Behaviour Mentor
Given the intensive and sometimes challenging nature of the relationships built between myself and the children I work with, the development of rapport is all-important. I have used several techniques such as mirroring to engage more constructively with the children. Mirroring stance and assimilating idiosyncratic phrases the children use helps with the development of rapport. This reinforces the relationship and thus enables the facilitation of progressive change for the children. NLP has helped support the nurturing of trusting and proactive relationships with the children. I am more aware of the language I use around the children. Even though I believed I was considered and selective with my language to begin with, I am more aware of the importance of specific wording and the potential impact. A basic example being the substitution of ‘if’ with ‘when’ . I would often say, ‘if you have a good lesson then you can...’ . Now I rephrase such sentences to, ‘when you have a good lesson you can...’. This is a simple change but is noticeably more positive and has a more beneficial impact. With NLP in mind I have started to apply positive challenges to negative comments, an example of this being a Year 6 girl who stated she was getting very anxious about her SATs in general and Maths specifically. She said, ‘I am rubbish at Maths; I’ve never been good at it.’ A natural response could have been to dismiss this comment, offer empty positive affirmation and move on. I stopped her mid flow in order to analyse her statement. ‘Rubbish in what way?’ She responded, ‘I still don’t know my times tables, I’m rubbish at them.’ I replied, ‘so, you’re “rubbish” at times tables. What are you good at in Maths?’ She listed several methods she could do and other elements of Maths that she felt confident with. ‘Ok, so you’re not “rubbish” at Maths then?’ She responded with, ‘Well, no. I just find times tables hard to remember. My Nan is helping me with them.’ A simple interjection at the opportune moment helped revise the child’s over-generalised statement. NLP has helped raise my awareness of the language I use, when I use it and how I use it. Naina has now completed her Master Practitioner and Teaching Excellence training and she continues to spread good practice across her school.
NLP supports the changes needed in a school in Special Measures
Max Vlahakis is Headteacher at Alumwell Primary School, Walsall,
West Midlands
Research plan
I saw the potential of using NLP to support the leadership and management of my school as I often encounter many difficult and challenging relationships with various stakeholders within the school community. Coincidentally, prior to commencing the course I was asked to take over a school that was in difficulties. The school had gone into Special Measures, which is the most serious of Ofsted categories, because of complete failure in leadership at every level within the school. A key factor in the failure was a breakdown in the interpersonal relationships between staff. I quickly became aware following the training that NLP, especially the Milton and Meta models, could be utilised to effect positive change. Initially, I felt that the presuppositions from the Milton Model could be used effectively to challenge the self-limiting beliefs of the staff, which were mainly to blame for the negative climate and ethos of the school.
I initially organised a series of staff meetings addressing the educational underperformance within the school. However, it occurred to me that a far more significant condition limiting the performance of the school were the extremely poor interpersonal relationships between staff members compounded by several complaints of bullying. The behaviours had split the staff into two factions separated along racial boundaries, and although the complaints, and in fact the issues, were not race-related, a schism had formed between a number of staff who were Asian and a small number of staff who were white. The accusation of bullying had been unresolved for a significant period of time, which had fuelled the negative belief that institutional racism was behind the lack of resolution. Initially, I addressed the issue of bullying using established local HR systems. However, the feelings ran too deeply and I felt that I was papering over the cracks. I therefore decided to use the Milton Model first to build good beliefs, therefore tackling several issues at the same time and to use Meta questioning at a later date to deal with perceived problems.
Action
A special staff meeting was arranged during an additional inset day for me to address issues regarding school ethos. I began the meeting by using the “yes sets” to presuppose success, as follows:
‘We’ve just completed our buffet lunch. We’ve all managed to get here on time and AD gave us a lot to think about this morning during her presentation on guided reading and I am sure that we are all going to work together effectively now to address the issues we’re facing.’
I then established a time anchor using May, when their Ofsted inspection took place, to highlight the negative patterns of behaviour that were occurring in the school when I arrived. For example, staff members gossiping about one another and numbers of HR complaints not addressed and unresolved. I then focused on the present (July) and reiterated the progress we had made to date and looked forward to the future, predicting the progress we were hoping to make by Christmas. I used the following key parts of speech from the Milton Model in order to direct the thinking of the staff members so that they felt empowered:
Verbs to ensure awareness – ‘I’m not sure if you realise yet that we have already come a long way to addressing our problems simply by recognising that they exist’
Adverbs to assume that something is true – ‘Fortunately, we already have in place everything we need to effect positive change’
Adverbial time phrases so that I convinced staff that something was true by positioning it in time – ‘when we achieve our goals, you will all think that this hard work has been worthwhile’
The more the more – ‘The more we work together, the more we will see how easily we can tackle the problems we are facing’
Impact
This meeting proved to be extremely effective. Attitudes visibly changed and although the staff still suffered from some historical negative feelings towards the situation they found themselves in, they saw the light at the end of the tunnel with regards to their situation. One of the presuppositions that was at the heart of the session for myself as the leader was that the staff had come to school wanting to help every pupil to achieve, whether they realised it or not. It was my aim to remind them of that fact and help them to uncover their motivation.
Following the meeting, the majority of the staff threw themselves into their work with a renewed vigour that comes from believing in what you are doing and being part of a bigger picture.
Whenever the staff met as group it became important to use anchors to reinforce the positive visualisation. An example of this was getting the group into a positive state for brainstorming - the creation of a motivated state. The question was, how can the state be anchored so that the group could get back that same degree of motivation more quickly in the future? The strategy decided upon was the use of a key phrase as a means to draw the focus of the group. The phrase was ‘no problems, just solutions’. This immediately focused the group and individuals to approach meetings they attended in a changed state. They were able to access their ‘want to believe’ state of mind and as a result began to bring forward real school improvement solutions instead of responding to the solutions and reality being imposed upon them by external sources.
The school’s journey from its starting point to where it is now has been quite remarkable. The most difficult change to take place within the school has not been the structural changes, which are straightforward and fairly easy to introduce, but the changes in the beliefs through NLP approaches that have occurred in key staff throughout the school.
conclusion
This book is not designed as a quick fix or little book of tips and hints. It is designed as a primer to give you the knowledge and skills of NLP that are essential to excellence in teaching and learning. It’s a software
update for the human brain for thinking, remembering, encoding and decoding learning to learn. As we continually strive to give teachers and learners the exquisite skills for voracious and tenacious learning, we hope that you will do so too.
We are hopeful for the future as a great many teachers are making an enormous difference to their students. In NLP we often say ‘we change the world one person at a time’ . In education we can do more than this and change the world one class at a time! Over the past 15 years of working directly in schools and colleges we have seen many situations where one individual teacher has changed the system and thinking in a school. They haven’t done this by evangelising, but by getting better results with their students than their peers. When you consistently improve the performance and behaviour of your students, it isn’t long before people begin to ask you what it is that you are doing and want to learn for themselves.
The skills, behaviours and attitudes of NLP enable you to teach so much more effectively and with enjoyment and ease, so that before long you may find your colleagues and managers wanting to know how you do it and you may find yourself changing the system without much effort at all. 16 years ago, when we began this work in the UK, most people could not see the relevance of NLP in teaching. NLP was for therapy or business and was not perceived as useful in schools. How wrong they were! Now we have thousands of teachers, all over the world, using NLP to improve their lives and the lives of their students.
The advent of initiatives such as the ‘flipped classroom’, blended learning and mindfulness training in schools strongly suggest that times are beginning to change and the focus is changing from what to learn to how to learn. Some initiatives go even further and remove the teachers from the process completely, replacing them with a virtual Grandmother who focuses on asking really great questions for the learners to explore.(1) NLP is not a static field, and by its very nature it continually evolves; we have more to do to challenge out-dated concepts and integrate more of the Bandler Technologies into education. Just as the nature of therapy is change, so the nature of learning is change. A student who has learned a new skill or gained some insight into a new subject is not the same person as they were before they did so. They have changed irreversibly. If the teaching and learning is effective, by the very nature of learning the students will be different people. So NLP was an educational model from the outset. As we have said before, people are not broken so they do not need fixing. Rather, they are uneducated as to how to drive their own brains.
Take Mary for example. Mary is 60-years-old and works in a laundry which participated in an NLP project to teach numeracy in the workplace.( 2) Upon receiving her certificate for her level 2 Numeracy she sat with tears in her eyes stroking the certificate. She said, ‘Is this really mine? Can I take it home? I have never had a certificate before and thought I was stupid. Now I know I can learn anything I put my mind to’ .
NLP enables us to know what is useful to others in ways that allow them to achieve beyond what they could previously conceive. Mary did not merely learn some Maths during the 12 weeks we worked with her, she changed her perception of herself, who she was and what she could achieve.
So we want you to take this book and begin to inspire your students, design easier learning to make them smarter and faster. To make this more worthwhile you can do more and design hope. We all have more to do!
references
1. The hole in the wall project www.hole-in-the-wall.com
2. The New Wave Project 2011 Meta Education Team, Funded by Cornwall Learning Partnership
This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, [email protected] on 10/18/2018
appendix a
Submodality checklist
Chart for comparing submodalities of two experiences:
Tap to download Resources
appendix B
Questions to calibrate
eye-accessing cues
What colour is your front door?
- What would you look like with green hair?
- When was the last time you saw your signature?
- What is the last line of your National Anthem?
- What does your answer phone message sound like?
- What would a room full of cats and dogs sound like?
- Say your name backwards
- What temperature is your big toe?
- What does cotton wool feel like?
- Which way do you turn a key to unlock a door?
- How do you feel when someone compliments you?
- What do you say to yourself when you wake up?
- Now over to you to create more questions
This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, [email protected] on 10/18/2018
appendix C
The Meta Model and Blooms
Taxonomy
Benjamin Bloom created this taxonomy for categorising levels of
abstraction of questions that commonly occur in educational settings. The taxonomy provides a useful structure in which to categorise formative and summative questions.
This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, [email protected] on 10/18/2018
appendix d
Transcript to use with students
Timeline Journey
Imagine yourself floating up above your timeline and travelling into the future to that moment of brilliant success. See yourself now, look at the delight on your face as you realise for the first time how well you have done – listen to what you say to yourself, congratulating yourself on how well you have done, knowing now that all that you wish for your future is now not just a possibility but a reality! Make this image big and bright so you can study every detail. Who are you with? Are you alone or with others? What are the sounds around you? Are you telling yourself how clever you are? Our imagination is a wonderful thing - the more we imagine your success, the more vividly you see your future the more you can manifest those things in our lives. Step into your body now and notice the good feelings in your body, I don’t know if you have a sense of satisfaction, or excitement, joy, or some other wonderful feeling. As you step into your body just begin to notice those feelings begin to spin through your body so you feel it in every cell of your body. Spread that good feeling all the way to the top of your head and down to the tips of your toes. It’s good that you can do this easily now.
Imagine now that you can turn around and look back at all the things that you have successfully achieved to get to this moment in time. See yourself planning and preparing to revise, watch yourself being determined and tenacious in your revision and review. Notice how you easily remember the facts and information as you discover new ways to use your brain to recall, review and learn, really learn easily. Enjoy the sense of satisfaction as you begin to drive your own brain in the direction you want it to go. Focus your attention on two points just beneath your eyes on your cheekbones, as you do this you can become aware of how determined you are to succeed. Feel that determination as you realise how easy this is once you make the decision to just go for it now. So take a moment now to run through the time you have for revision. Making the most of every moment, engaging with your learning, using your brain to maximum potential and really enjoying the discoveries you are making. See yourself taking the time out you deserve and being able to really relax in the knowledge that you have used each session really well and returning refreshed to the next session
See yourself on the day of the tests, relaxed and alert, arriving in good time, well prepared and ready to do your best. Notice yourself focusing on the questions and answering them easily with enthusiasm. Relaxed and alert, concentrating and calm, saying useful helpful things to yourself to encourage yourself to do your absolute best. Using each day as an unprecedented opportunity to show how good you are. See yourself relaxing after the test and preparing for any others. Letting go of any feelings about the last one and focusing your attention on the next one just imagining the time available to you as flowing smoothly and easily right up to
the day you receive the results.
That’s right. Now in a moment imagine I am going to ask you to float back out up above your timeline once more and begin to travel back to the time and place of this room. And now as you float gently and easily out above your timeline begin to gather all the learnings and experiences that you have noticed yourself doing in this time before your exams and bring together all the insights and useful thoughts and ideas, helpful behaviours and feelings and bring them back with you to the time and place of this room. Because as you imagine yourself successfully completing your revision it’s almost as if you have done the work once before and it’s always easier to do something for a second time isn’t it?
This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, [email protected] on 10/18/2018
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