I was listening to a radio interview this morning. We are still, currently, enduring a wave of Covid, courtesy of the Omicron variant. This is beginning to overwhelm NHS Trust hospitals in the North West of England.
During the interview, the health professional said,
"What we say matters. Language matters. We need sober, accurate information. So instead of "Riding the Wave" of this variant, we should tell people: the NHS cannot provide the level of service it would like to at the moment. There will be longer waits and we are sorry. Sometimes you may be asked to get a relative to drive you to the hospital, if that is possible, rather than wait for an ambulance. Language matters, and we need to speak to people honestly and clearly about the reality."
This reminded me of an article highlighted by my PGCE tutor about how outdated behaviour terms need to be left in the past; https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/5-behaviour-terms-we-need-leave-past.
This illustrates how, in education, too, what we say matters. Behavioural terms that are out-of-date relate, directly, to approaches and mindsets that are, themselves, no longer used, and for good reason.
I work in the Lifeskills faculty at Activate Learning, Banbury FE College. Our students are most likely to be with us because of issues with school, such as behaviour, often the result of health, learning or emotional needs which were not fully understood or supported. Our faculty specialises in providing this support.
So if someone talks about "low level", "challenging" or "attention-seeking" behaviour, that often misses the point - the cause of the behaviour. At a CPD course, yesterday, we were discussing behaviours which may indicate the presence of trauma. The tutor said "behaviour is communication - we just need to understand what it is they are trying to communicate".
As someone relatively new to education, this made a lot of sense to me. I am - by training and profession, primarily a science and maths practitioner. I am fond of logic, and cause and effect. Unexpected behaviour can throw you off-guard, but if you see it as a form of communication, it provides a route into understanding the student better, providing support, and maybe even identifying an underling problem for which expert additional support can be rallied.
The student may be suffering from anxiety, but perhaps their behaviour may be a sign of other pressures such as radicalisation, abuse, or trauma? A conversation may help to clarify what is bothering them.
Importantly, using the lens of the student, imagine the difference, between having your behaviour "managed" and being supported? You are being respected. You are not being treated as a "naughty child".
This will serve to build trust and self-worth, which are both very positive emotions to move forward with learning.
At Activate Learning, we have a Learning Philosophy which consists of the triad of emotions, brain and motivation. With your emotions in the right place, you are more likely to be motivated to learn.
Supporting learners, to be the best they can be, must, surely, be the primary goal of any teacher, whatever their subject. Understanding what a certain behaviour is communicating to us is a skill that we do not all possess, but we can see it as a trigger for a conversation with the student.
So, in teaching, what we say matters. A lot. It may result in moving the student from a negative path to one where the student has much better life chances and outcomes. And that really matters.
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