Category: Well-being in education

What has love got to do with education? Surely, education is all about ‘efficiency’, about ‘what works’ about achieving skills and knowledge? ‘Love’ has nothing to do with it! Only trendy, lefty progressives speak about soft things like ‘love’ in the context of education.

Well, one such ‘trendy, lefty progressive’ was the eminent professor of anatomy and anthropologist Raymond Dart. I first came across Dart on my 1st year physical anthropology reading list at Cambridge University. He discovered and named our hominid ancestor, Australopithecus.  More recently, I have re-discovered him as an advocate and enthusiast for the Alexander Technique, an embodied contemplative practice and educational philosophy I have spent 3 years learning to practice and teach. And according to Dart, love has everything to do with education.

Discussing the acquisition of skills and knowledge in education, Dart wrote in his 1934 lecture, The Significance of Skill, that ‘only love can evoke intelligent concentration on the nature of the movement involved and the will or determination to remember those movements,’ (1934) and he went onto say, ‘Unless our educational methods arouse, maintain and increase enthusiasm, they are worse than useless. They destroy instead of construct,’.

So, for Dart, love is an essential emotion, producing the necessary attention to enable us to learn, ‘Such attention is the outcome only of desire or love of the work,’.

If pupils need ‘love or desire’ to learn, it follows that teachers need to love their subjects in order to teach, to transmit that enthusiasm for learning that will excite young learners and stay with them for the rest of their lives, long after the details or facts that they learned have been forgotten. Sadly, teachers too often work, in the UK and elsewhere in the world, in an atmosphere of fear, mistrust and externally imposed targets and measures. I do not see that as an atmosphere in which love – or any other virtue come to that – can thrive.

Does fear produce good learning? Personally I doubt it. Love produces good learning, love and enjoyment and delight – all those fluffy terms that politicians are so rude about. In my opinion, considering the importance of love in education is not fluffy – it does not mean sacrificing excellence; it is fundamental to the achievement of excellence in any sphere.

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This morning I led an assembly at St Paul’s Primary School, Poynton on ‘Love of Learning’ – one of my favorite character strengths and the reason we are in school at all. And I told the story, also a personal favorite, of Anansi and the Pot of Wisdom.

We used our #creativity and our #love of #learning together to create a new prayer, in British Sign Language that incorporated the theme of the assembly. And I left them a VERY long piece of paper to fill up with what they learn this week! Oh, I also added in the strength of #gratitude – because I asked them to remember to THANK their teacher every time they learn something new.

Very excitingly, after the assembly, I had my first meeting with my new project team. Six pupils, years 3, 4 and 5, are going to be my project team and my research team at St Paul’s. Because, as I’ve developed and worked with Celebrating Strengths over the past 10 years it has dawned on me, slowly (yes, I am a SLOW learner!), that this project works best when children are included as collaborators and innovators. This year, for the first time, I am also including them as researchers. Their tasks are to find out how other schools use Celebrating Strengths and what they feel the benefits have been; to help to innovate and adapt it for St Paul’s AND to notice what, if anything changes – what is different because of this project? Together, we will be asking the key question of educational research – does this make learning better?

And, from my perspective, it makes sense to bring research and love of learning together because I think that learning just IS research – thoughtful, observant activity – and research IS learning – finding out something I didn’t know before or clarifying something I sort of half knew.

So, together, my team and I will try out new things, and learn new things – and do research and education together.

All schools aim to promote good character. Of course they do. While some commentators suggest character education is pointless, personally I would see any education that does not extend to character as pointless – and even dangerous. People with skills, knowledge and no moral compass rarely make the world a better place.

I want children to think about, focus on and debate vigorously what is right and wrong, what makes for a good life, what it is worth living and working for. And to be surrounded by teachers who do the same.

When I trained to teach, we were taught that the environment is an essential teaching tool – another teacher, in fact. To that end, I think it is essential that the environment in which children are educated reflects character as well as the finer points of the correct use of the semi-colon. And by environment I mean what the children can SEE and what they can HEAR. I would like them to hear and talk about concepts like love and kindness, courage and honesty, as well as to hear and discuss algebra and music, literature and history.

So, how do you embed that ephemeral concept, #character, not just into the curriculum, but into the ENVIRONMENT of the school? In other words, how do we put #theory into #practice?

One suggestion is to have a dedicated place in the school environment where #strengths are highlighted and featured in words and pictures – a #Strengths Display Board, if you like. That is what Downshall Primary in Ilford are planning to do.

So, what might a Strengths Display Board look like?

Here’s one suggestion

Strength of the week: Creativity

This week we spotted the following people being CREATIVE – well done them! 

Kevin, Ahmed, Lisa….Mrs Brown

Creativity is one of my favorite strengths and here’s how I use it ….

Jenny: I use it to think of stories to write

Ian: I use it in maths to work out new ways to get the right answer

Mr Brown: I use it to think of new games to teach music

Whole School Strengths Practice – ‘Strange Uses’ (from Character Strengths Assemblies, p. 11) – who’s done it?

Fred, Ginger, Mrs Brown, Jenny the caretaker……

The ‘Whole School Strengths Practice’ idea can be found (shameless resource plug) in here

The idea is to get EVERYONE in the school thinking about and having a go at the same simple strengths practice and to sign the Strengths Display Board when they’ve done it.

We get more of what we focus on!

I think that the visible and audible presence of #character strengths in schools is not only desirable, but is essential for a school that takes seriously its moral purpose, as well as the goal of getting them to read, write and add up. The Strengths Display Board is one way to do that.

Fox Eades, Jenny 2013 Character Strengths Assemblies. Notts: TTS available here

http://www.tts-group.co.uk/shops/tts/Range/Search?search=character%20strengths

I am feeling quietly excited by my new research team! The children of Downshall Primary in Ilford and St Paul’s Primary School in Poynton are helping me to research Celebrating Strengths – in their schools. Together, we are asking the key educational question – does this help us learn better? Does story telling help us learn better? Does a focus on character strengths help us learn better? Do celebrations and learning to play with and enjoy silence, help us to learn better?

We will be engaging in collaborative research – research together, with pupils.

Whitehead and McNiff define research as thoughtful, reflective activity. This week it has been my pleasure to engage in ‘thoughtful, reflective activity’ with primary school pupils. We played ‘silence games’; we set ‘Strengths Intentions’, using thoughtful movement as part of our thinking activity; we listened to, commented on and coached each other as we tried telling a well known traditional story.

And I am always amazed, and always wonder why I am amazed, at the insight, maturity and observational skills that children bring to their learning. They always do this. Often, we don’t give them the time or opportunity to tell us what they think or notice. I have lots to learn in researching with children – and one of the things I need to learn is to listen more and talk less!!

Some quotes from this week, ‘if I think about teamwork when I’m working it helps me share better’; ‘storytelling helps me be more creative’ ‘I think I’ve listened better today’ ‘I learned from this story to think before I do something’ ‘I really liked the Silence game because some people like being quiet’ (he was 5!!!).

I am quietly excited!

Whitehead, J. & McNiff, J., 2006. Action Research, Living Theory. London : Sage Publications .

This morning I told the story of The God Who Sneezed, an ancient Egyptian creation myth (Jenny Fox Eades 2013) at St Paul’s Catholic Primary school in Poynton, as part of an assembly where we thought about ‘creativity’. It is a strange story, a story from a faith tradition we no longer understand. But two things struck me as I told the story. Firstly, there was the fact that the act of creativity emerged against a backdrop of silence – there was ‘nothing to hear but the slow, sloosh of the primeval river flowing past’. Creativity needs stillness, it needs space and moments of silence for reflection, what I call ‘sinking in time’ – as well as noise and buzz, discussion and the exchange of ideas.

The second thing that struck me was the playfulness, or humour of the story – the god, Atum, sneezes creation out of its nose! And creativity just IS playfulness – playing with ideas, playing with materials, playing with words or musical notes or numbers. Too much seriousness, too much focus on ‘the right answer’ or ‘getting it right’, on deadlines and rules and regulations, is a sure way to stifle creativity.

The god in the story needed stillness and silence and playfulness to create – and so do we.

And during the assembly there were moments of complete stillness and silence – yes, children can and do enjoy silence! And there was time to be noisy, to play with ideas and to chat and think aloud.

The children and teachers at St Paul’s said that they thought creativity involved ‘making things’, ‘making ideas’, ‘originality or uniqueness’, ‘thinking outside the box’ and ‘linking’. One person raised the idea that you could be creative with friendships and relationships – I was surprised at first but her thought is growing on me!

I asked them to ‘be creative’ in the week ahead because psychologists tell us that the simple instruction, ‘be creative’ does actually produce a rise in creativity – perhaps because we need permission to be playful and not to try to get it ‘right’ first time!

When I go back in on Thursday, I shall ask them how they have got on. Watch this space………..

Fox Eades, Jenny 2013 Character Strengths Assemblies. Kirkby-in-Ashfield: TTS

http://www.tts-group.co.uk/shops/tts/products/pd3650728/

Hope is a forward looking virtue and one that is at the heart of teaching and learning – we teach for the future, we pass on wisdom (we hope) and knowledge and culture – good things – to the next generation.

So it is something of a paradox that a good way to BUILD hope is to reflect on the past, to tell the story of where we have come from, of past hopes that came true, past struggles survived. So this post is my reflection on where Celebrating Strengths has come from, the story of how it came into being. It is also a way of building my own personal hope that it might continue to grow and spread and do a little bit of good in the world of education and in the lives of children and teachers…

Starting with storytelling 

With a Masters Degree in Child and Adolescent Mental Health from The Tavistock Clinic and UEL, and a background in special needs teaching, I wrote an article, in 2003, on the importance of traditional tales, legends, myths and fairy tales in education for a teaching magazine called Five to Seven (published by http://www.markallengroup.com). One phone call later and I was delivering a training day to Riddings Infant School in Scunthorpe on using fairy tales, and reviving the ancient teaching technique of story telling.

I focused NOT on using stories to teach spelling or grammar or reading but on using them to nurture the well-being – the mental health – of children and I emphasized the importance of fostering the art of story telling in schools. Story telling is an ancient and powerful teaching technique, creative, nurturing, using the whole teacher and engaging the whole child.  Oral story telling can enhance the ability of ancient and powerful stories, like myths and fairy tales, to help humans make sense of the world and of themselves, and to pass on wisdom and values from generation to generation.

Adding reflection and celebration

As well as storytelling, another way that human societies have fostered well-being and passed on values to the next generation, has been to take time out of the daily routine to reflect and to celebrate. So at Riddings, we decided to create a yearly cycle of celebrations – festivals that allowed us time to reflect, to tell stories and to celebrate just being a community together. We first developed an Advent festival, that became a Festival of Lights, with the highlight being the Spiral of Lights #SpiralofLights. This has now become a valued tradition in schools  in Scunthorpe and elsewhere in the UK.

Other festivals we developed were a Beginnings Festival, an Endings Festival and festivals that celebrated the local and global community and the performing arts. The ideas and stories behind these festivals were later published by TTS as a series of 7 festival books

http://www.tts-group.co.uk/shops/tts/Products/PD3029641/Character-Strengths-Festival-Books/?rguid=ff14c56d-720e-417f-bffa-d6518492f196

Character Strengths – the final ingredient

The last ingredient we added to the mix, the staff and pupils of Riddings Infants, (and by now also Leys Farm Junior School, Riddings Juniors and Enderby Road Infants) and I, was the character strengths and virtues of Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman (2004).

We loved the words, the children loved the words. Parents began to comment when their 5 year olds came home talking about persistence or gratitude. We added signs from British Sign Language to the words, we added the words to displays and linked them to the stories and festivals we were already using – and Celebrating Strengths was born!

At first the schools and I made our own resources, I wrote versions of over 60 traditional stories and sent them to the schools, we created pictures and certificates to embed the character strengths in the environment and language of the schools. Then, a lovely young Danish teacher and artist, Laura Linder, drew me some cartoons of all of the strengths and, with some added ideas from the pupils of Bollington Cross Primary School, the beautiful cartoons now published by TTS were born.

I am proud of Celebrating Strengths. It has developed over the past 10 years. There are several books that describe the ideas behind it

It has been used in Denmark and translated into Danish! It is known and used by schools in Australia, too.

But what I am MOST proud of is the fact that it combines the wisdom of so many people. As this post makes clear, no one person created Celebrating Strengths. It was, very genuinely a collaborative project – the staff and children of Riddings Infants, Leys Farm, Riddings Juniors, Enderby Road …my lovely colleague Belinda Catt who then introduced it to Frodingham Infants School …the staff and children of Bollington Cross Primary…the work of Peterson and Seligman, the beautiful cartoons of Laura Linder, my superb colleagues at TTS, my Australian colleagues at schools like Geelong Grammar, Burgmann and St Michael’s Anglican Schools and the Berry Street Institute Schools, who adapt it for their own very different cultural climate…the nameless creators of the stories we tell…The Selkie Wife, Red Riding Hood, St Werburgh and the Geese….

And now it is my pleasure and privilege to be working with some more amazing schools – and pupils and teachers, who are changing and developing it further – Thomas Gray Primary in Bootle, Downshall Primary in Ilford, St Paul’s Poynton. These UK schools are using it as a practical and positive way of implementing #PSHE, personal, social and health education and #SCSM spiritual, cultural, social and moral education. I am researching it and developing it further for my own PhD.

And the developments and the changes and the bright ideas we come up with, will, hopefully, (because hope is where this story started), be written about here in this blog and will help, in a little way, to foster education, to pass on good things, like love and kindness, stories and silence, to the next generation. I hope so, anyway.

Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. E. P., 2004. Character strengths and virtues: A classification and handbook. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

#Character strength of the day: #forgiveness.

I have based my education work on character strengths on the work of Peterson and Seligman (2004). I am an educator, not a psychologist, and I have adapted Peterson and Seligman’s list to fit the context of schools and classrooms. I made small changes to language here and there, but the biggest change I made was to add a strength – in response to comments from many teachers and from my own reading and understanding of learning and teaching – I added the strength of patience.

Patience is an inherent part of TEACHING – we have to be patient with ourselves and our pupils, we have to allow ourselves to be human and allow them to be human too. It is an inherent part of LEARNING – we have to be patient and allow ourselves not to understand, not to grasp at easy solutions, not to settle for the quick and obvious answer and to do that long enough for deep learning to happen.

This week I was privileged to help an excellent teacher of the #AlexanderTechnique, Sue Fleming, http://www.suefleming.co.uk to run a group in Manchester who are learning the Alexander Technique, mostly to help prevent or improve aches, pains and bad backs. They were learning to pause and notice – their bodies, their feelings, their thoughts, how they sit, how they stand, how they breath – and learning to do those things with more awareness, more lightness, more thought. For those who’ve never heard of the Alexander Technique it is a ‘psychosomatic’ discipline, a ‘movement-based embodied contemplative practice,’ (Schmalz et al 2014), a way of tuning into your ‘whole self’ and how you react to your environment, to the stresses and strains of life. It is subtle, it is gentle and it takes time to learn it.

And fresh from the state school system of education in the UK, where I work as an adviser on ‘well-being’, I was aware of how slowly Sue was taking things, how much time she was giving to reflection and noticing, to questions and questioning – and I was impressed and challenged.

Because in schools right now, everything is FAST, everything has PACE (and it’s FAST pace, not slow pace!), everything is EFFICIENT. But some thinking and some learning can’t be done quickly. As the Nobel Prizewinner Daniel Kahneman points out, (2011) some thinking needs to be done slowly, some thinking needs PATIENCE! And efficiency and speed are not the only goods in life, sometimes kindness, gentleness, beauty and ‘what is right’ are more important.

So, here’s a tip for cultivating patience, for letting things take the time that they take…..

‘Pause at Doors’

You go though doors many times every day. When you come to a door just press your internal pause button

Pause….notice your feet and the feel of the floor beneath you; notice if you are breathing; notice what you are thinking, feeling and sensing, seeing and hearing; pause and think about wanting to go through that door lightly, cheerfully and with a twinkle in your eye …and then release your pause button and move on.

Tiny pauses in your day can ground you, calm you, slow you down, de-stress and unwind you …and cultivate the ability to wait, to be patient, to let things take the time that they take …..

Kahneman, Daniel, 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow

Schmalzl, L., Crane-Godreua, M. A. & Payne, P., 2014. Movement-based embodied contemplative practices. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience , Volume 8, pp. 1-6, London: Penguin

Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. E. P., 2004. Character strengths and virtues: A classification and handbook. Washington DC: American Psychological Association