The day Winnie the Pooh became my hero

I have just returned from a week at Disneyland Paris. A bizarre place of adults dressed in Goofy hats and employees always being happy. Oh, and there are endless queues. Queues that never end. A bit like Alton Towers, but with bigger and longer queues.

One of the things I am impressed with Disney is its attitude towards disability. One of my daughters has Cerebral Palsy. Something, I am quite open and honest about. She is diplegic, so her legs don’t function as do yours or mine. In fact, she can only walk for short periods of time and even then those short bursts of walking are fraught with danger and much destruction as she can’t walk in a straight line. Anyway, Disney helped her by having special access for each ride and allowing her to wait less than others. They even had a dedicated space for her and other disabled children to watch the parades. I cannot fault their attitude. They understood her needs and they helped.

So where is Winnie the Pooh in all of this? Well, one day there was a special parade for Mickey and friends. They drove around in a circle, waving to everyone. My wife, daughters, wheelchair and I waited to see this happen. As usual, the general scrum descended. We made our way to the two metres of a hundred metres strip dedicated to disabled children and waited our turn. A row of characters pranced around before us and talked with the able children and they signed their autograph books and took pictures. We waited and then towards the end some of the characters made it to the allotted space where we were stood.

Princess Jasmine arrived and signed my daughters’s autograph books. Then, Winnie the Pooh appeared on the scene. He was dancing along to the music blaring out of the speakers. He was two metres away signing autographs for children. They were loving it. He was too. We were right at the end of the section allocated for disabled children. A rope separated the two groups of people. One child, pushed on by his mother, was trying to get Winnie’s (I’ll shorten his name for ease) attention. He was pushing and shoving and elbowing his way. Behind him was his mother egging him on. The mother was helping him get under the rope and his was edging his way across to the disabled side near my daughter in her wheelchair. Thrust at the front of him was his autograph book and behind him his mother. We, as family, ignored what was happening. Winnie didn’t. He interacted with everyone apart from the pushing boy.

The boy started to push his autograph into my daughter’s face, covering her from sight. The boy’s mother watching and not doing anything about it; her inaction a sign of her acceptance of this behaviour. My daughter, being her usual self, didn’t mention a thing. More shoving and pushing ensued.  Had my daughter not been in a robust wheelchair, she would clearly have been pushed aside or on to the floor by this action. Everything that my daughter did, the boy pushed himself before her.

Winnie the Pooh then stopped. He made a clear point. He told the boy to go back to the space allocated to abled bodied children – all ninety-eight metres of it. Then, gently Winnie held the boy’s hand, which had been shoved into my daughter’s general area, and pushed him away and said no. Winnie then kneeled down to her level and cuddled her.

This all happened in a short space of time. So, quickly, my wife and I had little time to react or say something, but the whole experience had a bit of a profound experience on me. I am not angry with the boy, or even the mother, but proud and impressed with what one man in a furry suit did. There in that suit was a fantastic human being. I don’t know how much he or she is paid, but I’d like to thank them personally. Someone that dealt with a small injustice in such a brilliant way.

So what is the relevance of this to my teaching? Don’t worry: I haven’t decided to share my holiday memories and photographs. No, I felt this episode reflects what happens daily in the classroom. We all have needs. We all need support. We can all be a little bit selfish. We can all put our needs above others. I am not angry with the parent in this episode; she was focused on her needs so much she didn’t consider the needs of others. I don’t think the mother purposefully lets down the wheels on wheelchairs so that her child can be better than others. I genuinely think she and the boy did not consider how people around them have needs that are different to their own needs.

We, teachers, have to deal with thirty individuals with thirty different sets of needs. Everybody wants the best. Everybody will push and shove to get the best. Everybody needs support. However, it is the balancing act of these needs that is something that we need to be aware of. With too much support a student becomes too dependent that they cannot work on their own. With too little support a student lacks confidence and therefore will struggle to work. Our job is to be the Winnie the Pooh in the classroom. Allocating those that need support and those that don’t. We are the guides in the learning.

My daughter will pretend she can’t do things to get extra support from people, when she is more than capable of doing something. She knows how to play on her needs. That’s why dealing with SEN in the classroom is such a difficult thing. These are children and they don’t always know how to deal with things. Therefore, they opt for default approaches either ‘play weak and feeble’ or ‘push and shove’. That’s why I think it also important that we push SEN students. It is too easy to wrap SEN children in ‘cotton wool’, because they have something diagnosed or written in a folder somewhere. It is the sympathy factor. I see it all too often with my daughter. She is underestimated because she has the label of Cerebral Palsy. In fact, I would go to say, in a way, she needs pushing twice as hard as an able bodied student as life is twice as hard for her. All the sympathy in the world will not do her the world of good if she doesn’t do things for herself.  That’s why I think we need to work harder to make them more independent, because there will be a time when they will have grown out of ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and there will not be a Winnie to help them.

Winnie reminded me it isn’t sympathy that children with disabilities need; it is an understanding of how they function and interact with the world around them. It is an understanding when they need help and when they can do it themselves.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

 

P.S. If you ever see Winnie the Pooh, thank him for me.

Deep Reading: Literacy Across the Curriculum

My journey to work takes about twenty five minutes. It should be shorter, but that is down to several things on the way. First, I leave my street and wait at the junction and wait for gap to get through the traffic. Then, I carry on a road for a few miles and then I have to stop for pedestrians crossing. After a few more miles, I come to some traffic lights – one of three I have to sit through.  I wait for them to turn green and then I have to take my time as I join a road that cyclists love. At this point, I have to slow down (not that I am speeding) and be cautious for the lycra clad muscle machines as they swerve all over the place. Now, I travel through some country lanes and either I get stuck behind a tractor or I have to stop to allow a person to get through, as the lanes are so narrow. Then, traffic lights again. A bit where there are speed cameras. A difficult junction. Another set of lights. A junction. Finally, I arrive at school.

My point is: I have a twenty five minute journey that should take me about fifteen minutes. There are a number of obstacles that stop the journey. It isn’t a simple case of going from A to B. Before you imagine that I am a ‘speed demon’ on the road, I am not; I am just using this idea of driving to make a connection to reading. My daily journey to school is not a stress filled one like that great John Cleese film ‘Clockwise’. Anyway, reading in secondary schools can be a bit like my journey to school.

I am obsessed with reading at the moment. My daughters are currently learning to read and I am part of that process. Every night, if possible, I sit with them as they break words down and read simple sentences. I am seeing the results of what the teachers do in their primary school and I am amazed. Months ago they could only recognise their own names and now they are reading line after line. It has been a speedy process. While helping them, I have thought about secondary schools, and how we help ‘the reading process’. Please note that I say ‘the reading process’ and not ‘reading’. I personally think schools work really hard to promote reading. There are so many great things happening to promote books. Yet, and as recent reports and news stories suggest, there might be more we need to do to strengthen the reading process.

As an English teacher, I have a range of things I do to help reading in lessons. I break down texts. I use different reading strategies. I select texts that are suitable for the students. I explore unfamiliar words and their meaning. I do a lot on the understanding of a text, the subtext, the writer’s purpose and how the reader reacts to a text. Yet, I don’t always do enough on that decoding of words - the simple reading of words and linking them together to work out the basic units of sense. Yes, I do it for Shakespeare and some long winded writers, but I don’t always do it for everything students read in lessons. Why? Because, I assume that they have understood it. This is what I think is an issue we need to address in schools. Our assumptions.

We know with the new emphasis on literacy that writing is important. We are now using our writing mats, our sentence starters, our key words and many other good things. But, what do we do to help students with their reading? This is exactly the question I have inferred from Ofsted when they visit. They will also ask the question: How do they support and develop writing? I am sure they have hundreds of questions, but I like to simplify things. There are a lot of good things people do to help with the reading, but I think that we do assume somethings about how the students read. We assume the words they know. We assume the speed at which they read. We assume how they will understand things. We assume that have a certain level of proficiency in reading, yet we have nothing concrete and explicit to back these assumptions with. It roughly boils down to: they are a level 5 so they must be able to do it.

I have taught a wide range of student with various abilities and there is always that surprising time when they don’t know a word or concept that shocks you or alarms you. In truth, it might also be a sign of me getting old. You could be talking to Year 10 about a court of law and then one of the students asks: ‘What’s a trial?’. You then wonder how this student can watch endless episodes of Eastenders and not understand what a trial is. But, it happens. Therefore, I went back to the beginning with one-to-one reading that parents do with 5/6 year olds. I took my class of Year 9 students and did some one-to-one reading over several months and it made some surprising discoveries.

To put it simply, I sat with a student and got them to read to me an extract from a story. They read a photocopy and I annotated another photocopy where they struggled, broke down words or hesitated.  Some were really good and read flawlessly. Some struggled. Some, who I thought would be good, struggled too. It revealed a lot about my assumptions. If they demonstrated understanding at a high level in their writing about a text, then clearly understood the text and everything in it. In fact, that can be far from the case. One extract I read with the students had the word ‘agony’ in it.  A very high number of students struggled to read it out correctly. So, what would they normally do in a class? They would have a strategy to cope. In fact, most of our reading teaching focuses on strategies of how to cope with difficult texts. But, do these strategies fix or mask a problem?

At this point, I am going back to my journey to work at the start of my blog. For some of our students, reading is like my journey to school. They have several traffic lights that stop the flow of thought, ideas and understanding. These traffic lights are words that they are unfamiliar with when written down. They also have to face a cyclist on the road.  These cyclists are usually those long multi-clause sentences that they have to take extra care with to understand. They have to face a tractor that just stops the journey dead. The tractor is one of those words or phrases that without its meaning you can’t get any further. Take the phrase ‘dejà vu’.

Tom was feeling sick as he had a feeling of déjà vu.

Without a teacher, a dictionary or TA, a student will not work out the meaning of sentence; unless they know it, of course. Is it a disease? Is it an emotion? The strategies that we usually employ don’t work in this case.
 
You could argue that the gist of a text is important, but that isn’t the case when you look at exam papers and text books. Complete understanding is needed for some of the simplest of questions. If students are finding a tractor in every sentence, then their overall understanding is reduced completely. What can we do about it?

Deep Reading

We need to work harder to avoid superficial reading in lessons. I could adopt David Didau’s idea of ‘Slow Writing’ at this stage and consider that we adopt ‘Slow Reading’; however, I think ‘Deep Reading’ is far more suitable.  Most of the students I read with ( and I have done this with a large number of Year 7s this term as well) read quickly and that is generally fine for most, because they get the overall gist and understand the key parts of the text and then that helps them when they read for questioning. However, some students don’t get the initial gist of a text because of these stumbling blocks. They get a picture with the key parts missing. Then, when they approach the questions they struggle as they have the key pieces missing.

That’s why I am thinking of the following before reading a text:

Traffic Lights

These are the words that they might know and use verbally, but they might struggle to read them.  

·        Before reading a text, pick the polysyllabic words and get students, as a starter, to pronounce the words and discuss what they mean. It could also make a great bit of prediction. When they read the text, they know the pronunciation and some of the meaning of the words.

Cyclists

These are the long sentences where you often forget what the start of the sentence was about by the time you get to the end.  

·        Remind students that they have to take more care with the longer sentences. They might have to go a bit slower with these sentences.

·         Sentences that have lots or one of  these  ;/  : /  , / ( ) might need to be reread. 

·        Teach students how to read these long sentences.  

Tractors

Words that they might not be familiar with.

·         Rather than give the word and its pronunciation like the fanfare usually given to the unveiling of a plaque, show them the word and get them to pronounce it. Then correct them if necessary. If we don’t give them opportunities in simple lessons to explore how to say words, how are we going to help them build their confidence at guessing with words that they are not familiar with?

·         Give them a short glossary of five to eight words.

·         Simplify for the audience.

A Passenger

One-to-one reading. I think we don’t do this enough in secondary. We seem to think reading something aloud in class is the equivalent. I think it isn’t. Personally, I think it can cause more problems than it fixes. It can destroy confidence. Simply, reading to a teacher is so much more effective as it is less public and there isn’t so much of an issue if you correct the student.

·         While students are on task, get one student to do it verbally with you. They could read the text and you question them afterwards. The comments they give you can be written in their exercise book as bullet points. This can be done for the full spectrum of ability and not just those that are weak at reading.

 

Most of these things I have tried myself and others are things I am currently working on or trialling.

 

There are days when I wish I had a passenger with me when I am reading, especially when I am reading a Shakespeare play I have never read before. Then, there are road works and a traffic jam that is tailed back several junctions.

Thanks for reading,

Xris32   

SEN, Paralympics and Parents

Before I start talking about SEN or the Paralympics, I think I should tell you my story:

In 2008, I became the proud father of identical twin girls. Unfortunately, their birth wasn't simple and without complication. They were born prematurely at 30 weeks. Expectant mothers of twins know that the birth of a set of twins will usually be induced early, about 35 weeks, but they came even earlier.

We were happily decorating the nursery when my wife fell ill. She was suffering from the winter vomiting bug, which started off the contractions. I had it too, but I can't moan. Neither of us was ready.  She was rushed to a hospital and  had an emergency cesarean with much haste and worry. Two tiny pink things made their way into the world only to be stuck into a clear plastic incubator for just under two months. We sat patiently next to the incubators for the whole time, worried and scared.   Luckily, they made it through all this and managed not get any infections or develop any further complications. 

A year later, we noticed that one of them wasn’t crawling. We then had the shattering news from a Doctor Doom that Mya had cerebral palsy and that she may never walk in her life.

‘May’ is the key word in that sentence, because, she does walk. Not perfectly. Not elegantly. Boy, she can walk.  Mainly over my toes.

My experience of being a parent of child with a disability gives me a new perspective on teaching. I think it is only relevant that I talk about it as the of the fantastic, awe-inspiring Paralympics draws to a close.  People have been full of comments about how good the Paralympics has been. Some say it is so emotional because of the journey these people have travelled; others feel it will change how people see people living with a disability. For me, I see it as a start for change.

The Fight

The term for Mya’s cerebral palsy is spastic diplegia. I am not surprised if you don’t know that term, as even Microsoft Word doesn’t recognise it. It means that her legs are affected by the damaged (caused by a lack of oxygen at birth) parts of the brain. She struggles to bend her legs and move as part of her brain doesn’t link properly to that part of the body.  Just as Word struggles to recognise the condition, so too does the rest of society. I cannot believe how much my wife and I have had to fight for our child to be recognised as being disabled by the state. We have had endless form filling, evidence gathering, hearings, meetings, consultations and discussions to get a statement for her.  Don’t think that this is because I am faking her disability; this is the normal procedure, dear reader, for any child with a disability.

You would think that, in this day and age of enlightenment, we would be able to recognise those in need. It took us years to get Mya a statement for primary school; we started as soon as we learnt that she had cerebral palsy. We knew there was a fight from day one. As a result of this, we have fought for equipment, shoes, physiotherapy and support. None of which comes easily and freely. What shocks me the most is that you can clearly have a disability, yet the support you need to cope or rectify things doesn’t come automatically or quickly.

Think of this when you meet a parent of a child with some form of disability or special needs. What has their fight been to get their child to this point? The message our society gives to parents of disabled children is one of fight, or your child suffers and loses out.  I am not militant in my manner, but I want the best for my child, and so far I have had to throw a few punches to get the bare minimum for my daughter.

More than just a disability

Cerebral palsy is a non-progressive condition. It doesn’t get worse, so what we are dealing with now is what we will be dealing with next year. I am more bothered about the social aspect of things. Like most parents, I want her to have friends. I’d be a strange parent if I didn’t, but a disability can come with a social disability too.

I cannot express to you how hard it is to live with the looks and stares.  When I go out with Mya and her walker, I get looks and stares all the time. Now, everybody looks. That is fine. But there is a limit to how long someone should look. I think, a few seconds.  Mya is ignorant of this, as she is too young, but there will be a time when she notices and that day will hurt me because I can’t stop them staring. It’s adults that stare, and of all types. The great thing about children is that they accept differences freely.

Think of this when you meet a parent of a child with some form of disability or special needs.  How do the other children interact with them socially? Could you do anything to build these relationships in the classroom? I have only praise for my daughter’s current school and her nursery school as they did and do everything possible for her. They know, like me, that teaching isn’t just imparting knowledge. It is about creating a sensitive, responsible member of a society.  At Parents’ Evening, the first thing I want to know is if she is interacting well with others and what relationships she has built. Yes, of course I want to know about academic progress, but really, and honestly, I want to know if she will survive in the big world when she is an adult.

Safety

In the past, I was incredibly ignorant of this next thing. I assumed, wrongly, that that if you had a disability, it took you a while to get used to it, but eventually you adapted to it and that was it. With cerebral palsy I have discovered that the real consequences of having a disability: the tiredness. The amount of effort it might take an average person is doubled, trebled or even quadrupled for a disabled person. Mya gets tired quickly because it takes more effort and thought to complete a simple action that we take for granted.  What we see as an automatic process for us can be a process that needs considerable thought, effort and a lot of exertion for her.  A simple five minute walk could wipe her out for days. It isn’t just the Paralympians that are superhuman, Mya is, every day.

The tiredness is one of the things that I think teachers should be aware of. Children don’t always know their limits. They push themselves and that is where situations can be dangerous in a classroom. The older they get, the more responsible they can be for this. But, I know that Mya will walk around all day if she could. However, the more tired she gets, the more likely she is to make a mistake. I don’t want to wrap her up in cotton wool, but I try to find ways to limit the accidents she has.

Think of this when you meet a parent of a child with some form of disability or special needs. Do you know the child’s physical limits? Do you know when to stop them?

Differentiation

Mya has support in lessons from a very good teaching assistant, but even at four she knows that this person can do stuff for her and she can relax and be a bit lazy. She’s not daft. As a result of this, I’ve spent the summer holidays telling her to get things herself because she is so used to someone getting things for her. It is basic human nature; I'd not do any marking if I had someone at school to do it all for me. Therefore, just having a T.A. isn’t enough for differentiation.

One person said something at school this week that made differentiation easier for me to understand. They said it wasn’t about making the activity longer or short, but just different. Differentiation even has 'different' in it to help you. Take Mya and PE, for example. More exercise will only tire her out. Less exercise will mean she doesn’t engage fully in the activity and she might get jealous of others or disaffected. A different or slightly related activity means that she will not be disaffected and it means that she isn’t working beyond her capacity. I think this can be easily related to work in the classroom.  

Let’s spell it out: Not more. Not less. Just different.  

Right to the Paralympics:

The fact that the Paralympics is on Channel 4 says a lot about society's views on the disabled, or as I like to call them Superhumans. They are not seen as being 1st class citizens (BBC 1) or 2nd class citizens (BBC2). These Superhumans don't make it on those television channels. They even don't even make it to 3rd class (ITV). Instead, they are on Channel 4, which is a fantastic channel and I love it for just the Superhuman adverts alone, but the whole channel issue gives us the message of how we view the disabled in this world - less than equals. NBC in America are not even showing it! It even happens on BBC News now. Olympics = First Item. Paralympics = Last Item.

I want my daughter to see a society on TV that reflects the real world. I want her to see more disabled actors on TV. I want her to see them in high-profile roles. I want her to see disabled singers in our charts. Because they do exist. I forever hear people talking about Eastenders being realistic, but it isn't for me. For my daughter to see people with cerebral palsy, her reality, on TV, she will have to watch 'My Left Foot' and 'Grange Hill'. Both fabulous.

What the Paralympics has shown the world is that no matter what battles they fight, no matter what looks they get, no matter what risks they face, disabled people can achieve and they are equals. They are more than equal. They are super. They are better than me and they are better than us.

My heroes are not celebrities. My heroes are not people who have saved lives, although they do a fabulous job - feel free to save me one day! My heroes are those living with a disability.

My hero (heroine) is Mya - she fights a daily fight that I never faced as a child, and she is going to win.

Thanks for reading my blog and thanks to Gwen for letting me steal her sentences,

Xris32

 

P.S. I don’t want to sound like the ending of a TV show – ‘If you have been affected by events …’- but I am more than happy to talk personally with anybody who is going through a similar experience as I did. At the time  I had nobody else in the same boat as me and I would have really appreciated someone to talk to.