Walking the Talk

How Transactional Analysis is Improving Behaviour and Raising Self-Esteem

Giles Barrow, Trudi Newton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135397128
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 2006. Helping teachers to counter challenging behaviour, absenteeism and bullying, this book follows on from the successful Improving Behaviour and Raising Self-esteem ( 2001) and shows how Transactional Analysis can benefit the individual, class and whole school across the early years, primary and secondary phases. The book includes: An introduction to TA concepts and a map to direct readers around the book; Case studies that highlight how TA can be implemented in different educational settings; Time-saving photo coplable resources. For SEN Co-ordinators, LSU Managers, teachers, Lead Behaviour Professionals, Behaviour Education Support Teams, Learning Mentors, policy-makers in schools and LEAs, Educational Psychologists and Early Years Specialists.

I

Teaching TA in the Primary School

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LINDA HELLABY

INTRODUCTION

As every teacher knows, in order to learn successfully children must feel happy and secure within the school environment. In addition, they must be able to behave appropriately, communicate effectively, have self-awareness and the ability to problem-solve and resolve conflict, and also begin to learn how to protect themselves. This is in addition to the more obvious tasks of academic work.

When appointed to a new position 20 years ago, in an inner-city school in an area of severe deprivation, I soon found my class quickly disintegrated into total anarchy despite my trying all the ‘correct’ educational approaches. In desperation I decided to teach the children about strokes as I reasoned it might make them feel better about themselves. The results were miraculous. In two weeks order was restored and the children started working. I decided that, as the class found communicating with and relating to each other very difficult, I would continue teaching them TA.

Being new to TA, and there being very few books available at that time to use with children in school, I devised my own syllabus of PSHE(C) using TA. I decided to teach the children the actual TA theory, reasoning it would give us a common language with a very specific vocabulary.

The three areas I covered were:

• creating greater self-awareness using the TA concepts of egostates and strokes;
• relating to others through identifying authentic needs and feelings and introducing transactions; and
• problem-solving and conflict resolution using the drama triangle, egostate diagnosis and assertiveness techniques.

As is customary in most primary schools nowadays, I hold regular Sharing Circles with my class. Ideally, they are a daily occurrence, but in practice they are usually held three or four times a week. To institute a Sharing Circle I ask the children to sit in a circle on the carpet. Then I explain that Circle Time is a special time which belongs to them; it is a time for helping us to understand ourselves and to get to know each other. As with all groups, Sharing Circles require rules to enable them to be an effective vehicle for change. The children decide the rules, the teacher's role being to frame the suggestions positively. A maximum of six rules seems to be the optimum number for the success of the group. A typical list of rules might be:

• one person to speak at a time;
• keep your hands and feet to yourself (i.e. don't fight);
• listen carefully and politely to what others are saying;
• it is OK to pass (i.e. not comment during an activity which is going round the circle);
• be punctual for the Sharing Circle; and
• it is OK to feel what you feel.

RACKETS AND REAL FEELINGS

Once the ground rules are established I begin by teaching the children about feelings. TA theory states that there are four authentic feelings. They are: mad (angry), scared, sad and glad. Many of the other feelings we experience are called racket feelings — such as anxiety, guilt and confusion — and anger, sadness, fear and gladness can sometimes be racket feelings too. Fanita English (1972) writes: ‘Rackets are stylised repetitions of permitted feelings which were stroked in the past. They are expressed each time a real feeling (of a different category) is about to surface.’ Stewart and Joines (1987) further state: ‘We define a racket feeling as a familiar emotion, learned and encouraged in childhood, experienced in many different stress situations, and maladaptive as an adult means of problem solving’. This example shows how this process can begin. In this case the child was able to understand her own feelings and decide to act authentically.

Case study

Helen is being brought up very much in a TA way. Her parents always give her permission to feel what she is feeling. When she was aged 3 she was enrolled in an excellent nursery school. Her parents were very pleased at being able to provide such a high standard of preschool care. However, after about four months they became very distressed as her behaviour had changed for the worse. Helen was always whining and crying, never asking for things that she needed and going around looking sad. It wasn't until I went to collect her from school one day that the mystery was solved. As I sat, unobserved at the back of the room, I noticed that Helen's favourite nursery teacher was paying great attention to a child who was crying, first of all picking up the child and cuddling her, and then, when the sobs had subsided, letting her share her chair during story time. Walking home with Helen I casually mentioned what I had seen. Helen immediately reeled off the advantages of behaving in such a manner with this particular teacher — sharing the chair with her, being cuddled, getting a sweet, being allowed to play with a toy that another child wanted to use, and many other treats, I pointed out that the child had been crying. Helen replied, very matter of factly, that the teacher didn't like you to be sad, so if you were she would cheer you up.

I reported my observations to Helen's parents who dealt with it in a sensitive way. If she started with racket behaviour (e.g. whining) they would remark that if it were them in that situation they would probably feel sad or scared (a feeling appropriate to the moment). When Helen protested and said, ‘Well at school I always feel sad’, they said it was OK to feel sad at school if she felt she ought to, but that at home she could feel how she wanted, i.e. authentic feelings. Helen's behaviour returned to normal at home and at school; she said it was boring always crying. In another household, if this behaviour was not understood, a child may well have developed a sadness racket.

I teach the children about racket feelings because, as Stewart and Joines (1987) state, racket feelings are not effective in solving problems. Furthermore, a person's authentic feelings are squashed down under the layers of racket feelings; therefore these feelings are not appropriate to the situation. They are also censored in that the person is not able to be spontaneous.

During the first Circle Time on this topic I explain that every person experiences four authentic feelings, and I write them on the board. I explain that having these feelings enables us to be spontaneous, helps us to solve problems, and that they are appropriate to the situation. We then have a thought shower as to what one might do or feel when having these feelings. I then explain that, at home, your parents or carers like you to feel certain emotions, and I ask if any child can identify a feeling that is stroked at home. Children often say, ‘My mum doesn't like me to be sad, she says be happy’. After some discussion other children will discover that they are encouraged not to be angry and perhaps they are stroked for being sad or depressed.

At this point I stress that it is fine to behave at home how your parents wish you to behave but that at school it is fine to feel what you are feeling and express it appropriately.

Activities using art to allow children to identify feelings

To facilitate children to experience their authentic feelings, or to begin to identify them, I use art and drama activities with great success.

Drawing or painting while listening to music

• Choose a piece of music that is likely to suggest a specific feeling to the children;
• let the children choose their own size piece of paper;
• provide a variety of mark-makers for the children to use (paint, chalk pastels or crayons seem to be the most successful);
• play through the music, the children listening at this point;
• tell the children that next time you play the music you want them to do a picture of the feeling the music creates in them. (I do not do any discussion of what the feelings might be as I have found that children who have trouble accessing their feelings would merely take up the suggestions, or copy someone else's. If they say they do not know what to do, I say ‘It doesn't matter, just draw a picture’. More often than not an authentic feeling surfaces or I am able to identify their racket feeling.)

When the pictures are finished the children like to discuss their pictures.

Case study

For two years I taught a girl who was a cared-for child. She did not attend school until the age of 6, and only then because she was found foraging for food in a skip. Her mother was a drug-user who funded her habit through prostitution. Laura was locked in an unlit cupboard while her mother worked or was taken along and put in the corner of the room where her mother worked. Laura had many serious psychological problems and was expelled from two primary schools for unacceptable and dangerous behaviour.

Laura made slow progress, until I did the above activity. Her usual reaction when feelings were mentioned was to shout loudly that she wasn't going to do ‘that c—p’. She would then start escalating her behaviour until she had to be removed from the classroom. On this occasion, however, she just chose her piece of paper silently, took a packet of chalk pastels, sat down by herself and drew a picture. After we had finished she said she wanted to show me on my own what she had done. The music that day had been ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, from the Peer Gynt Suite.

Laura said the music had ‘reminded her of scare’. She had drawn a picture of a large field with very long grass. A small figure was walking in the grass. In the top corner were two coffins with ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ written on them. I asked her if she would like to tell me the story of the picture. Laura said, ‘A little girl is looking for her mum and dad. She is lost in the jungle grass and she doesn't know yet that they are dead.’

Laura's behaviour changed radically after this experience and she began to identify when she was scared instead of exhibiting racket rage. It also provided her with a safe vehicle within which to explore her feelings, both in the here-and-now and also in the past.

Drama techniques useful in working with feelings

• Audience direct
  In the manner of a film director, the audience directs the actions and responses of the people in role. Children can be given a scenario or a story to act out. The audience, on the second run through, can intervene at any point and ask the character to feel or behave differently. Once when I was using this technique with my class, I had given them the story of Cinderella to change. It was quite slow going until a small boy suggested this intervention: ‘ [I suggest] Cinderella gets off her arse, stops moaning, goes and gets a job and then she can buy her own ball dress’. After that the suggestions came thick and fast.
• Freeze-frame
  The audience can make a signal to stop the action and the ‘actors’ freeze in the manner of a photograph, sculpture or the freeze-frame on a video. This enables changes to be made or feelings to be explored at any point in the action.
• Thought tracking
  Invite the children to reveal publicly the private thoughts and feelings of their roles at specific moments in the action. In conjunction with this you can ask the character what he had been feeling the previous moment, what he might feel as the scene progresses or what he thinks the cause and effect of this action will be. If the character cannot think of an answer another child is allowed to put the thought or feeling into words.

The use of clay

Clay is another useful commodity when doing work on feelings.

• It can be used to show racket feelings and authentic feelings in the form of a 3D ‘Janus’ head. (Janus was the Roman god of the New Year who looked back into the past and forward into the future.) Children can make a two-faced head (like Janus), one face showing an authentic feeling and the other a racket feeling.
• Masks can be made showing different types of feelings.
• Just thumping a mass of clay can be cathartic for some children. I usually let them do it until they do not want to do it any more.

Other uses of mark-makers

• By using a stimulus such as a poem or a story, children can access feelings in a safe way. After using the stimulus the child...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Related titles of interest
• Full title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• TA Terminology
• 1 Teaching TA in the Primary School
• 2 Saying Hello: Establishing a Pastoral Mentoring Service in an Inner-city Secondary School
• 3 It Doesn't Matter What Age You Are – It's What Stage You Are At That Counts
• 4 Keep Taking the TA: A Letter to Henri Matisse
• 5 Have I Got the Right Hat On? Using TA to Deliver High-quality Individual Tuition
• 6 Am I In or Out? Using Imago Theory in Developing Effective Group Work
• 7 It's a Zoo Out There! Helping Children Cope with Bullying by Understanding Drivers and Permissions
• 8 Taking the Drama Out of a Crisis: How School Managers Use Game Theory to Promote Autonomy
• 9 3-D OK-ness for Schools: Developing Positive School Cultures through Three-dimensional Acceptance
• 10 Conclusion
• Appendices
• References and Bibliography
• Index