Simon Currigan: 0:44

Ever wondered why 'connection before correction' is so crucial when supporting students with SEMH needs? Discover Adele Bates's insights and real life stories, including how a small gesture transformed behaviour for her and also when things went wrong. That's all in this week's School Behaviour Secrets essentials. Tune in now. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi. Simon Currigan here from Beacon School Support welcoming you back to another bite sized essentials episode of School Behaviour Secrets where we revisit key discussions from previous podcasts that can make a real difference in your classroom. In today's essentials episode, we're sharing part of an interview I had with behaviour and educational specialist, Adele Bates, where we explored the powerful concept of 'connection before correction'. We'll jump into the conversation where Adele shares practical examples of how this approach can transform behaviour in high needs SEMH students and when things for her didn't go quite as she planned. If you find this episode valuable, please subscribe and share the School Behaviour Secrets podcast with your friends and colleagues. I'd be really appreciative if you did so because that prompts the algorithm to share this information in the show with more school leaders and teachers just like you so we can get this important information out there to help as many classrooms and students and teachers as possible. And now here's the interview with Adele Bates. You talk about Kim Golding's idea of connection before correction. Can you start to talk through what this idea is and why it's so important with these high needs kids?

Adele Bates: 3:07

Yes. So to begin with, very simply, it's the concept that if we connect with someone before we try and correct their behaviour, we're way more likely to be successful. And we know that because we know the manager who keeps calling you Sara when your name's Sarah, you just have a little less respect for that manager because they haven't taken the time to get your name right. For those managers who don't connect with you, who don't take the time to learn your name, you you're not quite as easy to form a relationship with. And that's a tiny example. So with the pupils, it's that idea that if we want to correct someone's behaviour, we need to connect with them as humans first. Now, there is an argument that, and in some schools this works, that you go in and you are completely zero tolerance and very disciplined, and they all just have to have high expectations around behaviour and get on with it. And it works. It works, I would argue, for compliance. And what always worries me about that approach is there is a difference between compliance and learning. We can have an entire class silent, working inverted commas, and then at the end of their lesson, you find how many pictures of penises have been drawn. So the idea between connecting first is that you start to build that relationship, which evolves trust, which evolves into things like, I can support you to do things that you never thought you could dream that you could do. I can create a safe space for you to try and fail, to try reading in front of the class and fail and it doesn't matter because you're safe emotionally. And then the next question I usually get asked is, yeah, but we haven't got time to find out everybody's favorite football team. We haven't. We've got 33 in a class. I'm an art teacher. I teach 20 year 7 classes a week for 42 minutes. And there's often this idea that this approach of connection before correction has to be this massive 'be the child's best friend'. That is not the case at all and I have the best example to show. So I was on the way back from a train in London and I was on the train and it was during a point during the pandemic. It was at a point where masks were mandatory on public transport and there were these 2 lads standing there about 15, 16 about a foot taller than me and they had their masks around their chins really usefully. And I sat there and I thought okay I want to correct that essentially. But I didn't know these teenagers. They weren't even from the school that I'd just been in. So I had a choice. In that second, I could have gone in and done what a lot of people do, I must say, to teenagers in our society. That's a whole other issue, but teenagers are very discriminated against. I write about it in the book. I could have gone in hard. 'Oi. You should be doing this. You need to follow the rules, yada yada yada'. But I didn't know them, and they were a foot taller than me. And I was on a train. There was no support network. There was no staff. There was no detention. So, I mean, they could have actually just told me where to go quite easily. And so what I did instead is that I connected with them first. And so I knew this wasn't the case, but it was my best opener. I said, 'Oh, are you from that school that I've just been in? I've just been working in'. And they said, 'Oh, no, miss, but from this other school'. And it was hilarious. They called me Miss. They didn't know I was a teacher. I must have, like, a whole teacher persona. And I said, 'oh, what's that school like?''What's it like compared to the school I've been in?' What's the, you know, what's the local gossip between the postcodes? And they kind of entertained me in this kind of small talk conversation. And listeners, as I was talking, this doesn't really work in a podcast so I'm gonna describe it, all I had to do was mime bringing the mask up from their chin and putting it on their nose. That's all I had to do. I did not even mention the masks at all. And as we were talking, they saw me do that little movement and they both quickly put their masks up. And of course, the best thing I was excited about was like, oh my goodness. That's an example of connection before correction. But it's so beautiful because I didn't know those kids. I I didn't have a relationship with them. I didn't know which football team they supported or who their auntie Joan was or I didn't know anything, but I connected with them first. And so then me correcting their behaviour. I mean, they knew they were supposed to be wearing their masks. Of course they did because they were on their chin. They'd forgotten. They're human. Lots of us did. So actually it worked. And then on the other side of this, a quick example of where I totally got this wrong was we'd had one of those sick meetings, SLT, telling teachers we need to get stricter on the uniform policy. And the issue was, surprise, surprise, the length of the girl skirts. It was one of those meetings where we were gonna come down hard on lengths of girl skirts, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Right. Okay. Fine. So I came out all rallied up about this issue, and it was almost like we'd been told it was the most important thing. You know? And I bumped into a young person who I think I taught a couple of times in a cover lesson or something, but I didn't have a relationship with them. They weren't someone I knew. And I came straight out of this meeting and I saw her and her skirt was short. She'd rolled it up. And so the first thing I did was I went in and I said, you shouldn't have your verdah. You need to roll your skirt down. Blah dee blah dee blah. She scoffed at me with disdain, and this is the first and only time I've experienced this actually. She said, I know you're bisexual, miss. Why are you saying that? Why are you perving at my legs? Why are you looking at my legs, miss? Wow. And I have to say in that moment, I had a lot more empathy for male teachers in this scenario because I'd never experienced that before. It kinda took the wind out of me because I hadn't, and I didn't know what to do. And I thought, well, hang on a minute. Whatever I say is gonna be wrong now. And and I kinda got my nix in a twist about it. And I realized afterwards when I reflected on it, I didn't even say hello. I just went in and I told about the length of this day. What right have I as an adult teacher? I mean, regardless of my sexual orientation or gender or anything, but what right have I to tell a young girl? Yeah. And it was so out of character for me to do it as well. It's not my usual approach. But I realized that I got fired up in this meeting, and it'd been presented like the most important thing in the world. And I'd come out and going, I need to do my job properly, and this is obviously what we need to do right now. And it completely backfired. And I think I just mumbled something really inane and really, really ineffective. And I probably turned around. She probably rolled her skirt up even higher. I don't know. But I hadn't connected with her. And yet I was trying to correct her. It is not my place to start going around in that way correcting people if I haven't built up a trust. And, of course, she retaliated and got me where she thought it would hurt, and she did really well. I hope she goes into politics.

Simon Currigan: 9:47

There will be teachers and school leaders listening to this saying, I'm teaching a child right now who doesn't want me to take an interest. They're they're actively pushing me away. So what are the practical things that we can do? What are the tips and tricks that you've got about forming those connections with resistant kids? Because as we've discussed, they don't consider the adult safe and they're deliberately pushing us away as a protective behaviour.

Adele Bates: 10:09

Absolutely. Often I refer to this as the blank because sometimes having that non response is harder than having an outwardly aggressive conflicting response because at least then you've got something to play with. But when they shut down, I think which is what you're talking about, it can be really challenging and for some staff it can be the most triggering thing for them personally. We all have this, and I talk about this a lot in the book. We all have our behaviours that for one reason or another just get under asking.

Simon Currigan: 10:40

And that's all we have time for in this essentials episode. If you wanna hear the full interview with Adele, head back to episode number 54. I'll include a direct link to it in the podcast description. I definitely recommend that you do because she shares lots of practical information and tips that you can use to support the kids that you work with. And, hey, if you've enjoyed today's episode, why not share it? Why not share the School Behaviour Secrets podcast with a colleague? It's a lot easier than managing a class of 30 on a Friday afternoon. I know. I've been there. All you have to do is hit the share button in your podcast app, and you will be your colleague's new best friend. Thanks for listening today, and we'll catch you next time on School Behaviour Secrets.