In my last blog I was discussing the need to reflect on my 'Why?' and that got me thinking about the reasons behind my blog but, it goes much deeper than that. I am not writing a blog just to write a blog, I want to affect change and in order to do that I need to understand my motivation and my goal.
According to Simon Sinek your 'why' is your purpose, your cause and your belief. So I need to unpick my reasons for working with children, my goal to support those who exhibit challenging behaviour and define this as my purpose, cause and belief.
The purpose of what I do is to improve the outcomes for the children in my care who exhibit challenging behaviour. I believe no child is 'bad' and that all children deserve the chance to have an adult champion them to affect change and impact outcomes. However, I struggled to unpick my cause until I recognised that without relationships my purpose and my beliefs could not be realised. Interestingly one of my first ever blogposts was about the importance of relationships in the supporting of students who exhibit challenging behaviour.
Making connections with our students is the most important part of our job. These connections are the building blocks of our relationships and need to be nurtured in a positive way. Creating positive relationships is a powerful tool which requires investment on our part to reach the disconnected students in our classrooms. This means that relationships can afford us the power to make a difference, without them any intervention will fail. Our students need to know that they can rely on us to create safe, secure environments for them to learn how to regulate their behaviour in a way that helps them to grow their self-esteem and self-worth. This will ensure that they can positively impact their own behaviour in the future as we have enabled them to build their own capacity for self-regulation.
A huge impact on the success of our work relies on our understanding of when and how to support our students. Forcing students to be compliant at any given time does not ensure that learning has taken place. Students must take ownership of their behaviour and acquire the necessary strategies from adults who see them as individuals. Individuals who deserve our understanding and empathy as Stuart Shanker says 'When you see a child differently, you see a different child'.
Can you identify your purpose, cause and belief? ...
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