DA (n5). Children highlighted teacher approaches and interventions that supported their wellbeing at school.
Ten year old Benji referred to his aggressive behaviour throughout our discussion. However, when talking about support he received from teachers he conveyed that their input enabled him to reduce his aggression.
Now in what’s it called playtime if you do anything physical you get told off…and if your teacher tells you off in lunch time and they tell your
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teacher you could get told off also...and then you’ll miss like a whole lunch time and get detention. If you do it again you miss two. If you do it again you miss three. It adds up one every time…like now that’s
happened I stopped now fighting…It’s fine because then like nothing bad could happen. Like when you’re older like someone like you beat them up you could get into prison. (Benji)
Following relocation to his new school, Benji mentioned that the teachers paid close attention to his behaviour. It appears from his quote that a behaviour management plan was implemented and this reduced his aggressive behaviour. With this strategy in place, Benji could envisage a future where “nothing bad could happen”. Benji made a connection to an identity he wanted to have. This was made possible following the implementation of clear boundaries by adults, in a traditionally less structured part of the school (i.e. the playground).
Similarly, Annie described how teacher discipline was important for preventing problems escalating. Annie described this as a caring approach.
The teachers are really, really nice and they really care like if someone does something wrong. They don’t just leave it like some people do. If someone hurts someone or someone has a cracked head, or they’re being rude or racist or something like that they are put in detention for a week. Lunch time or break time so they learn their lesson. (Annie)
Annie, like Benji, reported that physical fights could occur in school. Annie’s phrase (“learn their lesson”) reiterated that it was important to her that people who hurt others were punished and justice was restored. Although within the two aforementioned excerpts Benji is positioned as an aggressor and Annie
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as somebody fearing aggression, both children highlighted the benefit of teachers enforcing boundaries as a form of protection. Similarly to Annie and Benji, Rachel referred to the possibility of physical injury occurring at school. Talking about how a school teacher could help vignette character “Zara” at school when she had experienced DA, Rachel explained, “She [the teacher] can help her when she needs help. She could kind of like tell her it’s okay when she’s sad and when she needs to go to first aid” (Rachel - V).
Both emotional and physical support were mentioned as important by Rachel. Rachel assumed a child would feel sad and would visit first aid, and she positioned the teacher as somebody authoritative who could help in this
scenario. Rachel showed that teacher empathy and reassurance was important (“tell her it’s okay when she’s sad”).
Similarly, Claire explained that school children benefitted from emotional support from SPs. Claire explained that the school counsellor helped her feel happy.
They take you out of class and let you do what you want, draw and stuff. Make you feel happy so you can like forget about what happened in your past and feel like you can make a new life and start again and stuff, and you can maybe feel better.…It’s really important to me because if I feel upset and I want to share stuff, and I feel someone is going to say “stop being a bit dramatic”, or I feel like I haven’t got anyone to talk to, then you know someone like Miss Joshie is there.…Then like you could tell her what’s happened so you don’t feel like you’ve got no one to talk to,
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and a bit crowded or something, like you’ve got all these people but you can’t talk to anyone there. (Claire – V)
Claire directly attributed being able to “feel happy”, “forget what
happened in your past” and “start a new life” to the presence of an SP available to help her contain her emotions. Although Claire talked about being
surrounded by “all these people”, she felt “you can’t talk to anyone there”. This is an astute perception; Claire described what she needed, as well as how she could be perceived as “dramatic” by people around her. She assumed that the reaction to her sharing her feelings would be negative, and she raised the idea of being surrounded by people (fitting in the context of a busy school) while having nobody to talk to, although she appreciated having an important teacher she could disclose to. Claire’s visual image reinforced the importance of adults to her at school.
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Claire’s visual image depicted her old school (left) and her new school (right). She had been attending her new school for under a month when she drew the image and she focused on drawing her “old school”. Claire labelled her image with phrases applied to the class and head teacher. She wrote about positive experiences (“she looked out for me”, “the teachers were nice to me”, “she liked my handwriting”) and negative (“shout”, “they weren’t very helpful”) when describing SPs at her school. The image of the class teacher was as large as the image of the school. This highlighted the significance of school teachers to Claire.
When Annie talked about how a teacher could provide emotional support, she conveyed that not all children would want to share their feelings with an adult face to face but might still want emotional support through other means. Annie chose to use the “worry box” to write notes to the class teacher rather than seek out face-to-face support.
My teacher and some other teachers have a worry box so you can write a note and then put it in a worry box, what worries you or if you have a problem. Instead if you don’t want to say it in her face you can write it down in the note…I think that’s pretty good. I usually use that…I like it. That may be something the kids that want to speak to the teacher that are too shy or something, they can write it in the worry box…when people might like hurt my feelings or stuff like that. (Annie)
Annie referenced “shy” and “quiet” children who “do not want to cause a problem” throughout her dialogue. This could be connected to her experiences of DA and the way she self-managed and kept safe at home. Annie’s
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preference for a “worry box” fits with this idea of “not causing a problem”. She may have felt this intervention gave her more anonymity and increased feelings of safety.
Across this subtheme, all of the children also referred to teacher’s communication styles. Sunny explained his preference for his teacher being polite, and not shouting, saying: “When I get in trouble she says it nicely. She says it like in a polite way. She wouldn’t shout” (Sunny). Similarly, all of the children talked negatively about teachers shouting.
This subtheme has shown the approaches and strategies children perceived as helpful from teachers at school. It has highlighted children’s preference for structured boundaries to protect them from harm, empathy, opportunities to express their emotions both directly and indirectly and the avoidance of shouting in the classroom.
5.3.3. Subtheme 3: Friendship and peer support. All children talked