Being a Restorative Practitioner

  It has been a hectic term so far, the prelims, the workload and the incessant cries of “Miss, can we watch Elf yet?” have been exacerbated by the additional pressure that I have had to complete my final probationer report.  After 4 long years at university, a year and a half of probation (due to absence) and a lot of CPL, finally I can say I am an NQT. 

With that, I feel I want to take my blog in a new direction. I feel I want to focus more on the different elements of teaching using my own observations and that of others to try to share best practice, put forward a few of my own ideas and in particular focus on my new found love for restorative behaviour management. 

This week, I am going to focus on my newest strategy for dealing with an S1 class (12/13 year olds) whose low level disruptions and behaviours have caused a wider problem overall.  It all started with a bout of tears and a hysterical pupil.  At least that was when I decided I had to be brave and take the big step towards facilitating a restorative circle in class.  I asked the pupils to move tables and put chairs into a circle in the middle of the room.  At this, the uncertainty of change and trying something new was plastered across 25 faces which stared back at me.  Begrudgingly, they arranged themselves in a circle. 

Now came the tricky part – getting them to identify what the problem was with the class that had made it an unpleasant atmosphere.  Each of them thought hard for a second before I asked them to raise their hand if they felt responsible for something that was wrong with the class.  To my great surprise, a lot of the class put their hands up to volunteer to share their guilt.  They each made very valid points – none of which I could have disagreed with at all.  This demonstrated their ability to recognise when they were wrong and how they could go about fixing the issue.  This was the first step. 

Next, we discussed what we would like the classroom to feel like when we were there – me as much as them. We came up with some great adjectives such as safe, respected and happy.  Next we had to work out what needs to be changed in order to create this atmosphere we all wanted.  As a result, we renewed the classroom rules, people apologised to those who they had hurt, disrupted or annoyed and we agreed to work together as a class to make things better. 

Our final objective was to set ourselves personal targets to pin on our new target board.  These are to be reviewed each week and when a pupil meets their target they receive a reward for it such as extra library time or a merit.  These targets require a lot of self-reflection from pupils and are at first understandably lacking in detail or depth.  Gradually, by week two, these started to become more focused. 

There are still a lot of improvements to our class that need to be made, we still have circle time at least once a month and there are still people who haven’t met their targets.  Each week, we have our ups and downs but it is certainly a more positive classroom to be in.  Pupils have a visual reminder of their targets and can update, revisit and change them as often as they like. 

Memorial: An Elegy to the Punitive Classroom

Everywhere she dies. Everywhere I go she dies.
No sunrise, no city square, no lurking beautiful mountain
but has her death in it.
The silence of her dying sounds through
the carousel of language, it's a web
on which laughter stitches itself. How can my hand
clasp another's when between them
is that thick death, that intolerable distance?

(Extract from Memorial by Norman MacCaig)

For a while now, the term 'Restorative Practice' has been banded around.  It is mostly by people who have no clue what it is to be fully restorative.  I was/am one of those people who thought I was restorative but really was verging on the permissive side.  The rigmarole of sending a pupil out to the corridor to have the 'Why have I sent you out? Who have you affected? How can we change this?' conversation has become a mere speck of chalk dust on the board of restorative practice.

Recently, I started a course in the Restorative Approach within the classroom and realised that, while my intentions were pure, I am not a restorative practitioner.  This is a point of interest and is something that I am going to be updating on over the next few posts.  During the first two parts of the course, I have learned that it is important to make my classroom a restorative environment before I can make my practice restorative.  For example, greeting pupils by name as they come in the door, positive appraisal rather than picking up on negative behaviours and incorporating a class circle time to allow pupils to vent their feelings on what they want and expect from each other.

The effects of this on my practice so far are noticeable; much happier classes and a much happier me! 

This week, I gained partial responsibility for an S4 class which has meant that I now get the great pleasure of teaching Macbeth!  This is something that I am super happy about as it is one of my favourite Shakespeare texts.  Having said that, I have neither read, taught nor studied it in about 10 years.  So I am getting stuck in with re-reading it and making  copious notes on it too. 

 Overall, a very positive week this week.  Having said that, bring on the October break!

Miss.

Being Miss Short and Tired

This week, I have learned 2 key things about myself as a teacher:

1.                   Wall displays are tricky when you are this short.

2.                   I need to be in bed tucked up and asleep by 9pm to be able to function for the next day.

Following the end the fifth full week back, I feel myself crumbling under the weight of tiredness. I feel myself becoming more stressed about the little things.  This is not a good thing and it is something that I feel is important to try to combat at the early stages of my career to save myself a lot of stress in the future.  Currently, my strategies include: knitting and early nights.

So to expand on the first key point that I have learned this week, I have been attempting to put up some wall displays.  My room looked rather lacklustre and bare previously.  Now, I feel that it probably looks slightly worse with my attempts to hang freeze paper straight with only the aid of 3 small second year pupils and a chair to stand on.  The rough cut edges, squinty paper and close to a million staples at least have a little bit of character. 

So as I have gotten to know my classes a bit more, I feel that I am building up some nice relationships with them.  The trust and understanding is starting to build on both sides meaning that my classroom is a much more positive and productive place already. 

                I am remarkably getting used to the routine of leaving the house before 7a.m., being in bed before 10p.m. and battling a 40 minute commute on top of the exhaustion.  Being much more organised, settled in to a way of living is so much easier.  I feel like I am able to get more done in less time.

My S1 classes are all about to change and in some ways this is really sad.  On one hand, they are only just starting to settle down but on the same front, the classes are being set according to ability meaning that my tasks won’t have to be as differentiated as they are right now.  We are doing some lovely little book projects at the moment which will eventually make a lovely wall display (if I ever get the hang of wall displays). 

S2 have had a busy week, both of my classes were rehearsing productions of a scene from ‘White Poppies’ and have been putting together their group performances.  I had an observed lesson during one of the actual recitals.  The observation was to focus on how well I had implemented peer assessment and feedback however, it was a little chaotic.  It still went really well though so that was all good.

Finally, S3 who are still teaming their way through the media unit on ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ and seem to be really enjoying it so far.  The class are quite chatty at times and can often be found heading off topic.  I have a constant task of reminding them of the expectations that are on their shoulders.  They are gradually getting there though.

So as another week starts…bring on the October break!

Miss. 

Back for Good

'...Got your lipstick marks still on your coffee cup...' (it's tea for me but you get the idea - I am back to drinking plenty of tea somewhere other than my house).
Due to personal circumstances, it has been a long time since I have posted.  Since my last post, I have started teaching at a new school and am halfway through my second week here. 

Tuesday 18^th August – a real milestone in my life: I was handed the keys to my very own classroom.  The empty corridors were yet to be filled with pupils as the staff had an In-Service day.  The quiet corridor made for the perfect place to run about squealing with delight at the prospect of filling the bare shelves with my favourite books, starting some crafty wall displays and beginning the hunt for some awesome stationery to cover my desk!  Day one and I was already winning! After a day of meetings and planning, admin and a big clear out, we felt as ready as we were ever going to be for the return of the pupils the next day. 

This term, I knew what to expect, I was much more organised, less nervous and more than prepared for 8pm bed times.  As a result, when my first class, a lovely group of second years arrived, I was refreshed, enthusiastic and ready to start.  They were lovely, a bit boisterous but a high ability class.  Straight away, I could tell that they will be no problem at all as long as I keep them busy and prepare lots of fun tasks for them.  With this class and my other lovely S2 class, for this term, I am going to be studying a short play by Sue Saunders called ‘White Poppies’ which is set during the First World War.  This leaves me a lot of scope for good, fun tasks and so far the pupils have been extremely enthusiastic about it.

After my second years, came my two S1 classes.  We immediately reached a kind of unspoken agreement: I was new, they were new: we’d help each other!  The thing that I love about first years is their complete innocent questions – ‘Miss, I have reached the end of my page but I haven’t finished writing…should I take a new page?’ or ‘Miss, I started writing in blue pen and it’s not working, is it OK if I switch to black pen?’ or (and this one has to be my favourite, asked EVERY day) ‘Miss, do we write the long date or the short date?’ – there are so many of these inane questions asked during an S1 lesson that I am sure I have forgotten most of them.  The thing is, in S1 these are all genuine fears and concerns, it takes about a month to convince them that I honestly don’t care whether they write with a pen OR a pencil, I couldn’t be less bothered whether they write the long or the short date and when I am marking their jotter, I am definitely not looking at the colour of pen that they are using.  But that is why I love teaching S1.

Finally, my S3 class and, to my surprise, a lot of familiar faces.  I taught at this school for 10 weeks during my time as a student teacher 2 years ago so my S3 class is mostly made up of my S1 class from then.  They are an enthusiastic class with a lot of big characters who can hold their own in class discussion and are not afraid to stomp their feet and share their opinions.  We are studying ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ as a media text to start off.  The class have mixed views about this but are generally open to a couple of periods of sitting watching the film whilst taking notes at their own pace. 

I am aware that this post is getting very lengthy! So alas, I shall stop talking and get back to teaching…

Positives: amazing new classes, fantastically supportive department, lots of smiling.

Negatives: early starts, my car giving up at the beginning of the week.

Miss. 

New Year, New Classes, New Me!

So a lot has changed since my last post.  New Year, new term, new classes and new me. 

No longer do I dread Monday mornings, double periods of S5 and the chaotic corridors.  The reason for this being that I have found my feet.  I am gaining my confidence and control over my time and my classroom.  This came from a serious think that I had to have over my Christmas break.  When I left school on the last day of term, I was exhausted and close to breaking.  I had let a build up of stress, discipline issues and tiredness take over my life.  At this point, I was close to quitting.  I questioned whether this was really what I wanted to do anymore or whether a 9-5 job that I could walk away from when I left would be more suited to the way I wanted to live my life. 

Then I thought about the proud moments I have every day.  When a pupil learns something new, when they have a realisation, when they gain more confidence.  I asked myself would any other job be so rewarding as this?  The answer, for me, was no.  So I resolved to become more organised, get my sh** together and stop feeling like a walkover. With these resolutions, I walked back into school in January organised, confident and determined.

This reflected in my personality, my teaching and my classes.  There are much clearer lines with regards to discipline boundaries because I now have the confidence to be assertive when required.  Anyway, that's the new me part!

New classes is next.  So I had my S1 class removed from my timetable before Christmas so that I could take an extra S4 class.  This really upset me because, I adored my S1.  They were often the class that kept me most sane in a day.  However, as a result of a teacher leaving the department and not being replaced, I have gained a new S1 class this term.  They are ADORABLE! A challenging class when it comes to it as they are very low ability which means that I have to differentiate all of my lessons and tasks.  For the first couple of weeks, we put together a Robert Burns show to encourage them all to become confident in each others' company.  Now we have started reading 'The Twits' which gives plenty of opportunity for me to come up with really fun resources and tasks to do together.  So far we have read 4 or 5 chapters and created posters of Mr and Mrs Twit.  I am just loving having that escape in a day.  Yes, they need more nurturing and encouragement than most S1 classes, but the fact that I can see their trust building in me and that they get so much enjoyment from my lessons, is the best part of my day.

This week has been a busy week for me.  I run an S1 book club and an S2 book club and this week, we combined for a project to win the school library £10,000 of books.  We had to show how our school can't live without books so the members of the book clubs went around taking photos of staff and pupils with their favourite books and a reason why they felt that they could not live without books.  We then put them onto a display board and stuck books around the display and sent it away to enter the competition.  It was stressful, fun but most rewarding and I am so proud of the book clubs for putting in so much effort. 

This week, it's time to apply for jobs for next year...fingers crossed!! For today, marking Romeo and Juliet essays, creating prelim study guides and planning my lessons for the week :)

Miss.

What here shall miss, my toil shall strive to mend

(Title from Prologue of Romeo and Juliet)

So I have missed a few weeks since a lot has happened during this time.  I have moved house and the workload has increased drastically.  The great thing is that work is going well.

My S1 class are charming as ever.  We finished reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson together and took some basic notes to let the pupils get used to studying a text.  Book projects were completed and I have to say, I was totally overwhelmed by the immense amount of work and effort that went into them.  They happened to be due on the day that I moved house and one pupil had actually painted a canvas with a poem that he had written stuck to the middle.  He handed it to me with the rest of his book project and said 'Miss, I made this part of my book project so that you can hang it up in your new house.'  Quite honestly, I nearly burst into tears I was so moved with his kind gesture.  I have the canvas hanging up on my desk at work as a daily reminder of how lovely my class is.

After a long process, my S3 class have finally finished their reading of Witch Child by Celia Rees.  They have worked hard and we did watch Pocahontas in class the week before the October break as a reward for their hard work.  It relates to the early settlers destroying the Native American lands which we have been studying with Witch Child.  Over the next week, we will be planning essays and getting them out of the way so that we can make a start on 'Romeo and Juliet'.  I feel that I have learned a lot about the way that I teach texts since teaching Witch Child.  I need to include a wider variety of tasks for the pupils so that it doesn't 'scunner' them as they say.  I want to make Romeo and Juliet fun so that pupils enjoy it as much as I do.  The last couple of weeks, I feel like I have bonded a lot more with this class.  This may be partially due to the fact that we are all in the same exhausted boat with Witch Child and feel it should be done ASAP.

I feel like I have finally made a proper break through with my S5 class.  We had a lesson on boundaries and explained that there were rules that had to be followed in order for the class to work.  With the responsibilities, there are rewards for those who follow the rules.  The pupils chose their own rewards and have so far chosen to watch a movie for one period a week.   We finally got through 'Sailmaker' which is a Scottish Set Text for National 4 and 5.  This is a text I must say that I struggled a lot with.  There was just no possible way to make it fun or exciting.  The pupils found the text dry and difficult.  We have now moved on to study media which is really exciting for me.  I have been really throwing myself in to learning all about teaching media and the techniques that are used in films and media texts.  The pupils are really getting involved with this and we have started studying The Shawshank Redemption which as you can imagine has gone down a treat!  I am really excited about it and I think the pupils are becoming much more engaged as it is something that they can really relate to and understand.

So at the moment, I am going back to my duvet and re-reading Romeo and Juliet whilst creating a study guide before my S3 get their hands on it next week!

Miss.

Books, Stories and Telling Tales

Getting in the car to drive to work on Monday morning and as the sharp coldness hacked my breath, I wondered: 'Do Monday mornings ever get better? Will they always be that dread-filled nauseous challenge?'

This week was always going to be a long one, right from that Monday morning drive to work, I knew that for sure.  It was confirmed by 7:30 when I got to work and realised not only was there no milk for a cuppa, the person who was on milk duty this week was away on a school trip for 4 days.  So my week started with a peppermint tea.  First period on a Monday, I have non-contact time so it's nice to get in and organised as much as possible.  I was able to finish off some S1 marking and get the resources I needed photocopied. 

Then came S4.  This is a class that I am just not sure about if I am honest.  They are all lovely but a lot of them have a troubled background or are going through a lot at home.  I see this class three times per week and shared them with another teacher the other two periods.  However, the other teacher has now left and I am on my maximum amount of class contact time so the class is put out for a cover teacher twice per week.  This is a lot of change for these pupils and I get that they are starting to feel a little bit unloved and perhaps resentful.  A lot of them do not have a lot of stability at home and look to school to provide a solid routine of security for them.  Come Tuesday, the class were becoming a bit more cheeky and less willing to work and whilst obviously, I can't allow them to get away with that, I had to bear in mind that they probably felt like they were being passed from pillar to post and a little bit unwanted. There was a lot going on in the class on Tuesday when they came to English, the dynamics were a little different and there seemed to be a lot of disruption and very little motivation to work.  This class are a relatively low-ability class who require a lot of individual support.  For one boy with Asperger's, it was all too much and he had to get up and leave the class because it was just too disrupted for him.  After Tuesday's lesson when a disclosure was made about something, I ended up having to take matters to senior management to resolve the issue. I didn't see the class again until Friday morning but they were much more settled and I managed to get them to do a reasonable amount of work so this was a much more positive lesson for all involved.

My S3 class are the same as always, keen to learn but too chatty.  I wouldn't mind the constant chatter at every opportunity that arises IF it was about the task that they were set.  While I get on well with this class and I enjoy the big characters in the class, the constant low-level disruption gets very tiring and in many ways is actually worse than the bigger incidents.  At least if something major happens, it is dealt with and then we move on.  With the small stuff, there is nothing that can really be done without facing the risk of losing your voice from constantly repeating phrases like 'Ok, everybody stop talking' or (my personal favourite) 'There is nobody in here that needs to be talking, everyone has a task to get on with.'  By midweek, I decided that I would have a chat to the whole class about the importance of paying attention and not talking at times they shouldn't be.  Thus far, it hasn't worked.  I will try out something else on Monday and see if that works.  By Friday, I must say, the class had settled a lot except one poor girl who just couldn't stop crying because her boyfriend had dumped her.  I definitely don't miss being a teenager. 

A lot of classroom management and presence it trial and error because what works for one teacher won't work for another.  This is even true on a class to class basis.  It's all fine and well if sending one pupil out of an S1 class works in settling the rest of that class but for an S5 class, it may have no effect at all.  The balance has to be right and this is something that I have really learned this week. 

S1, I have to be honest, got themselves in a lot of trouble this week.  At the start of term, I explained to them that we would be in a different classroom every period.  I asked them to get out their timetables and write the room numbers on them for each day that they are in English.  So now 6 weeks in when I have pupils 10, 15 and on one occasion 20 minutes late to class with the excuse 'I didn't know what room we were in', I get extremely annoyed.  I can see the changes in this class since the day they walked in terrified at joining a new school.  A few of them have become very confident and overpowering in the sense that they make inappropriate remarks or snigger to each other when another person gives an answer.  It can be frustrating and it is something that I have been trying my best to pick them up on.  Give them their due, they do listen once I ask them to stop.  The other issue in the class is one pupil who refuses to listen to a word I say and then, once everyone else has started working, he asks what he is supposed to do.  An example: We are reading Treasure Island (an abridged version for younger pupils) together, we have read up to chapter 7 in the novel over the past 2 weeks.  We have also made notes and answered questions on each chapter.  Imagine my frustration when yesterday, said pupil puts his hand up and asks 'Miss, who is Jim Hawkins?'  (lead character of the story, been in it since the first sentence of the book).  I quite honestly could have screamed.  The more annoying thing is that the reason he asked this is one of two options: 1. He really hasn't been listening the whole time or 2. He thinks he is funny and asks obvious questions to get a laugh from his peers.  I am going for the latter.  This is just one example, there are several. 

S5 this week has been a different experience than even I could have expected.  The pupils who had been put to other classrooms to work last week seemed desperate to feel like they could be part of the class again.  I allowed them back with the warning that they would be sent elsewhere at the first sign of disruption.  They tested this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and true to my word, I sent them to other rooms.  On Thursday, not one pupil was sent out, everyone managed to get the work done that I had set and I was really happy.  Hopefully it lasts!! (I did have another weeper in this class too this week, also a result of boyfriend drama!)

Thursday saw the first meeting of the staff book club that I have started so I have started to compile a list of book suggestions for the coming weeks/months. I have also been thinking of a school blog page so that those who can't make the meetings can comment freely on the discussion too. 

This week for me has not so much been about teaching but more about meetings about teaching.  I had a meeting on Wednesday morning, Wednesday night, Thursday afternoon, Thursday night and then Friday afternoon.  It has been exhausting and I have literally wanted to crawl straight to bed as soon as I get home from school each day.  The meeting on Friday is one I have to mention though.

Probationer teachers have to show that they are doing continual professional development throughout the year (as do other teachers, but there is more focus during probation).  As a result, my local authority provides a programme of carious development opportunities throughout the year.  This week, my half day Friday was non-existant again because I had to attend a CPD course on Positive Behaviour Strategies run by a local school who caters for young people with severe emotional, social and/or behavioural issues that mean they cannot function as part of mainstream schooling.  Before I arrived, I had heard of the school and the stories that come from there but I had never actually seen it before.  The doors to every room inside were locked and a staff member had to unlock the toilet door to allow one of the other probationers to use it.  It turns out, the doors only open from the inside, not the outside without a key.  This is not to keep pupils locked in but to stop them accessing or disrupting other lessons should they end up leaving their own class for whatever reason.  The head teacher along with another member of staff greeted all of the local probationers and invited us to have tea and coffee then we listened to them about what some of the roots are to behaviour issues in the classroom.  What actually causes pupils to behave or act in the way that they do at times.  It was fascinating to consider that most pupils only act out in the places where they have boundaries and feel secure.  When they lack those boundaries and that security at home, the only other place that they can act in certain ways is in school. 

We spoke about how to handle certain situations and put forward our own strategies, shared with the group and then were given lots of tips from the staff at the school.  This was definitely the most valuable educational seminar that I have been to and I feel it was even more beneficial than a lot of the lectures on the same subject that were delivered at university.  In fact, after I left that campus yesterday afternoon, I genuinely felt like I would love to teach there one day.  I feel it is more of a calling for me than mainstream schooling.  The attitudes and spirit there were just amazingly awe-inspiring. 

Miss.