Take a walk on the wild side to get challenging pupils on track

Children with behavioural issues are often shunted out of mainstream education, but simply taking them out of the classroom environment can be enough to turn their lives around, writes Georgie Sweet
28th July 2017, 12:00am
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Take a walk on the wild side to get challenging pupils on track

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/take-walk-wild-side-get-challenging-pupils-track

Simon suffered from a pronounced stutter and was quiet and withdrawn. He lacked confidence. Staff struggled to engage him in lessons. But one day, he suddenly started taking every opportunity to read aloud in class, his stutter almost disappeared, and his confidence and enthusiasm for learning became obvious.

Then there’s Emma. She has a considerable track record of behavioural issues and has been at risk of exclusion. Bad decision-making and a failure to take responsibility for her actions often led to confrontations with staff members and students. Now she’s attending voluntary after-school revision sessions to improve her school grades. She’s more focused, makes better decisions, and is being polite to her peers and to staff.

What happened to these two individuals to change their trajectory? Quite simply, taking them outside of the classroom environment.

Every teacher recognises the young person who struggles to thrive in a conventional classroom. They might be very bright, but they can’t settle. They “bounce off the walls”, challenge authority, drown in distractions. They don’t see any point in school - or, at least, they claim not to. In these cases, schools normally resort to behaviour management or containment, but it rarely works and these children tend to exit the mainstream system and enter alternative provision.

There is a better way of helping these students. I am a member of support staff for children with special educational and behavioural needs. At our school, we’ve put in place interventions in which the most behaviourally challenging students are offered outdoor and expeditionary experiences, and it has had a significant impact.

Outdoor education is, thankfully, a growing element of many schools in the UK. Few now do not offer an outdoor education programme, even if it is purely extracurricular. We have tailored the curriculum at our school so that outdoor learning is a regular part of the timetable and we have seen some of our most challenging students thrive.

Anxiety alleviated

The outdoor experience comes in the form of six weekly sessions of climbing, mountain biking and canoeing, spread across the year and totalling 24 days. Children in care, those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those at risk of exclusion have an opportunity to take part in a weekly forest school throughout the year, too. Outdoor ed can be taken as a BTEC. We also run a very successful Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) programme with an intake this year of more than 120 students for the Bronze award alone.

The first effect has been a reduction of students’ anxiety levels. Poor behaviour often stems from anxiety about the environment inside the classroom. By taking themselves outdoors, students often find this anxiety is lifted and they feel more in control. They also avoid falling into the typical behaviour patterns - which often become habitual - that are triggered by their environment.

The second benefit has been a consequence of the first: with some of the barriers removed, the students become more engaged and involved. The group-based nature of outdoor activities encourages teamwork and communication, which helps develop the students’ confidence and self-esteem.

But while outdoor learning in school builds a foundation for growth, have you ever considered a real expedition for your students? You might see it as shock therapy, jolting the young person out of a behaviour pattern. I prefer to see it as an opportunity for them to change. Either way, what I’m referring to here are not trips or even outward-bound excursions. Rather, I am talking about hard, gruelling expeditions.

In my spare time, I work as a leader with the British Exploring Society - a charity that develops programmes to take 14- to 24-year-olds into wild and remote locations to support permanent change in their attitudes, skills and self-efficacy. Those with very challenging behaviour are a key target of the programme.

Leaders from many walks of life - scientists, photographers, doctors, members of the armed forces, those in outdoors education already, mountaineers, engineers and teachers - receive extensive training before volunteering to give up weeks of their time to take young people to places such as the Himalayas, the Canadian Yukon, Iceland or the Amazon for three-to-five weeks.

The more potentially risky the behaviour of the young person, the more extensive the programme of training and support in the UK prior to departure - and on return, too. British Exploring may take trained social workers - who are also mountain leaders - on expedition to ensure the right kind of support for young explorers feeling the strain.

Before you decide that this is a “holiday for hooligans” - a reward for bad behaviour - let me explain. These programmes are not cushy camping trips. British Exploring aims for genuine remoteness. There are no mobile phones, no chances to declare that you’ve “had enough of this” and exit to a bus stop. The physical challenges can be significant, the hardships unfamiliar. The students are pushed physically and mentally. It is, genuinely, an expedition in the truest sense: camping in the wild, carrying everything you need with you, taking responsibility for your own challenges and your team, and discovering a new capacity within yourself.

In this environment, young people are forced to change. They are forced into conversation, to develop self-control, motivation, teamwork and resilience. Sanctions are simple: kicking off or engaging in behaviours they displayed in the classroom endangers themselves and their team. The consequences are clear: it’s all real when you are in the middle of nowhere, depending on each other for survival.

High stakes

Every individual on expedition has an important role and that responsibility could be seen as dangerous in the hands of a young person that has failed to take responsibility in school. We take that seriously: a ratio of least one leader to every four young people provides on-tap support, advice and role-modelling 24 hours a day - and it mitigates risk.

That risk is worth it. Interventions like this work. Our explorers return having encountered the most powerful role model of all - an exceptional version of themselves. They will have acquired umpteen skills along the way: an appreciation of money; cultural education through interaction with local people; increased environmental awareness; communication skills; leadership and teamwork.

For some young people, these last three lie at the root of their difficulty. Through personalised strategies, carefully tailored to each individual’s needs, team members face their challenges with leader support and emerge at the end of the expedition with a sense of achievement and belief that they now have the tools to tackle barriers that previously held them back.

Does the change transfer back into the classroom? Well, those examples I gave at the beginning are anonymised versions of true stories. I could give you countless stories like that. Outdoor learning is great as a prod for young people to change behaviour; expeditions are a hefty shove.

Meanwhile, independent AQR research indicates that participants on British Exploring’s “invited” expeditions - almost all of whom will be receiving any formal education from pupil referral units or through alternative provision - experience statistically significant improvements in commitment, confidence and resilience. Also, 96 per cent of young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) progress to one of the three within three months of completing our Dangoor programme.

It has changed how I approach behaviour management, too. I can recognise where the environment of learning is playing a substantial part in a young person’s behaviour and how, in changing the setting, we can begin to change the conversation.

You can find numerous ways of providing experiences like this - British Exploring can be just the start. It’s a potentially expensive intervention and it won’t be suitable for everyone. But for certain young people, this is the jolt that can alter their path and put them on track for educational success - and, ultimately, success later in life, too.


Georgie Sweet is a member of support staff for children with special educational and behavioural needs

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