Let's Move On From Here...

The vast majority of students will experience stress during the exam season - in fact something would be strange if they didn't. I am not one of these people who think that all stress is bad - just the opposite. For one thing, the modern world is one of deadlines and accountability for most of us and stress goes with the territory. For another, some of what we call stress is actually what motivates us to try hard and to do our best! However, for some students stress gets out of hand, and rather than driving them on, it paralyses them. That is what we must help our students to avoid at all costs. Here are my 4 P's of exam readiness... 1. Preparation It is vital that students not only are prepared, but that they feel prepared for exams. They need to know what each paper will look like, how long to spend on each question and what they are being asked to do. Preparation is about having no suprises on the day. It also means having a plan if things go wrong. I use things l...

There's an old adage that "a stitch in time saves nine". It's an old, very practical saying. Putting a stitch  or two in a small tear or hole means not having to spend ages sewing it up later on when the hole has got more serious. We apply this in schools when we intervene with younger children who have gaps in their learning. We know those gaps will almost certainly grow and get bigger if we leave them. A short, targeted intervention in year 7 or 8 saves a much bigger set of interventions in year 11. We also do it with behaviour. A thirty second intervention at the door as the child comes into the classroom can save them and you from a stressful lesson - and maybe an incident. We are not so great with mental health. We seem to think it will go away on its own. That the child will "grow out of it" when they get more "mature". Think about that one for a minute. If children grow out of mental health problems then where in the heck did all the t...

The current crop of teens and young adults are rather unkindly being dubbed the "snowflake" generation. Snowflakes have no resiliance - they melt in the face of challenge, have poor mental health, and they are easily offended say their critics. Deborah Orr wrote a sterling piece in the Guardian recently about just this issue, challenging the negative sterotypes and lazy assumption so often touted in the press. Link:  Deborah Orr on the "snowflake" generation. Not all children are snowflakes - some of them are sunshine (happy, well adjusted and bright); others are more like tornadoes wreaking havoc wherever they go. So what do snowflakes look like in my classroom? 1. They are anxious and overwhelmed. They have received loud and clear all the messages about the importance of exam results - not education, mind you, just the results of the tests at the end. The message that they have received is that they are not working hard enough and that if they don...

Not many people really like change let's face it: it's stressful. We are supposed to see change as an opportunity but sometimes it is hard even as an adult. We get into a nice comfortable groove and then we want to stay in it because it's reassuring, we know what to expect and we can switch on the mental autopilot. Schools are lovely places for that. Timetables are published and stuck to, bells ring at the appointed hours and consequences for actions tend to be pretty predictable. You know where you are meant to be and what you are meant to be doing. The kids I work with don't do well with change, and I don't blame them! So when it came to saying goodbye to the young people that I have been working with since last Easter, I was expecting some wobbles. These are youngsters who find change very challenging - some are ASD, all are anxious - so me leaving to be replaced by someone they don't know is daunting. I know that my replacement is a really experienced ...

If, like me, you grew up in a happy home, then it can be hard to imagine that Christmas is anything but a wonderful time of the year. Christmas in my home was all about family. It was a warm, cosy time of year: there was always food on the table and presents under the tree; I got to see my cousins, rearrange my grandparents' furniture into train and eat way too much chocolate. But for some kids, Christmas is a bust. First of all, it means a change in routine and for some children that is really hard to cope with. Just the anticipation of Christmas can make some children stressed and anxious and the last two weeks of term can be very difficult. For an ASD child,  "fun" festive activities like special assemblies and nativity plays are a nightmare - suddenly their nice predictable routine is up in the air and they can't keep up. Stressed and anxious children - with or without an ASD label - are less able to make positive choices and they can end up being sanctioned...

I was talking to some of my students the other day about their experience of anxiety and how it feels. What, I asked them, is it like to suffer from anxiety? They described their anxiety in various ways - the rising panic, waves of nausea, the black fog... What they all said though is that it is always there. Imagine that. Imagine if that feeling that you have when faced with, say, an Ofsted inspection was your normal state of mind. Imagine if there was no let up from that colly-wobbly slightly sick feeling. That's what global anxiety disorder is like. It's exhausting to be anxious, and the more tired you are the harder it is to manage. The trouble with global anxiety is that it is not about just one thing. It's like a big tangled mess and the sufferer doesn't know where to start unpicking it.  It's one thing to be anxious about something that you can compartmentalise and quite another to just be anxious about everything. Some days everything is wrong. Ever...

I have just heard on the news that a child who claimed to have been abducted and raped has in fact made up at least part of the story. The abduction, it seems, did not happen. I do not know this child, nor do I know anything about her but I was heartened to hear her described as "vulnerable" and that "county council and social services are working with the victim at her pace" (BBC News website). It would be tempting to see this child as simply 'attention seeking', but my experience with children who 'make things up' tells me that there is far more than that to this story. Ask yourself this: why would a child lie about being abducted and raped? It is not the sort of thing that a happy child who feels safe and successful does. It is not the sort of thing a happy child even thinks about. It is the sort of thing that a child in crisis does because they desperately need something that they are not getting. I have met children who say things th...