From day one, we want to start building up our students’ resilience, confidence and ability to navigate and manage life’s challenges. An effective and meaningful pastoral care programme gives students a toolkit that they can use in those moments when things become difficult and the personal skills they will need to call upon throughout their lives.
The foundations of a pastoral care model that can do this typically includes consideration of the following elements:
01 Explicit values
By making our values clear, visible and part of daily school life, we set explicit standards in terms of how we act, behave and respect one another. This includes everything from classroom displays to talking about our values at gatherings such as assemblies. Through these actions, we create a sense of shared ownership throughout the School.
02 Emotional literacy
Creating a collaborative and productive classroom includes teaching children how to communicate with one another, both verbally and non-verbally, and how to be aware of their own emotions. For Prep students this might mean being able to tell an adult they are feeling worried, while Year 6 students might be able to discuss a difficulty they are experiencing in a calm, articulate manner. Having this emotional awareness gives the ‘rational brain’ a chance to triumph over the ‘impulsive brain’ and, crucially, ensures there is a balance between emotional and academic intelligences in their approach.
03 An emphasis on choice
Children must be involved in the consequences of their behaviours, understanding that they have the ability to choose between positive and negative actions. This means we need to recognise achievements as well as having consequences in place for behaviours that are not prosocial. Opportunities to pause and reflect on behaviour – simple phrases such as ‘stop, think, do’, for example – are also extremely valuable.
04 A growth mindset
The feedback we give children – praising the effort as well as the outcome – is crucially important to the way they view success and failure. It’s essential to make it clear that effort is just as important as the final product, and to expose children to controlled challenges. This builds emotional resilience and an understanding that they do have the capacity to grow and change. Understanding the relationship between risk and reward, the importance of experiencing failure and knowing the difference between excellence and perfection all contribute to a robust inner template that can be used to face the ‘grey areas’ of our lives.
05 ‘Little L’ leadership
Learning how to lead yourself is as important as knowing how to be the leader of a group. As educators we can guide the way children think, but we also need to teach them how to own their own lives and to live by a set of values. As with every aspect of meaningful pastoral care, these learning opportunities need to be experienced in age-appropriate ways. Emphasising the ‘Little L’ in children helps them develop the ability to do the right thing, even when no one is looking.
It’s important to remember that even with these structures in place, students may still have challenges during their school lives. Effective pastoral care is about making these experiences manageable and learning from them. Ultimately, children need to be emotionally literate and resilient, self-aware and understand the importance of choices in their life.
Royce Helm
Head of Grimwade House
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