Courses for Schools

Relevance of our Staff Courses

Our staff courses have a dual focus which aims to strengthen relationships within schools through:

• Developing staff awareness and
• Improving an understanding of the developmental needs of children and teenagers

They reflect three key developments in recent years:

• Contemporary research has raised awareness of the pivotal role emotions play in how our minds work and how we behave. Enhancing self awareness by learning to understand our own responses enables us to respond in ways that help to better support academic learning as well as personal wellbeing. Emotional literacy offers tools to facilitate this.

• Recent DfES guidance for schools, which is being implemented in the state sector via the SEAL initiative, has identified a need for students to develop key emotional and social skills which are proven to improve all aspects of learning. Enhancing awareness amongst staff produces a modified set of behaviours that are experienced and emulated by students: emotional literacy skills percolate down the school.

• Recent brain research has revealed an increasingly accurate picture of what is happening inside the developing teenage brain. This throws light on the kind of adult responses and environment necessary to promote the best conditions for stable behaviour, growth and learning. These conditions can be fostered through developing the skills of emotional literacy.

Our courses bring together these aspects, whilst addressing the social and emotional areas being targeted through the SEAL initiative, our courses have a wider scope and also deliver up-to-date scientific research to deepen an understanding of the needs of teenagers.

We believe that an appreciation of the links between emotions, thoughts and behaviours alongside what research is now telling us about their impact on the developing mind can have a transformative impact on wellbeing and learning. This view is supported by research highlighting the powerful connection between emotional literacy and raised self-esteem, clearer thinking and decision making, motivation, popularity, successful relationships and academic success.

The courses strike a balance between didactic and experiential learning, creating an environment in which staff can experience their own subjective change and development through carefully blended theory and practice. Whilst there are practical and interactive elements to the training, participants are not required to discuss personal material.

“Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is sometimes called “the missing piece” because it represents a part of education that links academic knowledge with a specific set of skills…..a combination of SEL and academic learning is the true standard for effective education for the world as we now face it” (The Educators Guide to EI and Academic Achievement)

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