Keith E Rice - The Parks #2

Part 2

"I just wasn't afraid"
As the school settled down into regular routines, with staff, children and most parents co-operating in a relatively-harmonious manner, the opposition of this small 'hardcore' of parents grew more vociferous throughout the first half of 2003; and more ugly!

To protect her staff from the verbal abuse some of them had been receiving - "I didn't want them distracted from teaching" - Cathy Byrne made it her business to deal with this group of recalcitrants, being, as she put it, "pleasantly confrontational".

As the hardcore parents tended to engineer these confrontations in public - usually at home time, to maximise their audience - one or two of the school staff would hover somewhere near by "just in case" . Which was understandable since Cathy came in for a welter of verbal abuse and was eventually threatened with violence. "They tried to intimidate me but, you see, I just wasn't afraid." (Interestingly Clare W Graves (1978/2005) identified loss of fear as a distinctive characteristic of 2nd Tier thinking.)

However, as the threats became more extreme, Cathy did ask nearby staff to make notes of what they heard in case the school had to resort to legal action.

With outright intimidation not getting the desired results, the hardcore tried more subtle tactics. They raised a small petition of around about 250 signatures demanding Cathy's resignation on the grounds that she was not doing enough to combat bullying at The Parks.

Although she knew the school was successfully implementing government and LEA policy on bullying, Cathy arranged for representatives of the parents to meet with her, her deputy, The Parks Chair of Governors, Simon Gardner (Deputy Director of Hull Learning Services (LEA)) and Sue Young (Hull Learning Services Anti-Bullying) in an attempt to tease out real concerns, As an output of the meeting, Sue Young proposed an anti-bullying task force.

However, those parents who signed up to the task force immediately found themselves labelled 'turncoats' by the rest of the hardcore and withdrew from it. The PURPLE/red need to belong to the 'gang' had proved just too powerful.

The hardcore then took the petition to the 'Hull Daily Mail' who ran the story, using quite sensationalist terms, in July just before the end of term. However, Simon Gardner, when interviewed for the article, unequivocally voiced his support for the school and Cathy's leadership; thus, reducing some of its impact.

On the last day of term Cathy had a note delivered to all parents collecting their children. In it she stated:-
"Please be reassured that your children are our top priority and that their welfare is our major concern. Please also be reassured that there is no question of any member of staff resigning because of a hate campaign by a small group of people. We are working very hard to stop bullying in our school and that includes bullying by adults."

Effectively a declaration of war, Cathy told me at the time that she had decided to show the hardcore just how “quietly determined” she could be and that she was “going to fight RED with RED!” In fact Cathy was actually macro-managing vMEMES and BLUE would prove a staunch ally in the days to come.

Breaking cycles of confrontation
More than herself, Cathy was concerned for the school, her staff and the pupils – especially the children of the hardcore oppositionists. Poisoned in their attitudes towards The Parks by their parents, these children were among the worst behavers in the school, disrupting lessons and damaging their own education.

To break the cycles of confrontation, Cathy turned to BLUE. In September 2003 Hull Council's Anti-Social Behaviour Unit issued letters banning the 3 most confrontational parents from the school site for 6 weeks. (The normal duration of such a ban was 6 months or even a year but Cathy requested the much shorter timespan because she was of the mind to mend relationships, not sever them.) However, in typical RED style, 2 of those parents continued to come onto the site. However, the threat of personal violence enabled Cathy to turn to stronger BLUE: the police were called in. n fact around this time the hardcore were largely undermined – effectively by the other parents!

The Governors of The Parks, who had been consistently supportive of Cathy, had decided at their meeting in early July – prior to the 'Daily Mail' story - that they wanted to know what wider parental opinion was. Accordingly, those attending that month's parents' evening were asked to complete an OFSTED-style questionnaire. It was then sent out to anyone who hadn't attended the parents' evening.

To minimise any accusations of the survey of being rigged, Cathy made sure she was never in sole possession of the completed questionnaires. Two parents completely independent of the school management collated the results.

The consistency and fairness displayed by Cathy and her staff, the honouring of old PURPLE identities while forging a new one, and Cathy's RED/YELLOW personal integrity and courage in standing up for the school she believed in paid off. The survey revealed that 80% of Parks parents 'strongly agreed' or 'tended to agree' that the school was 'well led and managed'. A staggering 99+% 'strongly agreed' or 'tended to agree' that The Parks expected "my child to work hard and achieve his or her best".

On an estate where the conventional 'work ethic' was weak, this was an astonishing vote of confidence in The Parks.

With this advantage in hand, the LEA set up a support group for The Parks to take some of the pressure off Cathy and her staff, inviting representatives from the local church, St Michael's, Hull DOC (Developing Our Communities), and other community groups and agencies.

Additionally, a mediator was volunteered by one of the community groups called in. To the surprise of some, Cathy submitted herself to mediation, received feedback and resolved to learn from it.

At the same time the BEST (Behaviour & Educational Support Team) for the area was inaugurated and their assigned police officer spent time with the most disaffected parents, absorbing some of their aggression and giving a sympathetic ear.

A marker that Autumn term of The Parks' increasing acceptance by the local communities was increased attendance by parents at the Friday morning assemblies.

December 2003's Christmas Concert saw the spaces in the school hall allocated to parents filled. At the event one of the hard core oppositionists, who had gone to the 'Hull Daily Mail' back in the July, now told Cathy what a good job she thought she was doing!

Still there were some who couldn't yet bring themselves to accept. In January another parent from the little group that had gone to the 'Mail' became so threatening and abusive that Cathy had to have the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit ban him from The Parks. As with the 2 of the previous banned parents, this parent's RED again led him to defy the ban.

Cathy: ”He then defied this order and came onto the site to argue the toss with me and was extremely threatening. [He actually threatened violence against both Cathy and her husband!] The City Council legal department were superb and within an hour and a half we were in Court getting a temporary injunction. Then 10 days later we were again in Court for the parent to put his side of the case. He floored us all by saying that everything we said about the incidents was correct and that his behaviour was 'bang out of order'. It may have been that he was trying to get the injunction lifted. Nevertheless the judge upheld the order banning him from the site until the end of the summer holidays. Not long afterwards he removed his children from the school.“

On the face of it, a case of RED collapsing and admitting its shame when confronted with its waywardness by BLUE. Whatever the parent's motives and whether the admission was genuine or not, there could hardly have been a greater vindication than the parent recanting in a court of law where the admission of wrongdoing is enshrined in BLUE!

Developing staff, nurturing children

To date two of the three of the local ward councillors have toured The Parks and pronounced themselves happy with what they found.

BLUE's real test, though, was an OFSTED inspection in July 2004. While the inspectors were not without some criticisms, they declared The Parks to be "an improving school, whose effectiveness is currently satisfactory. There is a clear commitment and determination to raise standards."

Considering all the difficulties with the hardcore and the fact that Court Park had been in 'Serious Weaknesses' at the time of the merger, the OFSTED rating of 'satisfactory' was no small achievement.

What must have been particularly pleasing for Cathy, given the tactics of the hardcore, was the inspectors' citing 'Leadership and Management of the head teacher and key staff' as one of the school's strengths.

During the inspection, the remnants of the hardcore did make their presence felt and the inspectors noted "the hostile response of some parents" and "the harassment by some parents". Yet the inspectors also cited 'Links with the Community' as a strength of the school.

"It's still early days," Cathy says cautiously, regarding this acceptance; but it is clear The Parks, in a very short space of time, has become accepted by all but a very tiny handful.

However, this acceptance has been won by far more than just confronting those who would not accept.

Rather it is Cathy's holistic approach to the needs of her school, its staff and its pupils which has won local confidence in her as a shamaness who really does have a touch of magic about her!

When one of The Parks' cooks expressed an interest in developing office skills to better herself, in line with her principle of enabling people, Cathy employed her in school administration.

Even more Cathy looks to enable The Parks children. She is keen on merit stickers, certificates and heaps of verbal praise for good behaviour, high attendance and good work as a way of building up the children's RED self-esteem. She encourages them continually to grasp opportunities. At The Parks' first anniversary assembly, Cathy spoke to the Year 6's about where they would be in another year's time (just entered secondary school) and then about where they would be in 10 years' time – future pacing the youngsters to think about what opportunities they might grasp. "I also took them forward 20 and 30 years and told them I would be retired but in the phone book; and they could phone me and tell me about their personal and professional lives and their successes.

"I created opportunities for my own children," she explains. "They don't always do that here – there isn't the same ethic. So you have to enable the children to recognise opportunities when they arise – and to grasp them."

As part of her nurturing of her charges, Cathy has encouraged sensible attitudes towards getting enough sleep and eating healthily. On an estate where malnutrition is significant and there is something of a 'junk food mentality', some of the school's exhortations have proved a little controversial. ("I was accused by several parents of 'forcing' their children to eat vegetables!")

Given Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck's expressions of concerns in recent years about malnutrition affecting the brain's ability to develop vMEMES healthily - the Upper Right's ability in 4Q/8L to facilitate growth in the Upper Left - the criticality of healthy eating to learning is clear. (Many primary school teachers tell children a good diet is 'brain food'!) In any case, Cathy is unrepentant…and her stock now seems high enough with most parents for her to carry it off.

Improving Learning
One of the key developments in Cathy Byrne's own thinking in recent years on the education and development of children is that interventions need to be earlier in life rather than later. Thus, she is critical of the Government's new Behaviour Improvement Project.

"It shouldn't be targeted at Secondary School Year 7. It is very clearly 'early intervention' but many people seem to think 'early intervention' means Year 7. "They seem to justify that because that's when the problems are really evident. But by then it's too late. Behaviour patterns are largely established and very difficult to change."

Cathy would have assessments conducted and interventions designed as early as entrance to primary school. "Not all indicators are always clear at that stage and we could end up bringing in support for somebody who turned out not to need it. But, by and large, we can tell you at that stage who is on track to go on to a worthwhile career and who, if nobody does anything to change it, is going to end up detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure."

One could see, following Cathy's argument, how 'early years' psychological assessments like Mary Ainsworth's 'Strange Situation' could indicate the current health of PURPLE – the bedrock of the Spiral.

Taking a global view, Cathy says: "We have gone almost as far as we can in improving teaching so the way forward is in improving LEARNING .

"I have long thought that there are far too few (teachers) doing far too much and far too many (pupils and parents) doing far too little. We need to redress that balance. The idea is not to do the parenting ourselves but to support and encourage parents in their task.

"We still have a great many issues to face such as low achievement, behaviour and attendance. Whereas we have direct control over the quality of teaching and other factors IN school, there are many barriers to our children's learning over which we have no real control such as attendance, punctuality, nutrition, sufficient sleep, good behaviour, positive attitudes to school, homework, parental support. We MUST try to crack some of these if we are to make the difference our children need."

A recent - and major! - innovation in attendance strategy at The Parks has been to text or phone the mobiles of parents of truants and children with poor punctuality records early in the morning as a kind of alarm call.

Macro-managing the Spiral
In terms of The Parks Cathy Byrne's remarkable achievement has been to create through multi-vMEME management a new PURPLE, which initially the children and increasingly the wider communities are identifying with. A key element of this has been the honouring of the old separate PURPLE traditions.

Cathy has fed and fed PURPLE, while at the same time demonstrating a robust RED resolve and sprinkling teasers to stimulate emergent higher vMEMES.

Looking back on the development of The Parks, Cathy says The Parks has "much more the feel of a 'normal' school now. We can no longer make the excuse we are new!

"It is an interesting thing - in a 'middle class' school the parents trust the school to do their best by the child until there is proof that that the school is not trustworthy. In our school we have to earn the trust of the parents. From past experience I can say that, once that trust is gained, you become the best thing since sliced bread and they defend you from any outside threats, but it takes a lot of doing."

NB: In July 2004 Cathy Byrne was awarded her Master's Decree in Science (MSc) from Leeds Metropolitan University. Her dissertation was case study of the merger of Danepark and Court Park to form The Parks. Cathy acknowledged a number of educationalists and philosophers who had influenced her thinking but the core of her strategy, as outlined in the text, was based on Spiral Dynamics. She referenced both 'Spiral Dynamics: mastering Values, Leadership & Change' by Don Beck & Chris Cowan (Blackwell, 1996) and 'Levels of Existence', Bill Lee's transcript of a Clare W Graves 1971 seminar (ECLET Publishing, 2003).