Blip

About this episode

In this programme, behaviour management guru John Bayley meets Debra Robinson, an English teacher at Highgate Wood School in north London.Debra is working with Year 9 on Stone Cold, a novel about a homeless boy, and is trying to get verbal reactions from the pupils. Despite her promptings and encouragement, she gets few responses, especially from the African-Caribbean boys in the class.Bayley offers some helpful advice about practical classroom strategies designed to build pupils' confidence, but agrees with Debra that the problems may be more deep-rooted. He shows the classroom footage to Paul Gabriel, who works as learning mentor and is black himself.Paul is convinced that the pupils are experiencing low self-confidence, caused partly by their lack of meaningful role models as second and third generation immigrants. Debra tries some of John's teaching techniques which prove successful but with Paul she embarks on a longer-term strategy to encourage greater participation from the silent boys.

• Release Date

  Oct 16, 2009

• Runtime

  15:41