Leave Us Alone Long Enough to Teach

by Rebecca Thomas

It’s fair to say that while the reform kōrero battles on in media headlines and across political sandlines — and, admittedly, in my head before spilling into online spaces — my actual classroom and my actual class have been largely shielded from all the upset.

The children are oblivious to the grown-up battles.

Thankfully.

They don’t know which politician thinks teachers need more power. They don’t know about the promises of stronger discipline, firmer consequences, greater accountability or tighter control. They don’t know about the endless arguments over what teachers should teach, when they should teach it and how long they should spend doing so.

And I have not imposed a single one of those battles upon their wonderfully unalike brains.

Yet somehow, in just twelve weeks, they have come so far.

And that leaves me wondering about something. What if none of the reforms were what these children actually needed? What if what they needed was much less politically exciting?

I suspect all our COVID babies need from us is permission. Permission for the adults around them to respond to the human beings standing in front of them. Along with things like: time, space, relationships, predictability.

Twelve Weeks Ago 

Twelve weeks ago I adopted a high-needs trauma class because of the teacher shortage. Despite my online pleas and public quest for someone to fill a void in the Far North the team leader, full time class teacher role merged with my existing senior leader and SENCO role. At our school we have three times the national average of students who need specialist, wraparound care.

As a North-East Impact Coach and trainer, a trauma-informed practitioner, and someone now carrying a fair few wrinkles of experience, I had the luxury — and perhaps the confidence — to resist the urge to impose power upon them.

Because I knew better.

Had I walked into that classroom determined to show them who was boss, armed with mandates, consequences and adult authority, it would have become a battle. And it would have been a battle only their beautifully unfiltered spirits could have won. They weren't ready for learning twelve weeks ago.

Their brainstems were on fire.

Emblazoned, in fact.

I am no psychologist, but I didn't need to be one to recognise what was sitting in front of me: a string of adult abandonment, poverty, COVID trauma, labels, disrupted schooling and life experiences had kept many of them living in a state where survival mattered far more than colons, fractions or reading comprehension.

You see, you simply cannot mandate a nervous system into feeling safe or sanction a child into trusting you by physically removing them from class or fining their whānau for not coming to a meeting. And you certainly cannot punish a brain into being ready to learn.

The Classroom Told Their Story

Twelve weeks ago, the physical classroom itself reflected their emotional minds:

Children jumped in and out of windows daily.

Metal stools were smashed into pieces.

Spaghetti was thrown down the decking.

Anything handed out seemed destined to be broken, dismantled, stabbed, snapped, chipped, emptied or lost.

Rubbers were pierced and cut. Rulers snapped. Pencil pots were destroyed. Glue sticks looked as though they had survived some kind of tiny classroom war. Felt pens wandered around without lids, surrounded by pencil sharpenings, broken plastic and the debris of another day.

The pots reflected their minds: chaotic, scattered and uncertain.

Everything was disposable because perhaps, somewhere along the way, they had learnt that things — and maybe even people — didn't always stay.

The Classroom Has Now Become a Place to Belong

Not just the human relationships played their part. The environment did too. The physical classroom became a happy and safe place to belong: bean bags, soft lighting, fur rugs, fish tanks, delicious fragrance, safe music and speakers, seat padding, sensory bliss. It is not an expensive showroom by any stretch. Or a silent room filled with compliant children sitting in rows proving that their teacher had excellent behaviour management.

It is a place where their nervous systems can slowly unclench. Where mistakes they make don't mean rejection. Where yesterday's disaster, screaming and tears didn't determine today's warm welcome. It is a place where the adults stay.

And slowly — almost imperceptibly at first — things began to change.

The same children who could barely remain in the room can now sustain learning beyond a twenty-minute mark.

We can unpack colons.

We can wrestle with maths problems.

Thick novels that once were abandoned after just one page can now be attempted.

Questions are asked because they genuinely want to know the answers.

They are beginning to understand what success feels like.

And sometimes the bell rings for morning tea and lunchtime nobody moves.

"Can we just finish this?"

“Can we do some more work?”

For a teacher, there are few sweeter sentences.

Agency has started riding in on the waves.

We Haven't Arrived at Perfect

Let's not completely romanticise it.

We still have messy days.

We still have meltdowns — theirs and occasionally mine.

Someone still makes a ridiculous choice from time to time. Learning still gets interrupted. Personalities still clash. Things occasionally disappear into that mysterious classroom vortex from which no whiteboard marker has ever returned.

They are still children.

I am still human.

But their āhua is almost unrecognisable.

There is a different feeling when you walk into the room now.

They have stamina.

They are able to maintain some relationships.

They have expectations of themselves and follow a work flow.

They have begun to understand that learning belongs to them, rather than being something adults do to them.

And I am extraordinarily proud of each and every one of them.

But I haven't become permissive.

Quite the opposite.

I remain sombre and firm when I need to be.

I smile, but sometimes not for too long.

I joke, but know when not to take it any further.

There are boundaries.

There are expectations.

There is still work to do.

I am their teacher, not their friend.

But they understand something important now.

The expectation comes from care.

I expect more from them because I believe there is more in them.

That is profoundly different from demanding compliance because an adult has been given the power to do so.

So I Keep Coming Back to the Reforms

While politicians continue debating how to fix classrooms like mine, I keep looking around this one. Where was the reform that did this? 

Was it tougher consequences?

No.

More power to remove children or stand them down?

No.

A mandate telling me exactly what should happen at exactly what minute of the school day?

No.

Greater consequences for children who could not regulate themselves?

Definitely not.

An attendance management plan that didn’t understand why they stayed home?

Nope.

What changed these children was much less headline-worthy.

Time changed them.

Consistency and relationships changed them.

Environment changed them.

Predictability changed them.

Success changed them.

Adults refusing to abandon them changed them.

I changed me.

And perhaps most importantly, having enough professional space to look at the children in front of me and respond to them changed them.

What worries me about reform built around mandates and constant changes to the Education Act is that the more tightly we prescribe what good teaching must look like, the less room we leave for teachers to notice what children actually need. Sometimes the most educationally important thing you can do is give children time. That isn't lowering expectations or leaving anybody behind when ‘national expectations’ are urgent.

It is simply understanding how human beings reach them.

Perhaps Children Don't Need Us to Become More Powerful

Twelve weeks isn't long; we still have a long way to go. There will undoubtedly be days ahead when I stare at the ceiling after work and wonder whether I imagined all this progress. But I know and feel what I have witnessed. Children who were supposedly disengaged have become learners. Children who destroyed their environment have begun to take ownership of it. Children who couldn't sustain learning are beginning to ask for more time to finish it.

And none of that required me to become more powerful.

It required me to become more patient.

More responsive.

Perhaps that is the reform kōrero we should actually be having.

Sometimes our children just need an adult who has enough freedom to look beyond the behaviour and wonder what sits beneath it. An adult who can hold the line without withdrawing the relationship. An adult who can say, I won't let you destroy this place, but I won't give up on you either. And then come back tomorrow and prove it.

Again.

And again.

And again.

As each political party begins another round of telling us what they will do to education if they are given the privilege of power, I find myself wanting something none of them seem brave enough to promise.

Leave us alone.

Not forever. Not without accountability. Not without expectations or responsibility.

Just long enough to breathe.

Give schools time to stop responding to the latest announcement, initiative, mandate, curriculum change, target, measurement or political promise.

Give teachers time to teach.

Give teachers and children enough uninterrupted time together to find their rhythm.

And eventually, their song.

Because perhaps that is the question sitting beneath all of this reform kōrero.

What might happen if, instead of continually reforming education, politicians simply gave teachers and children the time and space to make it work?

I don't need to answer that question.

I think my classroom already has.