Safe spaces vs. Brave spaces

I often talk about Safety First, Learning Second when it comes to education, in particular when working with young people with behaviour needs.

I know this to be true – if we don’t feel safe our body protects us – it gets us ready to biologically fight, fly or freeze. When our body has gone into this nervous reaction (quickened heartbeat, shallow breathing, tense muscles) our amygdala is on alert, processing extreme emotions quickly – and our pre-frontal cortex, known for rationalising and reflecting, is not engaged.

Hence why this is not a good time to learn a new tense in French grammar – or whatever else you’re attempting to teach your pupils.

As such, it stands to reason that within our pedagogy, a pupil’s safety or their perceived safety (not always the same thing) need to be considered; in our planning, in the way we set up the environment, relationships, subject matter etc.

We want our pupils to feel safe and belonging – to help their bodies feel regulated, their pre-frontal cortex able to engage and enable them to learn what we’re trying to teach them.

And

Recently I was challenged by my coach Suzy Ashworth, (again, she is good at it), to consider the difference between ‘Safe’ spaces and ‘Brave’ spaces, and actually, I found that to be true too.

If we are not careful, a ‘Safe space’ becomes somewhere without challenge. I heard of a great example of this from one of my excluded pupils once. He told me that in his Primary School, all he had to do was ‘push the desk and swear’ and he was allowed to go to the isolation unit for the day…where he could watch videos and eat popcorn…

Now – yes, that sensory break may well be what a young person needs initially to regulate their bodies, anxiety, safety levels. (Read my blog post Window of Tolerance for more on this)

And it was clear from the glee on my pupil’s face, that at some point this stopped being safe, but instead became what we might label ‘low expectations’ – unfortunately a common scenario with pupils with SEMH (Social, Emotional Mental Health issues). In Chapter 6 of my book “Miss, I don’t give a sh*t” Engaging with Challenging Behaviour in Schools) I interviewed Teacher, Trainer and Coach Mark Goodwin, who discussed the challenge and comfort matrix to exemplify this.

Which is what Suzy was alluding to:

Yes, as we support people, in our case young people, safety is essential – and then there’s a moment where if we don’t dare to step beyond – into something that might not feel comfortable then we risk doing a disservice to the pupils.

Where are you in your practice?

Are you creating safety?

Are you being brave?

Asking a pupil who can’t read, to read involves you being brave – there may be defiance, disruptive behaviour, avoidance – as the adult you will need to hold this space safely, so that the pupils get to be brave – so that they get to try, fail AND try again.

As I wrote recently in my blog post What I wish I’d learnt at school, going out of our comfort zone doesn’t always feel good.

Back to my pupil, having told me his desk-turning-over trick, I took that as a sign that I was going to push him to be braver -and I told him so;

“OK, thanks for telling me that, now I know your tactic I know that I’m going to not allow you to just stick in that pattern, I want you to have an education when you walk out of senior school, it might get uncomfortable, you might kick and scream against it, but you can see I’m creating the best opportunities for you, what do you think?”

“Alright” he responded.

“Great” I replied, “I’ll hold you to that.”