Cuttings

Affective Learning

Alite trainer Cath Corrie recounts a story of a teacher's self-realisation.

During a Lead Learner training course on Emotional Intelligence in London this year the teachers were working through an exercise where they examine their thoughts about the individuals in their classes. One Year 6 teacher was unhappy with what she thought about some of her children, especially when she realised how these thoughts were affecting her responses to them and her expectations of those pupils.

When she returned to school she and her support assistant worked out something positive and nurturing about every child in her class, something a child could live up to and into. She then made laminated name cards for each of them and on the back she wrote what she and her assistant had come up with for that individual. The next day she gave them out. She told the children that when she thought of them this was what she thought. She told them that even when she was cross, in a bad mood or having to tell them off, this was still what she thought of them.

Several weeks later the children had their SATs, and when she asked them on the first day to get their equipment and go down to the hall, every child took their name card. Throughout that week, whenever they got stuck doing their tests, they would pick up their card, read what she had written about them, look up at her, smile and then continue.

Not a dry eye remained when she had finished telling us this story.