School is not always easy for vulnerable children. On top of the usual challenges that every student faces - exams, falling out with friends, wearing the “right” school shoes - they may have to contend with past trauma or upheaval at home. Both of these issues can affect the decisions that they make in class.

I was always sympathetic to these difficulties - until a couple of years ago. That’s when I realised that students didn’t need my sympathy at all. What they needed was empathy.

This realisation was prompted by a course I attended on working with looked-after children. I came away from it reflecting on my own practice and returned to school waxing lyrical about the value of empathy in the classroom.

Hole school view

Brené Brown, a research professor of social work at the University of Houston, has written about the differences between sympathy and empathy. Brown uses the analogy of an individual in need at the bottom of a deep hole. A sympathetic approach to their situation would involve standing at the top of the hole and shouting down to them, acknowledging how difficult their predicament is. An empathy-based approach, meanwhile, would involve climbing down a ladder into the hole with the individual and feeling what they feel alongside them. I became convinced that if we were to truly make a difference for the vulnerable children in our schools, we would need to climb down the ladder and really find out what was going on.

The trouble is, when talking to colleagues, it quickly became apparent that staff could not see how an empathy-based approach would fit within the school rules - where was the space in the policy to climb down that ladder?

So we held a training day on empathy for our whole multi-academy trust and began the day by familiarising ourselves with the work of Brown. Once staff were comfortable with the difference between sympathy and empathy, we began exploring the work of Nathan Maynard and Brad Weinstein (2019) on how to cultivate empathy in our classrooms by helping children to communicate empathetically. In their book, Hacking School Discipline, they argue that we, as educators, must intentionally cultivate empathy in our classrooms.

They advocate teaching empathetic communication techniques and that every teacher should become a reflective listener. An example of the former is getting down to the same level as the children, avoiding crossing our arms, and speaking in a consistent, calm tone. Meanwhile, reflective listening includes repeating what a child has said, which can help them to internalise how they had made someone else feel.

Finally, we looked at an approach developed by clinical psychologist Daniel Hughes that encourages adults working with children to consider playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy (Pace) in their practice. These four qualities help a child to feel valued, listened to and, most importantly, not judged or threatened.

In my experience, children often learn to lie about things they have done - it’s a protective mechanism to deflect adults’ anger. In theory, by listening, accepting and empathising, these barriers can be broken down. The child takes ownership of what they have done and internalises the idea that they can deal with a similar situation in a more appropriate way the next time it occurs.

The training day felt positive, but could an empathy-based approach like Pace really make a difference in practice?

When we began to apply empathy-based approaches, we found them to be effective, to a certain degree. They have worked on many occasions and have, for example, been particularly effective when a child has run off because they knew that their behaviour would have a consequence, as they had hurt someone else. Allowing the child to calm down is essential: an angry child will not listen. Ensuring that the child is safe and then allowing them the space to consider what they have done comes first and foremost.

Yet there were definite inconsistencies. For instance, I found that I was personally giving children with specific needs the benefit of the doubt more often than was perhaps necessary, and this was leading me to make excuses for unacceptable behaviour. I was, in fact, being too kind. And I wasn’t the only one.

Another issue that arose with the new approach was that children would respond differently to different individuals. As there were no set responses that children knew they would receive regardless of who they spoke to, they would sometimes seek out their “safe” adult to the detriment of their own behaviour. There were even occasions when a child would seemingly misbehave in order to be with a person they trusted.

It became clear that a lack of consistency was undermining our success. If we wanted empathy-based methods to work alongside strong school rules, we needed everyone to buy into the same approaches.

Fobbed off

One simple but effective method was to change our communication between school and home. Formerly, we would send an email at the end of the day to the parents of children who had specific, identified needs, to ensure a seamless link between home and school. We had found that the day’s events could at times be rather differently reported by different audiences so parents would get a skewed view of a child’s school experience.

Instead, we began keeping a handwritten diary with entries recorded in live time throughout the day by individual teachers. This was then photographed and emailed to parents. The parent could then see a true reflection of the day, and the student could not rely on a teacher interpreting their behaviour in a certain way; indeed, on a number of occasions, a decision that a child was about to make was changed just by the thought of it being recorded for posterity and shared with people at home.

Building on the success of the diaries, the next step was to ensure that every member of staff was responding to students in the same way. For help here, we turned to the work of Paul Dix. In his book, When the Adults Change, Everything Changes (2017), Dix stresses the importance of creating simple consistencies within the school environment. He explains that if staff are deviating, then “you just need the brass neck to challenge adult behaviour”.

One of the things he recommends is using a “script” to help manage how staff respond to children. Initially, some members of our team were not convinced by the idea of scripted responses. Fortunately, I came across a teacher on Twitter who had the idea of creating key fobs of cards containing important information that each member of staff should have to hand at all times.

I adapted this idea to create something similar for our new script for how certain behaviours should be responded to. The key fob was welcomed by staff as an easy tool to help implement this initiative. So, for example, if a child is engaging in low-level disruption, the script prompts a response of: “I remember yesterday when you were so kind to your friend when they were upset.” This deflects a negative incident and brings it back to a previous, positive experience.

These interventions have been very successful. Instances of negative behaviour have decreased. Children are less likely to repeat the behaviour following a dialogue that has a positive tone to it. The children can be seen to be enjoying having the positives reinforced. It encourages them to want to behave in a positive manner. I can think of children whose learning mindset and whole-school experience has changed because of this approach.

However, this is a long-term project - an approach that is all about partnership and longevity. It takes time, understanding and patience on all sides, and children have to understand their role in the process. There must also be honesty between school and home to reinforce the consistency that you have worked hard to build.

But once that consistency is there, you will have the strongest team possible. Children see the consistency; parents gain trust; everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet … and it works.

Ginny Bootman is a Sendco for two Evolve Trust primary schools in Northamptonshire

This article originally appeared in the 6 December 2019 issue under the headline “Why I ditched sympathy for empathy”