Lily:
As part of the October conference, we delivered a session on Building Resilience in the Classroom. Our plan was to show our colleagues a few ways in which we try to cultivate a culture of resilience amongst our students. We also focused on the need for teachers to build their own resilience bank. After all, when we fly, we’re always reminded to put our face mask on first before helping others – it is important for everyone that we look after ourselves first and foremost.
After all, how are we to talk the resilience talk if we can’t walk the resilience walk?
Marginal Gains:
Brad introduced us to the idea of the positive impact of marginal gains – a theory discussed widely in PE. Brad will talk about this in more detail later, but here are our examples:
The notion is that there are a number of small things we can adjust to improve our well being as teachers. Minute changes that add up a happier school day.
Marginal Gains in Cycling
Brad Hodgson’s Marginal Gains
Lily Peters’ Marginal Gains (sorry, I’m no artist!)
What would your Marginal Gains be?
Mentally Healthy Classrooms:
The activities I presented focused on research garnered from a previous Teacher Advocates session on Mentally Healthy Classrooms. In this session, which occurred just as life was beginning to ‘get back to normal’ after the pandemic, we rated ourselves on how well we facilitated each of the following statements. I asked our colleagues to place them in a range from ‘completely agree’ to ‘completely disagree’.
In our session in October, this led to some really interesting conversations – our staff body is hugely reflective. We recognised what we do well here at CLV: picking up on any signs of bullying, responding consistently to behaviour and having clear classroom routines. All this helps our students to feel safe and in control within their lessons. In general, we agreed that we need to focus more on encouraging students to articulate their long term goals and helping them to develop metacognition strategies. Does this sound familiar to you?
Looking at these statements, what do you think you do well?
Brad:
For my part of the workshop I focused on establishing exactly what resilience is, and what it is not.
I looked at the 7 C’s of resilience established by paediatrician Dr Kenneth Ginsberg to act as a framework to recognise that, whilst we will be already carrying out many vital elements needed to promote resilience, these separate elements are more effective when utilised together and can help us to recognise areas of resilience that a student, or ourselves may be missing.
The 7 C’s demonstrate the many factors that we must consider when seeking to improve resilience and that, by its very nature, it requires a holistic approach that in turn feeds into our work on mentally healthy classrooms, meta-cognition and retrieval practice. Only once these factors are considered can we hope to achieve the grand goal that we all strive for in our lessons – the enjoyment of learning.
In my subject – Art, we often hear accepted myths such as students believing they “can’t draw”. When these are compounded by adults repeating the same phrases they begin to believe that it is a valid excuse. Through rephrasing and educating we can make students understand that these talents are in fact skills and can be learnt. Through building character and confidence we can make students realise that they can achieve much more than they may at first believe and that perseverance is necessary to achieve goals. Through modelling failure as a ‘First Attempt In Learning’, we can make students accept this as part of their learning journey and not be discouraged. Instead they should be informed of the process of learning and strive to better themselves, rather than do themselves a disservice.
As a way of recognising areas we could tangibly improve within our own lives and students in their own learning, I presented the marginal gains theory popularised by Sir Dave Brailsford in his revolutionary work as performance director of British Cycling. Brailsford believed that if you make a 1% improvement in a host of tiny areas, the cumulative benefits would be extraordinary. These simple acts of holistic reflection can have a big impact on taking control over learning and gaining responsibility on behaviour and conduct.
Through reflecting on ourselves first, we were able to recognise the areas of our teaching practice and our work and life balance that may be restricting our progress. The end of the half term acted as an opportune moment to pinpoint little changes to our routines that could have significant impacts in regards to self-care as we head into the next term with the challenges winter presents us with.
cramlington muse 