Kindness.
A post which has been gestating, but I’ve been inspired to write it by at least three tweeters recently: @stonewall‘s tweets from yesterday’s #edforall conference; @nancygedge’s wonderful blog about her Down’s Syndrome son and; reading ‘The Reader’ by Bernhard Schlink. Nat (@SelstonHIstory) gave me the book when I visited her school, itself an act of kindness, but she also knew what she was doing! Nat believes, rightly, that ‘The Reader’ is required reading for her history students when they learn about the Holocaust. On one level, the book is not about kindness at all!
Immeasurable, not found in RAISEonline, only obliquely referred to via SMSC in Ofsted parlance, but I believe that kindness is a major key to a great school and great teachers – because it allows kids to grow into kind, stable people, who are more likely to succeed and be more able to overcome obstacles. Here’s some examples:
I’m in a D+T lesson @selstonHigh @selstonDT. Cross-subject, Talk for Teaching, so no focus to a reflection with a science teacher (@DDogscience). The lack of focus allowed us the freedom to watch two students learning/teaching about how to measure a piece of wood for cutting. @selstonDT was elsewhere, helping students, in a lesson which modelled trust and independence quite brilliantly. A girl was showing a boy how to measure, as he was not sure. Neither had asked for help from the teacher to do this, as they didn’t need to. Myriad permissions to learn, had been installed in the class by the teacher.
The rapt attention of the boy, to the girl’s advice and the kindness the girl displayed in recognising the boy needed help and helping, had us both fascinated. There was a kindness from the boy too, as he acceded to the help which was offered and implicitly accepted her as his tutor for a few minutes. Both pupils learned, as did we and if we’d had a focus and that had been an observation, it would have been unlikely we would both have seen it. We’d have been busy writing notes, or trying to find evidence for something. You can easily miss acts of kindness when you do either of those thing and in doing so, you miss the real point of the learning. I saw other several such unsolicited acts of pure kindness amongst pupils @SelstonHigh.
I’m leading an inspection, in a multi-ethnic primary school in Bristol, with attainment data that is peppered with RAISE blue (however progress was excellent, from very poor skills on entry and the school was clearly on an upward path and pupils made better progress there than pupils do in schools Nationally). I select 6, pretty vulnerable, pupils for a typical Ofsted ‘pupil discussion’. We talk about whether they feel the good the school is good (all thought it was terrific) and how they feel about their progress (all felt they were doing well. Also, how they feel about bullying, especially homophobic and racist bullying (“There isn’t any”) and the quality of the teaching they receive (again, terrific), so I then I ask them for an example of why they feel the school is so good and Y6 indian boy says “It’s how we treat each other! We know we’ve got some Somali refugees coming next week and we can’t wait”. “Why?” (puzzled) “Because we can show them what our school is like, make friends with them on the playground and help them to learn!). Almost word for word what the boy said and all 5 of the others were nodding and supporting him. Amazing kindness and that doesn’t come easily, as many of these kids had difficult journeys through their early life. They weren’t described as vulnerable for nothing. I was close to tears listening to these kids describing what their school was like.
I’m in a Y2 lesson at Redhills Primary in Exeter @busbystuart. The evil princess has kidnapped the class mascot and the evil princess has told the class they must solve some challenging maths problems to convince her to give the mascot back. Pupils loved the hook and went to work with enthusiasm. Again, a Talk for Teaching experience. After around 25 mins, the teacher asks them to leave their books, go look at other people’s books and make sure the Evil fairy won’t find any mistakes. If they find one, they have to explain to the person who’s made an error, where they have gone wrong and help them to put it right. The levels of empathy these Y2 pupils were asked to display were astounding. As we scanned round the tables, we saw that one boy had made a clear mistake. Two boys tried, without success to bring him over. He shrugged them both off and they accepted the rebuttal. Then a girl gently talked to the boy, persuading him to return to his book. We watched this, entranced, from the side of the room. Although he clearly wasn’t happy with being shown his mistake, when the girl left to look at other work, *he sat down and corrected his mistake*. Amazing. He’d learned due to the incredible kindness and empathy of another 7-y-o pupil.
So what’s this got to do with great schools?
In all three cases, the schools had changed their HT in the last two years. Kindness and care were now second nature to the leadership of the school and this was modelled on a daily basis by the HT. As a result, staff in all three schools felt happier than staff do in many schools (they told me so) and this happiness was transmitted to pupils They responded by behaving, on the whole, brilliantly well and working hard for their teachers. Results in all three schools showed that all groups of pupils were making better progress than expected and I have no doubt that all three schools will be outstanding (OK an Ofsted term; whatever that means, exactly, is moot) in the near future.
Kindness happens in all schools, at all levels, but the degree of kindness experienced by pupils varies from school to school and especially from classroom to classroom. These are only three schools – it’s a tiny sample, I know – but if kindness and care are explicitly modelled by school leaders; if staff feel wanted and feel that leaders really do care about their welfare; and if everyone in the school transmits this kindness to pupils, then aspirations can be raised and pupils really can begin to perform better. In classrooms and schools where emotional security is high, pupils will do better.
Perhaps the conclusion is that kindness can be a tool for school improvement. Think; ‘kind’ in every action you perform with pupils next week and remember that a smile and a kind word is a hundred times more powerful than a frown and a telling off!