The gulf between SEBD and mainstream.

Tonight, I went to a fantastic musical showcase at the local secondary school. The young people on stage were talented, confident, entertaining and performed to an exceptional standard – almost professional. It was clear to see that the teachers there were both immensely invested and hugely proud of these young people – and I can see why. As teachers, we pour time, energy and passion into our pupils and these young people had been polished until they shone like stars.

I really enjoyed the evening, although about two thirds of the way through I suddenly realised I was also slightly sad.  It made me sad because it gave me a sudden jolt of perspective. In the SEBD (social emotional and behaviourial difficulties) world, we measure success on such a completely different scale. We have also had success to celebrate at school – not with a concert, we can’t really do concerts (certainly not with outside audiences) they cause our kids too much distress – and it makes us as proud as those teachers I saw tonight. At the end of every week, we have a draw for a £5 vouched for any students that have come to school everyday and had no negative behaviours recorded. This week the draw was between 4 pupils (out of 48) and it was one by a year 11 student who looked so ridiculously please with himself it was utterly adorable – I suspect he’s never won anything like that before.

I had my own moment of individual pride as well. A teacher who had been away for a while made a point of telling me how different one of my boys is now – that’s right, I was tearing up because a colleague told me that one of my boys had been responsive and good company for 35 minutes – and that had been the highlight of his day.

That’s right – two of my proud moments this week are because a year 11 boy came to school every day and didn’t get a negative behaviour point and another one was polite (ish), friendly and cooperatively for half an hour. The enormity of this achievement will not be apparent to many of you but to me there was the same level of pride as a mainstream teacher looking at fantastic exam results or the cast of an outstanding production. It doesn’t matter how much I polish my kids, they won’t shine – the best I can hope is that I’ll wipe enough grime away that they can at least start to see that they have some sort of value.

This is the important bit
Our kids come from the same type of socio-economic area as those mainstream kids, they have the same intellectual capacity, they live in the same world. The difference is very simple – each of those shining mainstream pupils has someone in their home life who has made them a top priority.  That is literally the whole difference and it is vast.