How can we help to support and motivate midday supervisors?
How do you get negative playground helpers on board with our positive behaviour management systems? The staff in question were involved in staff development but it has not helped.
Jenny: You are highlighting a massive problem! I really would love you though to read my book, ‘All Year Round – exciting ideas for peaceful playtimes’. It gives millions of ideas to build self-esteem and self-value of these ladies so they are more likely to want to change. It gives lots of ideas on how to involve all your supervisors in decision making, using welcome boards, assemblies, circle times and golden times so that children perceive the school as giving value to them. There has to be a huge attitudinal shift before this merry band will try out and take on new initiatives. You need to involve the parents in raising money for lunchtimes so that these midday supervisors are paid for the meetings they come to. We have rewards and sanctions, which help the supervisors feel safe enough to try out new ideas, we have little playground game booklets to go in their tabards. I even have a little book that is to be given directly to them called ‘Guidelines for Midday Supervisors’. In that slim booklet they are urged to ‘stay calm, not have favourites, practise fairness’, and it is all in very accessible language.
It may even be worth you getting together with a cluster of schools to host a training day with all your midday supervisors and teachers and even some parents and have a day on a ‘whole school approach to happier lunchtimes’. We have training consultants who run these days for lots of schools. So all in all it is a huge body of knowledge.
It takes at least a year using our approach before there are even any minor shifts. But the wonderful news is that eventually your whole school can release excellence through unified approach to positive lunchtimes. Hold onto that thought at the end of a long miserable day when they have been shouting and there is a line of children outside your office! Good luck!
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