Prank? Or Feedback? - Centre For Peaceful Solutions

Maria Arpa

Wednesday Whisper

3 April 2019

This week

Prank? Or Feedback?

Plus…

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

and

the Wednesday Whisper

Funny but serious

A school in East Yorkshire discovered that a pupil (most likely), accessed the school on Google Maps and renamed it. So, Hornsea School and Language College became ‘Hornsea Prison and Hell on Earth’ and found its way into the Google search engine under its new name. The school said they are aware of who did it, but are not releasing the information. It has since been changed, so no point in looking it up but how funny is that?

Unsurprisingly the school has had problems in the past when a former English Teacher called her tutor group a bunch of ‘t*****’.

And while the prank is hilarious, what’s serious about this is:

In the Dialogue Road Map we recognise that anything anyone says or does is valuable feedback. For a pupil to rename the school ‘prison and hell on earth’ is an important piece of feedback that tells us how the school is being received by at least one pupil.

In my world, the pupil and any accomplices would be the subject of a very important feedback session where I would want to listen deeply to what is so bad about my school that it warranted such an action, and what it would take for the same pupil to rename it ‘OK place and worth getting up for’.

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

I’ve spent some time wondering how the school responded to this. I sincerely hope they found it funny and serious. I went to a Convent Grammar School and it really was Hell on Earth. Even the passing of over 40 years has not wiped the memory of how bad it was and how my acts of dissent and rebellion were my only relief from the agony

The Wednesday Whisper

Have you ever taken a stand and marked it with a humorous act? What would you do today that is harmless but makes the point? Can I dare you?

Would you be willing to send this out to anyone you think might be interested in getting a little dose of mindfulness each week?

2 Comments

Neil Jackson
Posted 5 years ago Reply

One of the responsibilities we all have is to listen. As a manager I always told staff to let me know if I am doing something wrong, then I can explain my actions or do something about them. Unfortunately my experience is few managers want to hear this sort of thing, while one staff member told me it wasn’t her job to tell me what I’m doing wrong. Next time it will be on the job description.
- Maria Arpa
  Posted 5 years ago Reply
  
  Thanks Neil
  Yes, and that relates directly to schools. Interestingly, pupils are not consulted, only parents. Yet even prisoners have consultation forums. I think that making feed back to a manager as part of a job description is a highly sensible strategy. But workplaces would have to train managers in how to hear the feedback as an opportunity to grow and develop. This is where the DRM comes in useful.