Interning with Behavioural Support

This week, I began my internship at Hornsey School for Girls. There are four other CAPA interns there with me, which is really nice. The school has had more than one CAPA intern every term for the past eight years, so they have a great system in place for us.

The interview went OK. I don't think I made a stellar impression, but they didn't reject me, so I must have done all right. My supervisor's name is Sherife, and she is an amazing human being. She founded and runs the Behavioural Support office, and her job is a never-ending string of meetings, dealing with students' emotional crises, continuously keeping tabs on about 8-10 "high-risk" students, closely supervising/organising/mentoring the CAPA interns, and running the weekly staff yoga session.

The school is what would in the States be described as an urban public school. Caucasian students are definitely the minority there, there are something like 60 different first languages spoken by the students, and the student body is about 40% Muslim. Most of the students come from what Sherife described as "deprived areas". It takes me about an hour and a half to get there; it's on the other side of central London from where I live.

I was assigned, along with Kashiff (another intern) to work directly with Sherife in the Behavioural Support office. The other interns were all farmed out to other departments. My "project" for the semester is to get a group of about 4 or 5 students to improve measurably in science and in English by the end of my term. I worked my first full day on Thursday, and I must admit I am at a complete loss. When a student doesn't understand subject matter, I am pretty good at explaining it to them so they can get it. I have an astounding amount of patience, even when tested. But I've never worked with students who are thoroughly capable and thoroughly unwilling, and after one day it was clear that I need to seriously work out a strategy.

On Thursday I worked with two students. My time with the first one went pretty well; she was in Year 9, which I think makes her about 13 or 14. She was fairly obedient, but had severe ADHD. It took her a long time to get anything completed, but we worked through her science assignment together and I was convinced by the end of it that she had a good idea of the assignment's main concepts--even if it had taken forever for her to focus. She was receptive to the help I offered, and did not seem at all adverse to having someone sitting with her and going over things with her. I felt good after we finished.

But the next student I was assigned to was impossible. She was in Year 11, 15 years old and nearly done with school--this is her last term. The target that had been set for the day was for her to work on "revisions" for English and complete a practise English GCSE (the standardized subject exams British kids sit at the end of their secondary ed). The revisions turned out to be online exercises, GCSE practise. She did all right on those for about half an hour, then stopped working. "I just can't be bothered; it's so boring," she explained to me. I asked about the practise paper she was supposed to do, and she just kind of shrugged. "The college I want to go to doesn't need an English GCSE, so I don't think I'm going to do it. Can't be bothered." The way the British education system is structured makes it OK for her to get away with that kind of thinking; they don't get diplomas and I don't think they have GPAs. Colleges look at how many GCSEs the students passes and in which subjects, admitting them accordingly. This student already knew which program she wants to do, and she's pretty sharp. She could probably scrape by in the GCSEs she does need without doing much coursework between now and then, although she knows practise would help her. Sherife gave up on trying to get her to do the practise paper (apparently it's been on her to-do list for more than two weeks) and said we should just use the time to talk and get to know one another. I got the impression that the student came from a rough home life as we talked together. She's incredibly smart.

Later in the afternoon, I was sent to her science class to offer "in-class support" for her. It was a disaster. She showed up 15 min late, and flat-out refused to do anything once she got there. Her teacher hardly looked at her, and did not seem at all bothered when she just sat in the back of the room while her classmates did an experiment. She wasn't particularly disrespectful; in fact, she was friendly to me and didn't seem to resent me being there at all. I knew that I couldn't force her to take notes or participate in the lab exercise, especially if her teacher didn't seem bothered by her non-participation (in his defense, he's probably already had her for a term and a half, and has just gotten tired of fighting a losing battle. Still, it was depressing to see that he had given up so completely). So I just talked with her about the material while the students worked through the lab, explaining the key terms and describing what the experiment was demonstrating. She kind of listened--at least she didn't openly ignore me, and responded to questions (not usefully)--but I'm sure she retained nothing.

Admittedly, I've never worked with special needs kids in the States. But I can tell that the British system has a quite different attitude about it, and I think they should take some hints from the Americans on this one. Kashiff spent most of his morning counseling a student who was distraught because she had been transferred from the class group that she had been with for two years. She was one of the Behavioural Support office's most closely monitored students, meaning that she has a history of emotional and behaviour problems. But she has been doing above average recently, making great improvements. The staff is concerned that this sudden move will cause her to shutdown and stop working altogether. The reason the administration transferred her is because one of the students in that class group was severely autistic and had developed a sort of violent fixation on this particular student. They could not be in the same room together, even though our student had learned to cope very well with the autistic girl (never retaliated or anything). But the autistic student could not be moved, because British law compels the school to keep autistic students in mainstream classrooms and the logistics of caring for/teaching the autistic student were inflexible. So the other student had to move, throwing her off completely. I did not envy Kashiff's job, because as he and I discussed later, the poor girl had every right to be upset. It was unfair and absurd. Whose idea was it to put severely autistic students in normal classrooms? It can't possibly be effective. Furthermore, given this girl's history and Kashiff's long talk with her today, it is clear she needs much more than just tutoring and monitoring. She needs to be in some sort of therapy or counseling, because there are some deep set emotional problems there. That would have been recognised and dealt with appropriately in the States.

And as far as my non-cooperative student is concerned, she would not be able to get away with that attitude in the American system. She would have to do regular coursework in order to pass classes and get out of high school, and there is no way she would be allowed to just sit in a corner and be ignored by a teacher. She'd be moved into a special needs class or into an alternative school. Whether or not she would learn more is debatable, but at least she'd have to either complete work or drop out--and she would not drop out, because she has plans for her future career. And I don't think professional counseling would hurt her, either. But in the British system, they want to minimize differential treatment. Students are all different though--it's an impossible policy.

I know that this is an invaluable experience for me. If I want to be a good teacher, I've got to figure out how to work with these types of students effectively. But I have serious doubts about my ability to do that. To be quite frank, I am rather dreading work on Monday. I'm at a total loss. I don't mind the work, and I like the students, I just can't see any way I will be able to make any sort of impact--let alone get some of these girls to improve their science and English performance.