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Ah, at last … Golden Rules AND Values
A letter to ‘my’ schools…
Over the last few years there’s been a movement of schools gathering their staff together and drawing up a shared list of values that they want to inspire everyone with. These are fabulous concepts such as Courage, Humility, Compassion, Equality, Justice, Forgiveness… it’s a big and wonderful heart stirring list that differs from school to school.
However some of these schools no longer saw a connection between their current long held ‘Golden Rules’ and their newly chosen values, so discarded their Golden Rules. A big mistake. Let’s refresh our thinking. The Golden Rules are simple rules that lead you beautifully to higher order values.
‘Aaaah’ say another surge of schools who’ve just asked their children in September to draw up class contracts. I too believe in asking children to consider what behaviours they want to keep everyone safe. However… this creates a long list in each class of differently described behaviours often saying the same thing in a different way. This can be very confusing. Keep them… but why not tell children you want to gather them all in to look at them to see what common threads they all believe in. Guess what? If you cut them all up into single rules they all fall under each of the 6 headings of the Golden Rules which are:
We Are Gentle… (ie respect for physical safety)
We Are Kind… (ie respect for people’s feelings)
We Work Hard… (ie respect for myself)
We Listen… (ie respect for others)
We Are Honest… (ie respect for truth)
We Look After Property… (ie respect for the environment)
Now you can say to the children let’s keep these headings because they sum up all of your views. The beauty of this is that you now have a single set of Golden Rules, not only to put in the classroom but in all the important ‘social places’ ie corridors, dining halls, cloakrooms but MORE IMPORTANTLY… a set of simple rules to go out in the playground (the only one that changes is ‘We Work Hard’ which becomes ‘We Play Safely’). The Mid-day supervisors love having them outside, it’s much more simple for them to say “Do you know what Golden Rules you are keeping right now?” Or “do you know which ones you are breaking right now?”… and then point to the playground wall where they there, shiny, bright and simple.
Soooo a dear infant school in Stocksbridge, Sheffield, where both the head, Jane, and Alison, Assistant Head, are great believers in my Golden Model and very inspirational in the way they do things… have nailed it. They have made a fabulous display of their Golden Rules and their Values which I’m sharing with you. So now I am working with their team of mid-day supervisors (who only come in for an hour at lunchtime) on how we can put these rules into practice. Note to all of us, listen to Gandhi’s advice “Be The Change You Want To See”.
Website Managers Notes
1. We have some lovely new Playground Picture Circles showing the Golden Rules for the playground in a colourful and fun way!
Click Here to see all Golden Rules resources.
Click Here to see all Fantastic Lunchtimes resources.
2. Jenny has been working on British Values document that relates her Golden Model ideas to British Values. You can click below to download her British Values document.
3. Jenny Mosley runs successful and transformative positive behaviour for learning, circle time and social skills, and lunchtimes and playtimes training –Click here to see all forthcoming public conferences that anyone can attend]
4. Many schools book Jenny Mosley for a training day, conference or a Working in School Day. For enquiries about training workshops, keynotes and open conferences, please phone 01225 767157 or email circletime@jennymosley.co.uk.For all other training enquiries – better behaviour for learning, improved social and communication skills, circle times, working with parents as partners and more, phone 01225 76715701225 767157 or email circletime@jennymosley.co.uk
5. Resources to support all Jenny’s training are available in our website shop.