Furball is always there. He never judges or raises his voice, and is always ready with a cuddle - which is just as well, because he is irresistibly soft and snuggly.
Furball is a teddy and he belongs to the children in P5 at St Joseph’s Primary in West Lothian, but he’s a teddy with a very particular mission and he is not alone: he accepts the accolade as one of Tes Scotland‘s “people” of the year on behalf of a collective.
In August, we featured three West Lothian primaries where the headteachers had introduced an army of large cuddly bears into their corridors and classrooms to help their schools make the shift away from a punitive approach towards behaviour management. Instead, teachers started to explore the reasons why some children acted out.
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At one of the schools, the teddy bears arrived as “refugees” but classes could not take ownership of their bears until they had created a calm and welcoming environment - the kind of place where a vulnerable bear who had faced more than his share of challenges could feel safe and thrive.
At the vanguard of a change in behaviour management
Now at these schools, when a child gets sent to the headteacher there is no dressing down and there is certainly no shouting - although there are still consequences. If a child kicks over a bin they will ultimately be the ones to pick it up and put the contents back inside. But they will be asked why they kicked it over, what caused the outburst and how such incidents might be avoided in the future.
Essentially, the idea is this: the same children get into trouble because they themselves are troubled. They might come from chaotic households, be living on the breadline, or they could have parents blighted by poor mental health. Putting their name on a behaviour chart that leads to them missing out on something fun or exciting is - in the eyes of these schools - just heaping punishment upon punishment, but solving nothing.
As far as “adverse childhood experiences” campaigner and psychologist Suzanne Zeedyk was concerned, the so-called teddy bear schools are “brave” schools at the vanguard of a change in behaviour management gradually spreading across Scotland.
She predicts that in the not too distant future we will look back on punishing often vulnerable children with the same kind of revulsion we have for the belt.
