MFL: teach with more confidence and creativity…

 “Teaching can be both brilliant and really challenging, often in the same day! However, understanding some of the psychological ‘must haves’ can help teachers create classrooms where they and their students can work with greater creativity and confidence.”

In the mists of pre-lockdown one, I advertised an online webinar offering teachers some insights from psychology on creating successful in-class relationships. I had over a thousand teachers respond and many attended the free online session. It was noteworthy, given the broad reach of the database the invite was sent to, that secondary MFL teachers were chief amongst those who showed up and took part.

Given the subject of the webinar, “in-class relationships”, I decided to do some research in to the specific challenges that MFL teachers face.

The obvious benefits of learning a second language

The benefit of learning a second language go beyond being able to communicate in another tongue. There are also many secondary cognitive benefits. According to leadwithlanguages.com “People who speak more than one language have improved memory, problem-solving and better critical-thinking and listening skills.” [1] The general paucity of language provision in schools contrasts the public enthusiasm for learning another language. According to the New Statesman “Data from language learning app Duolingo reveals that, among the app’s users, the UK turned to language learning more than any other country during the coronavirus lockdown” [3] . And yet, from the same source “there is” according to the National Language Strategy “overwhelming evidence of a longstanding, and worsening supply of the language skills needed by the UK.”

Even so, to a large extent, language learning in secondary schools is an ‘also ran’ subject. In most schools, year 7 students get 2 language lessons a week – compared with between 4 and 6 English, Maths or Science lessons.

Old news for MFL teachers

The knock-on effect of this is multi-layered and I suspect, won’t be news to any MFL teacher. For example, if a language teacher teaches across a year 7 year-group, they can end up seeing most of that year group in any given week or two-week timetable. This not only affects the amount of admin – a prospective nightmare come report writing season – it impacts the ability to form and sustain ‘meaningful’ learning relationships given there are so many individual students. Teaching core subjects like English, Maths or Science bring their own challenges but at least, in terms of time spent with students, there is a natural propensity to form greater attachments with those students for better or worse.

Although I have many years teaching experience, I have no specific experience of teaching MFL so would not presume to offer any “tips and tricks” specific to the subject matter per se. However, I wonder whether some insights from the psychology surrounding ‘attachment’ might prove a useful resource for teachers who need to form a lot of relationships over a short span of time.

Help from child development psychology – the ‘must-haves’ for any classroom

If you are a regular reader of the blog, you will be familiar with the psychological premise that underpins the A Mind to Teach approach to learning management. It is taken from psychodynamic principles surrounding child development and calls on the work of Klein, Bowlby, Winnicott and others and one have developed into a short affordable course for teachers. The approach sees the relationship between primary carer (parent) and infant as the blueprint for the relationship that exists between any teacher and any learner or group of learners and takes the innate survival needs of the new born – to be held, to be warm and to find food – as the pillars of a psychologically ‘good enough’[2] environment for learning. There are many other branches of psychology that offer explanations of how humans learn best. However, in terms of simplicity and ease of application, the ‘Held, Warm, Fed’ model of classroom management, remains, in my view, the most helpful when managing yourself and others in the classroom.

After studying this branch of psychology and successfully applying it to my own practice, I have worked hard to distil the principles down to five insights that I know really helped me, have helped other teachers who have completed the AMTT training. It is the first of these insights – the Held, Warm, Fed model – that proved the most useful and the one that I would like to share with you.

The “Held, Warm, Fed” Model

1. Held: 

This desire for ‘holding’ – the innate desire for safety and security, remains the overriding priority for all of our lives. The new born seeks to feel the safety and holding environment of the womb. In the new-born it is the primary carer, the parent, that provides this sense of safety for the child. As the child grows and moves from breast to arms to lap to crawling to walking, it is the inner sense of safety brought on first by physical proximity and later the ability to keep the parent or other carers ‘in mind’ that provides the benchmark for our sense of feeling safe.

When the child goes to school, it is the teacher that stands-in, in the student’s mind, for their internalised parental figure. That means two things; one, that children (via transference) will see all adults as a slightly different version of their own parents and will initially, treat them similarly, and two; that they will unconsciously want any and all teachers to provide an environment where they feel ‘held’. What’s more, if the teacher fails to do this, the child will look for safety in its peers or find ways of ‘escaping’ their environment, either literally or through displacement behaviour that means they distract themselves from current threats.

Classrooms are busy and noisy environments. This alone can set off our (and our student’s) innate survival alarms. Remember too, that a teacher is asking students to enter the unknown – this in itself provokes a ‘fear’ response in the student, which has to be managed.

All of this points to the first priority of any teacher; to create a classroom environment that feels safe. If, and only if, environments are safe, will students allow themselves to become more vulnerable and as a consequence, more open to what that environment has to offer them; the lesson.

So, taking time to establish safety, through clear rules, boundaries and procedures will help teachers and students feel as though they are ‘held’ and so help them to open up to the learning. Think about the body language of a student who is anxious; looking down, shoulders up, arms across their body compared to one who is relaxed; good eye contact, shoulders relaxed, an open body posture. Then think about the body language, tone of voice or speed of delivery of a teacher who is anxious. Often teachers who are anxious stay at the front of the room, ‘hide’ behind their desk, avoid eye-contact and are quick to react rather than respond to off task behaviour. All of these factors will communicate to students how ‘safe’ the teacher feels and as a consequence, will have a direct impact on how they respond to what that teacher is offering them.

If all of this sounds complex, the thing to keep in mind is that every child will be looking for opportunities to be and feel safe. It is hardwired into them and they will take their cue from the behaviour of the teacher – the stand in parent – whether they see them once a week of ten times a week. This is not to underplay the pressures on MFL teachers but merely to offer a way of thinking about the challenges of infrequent contact time that might help.

2. Warm: 

We all seek both physical warmth and human contact and closeness. Humans maintain a functioning body temperature of around 98.6 Fahrenheit. A drop of around 3 degrees can kick in survival mechanisms whereby we seek warm ourselves up. Being physically warm enough – like being safe enough, means we are able to relax to take off some of those external layers that keep out the environment we find ourselves in. When babies kick off their blankets and get too cold, their sense of survival makes them cry out for help. But, being treated ‘warmly’ achieves the similar end in that treating others with kindness and fairness leads to an investment of trust. Remembering that our blueprint for a successful learning environment is one which replicates that of the new-born, the importance of a close and warm relationship to the carer in early experiences leads to more successful formations of close relationships later in life. Once a child feels safe and then is treated with interpersonal warmth, innate psychological defences are pushed into the background and they naturally move towards the source of that warmth and open up to the learning on offer.

3. Fed: 

 The more relaxed a child is when they are feeding, the better able they are to digest the food they are being given. Just like being in a relaxed enough state allows the production of digestive enzymes that help us digest food, so being in a relaxed enough state, allows the brain to get out of survival thinking into states where our social skills and our desire to connect and learn from others come to the fore. It is in this state that curiosity is activated and memory comes on line. Like the child opens up to food, so the learner opens up to learning. And, although there may be some fluctuation about what the learner is interested in, the configuration that flicks the learning switch means that to a great extent, subject matter is secondary to our curiosity about the environment we find ourselves in. In other words, it doesn’t really matter whether we are in a Maths classroom for six times a week or a language classroom twice a week, if the environment satisfies our unconscious survival needs, we will open up and naturally fill up with learning.

None of this is meant to minimise the challenges language teachers face and rise to every day. There are no magic wands. Teaching can be both brilliant and really challenging, often in the same day! However, understanding some of the internal mechanisms that are present in all of us can go a long way to help teachers develop a deeper understanding of their role and, to hopefully, work with greater creativity and confidence.

Best wishes for the summer term.

Steve