A post from our Clinical Director, Charlotte Clarke.
As we welcome our new learners at the beginning of the academic year, we often see lots of changes in the first few weeks of term. We will see learners fall into the rhythm of our daily routines and understand our expectations. We will see learners as they begin to thrive, demonstrating their understanding of our rules and actively contributing to our positive culture.
As we begin building and nurturing learner relationships, we will witness the impact of recognition and positive noticing. We will see learners who may not have experienced such deliberate sticky praise before stand a little taller and strive a little further.
We may see our learners change their focus as we give more attention to the behaviours we want to see; and if we look really closely, we might see signs of confidence and resilience developing as we talk about behaviours and expectations rather than individuals and personalities.
Relational practice will change many things in the first beats of our year and go on to change more as the year rolls on. We will see distressed and distrusting learners find emotional safety in our predictable and fair adult responses to their behaviour. We will see our whole culture shift to one which is calm, kind and nurturing, and by the end of the year, we will see positive noticing happening in the playground and find restoration and repair
happening between peers. We will see improved self-regulation, enhanced decision making and upgraded expectations in every nook and crook of our learning community - and then we are likely to think that everything has changed.
We have hundreds of schools telling us about the many ways that relational practice has changed their communities - some measurable, some describable and some only able to be experienced and yet, really, when it comes to relational practice and its impact, this is only the beginning.
Classroom behaviour isn't everything. And it isn't the limit of what we are here for.
Twenty two years ago, classrooms, families and the lives of children looked incredibly different. Relational practice was still a strategy people picked up and put down. Recognition was often still something for the few and restorative conversations were still geared at an apology rather than repair.
We didn't know what everything meant then, but in the last few years as everything has changed, our eyes have been held wide open by you; the schools and colleges, the leaders, the educators doing the work, sharing your stories and making us see just how far relational practice reaches into the lives of the children and young people that experience it.
You see, positive noticing changes something in the moment and often in the short-term, but in the long-term, consistent positive noticing becomes the voice that 'I matter'. 'I am worthy' & 'I deserve this'. It is the nudge that makes you apply for your dream job, it's the voice of reassurance and the standard to which you hold others to account.
Calm adult behaviour changes something in the moment and can teach self-regulation in the short term, but in the long term, calm adult behaviour becomes a standard to which we hold others and ourselves. It rewrites our norms and reprogrammes our neurotransmitters. It is behaviour that will make it easier for our learners to form healthy relationships, to recognise domestic abuse and coercive control and make it more likely that they will create calm, supportive homes rather than shouty shame-based ones.
Restorative conversations change something in the moment and can teach different behaviours in the short term but in the long term, those restorative conversations teach us to forgive ourselves. They pave the way for us to make mistakes and forgive ourselves and to learn without experiencing shame, guilt and regret. For some children, relational practice will be the difference between a good life and a great life. It might be the difference between achieving and excelling. But for many children, relational practice will be everything. The
difference between anxiety and esteem. The buffer between good relationships and poor ones. The difference between surviving and thriving.
Relational practice can change the narrative that shapes our futures. The voice that is kind and supportive rather than hurtful and shameful. That voice can be the difference between good mental health and suicide. It's a narrative that walks us into abuse or away from it. It's the difference between taking the drugs and refusing them. It's the hope that sways us from failure to fulfilment. Relational practice helps young people balance the scales so
that they live for today and plan for tomorrow in equal measures. It creates an intuitive response that will shape every interaction with others, reducing violence, anti-social behaviour and isolation.
Relational practice will create a generation of fairer and more predictable parents and start to shift the statistics and preventatively improve the mental health and emotional well-being of future generations.
The role we play in the lives of children and young people is much greater than we may anticipate. It is everything, and the impact we have will shape young lives long beyond our involvement.
Whatever role you play in the lives of children and young people, you have the opportunity to make a difference. If we don't get it right, if we don't do this relationally, that difference, even with our best intentions, input and skill, can get lost along the way and in some cases it will be translated into something we didn't mean, didn't hope for
and wouldn't wish upon anyone.
The very beginning of When The Adults Change is as true today as it was the pen first hit the paper; changing behaviour starts with you. It is us that need to change our behaviour. Change of course, is more complicated. It needs patience and planning, and achieving the consistency that relational practice demands needs less inspiration and more bespoke, practical input than ever before. But the 'everything' that once meant something
has the potential to change the life of every learner we work with, every member of our future generation, the lives of our children's children, the very essence of our society that will live on beyond us.
You have taught us that the everything is where this work really matters and we are here to walk with you, to support you, to guide you and to connect you to a community of adults that are changing their behaviour so that everything changes. We must hang on to the belief that there is another way, and that far beyond behaviour, inclusive, equitable and informed relational practice is something that every child needs, deserves and is entitled to. To them, we matter and what we say, what we do and how we behave means everything.
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