 
Week 2 - Healthy School Communities
|  | An Approach to Creating a Healthy School Community |
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Listing of Papers | |
MS LYNNE SYMONS
South Australia, Australia
THROUGH THIS PAPER I will attempt to describe some of the key elements of how we created and maintained a healthy school community for an extremely at risk group of young people. This will not only be a description of the processes at Bowden Brompton Community School (BBCS) in South Australia, but also the similarities and developmental work we are currently undertaking in Combined Youth Educational Services (CYEC).
Kids the Media Love to Write About
First, it is important to describe our student group. They are most likely to be the kids and youth described in the graphic media. They are the kids who have 'done' the crimes, and/or 'do' the drugs. In my schools, students are generally characterised by:
- poor histories of previous schooling, with a number of suspensions, exclusions, often for violence;
- low literacy and numeracy levels;
- predominantly boys business, with an at least a 4:1 representation of males to females;
- over-representation of students with disabilities, usually intellectual or communication disorders;
- low self-esteem and sense of self-worth;
- over-representation of Aboriginal youth; and,
- histories of involvement with alcohol, legal and illegal drugs.
However, during my tenure at BBCS, we had no incidents of student/teacher violence with this eclectic mix of young people and very few incidents between our students. In addition, the young people named the school as a place they wanted to attend, and the retention and attainment rates continued to improve. The key question then is: Why did the kids come to school, modify their behaviour and achieve a far greater degree of academic and social success?
Without wishing to make the responses to this question appear too simplistic, the young people I am now dealing with in the juvenile justice system provide similar views.
The Importance of 'Significant Adults'
The young people I work with are a group who often have exceptionally dysfunctional lives outside of school. Reasons for this may range from not having a regular home base, being itinerant or homeless, to having contentious relations with their parents/caregivers.
Our young people tell us that they hate change and often complain that their social workers are always changing and/or there are/were so many different people at 'home'. School is critical in providing, firstly, the stability of personnel, and secondly, a place where people 'liked' and knew them. The experiences with youth in secure care supports this experience. School staff are more 'permanent' because they do not have shift changes, etc.
The young people continually commented on the fact that they knew who the people at school were, that they did not change much, and that they were 'straight'. We interpreted this to mean that teachers gave clear straight information to the students when they mucked up, but were continually able to separate any negative actions (and consequences) from the kid themselves. There was a climate of mutual respect.
The adults provided a range of 'role models', with the key elements being an ongoing stability of personnel and the belief that they, the teachers, could really make a difference through a combination of all their roles - academic teacher, social skills coach, mentor, mediator and counsellor.
The 'down side' is that new staff or kids are treated with great mistrust and often hostility, although teachers are accepted quicker than other kids!
In essence, these young people need positive adult stability and the school may be the only place they are able to find it.
The Facilities
At BBCS we constantly made a commitment to provide the best facilities we could afford. Initially we couldn't afford much but we did undertake rigorous housekeeping practices. That meant all adults and kids were requested to look for damage, and to report or remove it. From my end, this meant putting extra resources into cleaning the grounds (don't be fooled, we never got our kids to pick up papers, but we believed that if we kept it clean and provided enough bins they might not litter as much, and this seemed to work!) Ripped posters or old work were removed and replaced with something else. Graffiti was removed within a day.
On top of this, as the manager, it was my job to convince the system that we needed the best resources/facilities, and that it was cost effective to provide them. Providing sufficient resources and ensuring adequate facilities is one of the most frustrating aspects of my work, both then and now. The reality is that I don't have the most attractive group of kids to advocate for, and the amount of space these kids need is frequently underestimated. For example, 4-8 adolescent males with a history of interpersonal violence need as much classroom space as at least 30 of their age peers. Just because the numbers are less does not mean the room size should automatically be cut down.
And if the teachers, as 'significant adults', are critical, so too, should be the facilities they occupy. The analogy with family and home cannot be overstated.
Common Culture: Caring and Success
The school culture, both public and private, is another key factor. One of my 'non-negotiables' as a principal is that public and private cultures must be the same - what we say is what we do! We need to be able to develop, articulate and then model a consistent culture and allied operational processes that can be understood by all students, and enable them to be included in some manner. What this approach has resulted in are schools 'of a million chances', with flexible entry and exit points, depending on the needs and maturity of the students at various stages.
And so, as part of this, a 'school language' develops. Examples include:
- TAF. A student is given a Think About your Future (TAF), told to go home and come back when they can think about the options that need to be put in place;
- Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. Yes, this is tiring, especially when you just want to say 'DO IT!', but you have to keep talking, try to find common ground, and get agreed commitments;
- 'You know there are always consequences'. Constantly reinforce decision-making by reminding students about the consequences of their actions, not what they are going to be, just that this is what happens in life!
- 'I will phone tonight'. Constant follow-up, plus allowing a time to reflect on the incident/issue, gather other information and consider consequences - but we will be in contact.
All schools develop their own culture. My perception is that this can be something that occurs by osmosis or stealth. However, when developing a healthy school community with our group of students we needed to constantly address the importance of culture and how it affects all our processes. There was an expectation that all staff, students and community could understand the common elements and articulate them!
Students would, and could, succeed, and to that end:
- violence of any sort would not be tolerated (including verbal);
- every student would have an individual program and they would negotiate its development (within the system's parameters);
- there needed to be a commitment to improve behaviour, even if this was 'baby steps'; and, there would always be another chance - when, how and what this might look like, would be negotiated.
Student Development Plans
Because we all have memory problems, we developed student development plans along the lines of the social work case plans. Everything discussed and negotiated with the student would be documented in there and signed. It was a public document and the student owned it, just like we wanted them to develop ownership of their lives and their own educational programs.
The culture of a school needs to be public and explicit and should not have hidden criteria that discriminate against individual students or groups of students. The culture should continue to evolve positively to ensure the growth of the health of the school.
Individualised, Experiential and Accredited Programming
Our students are the ones who, because of their behaviours and/or disrupted schooling lives, have gaps in their educational profiles. The students need individually tailored programs that will address these gaps. This means developing age appropriate curriculum, whilst realising that they need to address developmental stages that these students have missed. Examples include concrete activities in mathematics, undertaking out of school lessons (excursions) that structure some of the experiences that they were probably not able to participate in.
There must also be corresponding development of a young person's social skills so that they will be able to engage, and have success, in the mainstream curriculum. Most of my students need to be taught decision-making, this is just as important as teaching other areas of the curriculum. Combine this skill with self-esteem, anger management, challenging offending behaviours and it is clear that the social skills curriculum must be addressed both in the formal and the informal curriculum. This is the way the school operates on a daily basis.
The pace of schooling must be adaptable so that students can access and achieve success at different rates. There needs to be multiple entry and exit points to take account of a life outside school that often does not support 100% attendance.
I believe the development of relevant, experiential learning for our young people has been one of the major curriculum strengths of alternative schooling; the corollary is that mainstream accreditation of those options has been poor.
A healthy school environment must acknowledge the society we find ourselves in and ensure that the young people are achieving certification and accreditation at the same level as their mainstream peers. They must not be given home-grown certification, it is our challenge to redefine curriculum such that they can undertake our subjects or modified versions and achieve SACE, VET or TAFE accreditation.
A Magic Moment
One of the great personal moments at BBCS was when our first group got the SACE Stage 1 subject records and realised that it was the same one that everyone else received. And one of the true magic school moments was the first phone call about uni. entry from an exit student. Combine that with the achievement in traineeships and the job market and we saw, and could begin to measure, our success in mainstream as well as alternative ways. The formal success was important and modelled to all our students that they, too, could achieve, and were expected to.
To enhance the outcomes for at risk students we must continually endeavour to minimise their marginalisation and one of the critical ways of achieving this is by developing and delivering individualised, relevant and accredited curriculum.
Communication and Community
Finally, I would like to comment on the goal of developing real community partnerships to enable true full service schools. In working with disenfranchised young people, it is amazing how many key stakeholders there are. We all have an opinion and ownership of some part of the service delivery, often the most powerless are the students and their parents.
In my experience in the alternative schooling arena community partnership has been very limited. At various times we are in partnership with various sections but as a holistic approach we have been found sorely lacking.
Partnership with parent/caregivers, whilst always beginning with the best of intentions, has had a history of working at a range of levels on an individual basis. However, given that most of the parents we work with are under enormous stress, their energy levels are understandably focused at the home site. Our students are also often no longer in the care and control of their parents and, for them, the concept of school community is not high on the survival agenda - as long as the school is there for them.
With other government agencies we often have issues over power sharing and 'who owns what part of the process'. Whilst painting a somewhat bleak picture, I believe it is currently a realistic impediment to really being able to provide the best educational services for our young people.
However, I am convinced that, as a first stage, we must develop honest and open communication channels with all involved. It is in the sharing of information, both formally and informally, that we can begin to lay the foundations for individual and community partnerships.
Listening, talking to others, documentation following up, passing info. on all takes enormous time and energy, but it should be seen as a fundamental foundation of a healthy school. Structures need to be put in place to ensure good communication and documentation processes. Examples we developed included staff debrief at the end of each day, student development plans as discussed earlier, individual student follow-up on a regular (daily or weekly) basis.
Improving communication at all levels is critical to the improvement in the health of school communities.
Conclusion
In this paper I have only addressed five of the key factors that I see as critical in minimising the marginalisation of these students at risk and how, by these actions, we will develop healthier school communities. The scope of the paper has not permitted the development of the myriad other factors, including counselling and inter-agency processes.
It is in the development and implementation of key structures and processes that we will improve the educational and life outcomes of this group of young people.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ms Lynne Symons is the inaugural Principal of the Combined Youth Education Centres (CYEC), South Australia. The CYEC is an inter-agency initiative between Schools Division (Department of Education Training and Employment) and Family and Youth Services (Department of Human Services). The result is a combined educational service encompassing the two youth detention centres, an outreach service for students in residential care and a flexi-centre development for young offenders who are not accessing mainstream or alternative education options.
Prior to 1999 she was Principal of Bowden Brompton Community School for six years. During that time BBCS grew from a small alternative school, to a school covering four campuses, with students from middle primary to senior secondary. Two of the most significant features of BBCS during that time were that enrolment of all under-compulsion students was only through an inter-agency approach, and the school modelled a low key but consistent approach to discipline - the 4D model: Deflect, Defuse, Defer but Deal with it.
Previous professional lives have included State Manager of the then Disadvantaged Schools Program and Country Areas Program, secondary deputy principal, co-ordinator, student counsellor, project officer and adviser.
Lynne Symons can be contacted by email at:
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