A number of years ago, I was working as a full-time teacher and I was given THAT class. You know the kind I mean, the class everyone talks about for the wrong reasons.
The class no one wants to teach. The class that can chew you up and spit you back out.
As I sat down with my headteacher ahead of the new academic year, he gave me the headlines: they were low socially and emotionally, lots of behaviour problems, none were on track academically, parents were a nightmare and to be honest, they didn’t really have much hope. I then spoke to their old teacher – exactly the same message.
Safe to say, I wasn’t filled with much enthusiasm for the next academic year.
September came around and with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach I began the year with THAT class. By the time I got to the end of the first half term, I was pretty much ready to admit defeat and throw in the towel. My colleagues were right. They were awful.
It wasn’t until I got to half-term break that I was able to catch my breath and zoom out. I suddenly could see what was going on. I had heard the class were low socially and emotionally, lots of behaviour problems, none were on track academically, parents were a nightmare, and they didn’t really have much hope – and that was exactly what I found. I saw what I was looking for.
So I asked myself the question, what if I changed the way I was looking at that class? Instead of only looking for the bad, what if I looked for the good? Instead of me pointing fingers at them, perhaps I needed to point the finger back at myself and challenge my own behaviours and thoughts. What if I changed me, rather than trying to change them?
With a renewed sense of vigour, I committed to a fresh start in October.
When the children came into school, I announced we were no longer a class. We were a team. A team works together and supports each other. I started to pay attention to what the children were doing at the weekends and asked them about it. I got to know their interests and hobbies. I started to build a connection with them.
I created a curriculum where they developed their life skills, learning about other people, cultures, moments in history that would inspire them and show them what is possible. I shared stories of when I had failed, so they could see failure wasn’t something to fear. They started to take on roles within the school that they would normally have dismissed and became role models for the younger pupils.
By the end of the year, none of the children were low socially or emotionally, we had no behaviour problems in the class, the parents weren’t a nightmare, in fact they were so supportive. Sure they didn’t all reach their academic targets (I’m not a miracle worker), but most importantly they all had hope about their futures.
I share that story not because I’m saying I’m a fantastic teacher or leader, because I still make mistakes and I am learning all the time. The ending of the story could easily have been a different one if I hadn’t changed. I share the story because your job as a leader is to create the right environment for the right behaviours. And honestly, once you have created that environment, the results are just magical.
That is why I am proud to be part of our Lead Well course. I share more of the strategies I used in the classroom to help you apply these ideas to your own settings and create successful environments for your teams to flourish.