Classroom management is never easy. Sometimes the only tool in a teacher’s toolbox is their sense of humour and their personality. At a time when exclusions are at an all time high, academic standards are expected to improve year on year, these two seem impossible to marry.
After 29 years of teaching, I have learnt a lot the hard way. However if I know one thing it is this, young people learn from people they like. They want to feel important, they want to do well and they want to be liked. What they don’t want is to be embarrassed and humiliated , to be shown up for not understanding or to “lose face” in front of their peers. As a teacher and the adult in the room, it’s up to you to make sure that doesn’t happen. Not only would it disrupt your lesson and prevent learning, it also erodes the very fragile sense of self of a young person struggling to be the best they can be (or even just survive)
To some that sounds “airy-fairy” and a bit of “hug a hoodie” mentality. It is actually being human, understanding bad behaviour isn’t personal and that it is another way of communicating.
I’m sure we have all heard of the fabulous work of Maya Angelou and she has it right. Be human, admit mistakes, bend the rules sometimes, those kids aren’t in school to pass their exams, they are in school to get an education.
Someone once described the young people I worked with as “the minus-tens”…..
These are the “unteachables”, the “unreachables”, the “beyond hope”, the excluded, the thrown out, the disengaged and the hopeless. These young people must become our purpose.
Many people and organisations claim that they work with “disadvantaged” young people. Some genuinely do. I’m not criticising the work of others, all support has value. The most disadvantaged aren’t grateful, aren’t easy. It takes months to engage and even longer to gain trust (if you ever do). It often feels like a thankless task. Disadvantage is multi-layered. It’s not just poverty in monetary terms (although that is a precursor to much, much more disadvantage), it’s poverty of expectation, poverty of ambition, of hope, of resilience and of care.
I’m reminded of something a 15 year old boy said to me last year; “I don’t expect to be here at 26, I’ll be dead by then. I live a risky life, it’s what I’d expect. I honestly don’t care”. There is poverty of expectation. He’s a product of his history, his postcode, his exclusion, his self-medication and his disillusionment in every adult he’s ever met.
If mainstream education is made up of young people who rank between 1-10 (bear with me, it’s not what it sounds like), “10” being the most “successful” in academic terms, applying to university, excellent grades who have hit the jackpot with their background and family support, “1” being those who struggle with school but just get by and may achieve low paid employment…. At Foundation Futures our work is with the “-10s”. The layers of disadvantage they face is hard to imagine. Frankly I don’t think I’d get up in the morning if I were in their shoes, so it’s a labour of love accepting small wins and building on small achievements that mainstream education wouldn’t recognise as such, never mind measure.
These young people fight for fun and film it. They have child protection orders and youth offending teams. They have social workers (if they’re lucky) and undiagnosed mental health issues. They have drug addictions and Criminal Behaviour Orders. They have babies too early and are thrown out of home. They have criminal records and community service orders. They are excluded, shunned, blamed and sneered at. In response to all that, the fear and anxiety they universally feel is masked by it’s protector; aggression. These are the layers of disadvantage the “-10s” face, all masked and protected by a hard, impenetrable shell of aggression, bad behaviour, defiance and mistrust.
So, not surprisingly the “-10s” don’t do well in mainstream education. School, which used to be and should be, the safety net, where there was stability, structure, understanding and consistency isn’t welcoming, bending or accommodating any more. It’s another place to be excluded from, another place to be shunned. I honestly believe teachers still want to support every child in ways they need, it’s the system which fails them and demoralises those who work there. There used to be youth clubs where different relationships could be formed with trusted adults, experienced in youth work which is a world away from the exam factory, hard line, zero tolerance approach of the current education system.
Until decision makers understand fully the word “disadvantage” we will continue storing up trouble for the future. More teenage parents, more anti-social behaviour, more criminality and drug use. More cost to the public purse. More lost children.
If we all turn away, they won’t go away.