The Kindness Principle – Why A Relational Approach Works

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wellspring Way. Now, I've really been looking forward to chatting to our latest guest. He's been absolutely fundamental in making Wellspring what it is today. He's a published author and a leading authority on the relational approach to behaviour management. He's a former executive principal of social, emotional, and mental healthy special schools and alternative provision academies. He's Wellspring's Director of Learning and he believes in prioritising kindness in the classroom. Today we're joined by the one and only Dave Whitaker. Dave, thanks for joining us. It's good to have you.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

So, first thing, your book, The Kindness Principle. And I've got a copy in front of me, and I just want to read some of the quotes on the back. The kindness principle should be read in every school because above all it teaches us that excellence and kindness are not mutually exclusive. We can and should strive to achieve both. And that's Safiona Miller, the education journalist. Between these covers, you'll find everything you need in order to become a school where teachers love to teach, learners love to learn, and where curiosity and empathy turn adversity into opportunity. That's Dr. Pookie Knight Smith, an expert on child and adolescent mental health. So I think it's fair to say that it's been really well received. You must be chuffed with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, to be fair, I am, I think it's always a surprise. It genuinely is a surprise when, first of all, somebody asks you to write a book in the first place, so that's the first surprise. And then secondly, that somebody wants to actually buy it and read it. And there's this massive um imposter syndrome and self-doubt that you get when you um I suppose it's not just when you write a book, it a lot of people get imposter syndrome in jobs, don't they? But um it took about five years to persuade me to even do it from um Ian Gilbert, who's the publisher, and and he Ian had been pushing me and pushing me and pushing me and saying, Look, Dave, you've got a lot to say, um, I want you to write it in a book. And I sort of didn't believe that I had a lot to say until I eventually started to write it down. And then, you know, 46,000 words later, you realise you've got the content for a book, uh, and and the rest is history because what you've then got to do is go through all the process of it actually being published and then it's physically in your hand, and then you go, and that's the scary bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Oh, it's intangible.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Well, it's it's it it's both it's both um fantastic and also frightening, and it's frightening because you realise that people are going to read it and comment about it, and they're going to actually have an opinion, and we all know what people's opinions are like in education, it's it's polarized, isn't it? You know, you've got you've got all sorts of people chipping in, and and I suppose I I wasn't paranoid, but I knew that there could be some comeback to to my approach because it's uh the approach that we have uh across Wellspring, the um the approach that we have through our positive regard and practitioners and team, and we we're big on relationships and we're big on on I suppose kindness, and we also know that there are people out there that don't really believe that's the right way to do things, yeah. And to be honest, if you think about it, kindness, when you actually analyse that, why would you not be kind? You know, why why is it a thing?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

How on earth would anyone kind of be comfortable with saying actually I'm anti-kind of it? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

So so actually the the title of the book is quite disarming. Yeah, because if you say that look, this is a book about being kind to children, hmm, who's gonna criticize it really? Um so it is a scary moment, and it's a scary moment when um when you you know you go on Amazon and your book's on Amazon, yeah, and you think, right, okay, this is now real, it's in the real world, and you've got a book, and people can buy it.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

And every keyboard warrior can write a review.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and they do, and and that's what happens. Um, and you just you know, you you you you look you look and you sort of dread that one star review on Amazon, you know. Somebody which which there isn't, by the way. Excellent. So which is great, which so far, but you know, somebody listening to this. The thing is with Amazon, somebody listening to this could say, right, okay, there isn't a one-star review, I'll go and do one now then. Because it literally is like that. So you you expose yourself to that review process, even with people who haven't written it might not even read it, they can still go and review it.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

In today's world, kind of writing a book, you've got to have the thickest skin ever. Once upon a time, you know, you'd all you'd be worried about was an official review in a magazine or something.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Absolutely that.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Everybody can take the two penny things, total exposure, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 4:14

It it really is exposure. Um, in if I if I if I was to weigh it all up, it's one of the best things that I've ever done. Yeah. Because I just it just I just allowed myself to spend time writing. And if somebody would have said to me ten years ago, could you write a book? I'd have just laughed my head off. You know, what write a book? You're joking. And and then you you sort of fast forward a few years and and you've got a book, and it's you know, then I've got people saying, When's your next book?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I was just gonna say, is there another book in there? I've done that.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Well, you you know, never say never, because I don't want anybody coming back to me in 10 years and said you would never write a book, but writing a book is all about authentic content for me, and and actually some people can just churn out book after book after book because because either there's brilliant writers that they've either got loads to say, yeah, or they're sort of making it up. And one of the things that I I in in my that book that I've written is pretty much all my career content. There's 25 years of career content stepped into that book, so I'm not waiting another 25 years to write another book.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah, because that's what I was gonna say that I really enjoyed about it is that it's um it'd be very easy to write one that was very theoretical or almost political, kind of pushing an approach, but it's not, it's all about your practical experience and how you can translate that into a classroom. Um, and some of the examples really bring it home because I know we we talk a lot about unconditional positive regard in Wellspring, um, but I think it's those examples. Um there was one boy called Liam who he um got the windows really dirty when he had a bit of an incident, and it was it was the way that he um he faced consequences for his actions, but in a way that was kind and supportive rather than punishment, and I found that really a really interesting example.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yeah, well I I suppose what I've tried to do in the book is is is match uh theoretical principles to actual incidents that that have occurred in in sort of my um career as as a teacher and all the way through to being a principal. And because sometimes people will say, it's okay, Dave, that's not necessarily true, or that don't work. And my answer to that is well it is because it because I've seen it work and I've done it myself. So so when when you're actually writing the book, I was really conscious that um that I had to tell stories. So what I did when I when I first when you the way that you know for all those people who don't know about writing a book, you start to write stuff and and then you send it to your publisher, your editor, sorry. And and I I I think I wrote about 10,000 words and I and I sent it off to um my editor, and he sent it back and said, That's all great, Dave, but I need to know more about you. So I want more Dave Whitaker in that book. So don't lose the 10,000, just add to them with with stories and anecdotes that make that make the thing come to life. So that what you're saying you need to do, prove it by by writing what you've um you've done yourself. And that's all the book was. So it was a case of there's the 10,000 words, it now becomes 46,000 words by by going over things that have actually happened that can be linked to either um a theory or or or a practice that that you that you might see elsewhere. So that's all it is, really.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

It's always the best way to learn, isn't it? It's storytelling. If you tell it. If you tell stories, it brings things to life and people get it.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

And and that and so the book is the book is essentially a collection of little stories about real life, either myself or people who I've worked with and some of the things that we were involved in when working with really vulnerable and really challenging children in schools. And and going right back to you know, incidents that occurred to me even when I was a newly qualified teacher, you know, back in the in the first few years of my teaching career, and what actually steered my thinking in it really early in my career, which probably pointed me in the route that I I then took around working with special needs children, working in inclusion, working in alternative provision, and the sort of things that that I ended up doing for years and years and years as a leader.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

I was going to ask you that about kind of what um sparked that philosophy. Was it there from the start that this is my this is my approach as a teacher, or was it something that grew over time?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

I think you always fall into things by accident and opportunity. In a teaching career, you always do. It depends which school you get your first job at, it depends the influences, the leadership influences, and the culture of the school that you um that you fall into or where you first start to be. I was lucky in a sense that I went to a my my first school was was uh was a school of you know secondary school, 1600 kids, real comprehensive because it had some really, really challenging kids, it had some and it also had some kids that were sort of really middle class kids who who just did as they're told all the time and did really well. So it was that great experience of everything. But culturally it was in a really good place. So for me, that was that start of where we were culturally. You know, we we we spent um bearing in mind this was you know, we're going we're going back um over 20 years, we just didn't exclude children. You know, the the head teacher at the time said that's not what he wanted from the school, so we've got to work out different ways in um in working to prevent children from being excluded. So this is mainstream secondary, and one of my first leadership jobs was was to work on um behaviour policy and ways in which we could uh prevent exclusions. And we introduced really early in in the sort of big scheme of things restorative approaches, right? Use of restorative language and restorative practice in school to the point where we had two years without a single fixed term exclusion for two years because we did other things, we use restorative practice and we just we wove it into the fabric of the school. That was quite forward thinking.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah. I mean, I can remember from my school days that exclusion was you know quite common, really.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

And that was a response to exclusion being common.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

So exclusion was too high, we needed to do something different. I remember going on a course. Um, you know, he sent me on a course, it was a three-day course in restorative practice 20 years ago. You you know, and and and and so so ever since then it changes your thinking and the way that you work. And so, what you do is you find yourself going into a pastoral system or into inclusion or special needs, and and before you know it, that's where your heart lies, and the rest is history because you move from there.

unknown 10:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Well, do you think what is it? The is it the challenge? Is it that you can kind of you feel like you're really having more of an impact? What was it that kind of drew you to that that side of teaching?

SPEAKER_00 10:51

I I don't I don't I I honestly don't really know apart from maybe it allows you to be less academic. You know, you maybe maybe when you start working about relationships and working with the children and on on relationships and uh and really understanding the kids, you you you don't have to work so hard at being really good at geography. Fair you know, so maybe I don't know. But but but I think I think I I I genuinely think it you just you just find your niche and you you find your niche and you think actually I really enjoy this, so why would I change? When I moved from mainstream education into special education and alternative provision, that was a big risk, a sort of a personal risk, because you feel like I don't know whether I can cut it in that set of those settings, and so you move not knowing whether you can cut it, but I was lucky because I got the opportunity to do a secondment as a leadership in leadership as a secondment.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

So try before you buy it.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

So you try before you buy it. The way I sort of describe it, it's a little bit like somebody can either chuck you into the middle of if you into the middle of the swimming pool and you can't swim and to see whether you can swim, or they can drop you near the edge so that if you can't swim, you can grab the side.

unknown 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

And and I got I was lucky enough to be able to drop be drop near the edge, and if I and if I could swim, I was going to be okay. And if I couldn't, I could always grab the side and climb out. And and I didn't, but as it happened, I could swim and I didn't need to grab the side. So I soon changed mass economy into a uh into a permanent position and and and went from there.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

I've I mean I've spoken to quite a few teachers, um, Wellspring that are alternative professional uh special, and once they've kind of made that jump and discovered that's their thing, they also the same could never go back to mainstream now.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

I mean, yeah, I mean you you you see people who make that change and the it's almost like they either leave after two weeks or they stay forever. Yeah. Because you very, very quickly realise if it's too much for you because it is highly demanding, it's emotionally draining, um, it's hugely challenging, but it's also highly rewarding in different ways than working in mainstream is. So it's just horses for causes.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, yeah. It's um yeah, I I just I I love going around the around the schools and seeing kind of all the different things that are going on. It's absolutely fascinating, and and the strength of character that you see in the teachers that that deal with some of those uh challenges is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Yeah, you what you know what you see, you see kindness.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah, you do.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

And you see it cutting through, and you and you see that culture cutting through because you see those really, really powerful relationships between adult and children. The other thing that you also notice is really good relationships between adult and adult. Because actually it's it's the whole lot. You know, that unconditional positive regard thing and that that empathy and acceptance and understanding and tolerance is actually got it just goes round and round. It's got to be adult to adult, adult to child, child to adult.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Do you think there's enough emphasis on understanding those kind of things from a very early stage in in teacher training? So, for instance, like understanding about adverse childhood experiences and that window of tolerance and all those kind of things that wellspring teachers know inside out. Is there enough of that?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

No, that I don't there isn't. And and the the problem with anything is that initial teacher training and now early careers teaching is there's a curriculum involved in that and it and it's and it's packed.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

You know, where do what do you lose to it in order to bring other things in? But I do genuinely believe there isn't enough emphasis placed on working with special needs children and also on behaviour. And the reason that's a challenge is because that that becomes one of the biggest problems for teachers in the first parts of their career. One of one of the one of the things that keeps um children keeps teachers awake at night is managing the behaviour of the children or working with the really complex special needs children that they have in their class, but yet we don't do enough of that on teacher training. So so actually, what they should be doing is sort of tracking back and saying, okay, what's the biggest challenge you've got as a teacher? Let's tackle that on initial teacher training. You know, I think I think every teacher, and I would say this, I suppose, but I think every teacher at some stage during either their initial teacher training or their early career training should spend some time in a special school or an alternative provision. Whether it's a week or two weeks, there should be some way of doing that because it will it it will totally change the way you think in that short period of time.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah, it's it's like anything else, isn't it? If you've not experienced it, if you've not got practice in in dealing with certain things, then it's kind of like in the lion's den. Um and then on top of that, obviously, you get all the um the media you know, we must be authoritarian and strong discipline and zero tolerance and all that stuff. Um yeah, it what do you say to people that that come out with stuff like that that's suitable for broadcasting?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, and and and it is it's frustrating, isn't it? It's frustrating because what I know as well is that a lot of it is to do with what's easier. So if you're running a school, the easiest way to run a school is to have a really, really strict um behaviour policy, and if that behaviour policy is broken, then essentially what you do is you punish the children, and if they if the punishment doesn't work, you just move them on and they go somewhere else.

unknown 15:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

So actually it's quite easy. Yeah, you you if the children then do exactly as they're told, there's a really clear set of rewards and they get rewards. So rewards and sanctions, dead easy. People talk about um turning schools around and sorting schools out in um failing schools really quickly, it's pretty easy if you do that.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

If you then say if you tell yourself actually that's not what we're going to do, and what we're not gonna do is kick kids out and we're gonna work with them and we're gonna understand them, that's a lot harder. So, therefore, it needs a little bit more determination and a little bit more sophistication, a little bit more understanding, and and so if you if the chips are down and you're not feeling brave as a leader and you've got pending offstead and um you've got people on your back because standards aren't high enough. Are you gonna choose the long road or are you gonna choose the short road? And there's too many people choosing the short road. So, what it does is it actually factors in lots of things around school life. So things like funding, offstead. Yeah, you know, the pressures that that I I I have got every bit of empathy for for every head teacher who's working in a school and trying to improve standards. Yeah. Because what they're trying to do, there's I'm gonna stick my neck out and say there's no head teacher in a school who doesn't care about children, it's just what they what they see as being the priorities and how they see those priorities playing out, and also the sophistication in their approach. So so what they what they do is when they've got high exclusions, they truly believe that that's the way to sort out the school. The problem is there's unintended consequences and collateral damage there that they either choose to ignore or they don't feel a real or or they think of somebody else's problem. And and it's a combination of that. But if you're a head teacher who's got a mortgage to pay and a family to look after, and you've got offstead breathing over your neck, and you've got a school that needs changing quickly because you'll probably get sacked if it isn't, then what you need to do is hit them hard, get the kids out who were causing your problems, and have a really strict, rigid approach to behaviour because actually you're saving your own skin, yeah, possibly.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, it's interesting in the book where you talk about um seeing exclusion as a failure, and I think that kind of reframing would be really useful. So at the moment, you know, there's maybe head teachers that are seeing poor Ofsted or attendance figures or results as failure, rather rather, and then the solution is exclusions, whereas actually exclusions is a failure all of its own.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Yeah, and it's not even a failure that's linked to anybody in particular or a personal failure. I think that I think one of the things I talk about in the book is how do we genuinely judge successful schools? And and should we not have within successful schools should should be judged on how inclusive they are and successful they are with certain children rather than how quickly the deal with them get rid of them. And and and so you know, and and I do know, and you know, credit where credit's due, head teachers generally want to do the best by the children. And I've done a lot of work and we've done a lot of work through our positive regard team with with head teachers who've said, Can you help us not exclude children? Because we don't want to, but we don't know what to do instead. Yeah. So what you've got to find is that balance where you from the from a cold outside view, you might see a school that's got really high exclusions. When you scratch below the surface, it's because they don't know what to do and they're left with no option. And actually, what they're doing is they're crying out for some support and some help in to do something different to stop those exclusions happening. Now they're the sort of people who we want to work with. You know, we we want to work with people who don't want to exclude, and even if their exclusions are high, it's because they they feel like they need some help to change that and they need to change their approach. If they've got high exclusions and they're proud of that, that's a slightly different approach than where would than where we are. So we want to see and work and work with those those schools that want it to be different.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Do you think there's a move now? Do you can you sense a move kind of in the sector away from that very, very strict um ideology that we have had in that?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

I think there's an appetite for it. You know, we we um I'm talking again about positive regard and the work we do with positive regard. We're working across the country. You know, we're working with lots of schools and lots of leaders and lots of teachers and lots of staff on how to do things differently so that we don't have to continually turn to exclusions. So there's an appetite for it. But then, like anything education, on the flip side of that, there's also other schools that are saying enough is enough, we've just got to, this is what we need to do in schools, we need to have a really strict approach, we need to have um zero tolerance, we need to have no excuses, um, and you know, this is what we need to do with children. You know, and and sometimes they'll say, because that's what it's like a life lesson, we need to chill teach children that this is what life's about. I tend to disagree with that. Life isn't really like that. Do we want life to be like that? And do we want life to be like that? You know, so so it's like anything, isn't it? It's it's polarized opinions, uh, there's a spectrum of approaches, and what we do is we work and occupy a certain area of that spectrum, but what we do is we encourage other people to be part of it, and if you want to be part of it, we'll help you get there. That's what we're all about.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, and that that ethos is really strong, isn't it, now in Wellspring. It's really well huge, well known, well understood that that's that's what Wellspring's about.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

And I guess if you don't buy into that, then you don't kind of it's I suppose it's like anything, it's about a values match.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

It's whether whether it's a relationship, whether it's a partnership, whether it's a team. For it to be successful successful, there has to be a values match, and schools are the same. You know, for schools to work in partnership with each other within an academy trust, for example, or or some sort of confederation of schools, there has to be a values match. And if there isn't a values match, then it's never going to be successful because you're going to be conflicting all the time. And what we've done over the years with Wellspring is we've we've taken one school to 28 schools, but uh every step along the way, there's been a common there's a conversation about values and what we believe in. So schools don't want to join us unless they believe in the values, and actually we don't want schools to join us if they don't.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

So so there becomes a harmony, a natural harmony that develops. Now, some of the schools that we've taken have had no values because they're just in in they've been in very difficult positions, but but that has allowed us to build the values in those schools and align them with the rest of the trust. So it works if you think about it and you're thorough and and you get that those conversations, those early conversations in there about culture and values and what that means.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

And that's why the whole idea of community works, isn't it? With Wellspringers. Yeah, we're all. Yeah, and that's what you've got to encourage. Singing from the same hymn sheet. Um bit of a change of tack now, bit of a quick fire round, just to find out a little bit more about your own school days. Two choices, dead easy. Exams or coursework?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Exams so that I can do no work for ages and then just try and get through it in one hour.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

History or geography? I've already mentioned not geography.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Well, I was a geography teacher, so I've got to say geography.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Um school play or school sports day?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Good question. Um in my own school, and this is this is interesting. I saw sports day in my own school, but as a teacher, I absolutely love school the school play and the and and everything involved in the school play. I loved it.

unknown 22:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Um summer term or Christmas term?

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Summer.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Outdoor or indoor playtime?

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Outdoor.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Chemistry or physics?

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Neither. No, uh physics. I'm gonna say I'm I'm telling you, I'm saying physics because um I did I did O-level physics, so that tells you how old I am. Yeah and I I um that was probably one of my best um A level um O levels, but but somebody told me that A-level physics was really, really hard. Yeah, so I didn't do it at A-level.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember everyone like that. Oh, you don't want to do chemistry, you don't want to do physics, don't do maths.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

And I'm sorry to if anybody's listening who has aspirant um to do um as has aspirations to do physics, it's it's probably a great course.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah, brilliant. And we need we need more physicists, I'm sure we do. Um, and finally, to finish off, the question that we ask all of our guests if I gave you a magic wand and you could change anything, no, you know, no financial constraints, no practical constraints, one thing that you could change to make the education system in the UK better, what would you pick?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

I'd scrap Ofstead tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Fair enough. I think I think you'd get a lot of buy-in on that one.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

I'd I would do do something different. And I'm and I'm not I'm not saying that we we shouldn't be accountable and we shouldn't be regulated. I just think um Ofsted is flawed and it's not fit for purpose.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah, I think yeah, I think you'd find a lot of support with that one. Um thanks so much for joining us today, Dave. It's been a real pleasure. And thanks to you, the listener. Next time we'll be talking to Luke Mitchell about his work around positive regard and how he helps schools to put the kindness principle ethos into action. Hope you'll be able to join us then.