I really love a fire. Turns out most teenagers do too.

I also really love working with teenagers, especially those stuck in the mainstream system who, for a million myriad reasons, are not thriving. Not even close. It is, after all, often a deeply disconnecting, deeply disconnected experience for young people and adults alike. 

So I love a fire and I love working with teenagers within mainstream education but I have serious concerns about the system. It’s within that dance that I try to carve out spaces for young people and for adults that allow us to maximise opportunities for nourishing, connected, relational practices within mainstream. 

At present, I am doing this through the creation and leadership of a department called The Dell (Department for Enrichment of Literacy and Learning) within a pretty typical mainstream secondary school in urban Devon. I have the privilege of working with a visionary and compassionate leadership team who fully believe in the possibility of doing things differently, especially for the children for whom mainstream is least suited. But it is mainstream and there are limits.

Children can only join our little department if they are demonstrating significant difficulties with their literacy. Whether or not we believe in ‘age-related expectations’ or rather letting children learn to read and write in their own way and in their own time, if they are a part of mainstream secondary education, it is going to be an enormously tough gig with lower literacy levels. So in small consistent groups, in custom made classrooms designed for more freedom of movement and ownership of the space, we share with children a robust and, I hope, socially engaged and relevant literacy curriculum.

And there’s fire. A condition of me working in mainstream is school leadership that understands and values alternative ways of being. Part of The Dell is our Connection Curriculum, focused on developing self-knowledge and self-compassion as well as respect for others and for the land. Taking elements of Forest School, Way of Council and other practices, we develop children’s capacity for knowing that they are enough; that they don’t need fixing; that they are kind and capable and creative and have choices and control in their life. 

And so a handful of times each term, I get to hit the sweet spot: sitting around a fire in conversation with teenagers. I’ve been reflecting on why I love it so much, why we all love it so much:

I wonder if it’s because fire is a real thing: a visceral, ancestral, soul-dancing kinda thing; I wonder if it’s because there is always an explicit invitation to be exactly as we are: be that angry, exuberant, sad, worried, shy; I wonder if it’s because our nervous systems get a break from the bright lights and the frantic corridors, the tests and measurements and judgements; I wonder if, for them, it’s a welcome break from the constant social negotiations and hyper vigilance required to survive the day or from hour after hour feeling confused and embarrassed and battling to cover these vulnerabilities in a system that regularly fails to recognise their innate gifts and value as a human; I wonder if it’s because they get a choice of how they participate, be that through speaking or just witnessing, through supporting wood collection or leading the fire lighting; I wonder if it’s because we are all seen and heard by people we know care about us. Oh for the sweet medicine of a fire circle.



So I hold in my practice the following question: how close can we get to the sweet medicine of fire circle in all other parts of the school experience? For young people and for adults. How far can we hold space for these young people so they feel truly seen and heard? How far can we connect curriculum learning to the real world and their lived experience? How far can we support each individual child in nurturing a deep knowing that they are enough and that they are valuable and that they are loved?