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.

Went spinning today.

A 1 ½ hour tough cycling work-out. Every minute was a joy and a pain and as I pushed on and ‘upped the effort’ again and again throughout the workout I reflected on the support that our coach Chris was giving us.  He intuitively knew when to drive us on, when to offer hope (that we were nearly at the end of an exercise), when to crack a joke and encourage us to smile and when to bring on a whoop or cheer of exhilaration when we’d completed a specially grueling minute. Every single time I began to feel like lessening the effort or to believe I couldn’t go on, he would cut through my negative thinking with a change of pace (usually harder or faster!) and just the right kind of challenge or support. The music helped to drive the pace and the atmosphere of camaraderie that Chris created stopped me from getting off the bike and leaving the room. So I completed the workout and now feel great for it. And although I did all the work myself, I know there is NO WAY I could have done it alone. Left to my own devices I know I would have stopped after the second track (6 minutes in) when my muscles began screaming to stop.

Thanks for ‘keeping me on in there’ Chris!

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.

Hooray! The concrete is finally going down behind the house for our kitchen extension. We’re ‘over the hump’ and work should move forward quite quickly from now on. (…ever the optimist)

It’s taken a lot of time to get to this stage. We have dreamed, imagined, talked, changed our minds, discussed with planners, waited for plans to be drawn up, considered them and made alterations, waited for planning permission, negotiated obstacles etc, etc.

While this was happening there was nothing ‘concrete’ to show for the time and effort. Now there is definitely something ‘concrete’ – its CONCRETE!

Often the planning and considering part of a project can seem extraordinarily lengthy and it’s during this stage that motivation and momentum can flag unless you are aware of and prepared for it’s particular challenges.

This is often true for personal challenges or changes as well.

When steps are very small or there are long delays between steps, boredom or demoralization can set in. A slow pace can open opportunities for your inner gremlin to start making other plans: you begin to question whether you really do want the goal… “Maybe it will be best to give it a miss.”

This is where you can help yourself by recruiting support – that support can come from another person – say a friend or coach – or it can come from yourself. By being aware of the challenge you can be prepared to encourage yourself through it until you begin to see some initial results.

I’m going out now to have a good look at our concrete results.

Hey we have a new chick. It hatched last week and it’s so cute. The dogs are very interested in it. Nala wants to watch it all day – she loves to herd things. Annie is licking her lips ( she see’s hors d’oevres ) so we have to watch her. An interesting example of interpretation – same chick, very different interpretation and response from the two dogs – and the difference between life and death for the chick! I completely forgot to film it for you. It’s so easy to take the most wonderful and miraculous things completely for granted when they are going on around us all the time.

The miracle of new life – and I didn’t think to mention it until now!

It’s easy to let the wonders of life slip by right under your nose, without really noticing or savoring them, if you know what I mean…

I wonder what else I’m missing!

The Step-Backwards Before Going-Forwards-For-Good.

Went to visit my sister’s neighbors today – Franz and Marie-Jeanne. They are lovely people who live in a beautiful cottage in rural Ireland with two beautiful dogs (one is the biggest Irish wolfhound I’ve ever come across), 12 cats and two horses – as well as the 26 cats in their well-run cattery.

Franz has been training their two horses to take to the traces so that they will pull a cart.  Marie-Jeanne told us how one of the horses had suddenly developed a problem. He had started to go backwards in his training. Since Wednesday he was refusing to back into the traces.

She continued to describe the problem with concern until my sister said, “Well that’s the step backwards before he goes forwards for good – it’s a good sign that you’re nearly finished.”

It reminded me that we see this all the time with the children in school. They seem to be learning something well and then they encounter difficulties and seem to go backwards just before they become competent.

You’ve probably seen it with babies learning to crawl or walk. First they teeter.Then they start to walk or crawl and it seems as though they’ve cracked it. Then they go through a stumbling phase – it’s as though they’ve lost the skill they had gained . And then suddenly, they’ve mastered the art of walking or crawling competently.

This stumbling phase is often one where children and adults give up – and sadly, it’s just before success comes but that success is still out of sight for them. Once you notice that this is a common pattern with learning, instead of becoming frustrated when things seem to be taking a turn for the worst, you can quietly celebrate, knowing that it is a sign that success close by.

So as I was enjoying the country air and the company of delightful animals and lovely people, I was reminded of an important lesson in learning. How will this help you with your own learning or in supporting your children’s learning confidence?

I’ve been enjoying a holiday staying with my sister over in Ireland. She’s coming to England soon for a family wedding and so we found ourselves reminiscing about family and children during long fire lit evenings in her traditional Irish cottage. We were talking about communication and for some reason I found myself remembering when my daughter was a teenager. We went through a phase when it was difficult to talk. Was she bovered? I don’t think so! (Mostly it was, “talk to my hand because my face isn’t listening!’)

…and then I remembered that the way to create rapport with another is to mirror and match and talk in their preferred style.

Simple!

All I had to do was to match her style.

But what was her style?

When I stopped to think about it, it seemed she didn’t have a style when it came to talking. I rarely saw her talk. She spent most of her time texting friends on her mobile phone.

Then I realised… that was her style!

I thought I’d give it try… so I texted her,

“Hi Jen How ya doin”

I had an instant reply.

Success!

But the surprising thing about it was that, from that moment, we also began to enjoy verbal conversations as well. So I learned that it is always worth stopping to consider ‘what is the other person’s communication style’ in its widest sense if you want to open effective channels of communication.

And it’s worth remembering that, once you’ve made the effort to enter somebody’s world in their own style, then you may find it’s all you need to do to start the communication and connection flowing – you won’t have to keep it up indefinitely. And that’s good to know, because keeping it up indefinitely might prove to be a bit of a struggle.

Talking to a group of  students at The Clean Language Summer School.

They were preparing for their assessments – they had to demonstrate their competence by completing a series of ‘live’ client sessions, observed by assessors. Nothing quite like it for for ‘bringing on the nerves’.

I was reminded of a learning experience I’d had over twenty years before.

In an exercise to music teacher training course, all the students learned physiology, choreography and music editing, class management and cuing (which is surprisingly complex). For homework each week, we had to use all we’d learned to create our own routines and present them to the class the next lesson.

Naturally, at first, we were all shy, nervous and unconfident about our creations and our delivery. As the weeks went by we became more confident about the content of our routines and more confident about our delivery but we continued to be a little self-effacing when we went to the front of the class to present the sessions.

Until one week, when the tutor patiently let us go through our paces – and then proceeded to reflect back to us what we had been doing by giving us a precise imitation of everything we’d done.

We began to laugh at the coy way in which she was presenting – the little apologies she gave out before she started the routines (e.g. “I hope this will be alright – I wasn’t sure about the arm section so I just did my best!”).

We all recognized ourselves in her little display as she went on – and boy did we laugh – until she turned on us and reminded us, in no uncertain terms, that we were there to serve our class members.

Once qualified, we would be delivering our classes to people who had paid a fee and had probably made a great effort to come out on a cold winter’s night to get fit – it was our duty to give them the best.

She reminded us quite forcefully that…

IT WAS NOT ABOUT US.

IT WAS ABOUT THEM!

… and they had the right to expect a professional presentation, not a self-conscious display full of misguided modesty and excuses.

From that moment we all stepped up to the mark and dropped our nerves for the sakes of our clients.

She had driven a home truth well and truly home.

That lesson has served me well over the years.

Step up to the mark and give them your best – It is not about you – it is about them.

And relating the story to the nervous candidates at the Summer School gave a few more students some food for thought – and it helped them reflect on their own approach to ‘exam nerves’.

Hey, I met an old friend today. This ‘meeting people from the past thing’ is getting to be quite a habit. I trained with her, in the early eighties, to teach exercise to music. We were together for about a year until we became fully-fledged aerobics teachers.

She looks just the same as when I last saw her years ago – the result of a healthy lifestyle I suspect. She teaches body balance and yoga classes and works for the NHS training the trainers who deliver the “stop smoking’ programs we see advertised on TV.

We had ‘the traditional’ natter about our children. It’s quite amazing how quickly the years go by and it’s lovely to hear what they’re all doing now. Then we got to talking about what we’ve been up to in the intervening years. She’s developed her fitness repertoire and still has a passion for teaching and loves the training aspect of her work with the NHS.

I told her about my work in school and the coaching, NLP and Clean Language approaches I’ve been exploring in the context of the classroom – and with my adult coaching clients.

I explained how my aerobic teaching had stopped when I’d become ill with post viral syndrome in 1996. As I told her about the illness and my recovery from it, I found myself reflecting again on the wonderful progress I’ve made.

Lisa thought the story of my recovery would be a help to others (my doctor did tell me at the time to write it all down because it might be a help to others – but I was too busy recovering at the time and then – well life took off!)

Anyway if you’re interested I’ll put it all down here on the blog and if it’s useful to anyone I’ll be glad.