Great expectations

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Behaviour management guru John Bayley meets Debra Robinson, an English teacher at Highgate Wood School in north London. Debra is working with Year 9 on Stone Cold , a novel about a homeless boy and is trying to elicit verbal responses from the pupils. Despite her promptings and encouragement, she gets few responses, especially from Afro-Carribean boys.John offers some helpful advice about practical classroom strategies designed to build pupils confidence but agrees with Debra that the problems may be more deep rooted. He shows his footage of the class to Paul Gabriel, himself black, who works as learning mentor. Paul is convinced that the pupils are experiencing low self confidence, caused in part by their lack of meaningful role models as second and third generation immigrants.Debra tries some of John's teaching techniques which prove successful but with Paul she embarks on a longer term strategy to encourage greater participation from her silent boys.