Most of the things I know come from the time I spent as a teacher.
And yes, you ought to know that I worked specifically with children with additional needs of some sort. Some children had been excluded from other schools, for things like violent or inappropriate or abusive behaviour. Some children needed extra support to be able to access education, or they needed a slightly different curriculum so that they could maximise their potential and chances in life: Perhaps a bit more on language, or a bit less on something else that they found easier than the other kids, and… I’m getting distracted.
A crisis can mean many things. It can mean your classroom window gets smashed by a barrage of punches. It can mean getting covered in spit, or getting called a cunt. It can mean someone running away (“absconding”) and climbing on top of the building. It can mean someone ripping up their work, or banging their head against the desk, or pissing on the floor. All the usuals :)
We saw these behaviours most commonly immediately after someone joined us from another school. They usually met us when they were at rock bottom, just after they had lost all their trust in schools, adults, other children and themselves. It often took a little bit of time for them to recover from that and to realise that we were there to help them, not to bring them more trouble, and we’d be as patient as we needed to be for that. Children were often surprised that we didn’t exclude them after one of these crises. Nope, we’d help them fix it and learn from it instead. And yeah I’m getting distracted again, but yes. After about a year, these children would often be totally fine :)
There’s no avoiding a crisis, sometimes. We all have them at various points in our life. It would be weird and wrong if you didn’t ever have one. Whether it’s caused by a death or a shock or an argument or an accident, we all experience crises! It just so happened that some of these children that joined us— Yes, some of these children were having quite a lot of crises when they joined us. It was usually because they had been let down in some way by their previous schools, or the council, or the government. But yes…
“When there’s a crisis, three things can happen.”
I learned this repeatedly from my time as a teacher. It’s something you— We had to do this specialist training— this training that went over multiple days and— Uh… Yes, we did this multiple day training every couple of years to be allowed to work with these children. It was specialist training for working with what they call “challenging behaviour” and it involves everything to do with the risk assessment around that, to how to reduce it, to how to maintain safety during a crisis, to our legal obligations around that, to the paperwork, to what to do after a crisis to restore things in a positive way. And the number one thing you’ve got to know about that last part is that uhh— is this:
Three things can happen.
But first you should know that a crisis is very tiring, emotionally and physically. If a lot of them happen, it can wear you down. These kids would get themselves so so so tired out from all the adrenaline and emotional turmoil, and so would their peers, and we’d get tired too but less so.
When lots of crises are happening, it can feel like there’s no hope: It can feel like you’re going backwards: It can feel like things are getting worse with each crisis. It can feel like each crisis damages that child’s relationships with others and views of themselves. And likewise, even as an adult, it can feel like you’ll always be carrying around this baggage or this history. Because, often, a crisis can mean showing your more vulnerable side as a teacher: Because a child who’s in pain can really know how to get under your skin and, if they’re in your classroom each day, they probably know how to push your buttons, and of course also the buttons of their peers, and your colleagues.
This is the fear: You fear that every crisis will leave a scar, or unpick an old one, and you’ll be left with a build up of scars that taint you forever. You might ask:
“How can we possibly make any progress when we’re having all these crises?”
But of course…
When there’s a crisis, three things can happen:
It really stuck with me the first time I heard this idea because it’s something I didn’t realise until that moment. But as soon as I heard it, it seemed so obvious! A crisis can, for sure, ruin a relationship. It can also make no difference. Or (and this is the best outcome) it can strengthen it: It can be used as an opportunity for growth and understanding, rather than hatred or separation or blame.
It’s hard though. It’s not easy to get the third outcome. And it often needs at least one person to kick it off, by apologising or listening or trying to empathise with the other. There’s a certain amount of “swallowing your pride” or “ego death” that you need to go through to be able to do this. But luckily, you’re a grown fucking adult and they’re a six year old kid, so you’ll take the hit on this one!
For sure, boundaries are important. If a child did something illegal or damaging or wrong, it’s your duty to get them to learn that. But showing is always better than telling. If they broke someone’s property, demonstrate the cost of that. Let them discover the emotional toll it put on someone. “That was Miss Smith’s favourite pencil” or “Smashing that wall will cost the school two thousand pounds and now we can’t buy other nice things” but none of this learning can happen when the crisis is happening! First, the crisis needs to end, and then (and only then) when everyone has recovered from the crisis… then you can learn from it.
So you need to sacrifice that moment there and then, when the crisis is still happening. And as a teacher, yes, it is your duty to make sure that these crises don’t happen (or at least, as little as possible) so that’s always something you can apologise for straight away! But often there’s more. Our training taught us to understand that there’s often things we do that we don’t notice that contribute to a crisis.
Demonstrating that you’re patiently there, patiently waiting with them for the crisis to end, and that you’re listening to them and willing to listen more. Showing that you’re sorry for anything you did to contribute to that crisis, and that you want to learn what better alternatives you could have opted for instead. Helping out with fixing the crisis after it’s over, whether that means cleaning up the smashed glass, writing an apology letter with them, or brainstorming alternative communication methods that are more effective than spit.
If you do these things, you’re likely to form a stronger relationship whenever a crisis happens. You’ll gain more mutual trust, and trust goes a long way.
Of course, I’ve been talking about working with children in this blog post, but I’ve found that the same rules apply to adults too. Except adults are way worse than children because they think they’re smart or something. Though that’s probably unfair. The people I worked with in my seven years of teaching were (on the whole) highly empathetic. My colleagues valued emotional understanding highly. My bosses were bosses because they had higher emotional intelligence than me.
I wish I could say the same for some of the other communities I’m part of.
And I wish I could say the same for myself.
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