Six Year 5 girls at Thomas Buxton Junior School embarked upon a programme aimed at addressing emotions which gave rise to disruptive behaviour and bullying.

Aims and objectives
Main beneficiaries
The initiative
Art and play
Outcome
Evaluation and assessment opportunities
Challenges encountered
Cross curricular links
Project contacts
National Curriculum relevance

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The aims and objectives
The programme set out to support the school's efforts to deal with disruptive behaviour and bullying by working with six Year 5 pupils who had a history, going back several years, of quarreling which often led to victimization, bullying, fights and tears. The project aims to help pupils learn about feelings - theirs and those of other people. The consequences of unexpressed and unexplored feelings can be taking out anger, loneliness etc. on other pupils (bullying); turning negative feelings in on themselves (becoming a victim, self harm); burying or suppressing feelings (leading to depression, lethargy, isolation) The project therefore seeks to help the children learn not only to identify their feelings but also to learn to talk about them and through this, to enhance their understanding and control over their feelings.

The project aims are to provide a safe space in which the pupils can:
·begin to identify and understand their feelings
· learn to express their feelings
· explore feelings and develop 'emotional literacy'
· rehearse new ways of behaving and managing feelings

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The main beneficiaries
The Primary beneficiaries were the six Year 5 Bangladeshi girls. Ultimately however the whole school community benefits.

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The initiative
The Programme Facilitator, a qualified teacher with 27 years experience of teaching in bilingual, inner city settings, worked alone with the children, but was line managed by the school SEN co-ordinator and headteacher. The facilitator also has an RSA certificate in 'Counselling Skills in the Development of Learning' and a certificate in 'The Therapeutic and Educational Application of the Arts'. The six Year 5 girls worked once a week for fifty minutes in two small groups of three. The initial contract was for the group to work together for one term. As the project evolved an additional half hour session during the lunch break was introduced where all six of them came together for a 'circle time' group.

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Art and play (called integrative arts) has been central to the programme used and strategies used include a wide range of media; clay, painting, drawing, role play, movement, dance, music and puppets. The importance of using art and play is that it can enable participants to access feelings in a less threatening way than through talking. When people are not sure what they feel or are unable to articulate it, the art form can make it more visible and act as a bridge so they can 'dip' into how they feel, look at it, explore it, and then come away again, with the emotions safely left outside on the page or in the clay or the drama.
This approach is particularly suited for children who have little or no experience of talking about how they feel. The group had had very little opportunity to talk about, much less explore their feelings particularly their anger.
Through integrative arts they were able to explore:
· feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, fear, confusion, anger, frustration
· how feelings turn into action, through bullying, fighting, isolation or becoming a victim
· the feelings and motivations of other people
· their own needs
· other people's needs

The sessions also included some simple relaxation techniques, breathing, centering and visualizations to give the girls strategies they can use to deal more effectively with some of the stresses in their lives.

Each session began with a group 'circle time' as a means of exploring, expressing and communicating. This differed from the usual circle time, in that anyone could speak at any time. Inevitably, conflicts between members of the group emerged as being 'upper most' in their minds. When this was the case, they would be invited to 'clear' with the person concerned. This 'clearing' is done in such a way that it does not aggravate the situation.
The person clearing says: "When you did/said.... I felt...".
The person clearing owns how s/he feels and is not blaming anyone else (the one thing that is sure to make matters worse). The person on the receiving end is less likely to become defensive and attack back. It takes practice but it works and the girls became very good at clearing.

The next part of the session often came directly out of this group circle time. The girls were asked to paint, draw or role-play how they were feeling at that moment, as a result of their interaction in the group. They all had strong emotions to express, either because it had been their issue that was being cleared or because they had been a friend of someone involved. Art gave them a vehicle through which to identify how they felt and then through talking about it, begin to understand some of their own inner workings. Also, they used the art form to help them begin to understand the action and motivations of other people.

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The outcome
It was agreed with the school from the beginning that this work could not be expected to yield instant 'results'. Rather, it was seen as initial, intensive input, which would be followed up and supported by a range of ongoing initiatives and the development of a new, whole school anti-bullying policy. In fact, to everyone's surprise, it did yield results relatively quickly, with some of the girls appearing to be happier and more relaxed after only a short period of time.
It would be naive to assume that all of their problems have been solved and they will never again quarrel or behave badly towards each other. They will continue to need support to remind them to check out how they are feeling and 'clear' before conflicts escalate. But the fact that they came to these realizations by themselves means that it is much more likely that they will be able to sustain the new ways of being which they so much want - which in their own words are to:
· stop butting into things that are none of our business
· stop bullying people and be friends and be kind
· be nice, kind and sharing things and being fair to each other
· not bully other people and play with them
· not cut other people's friends
· carry on like how I've behaved when R was here
· get help from other people and make lots of friends in the school.

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Evaluation and assessment opportunities
A full report by the facilitator of the programme has demonstrated the development of emotional literacy among the six girls and the facilitator, school staff and pupils have noted changes in their behaviour. The comments by the girls themselves and evidence of the new strategies they have adopted demonstrate the effectiveness of the programme. There is a collection of children's art work, though this is not for public viewing as confidentiality was a vital element to the success of the programme.

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Challenges encountered
Perhaps not surprisingly because of their age and bilingualism, the girls often had very limited vocabulary to describe what was going on and how they felt. On one occasion the only word one of them could find to describe how she felt was 'silly' when in fact once she talked it became clear that she was feeling confused and unsure how to deal with a situation. On another occasion, the facilitator used the word 'quarrelling' and one of the girls asked her what it meant. So an important part of the process of identifying feelings included learning new words to express them.

The children also showed difficulties distinguishing between different feelings. What was often called 'sad' in fact was anger seething just below the surface. The use of art often gave clues where the facilitator could say, for example (never interpreting a child's painting), "I notice you've used a lot of red in that picture, I wonder what the red might say if it had a voice?" The reply might be "I'm angry and I want to kill!" The acknowledgement of such intense feelings can be startling but very liberating. However, it was very important that the facilitator was able to 'hold' the space safely for the child so that she did not become frightened of these feelings and realised that everyone feels murderous at one time or another.

Often role-play with small figures (sometimes in a sand tray) proved a powerful way of helping the girls to act out the conflicts they experienced in the playground, the room and with siblings. After the role-play they would sit back and reflect on the situation, sometimes re-enacting the same situation with different endings, new ways of resolving and 'clearing'. The process of 'clearing' is much more likely to happen when they have the support of the group. Transferring the process to the playground where they are on their own has proved more difficult.

The process is lengthy and costly but significantly the participants worked out new ways of behaving and managing feelings entirely on their own, without prompting and without being told 'this is how you must behave, this is how you must respond'.

It should be emphasised that due to the therapeutic nature of the work, teachers cannot deliver such a programme with a whole or even a small group without training. To do so might cause more harm than good. The programme offers specialised in-depth work for those who are trained to deliver it.

Having worked through some of their anger; having identified their frustrations and begun to see how these painful feelings were affecting every facet of their lives, they were able to begin the process of healing old wounds and establishing new patterns of behaviour. For this group of girls, these new responses and strategies represent for them:
· a new way of seeing relationships
· taking responsibility for their actions and feelings
· the possibility of an entirely different way of behaving
· the beginning of understanding other people's feelings and actions

Cross curricular links

In addition to fulfilling National Curriculum targets for Citizenship and PSHE, this initiative uses art, design and technology and music in implementing the programme. The programme should be seen as part of a broad behaviour management agenda which the school is pursuing. Other initiatives the school is using to support pupil behaviour include involvement in the healthy schools initiative and using Jenny Mosleys Quality Circle Time.

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Project contacts

Robin Shell 020 8534 9464
robinshell@talk21.com

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