foreign [Music] welcome my name is Dr Margo Sunderland and I'm director of innovation and research at trauma informed schools UK I'm delighted to showcase the work of Josh tires head teacher at biscuit Academy Cornwall a school in an area of severe deprivation one-third of the children have a history of trauma when Josh took over as head teacher in 2020 he said chair spent more time in the air than on the floor at 9 30 in the morning he would watch out of his window teachers walking out and not coming back Supply staff would do a day and never return until it was now impossible to get any Supply staff the children were constantly angry with each other so they had to be taught in Split classes exclusions were the highest in the county Josh trained with trauma-informed schools UK he attended the 11-day diploma course and then moved from being a graduate to being a trainer what he showcases now are his UK interventions creatively adapted and in some cases added to as you will see hello my name is Josh saiz and I'm head of school obesity Academy and I'm also a test trainer as well and I'm going to talk to you over the next kind of 10 minutes or so about a three-year School Improvement kind of Journey where that's we've kind of embedded this culture of trauma informed schools and what's really important for me is that we're not just trauma informed but we're trauma responsive so we know this incredible information this incredibly life-changing powerful information what have we done about it and so this is what we've done about it so to give you a little overview what makes us special 56 of the pupils that are on our role live in the most uh deprived for zero to forty percent of lower super output areas within England so what we see is we see levels of deprivation um equivalent to Inner City London Birmingham and Manchester the number of pupils on rolled that are eligible for pupil premium free School meals is currently one-third of the school so the best part of 100 children that is well above National we've got 39 of the school that have social emotional mental health needs and at the point of which that I took over in September 2020 we had um issued the highest amount of fixed term exclusions within the county what we also have as part of our school is we know that one-third of our school have an a score of higher than three how do we know that so we know that in two ways we have we build uh really strong relationships with our parents um so in the event that we could we we need to we can sit with one of our with our parents and conduct the ace questionnaire but equally we know enough about our children's story um to kind of build an accurate picture of where we're at in terms of Aces within our setting relationships are placed at the heart of all that we did and I wanted to build a curriculum that matched the community's needs okay and so just to give you an update and an overview what it is that I stepped into and I will tone it down substantially here's some of the things so we saw this regulated adults trying to regulate this regulated children we had high rates of Staff absence we saw several School leaders come and go no for no fault of the trust I work as part of the most incredible Academy trust who I'm nothing but supportive but for one reason or another we weren't able to secure um leadership at the time and therefore kind of they did what what they thought was best and what they could at the time we were blacklisted from Supply agencies and that's no word of a lie either we had to split classes classes up because they were just so angry at each other they just couldn't be together so it was just safer for them to be split we couldn't do stuff like hot chocolate Club because it became far too dangerous for us to run uh Forest School refused to take our pupils because it was becoming too dangerous and staff would quite literally walk out by 9 30. like I remember seeing them through this window walk down the drive um and it's too much remains and so what we saw we saw this domino effect we saw we had significant SMH needs we had inadequate provision we had high levels of exclusion and we had high levels of Staff absence and for me Insanity well not this is not my definition Albert Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result so we had to strip it back we had to rethink and as I said in the in the beginning we know that no significant learning takes place without significant relationship these children need to feel held they need to feel seen and they need to feel safe and that's what we needed to prioritize and that's what we did disclaimer don't dip your toe in and I say that because if you're gonna do summer do it well do it step into it wholeheartedly don't just go I've got a tis trained practitioner and that's their job to sort it out this has to be this starts with me it then goes to my senior leadership team it then goes to my extended senior leadership team then goes to my teachers my teachers my support staff my my cleaners everybody this is an everybody thing but it has to be driven from the top so don't just dip your toe in Embrace this Embrace this not as a scheme that's going to sort out all your behavior needs but as a way of being that means people feel like they are valued and that they are important because they are they massively are and that children feel important and valued and safe within your organization I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom it is my daily mood that makes the weather as a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration I can humiliate or humor hurt or heal in all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized Dr hayam genot and so we needed a way in for staff to go do you know what this is about me this is about my own way of being with children and adults and we needed to kind of reevaluate that and for them to realize it not just kind of for us to go around with a stick beating them around it for them to reevaluate to reflect and go you know what this is this is about me this is about how I interact with children and this was the biggest and most powerful thing that we kind of initially did with staff is they read this and they went I get it and that was our starting point and because what we know is and what Paul Dix has kind of shown us is that troubled children may not follow rules but they absolutely will follow a person so for us it was incredibly important that all of our children had a person and that person was an emotionally available adult and they all had access to them so we needed to Define what that will look like we needed to train stuff on it we needed to kind of outline our expectations for it right we we went full shebang fully involved fully embraced Julie's in we've got other trauma informed practitioners in we trained staff we went fully out there with it and so what it did and what we kind of um what that dipping the toe in look for us well it underpins school development plans surf the underpinned policy the underpinned leader interactions with staff it underpinned adult interactions with parents it underpinned adult interactions with children how we recruited our CPD offer to staff how we raise the profile of it the well-being offer that we put in place how we fostered this idea of botheredness botheredness and ensured that it was in place and kind of Rippling through the school what this supervision offer for all looked like and then finally what does the curriculum look like and how's that underpinned by this kind of trauma-responsive culture that we're kind of embedding here's your question and what we expect you to be working on over the course of the year what are you doing to ensure every child in your class feels seen and safe and we would factor that into Performance Management we would factor that into monitoring we would factor that into people progress meetings and we would ask questions around what are you doing what's those meet and greets look like how are you kind of what's your in-class rewards look like what are those adult interactions look like and we would monitor them as a subject and it kind of initially it started with a relationship policy so kind of this governs Adult and Children's responses and interactions so if you work at biscuit what do I expect from you in terms of how you interact with adults stakeholders and children it then kind of fed into our Behavior Support policy and within our class we have Behavior Horizons um we kind of catch those good behaviors and we reward them for it we give them a positive postcard home and what we kind of put in place there was a restorative practice so if you end up on wine then it is the person that where the relationship is broken down where that respirative conversation needs to take place so if the relationship has broken down between pupil and ta the restorative conversation is between people in ta not pupil and teacher so in a trauma-responsive school there are restorative conversations instead of shaming punishments these Foster social engagement in students rather than social defensiveness and support higher brain reflective functioning what were you thinking when she got you out you always love why did she get me out of my best friend what are you thinking about right now I'm just like thinking like that if she like she doesn't stop it like it'll be hard to make friends again how are you feeling a bit upset so how were you feeling them at the beginning of PA when things get by it's just how I feel just in case anyone gets hurt I think it affects everyone now do you think anyone's been affected in this did you think it affected Jamie and I just wondered if if you wanted to just tell me who you feel is being affected that's what you need to happen now what do you think you need Caitlin what do you need earlier um that will help you hey Matt what do you need to put this right what do you think you need to do to sort of repair the harm can you tell me what you need to happen from this Samantha to put it right we kind of threw loads of CPD at it so much CPD at it and I couldn't showcase all of it so as soon as they came back after covid we prioritized um containment and Bubbles of botheredness and we brought Julie one of the directors of tizim um we then looked at the language and embedding this idea of kind of a trauma-responsive language um and getting that in place so that all adults were clear and we had a level of consistency around the language that we were using um within our everyday interactions with children so can we want to outline if you work here this is what we expect from you and this is the stuff that I'm not willing to budge on so here are some of Josh's non-negotiables all staff will approach behavior from a position of social engagement not social defense behavior is everybody's responsibility what do you walk past you accept first attention for best conduct focus on the positive ensure positive phone calls home are happening each week all teachers will meet and greet their pupils each morning consistent use of wine and pace these are ways of being with children which ensure engagement not defensiveness so let's just look at a few of these now further this is meet and greet all right come on in we start each day by greeting every kid at the door good morning Declan thank you baby thank you oh and now on to Pace to all teachers need to be using Pace as do all School staff this is Dr Dan Hughes originator of pace which means play Acceptance curiosity and empathy and here he talks about the intervention play means playful social engagement acceptance means I accept the feelings Behavior can be wrong feelings never can be wrong curiosity would you help me understand and empathy really imagining in and empathizing with the pain oh that must be awful he talks about the intervention here then I realized this attitude of being playful except in curious and empathic really helps the person to feel safe with me I accept them my curiosity is no judgment my empathy is right there so I'm with them to support them around the hard times and it's it leaves it it leaves them feeling this person gets it and isn't judging me and it helps me to inhibit a tendency just to focus on their behavior whether it's they did something they shouldn't do or the behavior of trauma or whatever it is their behavior response if I get distracted by the behavior and don't develop a context of what it means I'll probably leave the kid with a shame or is fear or um you know I might react with anger at him because he misbehaved because that's all I see is the behavior Pace guards me from that if I have a peaceful attitude then my job is to understand what is the meaning of that behavior and always accept the meaning so I'm curious about the thoughts the feelings the Wishes the intention the perception that led to the behavior and when I go there it's going to be much easier for the child to feel safe with me and for me not to react to the behavior but to make sense of the behavior then we can know what to do about it if we need to do anything about it so here's an example of using playful interaction pace this leads to cooperation whereas punishing interaction leads to conflict no you're not running away Jamie because it's not safe will you'll be safe and you can take some coloring with you and some of her nice crayons okay we'll be going to look at the pictures and see well we'll go pick one so you can color and we'll get the good creams from our Roomba away why let's go I'll put easy one help me up help me up I'm stuck I'm very old you'll need to help me up I'm stuck hit me up help me up oh oh right that's me to the room let's go look at the pictures let's go look at the pictures stand up stand up for me well we'll just have to sit here and everybody who comes past will say why is Jamie lying on the floor has he fallen over can he not get up and I'll have to say you'll need to stay put over them because he's like a big lump line in the middle of the corridor what are you gonna do if somebody was like this boom oh sorry I thought it was a rug what will you do then no we're not running away well this is what we can do we can go and get pictures from the coloring books because she did a very good picture this morning it was beautiful we can go and do that right let's go then give me your hand and we're going to have a look at my special coloring book give me a hand I'll pull you up one oh two oh let's go and now Joshua will talk about staff recruitment and how he assesses capacity for empathy at interview we need to consider recruitment so um for various other reasons it came to a point where we were working in an environment that might not not necessarily be for everybody so we wanted to be kind of really clear on this is how we recruit people um and we wanted to do it through a trauma-informed lens so in terms of a a kind of a structure for employing people we wanted to make sure that trauma-informed approach underpinned everything that we did so to give you a very quick overview of what we do here within that group process what we're looking for and we hold it hold it and we hold it as kind of a five minute model so two minutes talking two minutes response um and one minute for them to kind of say what it felt like to be to be heard and responded to we prose a question so talk to me about a time that you've really found challenging within your career or in the past year and then the group respond to them in an empathic way such an insightful thing and so kind of useful for them to kind of meet each other prior to the day we then obviously factor in a teaching task within that we're looking for kind of um relationships we're looking for their ability to teach obviously um but we're looking for them to kind of present as somebody that would fit our school nicely is that an entry task and that's based on kind of an empathic response so we give them a scenario that kind of crops up day to day here so we've received an operation in compass call a child's coming in um in next I don't know 20 25 minutes um this is what's happened what are you gonna do about it we then give them a soundtrack now this was the most controversial thing that we probably did but the most powerful thing as well so this was their santry work so we set up the tables we it was conducted by one of my Tiz leads and then this was some of their responses so these are some of the sun trades from the candidates and these are some of the responses that they kind of gave to us through their sanitary work so the soldiers represent us all being there for each other supporting each other even when things get tough the shells are the kind of the calm space that I want to create in my classroom an area that provides safe space for children to go to okay so from a task that was a bit out there um we got some of the most incredible information from it we've got emails from candidates that were unsuccessful I'm even to say thank you for the opportunity to visit an interview for the position in school you and all your staff were so welcoming and the whole experiences interview team meeting was so lovely so thank you for me that was the best thing ever the fact that they've come in they've got a feel for the school that this is a welcoming inviting school that are that that's bothered about them as an individual was was so important I want to look at how we're embedding this concept of trauma informed schools how are we embedding this ethos how are we embedding Pace how are we kind of responding to children empathically I wanted to see where we were at with it and I wanted to monitor it as a subject so that's what we do we run it as a subject we do learning walks around it we do people voice around it we do feedback to staff around it we do CPD around what it is what areas of development have come out of that learning walk and all of that's done um by Matt is lead um we've got a clear tis rationale for kind of allocating support to children they come on to the program of support they go through a journey with my with my trauma informed practitioners and then there's a clear exit criteria after I insist on so one of my non-nonegotiables said the word again be a way um is the use of wine do we have children in a position of social defense we approach them using the language of wine got it I imagine that you're really struggling today because it's maths and it's really hard in it or what I notice is is every time it's French you're always in the corridor you help me understand why we review reviewing the Behavior Support policy constantly we want that to be kind of an evolving document we're we're tracking interventions with clear and clear exit criteria we're constantly upskilling staff providing CPD and building a mini Army in school and as I said we kind of we do it through learning walks building an Army in school is really important as well because what we found was is I've got one two two test practitioners and to kind of get to um and kind of to all of the children that needed it was borderline impossible so what we needed was this kind of cascaded CPD offer and this is what we kind of uh we hand-picked the best part I think it was six or seven Tas and we took them through kind of a um a six five week cycle of training we taught them about containment and botheredness and the language we gave them kind of attachment Theory and attachment games we kind of gave them an understanding around sun trees we use big empathy drawing and taught them kind of all about the importance of it and we looked at kind of social defense and social engagement and how we can kind of best get alongside children when they're in a position of social defense stage three is two sessions a week but this is kind of historical unprocessed trauma historical safeguarding concerns current observable changes in behavior and a complete lack of emotionally available at all at home stage four they get three sessions per week again very similar to stage three based on the fact that they don't have an emotionally valuable adult at home but are presenting with kind of Suicidal Thoughts self-harming behaviors and are currently in a position where there is kind of domestic violence divorce or recent loss within the family additional to that and as part of a whole school offer we have daily check-ins we have kind of um one to one 15-minute sessions with their T their Tas in class we have meet and greets um and we kind of uh we run a nurture group at lunchtime and break times um that are quick children with the skills they need to go out and be successful in the playground we log it as a as a um as we would do any kind of subject monitoring work my tis deed has an intervention log um and then as I was talking about exit criteria we want to get the children on the program we want to give them the skills they need in order to kind of process the trauma that they've been through but what we don't necessarily want and it may be the case we don't necessarily want them on them for the six years they're with us so what we wanted is a real clear kind of exit criteria for do you know what we've we've recognized the need we've put in a level of support and now what we can see is X Y and Z and for us the exit criteria was they're able to name the pain so they can affect labels we've seen them move from block trust to trust we can see that they've developed a coherent narrative over time and are able to articulate that and they begin to practice self-regulation using the techniques taught throughout the therapeutic work so they're the kind of four criteria that we work on if we see that we put them back into class but we check on them frequently so they'll still get check-ins but they just won't get that kind of bespoke therapeutic offer And We Gather that people voice people voice I'm not going to kind of talk too much about that but we track the emotional landscape and then we do something about it and that's what I'm so keen on so if you gather people voice for the sake of gathering people voice doing something wrong but if we say we get people voice we listen and then we do something about it and then we put it out there to show all that you know what we've listened to you this is what we've done that's the point of people voice for me so for us children were coming back saying yeah we feel real safe in school but I don't always feel like you value what it is that goes on outside of school for me so we listen to that we've got parents and carers to send in all of the great stuff they do outside of school we raise the profile of us on the newsletter raised the profile of it in celebration assembly and we've got a display that showcased all the amazing stuff that goes on outside of school for these children okay so we listen to them and we kind of wanted to base it on human hungers so to meet basic human hungers so recognition hunger stimulation hunger and structure hunger with the three we went for kind of obviously the base being recognition hunger how do we do that in our school so we recognize birthdays we recognize staff are going above and beyond we allocate them days we're attending weddings um they can attend their children's performances Sports days um if they're a new parent graduation days and just the power of saying thank you for the work that you're doing so at this gray we meet your recognition hunger there we meet your stimulation hunger we have one main event every half term we have a Christmas due end of year do Corey nights staff buffets where they bring a plate spot staff Sports days and a well-being breakfast because there's nothing wrong with the Bell being breakfast and then structure hunger so they know where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there and what they're doing so school-based systems and processes marking policy School timetables processes of Staff cover um senior leader release time set PPA day so they're not kind of when's my PPA coming clear policies and procedures Relentless routines not just for children but for staff as well so incredibly important okay so that's kind of our well-being offer and what kind of it what underpins that well-being offer supervision because the biggest advocate of supervision it's so incredibly important um that people are given a space where they can kind of take um what's not bearable and to and kind of hand it over to someone who can then reflect it back to them and goes you know what you can see things are really tough have you thought about this okay so we have a well-being offer a supervision officerian place I access it kind of fortnightly myself assistant heads access it collectively half terminally teachers then access it um led by my senior leadership team and then my teaching assistants access it led by their teachers okay so important that we that it's a space where people feel heard where they feel validated but not a space to moan in okay I say that kind of with the best intentions it's a really purposeful space it's a space for people to bring what it is that they're struggling with and work through it collectively okay we can work through any kind of gripes or groans that people may have in other spaces but this is a real um purposeful practical space so basically Academy is a place where um Everybody dreams big we built a curriculum around um Big Dreams and we called it our Dare To Dream curriculum and our key drivers for that were aspirations um we're curiosity or ignites and we're diversity so Dee's diversity ours for rules is for empathy a through aspirations M's for motivation and S is for success and every term we focus on one of those values but every dreams assembly we recite our school poem okay we sing Our School anthem of a Million Dreams and then we've got dreams oh we've got dreams so I've got a dream team and what I wanted from this dream team is to install this idea that you know what anything is is possible I didn't know if it was at the time turns out it is but this is about developing this idea and and a school that's based on experience experience that they might not get if we don't provide it to them so we stopped on 10 Big Dreams to a chip to have achieved by the time they leave year six so we've got everything from visitor City watch live sport um go to a theater Skydive indoors that was tricky to do anything other um hold a concert on the field visit a university take part in a musical visit museums fly on a plane record a single everything on that list is possible even flying on a plane believe it or not um we take children to Bath we take children to Cardiff um we're taking 50 Children next week to watch 2020 Cricket in Somerset um where we take children to theaters in London skydiving basing Stokes the closest one it takes effort but when you've got a team that are bothered and are invested in what it is that we're selling and the belief that this trauma-responsive approach is front and center they will go above and beyond that's the play we go on I know and he's an ex-pupil so cool um will we show you what's possible we show you ex-pupils that have gone on to do well we have careers day where we invite them in to talk through um their careers what they do how they got there what they got from school and how that's kind of given them the skills they need in order to progress further in the career we have local councilors so Vice chairman of of Cornwall Council came to our school we've got rugby players we've got teachers we've got RAF Pilots we've got nurses all of which want to give back on all of which show our children what is possible if you believe it to be here's some of the places we go so what's the impact um the impact is significant the impact is significant if you don't dip your toe in if you commit wholeheartedly to it the impact is significant Supply costs I had a six-figure supply outgoing I have no outgoings for supplies my exclusion rate was the highest in the county I now don't have any my attendance was um significantly below average with a significantly abovevised persistent absentees it is now in line with average we're in line with national and my persistent absentees is well below National my teacher retention is I want to say nothing's perfect I have no teacher turnover I have one teacher that's left in the last two years because they needed to relocate okay people want to be here because it's a lovely and amazing incredible place to be where teachers are bothered staff are bothered and the offer to these children is based on community needs but it took time to get it took a long time to get it well my top tip is one don't dip your toe in commit wholeheartedly and do nothing else believe in this embrace it from the top down make sure that it is what colors your water and make sure that when they cut you cut your open Yuri tis through the middle of it and don't just be informed be responsive we can give you all this incredibly powerful purposeful information but what you do with it is the most important thing thanks for listening