The Relationship SCALE (Smile, Connect, Ask, Listen, Engage) is a helpful frame to remind us to focus and scaffold how to actively create positive interactions. It represents simple but powerful intentions and practices to consciously build flourishing relationships, so that we are not just leaving them to chance. Maureen Gaffney’s research outlines that, due to the stickability of the negative, an average relationship needs a ratio of 3:1 positive to negative interactions; a flourishing one that we hope to foster needs 5:1. Check out Maureen Gaffney’s TED for her reflections on how powerful our inner dialogue can be and how important it is to focus on the positive.
The Relationship SCALE helps us to facilitate the 5:1 ratio and reminds us to be proactive, to focus on and create what we want instead of constantly noticing the negative impact of what we don’t want! It reminds us of the action required to follow through on what we already know, that relationships are at the heart of teaching and learning.
Top Tips 5:1
- Set your intention at the beginning of each day/class - how do you want to feel/be?
- Seek opportunities to smile with a specific student/colleague.
- Send a colleague a thank you email/post it note.
- Share two positives before you share a negative - invite students to do the same.
- Ask "what happened?" instead of "why?".
- If you have a problem - invite the person with the problem to consider/share if they have any ideas about how they/you/we can solve it.
- Take a mindful minute at the beginning of every class/day (begin with a focussing activity to enable this).
- Tap into and share your own personal scripts.
- Introduce a talking piece and do an energy check in/out.
- 'Love Bomb' someone that you are having problems with.
- Send home a good note/call.
- Express gratitude at the end of every school day.
- Give yourself a compliment/celebrate and acknowledge something that is going well each day.
- When in conflict, consider and share your intention to connect/find a solution/work together etc.
- Listen with your ears/body/heart - active and deep listening enables us to be present for others.
When using the Relationship SCALE, the intention is always to turn towards one another, to CONNECT, to move towards love instead of fear when faced with challenge as illustrated in this image called ‘Love,’ by Ukrainian sculptor Alexander Milov at Burning Man illustrates.
Wishing you all the very best for this school year and remember, as the amazing Rita Pierson tells us in her TED talk Every Kid Needs a Champion!
Sometimes, in my role as Guidance Counsellor, I get asked to intervene in situations where several consequences have already been implemented. One such example was a second year “feud” between a boy and a girl who had no dealings with each other in first year and were in the same class for the first time in Second year. Over the first few months, their bickering had escalated to Year Head intervention, detentions and still the teachers were reporting problems in the class. In fact, the whole class atmosphere had been impacted and the class was labelled the problematic one of Second year. “I felt powerless. I was confused, I couldn’t understand why she was treating me like this. I never spoke to her in First year and when we were put in class together this year she started sniggering and whispering to her friends every time I walked into class for no reason. ” (Boy X) These were the words of the boy in a preparation conversation before a Restorative Meeting. But they didn’t come easy. In the first round of the questions, I learned he was angry and that he thought his reputation was ruined. He couldn’t get beyond defending himself and making her out to be the ‘bad guy’. He wanted compensation and for the Year Head to call an assembly and tell the whole year he didn’t do ‘it’. At that stage, based on those answers, I was skeptical that there was a readiness for a Restorative Meeting between the two parties. In my work as an RP practitioner, I know that identifying what feelings reside behind the facts listed are where connection and empathy are built so I delved a little deeper – back to the start of the story rather than this specific incident. I followed the question protocol again and that’s when we started getting somewhere and he made the above revelation. This boy was very articulate, and I could empathise with the feelings he described. He described the mixed emotions of new beginnings, new classmates, and the added burden of this mysterious quarrel with a girl he didn’t know who just had it in for him. In an attempt to regain power, he began acting in a way that he wasn’t necessarily proud of but couldn’t think of approaching any differently. ‘Investigating’ the incident that landed them in my office wasn’t the priority, giving them clarity and a new path forward were.
Individual and Collective Accountability in a Restorative Framework
Restorative Practice Myth Buster Series Part 2
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