Advice Given to Teachers at the Start of Term – Part 1
It’s September and alongside the rush of students returning to schools across the country, there was also another group of individuals sitting there on a Sunday night nervous about what was coming. I am of course talking about their teachers.
For many, this new academic year signalled the start of a new chapter in their careers: starting new schools, new positions or simply another new school year. Accompanying this pensive energy for some, is an anxiety about the upcoming challenges and the impending rush of high expectations.
After the first week back, several teachers reached out for advice and support on a range of topics. Here in this first of three blogs linked to the start of a new academic year, I have included some of the advice which I gave to support one individual with dealing with the hangover from a bad experience in a previous school.
The hangover from a bad experience in a previous school.
Context:
This teacher had been in a school for a few years previously, in this setting they had been observed and given some negative feedback. Following this they had put them on a performance improvement plan, yet they had not received any additional training or support to aid them in their development. The teacher then made the decision to leave after Easter, feeling unsupported and incompetent at their job. They started at a new school in the Summer term, and with the start of the new academic year they were feeling unsure of their capabilities.
The Advice:
The advice which I gave was to work on reframing their internal beliefs which arose from their previous experience as this would help them to deal with the emotional response they are having to the time of year and the anticipation of upcoming observations.
Firstly, knowledge is key. From understanding their response and where it comes from, they will be in a place to adjust their preconceptions going forwards.
From their brief summary of the situation leading up to this moment, I suspected that they place a lot of value on two forms of recognition; primarily words of affirmation, with a secondary value placed on action and follow through.
I believe that this meant that they take verbal and written feedback to heart, internalising this very quickly through their self-evaluation systems and therefore impacts their measure of self-esteem, and as such the feedback immediately becomes a measure of their ‘real-self’. Human beings are naturally wired to hold greater weight to negative feedback than positive. This is a natural response, and a result of our evolution as it was vital in prehistoric times to not repeat mistakes for the sake of our survival and the success of both ourselves and our tribes.
So, this person has formed a judgement of themselves based on the negative feedback which they received. ‘Mistakes’ were pointed out to them, and this was internalised as a potential failure point for themselves and their tribe, the school. They formed a belief that they were a ‘weak link’ and letting down their students and the school, which they placed a high value on.
This was then re-affirmed by the lack of time and effort spent on them, with the lack of implementing a support plan which was promised. This lack of follow up re-affirmed the newly formed belief that they were a ‘weak link’ and not worth the time and effort in the eyes of the tribe, the school.
This repeated cycle of negative self-assessment and perceived lack of worth then cemented a low measure of self-esteem in their mind.
It was important to let this individual know that their thoughts and feelings here are (a) completely valid, (b) justified, and (c) completely okay to have. Therefore, it was important that they do not feel bad or guilty for feeling this way, even some time after it happened and in a new setting.
Secondly, it was important to start breaking down this internal belief which they formed through their personal experience and perception of the events surrounding the formation of this internal belief.
As a result, we worked through understanding that we as individuals all form a personal narrative for every situation based on our prior experiences. This is an important mechanism, as it allows us to (a) quickly read situations for self-preservation, and (b) in order to understand what is happening to us and why.
How do we achieve this? We take our observations and experiences for every situation and compare these to all our previous experiences. This is the same mechanism we use to learn effectively; we all know that we learn things quicker which are closely linked to other things we already know. This mechanism allows us to quickly file it away with similar experiences, which inadvertently adds credence and weight to the perceptions linked to these.
Why does this happen? Our brains are incredibly energy consuming systems, and as such it is advantageous to find shortcuts, therefore this mechanism is just our brains trying to save energy and basically being lazy. This is also why it is so easy to fall into old habits, as our brains require less energy to utilise regularly used neural pathways as opposed to breaking this cycle and having to actively think about an alternative action.
Using this mechanism therefore, our brains don’t need to waste resources making new memories and neural pathways, it just ‘borrows’ old ones and effectively says “that’ll do”. In the process, the borrowed pieces become embedded in more ‘schema’ and therefore get cemented in place. The more commonly used neural pathways, or intertwined beliefs, therefore become the most embedded and form the basis of our internal perceptions of ourselves.
For example, if we grew up getting told we were terrible at maths, and we were randomly given a maths test last week and scored poorly, we would file that away alongside the previous feedback which we were told, and this would therefore reaffirm our internal belief that we are terrible at maths. But if we were always told we were great at it, and did the same test and scored poorly, it wouldn’t match up and we would just rationalise that this was like the previous times where we didn’t revise for other tests and did poorly. Instead, we would hold the belief that if we had revised, we would have done well, because we always used to be good at it.
Thirdly, it was important to explore how there would also have been another side to the story. This would be a result of the experiences of the other people involved and the setting within which the events took place. In this instance, there could have been many reasons behind the perceptions of those who made the observations and their resulting judgement leading to the negative feedback. There could also have been a range of reasons as to why the support which was promised was not implement: lack of resources, time, expertise, etc.
Another, large, element which underpins the entirety of this situation is that the person, or people, who provided the negative feedback, probably did not receive any (a) training to give feedback effectively, (b) training to communicate feedback and guide the support necessary for colleagues, and (c) have the capacity provide the support at all.
The truth of the matter is that the training provided to those who reach positions of leadership are often lacking the training necessary to lead people. Often, if they receive any on-the-job training, it will entail the managing of tasks, their time, and the resources at their disposal. This training neglects the human side of leadership, such as feedback and helping to support the growth and development of those in their charge.
All three of these aspects, when put together is a really tough one to work through and move forwards. At this point it was necessary to point out that they should make sure they weren’t being too hard on themselves and beating themselves up for feeling the way they were.
The Action:
As a result of this, I felt it important to provide them with an action which they could take towards dealing with how they were feeling. This took the form of a personal reflection activity which would help to interrogate their internal beliefs against the reality of the situation they experienced and their current reality.
By working their way through these questions, they should find that there will be a disconnect between the logical answers to these questions and the emotional responses they are having to their current situation.
The reflective task itself works best when they write out both their instinctive and emotional response as well as their logical responses. By putting words to the emotional responses and starting to process them slowly through the rational parts of the brain, they can then start to bring the two together.
The Rationale:
This works because the emotional responses come from a part of the brain which is incapable of language. This is why in the heat of an emotional response we often struggle to verbalise how we are feeling and why we are feeling that way. Then after the fact, why upon reflection, we often feel better when we talk through the things which made us feel emotional.
Writing down answers to the questions posed above is a more private and personal mechanism which is equally as powerful as talking them through with someone else.
This is why journaling is becoming a bigger thing again. In such a fast-paced world, we often struggle to find time to (a) think about what is happening to us in the work environment, and (b) sit and talk through things that have happened to us. Couple this with the pressure of displaying a positive reflection of our lives to the world, the act of sitting and writing how we are feeling about what has happened to us, only for ourselves, is such a powerful tool.
When we ignore our experiences and our feelings surrounding them, or avoid talking about them, we don’t let our rational and logical selves align and process the events. Therefore, we bottle the emotional response which occurred at the time and tie it to the poignant triggers of the event itself. So, the emotional response therefore comes up again the next time something reminds us of those thoughts…i.e. something associated with our current settings.
Christopher Waters
Founder of LAMDA Solutions