What do you think about when you have toothache?

Please consider that question before we move on?

I was in Bradford recently. Facilitating a team of workers who are on the frontline
and facing difficult behaviour and aggression daily. Yet they love the young people they work with.

Those who had been excluded from school, little response, little change and little sign of hope. Still each of the group yearned to be of developmental assistance to them.

I asked them that question:

'When you have toothache, what do you think about?'
No pause.
An immediate answer from one worker
as we all stood in the circle -
"Toothache"
was the answer.

If we have toothache we struggle to concentrate on anything else.
Restless as a wolf - we feel like the cheese is falling off our cracker. Nothing else really matters.

We can see a person's behaviour but we cannot see their experience.
We can be so preoccupied by their behaviour that we don't see
beyond behaviour.

Difficult behaviour can get under our skin.
Feelings rise within us.
As emotionally intelligent as we may be the feelings we have stimulate us, sometimes, to make a regrettable response.

This is applicable in the staff room, the classroom, the team meeting, the prison, the street, the office, at home, and certainly not only when we are transacting with humans with special needs.

The way I work on awareness and skill development is by using Experiential Exercises including Blob Tree Tools.

The objectives are:

•          Become more aware of our own feelings.
•          Becoming more able to get into contact with them.
•          Develop emotional literacy by being able to give each a feeling name.

So there in Bradford we throw the Blob Feelings Ball around the circle.
'Motion changes emotion' I say.

An activity, doing, is the best way to learn - to practise.
So the ball is thrown around the circle, the miss-catching it is part of the-bouncing-around fun as the ball creates smiles as humans live in expectancy as to who will receive the ball next.

The Blob figure nearest your right thumb -
'what does that Blob feel like?' I ask.
I ban the use of 'happy or sad' as all feelings can be tossed in those headings.
So minds are stretched - everyone engaging in the struggle to articulate.
Even seasoned professionals struggle to find the appropriate word.

I often ask more questions as 'right thumbs' develop their literacy.
'Describe a young person you know who feels like that?'

'When one of your youngsters feels like that, what behaviour does it drive?'

When a group is ready - the questions may become deeper and more personal-
'When did you last feel like that?'

Awareness always precedes skill.
By becoming aware of our own emotional literacy, or lack of, we can then be more sensitive to the feelings of others. More importantly, we can begin to see beyond behaviour to be more in touch with a person's toothache.

Next time I will click about working with special needs groups. I want to share some methods of how I engage them with the crisp objective of making available more tools for their life toolbox.

- Pip Wilson
Beautiful Human Person
Speechmark author of Blobs

Finding Ways to Develop the School Ethos

The 35 lesson plans provided in the No Outsiders book are only half the story; they will have little impact unless we create a whole school ethos where the moral code is reinforced and brought to life. The No Outsiders ethos must be seen to be relevant and real for children to sign up to it and the first three chapters in the book explain how to do this.

We look for examples to use in assemblies and class discussions to show that it’s not just us in our school believing in No Outsiders; lots of people in the UK and around the world also believe in No Outsiders and their actions every day demonstrate this.

The photo (above right), taken from the BBC newsbeat website, shows two unknown men helping out people affected by floods over Christmas. I have used this photo in assembly all week as it encapsulates the No Outsiders spirit perfectly.

I start by asking the children what is happening in the photo and the usually say, “They are helping the old man” so I ask why do you think he needs help? The two men on either side are wearing coats and hoods; it looks like one of them has rain on his hat; where do you think they might be? Has anywhere in the UK had lots of rain recently?

We talk about the floods in Northern England and how it affected people then I ask, so what are the men doing here? I tell them these men visited houses in Blackburn that had been flooded and offered help. They found this stranded man who had no lunch so they made him boiled eggs.

I then ask the children, how are the men in this photo different from each other? Children have answered the men have different skin colour, the two men on other side are Muslim and the man in the middle is not (to which I reply yes, that may be so but we can’t always know someone’s faith by looking at them; you can be white and Muslim, and the two men on either side may not identify as Muslim). I press on asking for more differences; are they the same age? Are there any disabilities evident?

Then I ask the children to consider, did the two men decide before setting out, that they would only help men? Or that they would only help people who were Muslim? Or that they would not help people who were gay? Or that they would only help people who were elderly?

We all agree that the two men clearly would have agreed to help anybody and everybody. The reason is because the two men, like us, believe there should be no outsiders. They didn’t care if the man they helped was white, elderly, wore glasses, had a different faith, didn’t care about his sexual orientation or indeed whether he was male or female! That is what is so great about living in the UK today – we are all different and we all help each other. It’s a wonderful place to be!

Andrew Moffat

Speechmark author of No Outsiders in our school: Teaching the Equality Act inprimary Schools