The changing room conundrum

The other day I had a long conversation with a student about his experiences on teaching placement.  He is a brilliant student (I've had nice emails about him from his school mentor- which very rarely happens as everyone knows teachers don't have time to email) and has just been accepted onto teacher training next year so very competent and bright.  However, he has encountered a problem with one of the groups he was teaching as they were often quite loud and disruptive in the changing rooms before the lesson which could mean his teaching time was reduced as they would come out in dribs and drabs after ten minutes or longer, whilst also being worried that there could be an injury or fight in the changing rooms before or after the lesson itself.

I found this really interesting as another ITE student I have been working with was also struggling with the start of his lesson due to a changing room issue.  In his case it was because he was teaching a girls group and he had to wait outside until they were all changed before he could start his lesson, giving some students the opportunity to delay the lesson if they took a particularly long time. 

This must be a problem unique to PE, as within all other lessons once students arrive at a class they are ready to begin learning (although there may be time taken to set up equipment in DT or Science the pupils are in the same room as the teacher so can be supervised doing this, meaning they should be able to complete these tasks relatively quickly when monitored more closely).  This is also becoming an increasingly pressing problem as more and more schools are reporting that their PE time is being squeezed at the expense of other areas of the curriculum, indeed my last school only gave 1 hour per week to PE at KS3 (ages 11-14) and a portion of this was obviously allocated to changing time. 

During my career I have spoken to many practitioners about how they deal with changing; we used to have students change in 2 minutes in silence (it was quite militant but worked really well and meant we had a nice calm start to the lesson- I know I am biased but I think this was the best method for our students), others play music and give students the length of one song to get changed.  However frequently students are allowed to walk into the changing rooms, change at their own pace and only the very slow are chivied along by the teachers.  This means that at worst, 15 minutes at the start of a lesson can be lost to changing and the same amount of time being devoted to it again at the end- this is often half a lesson! 

In the current climate with a focus on health and physical activity in schools it is important that we get changing routines right. If we do this can give us more lesson time as well as ensuring students are focused and ready for the lesson- in short, getting changed is our 'starter activity', once which those from other subject areas would use to settle the class and focus them on the topics they will be learning that day.  It is also really important that students feel safe whilst changing so that they develop a positive attitude to PE overall- a lot of students in my own teaching experience who did persistently not bring kit did so because they had a worry about getting changed or the changing rooms themselves.  This is a barrier which is easy to lift.

The other side to this conundrum is the teacher's feelings around changing rooms and the ethical aspect of supervising young people changing which can make some new teachers (and probably some older ones too) feel uncomfortable.  Student safety is paramount (and is mentioned in the NSPCC document on the safe use of changing facilities) and often signs of abuse are noticed whilst young people are changing so is teacher supervision the best way to ensure young people are safe? The NSPCC document does not identify supervision as being essential and identifies guidelines for implementing supervision of changing due to the increased vulnerability of children in this scenario.

The first student I mentioned, despite feeling confident in his teaching practice and other areas of teaching found it uncomfortable to go into the changing room at the start of the lesson. However it was difficult for him to articulate why he felt this way, perhaps because it was a different situation for him to be in and he was wary of getting himself into a difficult or uncomfortable situation. New teachers are told over and over again to avoid being in a situation where they on their own with a pupil (for safeguarding reasons) and I can imagine the possibility that this could occur in a changing room would be worrying in this situation. Many other teachers I have spoken to (both straight and gay) have identified feeling this way and it is a difficult, for some people quite sensitive, topic to approach.  I think it is important to supervise students changing, both for their own safety as well as to make the most out of the lesson however I think there are important considerations to be taken into account in this topic, including religion or cultural preferences, teachers feelings, pupils feelings and gender identity.

I am interested in the views of others on this topic, as well as opinions on changing room routines and supervision as I feel it is something not often talked about but which is an important consideration with changing attitudes to gender and sexuality and the underlying importance of developing young people who are positive about PE and physical activity. I am also really interested in others' practice as it's not something you normally talk about on a training day or course! Please send me a message or comment below with your opinions!