We didn’t have the best start to Crew this week.
I received an email from Mr Pearson telling me that (with the exception of 2 students) Crew Finch hadn’t behaved very well during Friday’s DofE session. They’d been disrespectful to him and to each other. To top it off, other teacher had similar feedback about certain members of Crew. As you can imagine, I was not a happy Crew Leader!
So they spent Monday’s session writing out reflections on what they’d done and how they were going to put things right with Mr Pearson, myself and with each other.
However, what struck me about their reflections is that there was no sense of accountability in any of them and that they were all blaming each other! We had a discussion about this during Tuesday’s Crew session, and it became apparent that Crew are actually a bit fed up with one another at the moment, be it because of general conduct, missing extended study deadline, or not respecting each other during Crew time (talking over people is a major issue in my Crew!)
I thought it was worth regrouping and revisiting what Crew should be, and all it has been to us in the past.
I set up an activity where they had to tell me “just one thing” about Crew, focussing on the following areas:
- Crew makes me feel…
- Without Crew I would be…
- How has Crew helped me?
- How have I helped Crew?
- What could be improved?
- If I could give one piece of advice to another Crew it would be…
We used the silent conversation protocol for this – a dialogue using writing rather than speech – meaning that we all had chance to have our ‘voices’ heard.
It was heartwarming to see that Crew is still something special: it makes us feel safe, welcome and not alone.
There were lots of examples of how Crew had helped one another (Aden broke the rules here and added 3 things rather than just the one!)
The ‘What could be improved?’ sheet gave us the chance to reflect on what is going wrong at the moment, and open up discussions on how we are going to fix these issues.
The activity really helped to clear the air and we’ve now got a plan to get back on track. I guess like most relationships, we will have falling outs and annoy each other from time to time, but what matters is that we make the time and space to address the issues and make things right!
An appreciation goes out to Libby for making an apology to Mr Pearson on behalf of Crew Finch during our Y9 community meeting.