It should have been the first day of term, but instead I found myself driving, alone, to a family funeral.

Funerals at the height of the lockdown were a strange beast: a socially distant monster that ate away at all of the comfort that once could be found in collective grief. Standing two metres apart from loved ones, sitting, isolated, on a row of seats, seeing tears in the eyes of those you care most about in the whole world, but not being able to hold them…

It was an experience I hope never to repeat. It went against every instinct in my body not to hold my loved ones close and comfort them, and to be touched and comforted in return. Touch and proximity, in the most painful times of our lives, are the things we rely upon above all else.

As I drove home, my thoughts turned to school. Schools are usually full of touch and proximity. For our youngest children, touch is what makes social development stick. For our older pupils, to be at school is to embrace, laugh together, dance together, work together; it is to nudge, jostle and play fight.

What happens when you strip all that away? As more of our pupils return, what sort of school experience are they returning to?

So much of what we do as teachers seems to be indelibly linked to our physicality. In a 2005 review of the role of touch in humans, Antal Haans and Wijnand IJsselsteijn of Eindhoven University of Technology outline the significant importance of touch in our interactions with the world. They explain, perhaps unsurprisingly, that we use touch when we need to effect a change in others, either by providing encouragement or emotional support.

What else is teaching if not effecting change in others?

And while touch is often represented as something definite, in fact it is usually used as a soft influence. Used briefly and discreetly, it has been shown to increase self-disclosure, positive gratitude and compliance to requests.

Though we may not have explicitly recognised it, we know this in schools. A tap on the shoulder as we say “well done”, a shake of a hand when awarding a certificate, a guiding nudge of encouragement, or an outstretched hand of comfort - we reinforce what we say with touch because we know the message is better for it.

Research has even shown that peoples’ participation in a course increased after being touched by a teacher, a phenomenon also seen in restaurants, whereby tipping increases if the customer is touched by the server.

Of course, touch can be so much else: damaging, imposing, threatening, unwelcome, dominating. Touch is controversial; increasingly, we don’t trust touch. Research notes that, in a litigious society, touching is no longer commonplace in schools. It would be tempting to suggest the above eulogising of touch is misplaced as a result - education no longer depends on it. But there is little truth in that.

Touch still happens - and is still crucially important - between children and young people in schools. And while it may now be less common between teachers and pupils, it’s not as rare as the research makes out. Young children in primary hug their teachers constantly. And in secondary? I believe it is still everywhere, though the physical act itself may not be.

I’m talking about physical proximity. Behaviour management, supporting students with their work, motivating and engaging students - it all relies on that magical ability we have to use our bodies to influence others without having to touch them. We tilt our head slightly to the left and change the atmosphere almost instantly. We raise an eyebrow and a challenging behaviour ends. We get just close enough and they feel our encouragement despite the still visible carpet tiles between us.

Proximity matters as much as touch - to my mind, it is part of it.

Research shows that personal distance between humans influences the intensity of a relationship or communication - the closer you get, the easier the communication and building or maintaining of that relationship.

In a study exploring the impact of teacher proximity to students, tests were carried out on students from different distances, one with a teacher being 60 inches away from students, and the other being 30 inches away from students. In the more distant test, administrators stood and did not smile at the students. In their analysis, researchers concluded that the test scores show that those who were in the “warm”, closer group gained more points than those in the more distant, “cold” group.

And Patrick W Miller in his book Non-verbal Communication suggests that, as humans, we have a natural tendency to stand closer to those that we like and that this often unconscious behaviour is easily interpreted as a sign of being liked by others. Furthermore, evidence also suggests that when our verbal and non-verbal communication does not match up, the non-verbal communication reigns supreme.

Unfortunately, having to stay two metres from a pupil - from every pupil - is a wrecking ball to proximity. Without it, there should be serious questions as to how far we will be able to manage behaviour, or support or encourage or comfort, or communicate and build relationships. There is a risk our students are returning to a situation more akin to the cold than the warm group.

So, robbed of touch and proximity, do we risk pupils feeling less valued, less happy and less able to learn?

On the face of it, yes. According to Miller, successful learning may be at risk when our verbal and non-verbal behaviours clash; the interpretation of students may be that teachers are not credible sources of information. We may also find that students’ behaviour towards staff changes, or if they are working with staff who are new to them, it may mean that it takes longer to form relationships. Students may also find the whole education process disconcerting and their behaviour may deteriorate in this case. Equally, we might see some students overwhelmed by the changes and become increasingly introverted.

However, none of these issues means we should not bother. The psychological damage caused by being out of school and the issues with being in a socially distant school are complex and difficult to compare. It’s not a simple choice to conclude from the above that pupils would be better off at home.

Neither is it true to say that there is nothing we can do to mitigate the situation in which we find ourselves. For a start, recognising this issue is the most important thing we can do.

Early years professionals are ahead on this: they have long known the importance of touch and proximity between children and between children and staff. And faced with safeguarding pressures, they are ahead in finding ways to negotiate touch safely. Just last month, Tes featured the work of Jools Page, senior early years lecturer at the University of Brighton, who talks of the need for early years professionals to articulate what professional love means and looks like in their settings. That process will be key in all of primary going forwards, but also in secondary.

What do we think professional love is during a time of social distancing? As a pastoral leader, I have begun this process. I believe we should focus on these four areas.

1. Share the knowledge

Schools need to start with making the problem explicit to both pupils and staff. School staff will need time to understand and discuss the implications of the problems that social distancing presents. It would be sensible for school leaders to spend some time producing a summary of the problems that this will present us with, and allow staff some time to understand the potential implications. This will be an ongoing process - as more children return, more problems will emerge - but more solutions will, too.

2. Build awareness

This might include staff being more aware of their own non-verbal communication and making a conscious effort to use this in certain ways to make up for the losses in others. While they might not be able to give a student a pat on the back, a genuine smile and a thumbs up could replace that in a meaningful way. Thinking about specific scenarios in advance, and planning for them, will be important. What will you do when your instinct is to move closer to a student to change their behaviour in your classroom? What will you do when a child falls over? Giving staff time to plan for the most common situations will help them know how to act in the moment.

3. Informed response

We will also need to be more mindful of what our body language may be saying when we aren’t necessarily using it as part of our teaching arsenal: the mid-afternoon slump, the irritable glance, the bored look out of the window - it may all take on a whole new importance. Staff in school will need to consider the various ways that their body language may have ordinarily been used to enhance their role. They will also need to consider, consciously and regularly, their non-verbal signals in a way that they have not been used to in the past.

4. Engage students

Young people may not fully understand what is happening and why they might feel different from normal. They might not even be able to identify that they feel different because of the absence of physical proximity. Honesty is always the best way forward with young people, but it is important that this message isn’t delivered in a way that incites fear or anxiety in students. Simply explaining how they might feel and empowering them with the vocabulary needed to appropriately describe their emotions - plus modelling of this from staff - should ensure that younger students, especially, are aware of the problem. It will also mean that they are equipped to talk about it, which will be one of the most important support mechanisms a school can provide as we move into uncharted territories.

It’s clear that this problem is not going to go away soon. Social distancing - at least between staff and pupils - is likely to be a significant part of school life for some time. We can let that overwhelm us, or we can find ways of getting around it. As teachers, we will always pick the latter, because it is our instinct to care for others, comfort them and improve things for them.

At the funeral, we found ways to show we cared without the ease of touch and proximity to carry the message. We will do the same in schools. Because not finding those ways around our circumstance is simply not an option. We’re teachers - caring is what we do.

Amy Forrester is an English teacher and director of pastoral care (key stage 4) at Cockermouth School in Cumbria

This article originally appeared in the 5 June 2020 issue under the headline “Teaching without touch”