually sometimes avoiding the child themselves, because we are so scared of getting it wrong, is only ever going to make things worse.

The quote that inspired me this week is:

“You will never forget a person who came to you with a torch in the dark.” (M. Rose)

When we are feeling low or anxious or even just ‘out of sorts’, as we often say in our house, the one thing we need is connection. We need to know that someone cares and is rooting for us to feel better. The mistake we all often make however, is immediately feeling like we are responsible for making someone feel better. We are not. We are only responsible for letting them know that we are there. We can listen, we can care, and we can even try and empathise, but we can’t fix and nor should we try to. Often just noticing that someone is not okay or taking the time to genuinely hear what is going on for them is a crucial step in the right direction. We have made some progress in destigmatising mental health, and not avoiding people who are finding their mental health a challenge right now is part of that journey. If a child told us that their arm was hurting, we don’t immediately panic that it could be a broken bone, and may need surgery, and because we are not a surgeon, we should just leave them alone. We do the bit we can do. We are curious about why it is hurting; we ask them if they are okay, we see if there is anything we can do to make it feel better in that moment. Can you imagine where children would be without the fantastic healing powers of a wet paper towel?! Sometimes children just need the equivalent of a wet paper towel for their emotional needs too.

Active Listening is a great place to start, to reassure yourself that what you are offering will help, and it definitely won’t do any harm. Active Listening begins from the starting point that when we are feeling upset, we generally just want someone to hear our feelings and try and understand us. It is about attuning to the feelings of someone else and trying to see things from their point of view. I am talking about empathy not sympathy. If we offer sympathy, instead of the child feeling like we are trying to understand, they may just feel like we feel sorry for them. This could encourage them to push us away and lead to what we call disconnection. If we put our own feelings aside however and approach a child with no other intention than to listen, then we are doing all we can to fuel the opposite - connection. The child is more likely to want you to get what is going on for them.

Active Listening is about showing the child that you are hearing what they are saying. It is not about providing a solution or pointing out why they are wrong to feel the way they do, or even pointing out the positive bits of what is happening for them. There may be an opportunity for this later, but this is not the time. If I am telling you that I am hurting because my arm is broken, it doesn’t help to tell me that my leg is fine. Likewise, if I tell you that I’m hurting because my friends are leaving me out, at this moment it doesn’t help to tell me that I did a lovely piece of writing in English. It may all be true and looking for positives may be helpful at some point, but right now I just need you to hear that I am sad, to let me know that it is okay to express that feeling and to reassure me that feeling that way is normal and that most people would feel sad in that situation.

For me the quote reminds us that we all have a torch, we can all make someone feel a bit better by just offering them our time, understanding and empathy. A child may need further support, or even specialist intervention for more serious mental health concerns, however even if that turns out to be the case, you will still have offered them a little light in the darkness. Our other choice is leaving them in the dark, and none of us want to do that.

There are some great resources and ideas on Place2Be’s website or via: www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk

and the theme this year, as I mentioned, is Express Yourself. The resources can be used and adapted for use in school, for home learning, online lessons or independent learning and there are activities for teachers, parents and carers or anyone working with children. The temptation this year is to do less around things like Children’s Mental Health Week because understandably the pressure of just keeping children engaged with their learning feels like enough. However, right there is the reason why it is perhaps more important in 2021 than any year before.

We will all have moments when our emotional wellbeing is tested, our mental health is not at its optimum and we are perhaps feeling entirely ‘out of sorts’. If nothing else, the pandemic has forced us to accept that even the ‘strongest’ of people (and I use that word flippantly and somewhat ironically) have moments of anxiety, stress and sadness. In those moments I think that we all just hope that someone offers us a torch and show us some compassion, empathy and kindness.

#justbekind #torchinthedarkness #ChildrensMentalHealthWeek @Place2Be

The biology behind behaviour

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 13:21:51 GMT

So why did I decide to become an Education Consultant? A restructure presented me with two options of either a role that I wasn’t passionate about, or an opportunity to take the plunge and work for myself (something that I have always secretly wanted to do). I took the latter and whilst this is scary, I know it was the right decision. This is not because I am arrogant, I just know that I am wired up to be successful at the things that I am fervent about, and if I am not passionate about a job, I will give it 100%, however I definitely won’t get 100% out of it. People have always commented on how committed I come across when delivering training, completing audits or even contributing to meetings, and this is because I do roles that genuinely inspire me, and that I truly believe in. I think that we all need to find roles that match our values as closely as possible if we want to feel true job satisfaction (but that's another blog!).

This got me thinking about all the roles I have done, and actually so many of the things that both professionally and personally have always interested me. I come from a medical background, with a Dad who was a psychiatrist and a Mum who was a paediatric nurse, not to mention the generations before that. Whilst I never really had the desire to become a nurse or a doctor, what I always did have was a fascination about the human body and how it works, particularly the brain. I have always been, perhaps concerningly so, intrigued by serial killers for example! I have read countless books and watched endless programmes about real life murderers and I always enjoy a good fiction crime thriller, again either when reading or when watching the TV. Loving ‘Prodigal Son’ at the moment (I know I'm a bit behind)! However, my interest isn’t the gore or the violence, and I am not drawn to the salacious facts. I have always wanted to know, for as long as I can remember, how someone can actually do these dreadful things, and what is it in their brain that makes them believe that it is acceptable and moreover a compulsion.

Part of my psychology degree began to scratch this issue; however, I need to see the theory in practice. (Un)fortunately I haven’t had much opportunity to work with serial killers though, and they are thankfully quite a small percentage of the population. It is more realistic therefore to think about this the other way round – rather than focusing on what makes someone become a serial killer (which if I could solve would make me very rich!), we actually need to think about what things we may experience that may impact on our thought processes. I am by no means suggesting that negative experiences turn us into serial killers, however I genuinely do think that it is nurture over nature. I think it can be really difficult to separate the two, however I believe that this is more because nurture begins to impact pre-birth. I am also not really focussing on the extreme nature of someone who commits horrific crimes; what I am fascinated by is how our care providers, environment and experiences shape how we think, respond and manage our emotions. And in turn what this looks like in terms of the behaviours we demonstrate.

I loved teaching and think with more time, experience and maturity I would have been a fairly good teacher, however what I quickly realised was that I was often frustrated in a very different way to my colleagues. I found on a daily basis that I felt inappropriately distracted by the majority of the children in my class, who were on task and working, because what I actually wanted to do was just focus on the children who were not! I was drawn to the children who just weren’t in the right place for learning. Don’t get me wrong this didn’t necessarily translate into me responding to their needs in the best way, and certainly didn’t mean that I didn’t shout and use behaviour management techniques that now make me cringe. In fact, I think there was some part of me that intrinsically knew that the way I reacted was unhelpful in a number of ways. However I had never been taught how to do anything better, and I didn’t understand the children well enough to even begin to comprehend the reasons behind their behaviour.

I also didn’t understand enough about myself and how my emotions in any given moment would hugely affect how well I responded to the child in front of me. This is my biggest frustration with the teacher training I completed, and indeed some of what I still hear about today. There is not enough focus for me on Child Development and the biology of the brain, which can give us such a profound insight into what is going on for so many of our children. Furthermore, we still don’t pay enough attention to looking after the well-being of the adults providing care or education for these children. If our adults are not in a safe place, literally and emotionally, how on earth do we expect them to create safe places for our children? One positive from the pandemic is that we are beginning to talk about this more, which can only be a good thing.

My subsequent careers working with young people who had offended, particularly those who had sexually harmed. Then considering the impact of neglect and abuse on children, and how this impact manifests itself in the classroom, all just further compounded my compulsion to get this knowledge I have, about the biology behind some of this behaviour out there, and certainly into classrooms and early years settings. If we have just a basic understanding around what early adversity can do to our brains, it can immediately make us think differently about the child we are working with. The minute we view the behaviour from a different perspective, or through a different lens, we can approach it differently.

We all understand that if we adopted a dog from a rescue centre, its early life experiences will mean that it does not behave in the same way as a dog that we care for ourselves from being a new-born puppy. We don’t blame the dog for this because it is no way their fault and we are just curious about what the dog may have experienced to make it react as it does. Yet we sometimes struggle to apply this same logic to children and young people. If a child has grown up in an environment that is abusive, or they have just not experienced the nurture and care that we hope most children receive, then of course the way they have learnt to respond is different to children who have grown up in a secure and loving family. This again is through no fault of theirs and we can’t just wave a magic wand to make it all better. As I said in my last blog, I do love a quote and the one I have chosen this time made me really think about behaviour policies in school and what it is that they are actually trying to achieve. A word often associated with a ‘good’ behaviour policy is discipline:

“Discipline derives from the word disciple, which means student. Disciple does not mean the recipient of behavioural consequences. The aim of discipline therefore is to teach not punish”.

Thinking about children we work with in an education context. If children have never been taught their times tables, we don’t just keep telling them that they should know their times tables and punish them because they don’t know them. We notice that they don’t know their timetables, we may wonder why and then we teach them. Then the next time we are doing something that relies on a child knowing their times tables we remind them of what they learnt before and help them apply that knowledge in this situation. For children who have experienced early adversity, developmental trauma or ACEs (all different ways of describing similar things), they may have never been taught the appropriate way to manage the emotion of fear for example. They may even have seen and learnt a really unhelpful way of dealing with this emotion. If they then demonstrate this by dealing with that fear by running from the classroom, should we then just tell the child that they should know how to deal with this emotion better? And even punish them every time they run off? I would say of course not; we should notice that they don’t have a better way to cope, wonder why and then teach and support the child to find a way to manage this emotion which is more helpful for both them and others around them. We should keep working with them on this until they feel confident about what they have learnt, and when we notice a situation where fear could be a factor, we should remind them about what they have learnt and help them to apply this knowledge in this context.

If we understand that our brain is made up of neural pathways, and that these are developed by our experiences, we can begin to see how biology impacts on behaviour. Our neural pathways are developed through repetition, so if we have lots of positive interactions in our early years, such as lots of eye contact, touch, singing or rhymes, then these all help build helpful neural pathways that provide a strong foundation for future learning, behaviour and health. If we experience abuse or neglect, or an environment that causes toxic stress, then these basic structures can be poorly developed or damaged. As we get older our brain keeps the neural pathways that are most used and prunes away those that are underused. If the neural pathways that we are left with are not helpful in helping us to deal with our emotions, then we are left not understanding how we should react. We need someone to teach us, we need someone to support us to develop and build more helpful neural pathways, and then we need repetition to ensure that these pathways remain and get stronger.

So why did I become an Education Consultant and what can I actually do? I want to help anyone working with children to have the opportunity to learn more. I have obviously massively oversimplified the biology bit here, and there is so much information and research going on, that learning around this subject is definitely a journey not a destination. I can help people on that journey of learning, hopefully informally by making people think and approach things differently, and formally through training and support. It all starts however by appreciating that we don’t always know what is going on for the person or child in front of us, and that they may just need a bit of our kindness, curiosity, understanding and empathy.

#justbekind #thebiologybehindbehaviour

The day you plant the seed...

183:856109137 (Rezina Kelly) — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 09:24:10 GMT

Hello!

My name is Rezina and I have just started my own business as an Education Consultant. Interesting timing you may think; given that the country has just entered our third lockdown due to Coronavirus, and all the schools have just closed! Hmm well as a solution focused, optimist (or so I'm told), I actually think the timing is pretty good. I have time to really think about what I want to do and how I want to do it - how often does that ever happen in life, and certainly not in the world of education? Some may describe it as a luxury.

I have worked in education for a long time, both directly as a teacher and then less directly working with vulnerable children and young people in lots of different contexts. More recently I have focused on working with the adults that support children and young people around their education. I've enjoyed some of the most rewarding jobs and I am so fortunate to have gained heaps of knowledge and experience from all of them, which I am now eager to share.

My plan for this blog is to start to do just that, share some of my reflections. A chance to think about all the things that I have learnt and how we can put these into practice; to help the adults to look after their well being and to help children (particularly those who are more vulnerable) succeed in education and beyond. I am hoping that this blog provides likeminded individuals with that 'nod of the head' moment; they aren't the only one who feels like this. And my real ambition is that I get the less likeminded individuals to take a moment to consider what I have said and think about whether I have something worth listening to!

My background includes a lot of training delivery, and this is something I love and hope to do lots more of. There is something unique about the buzz in a room (real or virtual) when everyone just gets it. I experienced this a great deal with Safeguarding training, where you can really make people think about the children they are working with and what they may be going through. That feeling that you might just make a difference to a child in trouble, because you have sent one person away with a little more knowledge, is incredible. Likewise, I have recently been doing increasing amounts of training with schools around the impact of early adversity and developmental trauma. Again knowing that a teacher may look at a child through a different lens the day after because of something you have said or asked them to think about, is what makes me tick.

I love a good quote and a recent one really resonated with me, both in terms of the work I am doing and also what I am supporting others to do with the children they work with. It said;

"Remember. The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. Be patient. Be humble. Keep moving forward and know that all this hard work you're putting in day in and day out will produce the results you've been looking for. Your time is coming. Do not give up."

I can't credit anyone for this quote but it is so true. As any adults working with, or even with our own children, we have to focus on the long term. We say things to children hoping they're listening, and often feel so frustrated that we have just said something profound and life changing only to be greeted by a shrug or a roll of the eyes. However just because it doesn't immediately make a difference doesn't necessarily mean that what you have said has not been heard. I love the phrase 'every interaction is an intervention' because this is how we have to work with children. We don't know what the child is storing away from the things that we say, we therefore have to ensure that more of what we do say is helpful and positive, rather than shaming or negative. We all know that if someone says something critical or unkind about us we remember that forever, the compliment however we find harder to accept. We may just remind ourselves of it later though, and especially if it comes from someone we admire or respect - how nice does that feel?! So why don't we try and leave the children we work with that feeling, because for many of the most vulnerable children, they already come to us full to the top of the negative stuff. Our job can't always be to repair, what we can try and do is redress the balance.

I once worked with a young boy when I worked in Youth Justice, he was a really bright young man who had just had a pretty rubbish deal out of life so far. He lived on an estate where it was easier to get into trouble than stay out of it, and his brains were an asset that not all his friends had at their disposal. I found working with him challenging, not because he was difficult to engage or obstinate but because he was completely the opposite. As a naïve and eager Youth Offending Team worker I just couldn't understand why he would not choose to do the right thing, because he fully understood why he should, and even discussed with me what he may be able to achieve if he made better decisions. Yet he didn't, time after time.

I recommended a book to him once, flippantly in a conversation, 'A Child Called "It"' by Dave Pelzer. I spoke about it only to suggest that what happens to you when you are younger does not have to define who you grow up to be. This was long before I knew anything about the impact of trauma, and I probably need to read the book again to try and further consider what factors helped Dave Pelzer to become the man he did. However it had struck a chord with me, that we have to remain aspirational for all children, as they all have the capability to succeed. If they don't succeed, we have to wonder what more we could have done. I talked about it to this boy, more thinking out loud rather than considering he would actually listen to what I was saying. And he didn't really, just nodded and shrugged and then changed the topic of conversation as soon as he could.

It was three years later that I saw him in the City Centre. He had a job and was doing okay for himself. I was pretty surprised that he recognised me, I was totally shocked that he then thanked me for recommending the book! I am by no means suggesting that one conversation or even one book changed this boy's life, and I am not even claiming that it did. My point merely is that it really matters what we say to children, and only they will ever know what they heard and what difference it has made. I just know that I would prefer to be remembered for the positive things that I have said, than for just adding to their negative stuff.

#justbekind #thedayyouplanttheseed