Attention in each classroom, as teachers know, is a living, breathing thing. It ebbs and flows with the energy of the group, the clarity of the task and the sense of safety each child feels. When children feel they belong, their attention expands. They are curious, engaged and ready to explore. When they are anxious or uncertain, attention narrows, fades and fragments, often flitting between the task and the social cues around them.

I’ve seen different leadership styles in action in some of the most socially and economically challenging areas of the UK and have so much admiration for the dedication of everyone working in these communities. With decades of delivering rhythm-based intervention in schools, my priority is always to lean into the culture and values of the school so that the teachers and children always experience the intervention as an integral element of the school week.

The difference between belonging and fitting in

I worked in Washington D C, in 2018 and was surprised when a colleague’s partner said to me,

‘We’ve noticed you’re very good at fitting in.’

My response was, ‘Well as a professional musician, that is a very important part of the skillset.’

This has stayed with me. As school leaders, I feel it’s worth pausing to ask how important ‘fitting-in’ really is? There’s a subtle but powerful difference between belonging and fitting-in. When children are ‘fitting-in’ they are compensating for the sense that they cannot belong as they are. There may be many reasons. I’ve seen similar patterns whether in socially deprived settings or exclusive schools. Against a complex backdrop of social and cultural messaging, children may wonder whether they can ever truly ‘belong’.

Why feeling safe precedes attention

As children move from home to school, from playground to classroom, and from one task to the next, they navigate a series of adjustments that require emotional regulation, with experiences ranging from smooth to abrasive.

For some children, however, each transition involves a sense of ‘rupture’. They must ‘disengage’ from a perceived safety in the ‘known’ as they adjust (often at the sound of a bell or klaxon) to the new ‘unknown’. This is why going to school is in effect, a sequence of ‘shocks’ to the system. Staying on task is almost incidental to ‘survival’, which becomes the main priority.

Dopamine, timing and the experience of ‘now’

And as we know, a child’s attention span can be as short as 3 seconds, yet the pulsing of dopamine release which supports the brain’s subjective experience of the present moment, remains steady. Specific neural pathways known as thalamo-cortical loops are important for selecting and maintaining attention on particular aspects of tasks such as following a rule in a task, so that even after a delay, the brain is still able to continue with that task. Rhythm is processed within these same pathways, so, the question is whether a rhythm-based intervention can help with the children’s fragile attention?

From survival to learning: Helping children to ‘switch lanes’

For all children who are navigating transitions, there are ‘costs’ in terms of energy and self-reliance. Many learn to pivot with flexibility in the moment and learn to adjust with ease. They appear proactive socially, and grounded in an inherent sense of resilience, safety and belonging. But among the children who are just coping, their goals are very different. They are trying to fit in, appearing to behave normally, and the effort that is required to suppress their actual internal experience of stress during a ‘normal’ day at school can become exhausting.These children may appear to make ‘poor choices’, though an element of fear and panic likely drives their response.

‘Well-adjusted’ children, on the other hand as every teacher knows, are more goal-oriented and deliberate in their decision-making, typically driven by strategic, well-considered, adaptive responses.School can be a place where goal-oriented behaviors are continually reinforced by a system of incentives and rewards, whereas maladaptive responses can become more entrenched by admonishments and detentions, perhaps deepening the grip of fear-based signals.

The question is whether it’s possible for a child who typically receives warmings and detentions to ‘switch lane’, to experience learning as rewarding, and school as place of growth and belonging?

Rhythm as a route back into learning

Although all the children identified for reading intervention definitely try to focus their attention, they have identified it as ‘fading’ (either suddenly or gradually) or even ‘scattering’ into fragments.

After ten sessions of rhythm-based intervention, the same children were able to read with ease, to anticipate what was coming up next in their reading and to answer comprehension questions accurately. They described feeling happier and calmer, and they said that they could hear and understand their teacher more easily and also knew what they were supposed to do in the classroom.

The changes the children described pointed to their increased ability to select and maintain attention. These children became able to focus and remain on task, whilst at a deeper level they described feeling more settled and better able to self-regulate their emotions. They were no longer ‘messing about’ or constantly ‘chatting and joking’. Rather, they were able to listen and to follow their teacher’s instructions without difficulty. They were delighted by self-perceived changes in learning behaviour and their teachers provided feedback, corroborating their progress.

Implications for teaching, leadership and school culture

Reading is not only a gateway to literature. It is a portal into every discipline, from accounting to zoology. To unleash the potential of every child, whether that is in academic or practical subjects, basic skills, legal or financial professions or performance in liberal arts, manufacturing, public services, caring, therapeutic and medical professions, there is a specific vocabulary and a discourse for young people to access through reading.

In an era of instant access to information, and incredible human accomplishments, our children are still dependent on their thalamocortical pathways to carry information forward as they learn to read. Unless, they receive the necessary support, some children will not develop fluent reading, a basic requirement that 'levels the playing field' in the information age.

Reading for pleasure, reading for learning, reading for life

We live in an era of technical advancement and yet, we are still refining our educational systems to the point where children leave primary school able to read well enough to access the secondary curriculum. Without reading fluency, children cannot read for pleasure, nor can they keep up with their peers. This is the priority in the National Year of Reading. Reading well, reading for pleasure, reading with fluency are necessary for all children for learning and for life.