I was delighted to be doing this course in the same year as our staff has had Restorative Justice PD with Margaret Thorsborne, as elements of both strongly reinforced each other. It also tied in surprisingly, with the cycles if Inquiry, as a key element of effective teacher inquiry is really getting to know your learners. This, of course is a fundamental part of the Incredible Years programme, where effective behaviour management is predicated on building sound relationships of trust and caring with your learners, so that when problem behaviour needs to be dealt with, the learner still knows that you care about them as a person and are attending to the behaviour, not attacking them.
It was effective to, at each PD session, work sequentially through the pyramid of teaching that I had featured in a previous post, going from relationships, to low key intervention to higher order intervention. The little film vignettes, although dated and somewhat cliched, had their pace and generated useful discussion! Having time to reflect on own practice and also to discuss with others what had worked for them and what hadn't was really useful. In fact, that discussion time was, I fell, one of the most useful parts of the course.I have found it really helpful to have the low-key relationship and behaviour management stuff gone over and reinforced, with some new ideas and strategies also introduced. The focus on positive relationships, positive reinforcement and social coaching as a good reminder because, as an educator, I find there are times when I am just focusing on getting through the day and I forget to focus on the positives - so important to keep the positive, upbeat, sense of fun and enthusiasm forefront.
Overall, I am very glad to have taken this professional development and consider that it had positively impacted my pracice.
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