Archive for the ‘Stuff for Teachers’ Category

Drifting off to sleep last night,

I began to recall a time when I was walking down a corridor in a school

and I started to hear a teacher admonishing a child for painting the river in his picture the wrong colour.

“When have you ever seen a river that colour?’ she cried.

“…water is blue, not brown!

Do it again and make it blue this time!”

As I continued along the corridor I began to think about all the rivers I had seen

and realised that nearly every one of them had seemed brown of one shade or another

(mixed with hints of other colours and glints of light, of course).

I tried hard to recall if I’d ever seen a blue river

and to be honest I never had.

It reminded me of a time when as I child I stood by the sea with my Dad

and he gazed and pointed towards the horison and said with a puzzled tone,

“Where does it stop being sea and become sky?”

I peered closely and pointed to ‘the join’ to help him ‘make it out’.

“How do you know”, he said”

“Because the colour changes from dark grey to light grey” I said,

“… just there, see?”

(It did change from dark grey to light grey.)

“My teacher says the sky is blue but it’s not blue is it… look!” I told him.

” What colour do you see?” said my dad.

For the next week or so I noticed the sky and it’s changing colours

ranging from nearly black to nearly white,

with all the colours of the rainbow between.

And over the years I’ve noticed that British seas (and rivers) are almost never blue.

And back in the corridor I reflected on how our beliefs

and the conditioning we’re subject to from those around us

sometimes overrides, so easily,

what we can see clearly with our own eyes.

And as I continued to drift off to sleep,

I was glad to be reminded how important it can be

to encourage children to be aware of what they can see with their own eyes

and to know that their experience IS valid information.

That their data is NOT flawed.

And when they have faith in themselves to know what they see,

and to interpret the world from their own authentic experience

then they flourish

and we all learn something of value.

Clean Language has many more applications in the classroom and I’ll write about some of them in future posts.

meanwhile, I’d like to ask if you would be happy enough to let me know…

… what you would like to know more about?

… what kind of applications you would like explore further?

… what else you would like me to include in this blog?

… in the coming year.

Happy New Year and Decade everyone!

My posts this year have mostly been about using Clean Language in the playground for conflict resolution. The emphasis when you’re dealing with playground conflicts is on how to move forward rather than picking apart what happened and who’s to blame.

The benefits are -

• it saves lots of time
• the outcomes are usually positive
• children learn how to work through their relationship problems independently.

As children become familiar with Clean Language they can begin to internalize the process and start to resolve their own problems without your intervention.

It provides them with an excellent model for listening too – and children often pick up on it – which can have very positive knock on effects in the classroom.

Why not give it a go

… and notice how much time and angst it can save you in the new year?

You might like to post your experiences and questions below.

Wishing you all a happy and positive New Year!

Is there anything else?

Well… yes… another Clean Language question that can be tagged on to just about anything is,

“…and is there anything else?”

or,

“…and is there anything else about… (Insert child’s words)?”

This is one of THE MOST handy questions. I use it in lots of contexts to find out more.

Well yes, another important part of the Clean Language process is what’s called the syntax.

This is the basic pattern:

1. Say ‘and’ and then repeat the child’s words.
2. Then say ‘and when’ and repeat the child’s words, honing in on a specific part of what they’ve just said – the part you choose for them to focus on.
3. Then ask your chosen Clean Language question.

This can seem a bit contrived until you have got into the swing of it, so get in the swing of quickly by using it at every opportunity.

There are times when you don’t need to use the full version of the syntax but, for the time being, practice using it until it becomes second nature to you.

Clean Language has 12 basic questions and a few specialized ones as well. For working with conflict in the playground you’ll only need a few of them, so it’s a great way to get started!

These are the questions I use most of the time in the playground when children come to me with a problem.

1. What would you like to have happen? (This invites children to focus on a solution instead of the problem.)
2. And what needs to happen for… (Insert their solution)?
3. And can that happen? (This invites children to check if it is indeed possible in the current circumstances – something else might need to happen first.)
4. And then what happens? (This invites children to reflect on the outcomes of their actions or proposed solutions.)

If you would like to start using Clean Language in the playground or your classroom now, here are the basics:

1. The first step is to trust that the children really can solve the problem themselves given your skilled support. Remember the Pygmalion effect? If you believe they are capable then they will be. (Please don’t gloss over this step – it is important – especially in the early stages when you are first practicing and have no results to look back on.)
2. Listen absolutely exquisitely to the words the children say – and the way in which they say it. Don’t make any judgments; or have opinions or try to think of solutions. Just focus on what they say.
3. Repeat back to them the words they have said (just like they said it) and ask a Clean Language question.

That’s it in a nutshell!

Of course there’s a knack to the listening and it can take a while to get into the swing of it but it will be very well worth the wait. And knowing which questions to ask is a skill that can be picked up quite quickly AND developed into quite an art in time.

Have you ever finished dealing with a conflict in the playground feeling that you haven’t really got to the heart of it and settled it for the children? You listen to them both and try to get them to appreciate each other’s perspective and (twenty minutes later) after grudging apologies are made, you have a strong sense that some of their thoughts and feelings remain unresolved -but the lesson needs to begin and so you move on.

We don’t have the time in a busy school day to play out the role of councilor or policeman to get to the bottom of things and resolve them for children, but we can make use of an innovative technique, used in both professions now, to help the children resolve their own problems.

First things first – Clean Language has nothing to do with swearing! It is a technique based on a collection of questions that are as free from assumptions as possible. They help us to get a clear idea of another’s thoughts and feelings without ‘muddying the waters’ with our own assumptions or presuppositions.

The great thing about Clean Language is that it’s based on listening skills and a particular kind of questioning that is reasonably easy to get the hang of with a little practice. And as teachers we have ample opportunity to practice it throughout the day!

Julie McCracken is a practicing Class Teacher, Clean Language Facilitator, NLP Master Practitioner, Senior Life Coach, Coach Mentor and Assessor.

I’m thinking about teamwork today and I’m reminded of a fantastic lesson in teamwork for me from the children. There were six teams, each working on developing a key to the map they had made the previous day. The teams took a few moments each to display their ‘work in progress’, explain it and ask for questions/responses from the other groups, so they could use the feedback and other learnings to inform improvements to their key to make it more user-friendly. A kind of consumer group ‘think tank thingy’.

A lot of great new ideas were generated. The final group took the floor to show their work. “What are the blue scribbly bits?” asked one class member, not being able to find it’s equivalent on the key. “Oh, that’s where Bob scribbled on it” came the reply! “What’s that brown area?” “That’s where Bob scribbled on it.” “And what’s that part there?” “That’s where Bob scribbled on it too,” said the rest of the team in unison, looking slightly peeved! Someone commented that “it’s best to keep a destructive team member like that well away from the work “because they just ruin it.”  Most nodded in agreement.

Then someone suggested that ‘If you have someone in your team that just scribbles all over everything. Then why don’t you give them the grass to colour in because that’s all over and there’s masses of it, and if they’re good at scribbling all over then you can give that to them as THEIR job, because that’s what they’re good at – and grass IS scribbly anyway.”

And so they all returned to their map making and made their various improvements. Bob was entrusted with colouring in all the grass and all was well.

Well, it certainly made me think!

And I’ve had many reasons since to be grateful for the learning of that marvellous bit of wisdom from a six year old child.

I’ve just finished talking on the phone to my friend and colleague. We’ve been exploring the potential of her using Clean Language in her work in school and we’ve decided to meet up to develop a plan for using Clean Language in the Art and Technology curriculum this term. She can see great potential in it. In fact, we’re both very excited and are looking forward to trawling through the curriculum on Monday and integrating a Clean Language approach into the methodology with the aim of achieving the learning objectives effectively, efficiently and with elegance.