Making the Most of Therapies in Your Setting

15th December 2022Website Admin

Making the Most of Therapies in Your Setting

Victoria Rutter

The ever-changing political landscape has seen far-reaching implications for education and health services; spending cuts have been severe and there is currently a real disparity across the country in the amount and type of therapeutic provision available to children with SEND. It is interesting to reflect on the journey of how therapies emerged in schools, and to observe the inherent successes, but also the frustrations; frustrations largely due to ‘not enough’ rather than the quality of provision.

It is abundantly clear, from both research and anecdotal evidence, that the best possible model for effecting quality provision for each child is to do this within a team. In this case, the team would be school, parents and therapies.

Within School, Not Withdrawn

Historically children were taken out of school to attend therapy sessions in local community clinics and hospitals. This obviously disrupted children’s education and meant there was limited opportunity for liaison with school staff, and also that skills acquired in therapy had little chance of being generalised into everyday school life. With the advent of Statements of Special Educational Needs (Statements) — now Education, Health Care Plans  (EHCPs) — the NHS began to place Therapists in both mainstream and SEND schools. Subsequently, Local Authorities (LAs), through joint funding with the NHS, began financially and operationally to support this model and Therapists began to work regularly in schools to see children — both with and without EHCPs.

Therapists as Members of Staff

Schools and parents could really see the benefit of children receiving therapies in their school environment. However, they also became increasingly frustrated by the amount of input they were being offered, with both the NHS and LAs rationing services due to a never-ending series of spending cuts. Schools began to recruit their own Therapists, giving them more control over the frequency of input, and allowing Therapists and school staff the opportunity truly to work collaboratively as part of a team around the children and young people in education.

Cut to today and this model is seen in both SEND and mainstream schools across the UK. Some settings have multi-disciplinary therapy teams on site full-time, while others have Therapists either employed directly by them or contracted via independent Therapists and practices. Therapists may visit weekly, half-termly or termly depending on the needs and budgets of individual schools.

Arrangements in one SEND School

At Gesher, therapy is not seen as an ‘add-on’, instead, it is part of the overall curriculum and is designed and delivered in tandem with the educational and social curriculum. Therapy targets are woven into all aspects of day-to-day school life, and therapies can be delivered in a variety of ever more creative ways. Staff upskill each other and are able to plan jointly and run interventions.

As in most settings, therapy staff work to a three-tiered approach: Universal (for all), Targeted (for small groups) and Specialist (for individuals). It is at the Universal level that the work can really make an impact: devising, teaching, modelling and reviewing whole-school approaches such as communication and sensory-friendly classrooms, signs and visually supported speech, Zones of Regulation, Movement breaks, facilitating lunchtime chats, playground games and Fun with Food.

Some Lessons For Any School

This model can differ from setting to setting, particularly in mainstream schools. So, what can a regular school do to maximise the impact of therapeutic support where provision can be limited in frequency?

Preparation is Key

Identify the key person who will liaise and plan with the Therapist. This is usually the Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities Coordinator (SENDco). The SENDco can then ask school staff and senior leaders to come up with a list of priorities and areas for development with regard to the particular Therapist that is working with your school; this could include:

  • Identifying particular children (specialist) or groups of children (targeted) who may require assessment and/or intervention
  • Identifying areas of universal need for your particular school, for example: vocabulary, listening, play, handwriting, sensory regulation, etc
  • Creating optimal learning environments such as communication and sensory-friendly classrooms
  • Identifying opportunities for Team Teaching to model and embed Quality First teaching strategies
  • You may wish to identify a Teaching Assistant with relevant skills and/or interest to also liaise with the Therapists and who helps to coordinate and deliver the therapeutic interventions in school
  • Identifying training needs for all staff
  • Identifying training needs for identified staff
  • Identifying pieces of work with parents.

Plan For Each Visit

The SENDco and Therapist can make a joint plan prior to the visit, by email, which ensures:

  • The priorities of the school are met in a timely way
  • School staff are aware that Therapists will be in school/class
  • Parents are informed
  • The Therapist knows in advance what assessments/resources to bring in
  • Time is ring-fenced for the SENDco and Therapist to meet
  • A room can be booked in which to assess children and meet with staff and/or parents.

Taking children out for one-to-one work may be necessary if outlined in a child’s EHCP. In these circumstances, a Teaching Assistant should be able to accompany the child to observe and participate in the session and effect meaningful carry-over. If you are unavailable to catch up at the end of the visit, ask the Therapist to send you a summary of who was seen, meetings that took place, interventions/training carried out, etc.

How Do I Go About Commissioning a Therapist?

It may be cost-effective to link up with other local schools to ‘buy in’ Therapists and many independent Therapists and practices have a choice of bespoke packages to suit a range of needs and budgets.

For further guidelines and information on commissioning Therapies in schools, see the links below:

Speech & Language Therapy

Independent Speech & Language Therapists

Occupational Therapy

Dramatherapy

Art Therapy

Educational Psychology

 

Therapists share the frustration and challenges of our colleagues in education regarding provision.  However, as suggested above, there are ways to maximise outcomes and utilise the therapy provision a school does have.

In essence, those universal approaches will have a significant impact and are achievable and sustainable. Investing in staff training and setting up whole-school approaches benefits all students, leaving the precious remaining Therapy time directed where it is needed the most.

Building From Passions and Interests

15th December 2022Website Admin

Building From Passions and Interests

Sam Dexter

In the first issue of The Bridge, we introduced Gesher’s Five Design Principles. These principles were developed by members of the Gesher community, friends and supporters of Gesher, and with input from members of the wider community. They are central to everything that happens at Gesher and as such, across the next five issues of The Bridge, we will look at how they are put into practice.

For this issue, we spoke to Monique Lauder, a Teaching Assistant in the Early Years/Year 1 Class about Gesher’s second design principle; personalised learning informed by young people’s passions and interests. Monique has spent twenty-one years working in Early Years settings and joined Gesher two years ago. In that time she has developed her own approach to personalising sensory trays and tuff trays.

The decision about what to include in the trays is driven by her deep knowledge of the young people.

Sensory Trays and Tuff Trays

Sensory trays and Tuff trays are a regular  feature of many Early Years and Key Stage 1 classrooms.  They promote and support language development, gross and fine motor skills and support children to develop their problem-solving skills. They are typically large plastic trays filled with materials such as shredded paper, coloured rice, pasta, different types of lentils, couscous, shaving foam, or water. They also often include small-world play items or objects linked to a topic. When we sat down to chat with Monique, her latest sensory trays were full of small white stones, tweezers, and what looked to me suspiciously like old Weetabix.

… the personalisation of learning informed by young people’s passions and interests.

Planning and Creating the Personalised Trays

For Monique, the decision about what to include in the trays is driven by her deep knowledge of the young people she works with. ‘I try to get something I know will interest them, maybe someone is really into cars, so I would put cars in that tray… It’s mostly about looking at the children, seeing what they really like, asking them what they like and going from there.’

As well as knowing about the interests of the young people she works with, Monique also discussed how a young person’s individual targets feed into the personalisation of a tray. ‘A lot of our students have targets related to communication and interactions so I use the trays to encourage role-play… the students are seeing their friends or adults playing in a certain way or interacting with an object in a certain way and they’re able to do the same.’ Monique also told us how, if a student is working on a very specific target, that can be practised in the tray. For a student working on recognising numbers up to twenty, for instance, putting objects in the tray and asking students to find them, means the skill from a maths lesson can be practised throughout the day. The student’s Project-Based Learning (PBL) topic also helps Monique to decide how to personalise a tray. A PBL topic usually runs for half a term so one of the trays will also be linked to this.

Monique also shared with us how her approach to planning and setting up the trays has developed throughout her time at Gesher. ‘At first, I was doing two a week but I changed it because I felt that students needed more time to explore’. Now, Monique will change the trays once a week and this gives the students much more time to be curious and work out which different sensory experiences they like and don’t like. ‘The other thing I’m trying to do more is implement what the students are doing in the classroom into the trays.’ At this point in our chat, the young people Monique works with came charging in from the playground. After taking off their coats and putting away their bags, they headed straight for the trays filled with the white stones and Weetabix. One of them grabbed a picture of a mouth and the other immediately picked up the tweezers asking who wanted to be the first dentist to collect the teeth. Monique explained that their topic this term was healthy bodies and that specifically this week they were looking at how to keep healthy (and that I was correct, it was old Weetabix).

Monique’s Tips for Creating a Personalised Sensory Tray

Ideas

The vast majority of Monique’s ideas come from knowing the young people she works with really well, so her biggest piece of advice is to take time to build relationships with the young people. Once you’ve done this you can start including personalised objects in the sensory tray and build the process up from there. Knowledge of a young person’s targets and next steps will also ensure the tray can be further personalised to their needs, as can a broad awareness of the curriculum experiences they are having.

Resources

Monique told us how most of her resources come from things she would have usually recycled, like food containers and packaging, as well as natural materials from the garden like leaves, conkers and acorns. A store of these materials can be built up relatively quickly, especially if more than one person is contributing to it. The materials could then be shared between classes and reused for different topics. Finally, she said that shops like B&M, Tiger, Poundland and Wilko are great places to get inspiration (and often bargains!)

End Note

Whilst the work that Monique does is specifically related to sensory trays, this article is also about something much bigger — the personalisation of learning informed by young people’s passions and interests. The principles are the same whether it is six or seven-year-olds or much older learners — build relationships; know the learner well; involve the learner; connect to the real world; and design experiences relevant to their learning ambitions.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • We included this article because Monique’s sensory trays provide a highly accessible example of personalisation in practice. What is the best example in your school?

  • This example is built on relationships — and knowing students’ SEND needs, learning challenges and passions. Who in your school has this relationship with SEND learners?

Critical Friendship Groups: Think ‘Fireside Chats’

15th December 2022Website Admin

Critical Friendship Groups: Think ‘Fireside Chats’

David Jackson

Gesher School serves children who learn differently — many of whom have had highly stressful school experiences previously.

To do a brilliant job for these children, we want to be the best that we can be — the best in well-being, best in assessment, in project-based learning design and facilitation, in exhibitions, best community links, best staff development, best parent engagement, skilled in the use of technology and so on.  Not best or better in any comparative way — just the best that we can be to serve the young people, adults and families who are part of our school community…

We need to be the most informed and intentional learning organisation that we can be.

To do that we need to be the most informed and intentional learning organisation that we can be, and one feature of that is to reach out to people who have relevant knowledge and experience to help us with dilemmas or ‘problems of practice’ and to debate with us key elements of our ambition. One strategy for this is Critical Friendship Groups.

Critical Friendship Groups (CFGs)

Gesher started as a primary school and is now an all-through school. For the first 18 months of its existence as an all-through school, it is emphatically in learning mode. We plan to harness the goodwill and professional generosity of the school’s multiple partners and connections to establish a small number of CFGs around key themes that are central to the school’s success.

At the time of writing we have held one CFG so far, on the theme of well-being, when we asked our critical friends:

How do you empower young people to manage and own their own mental and emotional well-being through adolescence and beyond school?

Eight people from backgrounds as diverse as the Anna Freud Centre and Place2Be, and as geographically spread as Bolton to Israel, met online for two hours to engage in a facilitated conversation, the outcomes of which will be featured in Issue 3 of The Bridge. We plan to share both a think-piece distilled from that session and also a tool or framework that might be of practical value to teachers.

Critical Friendship Group Objectives

There are four objectives to CFGs, which are:

  1. To connect Gesher with advanced practice and thinking around issues linked to the school’s ambitions, and to the needs of the SEND sector.
  2. To build relationships with people who have experience, knowledge and insights that can help to advance Gesher’s work and the work of the sector.
  3. To generate usable knowledge and ideas around key ‘problems of practice’.
  4. To create an informal space that allows people to engage and contribute to Gesher’s evolution.

We hope, of course, to learn a huge amount. And we plan to share the things that we learn which are of collective value through the journal.

For the moment, we offer up the idea of ‘fireside chats’ with a group of people who know stuff and who care about young people’s learning, as one that might have value for other schools.

Three Houses Model

15th December 2022Website Admin

Three Houses Model

The Three Houses model is a tool which provides a visual way for people to express their views about a topic or experience. The tool was originally developed in 2003 in New Zealand for use in the field of child protection, but since then has been adapted for use with other groups. The version here is based on that created by Cunningham (2020) who used the tool as a way of eliciting the views of autistic children about what made their school autism-friendly. 

How Does It Work? 

The Three Houses model is a very flexible tool, which can be adapted to suit the needs or preferences of the young people you work with. Below are two options for how the tool could be used.

Option 1: The adult and young person draw three houses together. Once the houses are drawn the adult explains the name of each house: house of good things; house of less good things; house of dreams. The adult then asks the young person some questions and the young person’s responses are recorded in each house. For example, the adult could ask questions about what

 is going well at school. After the young person has given their responses, the adult would add these to the relevant house, in this case, the house of good things. This would be repeated until all three houses are filled.

Option 2: The adult shows a young person a picture of three houses and then asks the young person to draw their own version on a separate piece of paper. The adult would then explain the name of each house: house of good things; house of less good things; and house of dreams. Next, the young person would be asked to write or draw pictures of all the ‘good things’ about something, for example, school. As the young person draws or writes, the adult can ask the young person for more information about what they have drawn or written. This process would be repeated with all three houses.

Example

The below three houses are from Gesher’s conversation with students for the Changing Schools, Changing Lives article.

World Cafe

15th December 2022Website Admin

World Cafe

World Cafe is a protocol to discuss a ‘Question that Matters’.

This is what it says it is – a key question that matters to participants.

The Basic Format or Protocol

  • Groups sit at round tables, where all participants have a felt-tipped pen
  • One person, who has been briefed, hosts and facilitates the conversation and stays at that table throughout
  • Each group discusses and attempts to answer the ‘Question that Matters’ posed by the host – they come up with ideas
  • In the first round, each group has a blank paper tablecloth or flip-chart paper in front of them  They engage with the question and make notes or jottings or diagrams on the tablecloth that record key issues that emerge in the discussion. It can be either the speaker who writes down their own point, another table member who does so, or both – the important thing is those good ideas find their way onto the tablecloth. An alternative is to have a scribe as well as a facilitator.
  • Tables rotate after a set amount of time (15 or 20 minutes)
  • The host stays at the table. He/she welcomes the new group, repeats the ‘Question that Matters’ and shares the essence of the previous conversation, the insights that have started to emerge — where the previous group got to. That might include the beginnings of some categorisation of issues or lines drawn between points. (No more than 3- 5 minutes.)
  • The new discussion then builds from the previous conversation(s)
  • With each new rotation, the room might also be asked to consider a particular aspect of the question:
    • Within that question, what about x?
    • Who do you think is best placed to do this work and why and how?
    • What key recommendations would you make?

Key Protocol Rules

  • Keep introductions short
  • Everyone should contribute – all voices matter
  • Everyone has the right to write on the tablecloth.

Feedback At The End – From The Table Hosts

Avoid ‘This is what was said on this table’. Better is ‘The four key things that I would synthesise from this table…’ or ‘The most original two ideas that emerged on this table were…’

This group feedback can be publicly recorded, in writing or graphically.

THE VALUE OF GETTING IT RIGHT: VIEWS FROM AN AUTISTIC YOUNG PERSON

14th December 2022Website Admin

The current education system in the UK is setting up many autistic young people to fail. This is especially true of the assessment practices where the current system relies heavily on out-dated and old-fashioned standardised exams and tests which are unable to capture a young person’s real strengths and abilities.  

Joshua is an autistic young person who did not attend Gesher but spoke at our most recent Critical Friendship Group meeting, sharing his lived experience of the assessment process and his insights into how it could be improved for neurodiverse young people.  

Here, Joshua, now aged 18, tells his story of mainstream education and offers his advice to schools.

The importance of school support

In my early years I struggled to make friends. Some of my earliest friends were basically asked by my teachers because they felt bad for me. 

I was diagnosed in the summer of 2012 between Years Three and Four though I wasn’t told until later that year because my parents were working with my school to find the right way to explain it to me and my peers.

During primary school, my needs were well provided for. When I got my diagnosis, the school helped my parents put together a small Powerpoint that was used to explain it to me. This was then lightly adapted and shown to my classmates so they too could understand better.

I could leave lessons to take a breather and a walk if I needed to, as I struggled to sit still and focus for extended periods, I had a dedicated space I could go to cool off if I had gotten into an argument or fight over something, which was common because I was easy to anger as a child. Any time I felt I had a problem, I knew where I could turn.

The school helped me nurture the talent I had, often letting me complete tasks in a different way to the usual methods if it meant I was able to do it “my way” which would often involve a very flashy Powerpoint presentation. 

When schools focus on results, not the pupil

When I got to secondary school, however, there came a change. The school very much ignored any kind of ability outside of traditional educational achievement: you either fit their mould for a good student or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, you were left in the dust.

At secondary school, support I had grown dependent on during primary was almost non-existent and the staff were not friendly towards students. Even the SEN staff seemed to be less than interested. 

I will never forget the time I went to our KS4 mental health advisor and told her about how bad my depression had gotten at the time, to which she laughed and told me that I seemed to be very good at telling jokes. A story I genuinely wish I was making up.

When it came to work, methods I had grown so accustomed to were shut off to me because the school only wanted results in one specific way. You did it their way, or you failed entirely.

How the current assessment system sets neurodiverse children up to fail

I moved from secondary school to a different sixth form where support was available and actively advised to be used, and where I could work how I worked best, even if that meant going back to the flashy powerpoints like I would have done aged 10. As I grew up and came to understand what autism is and what it is to be autistic, I found it easier to make friends, especially in cases where they were also autistic.

Despite being in a better school, I spent most of my A-level time suffering extreme mental health issues and it was a miracle I even made it to sit the examinations

And now there’s a big problem. I’m currently looking for apprenticeships in software development, but on my applications, I can only put my grades, not the fact that I have neurodiversity where often the pressures of the school can break a student so easily and so quickly.

Starting out on your career becomes really difficult when, even though you are a strong candidate, the only important thing is your grade which says:  “you got this – this is all you are worth”.

How schools can learn from students’ experiences

For schools, honestly, I think my main piece of advice is just to listen to autistic students. A lot of schools, teachers, and just people in general confuse autism with being unable to look after yourself and understand your own needs, when in reality, it’s very much the opposite.

I was very lucky as my primary school helped me every step of the way to understand myself and be as comfortable talking about it as I am now.

The person who knows best what the autistic person needs, will ultimately be the autistic person.

Ditch the Green Paper ….

2nd November 2022Ali Durban

by Ali Durban, Co-Founder Gesher School.

With the constant merry-go-round of Education Ministers and no appointment of a SEND minister since Kelly Tolhurst, we have been looking at what has progressed with the Green Paper since its submission in July. The answer is not much – other than an exchange in the form of a letter to current Minister of Education MP Robert Halfon, (and former Chair of the Education Select committee) from former Minister of Education, Kit Malthouse who writes:

‘We are proposing to establish local SEND and AP partnerships. These partnerships would be responsible for delivering a local inclusion plan which sets out the provision that will be made available in line with the national standards.’

To be clear, the Children and Families Act 2014 is the national standard (as opposed to a local inclusion plan), it already sets out a legal duty on LAs to secure and maintain Special Educational Provision through an EHCP. If provision is specified and quantified properly in an EHCP and the general principles of section 19 upheld (the need for the LA to have regard for what will help the child or young person to achieve the best possible educational and other outcomes), then an inclusion plan is not necessary.

What does need to be established is a clear accountability framework. Local Authorities need to be held to account when they do not uphold the legal standard (namely the Children and Families Act). At present the only setting for this is tribunal. It can take parents years to reach tribunal level, and the journey to get there is arduous, exhausting and often quite traumatic. Shockingly, around 95% of tribunals are upheld. This stark figure reflects that one of the biggest weaknesses of the system is in fact Local Authorities not doing what they should do legally. Establishing ‘new partnerships’ to deliver what is already written in statute will without doubt add another layer of delay to families trying to achieve the appropriate provision and outcomes for their child.

Tragically the human cost in all of this is the child or young person, who is at this point often in crisis.

Kit Malthouse goes on to write ‘The local inclusion plan will inform the tailored list of settings from which parents and carers are able to choose provision where their child requires an education, health and care plan (EHCP). The expectation is that all schools on the list will be settings that can meet the child’s special educational needs as identified in their EHC needs assessments. This aims to give parents and carers clarity on what is available locally which may still include mainstream, special, independent, or out of borough provision. Our intention is that this will lead to greater transparency about what is available for children and young people in their local school and greater clarity about how it can be provided. We also aim for this to improve the choice offered to parents and carers by suggesting options they may not have otherwise considered’.

This ambiguous statement shows a deep lack of knowledge of the SEND system. It infers freedom of choice.

However, choice is something that many families of children with SEND have never had.

The tailored list that Mr Malthouse refers to already exists in the form of a local offer. This list is drawn up by the Local Authority and typically based on cost. It does not and could not list a school to meet each and every need because:

● There is a lack of provision across the UK and the quality can differ hugely between LAs. Figures obtained by the newspaper ‘Schools Week’ show that over half of special schools had more pupils on roll than the number commissioned by their council. This was a 15% rise from 2017-18. There simply isn’t enough provision in-borough or nationally to meet need.

● Much of the provision comes out of the independent sector. In order to make the local offer list, a school must agree to section 41 – reciprocal duty to co-operate with the local authority on arrangements (admissions); this means that LA’s loosely control admissions and could see a school end up with a very mixed and challenging cohort of children. For this reason, many independent schools choose not to be part of the local offer.

There is no indication of what will happen if there isn’t an appropriate school on the list. Will parent’s once again need to battle to reach a tribunal to access the provision they need, whilst, once again, (same story here…) the child is left in crisis?

There is no mention in Kit Malthouse’s letter of placing the child and their needs at the centre of decision-making. A true local inclusion plan would see a timely and thorough multi-disciplinary assessment, followed by the family and LA working together to find the right placement with the child’s needs at the centre of all decision-making.

The reality is a 2-3 year wait for a full assessment, which is often not accurate because there is a vested interest to keep ‘need’ to a minimum (if at all) in order that there is less of a requirement to procure an EHCP and LA spend. When it comes to placement, the LA’s decision-making is based on budget and very often they will write “mainstream school” or the next cheapest placement in Section I.

Kit Malthouse’s letter highlights the disparity between what the central Government thinks inclusion is, versus the reality of what children, young people and their families face. 

We know the system is broken. Report after report after report has evidenced that children with SEND and their families are being consistently damaged and failed by the system. Much of it might be legally questionable. The proposed changes in the Green Paper continue to raise significant concerns as to the future of SEND provision.

What we need is a long-term plan for education, designed with those who bring their lived experience to a collaborative and inclusive process. We need to take the 7000+ responses from the Green paper review, analyse and publish the responses, as Tania Tiororro of Special Needs Jungle recommends.  She also writes:

‘DELAY further plans for improvement, DITCH the Green Paper in its current form and PUBLISH a straight analysis of the consultation as soon as possible

And perhaps most importantly, we need someone bold and brave who is willing to make real change and for once, put this group of children and young people and their needs first.

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.

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.

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?