Children’s Friendships in the Primary School Context
[00:00:00] [music playing] Hello, and welcome to Children’s Friendships Matter. A podcast about children’s friendships post-COVID 19. In this episode Dr Caron Carter talks to Deputy Head Teacher Richard Owen. This episode delves into some of the friendship issues that emerge for children, teachers, and parents today. Why are friendships so important during primary school education, how do schools support children’s friendships, how is play integral to children’s friendships, why is emotional regulation important for children’s friendships, and how has COVID 19 impacted upon children’s friendships.
[00:01:07] So I’m here at Monteney Primary School with Richard Owen.
Richard Owen: [00:01:08] Hello.
[00:01:10] So welcome to the podcast.
Richard Owen: [00:01:12] Thank you very much, thanks for coming.
[00:01:13] I think listeners are always really interested in hearing a little bit more about guest speakers, so could you tell us a little bit about your background, your journey in to teaching, and your role?
Richard Owen: [00:01:26] I was born in Sheffield; I was born in Stannington in Sheffield and grew up around Stannington and Rivelin. I loved primary school, absolutely loved primary school, and I always had a desire to be a teacher, but I just didn’t realise it until I was about 22. So I kind of did lots of other things after secondary school and I went to college and did things with art, things with photography and music and then my dad said to me ‘You need to get a job’, so I went in to teaching, into primary school teaching at 22. I qualified at 25, and then I got the job here at Monteney and I’ve been here ever since. So, I started in Y2, and I initially thought I was going to be a KS2 teacher and that’s what I was set on.
[00:02:10] I got the job in Y2 and loved it and I spent most of my career in KS1, absolutely love working with the younger children. I love working with all of the children, but it really suited me, working with the younger children. I started as the music lead in school because I had a bit of a musical background and I had been in bands when I was younger. We were rubbish. A few years after that I became the maths lead, so part of a leadership team. A few years after that I became the assistant principal and then in 2015, I became the deputy principal, soon to be changed to deputy head; a change in the titles.
[00:02:51] So I lead on inclusion and safeguarding, behaviour and work across our trust of schools as well delivering things like Team Teach and just supporting teachers, supporting staff in de-escalating behaviour situations, working on inclusion to make sure that children are getting what they need.
[00:03:12] Just when you were talking then, obviously this podcast is focusing around children’s friendships and it made me think when you were talking then about relationships and your role probably, and I might be putting words in your mouth here so correct me if I’m wrong, but there would be an element of your role that will be about developing relationships with staff and that as well as the children.
Richard Owen: [00:03:37] Absolutely, yes, you hit the nail right on the head. I think the key thing about schools, primary schools, any form of education – in fact society as a whole, is all about relationships and positive relationships. Talking about the staff just briefly, I think that our staff team, we have a wonderful team here and that’s because we place a lot of emphasis on it being team [00:04:02] You’ve gone around our school, and you get that feel of our staff team. You’ve been in our staff room as well and you can see that it’s really important that our staff come together to be together so they can get things off their chest, they can talk, but they can develop those relationships with each other, so that when things do get a bit challenging, as they will do in schools, that they feel that there is someone there to support them. So that team ethos kind of runs all through school.
[00:04:31] More importantly though the relationship with children is so important. Relationship with families as a whole, with parents as well. I think sometimes, and we can touch on this a little bit later, but the relationship with parents is something that you need to get right, because that really, really has an impact on how well the children do in school. Relationships with the children – we develop those straight away. So as soon as the children come in in the morning there’s somebody on the gate to greet them. We try to know their name as well so they feel included.
[00:05:04] I always think back to when I was a secondary school and something that still sticks with me is my secondary school was large, over 1000 children, and I was in Y8 at the time and the head teacher knew my name. I was walking down the stairs and he said ‘Morning Richard!’, and I thought ‘How does he know my name?’, because I wasn’t – I didn’t stand out, I wasn’t in trouble, I wasn’t a high flyer but he knew my name and that still sticks with me now and it gave me that sense of belonging and that sense of yeah, I am included in this, they do know who I am! And I think that’s key. We need to know the children; we need to know who they are and what makes them tick. And those relationships are just absolutely key.
[00:05:56] When you come into the school you can feel the welcoming feel. It’s just there. There’s a presence. And like you say, when we’ve looked around we’ve gone in the staff room and you can tell there’s that sense of wellbeing or considering the wellbeing of staff and I think that’s so important in terms of role-modelling for children, isn’t it. That we’re not just thinking about the children. We’re thinking about the bigger picture and the families and the community and so on. It’s so important.
Richard Owen: [00:06:24] That is really, really important. The role modelling of emotional regulation. That is something that we are keen to develop and something that we place a huge emphasis on. The wellbeing of staff, I think that’s paramount at the moment as well. With the recruitment crisis and the retention crisis we need to make sure that we are looking after our staff. We’ve got a wellbeing committee at school at the moment. We have access to listening services where staff can book in to talk to somebody and listen and they can kind of get things off of their chest. We kind of pride ourselves in our door is always open as well. So, we are all in it together.
[00:07:22] And just going back to what I was saying about the parents too. I think that’s the same for parents. The door’s always open. We’re always open to speak to parents, open to help parents, the door is always open for the children as well. Children are the most important people in school and so that is why we need to make sure that they see that everybody in school is there to help them. We are all the same in that regard.
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[00:08:00] Just thinking about, again, going back to children’s friendships. In this school you’ve kind of got nursery to Y6, so what age phase would that be? How old would your youngest and oldest children be?
Richard Owen: [00:08:18] So the youngest children are from 3 in nursery, and the oldest children are 11. So, you can see that there’s a wide range of interests that the children will have. Having said that, there are things that the children do at 3, you will see on the yard, because we’ve got our imagination station where there is lots of roleplay, the Y6’s will engage in the same play that the 3-year-olds do as well, which is really, really interesting. And that is something that we need to promote more and more. Just the other week there were two Y6 lads who had gone to the imagination station. They didn’t think that anybody was watching them and they dressed up in these coats and they were parading around and they were having the time of their life and it was so good to see. It was absolutely brilliant to see.
[00:09:04] We’ve been and looked at playtimes today, and you will see how relaxed the children felt at playtimes, how they were engaging with one another. They were playing. They were smiling. And I think that’s one of the key things that school does. It encourages that positive play.
[00:09:23] Now the other way around, you wouldn’t want 3 year olds doing the interests that the 11 year olds have, so we really lose out, I think, when we move away from the foundation stage and that approach.
[00:09:36] I’m really glad that you’ve mentioned this Richard, because play is so integral to children’s friendships and children’s wellbeing. I was reading something the other day from Blatchford and Baines and they’ve done some research on the playground, when we’re talking about playtimes, and they’ve been looking at a decline of playtime and they’ve looked at survey data over a number of years, like a kind of longitudinal study and what they were finding is that playtimes are being reduced, the amount of time that’s available for playtime. And I was quite shocked actually, because I was thinking us as adults, we get breaks through the day and there is legislation around people have to have breaks at certain times but actually there’s no legislation that says children have to have playtimes.
[00:10:27] So if a school said there’s going to be no morning playtime and no afternoon playtime that could happen, in theory. There have been, in some schools, a move to reducing the playtime because there is such a lot of the curriculum to get through and that made me think about children’s opportunities for developing their friendships and most of the friendship development, particularly once children reach compulsory school age at 5, there is less opportunities to develop those friendships or to have free play to play the games and the things that you want to do and explore with your friends. So I thought actually therefore from 5, if there’s going to be that reduction in play I just wondered what your thoughts were around that?
Richard Owen: [00:11:17] It’s interesting, I’ve got a few thoughts about that. The reduction in playtimes: we have reduced the amount of time that the children have to play but that’s based on our data in school. Breaktimes in the morning, the children have 15 minutes at 10.15 to 10.30. Just going back to your point as well about schools not having to give breaktimes. It’s not in school’s best interests to do that at all. Like you say, we all need a break, we all need to let of steam, and that’s the children’s opportunity to do that.
[00:11:50] So they have morning break and at lunchtimes they used to have an hour, but we have found that there were more and more behaviour incidents in the last 15 minutes of lunchtime because the children had been out there for quite a while and they have been spending a bit too much time and things, they’ve started to fall out with their friends, and so we reduced that so that the children have 50 minutes now. What happens is that they have 45 minutes out there, and then for the last five minutes the teaching staff go out on to the yard.
[00:12:24] So if there are any issues what they can do is help to regulate the children, they can help to sort out any of the issues, they can communicate with the midday staff. So anything that happens on the yard doesn’t come back in to the classroom, so that the children are ready to learn.
[00:12:38] I think it’s also about the quality of the play as well. No matter how long they have, they could have two hours. If the quality of the play isn’t very good then those interactions aren’t going to be built and so you need to make sure that you’re meeting the children’s needs, you’re doing the things that they’re interested in, you’re putting things out there that the children are interested in and so you could use pupil voice for that, your school council, to make sure that you’re doing what the children need.
[00:13:06] In terms of playtime and opportunities for that, I think that play and social interaction and talk and communication is one of the most important things that we do as a primary school and I think that there’s been a move away from that a little bit, in terms of what’s happening in the classrooms. So you will see how happy and relaxed the children were at playtime earlier. We’ve seen that there’s been a rise in anxiety of children ending playtime and coming in to school. Those transitions from play to coming in to do their traditional learning in school – because I think that playtime is learning too and really important learning. We have a lot of anxiety around that and that is where you have your behaviour issues. Not on the yard, not at playtimes. We see fewer and fewer of those. There’s the odd thing from time-to-time but less than before.
[00:14:28
[00:15:16] I was kind of thinking when you were saying about the children are really relaxed outside and then there are some of those issues when you transition. I just wonder whether some of these issues are because children haven’t had as much opportunity to engage with their peers. We had this unprecedented period where children couldn’t be with their peers, they were socially isolated, and now they’ve come back and for some children there’s probably two years where they’ve got a gap and they haven’t had those opportunities and maybe this is part of children telling us that they need more of this, you know.
Richard Owen: [00:16:00] I absolutely agree. I think when we first went in o lockdown and it was restricted opening in schools then the first period of that I think was quite positive actually because there was a period of time where everyone was like we’re all in this together, we can all do it! And people were making those connections on Zoom and it was great, and it was interesting, and it was something new. Yeah, absolutely, it was a novelty. But I think that as that went on it became something that people were over-reliant on. Even now, when I do meetings, most of the meetings with external professionals are via Zoom. I must prefer meetings when they’re face-to-face. I think that we get so much more out of the meetings, they’re more productive, and that’s what happened during lockdown. Children didn’t have time to get together, they didn’t have time to come to school and play and they didn’t have time to just be out and play with one another. They didn’t have time to go to parks. All of the parks were shut down. I remember all the swings being taken down.
[00:17:09] So a lot of children, we find that they struggle with their core strength, they struggle with their movement, because they’ve not had those opportunities to develop that by swinging, by holding things, by climbing, because they didn’t do that. Because they had to be indoors. Maybe they’ve missed out on those kinds of experiences. Maybe that’s something that they need to do to emotionally regulate and they’ve missed out on it. I think the increase in screen time as well is a huge limiting factor in children’s relationships.
[00:17:59] If somebody’s on a screen or you’re playing a game on a screen, or you’re learning on a screen you don’t get those social cues, you don’t get those interactions, you don’t read body language, you don’t read facial expressions. And that is absolutely key. That is almost a fundamental thing. If you can’t speak a language, you can’t write a language or read a language – if you go to a foreign country you can communicate through body language, can’t you, through facial expressions, without being able to speak the language. I think that’s something that some of our children are missing. They don’t get those social cues; they don’t know when somebody’s feeling like something. They don’t empathise with other children. With it being online as well everything’s so instant. The children haven’t learned to be patient either. And why would you need to be when you’ve got the internet and you can have anything you want as soon as you want it. So those interactions and the friendships, you do need to have an element of patients and taking turns, but they don’t do it like that – because why would they need to? Everything’s on demand. They can have what they want when they want it. It’s at their fingertips, if they’ve got a screen in front of them. Whereas if they’ve got their friends in front of them that’s a bit more challenging. It’s a bit difficult, isn’t it, because you’ve got to read somebody’s body language and you’ve got to listen to them, you’ve got to cooperate.
[00:19:28]
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[00:19:42] The point you made there about the importance of those social interactions and just recently I’ve written a chapter that talks about parent’s perceptions of their children’s friendships during COVID and during the lockdown and return to school. Interestingly one of the parents in that study talked about they felt they could support children with the academic learning, but they said what they found challenging was plugging the gap socially. This particular parent had two children. So, there was a sibling relationship, but they were saying it’s not quite the same as your friendships in school so I just kind of wondered what you thought in relation to that, if that’s something that you notice?
Richard Owen: [00:20:30] You can’t replicate school at home in terms of the social environment. There are things you can access on screen or parents can have an idea of how to teach children to read. We encourage parents to do that anyway. They are helping us to teach their children to read by reading with them at night times, or they might have homework to do over the weekends. What they can’t do is have 400 children over at their house so they have the social interactions and that is so, so, so important for schools.
[00:21:05]
[00:21:35] When children are at home, by and large, it depends how many children you’ve got, they are the centre of your attention so what they need they get straight away. When they’re at school they’re in a class of 30, so their needs cannot necessarily be met straight away. So again it goes back to those kind of characteristics of being a well-rounded individual and sometimes you have to wait your turn for things.
[00:22:25] We’re finding now that children can’t do that, and the children that do have challenging behaviours are because they can’t have what they want straight away. Or they can’t do what they want, or what’s on their agenda. That’s where we have those struggles at the moment.
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[00:22:43] So just coming back to the sort of focus of friendships and you’ve said your school ranges from 3-11 years; I just wanted to ask you what benefits do you feel children get from having friends in school?
Richard Owen: [00:23:00] It helps develop them. They have shared interests; they can learn new interests. So children learn from one another. I know I’m a teacher in school but the children learn so much from one another in terms of the things that they do in the classroom, the things that they do out of the classroom. Lots of children are exposed to other kinds of interests through other children as well, so it could be that they join a football team, or they join a choir group or a dance activity out of school. Because of them being exposed to that, because other children have experienced that. So that’s what they get from friendships. It also helps with their self-esteem. Feeling included and feeling part of something – a bit like Team Monteney with our staff, that helps children’s self-esteem and their sense of wellbeing.
[00:23:49] So being isolated in COVID, that had a detrimental affect to that. That sense of community is something that children thrive on and they need to be in school. I often say that children come to school to learn to read and write, to do maths. But also just to be around one another and just how to interact with one another. It’s so important that children have friends.
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[00:24:20] I’m really interested in the sort of pastoral provision that you have in school, and how you support children’s friendships and wellbeing. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Richard Owen: [00:24:30] Since I started here a long, long time ago, we have always had a pastoral team. So, it’s consisted of a learning mentor, or senior learning mentor, and pupil support assistants. Currently we have a senior learning mentor and two pupil support assistants. We also have play workers, and those are the members of staff who support play at breaktimes. They also support children that might need a more play-based curriculum during learning time as well. They might also listen to children read as well but our pastoral team are vastly important to our school. If we didn’t have a pastoral team we would really, really struggle.
It’s about engaging with our community as well. So it’s engaging with parents, and so making sure that our pastoral team are available for parents to talk to if they’ve got any concerns and any worries. Having said that though we do have a team that is dedicated to that but the wider ethos of school – we’re all part of the pastoral team in a sense, in that we’re all trained to support children’s learning through emotional regulation. We all use the zones of emotional regulation to help children articulate their feelings, but also to help find out what they need to do to make themselves feel a bit better, if they do have a big feeling. So if they’re angry or frustrated or feeling impatient.
[00:25:53] So we kind of role model that as well for children. We find a lot of the times we need to teach down regulating activities rather than up regulating activities.
[00:26:04] It’s really interesting that you mention this sort of emotional regulation. I guess really that’s got to be in place then for children to be able to interact with others and you mentioned – did you say emotional regulation zones? Could you tell us about what that is.
Richard Owen: [00:26:15] So that’s an approach used by lots and lots of different schools. It’s an approach that was first – I think it came from America. So, the zones of emotional regulation are broken down in to four zones. There is the blue zone, green zone, yellow zone and there is the red zone. They are displayed in like a ladder. So, the blue zone is at the bottom; that’s when you might be feeling tired or slow or feeling a little bit sad about things. The green zone; that’s when everything’s okay and you’re ready, feeling good, feeling positive. The yellow zone is when you might be feeling a little bit anxious, a little bit wiggly, a little bit excited, and the red zone is when you feel mad and angry. You might be shouting and you’re losing control.
[00:27:02] So it helps our children to articulate how they’re feeling, because not only is it in words and the visuals that we’ve got, but there is also visuals from in print as well, so it helps the children to say yes, I feel yellow/red/green. Linked to that we have things called the toolkit. So if you are feeling a certain way what are you going to do to regulate your emotions? We say that there is no wrong zone to be in; so sometimes you do need to feel in the blue zone, for example you need to feel sleepy, but when you’re going to bed. So you need to be in the blue zone, so that is a good zone to be in at bed time. The green zone, I think that there’s a focus on ‘Oh, I’ve always got to be in the green zone all the time’. Nobody is in the green zone all the time. Nobody feels okay all the time. Just this morning, I’m sure that we’ve all felt a range of emotions, but because we’re adults we’re able to regulate our emotions and we have developed techniques to help us regulate. Even when we’re in the yellow zone that’s okay. Christmas morning you want to feel excited. It’s fine to be in the yellow zone. The red zone? You can feel angry at times. There are things that you do need to feel passionate and angry about. It’s what you do when you’re feeling like that, and how to regulate your emotions.
[00:28:21] So there are lots and lots of things you will see in our corridors where you can push against a wall. That’s for when you’ve got the big red and yellow feelings. You will see there’s like computer keyboards for children to type their names in on the wall as well. They can do kind of jumping jacks – that’s when you’re feeling a bit blue. You might do a bit of exercise. Just this morning there was one lad in Y4 and his mum had a word with me and said he struggled to get up this morning. Not feeling great. So, I’ve taken him for a run around the yard and done a bit of exercise, a bit of activity with him – and you could see he was feeling a lot more positive, a lot more woken up. So just those kinds of subtle things that we need to kind of change to help children emotionally regulate.
[00:29:07] We all do it. We all do. But we need to be a bit more explicit with the children of ‘I am doing this. I am feeling like this, so I am doing this’ and we do it all the time. It’s not like a standalone lesson. We are always using the zones of emotional regulation. We are always role modelling how to regulate. We are always being role models with our body language. So open body language, our facial expressions. Making sure that our facial expressions are calm, and we talk about, it’s almost not a blank expression, but we don’t judge behaviour. And it’s the smiling eyes and it’s not with our hands in our pockets or hands behind our back. You can see our hands. We’ve got an open body language.
[00:29:53] Myself, I always make sure that I’m really, really aware of my body language. I’m quite tall, I’m 6ft 7 and so I work with lots of children that are quite small and not quite 6ft 7. Soi if I am stood next to a child and I’m talking to them they’re looking up at me and it’s uncomfortable for them. So, I make sure that especially with children that are in a high level of distress, I do not go close to them because that is going to make it a lot worse for them. I talk calmly from a distance that makes them feel a lot more comfortable. So it’s just about being aware of yourself in space as well, to help those children emotionally regulate.
[00:30:30] That’s amazing. It really shows how you tune in to children and listen to them and think about what they need, and the example of somebody coming in and feeling a bit tired and needing to do a little bit of exercise. I think that is just amazing. We know of the pressures that schools are under, but actually still to be able to make that time to sort of – you know, you know children are going to struggle if they’ve come into class and they’re going straight in to learning, but to make that time to turn in to children and just give them what they need at that moment. And I think that it’s really fabulous as well to sort of say it’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be feeling blue. And I think sometimes in society there is that everybody has to be green all of the time and it’s unrealistic isn’t it, And I think that the way that you respond to children, I’m sure – I could imagine that children could support one another in the way that you role model supporting them.
[00:31:27] So if your friend’s feeling a bit anxious today that you can kind of tune in to them as well and sort of say don’t worry, it’s going to be fine, or let’s do this to help you. And again that role modelling, which I think probably helps with friendships.
Richard Owen: [00:31:40] Yeah, and that links into our values as well. So, we have a list of values at Monteney, and just this last week I did an assembly on empathy. So, we have talked about when children or friends might be struggling, and trying to think ‘Well it must be difficult for them at this point in time’. We might not have experienced that ourselves but we can see it’s difficult for them and we can see that they might be feeling in that zone, so how do we respond to them? And making sure that children treat each other with dignity and respect. I think that’s really important. Us role modelling that in schools so that children can see that.
[00:32:19] Gone are the days where you would be shouting at children because if you shout at children they are just going to get angry and they are just going to shout back, or they’re going to get less open to talking about things with you.
[00:32:32] But going back to the checking in with children; one of the great things about our office team as well is sometimes children are late, and for me I hate being late for anything. I would rather be an hour early than two minutes late. If I’m walking into something and it’s already started and I have to walk in and go ‘Excuse me, sorry’ and trying to find my seat, I feel so self-conscious and then I’m going into the yellow zone because I’m feeling anxious and I’m not comfortable.
[00:32:59] I’ve not had time to select my seat, because I like to sit with nobody behind me. I like to be able to see everything. So, it’s about me knowing myself and so that’s why I like to be early. Some children don’t have that option because they don’t choose or their parents bring them to school. So, if they’re late and they have to walk into class late the last thing they want when they come through the main doors is the office team going ‘Why are you late?’ ‘Not late again’, so our office team are so positive. They are so welcoming, they are so friendly with children, and they don’t accuse children of being late. It’s brilliant to see you. It’s great to see you this morning. There is a number of children that sometimes are late with additional needs because they might have struggled to get ready in the morning, and they love our office team. They give them a hug. The children actually say that they love the office team and that start for them in the morning is absolutely key, and I think that check in and just those tweaks to things really, really can change a child’s day.
[00:34:06] One of the things in the training that we do is a dot on the page. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? You have a big A3 piece of paper, you put a dot right in the middle, and then you ask the people what can you see? And they say ‘The dot’ but obviously there’s the dot that takes up a tiny, tiny bit of the page but you can see a big page as well, so it’s not just looking at what you can see in front of you straight away. A child that’s come in late, you don’t know what kind of morning they’ve had. Are they in the red zone? Are they in the yellow zone? Are they in the blue zone? So, if you are welcoming and friendly with them straight away that helps them to think ‘Oh no, it’s okay, I’m somewhere safe’ so that can help support them.
[00:34:49] It might not. I’ve had a terrible morning, but I know with my own kids, if we’re running late then I’m not at my best, I’m not saying ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s okay, let’s just plod on’. I’m like ‘Come on! Let’s go!’ so I’m hurrying them along and that’s going to cause them stress, it’s going to cause me stress and so I would imagine – because we’re all human, that parents have had something very similar in the morning and the last thing that children want is to be accused or being late.
[00:35:21] So that’s key. A start in the morning that’s positive from our office team is really important to how we set the tone for children’s days.
[00:35:26] And then it’s kind of that feeling of wellbeing when you come in, isn’t it. I was just thinking about that idea of attendance, and the link with – you know if you’ve had a bad morning there might be a tendency to think I’m not going to go because I’m going to get told off when I get there, I will just not go today, whereas actually if you know actually I am late but I’m going to get a nice welcome – better late than never.
[00:36:21] We’ve talked a little bit about COVID and obviously I’m thinking about this cost of living crisis and do you feel now in these new times that there are particular challenges or adaptions that you need to make in terms of supporting children with friendships and wellbeing.
Richard Owen: [00:36:41] Yeah, massively. Massively. So, our pastoral team, we’ve had to deploy those differently. Five, six, seven years ago our pastoral team would be supporting groups of children that might have friendship issues, disagreements, that kind of thing. And we could run a series of interventions for those children over a number of weeks, but as the children that we have in school have far more complex needs, and there aren’t the services externally to support them, our pastoral team are having to be deployed to support those children.
[00:37:22] So the pastoral element of things falls on to class teachers. So a class teacher is having to be almost that pastoral, running interventions kind of thing, but also teaching the curriculum. I think that there are two agendas at the moment. There is the kind of curriculum and this kind of ‘We need to be moving this way, we need to be rapid with what we’re doing’ and then there’s the wellbeing agenda and teachers are in the middle of that at the moment. So, they’ve got people like me saying you need to be doing this, or you need to be doing this as well, and you need to do that as well, and by they way there’s another thing here that we need to be doing’ and it’s just too much. So, we need to make sure that we are focusing on relationships, friendships, and interactions.
[00:38:17] If you try and spread yourself too thin you’re not going to do anything well. It’s going to have a detrimental impact for children. You talk about children’s outcomes and the outcomes that they should be getting is that they know how to function in society as they leave primary school. Yes, it’s challenging times at the moment.
[00:38:34] Yes, that’s really interesting. And interesting that you’re saying about making the adaption, that you’re responding to the situation. So, it kind of draws us to my final question really, and it’s been really interesting talking to you, and I just wondered at this point if you’ve got any, it might be a take home message, or a reflection, or a question, or a thought that you want the listener to take away from this podcast?
Richard Owen: [00:39:06] I think that we need to let children be children and make mistakes and have fun and explore and make sure that our curriculum is irresistible for them. Our children at Monteney, that is one of our key drivers: oracy. Making sure that our children are talking because if they’re good talkers then they can write.
[00:40:23] You can’t write anything down if you can’t talk about it. So at the moment I think that the curriculum, it needs to change. It needs to be fit for purpose. Children change. Generations change. You think about the children in the 50s compared to the children in the 60s. Very different. Compared to the children in the 70s and what they experienced. Very different. Then in to the 80s, and 90s. Every generation, children change. I feel at the moment we’re looking back at something and trying to catch up on something when we should be looking forward. And that’s what we need to be doing. Looking at careers that might be happening in the next 20, 30, 40 years. You look at the things with climate change, and is that something on the agenda, do we need to be looking at that and are there other industries that we need to be thinking about and making sure that children can be educated towards working in that? I think that yeah, looking forward and adapting to the children now and their needs now, and what they’re interested in now with the kind of generation where everything’s on demand and you can get everything instantly. We need to make that our curriculum. More tailored towards the children in that it’s irresistible for them not to be in school and they want to be in school and they want to learn.
[00:41:50] There was something I heard, I was on a podcast a few weeks ago about somebody saying that schools teach children to remember when they should teach them to think. And I think that’s what we need to do. The example I gave the other day, I think as we were walking around, there was a lad that struggles with his learning. He had made some fans. He made a fan out of paper because it’s hot outside at the moment, and he tried – he said ‘Mr Owen, you can buy this for £1’ and I was like ‘Well I haven’t got any money, I’m sorry, I don’t have any money’. ‘Okay, a house point’. Alright, okay, you can have a house point for that. And that’s him, he’s seen that there’s a need. He’s kind of interested in creative things, and that’s his learning. So, he’s learnt about kind of talking to people and compromising with people, which he has compromised there, but then the next day he made a fan out of card, because it was a bit more sturdy, and it was a better one, so he upped the price, two house points. And we went with that learning. And that’s the kind of thing that we need to do.
[00:42:55] Now if I said to him ‘Now write about that’, not a chance. There would be no point to write about that. So yeah, we need to make sure that our curriculum suits the children, but also remember our families too. We need to make sure that families are part of the children’s learning journey, which COVID sadly has stopped that happening as much.
[00:43:19] if I could change anything I would try and involve parents more and more in the school day. I think that would be something to develop further. I think that one of the things at the moment that parents are struggling with is that after lockdown lots of schools have stopped parents coming into school in the mornings, and I can see the reasons why and there has been some reductions in things like separation anxiety but it’s the reduction of separation anxiety in the classroom just moved to outside now. So, I think involving parents more in the children’s education so that they feel part of it.
[00:44:02] We’ve talked about teams. So, the children feeling part of a team, the staff feeling part of a team. I think that parents need to feel part of that team as well.
[00:44:10] That’s so interesting, because that chapter that I was referring to was about parent’s perceptions of their children’s friendships. It came from a study originally where I was just going to interview some staff and also work with some children about their perceptions and as I was doing the interviews parents, members of staff were saying that parents find it hard with this, that or the other’ and I thought actually the voice of parents is missing here.
[00:44:38] So I intentionally did these interviews with parents because I thought how difficult it is for a parent if a child comes home and says I’ve had this challenge with a friend today and your child will tell you, but sometimes you get like part of the story or you get like their perception on something and then you’re trying to support them at home not knowing the full context.
[00:45:01] And then you’ve got the teacher that’s got 30 children and trying to support your child from a distance with things can be quite tricky, can’t it.
Richard Owen: [00:45:12] Absolutely.
[00:45:14] So I just think that it’s really interesting that you are saying about involving parents, and I can really see the benefits of that, particularly to children’s friendships.
Richard Owen: [00:45:23] I think that, because there are some parents that have not seen their children’s classroom. So, they don’t know the learning environment, they don’t know what happens, and quite naturally when you don’t know what’s happening you make up your own narrative about things and I think sometimes that’s what happens. We’re all guilty of that. It’s natural to do those kinds of things. And me myself, having children myself, what you’re doing is you’re sending your most precious thing in the world to somewhere where you don’t know or somewhere where you’ve not seen. Schools are lovely places to be. The staff in school want to be in school because they love working with children. I always think that. You wouldn’t work in a school if you didn’t love working with children. Parents need to remember that but still, if you’re sending your most precious thing in the world to somewhere you don’t know and you don’t know what’s happening and they’re having some disagreements or difficulties, then it’s hard for you to kind of help them. It’s hard for parents to regulate their emotions, it’s hard for them not to feel stressed about things. It’s hard for them not to pass that stress on to the children about it. So, I think that we just need to make sure that we are embracing our community and working with our community. Working with parents. And having our parents, as much as we possibly can, in school.
[00:46:41] And we’re starting to do that now with parents coming in for reading mornings and things like that. I don’t think it can get back to how it was because the world has changed and we need to change with the world, but we need to think of more creative ways to involve our parents so that they know what’s happening with their children in school.
[00:46:55] It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Richard Owen: [00:46:57] I’ve enjoyed it.
[00:47:00] I think that you are an inspirational role model, I really do. When you were talking about feelings and regulating and all of those things, I just thought what a role model you are, so it’s fantastic. Thank you very much.
Richard Owen: [00:47:12] Thank you very much. Thanks.
[00:47:15] [music playing] Thank you for listening to this podcast. For more information on Caron’s research and other related podcasts, please visit https://research.shu.ac.uk/friends This podcast was made possible by a fellowship opportunity funded by Sheffield Hallam University. [music playing]