In further awful news, some horrid Y10s have stolen my "happy stamps", which means that all the books I have marked this week are without colourful expressions of praise disguised as frogs and monkeys. Booo. Also, my Y8s are up in arms because one of them threw chewing gum across the room on Tuesday (gross) and so I got our Head of Department in and he threatened to write letters home to all their parents/guardians if no-one admitted to it. Luckily they're still at the age where they give one about what their parents say and so some of them told on the culprit. C is flatly denying it so I think a public dressing-down may well be in order tomorrow.
My Professional Tutor from Canterbury has sadly broken her elbow in two places, which means I think I will get away with a whole half-term without being observed once, good stuff. When someone finally watches me teach again, I think they're gonna be in for a bit of shocker since I have become a wee bit rubbbbbbish. Oh well.
So, onto Circle-Time. Today, period 2, in an attempt to get me some behaviour management tips (not to mention anger management tips!) I observed a session in the LSU. They had a specialist in from Behaviour Support Services, who comes in once a week to help pupils who have been identified as lacking in social skills. Now, in my opinion, most kids in the school are a bit weak on the old emotional intelligence, but the ones I saw today were probably pretty low even when compared to the others.
Anyway, the session was on identity, done through Circle-Time. This is basically a behaviour and social skills model pioneered by Jenny Mosely. It teaches kids all kinds of things, but principally how to think, listen, look and share using the safety of the circle, where there are no barriers, everyone is equal and everyone is included.
The model works through games and stories that help the children learn different skills and share experiences. For example, in today's session each child had a worksheet with some different aspects of their identity on it and they had to tick what they though described them (e..g I am tall; I have lots of friends; I always keep calm). Then we put all the papers in the middle and took turns reading them out to try and guess which paper belonged to which member of the circle. Then, later, a special box was handed around and it had a mirror in the bottom. The specialist told the kids that there was something very special and unique in the box - when kids looked in the box they saw themselves! This led to a good discussion about how we should be proud about our uniqueness and what makes us who we are.
I was thoroughly amazed at how the specialist had all the kids under control, and not just that, but actively participating! It was a joy to watch such awkward and "baggaged" children feel so safe and confident - the dynamics within the circle were just great!
I've now got lots of ideas to try with my Y7 groups. It's so important for kids to learn how to be in our society, but we never really think about teaching them. The Circle-Time resources are all about teaching kids how to interact in positive ways. Further, they made me reassess the way I behaved in class too. I'm going to try and be much more positive and instead of criticising poor behaviour, praise positive behaviour instead. The first step is to switch from writing "bad" names on the board to writing only "good" names on the board. I'm going to try and be calm and speak quietly and slowly. And I'm gonna try to realise that I'm not always right (a tricky one!)
So, yes, any teachers out there, please check it out. I think it's aimed more at primary school kids, but I'm sure it's good for our secondary kids to learn this stuff too. At any rate, I really enjoyed getting away from maths and going back to working with kids. In all the hustle and bustle of targets and reports and standards, I think sometimes we forget that we're working with people here and that there's more to learn than solving equations.
