Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 14th April 2024

I’ve had a couple of conversations this week to spark this blog, and it’s about where Gloriously Ordinary Lives starts and grows from, where it takes its roots.

It’s no secret that I’m a passionate inclusionist. I trained as a special school teacher, worked in one for two years, and I’m outspoken enough to say that there’s nothing special about special schools. I’m one of those irritating ‘all in’ folk and genuinely believe that every child should be welcomed in their local school. As Marsha Forest was fond of saying, ‘What part of all don’t you understand?’

The Boy was eleven when he started at the local comp and The Girl was nine when she went to a local primary school. One of the things that I learned from their experience of being included is the impact it had on the other children and young people.

Verity was five when The Girl started at her primary school. I remember her coming to me about a week after The Girl had joined and asking, ‘Why won’t she say hello to me?’. I remember responding that The Girl was a little bit rude (because she was) and that also she didn’t always notice people saying hello to her. After a short pause to consider, Verity replied, ‘Like when you’re in Spain? You don’t understand what people are saying so you don’t always listen?’. Genius. She then went on to say, ‘Well that’s fine, I’ll just keep saying hello to her, and I’ve noticed that if you touch her arm when you say hello she’s more likely to notice you. I’ll tell the other kids.’

Five years old. Speech and language assessment and plan in less than 2 minutes.

At The Boy’s Year 9 review, the (lovely) Ed Psych started a conversation about how The Boy was probably going to need to spend more time in ‘the unit’ (not in class with the other young people) as they were all going into Year 10 and the start of GCSEs. We always made a point of having other young people in any meeting as a way of keeping it real and Ashleigh Girl was in The Boy’s meeting (not to be confused with Ashley Boy). She immediately piped up, ‘What do you mean he won’t be in the classroom?’ The Ed Psych and some of the teachers reminded her that The Boy can be noisy and that he didn’t always sit in his seat during lessons. They were anxious about the impact this would have on other young people doing their GCSEs. Her reply was, ‘He’s fine. We’re all used to having him in the classroom and he doesn’t disturb us. We like having him there …and how is he going to learn if he’s not in the classroom?’ Fair point Ashley Girl. After a bit more to and fro, it was agreed to give it a whirl for a term. He stayed fully included for the entire two years of his GSCE programme (and came out with some graded GCSEs).

The Girl got the Year 13 prize – not a special Year 13 prize, but the main one. When her wonderful headteacher presented it, he said that when I’d approached him to ask if The Girl could have a place in his sixth form, he felt a bit smug in saying yes – he felt it was a good and altruistic move. He said that it had taken him until the first October half-term holiday to realise that his school was going to get more out of The Girl being present than she was ever going to get from the school. He cited UCAS application forms that showed an understanding and awareness of equality and diversity that he hadn’t seen before. Of young people having more thoughtful conversations about potential career directions.

My point? All these children are now forging their own paths as adults and bringing their ways of seeing the world into their everyday lives. All of them inherently ‘got’ the concept of Gloriously Ordinary Lives – no one taught them. They are going to be the teachers, the supermarket workers, the doctors, and the support workers who naturally work in ways that enable Gloriously Ordinary Lives – for everyone.

Alex Fox wrote a great blog last week that I got into a conversation about called ‘Should we specialise or generalise?’

As I responded to him, I think the issue is how we see 'specialism'. In the world of social care and education, we tend to talk about specialism as understanding a particular ‘type’ of person ....and as soon as you go down that route, you are instantly othering. There are very real specialisms in life; I'd rather have my teeth drilled by someone with a degree in dentistry and I get my hair cut by someone who understands that curly hair behaves differently to straight hair. But once you start talking about groups of people who have been allotted to a group by Serviceland, then I think you start getting into trouble. The stories of the children who grew up with my two, demonstrate that the most expert people were the other kids. They had no issue with figuring out how to play with The Girl and no difficulty in working out how to learn alongside The Boy. They had absolute expertise in naturally thinking Gloriously Ordinary.

The Girl didn’t go to the local primary school that we lived 300 yards from. The reason they gave was that her ‘needs were too high’ and (this has always stuck) ‘we have to think about our children’. What they were saying was that she was somehow too different, too scary, that she needed some sort of specialism that they didn’t have. But what they were really saying was that they weren’t able to welcome her. They didn’t see things through the Gloriously Ordinary Lives lens.

So perhaps there are two points here. There is a (researched) truth about the impact of genuinely inclusive education that we have to consider as our schools get less and less inclusive, and there are the children and young people who have experienced inclusive education and who will be part of changing the world. Alongside this small group, the rest of us can learn from their natural ‘what would it take?’ attitude and have a healthy debate about specialism as we plan and offer support.

PS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast episode three is here! I catch up with Angela Catley⁠ and ⁠Sian Lockwood⁠ about their fabulous new challenge, ⁠#WhenIGetOld⁠