First CPD Training Day Completed

Yesterday was Managing Challenging Behaviour Training Day. I put together a training that was designed to help Care Givers to understand that children’s behaviour that challenges is best considered as a form of communication and if we are to understand where it comes from, and what we should do to help the children to find a better way to behave, it helps to think about what they are trying to communicate. Also we looked at how behaviour escalates and what are the best times in the development of the behaviour to intervene when children are not too distressed, and therefore able to learn from the experience. I shamelessly cribbed some of the slides from a presentation I used to use when I was working for a children’s charity in the UK and added some from my own experience, and some from my observations of what is happening at Mother Teresa. Anyway we had some fun and a few laughs on the way and the people who I have bumped into and asked about it since seem to have enjoyed it and learned something. The trouble is that Malawians tend to be so polite that I am never really sure if they mean what they say! For me the day was extremely tiring. I was on my feet and talking for 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon and I had to think as well to come up with appropriate examples and answer questions thoughtfully. By the time I got home, in a vehicle full of children from the Secondary School who live further away than most of the others, via Ntukwa and Sigregge, I was absolutely shattered. I did nothing but eat my tea and fall into bed and was probably asleep by eight o’clock! I woke this morning feeling much better and today I have spent the day in Guinea Fowl room with children aged 3-4 years. The Room Leader here is very organised and I felt that the children in the room were more settled because of this. The routine was similar to that in Doves and Ducks, where I have been before. I think this is largely dictated by the arrival of breakfast, morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack. In between were fitted Circle time, Key group time, various Free Flow Play sessions which offered less freedom and less flow than I would like but did allow for some child initiated play, and two outdoor play sessions one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Resources were limited but not nearly as limited as in the Doves and were well looked after and stored in labelled boxes on labelled shelves. Hoorah! Well done the Room Leader. Staff duties were clearly distributed through rotas which were clearly working. There was a rota also for Care Givers to have time to work on their Learning Journeys but I got the feeling these were not working quite so well. However during free play staff were usually in the areas they were supposed to be and were engaged with the children, and clearly enjoying their company. Tick lists of milestones achieved are updated every three months. I need to find out how much the adult-led activities are based simply on the curriculum and how much on the children’s emerging skills, but the care Givers made an effort to make them fun and engage all the children despite larger group sizes than I am accustomed to. Currently blogging in the garden with a packet of biscuits, (strangely they are sweet but potato flavoured; not bad though!) and a cup of mint tea.