Sue's Story

An authentic and enquiring voice for every child and adult in our learning community.

Personal journey and beliefs.
I am lucky enough to have had an interesting and varied career, teaching across the 3 to 18 age range, in many different types of schools, in different countries and including a spell in advisory work.

I am passionate about the benefits of a truly balanced, ‘child-focussed’ approach to education where children can develop a life-long love of learning, a positive self-image and a sense of their place, voice and value in community (whatever that community may be), and where teaching is a continuing and enjoyable learning experience for the adults.

I feel that schools are very powerful organisations and have always been mindful of the necessity to work with integrity and respect. My guiding principles are concerned with democracy, social justice and honesty.

Context of the school.
Tuckswood Community First School has 110 children on roll, with seven teaching staff (including the head and a job share), five Learning Support Assistants and a Nurture Worker. The school serves an area of established Local Authority housing. It is an area of socio-economic deprivation with a high percentage of Free School Meals and children on the SEN Register. The school is physically and socially at the heart of the community, the children delightful, well behaved and engaging and the parents extremely supportive.

It was not always so!! We have spent nearly 9 years working towards the shared vision of Tuckswood as a community of enquiry – a fascinating journey.

We began with a close look at our principles and beliefs about education, thus formulating of such vital documents as our Value Statement, Positive Behaviour Policy, Spiritual Development Policy, Learning and Teaching Policy and, crucially, our attitude and approach to policy writing and school documentation – the steps we took and continue to take to try to make sure that we ‘live’ the words written in the documents and keep the children at the centre of our thinking.
I became head of Tuckswood nine years ago. The school had undergone a long ‘crisis’ period, which had resulted in staff feeling undermined and children having inappropriate amounts of power but very little self-esteem or sense of community.

Alongside a huge amount of dialogue concerning values, beliefs and policy development, we needed to take action to show the children a different way of being. Some of the Year 3 children had lived with the distressing atmosphere that had prevailed for all their school life – ‘the Year 3 from Hell’! They were not only non-compliant but also some dangerous behaviour prevailed. All members of staff worked together to identify a group from the Year 2’s and 3’s whose behaviour was particularly worrying for themselves and others. We identified 18 children, all of whom were boys. My deputy head and I worked with this group of children on activities which would lift the conventional work pressure from them - this was obviously not working for them - but which would be rigorous in our expectations and requirements of their total involvement. Motivation to learn and a positive view of themselves as learners – important for all children - were paramount for this group of children.

How we did it
We used activities such as Philosophy for Children (I came from a background of teaching Philosophy for Children to young children), poetry and drama work, ‘soft war’ and ‘co-operative games’. These sessions were exciting but really challenging for us and were full of tensions. However, our success criteria were finely tuned and shared with the children and with all, and we felt we were successful. We knew that we could not ‘solve the problems of the universe’ and were very realistic about what we could achieve for these children – realism as well as high expectations is important for our own well being. The children became more involved in their work, developed at least some sense of belonging to the school community, including the responsibilities that go along with that, and had a more positive self-image.

Nothing happens in a vacuum and the success and excitement of learning and teaching that happened in this group had a huge impact on the work in the rest of the school. There was a great interest in the teaching of ‘Philosophy for Children’ and in providing the sorts of educational activities that would serve the children’s needs as life-long learners and reflective, critical and creative thinkers. Having established our principles about learning and teaching very early on, looking for the practical processes, activities and teaching styles that would help us fulfil those principles became a vital part of our work.

At the very heart of our development work in those first few years was some high quality professional development. We worked hard, exploring our own questioning, our teaching & learning styles, positive behaviour strategies, children’s secular spiritual development and Personal, Social, Moral & Health Education. All staff members (teaching and non-teaching) were fully involved in this; they were also involved in training for the teaching of Philosophy for Children. It is our approach to professional development, and strong adherence to our Value Statement, which has enabled us to sustain and continue to develop our work.

Professional development is most powerful when shared at first hand by all or the majority of the staff and time given for reflection, exploration and classroom research. All staff have had high quality training the neuro-scientific research concerning how the brain works and how learning happens most effectively; we have all had training in ‘Inquiry Curriculum’ and ‘Mantle of the Expert’ contextual drama; similarly, all staff have had training in the teaching of literacy, numeracy and ICT. We read and discuss any relevant articles and give a lot of time to professional debate and dialogue to improve our practice. Over the years we have developed a strong whole school approach to learning and teaching and we share not only an understanding of our principles, beliefs and moral purpose about education, but also about how to ‘live’ our vision.

We feel strongly that our children need a true balance of basic skill teaching, expressive arts work and an infusion approach to the teaching of metacognition and thinking skills. Any new initiative, arising from external sources or from within the school, is evaluated against these important questions:

• What difference will this make to the children?

• What will this look like in the classroom/school?

• How will it link into our values and our ‘vision’ for the school?

We have always involved the children in the life of school; it is, after all, their community. The development of the Tuckswood Community School and Class Councils and committees enabled them to take on a more active & formalised role in decision making. In the early days it became evident that the Philosophy for Children approach had enabled the children to discuss issues brought forward to Council in a very mature fashion, being able to see all sides of an argument and to agree and disagree with each other amicably, but they found it hard to reach any decisions. This was easily solved by giving them decision making strategies such as the De Bono ‘PMI.’ format. The Council is now a very strong part of our Community of Enquiry and is inclusive of all at Tuckswood.
During the eight years of our work there have been important periods of consolidating of our learning, where we’ve worked to evaluate methods and processes and put evidence based practice in place. Equally, there have been times when we have felt it has been right to explore new avenues to enhance the learning both of ourselves and the children. As the leader of this process, I feel that the timing of these periods of reflection and intervention is crucial. However, much of this is about trusting one’s instincts and listening carefully to people; there is no magic formula to tell us when to act and when to ‘step back’.

The original sharing and forming of the values and vision was really important and, in terms of sustaining and refreshing the Community of Enquiry, it has been vital not to lose sight of it. We are not afraid to integrate new ideas in the interests of developing our community. We know that learning is not linear – it is sometimes ‘messy’ and sometimes mistakes have to be made. But the children’s education is never put at risk. Our re-designed curriculum complies with the Foundation Stage and Curriculum 2000, is research based and fully in tune with our values and beliefs. We have found that it is entirely possible to be innovative within this context.

Sue Eagle
Headteacher, Tuckswood Community First School, Norwich