4, 3, 2, 1 - The Incredible Five Point Scale

I was in a foul mood this morning.  I’d got it into my head that it was going to be a rainy Saturday so I stayed in bed too late only to then discover it was lovely and sunny and it felt like I’d wasted too much of the morning.  Then I was rude to a Jehova’s Witness, which isn’t like me, and I felt bad.  Then I made coffee with gone-off milk.  Throw in general tiredness, weird dreams and inconsiderate neighbours and by the time I left the flat, I was a ‘four’.

If you don’t know the five-point scale, a ‘four’ is close to meltdown.  I use it with my class of autistic boys to reflect on our feelings, learn more about emotions and develop strategies to manage them.  As its name suggests, it runs from one to five.  At ‘one’, we might feel relaxed, blissful, confident and at ease; we smile, laugh, chat, joke, play and it’s easy to focus on our work and learning.  At ‘five’, we might be depressed, distraught, incensed or aggressive; we shout, cry, hide, punch, kick, throw things and it’s impossible to do anything productive.

Every morning at school, we all share our five-point scale ‘score’ and describe our feelings, then throughout the day, we record our ‘score’ and reflect on our changing emotions.  We’re learning new, more nuanced vocabulary for them too and we talk about strategies for managing our emotions.  What does a ‘three’ look, sound and feel like?  What can you do when you’re a ‘three’, you don’t want to become a ‘four’ and you want to de-escalate to a ‘two’ or a ‘one’?  My own five-point scale is on the wall for my students to see.

I pretty much stormed out of the flat this morning after snapping, ‘It’s no good!  I’m just going out!’  It wasn’t until I caught myself shouting at myself in my otherwise empty car with that knotted feeling in my tummy that my own five-point scale kicked in.  Storming out of the flat without knowing where I was going to go was pretty irrational – a heat of the moment impulse.  However, my own five-point scale that I’ve shared with my class – drawn up in more rational moment – tells me what to do: I need to be by myself and it helps to go out for a walk.

So that’s what I did.  I live close to Hengistbury Head - a beautiful nature reserve in Bournemouth with the sea on one side and Christchurch Harbour on the other.  After about twenty minutes walking, I was a ‘three’.  Watching carefree young children play on their bikes and scooters helped.  The bright sunshine falling green through the leaves and the sound of the wind blowing through the trees helped.  The simple smiled greetings from strangers walking their cheerful dogs helped.  It all helped to put things in perspective – a concept, I thought, that it’s important I teach my class.

Above all, the wildlife, especially the birds, helped me.  I paused frequently, listening intently to an unrecognisable bird’s song; it’s fun trying to work out which tree it’s coming from and to find the elusive songster among the leaves and branches.  I watched a stonechat flit from gorse to gorse, egrets striding through a marshy field, a hungry hovering kestrel and gulls battling against the strong wind.  Bright-legged waders sifting through the water with their long bills were especially engaging.  I couldn’t work out what they were – probably redshanks but they looked greyer than the ones in my book.  I lost myself in watching them for about twenty minutes, oblivious to anything else around me.  Focusing so hard on this one thing, simply living in that particular moment without a thought for another was, I realised, a wonderful exercise in mindfulness.  Thus, I became a ‘two’.

I went home feeling much happier, maybe not quite a ‘one’ but not far off.  I think I’ll tell my class this story on Monday.  It will surprise them because they know I rarely reach four or five but perhaps it will also help them to understand that there’s no shame in reaching that stage if we can diminish the impact on those around us and we have strategies that help to manage our emotions.  It was a powerful reminder for me of the value of the five-point scale.  In a simple, numeric score, it sums up and communicates so much but it is also an effective tool for teaching young people about emotions, how to recognise and describe them, how to manage them and in doing so, how to protect their emotional wellbeing.

For more information about the five-point scale, I recommend ‘The Incredible 5-Point Scale: The Significantly Improved and Expanded Second Edition’ by Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis.

Defending democracy - My first ever protest

To be honest, it wasn’t much of a protest.  Fifty or so people, a smattering of Lib Dem conference delegates and a few dogs gathered in the sunshine around half a dozen fluttering EU flags.  There were a few feeble chants of ‘This is what democracy looks like!’  Three or four speakers made rambling speeches.  And the ‘march’ through the town centre gardens was more of an uncoordinated, leisurely stroll in the sunshine.

I nearly didn’t take part.  When I arrived, the turnout was so disappointing that I sat on a bench watching a few more late-comers arrive and contemplating a late breakfast somewhere instead.  This matters though, I realised – perhaps more than anything else I’ve ever believed in – and I want to stand up and be counted.  So I clapped as the speakers took their turns, admiring them for having the courage to take the mic when I wouldn’t, and I handed out ‘Brexit is breaking Britain’ leaflets as we ambled toward the seafront.  

I was nervous about joining my first ever protest – fearful of other people’s reaction, and that fear wasn’t entirely unfounded.  As we handed out leaflets, the anger, hostility and rudeness of some Leavers was shocking – all older people, shouting, pointing, swearing, jabbing their middle fingers.  Scarily, it wasn’t difficult to imagine these confrontations becoming violent.

I understand the frustration of those finger-jabbing Leavers who were so angry at our protest yesterday.  They have been massively let down.  Three years on from the referendum, it’s patently obvious that Brexit isn’t as easy as they were told it would be.  It turned out that the politicians who won it had no plan for actually delivering on their promises and still have no plan.  And they were given a date for Brexit that has proved unachievable.

I posted on Facebook that I was taking part in my first ever protest to defend democracy.  How could I claim such a thing, I was asked, if I also advocated ignoring the result of the 2016 referendum.  I understand the point, which is why I want to respect that result.  I voted remain, I was desperately sorry to be in the minority, I’m cynical about people’s reasons for voting Leave, but a majority’s a majority; that’s British democracy for you.  If a good deal can be done with the EU that enables us to leave whilst maintaining a close, positive relationship with our European neighbours, I will sadly accept it.

There must be a deal, however.  Back in 2016, we were told it would be easy to get one; the possibility (wherever you put it on the probability scale) of terrible disruption and economic catastrophe resulting from a no-deal Brexit is too great a risk to take; and the view that we should just take the hit and get it over and done with ignores the fact that the hit could be dreadful, it still won’t be over and done with and the no doubt continually acrimonious debate that will still follow about our future relationship with the EU. 

In the meantime, whilst we await Boris’ miraculous deal, Parliament ought to be doing its job, debating the detail and holding the Government to account, and the rule of law must be upheld.  Boris’ decision to suspend Parliament, his attempt to silence opposition and talk among Ministers of ignoring the law is beyond contempt.  This is not a case of ‘Parliament versus the people’, as some say; I am the people as much as any Leaver is, and I demand to be represented.  Whilst I’m not, I’ll protest for the democracy I believe in and against this appalling assault on our values. 

Notre Dame: Has God moved out?

Since Notre Dame burned, there’s been much emphasis in the news on the officially secular nature of France’s society – analysing the significance of an eight-hundred year old church in what one commentator last night referred to as our ‘Godless society’.  Strangely, it was an expression that made me cringe a little; I’m not especially Godly myself, but I fear what God may have been replaced with in our world, and I’m sad for people with faith in God who it seems are written out of society with such a phrase.

Nonetheless, the blaze at Notre Dame has sparked reactions that get you thinking.  As of this morning, €800million have been raised for the reconstruction of Notre Dame, including enormous donations from wealthy families and their businesses – Gucci, Yves Saint Lauren, Louis Vuitton, L’Oreal and Total among them – and President Macron has boldly pledged that the great Cathedral will be rebuilt in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In this secular, Godless world, what motivates this generosity?  Where does God feature in Macron’s determination and the desires of people all around the world to see that great monument to Him restored to its former glory?

I think I understand some of the emotions that swept around the world as the flames swept through Notre Dame, which have prompted this will to rebuild.  Firstly, there’s that connection to a special (even sacred) place that many will have felt.  Like me, millions have stood in front of those twin towers, gazed in awe at those beautiful stained-glass windows and sat in peaceful silence in that vast nave.  Notre Dame is a place where it feels you can reach out and touch history, and maybe even touch the divine.  Even if you haven’t been there, you know of somewhere special – even spiritual – that it would be devastating to lose.  When these places are gutted by fire, we are all gutted.

Then there’s something elemental and timeless about fire that plays to all the fears that permanently lurk at the back of our minds.  It starts so easily with that one spark and spreads so quickly, out of our control.  It burns so fiercely and indiscriminately, destroying just about everything in its path.  There’s a reason hell is a place of fire and brimstone: fire can seem evil; we fear it more than almost anything.

On Tuesday night, when almost all hope had been lost, the fire at Notre Dame was beaten; evil was defeated.  Fear and despair were replaced with good old Christian feelings of triumph, hope and rejoicing.  The ancient walls of Notre Dame stood strong – an enduring symbol of hope and resilience and, apparently, the strength of French (and even European) culture, faith and society.  It’s no wonder that we all want to see the cathedral rebuilt, phoenix-like.

These same sentiments would almost certainly have played out similarly had Notre Dame been ravaged by fire in any of its nine centuries.  But there would have been another dimension to them: the God dimension.  Had Notre Dame burned in Holy Week a few hundred years ago, a God-fearing society would less have launched an inquiry into how it started as questioned why.  What had they done to provoke such divine retribution?  And their determination to rebuild would have been to the glory of God – the same motivation that sent great cathedrals soaring skyward a millennium ago.

As much as I too want to see Notre Dame rebuilt, there is today something odd about a proudly secular government of a liberal, multi-cultural society pledging to rebuild a grand house of God.  Does this imply that France is actually less secular than we thought or that Notre Dame is these days less a place of God?  Has he moved out?

What too of those benefactors who will help fund the cathedral’s reconstruction?  Once upon a time, they may have believed such generosity to the Church booked them an eventual one-way ticket to paradise.  Is it too cynical to wonder what they think they are buying today?  Validation in the court of public opinion, perhaps.  And how comfortable ought we and the Church be with oil companies and fashion houses funding holy endeavour?  (If that’s what it is.)   I don’t know about the morality of these donations but post-Sackler and once the embers of the Notre Dame fire have died down, it surely won’t be long before someone questions it.

Finally, to use a somewhat hackneyed Christian question, too often asked in school assemblies: What would Jesus do?  Specifically, I wonder what Jesus would do if he suddenly found himself with nigh-on a billion Euros.  It seems quite a pertinent question to ask in Holy Week.  We are told he said, ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy … but store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven.’  (And for ‘moth and rust’, we could as easily read ‘fire’.)  I wonder then, would he want that billion Euros spent on building a great monument to himself or would he want it spent on refugee children like he himself had been, clothing the poor, healing the sick, feeding the hungry and bringing hope to the lonely?  

God knows what the answers to all these questions might be.  Throughout time though, people of all faiths would have seen a calamity like the great fire of Notre Dame as a sort of test.  At this time of year especially, Christians today, sharing faith with those who first built all our ancient churches, must surely see the significance of the fire in the asking of those questions.

Probably like most people of faith in God and of no faith, I want to see a billion Euros spent on rebuilding Notre Dame and at least another billion spent on the poor, homeless, starving, sick and needy this Easter – a practical renewal of ideals you might call Christian, if you like.  I’d like to see Notre Dame restored not only as a magnificent testimony to what can be built in stone but as a shining beacon of what humanity can achieve.