A minefield of sexual activity

Coming back after the two week holiday, I had somehow lured myself into the false hope that the behaviour would have miraculously improved and we were in for a nice quiet week.  By 8:30am on the first day back that false notion had been quashed and I was right back where I had been on the last day of the previous term...except in the unfortunate position of staring down a long term of this!

In many respects the week has been positive - my NQT review was really good and I felt, for the first time in quite a while, that I might actually be able to be a top notch teacher one day!  But the familiar problems of last term - whole school not just in my classroom - of truancy, refusal to follow instructions, violence and illegal activity yet again reared their ugly heads within hours of being back.

The first day back I had an email from the mentor for my year group asking me to come and see her as a matter of urgency, but with all the crazy goings on and million and one emails I had over the course of the day I missed the email and only saw it after she had left.  So the following day I managed to catch up with her and was informed about the many goings on over the holidays that had led to one of the 12 year old girls in my form needing to go for a pregnancy test.  This was compounded by finding out that another girl, this time 13, had unprotected sex with a 15 year old boy in the school, and another one had been sexually active with another boy in the year group.

So I have spent the week trying to deal with the fact that three children in my form are clearly acting way above their age and getting themselves into a whole lot of bother!  It terrifies me to think that these girls may end up pregnant before they've even stopped being children themselves!  Sometimes I forget just how young they are - at 12 years old I was vaguely aware of sexuality but I definitely wasn't looking to have sex with any boys, and definitely not with men, and yet these girls are posting provocative photos of themselves online and sending these same photos to boys and men who they barely know!  In this age of modern technology I feel like it's so difficult to be able to monitor everything they are doing and stop them from making potentially dangerous mistakes...

Aside from the obvious huge issues with my form that have been happening this week, I have also had many issues with other students.  There is a hardcore group of about 30 kids at the school who truant many lessons week in week out.  The school seems to think that because we have 'done so much to tackle persistent absenteeism' that as long as they're in school, even if they aren't in lessons, we should be happy!  Unfortunately trying to cope with a student who turns up 25 minutes into the lesson and refuses to follow any instructions is getting to be a little bit of a joke!  Similarly, having ten kids hanging around outside your classroom door during lessons because 'the G is a good place to truant' is also highly disruptive!

The last thing that happened this week, in 2nd lesson yesterday, was that I was physically abused by one of the students in my Year 8 class.  You'd think you'd get used to it, this grabbing and pushing out of the way by students who seem to think that they are perfectly within their rights to manhandle teachers!  I've lost count of the number of times this year that I have been hit, pushed or grabbed by a student...on a couple of occasions I'll admit that I've been genuinely worried about what the student is willing to do.  I mean a lot of these kids are bigger and stronger than I am, particularly the older boys, and they are so volatile.  I'm sometimes a little bit scared that if I were to see them outside of school they wouldn't have quite the same fear about being caught.  In school there are CCTV cameras everywhere, so there is no chance they will be able to get away with it, but outside there aren't!

So where to go from here?  Back to counting down the days and hours?  I'd really like to know what it is like to teach at a school where there aren't these behavioural issues, where you aren't worried that you will be abused on a daily basis and where you can actually be a teacher, and yet what happens to these kids if everyone feels like this?  Do they just stay where they are and get sucked into the same lives as their parents?!

Emotional Management

Emotional Training

Today was officially the last day of the Spring term and, as the students finished yesterday, we were able to use the day as a planning and INSET day.  However there was also offered a day long training session on emotional management, which I decided to do.  This was initially fed to us as a behaviour management training day, which, given the nature of the school and my classes, would obviously have been highly beneficial and appreciated.  What we got instead was a whole lot better though!  The lady delivering the session, Paula, first off trained as a speech and language therapist, before branching out into anger management.  To introduce the training she first of all asked us to 'check in' saying how we were feeling and who we were, before setting us the task of writing down as many different feelings as we could in 3 minutes.  She then explained that she believes that there are only 8 core emotions - these are like the primary colours in that they are the basis of all other emotions (see diagram below) - for instance when we are feeling excited this is usually happiness and empowerment mixed with a little bit of fear (hence the butterflies...).

The 'Core Feelings'

Brene Brown - TEDx on Vulnerability

From these 8 core feeling we are able to find many other emotions, but at the root of all of them we come back to these.  The things we talked about touched on a bit of what Brene Brown talks about in her TEDx Talk (see video below).  The idea was that you need to be in touch with your emotions and have a handle on them and your own self-esteem before you are able to connect with others on an empathetic level.  As Brown talks about in her video, people who are wholehearted embrace their vulnerability and are willing to accept that they are not in control of everything.  (By the way, if you get a chance - WATCH THE VIDEO - she's funny and direct and yet has some really good stuff to say, particularly where she talks about raising children as imperfect and yet worthy of love and belonging!)

Managing our emotions

Following on from this introduction Paula asked us to think about how we manage our emotions when we are at home or at work.  At home I find it very easy to keep a check on my emotions - if I am stressed or annoyed I go for a swim or a run, if I'm upset I read sad stories and watch sad films so that I can cry without feeling too sorry for myself, if I'm hurt I let the people who have hurt me know and try to reconcile it.  But it is so so so much more difficult to do this in the classroom, because you are the teacher and you are the adult.  And I'd be lying if I didn't say that I get annoyed and upset in school, I most definitely do, but when I'm there I try to bottle it up and then deal with it when I get home.  And this in itself is so unhealthy!

Dealing with ANGER

Continuing on the dealing with emotions theme Paula talked us through the aggressive and passive aggressive responses to anger - she asked us to consider our upbringing and what our parents were like and how this impacted us.  My Dad was brought up in a very abusive home and as a result he was often quite aggressive and quick to anger with us, and although he was nowhere near as bad as his Dad was, he was still terrifying when he was in a bad mood and you were never sure whether or not you were going to come under his wrath.  As for my Mum, she demanded perfection.  And I don't blame her, especially now I'm older and can understand it more, but at the time I hated her for it.  I was constantly disappointed in myself and didn't feel like anything I could do was good enough.  And these things and the way life was for me when I was younger have impacted into who I am now, and even what I am like as a teacher, and that in itself is a scary thought!

It also explains a lot about our kids.  Children mimic their parents' behaviour - either that or they take the other extreme.  The home lives of some of our kids are dreadful - one of the girls in my form came in the other morning at 7:30am and asked if she could have a nap at the back of the room until school started.  I didn't question it at the time, but later on took her out of one of her lessons to chat about it and she explained that her Mum had been up all night drinking and doing drugs and having shouted arguments with her boyfriend and because of this she hadn't been able to sleep at home so she'd come in early to have a sleep.  In the same vein, we have a lot of kids who come in early to take advantage of the free breakfast and the fact that in the winter the heating is on at school and some of them don't have heating at home.  All these things compound to make children who are so vulnerable and yet have had to toughen themselves up well ahead of their time and become hardened shells impervious to any emotions.

The Bucket

Another thing that we were asked to consider was the idea that self esteem is like a bucket with holes in it.  As a child we expect others to fill this bucket with things such as trust, respect, love, appreciation, understanding, caring and believing.  And yet as adults it is our job to be able to fill this bucket ourselves, knowing ourselves well enough to keep it full enough.  I definitely think this is accurate - as an adult I am most low not when I think someone else doesn't believe in me or value me, but when I doubt myself and my abilities. No longer do I rely on others, but instead I rely on my own emotional stability.  The only thing I do struggle to reconcile with what Paula was speaking to us about is the idea of depression.  Knowing firsthand what depression can do to someone, from watching my Mum sink deep into it while I was in my mid-teens, I don't see how the bucket concept is at all helpful in pulling yourself out.  It is such a complex illness with so many variables, and even though many people want to be better and want to feel happier with their lives, it just isn't possible!

Questions to ask yourself

The last thing that we talked about was questions to ask myself when I start to feel angry/hurt/scared/ashamed etc.

1 - If I wasn't in the situation what would I see?

2 - Will this matter in 3 months time?

3 - Exactly what am I feeling?

4 - Can we agree to disagree?

5 - What might be triggering me right now?

6 - Is this really directed at me?

7 - Can I talk this through with a friend, or write it down, before I respond?

Question 6 I think is a key one to consider when working with teenagers.  So often I have let myself get upset by a student who has been acting out or has been particularly disruptive, but when I think about it later I know that it hasn't been directed at me, that the way they have acted is often as the result of their inability to cope with and understand the way they are feeling or how this is affecting them.

To this end Paula suggested that the way we portray our emotions to the students we are working with, and also the way that we communicate with our students will directly impact on how they respond to us.

Transactional Analysis

This concept is best explained by transactional analysis (Eric Berne) - this is the idea that we have three possible roles that we can take : Parent, Adult and Child.  And that communication between teachers and students is often like that of parent-child, thus telling our students that the behaviour and attitude we expect in response is that of a child. And yet we are frustrated by this immaturity on their behalf when this happens.  Berne suggested that instead we should consider a more adult-adult communication.  By treating our kids like they are adults we are suggesting to them that they should be responding as adults and so developing their emotional maturity and giving them the skills to be able to deal with situations as adults.

I have noticed this in particular with the kids I worked with in New Zealand.  I developed very quick and comfortable relationships with these kids because I took the time to get to know them as adults and not as children, and I think at times I forget this with some of the students I teach now.  I need to be more proactive at getting to know more of the students who are particularly difficult in lessons and finding connections to them that are not just on the adult-child level!

Why this matters and what is going to change...

I feel like I've gone into an awful lot of depth about this, but I've found it extremely useful training and have really enjoyed the chance to get more to grips with how emotions work and why our kids may be behaving the way they do.  In particular it reminds me of the talks we had from Margaret Ross back when I was in my Summer Institute training before I started Teach First.  A lot of the concepts discussed were very similar (if worded slightly differently) and I would love to be able to study this more in depth - perhaps as my dissertation topic for my Masters degree!!!

One of my year 11s...

I've noticed recently that a lot of my status updates and conversations start with "One of my Year 11s.."
Usually it's a funny thing that one of the kids has said or something they have done to make my day - I think because I've had them through from last year and this year I've been able to develop a really close relationship with them and I love that!

Yesterday it was SK's turn to make my status update.  ((To give a little background, SK is a 16 year old boy who is in bottom set in school and has had some real behavioural issues particularly involving gangs and gang rivalry with a Czech gang in the local neighbourhood.  He's not very academic and last year was moved down to my class because his behaviour was so disruptive that they couldn't keep him in the set above.  His home life isn't great - Mum is a prostitute and his Dad is in prison for killing his Uncle last year, and this has obvious impacts on him and his brothers and sisters.))

Anyway, yesterday afternoon we were all sitting around a couple of desks working on a bit of Pythagoras' Theorem and one of the other boys asked me if I would be annoyed if I saw them in 10 years and they were on more money than me, and I said, quite honestly I think, that I'd just be over the moon that they'd done so well for themselves.  Anyway, thinking that was the end of it I carried on working with the student I was helping and next thing I know SK is telling me "If I ever get dead rich I'd buy you a house Miss Hex, cause you're proper sound and the best teacher I've ever had."

At first I thought he was being facetious but he backed it up and took all the flak off the other kids who laughed at this pronouncement.  I felt like hugging him.  I know it's ridiculous, but the moments like that make me love these kids so much more, and make every day so worthwhile.  And with SK in particular, he has made such a turnaround this year in his attitude in my lessons and the way he interacts with the other students.

To top it off, today my head of department came and found me to chat about how my observation lesson had gone yesterday and pointed out that I should be really proud of the way things have gone with my two Year 11 classes because they are full of difficult kids who won't work for other people but for some reason are getting on and doing work for me.  Now I still have so many things to learn about teaching, and I am so far from being the best teacher I can be, but I know I have done a really good job with these kids who make me so proud every day in the way they treat each other, in the work they produce, and the way they are maturing and becoming these little adults.

And so I am probably going to continue with these stories about 'one of my year 11s' and keep posting status updates about them, and in 10 years time who knows, maybe I'll look back and remember those mental kids that made my first 2 years of teaching such a pleasure!