Is it alright to create a safe and caring school when the outside world is not always like that?
Q: Is there any risk attached to creating a class and school ethos which are inclusive, caring, protected, "emotionally safe" etc when the world outside school and beyond school is very often a quite different place?
Jenny: If we are to help build resilient children then they must have a safe place they can refer to e.g. school or the home. You may wish to consider reading the work of June Bluestein who likens the school to a dysfunctional family. It makes you wonder what the role of the Head is? It’s a good question. However, I believe, and theories would appear to support this idea, that an individual needs to feel emotionally safe before they have the inner strength to take risks. If you remember back to Maslow’s Hierarchy there are basic human needs which have to be met before an individual can reach the self-actualisation stage. If you know that you are within a supportive, consistent and safe environment you will not mind making a mistake and you will be prepared to exercise your own creativity knowing that there will be no lash-back. The safer and more supported you are, the more able you are to free your thoughts from the survival stage and look upwards to more exciting horizons. The more unsafe you are the more you have to concentrate on just coping with everyday life. Many schools fail to reach excellence because the staff are not safe enough with each other and they get trapped in, what the Elton Report once called “mounting spiral of stress due to classroom isolation”. So, whilst I totally agree with you that the world itself is an unsafe place, a child who has known safety can create a sense of order and calm within themselves. A child who has never has this experience will find it more difficult to create it for themselves.
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