Having honest conversations about the barriers to educational success . . . Helen Kinsey-Wightman
We started the year with a staff workshop on restorative practice and how this fits within our focus on culturally responsive and relational pedagogy. The more I learn about being restorative and developing relationships the more I come to appreciate the power of using open ended questions to listen. This week there has been a lot of discussion in the media about the cost of starting back to school. One story in particular hit the headlines, KidsCan surveyed 210 teachers and principals who shared stories of life in their schools, ‘We had [four] boys attending on different days of the week and the excuse was illness . . . [It] turned out they only had one school shirt so they picked their favourite day of classes to come. Mum was too embarrassed to tell anyone,’ one teacher wrote.1 What impressed me about this story was the fact that someone (a teacher) had taken the time to observe what was happening for these children and asked some careful questions which allowed this parent to overcome some of the embarrassment and shame of economic hardship and access help to get her boys to school every day. Many of the students we work with experience a number of barriers to educational success – these barriers often result in poor school attendance. I have noticed that the systems we put in place to deal with attendance and lateness are often anything but relational and restorative. Often we start with the question, ‘Why are you late?’ and sometimes the shame is maximised by asking this in front of an audience of 25 others. Sometimes attendance issues are rooted in economic hardship, sometimes there are issues of mental health, anxiety, addiction or family violence. These result in shame and embarrassment for parents or students or both, getting to the root of the issue and giving the rights support requires an ability and a willingness to ask open questions and listen carefully to what is said and what isn’t. We know that poor attendance is linked to poor achievement, so we all need to support our staff to ask about the issues around school attendance with care and empathy.
The people I know who ask the best open questions start: ‘I’ve noticed that . . . (you are not at school on Mondays, you have been late a lot this week.) We’ve missed you at school, tell me about what’s happening . . . ’ ‘What else . . . ’ ‘Anything else?’ ‘What can I do to support you?’ In between they pause a lot and wait for an answer and then listen. If you are working on your questioning, I found a great article called 9 openended questions to use with students on a blog called Presence.2 Having genuine conversations about the tough issues our students face often requires us to tackle our own underlying prejudices around poverty, mental health and parenting s k i l l s . We a l l m a k e judgments based on our own experiences and prejudices, sharing these and talking them through can help us to see different perspectives. Last year a colleague and I went to visit a family whose Y9 daughter wasn’t attending school, to ask for their help in supporting her. When we knocked on the door it became obvious that the student was part of a large family, living in a small home with a low income. We talked to Mum – who was clearly shocked that we had taken the time to visit her at home – and agreed a time when she could talk to us about how we could support her daughter to be at school. As we left Dad pulled up with a pile of Pizza Hut boxes for dinner. On the drive back to school my colleague (an Economics teacher!) and I talked about the visit. I shared that I had grown up in financial hardship and I struggled not to judge a family who clearly had a very low income and chose to spend money on fast food. She talked about the relative costs of fast food in the 1970’s compared to now and about how easily $100 of groceries can disappear overnight in a family with hungry teenagers, we also talked about how time poor a family is when both parents
need to work. We concluded that $25 worth of $5 pizzas might be an effective way to feed a large family in such circumstances. As a result of the visit, we began a relationship with the family that means that, despite a term in Alternative Education, she is still engaged at our school a year later and I had one of my prejudices around poverty challenged. This term we have Year 10 Camp – we work hard to support all of our students to attend and offer financial support to those who cannot. (Whether this approach will be able to continue should the draft guidelines on school donations become law is difficult to determine – here’s hoping for some genuine consultation around this legislation so that the ideals around equity result in a reality that is equitable.) In the 5 years I have been running this camp, I have noticed that more and more families need financial support and less and less are able to communicate that. After sending a general letter to families with only 1 response, I sent an email to families with outstanding camp fees with the subject line, ‘Camp fees are now overdue – can we help?’ As a result I have been able to offer financial support to a number of families who had not previously felt able to ask. On a side note, in the course of thinking about and researching this topic I came across an edutopia article about a teacher who calls the roll – and builds student relationships – by asking a daily attendance question. He starts with the ordinary, ‘What is your favourite food?’ He says, ‘After those first “getting to know you” questions, I introduce this one: “How is the weather in your world?” If students are
feeling stressed or tired, they may answer “stormy” or “cloudy.” If they’re in a good mood, it’s “sunny.” The answers give me a sense of the general mood in the room, and I can adjust my lesson in response. (Giving a test makes no sense when the general weather report includes storms with lightning and thunder.)’3 Finally, Ministry data tells us that School attendance declines over Term two. 2015 data indicates a drop from 93.2 per cent half-days attended in the first week of Term 2, to 87.8 per cent in the last week.4 If you believe attendance matters then now is the time to talk to your staff about having conversations of care and connectedness with students and whānau who are struggling. References 1 https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/teacher-reportsfour-brothers-sharing-one-uniform-families-struggle-backschool-costs 2 https://www.presence.io/blog/9-open-ended-questions-to-usewith-students/ 3 https://www.edutopia.org/blog/building-community-withattendance-questions-lizanne-foster 4 https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2503/ attendance-in-new-zealand-schools-2015
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History shows us that Schools focus on Assessment and Curriculum because it’s easier and it’s in their face on a daily basis. Teachers are drowning in assessment data – it finds them. Curriculum is also easy because it is what teachers are required to teach, it’s found online, in books and in school documentation. You can understand why focusing on these areas has been the path of least resistance and currently occupies teachers’ and leaders’ time and energy. The unfortunate truth is that Pedagogy is the most important and significant factor influencing student learning over which teachers have influence (it accounts for around 30% of variation in student achievement – students’ ability is the biggest at around 50%), but improving pedagogy can be challenging and until now it has been an arduous and time consuming process as schools don’t have systems that capture the school’s expertise in these areas.
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If you would like to know more about SLEUTH™ please contact either Tony / Andrew or any of the team as they will be more than happy to provide further details. Tony Burkin
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Andrew Ormsby
+64 3 420 2800 ext1 a.ormsby@interlead.co.nz