An interest shared leads to a problem halved

I began working with a Year 4 class (7/8 yrs) and covering playtime 4 times a week, I met a young girl (G) I had heard about from other staff, but had never worked with before. She came to the reading room to read with me and was quite dismissive and off hand, although she read very well. I made a note against her name in the observation book I used to keep notes on their reading progress in for her form tutor. I was told that she was very prone to sudden rages. She did not become violent but would verbally abuse anyone who approached her and it was causing problems with her friends, who were beginning to dislike her.

She was above average intelligence in most of her subjects and in conversation, but had a very disjointed home life with her father living in the States with a new family, which involved lots of step-and half-siblings, her mother remarrying and her uncle dying suddenly. The death made front page news on some of the papers, which had angered her further.

Over time I built up a relationship with G, began when she discovered our shared love of the Tudor period in History. After a while (and a little gentle prodding) she began to talk about how being angry affected her and how she needed to be left alone but everyone wanted to know what was wrong and that made it worse.

In essence, she was angry at the world, frightened of the future, frustrated at her lack of control over everything and isolated from parts of her family. I asked her what she Elizabeth 1st would do, which made her smile a little and told her that I would need to talk to her form tutor. She seemed quite relieved and a behavioural plan was put in place for her, with staff aware that she would be allowed to sit outside the office if she needed some space, and her mother was kept informed. She responded well to the measures put in place and spoke to her friends about how she was feeling, which in turn made her a lot calmer in general and had much better control over her temper.

I was pleased to have been able to help and even though our connection was random, it illustrated that our mini gossips after reading ‘Beware, Princess Elizabeth!’ by Carolyn Meyer we had opened up communication between us that she trusted and that I, as a TA, should not dismiss any detail about the children in my care as being insignificant.

R Ryan