Melanie

From my first year as a qualified teacher, my mentor said I would work with children with SEND in a more specialist capacity. I have always loved teaching children with additional needs, long before I became a SENDCo/ Inclusion Manager. I have my own first-hand experiences of struggling with additional needs at school and I know the difference that high quality support and provision can make. I have taught for 15 years across a range of inner-city London schools with a wide range of SEND. Before becoming a SENDCo, I worked as an intervention teacher for several years and was able to really dive deep into the process of learning for each of the children I worked with and establish strong and positive relationships with them. I then moved onto working as a SENDCo/ Inclusion Manager for two London schools and spent a significant chunk of time building and developing a SEND Unit alongside the mainstream school. This has undoubtedly been one of the most rewarding aspects of my career so far and has been an education in and of itself. I have seen time and again what a difference it can make to a child's life to have a skilled practitioner who is willing to go the extra mile because they believe in the child and their innate potential – no matter the barrier. I want all children I work with to feel valued, safe, and confident. I strive to support them in developing their own sense of self and in finding out who they are and what special skills, abilities, traits, viewpoints, and insights they have to bring to the world around them. I want every child to know their importance and value.

My specialist experience working with young people with SEN to develop trusting and meaningful and provide engaging sessions that inspire a love of learning and boost self-esteem and confidence:

I have seen time and again through my own practice and that of the teams of professionals I have managed, that the starting place of all good learning for children with SEND comes from prioritising and building a trusting relationship between the child and the practitioner. Without this, no matter how good the teaching, lesson plans, resources or theory, meaningful progress is difficult to achieve.

My approach is flexible, and I take time to really get to know the whole child that I am working with; their interests and hobbies, factors that might create anxiety or upset, the important people in their life, the way they communicate, and so on. When I have worked with children with Autism, for example, who are either non-verbal/ non-vocal or have very limited speech and language, I have always prioritised finding myriad ways to support the child in communicating their needs to me – whether that be through non-verbal means/ Makaton/ communication boards/ visuals / key words or any other useful approach. This is an extremely important part of building a positive and trusting relationship where the child can feel safe and seen.

Knowing the activities and special interests a child may have can really support my work with them and I will always make the effort to build these into our sessions. For example, when working with a child with ADHD and high anxiety, he would only respond to lessons that were themed around Sonic the Hedgehog and so we tailored all our resources and lesson plans to include this as well as building this into reward time to motivate him to engage with subjects that he found challenging. Another child with Autism, had a special interest in tiny objects and toys, so I used a vintage Polly Pocket collection (with very close supervision, of course), to support speech and language sessions. I have many other such examples and find that using special interests to stimulate learning can be very useful.

Starting from a place of success is also something I try to do with all aspects of learning. This means starting with a task or activity that I know the child can do well and is familiar with before introducing something new. I want for the children I am working with to build resilience and confidence and feel safe before attempting something they might perceive as challenging or tricky.

I believe that so much of how we learn is informed by our self-image and the perception of oneself as a learner. As much as I want children to learn and progress in academic subjects, I strongly believe that they must have an underpinning and understanding of their strengths and how these can support them. I invest a lot of time in celebrating with and mirroring/ reflecting to children the strengths I see in them. I use all opportunities I can to build a child's awareness of their strengths and use this as a building block to greater confidence and positive self-image.

My experience teaching children with Autism:

I have worked with children with Autism for over 15 years in both mainstream class settings and within Additional Resource Provisions (ARPs). I developed and ran a successful ARP as part of a mainstream school in the London Borough of Brent and the majority of the twenty-five children within this Unit had a diagnosis of Autism. I was responsible for lesson planning, curriculum creation, managing the teachers and Teaching Assistants, and training the staff. I worked very closely with the Brent Outreach Autism Team (BOAT), SALT, OT and EP services and was fortunate to receive a wide range of training – both bespoke and general. I am well-versed in many different types of intervention and have trained staff extensively on these. Some of the interventions I have found particularly helpful when working with children with Autism have included: The TEACCH approach/ Colourful Semantics/ BLANKS/ Zones of Regulation/ Precision Teaching/ Visual aids and prompts/ Alex Kelley TalkAbout Social Skills programmes/ Instrumental Enrichment (IE) – an educational programme focussed on building executive functioning and metacognitive skills that will support a child in learning how to learn and building study skills.

As with all interventions and approaches however, these are not a one-size-fits-all approach, and one of the things I love to do as a practitioner is build and adapt from known interventions and strategies to tailor these to individual pupils' needs. I have created many educational programmes for children over the years, using a range of the strategies I have been trained in while also taking account of the child's interests, motivations and learning styles. I love to plan engaging activities for children that very much take a child-centred approach.

My experience working with pupils with social, emotional, and mental health difficulties, including anxiety and developing self-esteem:

There is perhaps no clearer area of need where the importance of first developing a solid relationship / attachment with a child is more apparent than in working with children with SEMH needs. There is often, though not always, an overlap and comorbidity of need for these children which requires a holistic mindset and approach. When working with a child with SEMH needs, I will first take time to understand the child's attachment style, possible trauma history, specific learning difficulties (if present), potential sensory processing issues, sleeping, eating and screen-time patterns, amongst other things, before trying to establish the best way to work with a child.

One of the children I have most recently worked with has a diagnosis of PDA and his sensory processing issues were contributing greatly to the emotional dysregulation and anxiety we saw throughout the day. Working closely with the OT was very beneficial in helping to establish routines, such as “heavy work” and the creation of various sensory circuits to support his nervous system. Another child I recently worked with required a lot of support in emotional regulation and developing a more positive self-image. The use of Zones of Regulation to support first labelling emotions and then making use of a range of strategies supported the journey towards emotional regulation. Further to this, the child expressed an interest in Music. I, therefore, planned in short singing and piano lessons at the end of a learning session. These provided not only an incentive for learning but a jumping off place to build confidence through something fun and engaging.

When working with children with high levels of anxiety, I try hard to build in consistent routines and support the child to understand the structure of the day and each session, as best as possible, through use of visual supports and simple language, especially when there are co-existing language difficulties. I always aim to prepare a child for any changes to reduce anxiety and I like to use tools such as social stories to support this so that a child can refer to these when I am not with them, for reassurance. If a child is dysregulated, the academic learning needs to be put on hold and supporting emotional regulation becomes the priority. This might include deep pressure massage or activities, such as a weighted blanket, sensory breaks, music, story-time or any activity that the child responds to positively. It is important as a practitioner to remain curious and committed to developing a toolkit for the child to use in times of high distress or anxiety. I spent a great deal of time as SENDCo supporting teachers to build regulation toolkits for specific children with SEND in their classrooms and wherever appropriate and possible, training the child to access this independently.

I believe strongly in the importance of language as a tool to diffuse or indeed escalate dysregulation and have also been trained in a range of approaches to use with children, including restorative conversations and non-violent communication. Children with SEMH needs have sadly and all too often, experienced the label of being “naughty.” They have, at times, been blamed, shamed and misunderstood by a system that struggles to cope with children that perhaps learn and see the world differently. As a trusted adult, I see my job as creating a safe space for a child, with boundaries and parameters. I am very serious about modelling emotional regulation through my own words and actions when working with a child.

My experience teaching children with ADHD:

As a practitioner working with children with ADHD, it is important to understand the differences that can be apparent between male and female presentations. Understanding a child's experience of anxiety and nervous system dysregulation is also key. Before any effective learning can take place, we need to be and feel regulated and for everyone that looks different. Some children I work with require a great deal of physical activity, such as sensory circuits or simple ball games, before starting a task. Others might need strategies that support calming, for example, drawing, mindfulness meditation, use of sensory objects or perhaps a simple chat with a trusted adult. Further to this, equipping children with emotional literacy skills; identifying how you are feeling and what you need, is a core part of the way I teach. I weave these skills into and through my sessions. I also think carefully about the way I structure tasks for learners with ADHD. This might mean we flit between two or three different tasks at any one time, or we work for short periods of time with frequent breaks in between. I also spend time on supporting the child in learning how to learn. Study and organisational skills are central to reducing overwhelm for a child with ADHD and giving them a clear path forwards for how to start and complete a task.

My experience working with young people with sensory and/or auditory processing needs:

Many of the children I have taught over the years have experienced sensory and/ or auditory processing challenges and I have been fortunate to work with a wide range of professionals and learn a variety of strategies to support with this. This has included working with specialist teachers for deaf children, autism outreach services, a wide range of educational psychologists and occupational therapists, alongside speech and language therapists.

I am very mindful in my teaching practise when a child has these needs, and I work hard to establish what the specifics of their sensory needs are to ensure that we can work in a way that supports the child to feel calm and regulated. I have designed sensory rooms in my previous role as SENDCo and built sensory circuits and sensory diets for children. I have trained school teachers in how to implement sensory circuits in their classrooms also. I am open to using a range of materials and sensory stimuli to see what works best with the child I am supporting. I want to help the children I am working with to understand their own sensory needs and be able to advocate for themselves as best they can.

In terms of auditory processing needs, I make my teaching very visual and work hard to ensure that I am not overloading the child with information by breaking instructions and verbal communication down into bite-size, manageable chunks. I also check the child's understanding by asking them to repeat back to me what they think they need to do or what the instruction has been. I use a lot of gesture when I teach and am always thinking about how I can present information in a range of ways to the child so that they may have the best possible chance of accessing fully what I am teaching. I encourage the child to advocate for themselves when I am not presenting information in a way that is clear also. I want them to have the skills to recognise what they need from the teacher and learning environment to do their best learning.

My experience working with executive functioning difficulties and teaching study skills:

In my fifth year of teaching, I was fortunate enough to attend a course on a meta-cognitive approach to learning, called Instrumental Enrichment (IE). The purpose of the programme is to equip children with a range of learning and study skills that they can generalise and apply to all areas of their learning. It was a very intensive course that radically changed the way I viewed teaching and learning and ultimately the way I taught children. I hold certification for Level 1 IE training, and this enables me to work through a range of instruments with children to build learning skills, such as:

• Working systematically
• Categorising and comparing
• Planning
• Organising, ordering, and sequencing information
• Reducing impulsivity and developing precision and accuracy
• Logical and inferential thinking
• Being able to use more than one idea at a time
• Hypothetical thinking
• Effective checking of answers and work
• Developing resilience

All too often, our education system seeks to overload the curriculum with content rather than teach children HOW to learn. Children with SEND can experience a high level of overwhelm due to the cognitive load that accompanies a constant stream of information. There is a need to first equip a child with the skills they need to be an effective learner and once these are established, the overwhelm and anxiety can be reduced, and deep learning can take place. The underpinnings and principles of the IE approach are often fundamental to the general way in which I teach.

My experience supporting young people with social interaction and friendship skills:

I want every child I work with to come away with the skills and the confidence to connect with others in ways that feel empowering for them. It can be extremely isolating, lonely ad anxiety-inducing for children with SEND to navigate school life and the social relationships within it. This is why I always start from a place of validating the child and their experience. Too often, the messaging around their forms of social interaction has been quite shaming and confusing, especially for children with ASC. It is important, therefore, to acknowledge and support the child's feelings around social interaction and friendships and start from a place of celebration of who the child is, all of their wonderful qualities and what they bring to the party – so to speak!

I have been trained in a range of social skills interventions and programmes but the direction I take with each child is often different every time. Social stories can be very effective when used in the right way. I also like to do role-playing with children and talk through social scenarios with them. I do a lot of work on emotions and understanding, recognising and verbalising what these are and how they feel in the body, alongside supporting a child to discover ways to regulate that are personal to them.

Connection is part of what it means to be human and supporting children to find ways to do this is one of the great joys of my career.

My experience teaching community support and outside activities:

Many years ago, I worked as the Pupil Premium Lead for a school in Hackney. I organised a range of out of school projects to provide opportunities for children and families to access community events and resources. This included beach trips, museums and theatre productions. I am passionate about connecting children to the world around them and giving them opportunities to find something they are passionate about and thus to find their place in the world!

As a SENDCo, I regularly supported parents and families to access the services in our local borough and to raise awareness of advocacy services that might provide support.

Now, as a specialist Music Teacher, I run a range of after-school clubs around Musical Theatre, which I absolutely love and adore!

My skills and experience supporting young people to develop their independence:

My aim as a practitioner should always be to enable the child I am working with to become as independent of my support as possible and as appropriate. Building independence can take a wide range of forms, from putting on a coat or finding a pencil to start a task, using the toilet independently, using a knife and fork or being able to complete a Maths problem or write a word or sentence without teacher input. These are of course, just a few examples. Depending on the child's needs will of course, depend on the areas of independence that need to be focussed on and developed. I have a wide range of experience in supporting children's independence in both functional and academic skills. I take a patient, kind and fun approach and believe in starting from where the child is at and working closely with parents and professionals so that we are all consistent in our approach for the child. This can mean breaking the goal down into very small chunks. However many steps we need to break a task down into, we celebrate every achievement and moment of progress.

In working with a child with Autism, she had an intense fear of the toilets at school and would become very distressed if asked to use them. It took two years and a variety of methods before she was able to successfully and independently use the school toilets. During this time, it was important for us to really break the ultimate goal down, starting from a place that would not completely overwhelm her. We began by reading books about toilets and showing pictures of her favourite characters using the toilet to build her tolerance of the distress that this topic created within her. Through a slow and methodical step by step approach and a lot of trial and improvement, we were able to reach the final goal. This really took a commitment and persistence in approaching the situation in a range of ways.