Overcoming Barriers to Learning

There are a great many children and young people in our classrooms struggling with a range of social and emotional problems across what teacher and interim Virtual Head Sheila Mulvenney describes as 'the spectrum of trouble'. At one end, the pupil may have experienced severe difficulties, such as neglect, trauma and abuse, the death or imprisonment of a parent; at the other, the pupil may have experienced parental or sibling ill health, separation through parents being posted overseas, having financial difficulties. Such 'troubles' may be long or short term, but coming into school, these pupils are unlikely to be in a state of readiness for learning. Their distress may not only prevent them from being curious, engaged and open, but expressed in challenging behaviour, can quickly disrupt others learning too. Mulvenny shows how relationships with staff in school are critical to enabling pupils and students to feel secure; how essential a 'culture of care' of both staff and pupils is to creating the right environment for concentration and good learning, and how it can be improved; how staff managing their own emotional experience can both reduce the likelihood 'collisions in the classroom' and also provide modelling for pupils and students on how to mitigate the worse effects of the distress they are experiencing. She also addresses how language used in school can be modified to challenge the 'scripts' our pupils carry with them in more constructive direction. In short, a blue print to overcome barriers to learning.