Zero tolerance schools and slant techniques for send - good, okay or terrible

[Zerotolerancetofun]

Dd is starting secondary next year. The school has a zero tolerance behaviour policy so very strict about everything (uniform, homework, behaviour etc). They are also bringing in this new teaching technique called slant that the kids are meant to follow - about how they sit/pay attention/look at the teachers - it sounds very Draconian.

Dd has ASD and significant levels of anxiety and I am concerned how this environment will work for her. I think she will be terrified of making a mistake and getting detention for minor mistakes, but of course if this approach stops bullying etc then that is a good thing for her.

I'd love to know how other people's DC have got on with this type of school. Particularly if they have ASD, but also NT children too.

@Chilloutsnow

i know what you mean about choosing for your own kids - the last place I worked in, with a huge emphasis on listening, was great for bright kids with supportive parents who just knew when to crack on and get their head down. It served them really well and set them up for the future. I always recommend it to local parents with kids like that. For parents of kids with send… I don’t!

@goldfootball

Exactly. I guess one big issue here could be some areas don’t have many schools to pick from, so some kids are going to end up in schools that are absolutely not right for them. Thankfully in my particular area there are quite a few to pick from.

You've said you work in an alternative setting. I teach some very low ability groups in a mainstream secondary, and so I obviously don't have the same expectations of those groups as some of my other classes.

But in a mainstream secondary school (or even KS2), where the overwhelming majority of children have no SEND that affects their behaviour, then I think it's a very reasonable expectation to be able to sit and listen to someone delivering information. That means that the teacher has the capacity to give more help and attention where it is needed, not crowd controlling children who are perfectly capable.

I would find a school that expected KS4 or lower students to listen for a full lesson without at least answering a few questions in their exercise books very odd.

One of my children is an anxious perfectionist and possibly asd. I think a school like this would have caused him to either school refuse or have a nervous breakdown or both. School refusal is really common in asd children without the added anxiety rules like these provoke.
However, my child also wouldn't have thrived in a noisy chaotic environment either.
Is moving an option?

It seems to be exactly what I expect from my kids at home. I want classrooms that’s are calm, well ordered and where the kids look at you and actually engage.

There are lots of ways to actively listen though. In a meeting I might not constantly track the speaker. I might write myself some notes. I might occasionally look away as I consider something the speaker has said. I might slightly shift in my seat because it's not the most comfortable seat.

I'm not slumped on the desk. I'm not staring out the window constantly. I'm not getting up and moving around or jiggling the whole time. But I'm also not following the SLANT rules. And if the teacher notices the one time I make a note or shift because my bum cheek has gone numb, and not the 100 times I was sitting fine, then I've got a detention. For being entirely human. Wtf?

Also really, neurotypical people just need to accept that eye contact is a cultural norm and we can change those.

SLANT isn't just sitting and listening which Is a basic expectation. In my sons school it was a very specific limited way of demonstrating 'active listening'. It was very much a very particular sitting position meant you were actively listening. You had to sit slightly leaning forward rather than resting your back on the back rest. Hands had to be by your side, you couldnt rest one on you lap. And you couldnt adjust position like crossing and uncrossing legs. For Looking you had to move your head to track your teacher, not just your eyes (or perhaps the other way round) They recently dropped it and have come up with 'ready to learn' and 'respectful' and everything is a lot less prescriptive. Like you can be listening resting on you chair back and still be listening if you then cross you legs.

@EpicBanana

Common sense applies here though doesn’t it? They’re really not going to expect it for 100 percent of the lesson.

@EpicBanana

That's what I mean about the exaggeration that this means having ramrod straight backs, frozen stillness and eyes boring into the very soul of the teacher.

It doesn't.

This idea is precisely to tackle children who: lounge across the desk, randomly get out of their seat to put something in the bin, rummage endlessly in their bag, crinkle their plastic bottle and pick the label off, doodle all over their hands and exercise books, take their pens to bits, pull faces at other people, pass notes, whisper and giggle and talk over the speaker.

Would YOU want to sit next to that person in your next meeting? Wouldn't you be distracted by them?

Are they doing all those things or just some? I don't care if someone is doodling. Doodling helps loads of people concentrate. My child has drawings all over her hand and is still the one who has her hand up to answer every question. I don't really care about lounging across the desk either. And you can tackle the getting up and rummaging in your bag without having to use SLANT. That's a "tools out on the desk at the start of the lesson and you don't touch them until the end" rule. It's got nothing to do with sitting up straight and tracking the teacher at all times.

@EpicBanana

Yep they’ll be doing pretty much all of them in some chaotic schools. Doodling is quite frankly the least of some schools concerns.

Round here parents must be all for it because my sons school is heavily over subscribed at a ratio of around 8 applications to 1 place. You can easily get into the other schools.

I don't think I could cope with SLANT as an adult. At 11 it would have made me really nervous, I'd worry I wasn't nodding the right amount of times or something. Doubt I'd take much in while focusing on all that.

My sons school has a strict behaviour policy and uses slant. He hasn't found a problem with it though he doesn't have any additional needs. It suits him as he is is a rule follower and keeps the classroom environment orderly. By contrast, I know someone at a school with a more lax approach. Behaviour is horrendous and in some lessons no learning takes place. My son would find this much more stressful.

He gets the odd warning for chatting but has never had a behaviour detention as most ofnthr expectations are reasonable. He had had one detention for forgetting equipments (he has forgotten equipment including books and PE kit several times and has managed to blag it by borrowing odds and ends from.friends!) and said it was fine. Just sat in a room and got his hwk done and had a chat with the teacher.

I am not saying zero tolerance is for everyone, but i think it is important to remember that detentions aren't the end of the world. A bit boring perhaps , but nothing horrendous or traumatising is happening to the kids whilst in them.

It depends what your options are but I would chose a perhaps unnecessarily strict school over a chaotic one. I work in schools and when behaviour policies haven't been well enforced an awful lot of kids are getting their time wasted in lessons and would likely be feeling quite intimidated to boot.

@EpicBanana in my scenario you're surrounded by room full of people, most of whom are doing some of these behaviours for most of the time the person is speaking.

Yes, a teacher can intervene and give a quick reminder or cross the room to remove an item that someone is fiddling with. But every minute or so? It would (does) get annoying very quickly.

You repeating the exaggeration that ones eyes must not flicker from the teacher is unfair and not what this is about.

All SLANT is, is being really explicit about what the expectation is. It's more explicit than "you need to behave" or "stop messing about". As @goldfootball says, a surprising number of children don't know what that actually means.

The method advises using a phrase like "check your SLANT" with maybe a visual poster in the room rather than endlessly saying "Jimmy, put that down, Jonny, look at me, please, Jenny, now is not the time to be brushing our hair."

Great if doodling all over her hands helps your daughter, but it might be distracting for the people sitting next to her. Great that you wouldn't be bothered by someone slouching face down on the desk when you're trying to tell them something important, but if I was that person's boss, I'd find that pretty rude. It's not always about the individual.

The opposite of SLANT isn't chaos though, is it @PetitPorpoise? So if we are over exaggerating the tracking you are not allowing for the fact that other approaches can also work. And exactly how much tracking is enough then? What posture is sitting up straight enough? Because it doesn't actually sound that clear what the rules are if there is some slack to the slant.

And I still don't see why someone quietly doodling is a distraction for another person. Give the doodling kid a spare piece of paper and let them get on with it if it is helping them concentrate on the words that are being said. I'd rather have kids who are actually learning then giving an impression of it.

I'm sure there are other similar approaches but lots of people like this one for it's simplicity. You can demonstrate what "good sitting" looks like when the children join the school. I wouldn't say anything to a child who was looking at me or the board pretty much everytime I looked at them. If they were looking around the room in an attempt to distract others, or staring vacantly into space and then couldn't answer any questions, then that would be a problem.

All teachers want students to learn. Cutting out low level disruption is a really good way to enable more actual teaching and learning to take place.

Do you teach yourself, and if so, what age group?

@EpicBanana

The opposite can be very chaotic actually judging from the schools around me, and also the ones I’ve worked in. SLANT is a simplistic method that usually sets the tone for the whole behavioural management system of the school. Parents know before applying that there will be high expectations for all behaviour.

If you’re letting someone doodle, you haven’t got a leg to stand on when you insist on someone else who’s vacantly staring out the window to fix up and listen. They’ll happily tell you their friends are sitting there doodling and also not listening (according to them). Kids are smart, smart as fuck. They know fine well what they can and cannot get away with, and often that starts with the same rules for all. They hate what they perceive to be any sort of injustice.

I think I'd try it out and fact find before I made any conclusions.

My daughter has ADHD, ASD and hypermobility. She struggles to sit still and sit upright in a normal position because it's a stress position for her. Rather than relying on the limit of her range of movement to keep her upright it is literally a stress position.

HOWEVER, the ensuing calm classrooms and engaged learning style would be a huge benefit as there would be fewer distractions. Her attention span is really low, if she is not interested she can focus for about 10-15 seconds before her attention wanders. No amount of sanctions will change that. She is working 3 times as hard as the rest of her class to achieve half the result. So much of her mental energy would be spent staying still and upright.

I can only assume that she'd benefit from the outcome but struggle with the methods to get there.

Have you got any local Facebook groups where you can ask other parents of SEN children what their recent experiences of the school have been? You could also contact the school's SENCO to ask how they handle additional needs in the environment without damaging self esteem or mental health. Their response will probably be very telling! If they put tools in place in the classroom to give movement breaks, wobble cushions, weighted blankets, that sort of thing then I'd be all for it. If they are of the "if you fuck up it's a sanction" mindset I'd look elsewhere.

This is the kind of model our schools should be following.

@PetitPorpoise I'm not trying to ban it. But the OP was asking about it specifically in the context of SEN and I was answering in that context. You sound like you'd be fairly reasonable about it, but your approach still wouldn't work for my child because she probably wouldn't be looking at you when you happened to look at her. She would be participating and have her hand up to answer every question though. So maybe you'd make an exception, I don't know. But even if you did, can I guarantee that every teacher in that school would? No. So in the context the OP asked, I would not send my child to a school that was using SLANT.

Other parents can make other decisions. The difficulty comes when there is no choice, as the OP is concerned about, because every school is run by the same academy with the same approach. I'd hope that parents have a choice so those of us with children who can't learn in that sort of environment have another option.

I was in a meeting where people were eating the other evening. And in a virtual meeting where other participants had their cameras off and could be doing anything. One answered their phone. Others were (reasonably) making notes, but missed information while doing so.

Hardly even close to SLANT.

No, @saraclara but i'm sure they understood the social etiquette of the situation, which sounds pretty informal. Maybe you have other meetings, or courses where there would be different expectations and would adjust accordingly.

I have an autistic/adhd DD. She would love a zero tolerance, quiet and predictable environment.

She wouldn't cope with SLANT and I see SLANT as highly discriminatory against neurodivergent individuals.

I've said consistently, that this helps students with SEN because:

1. Non SEN students have clear expectations and are not misbehaving. The teacher is not wasting any of his or her time dealing with their misbehaviour. The focus is on a lovely, calm learning environment.

2. Because the other children are getting on nicely, the teacher has greater capacity to be mindful of and get to spend extra time with SEN students not on constantly 'policing' the room. Seating plans can be made with their specific needs in mind, not built around keeping disruptove students separated. This benefits SEN students. The reduction in distractions also helps SEN students.

3. ND students can be exempt from some or all of the SLANT expectations within an orderly context. Most students are actually really understanding of SEN and why some students have adjustments. Maybe it's enough that a particular student is able to remain seated.