Forty Seconds at Primrose Hill: Part 3 of 4. The teacher’s view.
Jake Parsons has taught at Primrose Hill for the whole of his career, six years, starting in Reception and now working in Year 5, where he says he has found his niche. He’s exactly the kind of teacher a new initiative must win over, because he’s honest about the first thing every teacher thinks when a new initiative arrives.
“When I first heard about compassionomics,” he told us, “I wasn’t entirely sold by the concept.”
It’s worth sitting with that admission, because the doubt he names is the one most teachers feel and rarely say out loud. Compassionomics, the body of medical research that found a 40-second compassionate conversation could measurably improve a patient’s outcomes, can sound to a stretched teacher like one more thing. Jake’s worry was the obvious one. “I’ve not got much time as it is, and now I need to try and fit these 40-second conversations in throughout the whole day. How am I going to fit them in?”
Anyone who has stood in front of a class will recognise that thought. What matters is what moved him past it.
Making the science usable
Two things changed Jake’s mind, and the first was practical. He didn’t have to wade through the original research. “You didn’t have to go and read the whole scientific literature,” he said, “probably things that were above my pay grade anyway. PiXL condensed it, made it so we can understand it as teachers and teaching assistants, and it’s easy for us to implement.” The framework told him he didn’t have to reach every child at once. He could start with a few, stage it, and build.
The second thing was the realisation that he was half doing it already, just without the intent. “As teachers we do it in the first place, but it doesn’t have that intention behind it of ‘I want to find out more, I want to care and nurture just a little bit more.’” The shift was from asking children about their weekend in general, to choosing a child, listening properly, holding the detail, and following it up days later. “How was that all-inclusive Chinese you went for?” The child feels valued, he said, because the question proves you were really listening the first time.
His own definition, offered for any teacher who has never heard the term, is worth keeping. Compassionomics, he said, is “a direct approach to caring for the children, through conversation, through warmth and nurturing, through ensuring that all the children feel heard and listened to.” Then the line that identifies the real problem it solves: “So often as a teacher we talk and we don’t listen.”
There’s a nice tension in doing this well. Done right, the children shouldn’t notice it’s a strategy at all. Jake says it becomes “just what happens,” and then, every so often, he watches one of them almost catch him at it. “You can see the light-bulb moment, where they go, oh, he’s doing something here, he’s asking how my grandmother is after her hip operation.” Part 1 of this series rests on the fact that the children can’t name what the school is doing. This is the same fact, seen from the front of the room.
The tally chart
Jake’s first focus child had struggled with attendance. Late every day, falling behind before he sat down, walking in already braced for the feeling of catching up. Jake started a daily conversation and, with the child, kept a tally of the mornings he arrived on time. They marked it off together, day after day. “He went from turning up late every single day for a whole term to being on time and there every single day.” The arithmetic of that is striking. A child who was losing the start of every lesson, brought back into the room by a conversation that cost under a minute. And once he was in the room, Jake watched the rest follow. The boy stopped carrying the stress of being behind, and his learning lifted with him.
The harder story was a boy who joined mid-year, having been excluded more than once elsewhere. Jake is candid about the red flag he felt reading the paperwork, with a settled, hard-working classroom he didn’t want disturbed. So, the team did the opposite of brace for trouble. “We made a really conscientious effort of going out of our way to really understand him as a person, to find out what makes him tick.” It turned out he had a good sense of humour, and that a light touch in a tense moment could defuse it before it escalated. “Since he joined, we’ve had no behaviour problems, and his work has improved significantly,” Jake said, from at-risk on attainment to working at age-related or better across the board. He’s careful to share the credit, naming the teaching assistants who bought into it. The point he keeps making is that the conversation only works if the caring is real before the question is asked.
The same team
Asked for the parent relationship that had changed most, Jake didn’t reach for a quick win. He described a mum whose son’s attendance was poor, and who, rather than bring him in late, would often keep him off without telling the school why. There was no chasing her with policy. Instead, the school had what Jake calls “candid conversations” and “compassionate conversations,” until something gave. “We made sure she realised that we’re on the same team here,” he said, “that behind that compassion is that we both want the best for her child.” Now she tells them straight away if there’s a problem, and she knows the door is always open. His way of putting it holds the whole strategy in a line: “What she wants and what we want is exactly the same.”
The mechanism is what should interest a leader. A short, repeated, genuine conversation changed how a hard-to-reach adult behaved, and the child’s attendance moved with it. The parents in Part 2 of this series describe what that warmth feels like from their side of the gate. Here’s the teacher describing how it gets built.
Bravery, and the why
There’s a quieter strand in Jake’s account, and it’s about courage, one of the school’s values. He shows what that word means in practice, which hits harder than any poster on a wall. He teaches a class of ten-year-old boys reaching the age where feelings go underground. One told him, in a lesson on emotions, that his dad had said sadness should be pushed down. Jake saw the moment for what it was and gently turned it over. “We want people who know it’s brave to show empathy, to be nurturing and caring. That takes bravery.” Getting boys who would rather not talk to talk is now, he says, one of the things he watches for most.
The care turned out to travel in both directions. Jake noticed behaviour settle right across the classroom, “because they care for you as you care for them, it’s reciprocated in both ways.” And it didn’t stay between him and the children. The staff have started doing it with each other, and a session held without the head and deputy in the room, simply so people could talk openly, is the kind of thing Jake says wouldn’t have happened as easily before. He even admits, with a grin, that it has improved things at home.
His message to a teacher elsewhere who feels they have no time for this isn’t a slogan. It’s an instruction. “Make time. You can do it in those small moments throughout the day,” the walk to the lunch hall, the few minutes before the bell, the playground duty where you talk to a child who isn’t even in your class. Weave it in so it’s flexible rather than rigid, he says, and be honest about which children most need it. The rest happens as a by-product.
He ended on the line that, more than the data, explains why it works. “Between the times of nine and three, you are their parent. It’s your sole job to make sure they feel looked after, cared for, listened to and nurtured. The learning is a by-product of that.”
Final part: Emma Mignaud, the head teacher, on hearing about compassionomics at a PiXL trust heads day and turning “that sounds like a good idea” into how a whole school runs. Primrose Hill is a PiXL member school in the Forest of Dean.
Missed part 1 and part two? Check them out here: Part 1 (The student’s view), Part 2 (The parent’s view).
Further reading
Trzeciak, S. and Mazzarelli, A. (2019) Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference. Studer Group Publishing.
