Vulnerable pupils: When students cannot relate…

I recently asked a pastoral leader to describe the types of encounters she had with the students in their school during a week. She described four students who presented with a range of concerns that could all be loosely described as “relating” challenges.

We talked about the significant concerns for staff regarding these issues and what we could do about them. This article is a record of that discussion.

People ask me if it is merely a generational thing when school staff argue that: “Teachers shouldn’t have to deal with students’ emotional and psychological problems.”

I don’t know, but I do think that the most emotionally and psychologically wise generation of teachers are definitely my elders, but perhaps these are the handful I clung to in order to learn. This is perhaps a purely academic discussion, but you could posture that this is what underpins some teachers’ attitudes towards the most challenging of students.