Or choices and consequences.

Resilience, to me, is the seeking of solutions to problems that are put before you, harnessing all the available knowledge, your own and from other sources, developing a plan of action, carrying it out, with in-action alterations to evident need, leading to an outcome that can then be evaluated, and if necessary remediated or refined following further reflection. Sometimes it is reflective, at other times it is reactive, dependent on the time constraints.

From my personal story, I think I have some insight into the potential for life to throw things at you. I am also well aware that some people have had greater things to cope with than me. For all the challenges I am content with my lot, not least because I survived them and also because each contributed to overcoming the subsequent issues as they arose and made me into the person that I have become.

Life offers challenges, opportunities and experiences at different levels to each and every one of us, unless we live in a self-contained bubble and don’t participate.
​
It is something of a truism that children today don’t enjoy the same freedoms which my generation did, to explore the surrounding area without worry, to play together, or climb trees, until caught, in a local recreation ground. I walked the couple of kilometres or so to school aged 5, crossing roads by myself, having been taken on the first few days by one of my parents. These experiences developed personal capabilities and a certain amount of self-reliance.

If children are not able to experience the world through their own eyes and through their own decisions, but have to rely on an adult to make the decisions for them, they can become somewhat disabled in their growing experiences. We want our children to be safe and secure and I do remember the first time my own children went off on their own into town, a kilometre away, in the days before mobile phones. That they went, got back safely and wanted to talk about what they had done in the interim was a rite of passage. Their confidence raised our confidence as parents. They had demonstrated their capability and independence in decision making. They took responsibility and grew as a result.

Regularly, we hear that about the need for “lessons” in “grit and resilience”. In a school system that has almost systematically embedded a spoon feeding culture, how will it be done?
​
Put children out on wet days without a coat, to see how it feels to be cold and wet? Deprive them of food for an extended time to experience hunger? Or will we see more cross-country running, or some other physical exertion, until children feel real physical exhaustion?

If they are given “Ladybird” or “Blue Peter” instruction (here’s one I made earlier, copy the recipe), how do they learn to make decisions and take account of resultant outcomes? They won’t always have a teacher or adult around to make the decisions for them. Because, in reality, grit, determination and resilience are internalised, personal to each and every one of us. Some have more than others. This can be our ability to tolerate discomfort or pain, in different forms, mental or physical. We sometimes don’t know what we can endure until we are tested.

Independent decision making is a part of this process; making appropriate choices when faced with a problem. Working together as a team can sometimes be problematic, requiring understanding of others, but success, as a result of collaboration, can be the source of personal growth. Life is after all a glorified team work exercise. Getting on with someone can be testing, at times.

Thinking back to my active teaching days, which extended through headship, my aim was always to harness and develop independence in learners, with children thinking, talking, decision-making and enacting their plans an integral part of as many learning challenges as possible.

My classroom organisation, some would occasionally have described as a “learning workshop”, enabled challenge such as “Make a picture to represent autumn” or “What’s the best material to wrap a parcel in the post?” This would allow children choices of materials, composition and the direction of their working together, as they always made such pictures in twos or threes, so decisions were corporate. Elements of other subject challenges were treated in the same way, because the talk, planning and decision were effectively “tests”, enabling children to demonstrate how much of the taught curriculum they had internalised.

As someone is likely to be asking if teaching occurred, the answer is a resounding yes, with the tasking checking that the teaching had been embedded, and remediated within the task as necessary.

Children will not become resilient through dictated lessons, which can then just become exhortations to finish the activity. Making learning challenges such that effort across a range of capabilities is needed, over time, so that grit, resilience and decisions are in-built, might just offer a greater chance of success.

Then again, life might already have given some of the children their life-time’s quota of resilience. Imagine a refugee child, who has had to flee conflict. School does not often mirror real life, so is not always a preparation for those things that might be encountered.

You just need to know them well, teach them well, support, guide and mentor to need and challenge appropriately, letting the cords loosen from time to time, to test their security.

This week, I have been able to have a number of conversations that have drawn on my teaching career and life experience in general. One of these was in the context of special educational needs and “inclusion”. The term inclusion rightly became a significant part of political and social life within the past twenty years, but I have always wondered if the label itself, defined as a state of being included, implies an “outsider” who has to be incorporated into a group, which in turn has to adapt to the new person; “Please can I be included?” It reminds me of playground games; who’s chosen first and who’s left until last?

That people are different is easily understood.

The differences can, at times, be exaggerated at the expense of similarities, to the point where accommodation is deemed impossible. This, in education terms, can amount to a form of exclusion; you don’t fit us, we can’t cope with difficulties like those.

However, finding the right educational setting for defined needs is key to success.

 My career has shown me that capacity creates capacity, in that schools which find themselves able to accommodate individual needs find the capacity to adapt to the needs of all children, so making themselves desirable and valued by parents and children. Schools operating in challenging areas, taking every child who comes through the door, often because they simply have space, with a positive adult workforce, can transform children’s lives. For the first time, some have space to grow, even if, from time to time, they rail against the system. Children are little humans and have, at their age, perhaps less self-control than adults are supposed to have. They make errors of judgement.

For eight of the past ten years, until two years ago, I did substantial work with Inclusion Quality Mark. This came up in conversation this week, as a Twitter acquaintance proudly told me that her school had recently received confirmation of the award. As I had been instrumental in developing the audit in use from 2015, I was aware of the qualities that the school would have displayed, as there were significant common themes that ran through each, although there were contextual adaptations to evident need.

It made me have a look at bits that I wrote during that time, after visits to schools. The following is an extract from one summary, anonymised.

To move from Special Measures to Outstanding in three years suggests that something special happens in London Primary School. Whilst working with the same staff, the school has seen a rapid turn-around. The principle can be easily stated, as Personalisation in everything, holding to the Every Child Matters ethos, although the practical aspects are more complex to describe. London encounters virtually every identifiable barrier to learning, seeks to identify root causes and then to find solutions which allows each child to feel valued and to develop self-esteem, from which learning needs can be addressed, as children have the skills to cope when errors are made. 

Passionate, articulate, hard-working, engaged, analytical, purposeful, creative, inspirational and visionary are all adjectives that can be attributed to the London staff. It was a pleasure to spend quality time in their company.

Equally, if I could nominate a school where Inclusion is lived and breathed, it would be London. It permeates every aspect of school life, perhaps, as the Head of School commented, “With so much need, we have no choice but to use inclusive approaches”. But inclusion at London is more than that statement; it is the raison d’etre, like a stick of rock, sliced anywhere, the word Inclusive would be seen, hearts, minds, bodies and souls are dedicated to the same aims. Although the end of term was in sight, there was still and energy and vibrancy to the school which belied its Victorian building, although even that had been imaginatively used to enhance all aspects of teaching and learning, from Nursery to eleven.

I came away from this visit to London Primary with two thoughts that summarise its outlook:-

 The staff give above and beyond what one can reasonably expect of them.
 Nobody is left out, child or adult. All are valued for their unique gifts and talents.
Two quotes from a parent and a teacher add to the summary:-
“Like a big family.”
“We offer a glimmer of hope in their lives. We are here to make a difference.”
While an external view was that:-
“The school makes excellent links with the community and other schools to deliver a high quality of service to families”.

The school aims for every child to have a happy and active primary education in an environment that is caring and supporting. It provides a stimulating and structured environment in which every child will be encouraged to reach their full potential.”

Teachers, at all levels of experience, take their responsibilities very seriously, working hard to improve themselves through personal reading and regular networking, where this is easily available. Some are prepared to spend part of a weekend at conferences. They want to offer the best of themselves, so that every child receives the best that they can offer. The best teaching context is collegiate, with expertise willingly shared.

External judgements on the system, schools or individual teachers often creates a negative image; for seemingly thirty years it has often been found wanting and “in need of improvement”, to use an Ofsted judgement, while children may be judged to “not be at national standard” at SATs. Some of these children may well be told this throughout their schooling. And yet, we are, as a profession, acutely aware that labels hurt children (people), this being one of the arguments for removing levels, but we’re in a cultural period where no-one quite knows exactly what to expect of children’s outcomes, as there isn’t, as yet, a common expectation that can be articulated and demonstrated. Teacher insecurity can lead to insecure advice and guidance. We are also at a point where long serving teachers are retiring, to be replaced by younger, less experienced staff. A recent post looked at different stages of teacher development, where less experiences professionals may be more likely to be concerned with getting structures right than the details of specific needs.

Collegiality, quality mentoring and high quality communication are key to safeguarding educational opportunities for each child.

Inclusion is a personal and school wide ethos. It cannot thrive in isolated pockets, without frustration creeping in. Poor communication and inaccessibility engender parent and teacher annoyance with each other. Frustration, on either side can lead to rapidly diminishing relationships, which then have to be tackled before the needs of the children can be addressed.
​

I’ve included again, the general outcomes from multiple visits to schools to look at Inclusion (above) and also a link to a post that looks at the underlying principles of inclusive practice.
 
 
It can be a salutary experience to really take a look at yourself first.
 

Have you ever had the experience of "corpsing" or "bottling it" during a public performance? How much rehearsal is "enough" or possibly too much?

​Some years ago, personal relaxation time was provided through plating in a performance folk dance group band, from which, occasionally, we morphed into a barn dance ensemble for special occasions. In addition to playing the Irish drum, the bodhran, which I'd played in France in front of an audience of 3000, I also stepped out from the band to sing folk songs appropriate to the occasion.

​This was fine, until the day that I literally froze mid-song. I’d sung this particular version of “As I walked out, one bright May morning” many times, but for some reason, the beginning of the next verse eluded me. In front of an audience of 100 people, I was stuck. Fortunately, the band discretely started to clap, as if the song had finished and I slunk back behind my drum. The experience was so stark and devastating, my confidence so dented, that it has stuck with me ever since.

We’re into observation season for ITT trainees. They are, during an observation, on show, demonstrating their current abilities. It’s very public, with an audience of children adding to the adults in the room; the TAs are as much part of the audience as the class teacher and, occasionally, an external tutor.

This has also heightened to me the ways in which we ask children to perform, every minute of every day, changing their focus from one lesson to another, often with just a few minutes’ hiatus. Some lessons are highly performance based; PE, dance, drama, music and art come to mind, but reading aloud could be seen as performance, as can being put on the spot to answer a question. It’s the immediacy that can cause a tension in an insecure child required to respond, perform and achieve. Where there is the potential for responses to be right or wrong, the insecure child may take time to respond.

Desert Island Discs interviewee on 10.3.17 was Jimmy Carr. Most people will know of the seemingly brash, confident comedian, prepared to say the unsayable. It was with great interest that I listened to him talking of his childhood that was marked by late diagnosed dyslexia that left him unconfident in class reading lessons. That he went on to exam success and to Cambridge was down to teachers later in his career who believed in his abilities and focused him in the right way.

Wait time; helpful or not?

I watched a class lesson, based on bible reading, with the teacher reading aloud from the bible, while every child had their own copy and had to “read along with the teacher”. For me, there were a number potentially issues built into this activity from the start; the readability level of the text and the reading ability of the class as a whole. While the additional adults were deployed with the readers with greatest need, there was no guarantee that the children were reading with any accuracy, or with understanding. Wait time is a useful technique, allowing a child a bit of thinking time before responding. Well used, it can be the difference between offering an answer and becoming tongue tied and unable, or unwilling to answer. When one of the struggling readers was asked a question, the pressure to answer was great and became more so as the wait time progressed. Fortunately, the teacher offered an opportunity to think longer by going to another child. An alternative would have been for the child to talk with her supporting adult, who could act as advocate for ideas.

Rehearsal time.

When I was a class teacher, the prevailing orthodoxy in reading was to hear individuals. Where this was planned, it was possible to think ahead and “line-up” readers, who would be called, by offering them time to come out of the activity that they were doing and allow some time to go back over a few pages of already read material, so that they were prepared to move onto the next few pages to be read aloud. This preparation, or rehearsal, was very valuable for vulnerable readers, for whom reading aloud can be sufficiently great to diminish their performance, meaning that they might receive less than flattering feedback.

Where any form of reading aloud is envisaged, I would always advocate a period of time where the children could do some personal practice ahead of the reading, especially if they have moved from one subject to another. Where an additional adult is available, some children could do this out loud, while others, if iPads are available, could record themselves reading aloud and listen back.

Responsive teaching.

Watching for the nuanced responses of children is a key element of responsive teaching. Spotting and responding to evident need in timely fashion is an example of quality teaching. It is very easy to miss tell-tale signs, especially if the teacher is in training or in their early career. As I wrote in an earlier blog, inexperienced, developing teachers move from structural considerations to more holistic, child-evidenced decisions.

Not everyone is a naturally outgoing personality.

We hope in schools, that we offer a safe environment where it is possible to make an error, in any aspect of life, without it being blown out of proportion. Should it become so, it can have a long term detrimental effect on future effort and outcomes.

Insecurity in any form can become debilitating. It is the teacher role to minimise the potential for learning opportunities to add to present insecurity. Children know if they struggle with learning; they don’t need it exaggerated. We need them all to be active participants, but not necessarily in a starring role.

In this regard, I do have some concerns about some 1:1 teaching; are these children potentially under too much scrutiny?  

​Images are of "Octan" playing and rehearsing for the Truffe de Perigeux; Chris Chivers, Paul Fane and Nick Manley.

Deconstruction of Walderton farmhouse

When Shakin’ Stevens sang “Ain’t gonna need this house no longer, ain’t gonna need this house no more, ain’t got time to fix the shingles, ain’t got time to fix the floor”, he obviously hadn’t met with the people who run the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton, near Chichester. Their mission is to save old houses that otherwise would become derelict and their historical heritage lost.
​
These houses are painstakingly taken apart, marked, measured and mapped, so that they can be repaired as necessary and then put back together in such a way that they are accessible to a very large number of visitors during each year. The team also reconstructs buildings of archaeological interest, recently building a Saxon Hall from evidence of a 950AD structure from Steyning in West Sussex.

​When my children were young, being naturally inquisitive, they regularly asked “What does that word say?” The response was the whole word, with perhaps a side order of sharing the first letter sound. Children want to understand the world around them, and awareness of words is a significant part of that. For deconstructing, in current parlance, read decoding, the new orthodoxy. Young children don’t necessarily want to know that “Road” says “R-OA-D”, or worse “R-O-A D”; or perhaps try “Crescent”. They want the word, perhaps because they are also naturally seeking meaning, to make sense of the world. That they are aware that a written road name “says” something is a step to note, in itself?

I have already said that I can see great benefit in deconstructing to determine the parts that can then be put back together. A large number of words conform to rules according to how letters are linked together; equally, there are many that don’t. Listening to children read who are over-reliant on decoding can be a painful business, especially if this is their approach to each word. Reading requires some fluency, to enable sentences to create an overall meaning, which, in turn, requires retention of whole words, or significant chunks of words that allow rapid construction of the less secure parts.

To my analytical mind, deconstruction (decoding) leads to reconstruction (encoding), then to retention, for rapid retrieval when required in context, by definition the reconstructed word, in memory becomes a (recognised on) sight word, a form of word matching.

I can remember the pleasure of playing with words, within “word families”. Having learned a simple word like “at” beginning to add letters to make additional words: - bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, tat, vat, or “it”: - bit, fit, git, hit, kit, lit, mit(ten), nit, pit, sit, tit, wit. Coupled with learning nursery rhymes and simple songs, words like this and the idea of rhyming allowed children to be explorers of words.

I have worried about the potential for approaches advocated since 1997, with the National Strategies and Assessing Pupil Progress (APP), that the curriculum, as a whole has become disjointed through deconstruction, requiring the learner to make sense of large parts of the journey, without a clear picture of where everything fits; a bit like trying to make a complicated jigsaw without sight of the picture.

I made this point, in this way, to Lord Dearing at a local curriculum review conference, because teachers were finding themselves in a similar position. The current curriculum approach has an even greater feel of an incomplete jigsaw. In fact, at times, it feels like someone decided to throw the bits out and ask people to find them first; not much fun playing an incomplete game.

A lack of overall narrative, or breadth of knowledge and understanding, allows smaller elements that are in place to assume greater prominence than each perhaps should have, as busy teachers seek to cement some simplicities into the complexities of the curriculum demand. Some schools seek to simplify further by giving some subjects greater prominence at the expense of others, diminishing the conceptual and vocabulary base.

Much mention has been made recently of the need to memorise, thoughts in working memory leading to storage in long term memory, with the potential for cognitive overload and dissonance thrown in for good measure.

There is the idea that the current simplicity ensures no cognitive overload, that working memory is only put to a particular use and that this is then stored and retained, for easy recovery when needed.
If only life and learning were that simple, we’d have been doing that forever. The narrative of sharing ideas with learners often leads, in the telling, to the leader making links with other ideas, some of which are aroused in memory simply in the telling, a link having been made by the use of a word, or seeing something in an image that jogs a thought. These tangents can sometimes be seen as new insights, which arise as much within discourse as in “deep reflection”.
This, for me, is one reason why teachers need to be excellent storytellers and children need to talk their ideas, in discussion with an adult, who can offer appropriate additional linked asides that add value to the retelling.

We don’t know the capacity of a child’s working memory, nor do we have any idea about their long term mental organisation, but we can assume that these will vary. Unless there is very good modelling of ideas in a framework that makes sense to the child, they will be struggling cognitively. As an adult, if you have been in a lecture and found an idea interesting or challenging and spent time reflecting on that, is that at the expense of the next few minutes of the talk? I know that I have, probably on many occasions.

Learning can be hard.
The problem, for a learner, in a deconstructed environment, where they have no clear map or picture, nor signposts to how things link together, is that they then have to try to put things together for themselves. It is not surprising if many find this very challenging; some may be experiencing working memory or cognitive overload or, in extremis, stress.
It can be made even harder if it isn’t articulately presented and effectively scaffolded, through appropriate concrete and visual modelling and examples that encapsulate the concepts that are embedded within the subject specific vocabulary and processes being espoused.

Learning is often hidden in the language used.
The teacher is, at times, an interpreter, even in a home language, where extended vocabulary needs to have a developmental relationship to earlier forms. This may be specific within subjects, but needs unpicking if gaps in learner understanding are to be bridged.
 
Deconstruction, without reconstruction, leads inevitably to gaps, as bits are not picked up and put back into place. If the gaps are in the teacher element, it’s not surprising if the learner demonstrates those gaps.
​
Put your learning jigsaw together with clarity, share the overall picture, then unpick the pieces as they become relevant during the journey.
​

Walderton farmhouse, reconstructed.

 
A simple idea that I used on a long ago teaching practice, thanks to Rolyat Trebor, enabled children to enter a world of pure imagination. The premise is a simple one; you take your name and write it backwards. In so doing, you become your anti-person, the complete opposite. This allows children to explore their own personality, so would have explored ideas that are now a part of Personal and Social elements of school.

for example, some personality traits are positive:

• Being honest no matter what the consequences.
• Having responsibility for all of your actions.
• Adaptability and compatibility can help you get along with others.
• Having the drive to keep going, and having compassion and understanding.
• Patience, so people say, is a virtue.
• Having the courage to do what’s right in those tough situations and loyalty to your friends and loved ones.

Read more at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-personality-traits.html#wieQA3vRM9k4XYbi.99

So, obviously, the anti-person, in this case, would be dishonest, irresponsible, dogmatic, lazy, impatient, cowardly and disloyal.

The benefit is that it enables the exploration the language of opposites and opposition, but is also enables children to develop a reflective scenario where they meet their alter-ego.

Making masks accompanies this idea really well.
​Links to two different methods; one simple the other slightly more complex.

3D Masks made easily
Five fold 3D masks

I like this poem, I woke up this morning, by Karla Kuskin
​
I woke up this morning at quarter past seven.
I kicked up the covers and stuck out my toe.
And ever since then, that’s a quarter past seven,
They haven’t said anything other than “no”.

They haven’t said anything other than,
“Please dear, don’t so what you’re doing” or “Lower your voice.”
Whatever I’ve done and however I’ve chosen,
I’ve done the wrong thing and I’ve made the wrong choice.

I didn’t wash well and I didn’t say thank you.
I didn’t shake hands and I didn’t say please.
I didn’t say sorry when, passing a candy,
I banged the box into Miss Witelson’s knees.
I didn’t say sorry. I didn’t stand straighter.
I didn’t speak louder when asked what I’d said.

Well, I said that tomorrow at quarter past seven,
They can come in and get me, I’m staying in bed…

Or this one, Sulk, by Felice Holman.

​I scuff my feet along and puff my lower lip,
​I sip my milk in slurps and huff and frown and stamp around,
And tip my chair back from the table,
​Nearly fall down, but I don't care.
​I scuff, I pout and frown and huff,
​and stamp and pout,
​Till I forget what it's about. 
​