ATL

An American education

From students' brand-new BMWs to after-school activities for under-privileged young people, ATL member Ken Merry's research trip to the USA unearthed some surprising findings. Words by Alex Tomlin

ATL member Ken Merry saw a myriad of different education environments on a whistle-stop tour of the United States after winning a Walter Hines Page Scholarship from the English Speaking Union (ESU).

ESU Walter Hines Page scholarships are awarded to teachers and educators from the UK and are intended to promote the exchange of educational ideas between Britain and America. Scholars travel to the USA to study a specific aspect of American education that interests them and that is relevant to their own professional responsibilities.

Ken, who teaches travel and tourism at Kirklees College in Huddersfield, decided to ask the question, can students with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties be successful in a mainstream education setting? This was of personal interest to Ken as his younger brother suffered a serious head injury following a road traffic accident when he was younger and Ken has followed the support he has received since being back in education.

One of the major things that Ken was struck by was the variation between the richest and poorest schools he saw, as they ranged from private schools, where the car parks were full of the students' shiny new BMWs, to the likes of Fairdale High School in Jefferson County, Kentucky, where two thirds of students receive free or reduced school meals. However, it was noticeable that, regardless of wealth, most students seemed to be proud of their school.

"The pride in their school was interesting," Ken recalls. "Fairdale had a high proportion of underprivileged children, but everyone was walking around with bomber jackets or hooded tops with the school's bulldog mascot - there was a certain amount of pride in their school that I don't think people generally have [in the UK]. I didn't encounter anyone who didn't want to be at their school."

Schools seem to play a much bigger role in the students' lives, Ken found. "School buildings in the UK are generally used between nine and four, 36 weeks of the year. Many schools in America have it built into teachers' contracts to help out after school. It was most successful where extracurricular activities were compulsory. It might just be juggling or football coaching. Students were engaged and so not so likely to get involved in antisocial behaviour."

Ken cites the example in New York, where substantial sums were invested in after-school activities and the cost of antisocial behaviour and crime dropped even more significantly. "Schools over here could adopt that mentality," he suggests. "It would be quite a change and require a lot of money, but you could make the investment and then there would be less money needed for community policing, say. In my experience, kids only cause trouble because they're bored and have nothing better to do. If you can provide them with something better to do, it might affect their actions."

Another major difference was in the special educational needs (SEN) provision. At Ken's previous workplace, a sixth form college in Pontefract, "SEN would have been dyslexia, dyspraxia, possibly a bit of Asperger's and low-scale autism. In America they were taking me to see classes for those with an IQ of less than 25, which is entirely different to what I have worked with. They were being taught in a mainstream school. I'm not sure how and if that would work over here."

He relates how one pupil was integrated into a mainstream class. "There was a student who was quite high on the autistic scale. He was 15 and had no verbal filter, so he would just blurt out things in the class. It was a class on different people around the world and had pictures of different nationalities with their worldly possessions and their house. Some of the things he was blurting out were quite inappropriate, but the rest of the class, because they knew him, kind of glossed over it.

"The teacher pulled him up on a couple of things that could be offensive to the group, but otherwise he was encouraged to get involved. Over here, I would question whether the approach would have been so relaxed. He might have been encouraged to train himself to not blurt out. There was no doubting his ability as a student though; the work he was producing was of a standard equivalent to his peers."

Ken found different styles of general support for students depended on the type of school he was visiting. For example, Richard Stockton University in New Jersey had a "carrot and stick approach". As a private university, where students paid about $11,000 a year, Ken believes they had the attitude of: "'We'll give students as much support as we can, but if they start to not achieve, we'll wash our hands of them.' They're not tied to supporting the students. Maybe they believed they could afford to lose some," he suggests.

At the significantly less privileged Fairdale, just seven per cent of students' parents have any form of college education and the school has put together a programme to encourage students to think about their own futures. One such scheme is the 'readers' challenge', which encourages students to complete a number of books over the course of an academic year, with rewards issued upon meeting milestones.

On an "eye-opening" trip to Winter Park Vo-Tech College in Florida, Ken discovered an interesting approach to deadlines. "Many of the students need additional support from the college and the courses they study are structured so that students can take as long as they need to complete their programme," he explains.

"Allowing students the flexibility to complete their programme in a timescale that suits them removes the pressure that can make many students lose their way and eventually drop out of programmes. It is interesting to see the results that such a set-up allows in a socially deprived area of Orlando."

The same establishment also offered students the opportunity to work on genuine, meaningful projects for real clients, which allowed the students to receive feedback from their customers, as well as guidance from their tutors.

Giving those students with milder SEN responsibilities around the school was another method of easing their path into employment post-education. Some were given jobs to carry out around the college, such as shredding office documents or collating files. The school received extra funding to support this.

Another initiative Ken witnessed that produced positive results was Cornell note-taking, the simple idea of students dividing their note-taking pages into two columns - the right-side note-taking column being twice as wide as the keyword column on the left. The student records the key words of a lecture or text in the left column and the details in the right. Long sentences are avoided and simple symbols or abbreviations are used instead. The notes should be reviewed as soon as possible afterwards and the student is then encouraged to cover up the right column and explain the key words on the left.

Ken says that students, "particularly the lower ability groups, have found this technique useful and results of the users have increased by an average of two grade boundaries per student".

Ken also identified issues with accessing any support available, including a desire on the students' part not to appear weak, something that applies on both sides of the Atlantic. "Students are embarrassed. There's a reluctance to seek help and support because they often get stigmatised. My college is moving very rapidly in the right direction and offers the chance for students to access support confidentially so that no one knows the support they are receiving. I think schools and colleges can certainly do a lot more to make students feel comfortable accessing support."

One way would be to make it feel more normal to ask for support. "In some schools in the States the door to the pastoral support was always open. You would be greeted by the armed security guard as you came into the school; the principal's office was on the right and the door after that was the pastoral support office. Every day the students would walk right past it. Sometimes in the UK it's hidden somewhere. There is a responsibility for teachers to flag the possibility of support early on. If you've got a class of 30 and 15 are receiving some kind of support, it's much more normal.

"The pastoral support was very strong in a lot of places and I think that's something we need to encourage in our schools," Ken concludes. "The schools put their students first in everything they do. They are trying to do a similar thing in the UK, but you've got to have the support.

"I believe that, with the right support and guidance of experienced staff, a student with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties should have no credible reason why they should not ultimately be successful with their studies."

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