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News
News update from Dave Vizard – March 2005:
March was a
very busy month with 14 events in 22 days, located all over
the UK with events in London, Birmingham Glasgow, Swindon,
Bath, Camborne, St. Austell, Falmouth and at the Duchy
College in the middle of the beautiful Cornish countryside
at Stoke Climsland. During this time I ran a new course,
‘Better Learning Through Better Behaviour – Reaching and
Teaching The Disengaged,’ which was well received. Other
courses included ‘SEN and NQTs,’ ‘Conflict Management’ and
‘Essential Skills and Strategies For Teaching 14-16 Year
Olds in FE.’ The highlight was working at the London School
of Economics with 2 large groups of NQTs in their first and
second years of teaching as part of the Teach First
Initiative. This scheme puts some of the brightest graduates
into schools in challenging areas. The first few events in
April will take me to Manchester, Hull and Plymouth.
Publications:
2005 has
seen brisk sales in 2 new publications in the Behaviour
Solutions Series; ‘Top Tips To Deal With Badly Behaving
Pupils’ and ‘Activities For Behaviour Management Training
Days.’ Details of these appear in the
Publications Section on this
site.
Rob Long, a
colleague of mine, has also been busy and has extended his
‘Making Sense of Behaviour’ series of booklets, published by
NASEN. New titles include: OCD / Positive Communication /
Loss / Adolescents In The Classroom / Groups / Motivation /
Emotions / Interventions. These can be ordered through
contacting Behaviour Solutions.
Latest
news on behaviour related topics include:
Food:
Jamie
Oliver continues in his quest to improve the health of the
nation’s youth and the quality of school dinners following
his successful television series, ‘Jamie's School Dinners.’
He delivered a 271 000 signature petition to Number 10
Downing Street. The Government agreed to spend a further
£280 million to improve school dinners - £220 million for
school meals and £60 million for the School Food Trust to
give independent support and advice to schools and parents,
and to improve school meals. The cash will ensure that at
least 50p a day is spent on Primary School Students and 60p
on Secondary Students – an increase from the current 37p. In
comparison, however, France spends 80p on the ingredients in
their school dinners, Italy spend 70p, Spain 67p, Australia
82p and the USA spends 79p. See the
publications section for
details of ‘Fuel For Thought – Improving Learning and
Behaviour Through Appropriate Food and Drink.’ This book
demonstrates how changes in diet can have a significant impact
on improving behaviour and the ability to learn.
Parents:
Professor
Charles Desforges from Exeter University, has outlined
research which compared children’s level of attainment with
the level of support they received from their parents. His
research questioned whether if you could make all schools
equally good, would all 7 year olds be equally good? He
found that by doing this you would only reduce differences
in attainment between them by 5%. However, he found by
making all parents equally good at parenting, then the
reduction of differences between children would be 30%.
Footballers as Role Models:
A
teachers' leader at an Easter Conference suggested that a
Premiership player was allegedly caught swearing at the
referee more than 20 times in a recent game. The view is
that the players are so influential and act as role models
for so many students that they should act in a responsible
manner. What happens on the pitch at the weekend is aped in
the playground the next day. One Union Leader suggested that
football was, allegedly, such a bad influence that it should
only be shown after the 9pm watershed. Football authorities
say that they will tighten up the rules and players using
bad language will be sent off.
Bullying:
Childline
took 31 000 calls from bullied children in the past year to
March 2004, an increase of 48% on previous year.
Happy
Slapping is a new craze. Pupil’s gang up on a victim,
assault them and use their mobile phones to video the
attack. Their videos are then shared. Some bullies set up
websites in the name of a victim and use it to make
offensive marks.
Self
Harm:
Girls are 4
times more likely to self-harm than boys. Over 24 000 under
18’s are treated in casualty departments each year from
effects of self-harming. By repeating the process,
self-harmers can get addicted to the endorphins released by
the body when they do it.
Depression:
1 in 10
teenage girls describe themselves as emotional wrecks. 60%
feel insecure. Family breakdowns, bullying at school and
society’s obsession with the ‘perfect body’ were fuelling
the lack of confidence among pubescent girls. To cope they
were copying the binge drinking and stressed-out behaviour
of adults.
Alcohol
Abuse:
4 000
children aged 11-15 were hospitalised last year suffering
from the effects of alcohol.
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