How does Golden Time relate to playground behaviour and mid-day supervisor support?
Q: Time after time, despite training our mid-day supervisors in positive behaviour, mutual respect, not shouting or accusing pupils and having regular half-termly meetings, we still find that the way of many of these staff of working with the children does not improve and so the issues of playground behaviour are still appearing at lunchtime. What else can we do? How can we get our dear ladies to listen and take note of what the children need, because at the moment they are helping to create the negative culture that exists at lunchtimes.
A: You deserve to have peaceful, productive and respectful lunchtimes, but it's still not happening for you all. Why is it that sometimes, despite our best efforts with the admin support or teaching staff, there appears to be no personal growth or sharing of the school vision? One of theories hinges on self-esteem. If an adult has low self-esteem, personal change is extraordinarily difficult. People with low self-esteem often ride roughshod over other people's feelings. If you felt good about yourself, you would not need to talk disrespectfully to other people. However, because you are giving so much input to them, your irritation and disappointment at their lack of response maybe more apparent than you realise. It goes against the grain, but somehow, despite feeling let down, you have to keep looking for the tiny markers of success they may have achieved. Feeding these back to them in verbal praise or written notes, ending your lunchtime meetings with 'One positive thing I have noticed about lunchtimes', might go a little way towards softening their attitudes. Sometimes, when I work on my own with mid-day supervisors, they have a list of moans to do with the fact that they don't feel they are communicated with properly. Some, who are not parents, don't get the letters about what's going on in the school. Sometimes the teachers let them down by not picking the kids up from the playground on time. Sometimes the dining-hall system goes wrong because they don't let the children out quickly enough (I was the worst culprit at this). There are quite often a series of small events which have added to their perception being valued.
It becomes a vicious circle; they become more truculent and strident - we withhold our warmth and valuing response; we become emotionally colder - they feel less a part of the whole ethos. Have you asked mid-day supervisors to class Circle Times? When they are not locked into the interaction, and can observe or take part in a Circle Time on 'How we can make lunchtimes better', they are often amazed at the gentleness and wisdom of children. They don't usually have a chance to see them behaving like that. When we do these Circle Time sessions, we often ask them, in front of the mid-day supervisors, 'What does a mid-day supervisor do that makes you feel good and safe?' By keeping the dialogue very safe, mid-day supervisors are made to feel praised and valued. We also give them ',Gold Dust notes', on which they can write positive comments about the individual progress of difficult children and the good behaviour of the majority of children, then pop them into the class's Golden News Post-box. Another strategy they like is to be given Golden Raffle tickets. At every opportunity, whenever they see any good behaviour (you need to identify a list of good behaviours, such as lining up calmly, displaying good manners and so on. They hand the child a raffle ticket with the child's name and the words 'good choice' on it. The pupils then put their raffle tickets into a big drum, which is brought onto the stage at a Friday assembly as the weekly mid-day supervisors' celebration of great lunchtime behaviour. A child then does a loud drum roll, a hand plunges into the raffle tickets and draws one out, and a hush goes over the crowd. A prize is awarded, a huge cheer erupts. . . and the mid-day supervisors' self-esteem is lifted a little. There are lots of other ideas in “Turn Your School Round”, but you may have tried them all. The learning I still find the hardest to swallow is that, despite the fact that I have been as warm and positive as I can be (or, at least, I think I have), I still cannot win all people over. Sometimes you may have to go down a more radical route. Some schools will tell you they have raised money through the PTA and have bought in paid play leaders. Some schools have bought in trained sixth formers. It's an ongoing long term task to solve this problem and, as I said at the beginning, you all deserve to succeed.
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