Barking and Dagenham London, UK, is not the easiest place to work in education. The level of deprivation (6th most deprived borough in England), the high mobility of our population, the broad and rapidly changing diversity of our community (in my own school EAL is 86% and that is spread across 72 different languages) are just a few of the factors that contribute to the pressures of maintaining the highest possible standards of education, care and support for our pupils and our school community.
When I arrived at Ripple Primary School in 2005, it was a school in a very fragile position that had suffered the long-term illness and death of its Headteacher. The staff team, without secure leadership, had begun to splinter and the children’s attendance, behaviour and attainment was not great. It wasn’t the happiest of schools by a long way.
I very quickly realised that I was working with a group of people who were not a cohesive team. It was also a very fast lesson in the fact that nothing happens without leadership; and they’d had no clear leadership for well over a year. The staff had become cliquey and bitchy. The staffroom was mostly empty because it didn’t feel like the safe space for staff that it should be. Everyone walked about with their eyes facing the floor. Parents didn’t feel welcome. And it was clear that some of the grown-ups working at the school didn’t even like children.
My deputy, who arrived at the same time as I did, said to me, “What are we going to do? Where do we start?” It started very simply by my requiring all the grown-ups in the school to walk with their heads held high and to greet everyone they encountered with a smile and a ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good afternoon’ whether that be colleagues, our children or their families. Regardless of how you were feeling yourself, I insisted that it was vital for everyone they encountered to feel welcomed into that space.
I was heartened by how far just doing that – greeting each other with a smile – improved things. And how quickly the grumpy cynics and those who preferred zero tolerance to relational approaches and nurture decided that they couldn’t stand being anywhere near me any longer and decided to pursue their professional futures in other schools, thereby providing me the opportunity to recruit the right people to strengthen the team.
I also developed a couple of mantras to establish a core ethos amongst the grown-ups, and then the children: Professional Maturity and Professional Generosity.
Professional Maturity means
‘Maintaining the highest level of professional self-management at all times’
And, most importantly…
‘Doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because you fear the consequences of doing the wrong thing’
For example, my staff now mark their children’s work to inform themselves of the next steps for learning for each child, not because they are fearful of me finding out that they haven’t marked them.
Developing this attitude, like almost everything else, works equally well for children as it does for grown-ups and is a major factor in maintaining our sanction free Behaviour Through Nurture and Relationships Policy.
Professional Generosity means:
- Looking out for each other and looking after each other.
- Always giving the benefit of the doubt.
And most importantly:
- Even in the most challenging of circumstances, asking yourself WHY a colleague, another adult or a child has acted in the way they did before addressing with them WHAT they have said or done.
Although I originally started using this with the grown-ups, once we had begun to secure the team, I very quickly insisted that this must apply to all our relationships across the school (Child-Child, Child-Adult, Adult-Adult).
Last summer I got rid of the old motto on the school website, “High aspirations and a shared passion for learning” and replaced it with something that is so much more important:
An Emotionally Available School. Everyone is Welcome. Everyone Belongs
And I honestly believe that this is the most important educational statement that I have made in my entire career as a teacher and as a school leader because, strong, positive relationships are the foundation on which social, emotional and mental wellbeing are built, and they underpin the development of resilience and security.
Children and young people who truly feel that they belong in their school will be better attenders, better behaved, better engaged and will consequently better achieve and attain; academically, socially and emotionally.
We can only do this by working with, and not at, our children and families. Therein lies the basis of moving from being a Trauma Informed school to being a Trauma Responsiveschool.
None of this happens overnight and none of this happens on its own. All effective change and development happen slowly, and vitally, as I have already said, nothing happens without leadership. It is leadership that establishes and maintains the core ethos, vision and culture of the school. It is leadership that drives the school’s continual development. It is leadership that secures the consensus across the whole team. You don’t reach a consensus by sitting around a harmonious table. You need to have the opportunity for many different opinions to be voiced. You need the confidence to take your ideas to the group and ask them where they can see anything wrong with it. You need your team to be able to do the same. There needs to be equity, trust and safety so that there is no such thing as a bad idea, just ideas that can challenge and be challenged.
Only when you have had all those conversations can you truly say that you have a consensus, and only when we have a consensus can you embed the core principles upon which we want our schools to operate. In doing this, school leaders must become the consistent role models for what they want to achieve in their schools.
At our school, through our consistent upholding our values with key messages of Professional Maturity, and Professional Generosity we have created a safe, trusting and caring school environment for everyone that is based on Emotional Availability and Belonging. By being emotionally available for each other, we can protect children by being the emotionally available adults who are consistently there for them to help to interrupt the trajectory from childhood adversities through our responses to their needs.By being curious about challenging behaviour and learning difficulties and by understanding the impact that adversity can have we can provide positive relational experiences with children to help them become emotionally secure.
Why wouldn’t you want to be that person who made that difference for that child?
Roger Mitchell, Headteacher – Ripple Primary School, London
Roger has taught in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham for 36 years, in schools and centrally with the school improvement service. For the last 20 years he has been Headteacher at Ripple Primary School (link here. https://www.rippleprimary.co.uk/ He is also a Trustee on the Board of NurtureUK. (link here https://www.nurtureuk.org/)
Roger strongly advocates for there to be as many Emotionally Available Adults as possible in schools so that they become truly Emotionally Available Schools where everyone has a real sense of belonging, but especially for their pupils because, in his words,
‘If you lose the child from their school, you lose the child.’
Roger can be found on LinkedIn. Link here https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-mitchell-7062422bas
