Lasagna, honeymoon and slump: phases in crisis recovery on Creating Value In Schools

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Paul K Ainsworth shares how reading emergency planner Lucy Easthope’s book Come What May: Life-Changing Lessons for Coping with Crisis resonates with his experience of what happens when things go wrong in schools.

Layers of lasagna, dripping cheese and sauce, with a sprig of basil on top.

Image by Crafter Chef from Pixabay

Paul K Ainsworth has supported hundreds of schools on their improvement journey in his system leadership roles across four multi-academy trusts. Paul is the author of No Silver Bullets: Day In, Day Out School Improvement and writes on Substack as No Silver Bullets Man.This blog is an extract from our longer conversation, Crisis recovery in schools: ‘it will get better’.

So one summer Sunday morning I turned on the radio, Radio 4, and Desert Island Discs was in the middle of an episode.

And there was a lady describing how she didn't like to go home from work without having a shower. Because her husband would smell the aviation fuel on her, from a plane crash, and her husband was a pilot. And the last thing she wanted to do was go home and wake him up with thoughts of plane crashes and death.

At this point, I turned it off. I don't like listening to sad news. I don't read sad books. I don't watch sad films. But sometimes, something just nags in your brain, doesn't it?

Introducing Lucy Easthope

A few weeks later, I was running, and I always listen to podcasts while I'm running. Something prompted me to put Desert Island Discs on, because I wanted to find out what that lady was talking about.

The lady was called Lucy Easthope, and she works in emergency planning and disaster recovery. And it was one of those listens that was just really fascinating. It made me stop. And then at the end, it was announced that she'd written three books. So I picked up the most recent one, which is called Come What May, and it's all about life changing lessons for coping with crises.

It made me think about the different crises that I've worked with in schools over time, and how I could use her learning.

I've just been really fascinated with those steps ever since. She brings crises to life. The first one she talks about is a crisis in Wrexham, where a mine collapsed, way back in 1934, and apparently it still resonates in the town. Then she takes it up to more recent ones, and also talks about her own personal crisis.

I was just really interested in how that could relate to school, and how I could get better at being a system leader from reading her book and from listening to her.

Crises in school

In school life there's just so many crises, aren't there? There's always things happening. There's always things going wrong. I was interested in the processes that she describes in the book, and it made me think about the different crises that I've worked with in schools over time, and how I could use her learning.

You remember these things that stick with you.

Easthope describes herself as an emergency planner, and working in disaster recovery. I thought those were two really interesting things because as a school improver, I help people put plans together. We talk a lot about mitigating risk and how you reduce the chance of something bad going wrong. So there's that aspect. How do I mitigate risk? How do I work as an emergency planner?

And then, how do I work in the context of disaster recovery? And there are disasters, there are crises in our schools, but how could I use that learning to help with that process?

Things that stick with you

There's so many things that I've seen happen in schools. I don't think I'll ever get over the death of a pupil. I don't think I'll ever get over standing up in a staff room and telling my staff that one of their colleagues has died and won't be back.

I don't really want to focus on those things here. There's a whole range of other disasters and crises we face. Ones around the building, for example. I've worked with schools that have been flooded. I had a conversation recently with a headteacher who works in the Lake District; sadly her school got flooded two years ago and they're still in temporary buildings.

We can think of schools that have burnt down. During my teaching practice, the neighboring school to mine burnt down and one of my friends was working in that school and everything went, all the school books, all the coursework, everything.

Sometimes I go into schools and it just doesn't feel right. You just feel as though things aren't adding up, maybe because of what you're told or maybe things that you are not told, or the way people react.

We can think about schools being broken into. I can still remember as a child in top infants, my primary school being broken into and all three infant classrooms being vandalised. Everything got trashed and paint got thrown, and we had the day off.

You remember these things that stick with you. And then yes, I have dealt with lots of Ofsted inspections, sometimes when they've gone wrong and they're real hammer blows for the school community. I suppose in those aspects, I have been that disaster recovery expert.

I've been the person that’s been sent in, following the inspection, to help pick up the pieces and work with that headteacher, work with those school leaders, work with those staff about how they navigate their way out of those crises.

So there's a whole range of things. And in the roles that many of us do, we don't get the good news. It’s that time when somebody rings you up and says, can you help? So you put all that into context, and I think that was what made the book really interesting to me. How can we navigate through those different stages, and how can we be better at what we do?

The canary down the mine – what could go wrong?

In Lucy Easthope’s book, she broadly splits things into three sections. The first stage is before the crisis – the canary down the mine. She talks about when she advises communities in terms of emergency planning. I suppose that's something that I've done, going into schools and trying to give schools advice around what could happen during an Ofsted inspection.

We're thinking a lot about that at the moment, aren't we? With a new framework, trying to advise head teachers around what it might look like. And in the same way, incidents that could happen. How can we prepare for those? How do we deal with parental complaints, for example?

From our experience, is there something that doesn't feel right?

So that's before the crisis; she talks about it being an initial visit, and the canary down the mine. What she said really resonated with me, because sometimes I go into schools and it just doesn't feel right. You just feel as though things aren't adding up, maybe because of what you're told or maybe things that you are not told, or the way people react to training that you give them. Those comments of “it won't happen here”, or, if you run a good school, Ofsted will look after itself.

That's a classic line that we've heard over the years and it just makes you worry about something coming. In the book, Lucy talks about going and visiting a community in the Channel Islands, and that she just had this feeling that she'd be back again soon. And she was.

So there's that initial visit. From our experience, is there something that doesn't feel right? And then there's that impact point, that crisis point, whatever it is. The crisis happens.

Lasagna and honeymoon phases

Then after that crisis point, there's maybe two things that happen. Easthope talks about the lasagna phase – the idea that if something goes wrong, if a member of your family's ill, and maybe in hospital, it's that idea that neighbours will come round or your friends will come round with a pre-cooked meal for you, that lasagna that you can just pop in the oven.

Certainly that's something that I've experienced in recent years. As a school leader, when something goes wrong, it might be the neighbouring headteacher down the road, picks up the phone and says, are you all right? Or it might be some of your parents sending some chocolates in, or maybe a fellow headteacher from within your multi-academy trust pops round with a couple of Starbucks coffees.

You just keep thinking it'll be better next week. It'll be better the day after.

That's the lasagna phase. People are trying to do something to make you feel better. Then, there can almost be a honeymoon period – that stage where there's a little bit of an uptick.

Maybe something dreadful has happened. A really good example is the Ofsted scenario. Ofsted goes wrong. We then sit there and wait for four weeks until the report gets published. The report gets published, parents don't believe it because they think it's a good school and all those things, they write in and give you support, and then almost you think, oh, it's not as bad as I thought it'd be, and that's that honeymoon period.

The long slump before reconstruction

But then after that, there's a long slump, where it takes ages. It feels like as leaders we're just walking through mud, that every day is hard work. Then coming out of that long slump, there's that reconstruction of how do you build back, how do you get yourself back to where you maybe were?

And I think that we'll often underestimate how long that slump will be. And you just keep thinking it'll be better next week. It'll be better the day after. Maybe we don’t accept that these things take a period of time. If your school gets flooded, and there's water pipe breakages, it's going to be six to 12 months before insurance is paid out, before you can have things properly repaired and all those kinds of things.

Or the Ofsted scenario: there was a reason that in the past, if schools were put in a category, it was 18 months before your next reinspection. Because people understood that it took 18 months to try and get a school from a four to requires improvement. And then you'd have two and a half years to get from RI to good because that's how long it took for sustainable school improvement.

We just haven't seen how long it will take for us to properly recover and the length of that time it will take.

How do you deal with that long period, that slump, where there's a lack of energy? As a school leader, it can feel like you're trying everything and you're not making much progress.

Then you get to that reconstruction period when actually it does feel as though you've got some traction. It does feel as though you're improving.

The disaster recovery graph

Those chunks of time really resonated with me in terms of working with schools to help them improve or deal with difficulties that have happened. I think one of the really interesting things in the book is there's something called a disaster recovery graph or recovery chart, and it charts that movement with different points.

I hadn't seen that before and when I saw that, I thought that was really useful as a tool for dealing with difficulties that you've got, whether it's a school difficulty, or a difficulty in your personal situation.

She never shares that graph too early.

I don't think I'd thought about that uptick soon after the crisis happens. I hadn’t thought about that as a thing. That sticks with me, because there are moments I can think of in the recent or further past where you go through that lasagna period, or you go through that honeymoon period, and you feel supported and you think that everything is going to turn out faster than it is going to, and you've got that sense of community cohesion with you.

I can think of schools that I've supported that have had that, and we just haven't seen how long it will take for us to properly recover and the length of that time it will take. So I found it really helpful to see that graph.

Also, Easthope says she never shares that graph too early, which I thought was very interesting. So if she's working with somebody that's going through an emergency at the moment, she doesn't show them that graph. She waits until they've got through the honeymoon period and it starts to go back down and almost heading into that slump.

That's the time when she shows them the graph because actually that honeymoon period, that lasagna period, that actually gives you some energy to get through the worst moments, the darkest days. She also says, and this resonates a lot with me, that it takes a long time to recover from things.

We’ll be sharing more from Paul in the next blog post. In the meantime, listen to the full podcast conversation (35 minutes).