Change takes courage

I currently work as a teacher and pastoral leader in a multi-cultural challenging East London school. I love it, and I hate it!!

I love the endless possibilities the kids have and potential as they start out on their own personal journey to success whatever that may look like and wherever that may take them. I love the fact that I can contribute in a small positive way to helping them realize their dreams and aspirations and help them and believe that anything is possible.

Unfortunately, I hate the lack of resource and time my colleagues and I have to do this, and the lack of quality leadership that surrounds me in order to afford these children the very best life chances regardless of their start position. I am sick of leaders not “getting it “, being 10 years behind the curve when it comes to positive learning and working environments. Not being sufficiently bothered about a multi-cultural inner city school actually being wholly inclusive, which means educating the next generation about embracing diversity, be it ethnic diversity or neuro diversity or cultural difference. Realizing that genuine inclusion means everyone, even those who struggle to get it right. Inclusion for those who do not get it right should NOT be the prison room day in day out, lesson in, lesson out, back into prison room, repeat and all the while school leaders are banking the evidence to say that this child doesn’t fit here, he/she falls short of our expectations, so its alternative provision for you my friend! These poor souls, and often their parents, lack a strong enough voice and the resources to find a way to fight this system that is lead in this draconian way. They fall by the way side and are punished daily for not getting it right because the system designed by such leaders does NOT include them.

That is why I find myself here to agitate and to change this lack of inclusion. Let’s face it, this may well resonate with many of you here. It’s not that this type of leader wants to be unkind to the children or be a big meanie it’s just that they lack maturity and wisdom themselves and both the courage and methodology to change it.

This is how it’s always been done for a number of years now, and in strict no nonsense academies, on paper they get superb results, but the results don’t tell you how many poor, struggling students were moved on to the PRU, alternative education or underwent a managed move.

Leaders like this cascade their lack of understanding throughout a school. They’re often not visible, hiding away from the reality. They have lost a grasp of what it’s like to be on the frontline managing the ever growing complex issues children arrive to school with on a daily basis and how long in reality it takes teachers, assistant teachers and pastoral staff to unpack and start to attempt to mend these problems with a finite resource.

My school is currently undergoing a staff absence crisis. Surprise, surprise! Again, if the leaders had a better understanding of their staff’s lives, which in part don’t differ very much from their own, and support them in a way they support themselves and had empathy and not question the workforces’ integrity, then a big chunk of the problem would disappear. But they don’t. They lack any level of trust in people, judging others on their own shoddy standards. They forget teachers are people, they often have children, elderly parents, and yes believe or not people who work in a school do actually get ill. Teachers are 5 times more likely to contract coronavirus than the average person in other professions who are not public facing. Take myself as an example, I’ve had it 4 times that I know of in 2 years.

Staff will be picking up all the new strains of viruses circulating in the community at any point in time.

hey need compassion and care and kindness from school leaders, not mistrust and making it very difficult for you to even to be ill without a whole load of stress plonked on you as you have to call the Head teacher’s wife’s grandma’s mother’s cat before 6:57am each day of illness. This is no way to treat people. This drives absence up.

RANT over!!!

Back to my point, inclusion needs to mean everyone, it is about going on a transformational journey that looks to dissect the problems faced by the young person, and start offering and securing emotional safety for that child. When a child arrives at secondary school from primary, for example, it is a major change for any child let alone one who may struggle to navigate due to social and emotional needs, or other anxieties or previous trauma related experiences. All too often their behaviour is a communication of an unmet need. We as professionals need to be able to be better at offering support by building and establishing meaningful connections instead of putting up barriers. Even in the trickiest moments, when behaviour of the child is very ‘wobbly’ to say the least, we need to learn to manage with a genuine relational focus. Those ‘oh so important’ values of basic kindness, genuine care and consideration for all children and colleagues need to ripple through everything we do, every interaction, every tricky moment, every reflective moment.

We need staff who are willing to separate the behaviour from the child, staff who are able to leave their ego at the door, staff who are bold enough to take responsibility, and want to adopt a relational approach, which in essence is a much more pleasant way of being for all concerned.

We need staff who are willing to change, and who see a real need for change, staff who want to change, and remember change takes courage…

If you are interested on coming on this journey with me contact me at ….