The Value of Getting it Right for Each Child: A View From Parents

7th April 2022Duncan Robertson

The Value of Getting it Right for Each Child: A View From Parents

 

ʻThe Bridgeʼ is an adult learning journal for and by educators – which includes community members with an interest in young peopleʼs learning. This first issue would not be appropriately balanced if it didnʼt include the voice and reflections of parents. In fact, we intend that every issue of ʻThe Bridgeʼ will include articles by parents and community members who have experiences to share.

 

What it feels like when a school doesn’t understand your child

Our daughter was previously in a local mainstream school with 1:1 support. She would regularly be separated from the other children in her class in order to receive various therapies and in order to carry out her learning.

We knew she wasnʼt happy because we had frequent reports of her pulling her learning assistantʼs and other teaching staffʼs hair. She started stimming (self-stimulating behaviour) at this time by waving her arms around; this was evidently her way of coping within the experience of boredom and isolation and yet it marked her out as different, leading to yet more of a sense of alienation both on her part (and mine).

Our daughterʼs difficulties in all areas such as speaking, attention, large motor movements, were making it difficult for her to join in classroom activities. It was clear that she was suffering from anxiety. She was being and would be increasingly failed by the mainstream education system and I could see things would only get worse if we didnʼt find another school for her.

The staff within her school were clearly overwhelmed and they didnʼt really know how to support us or how to deal with us.

This was obvious from our meetings with them. They didnʼt know how to help our daughterʼs learning, nor did they know how to help manage her behaviour and it was evident that we represented a burden or a problem for them.

I didnʼt have much of a connection or common point of contact with other parents owing to our experience being so different.

Our daughter lacked confidence when she was in peer group situations and she would often shrink back and stick to the adults in the room. I recall birthday parties and park playgrounds being particularly tense times for both of us.

 

How did you know when you had found the right school?

You can tell when a school knows what it is doing. When we found Gesher, the corridors were calm and distraction free and there was an atmosphere of peace and contentment and also a positive can-do attitude amongst the staff.

It was clear to us that this was going to be the best place for our daughter, not least because her severe speech dyspraxia was making any kind of integration into mainstream schooling increasingly complicated.

We knew that people would take the time to listen to her and to try to understand what she was saying, that she would be encouraged to communicate. She would be able to join in group activities without being separated. Immediately, we felt that Gesher would see us, not as a problem or hindrance, but rather as an opportunity.

 

What it means to belong

When children are encouraged to feel a sense of belonging to their school, not just to their class, that is really important. A whole school focus on inclusion, support and nurturing of children means that children are encouraged to learn good values and the importance of taking responsibility for themselves and for others. This is crucial.

I really appreciate here that therapy is integrated, meaning no child is singled out or isolated, while at the same time each student has their own learning plan. Each child is included and also cared for.

 

When your child (and you) are truly seen and valued

Our daughter has flourished, blossomed even, into a confident young girl who has a strong sense of who she is. She is no longer scared to try new things. Her ability to focus and to give her attention to a task has grown too. Her speaking is improving day by day. She is so happy to be part of a wider community. She wakes up each day with a sense of purpose and curiosity which is exactly how we should all be in life.

As parents we no longer feel alone in the experience of having a special needs child. When we go through a difficult time, or we have a specific issue, or we need some practical help, we know that we have other parents and teachers to whom we can reach out. That has made a phenomenal difference to our lives. We have started to feel a sense of optimism about our future as a family.

Project-Based Learning Animation

7th April 2022Duncan Robertson

Gesher School’s founders, Ali Durban & Sarah Sultman, share their experiences of founding a school that is radically ambitious about what education can look like. This video narrates the school’s journey, including the underpinning principles, values and pedagogy that bring these ambitions to life, what this innovative approach to educational provision has meant for Gesher’s children and parents and the advice they would give to others who are equally ambitious for change.

 

 

 

Project-Based Learning Animation from Gesher School on Vimeo.

Assessing What Really Matters – Ron Berger

5th April 2022Duncan Robertson

Assessing What Really Matters

A conversation with Ron Berger

In March 2022 some staff and friends of Gesher School met with Ron Berger, Chief Academic Officer at Expeditionary Learning. Ron is the author of 11 of the most valued books about educational leadership, learning and relationships in schools. We talked about what really matters when assessing young people, especially those who are ʻdifferently ableʼ, and what good assessment can mean for supporting happy, fulfilled and kind future generations.

Why aren’t traditional forms of assessment right for children?

Ron Berger

The first thing I would say is that the most important assessment that’s happening in a school is never high stakes tests, or even interim tests, or even weekly tests. The most important assessment that’s happening in a school is what’s going on all day long, every day inside the heads of kids, because every kid in every school is assessing, all day long, how much she understands, how well she’s behaving, how much she wants to try, how good she feels about her identity – her academic identity and her personal identity. When she’s about to hand something in, she thinks, ʻIs it good enough?ʼ She’s in class and she thinks, ʻShould I raise my hand? Do I understand this stuff fully?ʼ When she looks at her personal relationships, she’s always assessing ʻAm I a good enough person?ʼ That kind of assessment is constant. It’s constant in all of us.

And that’s the kind of assessment that matters the most. Of 
course, we need to check in on kids’ skill levels sometimes, 
just like every year we should go in for a physical and make 
sure our body is working and that our vital signs are okay. 
And, if there’s something wrong in our annual physical, 
that’s something we need to attend to. But an annual
 physical tells us nothing about how to live a good daily life, 
right? It doesn’t give us feedback. We need to be our best 
selves academically and personally and physically. And it’s
 the lifestyle choices we’re making all day long about what we eat and how we eat and how much we sleep and how 
much we exercise and what our relationships are like with 
others that define whether we have a healthy lifestyle or
 not. And we are assessing that all day long.

We need to remember our kids are also doing that all day 
long in school. And so we need to build systems of 
assessment that encourage them to be their best academic 
selves and to be their best personal selves all day long, 
where they’re getting clear feedback from each other and 
from themselves about ʻHow am I doing? Do I understand 
this well enough? Can I show more academic courage? Can 
I take more academic risks? Can I put more effort into this? 
Can I take the risk of showing what I don’t understand? Can 
I step up for other people? Can I be a better person?ʼ

So, of course, we still need to have those interim
 assessments and quarterly assessments and annual 
assessments, just like we need to go to the doctors’ 
sometimes, but assessments that give us ways to monitor our 
own academic and personal health all day long are the
 assessments that will really make us better students and 
better people.

 

Gesher and Standardised Forms of Testing

Rowan Eggar, Assistant Head Teacher, in charge of assessment

One of the things that we are really struggling to navigate is the way our UK education system is built around the notion of standardized testing – which can be quite fixating.

We find that parents, especially those whose children have additional needs, use milestones like GCSE grades as a marker to show their child has made relevant progress, which is entirely understandable. But one of the things that we are trying to do at the moment at Gesher is to also support our parents and children to focus on life skills and the journey it takes to become fully fledged humans in society. You canʼt determine this from standard grades and scores.

We are looking at things like personal and emotional health, self-care, wellbeing, things that maybe our children struggle with more, and starting to build in assessment approaches that encourage them to check in with themselves, very similar to some of the questions that you mentioned, Ron. Lots of our students don’t yet have the toolkit to ask themselves those questions. So this type of assessment needs to be taught in a more obvious way than you might in a mainstream setting.

Loni and I are currently working with a few colleagues on an assessment tool that breaks down the national curriculum into small steps for whole-person assessment. One of the elements of this is around life-skills. Our SENDCO and Assistant have developed a ʻlife-skillsʼ programme, where our children get different badges, bronze up to platinum, depending on the life-skills they are building.

Whatʼs a bit more of a struggle is thinking about assessment for personal traits and character traits. Often our childrenʼs academic progress doesn’t really reflect who they are as people and how much they’ve grown. So, let’s say they’ve grown in confidence to be able to communicate, academic progress might not show that. Weʼre developing a tool that is about personality and character, but thatʼs a work in progress!

 

 

What advice would you give to a school embedded in the current assessment culture that wants to move to a new paradigm of thinking about assessment, one that focuses on the wholeness of the strengths and skills of children?

Ron Berger

That’s a great question, because we are all under the same pressures.
I find it really interesting to hear what Rowan is saying about being a school
that’s working with differently abled kids, but there is still the same kind of
intense pressure around labelling and ranking that every other school
experiences.

It’s pernicious and harmful for all kids, but it’s particularly harmful for kids
who always get ranked in a way that doesn’t make them feel positive, and
that doesnʼt focus on their personal identity as a student and as a person.
Imagine if, as adults, we got ranked every day in our life, and we were
always at the bottom of the rankings. What would that do to our spirit in our
work, in our lives as, as people?

I think anything that our schools, and particularly a school like Gesher that’s
working with differently abled kids, can do to keep ranking out of that
conversation is important, because being ranked low on any scale hurts
your spirit. It makes you lose your heart for investing and taking risks.

Kids are also aware of the way the world sees them and the kind of rankings
of the world. So being a school that lets kids know that those types of
rankings arenʼt their priority is really important. Schools should prioritise
and share work that focuses on what kids are learning, through portfolios,
projects, presentations – assessment approaches that celebrate different
types and styles of learning, building on the strengths and positives about
each childʼs learning.

But itʼs important that that type of assessment also shows kids where they
need to work on their challenges and the steps that they need to take next.
I think it’s fine for kids to be able to be honest about the things they struggle
with, whether those are personal things, executive functions, physical or
emotional wellbeing, as well as academic levels.

 

Ron shares a story here, which can be watched via the QR code at the end of the article, or link.

Ali Durban, Co-founder of Gesher School

I love that. I think as Rowan said, one of our biggest challenges is working in a system that both feels familiar and safe and also gives parents some kind of validation that their child is going to be okay in the world emotionally. Itʼs hard because our children havenʼt become adults yet, so we canʼt yet show that this way of learning and assessment is going to let them shine. Going on a journey like this is ultimately about trust.

Loni Berqvist, Project Based Learning Coach at Gesher School

We have a tendency to try to assess everything that we put value on. Is there a risk that we start to try to assess childrenʼs passions and the impact theyʼre having as humans, say, by creating portfolios that demonstrate the impact they are having on the world, which could kill the passion? How do we move to a place where weʼre comfortable with not having to assess things and demonstrate outcomes in the ʻnormalʼ way?

Ron Berger

I love, Loni, where you went at the end of your question, “assess it in that traditional way”, because I actually think it’s fine to assess everything. If it’s a reflective and formative assessment, if it’s an assessment to help us learn and understand, and it’s not a ranking, judging, summative assessment, then I don’t think it’s bad.

I feel like kids and adults assess everything we do, right? If we watch a TV show, we assess it afterwards, we discuss, what did you like? If you put on a new outfit, you’re going to assess, do I look good in this?

You’re always assessing and making that assessment explicit and reflective and thoughtful and safe is fine. I don’t really worry about us assessing many things. It’s the way we assess them that matters.

But assessment in the traditional sense – where we need a summative number next to this, we need a letter next to it, we need a ranking next to it – is where we kill the spirit of assessment.

So, going to a silly metaphor, if you see a movie, it doesn’t diminish the movie to say, “Wow, that was amazing, where did it work for you? Where did it move you?” But what kills that passion and fun is asking, “Okay, of all the movies you’ve seen in the last three years, where does this one rank? And do you give it an 82 or do you give it a 65.”

That kind of assessment, where it has to be summatively labelled and viewed in a reductionist way, so that it could be ranked along with a set of other movies, stops it being fun to even talk about it. But assessing it qualitatively through reflecting in a safe way is something that we can do with all kidsʼ work and all kidsʼ stuff. They are always doing it anyway. It’s just making it more explicit: ”Let’s have a conversation. How are you doing with this?” Whether it’s a life skill, whether it’s emotional growth, whether it’s physical capabilities, or whether it’s academic doesn’t matter, kids can assess “I’m doing better at this, or I’m not doing better. Why?” That’s very different from saying, “We’re going to rank you. We’re going to give you this label”. That’s scary and threatening but assessing how you’re doing doesnʼt have to be.

 

 

Gesher is underpinned by Jewish principles. What does having that foundation bring when assessing children as whole people?

Ron Berger

Well, in particular order for Gesher, there are three reasons why assessment that lifts the whole child and helps the whole child to feel like she’s growing into the kind of person and scholar that she wants to be are important.

The first of those is that it is a school particularly for differently abled students, which means they go through all of their life getting negative messages, telling them that they are not ranking as other people would. There are so many ways in which life is giving them the message that they are not good enough, whether it’s about their social skills, emotional skills, physical skills, academic skills. There’s a tremendous reason for Gesher to use an approach that gives kids power and pride in getting better at what they are rather than feeling diminished about who they are.

So having an asset-based vision of assessment at Gesher for that reason is extraordinarily important. Itʼs important in every school, but particularly important in a school that needs to lift kids who people have seen with a deficit lens, for so much of their life.

And the second reason it’s an important thing for Gesher, is that as a faith-based school, everyone who chooses to send their child to Gesher knows that there is more to life than academics. There is the human character of who you are as a human being. You choose to send your child to a faith-based school because your faith, your culture is something that matters to you, because you want your kids to embrace values that you care about. And those values mean being a good person. And so if the assessment systems diminish the kind of human beings we’re trying to create, they’re not good for us.

We need assessment systems that help our kids become more of the kind of people we want them to be. And so kids should be self-assessing and should be getting assessed for beyond their academics. It should be a holistic assessment system because kids should be proud to say, “This is the strength I have in this, and this is where I need to grow in my character.”

They should be able to say, “I’m focused on improving my courage, my passion, my respect, my responsibility, my kindness, my initiative, my integrity.” Kids should be assessing themselves and thinking about, “How do we become better human beings?”.

Itʼs scary for schools that are not faith based to say that because how do they choose which values theyʼre supporting? Will parents get upset, as they may not feel the values of the school are their values. For me, that’s a ridiculous cop-out and it’s just not real. I think almost all of us as human beings share values. What parent does not want their child to be respectful and responsible and courageous and kind and have integrity and honesty? No faith, no difference, no political party, no background makes you disinclined to want your kids to be a good person in those ways.

A third reason is that schools have no choice but to teach character. Schools are already teaching character all day long because the way kids experience school makes them more respectful or more responsible or more compassionate or less. So the experience of schooling shapes who kids are, and we’re doing it intentionally and well or haphazardly and poorly. In summary, a faith-based school has the opportunity to lean into these things and say, we’re going to do it intentionally and do it well because we want good human beings coming out of this school. And we’re not worried about talking about values because that’s partly why people choose to attend our school. So, for all those reasons, I think having an assessment system that elevates the whole person for every child is a perfect fit for Gesher.

 

 

Ron is responsible for leading EL Educationʼs vision for teaching and learning, bringing with him over 45 years of experience in education, 28 of those as a public school teacher.
Ron has authored 8 books on education: A Culture of Quality, An Ethic of Excellence, Leaders of Their Own Learning, Leaders of Their Own Learning Companion, Learning that Lasts, Transformational Literacy, Management in the Active Classroom, and We Are Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School Culture. He is a sought-after keynote speaker nationally and internationally, focusing on quality, craftsmanship, service, and character.
Ron works closely with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he did his graduate work and taught the course Models of Excellence, focused on using student work to improve teaching and learning. He founded the Models of Excellence EL website, which houses the worldʼs largest curated collection of high quality student work.

 

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • What purpose do your current forms of assessment serve for children as future citizens?
  • How would you assess the life-skills that children are learning under your care?
  • What values would you assess children for?
  •  Who would you need to convince to move away front he current assessment paradigm? Yourself? Parents? Colleagues?
  • How could the above align with standard forms of assessment, such as GCSE results or OFSTED grades?

Ron Berger – Additional Content from Gesher School on Vimeo.

Turning a Seed of an Idea into Reality – Kate Goldberg

5th April 2022Duncan Robertson

Turning a Seed of an Idea Into Reality – The Role of Philanthropy

Kate Goldberg

 

Ever thought about what it means to turn the germ of an idea into something that creates real change in your community? We caught up with Kate Goldberg, Chief Executive at the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation, to talk about the role of foundations and the advice they would give to those dreaming of change, including Gesher.

 

Charlotte Billington

Thanks for your time today and for talking with us about the role that foundations can play in building communities and turning dreams into practice. To start could you describe a bit about the Wohl Foundation and the role you play in your community.

Kate Goldberg

Thanks so much. Itʼs a real privilege to be involved in the work of Gesher and to be part of The Bridgeʼs first edition.

The Wohl Foundation is one of the larger funders of the Jewish community in the UK. We fund work across the education, social and welfare sectors, towards ensuring the sustainability of Jewish and communal life here in the UK.

The position of foundations is a very privileged one. We are quite niche, as we focus mainly on the Jewish community. Weʼre able to take a balcony view of our community and watch the dancers on the floor, but we also all live, work and engage within the community. I often think about the Leonard Cohen quote, “Thereʼs a crack in everything, thatʼs how the light gets in. ” We see our role as both to underpin the core infrastructure, as well as to find the cracks and fund the light, in the shape of new and dynamic projects.

We all have a role to play in developing our community and ensuring that it is the best of us and the best for us.

Charlotte Billington

With that idea of ʻletting the light inʼ, what was it about Gesher School that made you want to invest in their dream?

Kate Goldberg

When the founders, Ali and Sarah, came to us we’d been funding Jewish schools for some time as well as working in the field of special needs. They brought a solution that bridged a real gap. They had clearly defined their target market – who they wanted to set the school up for – and they had a clear rationale – why it was needed and why their idea was the solution to that need.We saw strong leadership, with the passion, vision and determination to turn the dream into a reality. They had (and still have) the ability to vision, and they had the grit to roll their sleeves up and get the job done.

Charlotte

They will be the first to say that they werenʼt a polished product when they approached you. What do you think it was that has helped them turn the seed of their idea into practice?

Kate

Before we met today, I looked back at my notes and actually they came to us with much more than just the seed of their idea. They had already developed a clear sense of what needed to happen to achieve their ambition and they had already spoken with one other key funder who was showing interest. They had a good group of experienced professionals around them, and an advisory and trustee board already set up. Finally, they were also in the process of bringing in more expertise to fill gaps in knowledge.

Having said that, they were not the polished article and we, my colleague Howard Stanton in particular, spent an enormous amount of time helping them refine their ideas, develop a business plan around that, and how to engage with funders, to ensure they could fulfil their dreams.

Charlotte

Would you give them any advice for how to continue meeting their vision?

Kate

I think itʼs really important that their voice is amplified.

They should focus on shouting more about what it looks like to create a school where children with mild or moderate special educational needs are aspiring and thriving. Iʼm not sure how much Gesher is recognised in the wider Jewish or the SEN community yet.

Charlotte

And how do you start to bring a community into your vision and the journey travelled?

Kate

So there’s something about timing, consciousness, and a shift that makes you pay attention. I think that Ali and Sarah captured the timing piece really well, but they need to dig deeper into the consciousness of the community. Itʼs probably a communications effort, which is why I was also glad to take part in this interview and to hear about The Bridge.

They’re very, very good at writing to donors. This should be translated into creating good news stories for others in the Jewish Press and wider.

Charlotte

This has been such an insightful interview, thank you so much Kate. One final question I would like to end on. What advice would you give to others who want to take their seed of an idea and turn it into change?

Kate

I would ask a few questions of yourself:

  • Do you have an achievable vision, that is a crack of light?
  • Do you have what it takes to deliver?
  • Do you have the right governance and people with the right expertise in place to help you?
  • Are they pushing you and most importantly challenging your thinking?
  • Do you have a plan for sustainability?

If the true answer is yes, then go for it!

 

Kate Goldberg is the Chief Executive of the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation.

 

 

Reflection from Gesher’s co-founder Sarah Sultman

5th April 2022Duncan Robertson

A reflection from Gesher’s Co-Founder, Sarah Sultman, on the experience of mobilising the creation of Gesher School

 

Before we could go to any donors in the community we spent over a year researching the need in the community.

We began by hosting what were essentially ʼtrunk style eveningsʼ in local synagogues and around kitchen tables, where we invited people through Facebook and word of mouth, to come and hear about our plans and to gather people who wanted to get on board. It wasnʼt us dictating to the community our vision but more like sharing our ideas and asking them – what did they want in a school, did they have skills they could help us with.

We knew that ideas alone werenʼt enough to create a school. We needed an entire community of volunteers to freely give up their time and expertise to get the project up and running and we were fortunate to have met so many remarkable people who so enthusiastically wanted to get on board.

The first people that came on board were a retired lawyer and an accountant – we needed to register as a charity and to have some sort of an idea about the finances involved in setting up a school.

This very basic, crude, mind map is from 2014 but this was our starting position! This led us to meet all the people that came on board. It gives you just a small idea of all the different areas we have to find expertise in. We created a network with people introducing us to other people as well as cold calling.

I think our passion, determination and tenacity went a long way but really, once we were armed with the data and the numbers, it was obvious that this school was desperately needed. Most people didnʼt take that much convincing.

We have heard of many others wanting to set up a school and many of them give up before theyʼve really even started. It takes commitment, time and dedication. We thought we could do it in a year but it took us from 2013 – 2017 when our first pupils arrived at the school. There is no official ʻhow to set up a SEN school from scratchʼ manual. If there was, it might have saved us a year or two but equally we wouldnʼt have acquired the knowledge that we did by educating ourselves every step of the way.

Demystifying project based learning – Loni Berqvist

5th April 2022Duncan Robertson

Demystifying Project Based Learning

Loni Bergqvist

 

Loni is Founder & Partner at Imagine If, and is a PBL coach to Gesher School

There is a range of reasons why a school decides to break the mould of traditional education and embark on a journey of using Project-Based Learning (or PBL) as their primary approach to teaching and learning. Many schools are becoming increasingly aware of the skills and knowledge their students will need to thrive in their lives due to advancements in technology and society.

These skills include collaboration, critical thinking and communication among others. Other schools become interested in PBL because of a philosophical resolution that every single student, regardless of background or perceived academic ability, should be able to flourish in school. In this pursuit, schools are required to break the traditional model of “one-size-fits-all” approach to learning where everyone is doing the same thing at the same time in the same way.

Instead, PBL offers the possibility for students to investigate real-world problems and challenges that are relevant to their lives. They collaborate in teams and develop their own solutions. Students are engaging with learning that matters to them and producing work that matters to someone else.

But itʼs not rocket science.

I often get asked, So, what exactly is PBL?

And the honest answer is: you already know.

Projects make up the world we live in every day.

When a daughter learns to play a love-song at her parentʼs wedding anniversary party. When film-makers make a documentary for a TV programme. When a lawyer takes on a new case. When we cook a meal for our family. Our lives are made up of little and large projects. When we are driven by a real need to create or do something new… we engage in Project-Based Learning.

But most schools are not set up to embrace learning in this way. To make this transition, teaching and learning must be organized around a set of Project Design Elements that help establish the basis for authentic work and natural learning processes while also, importantly, integrating academic learning goals.

Project Design Elements

Big Questions

Every project is composed around a Big Question that is designed to set the stage for the inquiry and exploration during the project. Big Questions are complex, found in the real-world and require students to develop their own answers over time. Examples of Big Questions include: How can we get our families to be more healthy? and “What is the perfect school?”

Student-Created Products

During each project, students create products. It is these products that drive the learning and inquiry process throughout PBL. Products can be physical (like a sculpture, poster or furniture) or virtual (like a website or social media campaign) and everything in between. In the process of making, we learn by doing and engage the head, hand and heart.

Drafting and Critique Process

Driven by creation, students go through a process of drafting and critique. They start by examining models of exemplar work and ask and answer the question, what makes a good (product)? They may need to brainstorm, draft a plan or do additional research as they start to make their products with their peers. With each new draft, feedback is given to improve the work. Sometimes this feedback is teacher to student, but it is often peer to peer or an expert guest from outside school who is relevant to the project. Through this process, students nurture a ʻgrowth-mindsetʼ, go deeper into their own understanding and application of academic knowledge and create a community of learners where it is the responsibility of all to produce beautiful work, and to support each other to do that.

Exhibition

Every project includes an Exhibition of learning where students present their work (product and process) to a public audience. This authentic audience is carefully chosen and is best when it includes members who require the knowledge and products created in the project by students. This might include a school-wide Exhibition night where the local community is invited, or a presentation at the local aquarium to inform the public about ocean conservation.

 

The Philosophy of PBL

While projects are planned around these Design Elements, there are foundational beliefs and philosophies that underpin PBL and are just as significant as the project. When these vital mindsets are in combination with great project design, PBL is transformative and truly authentic to learners.

Adults must believe that all young people are capable of amazing things. When the adults working around children hold limiting beliefs about what individuals are capable of achieving, when we use language like more able or less able, it becomes impossible to design learning experiences that allow all students to flourish.

Teachers must believe that learning is more than memorization. In our current education culture, most of us have been conditioned to believe that learning is about memorizing knowledge and we are ultimately successful in learning when we can transfer this knowledge onto a test or exam. School learning and the learning that is mostly required of us outside school are two different things. Natural learning (when toddlers learn to walk, for example) engages in a process similar to PBL. Itʼs messy. It requires failure. And itʼs not always easy to assess or find progress. But toddlers walk, and they exhibit it! When we shift our perceptions of what learning is, we can find much more of it and begin to value something else.

Finally, there must be a profound boldness to commit the primary purpose of school to be empowering young people to know who they are, what they are naturally positioned to love and to have the confidence to contribute to the world they are already a part of. It is the boldness to commit to every young person leaving school with their self esteem as a learner enhanced – to every child walking.

 

Loni Bergqvist is the Founder and Partner at Imagine If, a Denmark-based organization committed to support schools with using Project-Based Learning as a catalyst for educational change. Loni was previously a teacher at High Tech High in San Diego, California and has worked with schools to support the use of PBL since 2013.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • How is your current curriculum preparing learners for the real world skills they need?
  • What do young people really need to learn in order to thrive?
  • How can you build a curriculum in which every child can thrive and explore and build their innate skills?
  • How can you develop projects that allow your children to create authentic work?
  • What does a really good, whole-person, learning process look like?

Spaces That Matter – Terry White and Bhavini Pandya

3rd April 2022Ali Durban

Developing the spaces and places where children learn and thrive

Terry White and Bhavini Pandya

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” – John Holt, American author and educator.

The concept that childrenʼs learning does not follow as an automatic consequence of what they are taught is well established. Loris Malaguzzi, in developing the Reggio Emilia approach, believed that children are capable individuals with the ability and desire to develop their own knowledge. He recognised, as part of his work, the value of space and, in his own words, wanted to ensure “a handsome environment with its potential to inspire social, effective and cognitive learning”. His thinking was influential in developing the concept of space being described as the “third teacher”.

Such an approach focuses on meeting the needs of the whole child and involves moving from a culture of teaching to a culture of learning, and where learning experiences move towards the design of a meaningful, empowered and creative world for children, enabled by the teacher.

The spaces and places where children learn therefore matter and they are inspired by aspirational pedagogy. It follows that the design of all environments for learning should be both learning and learner-led and set within the distinctive culture, ethos and values of the school and its learning community. Our experience working with many schools has been that you canʼt successfully design education spaces unless you fully understand the learning and teaching practices that they need to support.

Planning Learning Spaces in Practice, and Autens, have worked together in collaboration with Gesher School to help make a reality of the schoolʼs vision for learning through the design of learning environments for the school and community. Gesher is developing an approach that is focused on a learner-centred curriculum and is designed to develop the whole person, balancing “head, heart and hand”.

The scope at Gesher embraces conventional areas such as ʻclassroomsʼ (flexible furniture design and arrangement, decor, resources and equipment, images, fluid links between rooms), display areas, corridor environments, dining and social areas.

It also involves the co-design of an ambitious integrated Maker Space; creation of large exhibition areas; and creative incorporation of external environmental features into the everyday learning ecosystem of the school.

Lene Jensby Lange at Autens recognises that “learning environments are an expression of a learning culture and need to be designed to strengthen that culture”.

As a team we are excited and honoured to be part of the learning journey of Gesher School seeking collectively to reimagine opportunities for learning. We are confident that by creating an active engagement process around current and future practice with teachers, learners and community, a transition to new and innovatory learning environments can occur. We believe that teachers and learners must be fully engaged and empowered to fully contribute to the design process.
As a design team, we have engaged with learners and school staff to develop thinking about what will excite, motivate and interest learners and teachers in the design and furnishing of the learning spaces. It has been inspiring to see the level of detail and innovative thinking that learners and staff have brought to the design of spaces, both inside and outside the building.

Learners and staff together are becoming the creators and designers of the spaces and places in which aspirational learning will occur.

“The task of good school design is to create the best physical environment – the best habitat — for that to happen. For that reason, reimagining schools is one of the most creative challenges in contemporary education.” Sir Ken Robinson. Planning Learning Spaces. (Hudson and White) Laurence King Publishing.

Bhavini Pandya and Terry White are co-directors of the Planning Learning Spaces in Practice Projects. Sir Ken Robinson was a British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • Is the vision of the school reflected in the day-to-day learning experience for all?
  • Whose needs does the learning space serve?
  • What value do you place on learners taking responsibility for their own learning?
  • How dynamic and adaptable are your learning spaces?
  • Are your learning spaces encouraging enquiry, collaboration, creativity and physical movement?
  • Are you placing equal value on inside and outside learning spaces?

Emotional Resilience in Children: Building an Essential Curriculum – Lucy Bailey

3rd April 2022Ali Durban

Building an Essential Curriculum

Lucy Bailey

The Mental Health of Children and Young People (MHCYP) survey found that one in six children aged 5-16 had a probable mental health disorder in 2020. Earlier data showed that only a quarter of these children had contact with a mental health specialist, and one quarter had no support at all.

The consequences of not addressing early mental health issues extend to adulthood, limiting opportunities. As it currently stands, education is not geared towards equipping children with the skills and tools they need to live happy, healthy lives. There needs to be a fundamental shift in understanding about the role schools can play in the long-term health and wellbeing of our future generations. When young people feel connected to their schools (and their families) this can protect against the risk of:

  • Suicide
  • Disordered eating
  • Susceptibility to injury
  • Violence
  • Substance abuse, and
  • Emotional distress.

This is why Bounce Forward is passionate about supporting schools to build a curriculum that equips children and young people with the essential tools to develop emotional resilience and psychological fitness; preparing them for life, not just exams.

What does a positive emotional resilience curriculum look like?

There are four core elements that Bounce Forward teaches young people in their lessons:

  1. How to deal better with education and life pressures so they bounce forward in and beyond school
  2. The mental resilience skills to think flexibly and realistically to adapt and respond to challenges and make the most of opportunities
  3. The emotionally intelligent capacity for empathy, compassion and hope
  4. How to be proactive agents for change about the things they care about, and that matter most for humanity.

This article focuses on two of these four areas, exploring how each can be taught as part of an emotional resilience curriculum.

Teaching Optimism

Optimistic thinking is not the same as positive thinking. Learned optimism is the ability to focus on the positive whilst not ignoring the negative. The idea is that if there is a choice (and there often is) it is more productive and helpful to pay attention to the positive that can be found amongst the negative. To teach optimism, first we have to understand the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviour. This is possible using a well-established and simple cognitive behavioural model that helps break down situations into facts, beliefs and consequences.

The theory suggests that when things happen, we interpret them, deciding what has caused the situation, or the implications of the situation. It is our interpretation or beliefs in that moment that influence our emotion and our behaviour. Imagine three people in the same situation – stuck in a traffic jam. 

Person one thinks “some idiot has been driving too fast”, feels angry and beeps their horn. Person two thinks “there is nothing I can do about it”, feels calm and takes the opportunity to listen to their favourite tune. Person three thinks “I am going to be late to pick up the children from school”, feels anxious and clutches their head in their hands. 

One situation, three different responses (emotions and behaviour) because each person’s beliefs about the situation were different.

This simple understanding offers choices: If I don’t like how I am feeling and behaving, then I can reframe my thinking. It leads to a sophisticated understanding of self as patterns emerge: In these types of situations I can react in an unhelpful/helpful way.  It supports the ability to clearly explain what is going on for me: This happened, the facts were x, y, z. I believed ……. to be true and I felt ……. and responded by doing ………. 

This foundational learning has been proven to see sustained long-term positive outcomes.

But please donʼt make the assumption that the goal is for young people to feel happy all of the time. Almost by contrast, the goal is to help young people explore alternatives, look for evidence for what they believe to be true, challenge their viewpoint and develop the psychological muscle to overcome setbacks and make the most of opportunities.

This is achieved by teaching skills and providing the opportunity to practise and master the skills.

Teaching Compassion

Compassion comes when we are faced with another personʼs suffering and we want to do something to relieve that suffering. Learning how to be compassionate starts with understanding emotions, the range of emotions we can feel and what happens in our bodies and minds when we experience certain emotions. This understanding offers the opportunity to first understand our own emotions and then to build empathy, the ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person. It is this understanding that drives us to be compassionate because we can understand what someone else is going through.

By supporting young people to recognise the differences between positive and negative emotions and the associated levels of energy that are spent (or wasted) with strong emotions, they can develop strategies that help them manage their emotions and therefore their energy, and themselves, more effectively.

Positive emotions can often take a back seat, while we pay attention to negative emotions, but they really are important. When we feel good, (happy, content, relaxed, at ease, receptive), we are better equipped to problem solve and think creatively in the moment, which in turn builds personal resilience such as social connections, and physical and psychological resources. So, supporting young people to recognise their positive emotions is not a ʻnice to haveʼ part of teaching; it is essential to equip them to deal with adversity.

 

Conclusions

Optimism and compassion can be viewed as ʻsoftʼ, ʻnice to havesʼ but there is nothing soft about them, they are essential and a part of core learning we should be teaching in school to all of our children, especially those who face learning challenges. Building a curriculum and teaching it in a scientific way will help all our young people to not only survive, but thrive.

 

Lucy Bailey is Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Bounce Forward. She is proud of her beginnings as a youth worker and her 17 years of experience of working in, developing, reforming and managing childrenʼs services. Over the last 12 years Lucy has focused on education and has been instrumental in embedding resilience curricula in schools and services across the UK. Her passion is to drive a movement to influence UK policy around education to form a positive system of change. Lucy directed the Healthy Minds research project, has an MSc in Practice Based Research, a BSc in Social Policy and Criminology, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education.

 

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • To what extent do you see yourself as responsible for your studentsʼ emotional health?
  •  In what ways might staff in schools role-model compassion?
  • What tools can you give children to deal with adversity?

Useful Resources

Mindfulness In Schools

Action for Happiness

Five Ways to Wellbeing

Putting Design Principles at the Heart of a School – James Wetz

1st April 2022Ali Durban

Putting Design Principles at the Heart of a School

James Wetz

I was involved in an advisory capacity during the gestation of Gesher, and at its birth. Asked for this journal to reflect on that period in this extraordinary schoolʼs development, I am driven back to my own belief system -to what the education project is all about. In summary, there are three questions or ʻasksʼ that I would put to all those who work in our schools.

The first: Reflect on how important relationships between staff and young people are

The first challenge to historical models of schooling is that we should reflect on just how important the staff who work with young people in our schools are for each and every young person, and in particular for those more challenging young people who find it difficult to engage with their schooling. This leads at the outset to an emphasis on four key ideas:

  1. That relationships should be the building blocks of school design
  2. That we all learn in and through relationships
  3. That we cannot teach children we do not know and know well
  4. That teaching is a ‘relational activity’ based on ‘educational tasksʼ.

 

The second: Take a holistic view of education

The second challenge is that we see young peopleʻs educational journey from early
childhood to young adulthood in a more holistic way and, additionally, that we ensure
that there are three equally valued and interrelated components to the educational
design, namely:

  • The importance of relevant learning
  • The personal and social development of young people
  • The professional care and intervention we provide for more vulnerable young people.

 

The third: View building resilience and emotional capital as key toeducational provision

The third consideration is that we should, quite simply, view emotional capital and resilience as being a crucial part of a teacherʼs role and a schoolʼs mission.

 

How do these three features relate to Gesher School?

One of the first conversations I had with the schoolʼs founders, Ali and Sarah, was around establishing the core values and principles that would be central to the design of their school – what would be the conceptual framework and belief system that should inform the design of the school they wished to create?

The four underlying principles that were to inform policy and practice in this new school built on the three belief statements set out above, have remained constant to the design and working of the school over time.

They are:

  • The importance of relationships in the education of young people
  • The importance of a holistic approach to the education of young people
  • The importance of building resilience in young people
  • The importance of responding to each young personʻs needs and aspirations

 

It felt important from the very early design of the school to create a constant emphasis for school leaders, be they the Founders of the school or the Headteacher, to see themselves as architects and designers of the school community in its deepest sense. These design principles would be meaningless without those leaders living them and supporting practice that had these principles at their heart.

“We need to see young peopleʼs educational journey from early childhood to young adulthood in a more holistic way.”

 

So what could this new school, Gesher School, and other aspirational settings look like if these core principles informed policy and practice and were evidenced in the school?

The key design features of a school that I believe are essential have little to do with buildings and technology provision, important though these are. Rather, they are very specifically those aspects of the school which give explicit meaning and expression to the core principles of a school. Let me share a few of these that I hold to be important for all schools, which have been embedded in Gesher School and I hope continue to be so as they evolve into an all through provision. Whilst I cannot explore these features in detail here, they are for me essentials of what outstanding schools should demonstrate.

They include:

  • The importance of ritual
  • The importance of celebration
  • A listening culture with and between young people
  • Giving teachers time to think about young people
  • Talking together about young people
  • Planning collaboratively to meet the learning needs of young people
  • Paying deep attention to transitions and the managing of endings
  • The importance of roles and boundaries
  • Putting in place effective professional supervision and role consultation for teachers
  • For teachers to have a therapeutic disposition informed by training in attachment and trauma informed approaches
  • The importance of human scale and the primacy of relationships
  • An emphasis on the importance of living in community.

 

Concluding thought
This is an urgent call for us to set aside preconceived notions of how schooling should be and to think deeply about what it could be or would be if it were to work well for those young people who are currently finding school so difficult to engage with.

 

Case studies of really well designed schools

As part of authoring and presenting a Channel 4 Dispatches programme titled ‘The Children Left Behind’, I was able to film in the small school movement pilot schools in Boston and New York. Here I met two quite remarkable school leaders and schools. Peggy Kemp, Headteacher at Fenway High School, held staff meetings every day of the week with the total commitment of the staff team and asked just one question of them at the end of every day: ‘Who has not been seriously engaged in learning with us today?ʼ On the day of my visit, when invited to the staff meeting that day and in response to this daily enquiry from the Headteacher, teachers raised the needs of three young people: a boy who had ‘kicked off’ in a bout of extreme anger during the morning session; a normally confident and engaged girl who had seemed sad and withdrawn; and a boy who had missed two weeks of schooling because of domestic upheaval and who was clearly not coping with the work.

What was important, though, was not just their identification as young people of concern on that particular day but the immediate responses of the staff team: “I live near the family of the boy who ‘kicked off in anger’ and will visit on my way home”; that they as a staff group would meet and greet the withdrawn girl with greater love and affection the next day; and that an immediate tutor intervention was necessary to enable the boy who had missed two weeks of school a chance to catch up and cope with his programme.

Linda Nathan was school leader at Boston Arts Academy, which teaches the curriculum through the arts. Linda sees relationships as the essential building blocks of her school and stresses that teachers just cannot be ignorant about the lives of the young people they teach. She sees the need for teachers to show unconditional commitment – persistent care – that the young people should know that the adults will never give up on them, whatever they do. This is the culture of her high-achieving school, where attendance rates are high and exclusions almost unheard of. The staff in her school had a commitment and an understanding to think deeply about the needs of young people who present with challenging behaviour, by providing and affirming a holistic approach to education and seeing relationships as the building blocks necessary for any school if young people were to thrive. There was an understanding that recognised that disaffection from school is often rooted in a lack of early affection; that very challenging behaviour is often a communication about need from children who are acting out due to remembered hurt of earlier neglect, abuse, loss, or separation.

 

 

  • Professional Prompt Questions
  • What principles are your school currently built on?
  • If you could design your school from scratch, what principles would you want to guide the way you set up your school? Can you think of a way to embed them where you are now?
  • Is the building of positive relationships between staff and students explicitly designed into the way your school operates? If not, how could it be?
  • Looking at Jamesʼ list of outstanding school features — how many do you recognise in your own school? Would you like to implement any of these?

 

 

James worked for over 30 years in state education, 16 as a secondary school Headteacher at both St. Laurence School Bradford on Avon and Cotham School in Bristol. He retired from the role of the Principal of Cotham School and the North Bristol Post 16 Centre in 2004. Subsequently, he has been National Director of Human Scale Education and co-founder of the Consortium for Emotional Well Being in Schools. He has published widely, most notably ʻUrban Village Schools – putting relationships at the heart of secondary school organisation and designʼ, which was published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in November 2009 and launched at the RSA in London. In 2008 he authored and presented a ʻDispatchesʼ Programme for Channel 4 titled ʻChildren Left Behindʼ based on field work in the small school movement in Denmark and the ʻPilot Schoolsʼ in Boston and New York in the US. He is currently an advisor or trustee of multiple innovative educational and cultural ventures. He is married to Diana, with three children and eight grandchildren.