When Castle Wood School began the Change School programme (in 2008) it was at the same time of its creation from the amalgamation of Deedmore and Hawkesbury Fields Schools.
Deedmore School had worked with Creative Partnerships for 3 years in a partnership with Open Theatre Company (The Shysters), working with Richard Hayhow using the ‘shyster’ methodology. This had looked at how theatre could be used to support the development of children with moderate learning disabilities. Staff at Hawkesbury Fields however had not had this experience and the ‘Shyster’ methodology was new to most of them. So in addition to its central research agenda the programme also had to negotiate and then manage the practical and emotional impact of combining these two very different schools, and very different staff.
This last year of the programme has been the sixth year of action research for some involved and the third year as Change School. This long-term partnership has been important for the whole combined school as staff and practitioners have discovered together ways of working, witnessed the impact of the approaches, gained understanding from the experiences, and looked at how they can be sustained within the school.]
An ongoing challenge that the Creative Partnership programme also brought itself into Castle Wood has been how a programme largely geared at able KS2 and above children can capture, monitor and evaluate in a meaningful way the true understanding of the work taking place in a school like Castle Wood.
“The idea was to look at linking two very different schools together in order to make one cohesive school. In order to that every single child went on a journey and the end point was to find our new school site together. It worked! It worked because of the skills of the Shysters, the teachers, other artists, support staff and parents collaborating with other to make the project happen.” Teacher
“The relationships have developed between the staff and children and it has changed through the work. Less of a caring model and more of a learning model within the school. That in itself engenders more understanding that then moves into knowledge to pass onto other people. There is a greater understanding of the children’s needs, responses and abilities.” Creative Agent.
“Richard’s Shyster sessions stimulate and encourage children to move from copying to developing new movements, communications and relationships, which deepens understanding for the children.” Teacher
The question the school looked at was “How do we define the essence of the creative practice so that we can share it more effectively and influence practice of it” – can we pin down the ‘butterfly’ without killing it? This question was identified to help focus the work on understanding more the shyster methodology and discuss it with staff, in order to embed it further in the school and know how best to communicate it.
The final year has had two priorities: firstly to continue the integrated work (broad spectrum disabilities) to support the transition into the new school site and secondly to develop the staff through sessions, CPD and reflective meetings to enable them to deliver Shyster approaches for themselves. For the work to be sustained beyond the CP programme it had been identified that it was crucial that staff understood more the shyster methodology, its impact on children and how they could deliver it as part of a creative curriculum. There were 3 further practitioners involved in the programme working alongside the lead practitioner Richard Hayhow. The greater involvement of Becky and Amy formed part of a strategy at Open Theatre to train more practitioners in the work of shyster methodology so that it is less reliant on one person. Matthew has been an important role model for the children as someone who has a learning disability himself.
The work began in the Summer Term 2010 with weekly sessions with all classes across the school, paired up between the two old school sites by year groups. Year 6 created a piece of theatre together for the opening of the new school, which took place on the last day of term (2010). All at the school, joined by parents, guests and the Lord Mayor, were involved in a procession to the new site as a physical and emotional transition to their new home. This final event was called The Castle Wood Cavalcade.
Moathouse School were also involved, greeting their new neighbours onto the site, waving them in with banners, flags and a card to present. The role of Moathouse, parents, guests and the Lord Mayor was twofold: engaging them in the process of transition as part of the final event; celebrating the significance of this final moment of two sites becoming one school and the role of creativity within the success of the transition.
The Autumn term opened in the new combined purpose built building, and began by everyone getting to know what it meant to be in the new spaces, with broad spectrum classes and with the newly developed approaches to the schools curriculum. Initial sessions were tasters, combined with practitioners going into classrooms to observe the children, in order to get to know them and understand the challenges of the groups. The second part of the half-term started with an inset day that focused staff on the rest of the years programme, particularly focussing on the expected shift in their role from participants to co-deliverers.
The theme of the work for this last year was ‘Something in the Air’ – which resonated on many levels – with the essence of the shyster experience, as an anticipation of more exciting developments to come after five years’ work, as a stimulus to the imagination to create new work, as a means of introducing new real props as starting points for the work, as an identifiable ‘shyster’ intervention in the life of the school, as a metaphor for the freedom found in notions of floating and flying for a range of children with physical disabilities.
Sessions took place with ‘clusters’ of classes together over three mornings in order to work with as many classes as possible. Throughout the programme there were key planning and reflection meetings at egular intervals, at least monthly and at times weekly dependent on need. This involved usually the lead practitioner, the school coordinator, the Creative Agent and on many occasions the head teacher. Time was set aside for practitioners to have their own planning and reflection meetings which became a valuable time for them all to share experiences and discuss how they could be built on further. Staff met more informally in a way that suited them to understand more the shyster methodology and the impact
it has. The inset day had introduced the higher level discussions expected now from staff and the ‘significant moment’ reflection sheets created enabled staff to reflect on the moment with greater thinking than they perhaps would have given to something within a session.
The previous 5 years (2 years as Castle Wood) has seen Richard Hayhow as the main practitioner, with learning disabled actors supporting in the sessions. Richard’s approach is very innovative and often challenges many pre-conceptions about learning disability and the best ways to work with children with disabilities. His role often begins from the moment he arrives at the school as the relationship he has with staff and children is key. His communication and nonverbal dialogue plays a crucial role whether it’s a moment in the corridor, or as the children arrive into the space as much as during the session itself. There is a familiar structure to the time, which allows a sense of routine and anticipation but within it the children, staff and practitioners know that anything can happen. A session always consisted of greeting each other/saying hello, followed by a warm up, then at least one maybe two activities finishing with a warm-down and goodbye. Music played a significant factor as a way of engaging the children without dialogue and props were latterly used as a way of exploring play. The children’s role in the session is not passive or responsive. They are in fact through the structure taking a lead in what happens and how. As non-verbal communication is key it is often through them physically directing/leading/responding to a warm-up or activity that choices are made although those who have language will communicate a choice or will add a story to the process. What the children do and how they respond are key for the practitioners and staff as the direction of a session will be reliant on this.
As the programme was equally focussed on articulating the practice as well as delivering, throughout the year discussions took place around how to describe Richard’s approaches, the impact these approaches were having and how it related to educational and health research, understanding and other practices. The shyster methodology has begun to take shape as having 3 elements: Play; Pretending and Performing with a number of key factors: what it is being done; how it is done; how that person enables that to happen; the atmosphere/environment; the interaction with the children and how it is measured.
At the end of the academic year all the children participated in two days of interactive sharing experience, enabling all children to have one large shyster session that families and guests were invited along to. This was more reflective of the exploration and experiences that had taken place with the children, providing an opportunity for all to be together and for visitors to get a sense of what a ‘shyster’ session is like. An additional grant from the RTR Foundation enabled a specialist ‘floating’ chair to be bought, snow and wind machines to be hired in and additional design elements included to provide a very special ending to the programme.
Throughout the year the creative agent played a key role in discussion, planning, articulation and evaluation of the work. Her visits throughout the process enabled discussion to be focussed and summarised in order to pull through key experiences and findings to feed into documentation and the next set of discussions.
As mentioned above it was very challenging to find a method that could meaningfully capture and detail the true understanding of the impact of work taking place in a school like Castle Wood.
For the children, due to the range and complexities of disabilities this meant looking for any sign of change outside of staff’s normal experiences of the children. These were recorded through significant moment sheets for staff to be able to discuss further with the practitioner. For children with autism this might mean that they would demonstrate that they were prepared to imagine rather be literal and for children with more physical disabilities with no verbal language it was hoped to see signs through facial expression or small movements that indicated choice and emotions. It was found that in particular skills were developed in communication with others and building relationships with others. For some children
they developed skills in using their imagination and were aware of how this could be used for an audience. The fact that they communicated more meant that they acquired new skills of collaboration and interest in other people.
The safe structure of the sessions created through the relationships in the room enabled the children to take many risks that are not normally seen in the classroom. When children were asked they indicated that they were “not so scared”, “more confident”, “got braver”. Staff noted that children with very little confidence over time began to join in “some children are watching and have started to move their hands in time to music or in a way that they haven’t done it before.” Other children got up and took the lead, doing something in front of an audience when a child wouldn’t dream of doing something like that before. Most notably the broad spectrum classes had proved a challenge for some of the children with autism who did not want to work with children with complex physical disabilities however this changed over the year. “One of the things that was really obvious was when the children started working together early on, some of the more able children stayed away from those who were less able.
Richard made the session feel safe enough for the children to collaborate with each other. It was definitely that which was enabling them to move together as those children just did not want to be with each other.” This change has particularly impacted beyond the session back into the classroom on a daily basis. A Year 6 teacher attributed the progress of one child who is classed as PMLD, making significant progress due to the support the other children in the class had given her over the year.
Another child at the final sharing did something that staff have never seen “P went into the hall. He never goes into the hall, he’s always outside or on the very edge of the doorway…we have photos of him in the middle and joining in.”
The most challenging area to measure for the staff (due to the complexities of some children’s disabilities) was that of engagement, enjoyment and motivation: Staff did however feel there were some very clear signs of an increase here. “On the whole the children are very engaged in the work
they are doing with the Shysters. They enjoy the collaborations, they enjoy developing relationships and they enjoy the work, as they don’t see it as work.” The Creative Practitioner had a greater sense of the impact of this saying that it was “Consistently high in all these areas throughout the year”. Due to the nature of the sessions, practitioners have been able to gauge responses to movements, gestures, objects and music to ensure that all children could at some point be impacted on in these areas.
All the staff have taken greater risks during the year; with how they participate in the sessions, with how they reflect on the sessions and for some how they have then led on sessions themselves and taken principles back into the classroom. This risk taking has then impacted positively on the children who were out of their chairs much more than they were before, enabling them to move in different ways and engage more senses in more situations, in turn being more exploratory in their learning. Staff have also developed how they reflect on learning: the school has been developing reflection across all areas of responsibilities/priorities in the schools and the programme has been a part of this. There is now a real keenness to understand what is happening in the sessions and how to learn from it and incorporate it in the classroom.
For staff there were also some key moments in the process. The first significant moment for them was the Cavalcade event. Many had been weary and uncertain of merging the two sites and were very fearful of the process. However as they came together through the sessions and the event itself, there was much joy attached to the transition and all could not believe what had been achieved and the impact it had on the children and themselves. The next significant moment was the Inset day. The day was planned in order to provide a supportive environment, as it was believed that the staff would engage with the session on different levels with much nervousness for many. However very quickly it became clear that all the staff were prepared to take a risk and give themselves completely over to the activities especially the practical session, which was the most exposing element of the day.
Teachers, teaching assistants and support staff all joined in and from all taking the risk together everyone’s confidence grew. From this a solid foundation was put in place for Richard and the team to work with the classes and with the staff he was able to build them up as co-deliverers in the sessions.
For the school and the practitioners there is an understanding of what the programme has meant to all those involved however working largely non verbally in process has meant at times this has been largely a ‘felt-understanding’ rather than one that can be ‘measured’. It has been the experiences, the discussions, the learning and the vision for what comes next that has been important.
The school has incorporated the structures that were most key, and will affect what comes next; the enquiry question, expectations of outcomes, key stages for planning and reflection and the role of the Practitioners and Creative Agent. There has been strong collaboration on almost all accounts. The only disappointment has been with other local secondary schools, who as yet have not been open to learning about how the programme can support transition as the children move on. Castle Wood and Open Theatre Company are committed to finding other ways of pursuing the potential through other means.
A strong relationship has been built between the school and the practitioners who are seen as an important part of the schools development and future. It is because of this that all are committed to looking at how a relationship will continue in the future.