Episode 3 - FINAL with music

Jan Barzelman, a speech and language therapist, shares a story about a training failure she experienced. She was asked to provide training on active listening to a group of teachers, but they seemed disengaged and didn't give any feedback during the session. Later, she discovered that many of them couldn't hear her but didn't speak up. Jan realized that she hadn't created a culture that encouraged asking for repetition or clarification. She now starts her trainings by asking if everyone can hear her and encourages them to interrupt and ask questions. She also thanks people for speaking up. Jan emphasizes the importance of creating a culture where it's okay to ask for repetition and encourages feedback. She shares a conversation with her daughter, who recognizes her importance in helping teachers become better at their jobs. Jan credits a book called "Active Listening for Active Learning" for teaching her strategies to support children with receptive language difficulties. Hello and welcome to the SLT Stories podcast. I'm Jan Barzelman, a speech and language therapist with over 30 years experience, here to download my and my colleagues' professional stories. Our learning, mistakes, thoughts and ideas, all in bite-sized chunks, by sharing a series of pivotal moments from our careers so far. Whether you're a seasoned SLT professional or a student just starting out, I've designed this podcast with you in mind. Each episode will bring you new insights. We'll have client voices, guest interviews and reflections on a range of topics, from turning careless mistakes into valuable learning, to a child's moving description of how hard it is to speak. In Series 1, you'll hear my own stories. I'm aiming to inspire you, so if anything resonates or has an impact on your practice, please get in touch at Talking Outcomes on X on Facebook, or at SLT Stories on Instagram. Thanks for listening. In this episode, I'll share the story of my most surprising training failure, the lessons I learned from it, and how it's shaped my training since. Some years ago, I was asked to provide some training for a whole secondary school staff group of about 30 teachers on an inset day. The topic was active listening. I can't recall whether I was training alone or with a colleague, but either way, I had an hour's slot. The aim was to add to the teacher's armoury of strategies to encourage active listening in their classrooms, particularly for the children that we, as speech and language therapists, were involved with. As we know, inclusion strategies to support the less able children almost always benefit many other children in a class. I had already learned that more is less when it comes to training. So my aim was to get across one fundamental concept, and that was the importance of creating a culture whereby children are encouraged to tell teachers if they haven't heard or if they need something repeating because they were momentarily distracted. A culture where children are allowed, encouraged, and invited to request repetition. A culture where asking, can you say that again please, is not shameful or weak, but is seen as a positive behaviour, helpful for everyone, a behaviour which is rewarded accordingly. I think there are probably four key reasons that children don't ask for repetition in class, and the first three apply to adults as well. I'll take each one in turn. Firstly, listeners don't know they're allowed to ask. It's like us adults when we're on a course. If the presenter says, would anyone like me to run through that again? Or, please stick your hand up at any point if you miss anything, then we've had an explicit invitation. We don't feel so rude interrupting. Then if the speaker actively pauses and says, well this is a good point to let me know if you'd like me to repeat anything, then we're given specific opportunities to ask questions throughout. Secondly, listeners often think they're the only one who needs repetition. We've all been that grateful audience member, relieved that somebody else was brave enough to ask the presenter to go over something. Children tell me it's the same for them in class. Thirdly, listeners often don't have the confidence to speak up in a group of peers. They fear judgment or ridicule. Some people rarely speak in group situations, particularly if senior colleagues are present in a work situation. And we've all been teenagers, right? It's especially terrifying in class when the mean kids you don't like are sat near you, or the one you've had a crush on since year eight is right behind you and would see you go bright red. No way are you going to speak. Number four only really applies to children. And that is, they may not know how to ask. The children that speech and language therapists work with may well not know that simple sentences such as, can you speak up a bit? Could you just repeat that? Or simply, say that again please are the most powerful tools which can make teacher talk more accessible to them. And they need to be explicitly taught when and how to use these requests. Back to the story. The teachers that I was training didn't seem very engaged. Most of their non-verbals were telling me, get on with it, we don't want to be here, or a bit meh to say the least. The ones nearest me were okay, but a whole bunch around the outside of the hall kept whispering to each other and giggling. And there was no one from senior leadership in the room keeping them in check, so I didn't really have a hope. I got more and more demoralised as the session went on, but finished, wound it up and gave out my paper feedback forms, curious as to what would be written on them. Around half the group completed the forms. I firstly flipped through the ones from the teachers around the outside of the room, and this is a flavour of what they said. Couldn't hear the speaker. Noise of the heaters was too loud, didn't hear much of it. Slides good, but couldn't hear over the heater noise. Speaker too quiet. And the speech and language therapist needs to learn to speak louder. Oh my goodness. For several minutes after the room was empty, I just stood there in disbelief that not one of these grown-up professionals over the whole hour had let me know that they couldn't hear me. The irony when the whole session was about encouraging listeners to speak up when they can't hear or need repetition. No one had said, we can't actually hear you at the back. They all just sat there, bored, not hearing, so not listening, not understanding, not engaged in the session, and that impacted on their behaviour. Do you see where I'm going with this? They were behaving like kids who aren't engaged in lessons. Giggling, messing about. But why hadn't they let me know? After some long hard reflection, I realised my part in this. I hadn't actually done the three key things that I was trying to encourage them to do around creating this culture of it being okay to ask. I should have, one, asked if they could hear me. Two, I should have given them permission. If at any point you'd like me to repeat anything, please interrupt. Just put your hand up. And three, maybe they didn't have the confidence to ask in front of peers, or they feared judgment by their colleagues. This event also made me realise that trying to encourage a shift in classroom culture is maybe unrealistic when it's counter to normal British adult behaviour in learning situations. So what did I change after that? Well, I realised I was effectively a teacher modelling helpful teaching strategies. So at the start of every training, I now ask everyone around the edges and at the back to wave at me if they can hear me, particularly in a big room. Then I tell the story about this very training session, where only half the attendees could hear, but they didn't tell me until the feedback forms. And I tell them that I don't really want that to happen again. And then I do all the inviting questions bit all the way through. And that way, I'm role modelling all the behaviours that I'm trying to encourage. And one other thing, I thank people for asking me to speak up, or to repeat things. So I'll finish with an excerpt from a conversation with my daughter, Alex, aged seven. Because I'm a bit of a word nerd, I've kept a written record of all the cute things my own twin girls said when they were growing up. I was working late one evening, preparing training. When she asked me, what are you doing? I said, I'm preparing some training for teachers. And she asked, what do you mean? I said, I'm helping the teachers learn how to help children who can't talk very well. And these are my slides for the whiteboard. She said, why do the teachers need to go to a classroom when they're teachers? And I said to learn new things to make them even better teachers. Whereupon with eyes wide, she said, so you're a really important person. I'd like to give credit to Maggie Johnson and Carolyn Player at this point. Their book, Active Listening for Active Learning taught me key strategies for supporting children with receptive language difficulties. If you've enjoyed this SLT Stories episode, let us know what you think at Talking Outcomes on X and Facebook, or at SLT Stories on Instagram. Transcribed by https://otter.ai