What is it about?
Changing the way your classroom looks and feels can make a huge impact on the learning of your students. Helping them to concentrate, focus and feel calmer. This paper looks at why it is important to change classrooms and make them more therapeutic given the number of children now struggling with their mental health and emotional wellbeing. It also offers ways you can adapt your classroom to suit their needs and get the best from them in terms of learning.
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Why is it important?
Mental health issues are on the rise and more and more children are coming in to schools after suffering from difficult life experiences. Abuse, neglect, domestic violence, loss, being adopted and in care are all issues children are facing. The numbers are rising and this is leaving teachers struggling to know how to support them with their emotional needs. It is also impacting learning in the classroom.
Perspectives
All of my work in education focuses on supporting schools to adapt their practice to support the emotional wellbeing of children. Children suffering from abuse, trauma and adverse experiences have so many barriers to learning and often their behaviour is an on-going issue. Many teachers tell me how unequipped they feel and how deflating it is to try to teach a class when there is a particularly difficult child amongst them. By training teachers on mental health issues and offering practical advice for their classrooms/ responses and teaching skillset i am hoping we can move toward a more therapeutic teaching model which will make an positive impact on everybody long term.
shahana knight
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A calming, therapeutic classroom environment, Headteacher Update, January 2018, Mark Allen Group,
DOI: 10.12968/htup.2018.1.34.
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