The Therapeutic Teaching Podcast with Shahana Knight

Dave Mcpartlin: Teaching children to dream big, raising self-belief, being brave enough to try and going beyond the curriculum

In this episode, I am joined by Dave Mcpartlin, Head Teacher of Flakefleet Primary School. Dave has been in leadership roles for 16 years and has been the head teacher of two schools. His approach is extremely inspiring. Dave wants the children to believe in themselves and dream big and he is on a mission to make sure that every child leaves his primary school believing in themselves and their capacity to do anything, no matter how scary that might be.

 

Dave leads by example and after creating a ‘dream list’ with the children, the school has been on a lot of adventures together - including being on Britain’s Got Talent and getting the Golden Buzzer in 2019, making a song that made it into the Christmas charts and opening their own community coffee shop!

 

Dave and I get stuck into talking about children’s mental health and wellbeing, emotional intelligence, life skills and everything that goes beyond the curriculum. We also talk about Dave’s own experiences in life, his struggles with depression and the importance of sleep and prioritising wellbeing! This episode is not to be missed, it will leave you feeling happy and inspired to make changes. You might even find yourself wanting to take more risks and dream bigger!  

Links to Dave and his work: 

Twitter: @dave_mcpartlin 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flakefleet 

Britain’s got talent snippet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSbV3YiRkI 

John Magee: Living with childhood trauma, teaching, kindness, happiness and positive psychology

You have to listen to this episode! John Magee is the kindest coach and the UK’s kindness ambassador for schools. He shares kindness with teachers and cultivates kind classrooms in hundreds of schools throughout the UK. He is a father, speaker, author and mentor to leaders in education.  I loved having this conversation with John whose energy and purpose is soaked in self-development, positive psychology, happiness and connective relationships. There are so many pearls of wisdom to take away as he talks us through his own experience of childhood trauma, adversity in his adult life and how through all of that, he set up his own business and dedicated his life to helping hundreds of children and teachers across the UK. Get your notepad and paper out for this one because there are so many things you can take away!

 

Links to John and his work:

Johns courses and website: https://kindnessmatters.co.uk/

Twitter: @KindnessCoach_

John's book: Kindness Matters

Johns book: The Happy Tank

Daniel Croft MBE: Raising standards in foster care, living with purpose and making a difference

This week’s podcast episode is with Daniel Croft, the CEO and vice chair for fostering and social work organisations across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada! Daniel is on a mission to make a change to the fostering landscape. His goal? To improve conditions, pay, transfer options and create a global impact on as many children and families' lives as possible.

Daniel's journey is nothing short of inspirational. I wanted to sit down with him and explore how he got to where he is today and what his hopes are for the future of children in care. In this episode, Daniel shares his own life experience, which includes being raised by parents who were foster carers and talks us through the circumstances that led him to where he is today.

His story reminds us that anybody can do anything they set their mind to and if we lead from a place of passion and inspiration, our impact can be a great one.

Dr Poppy Gibson: Helping others, raising children, self-care and creating connective caring relationships

Join us for the first episode of the Inspiring Leaders series with the amazing Poppy Gibson. Poppy, a senior lecturer and course lead in primary education at Ruskin University. If you follow her on social media, you will see she spends lots of her time delivering talks, writing books and doing research for education. As a mum of 3 focused on children’s wellbeing and mental health, Poppy's work is driven by a desire to help others and make a difference.

In this episode, we discuss various topics including parenting, children’s mental health, education, wellbeing and self-care. We discover the personal journey and life experiences she has experienced, including her struggle with sepsis. Despite life’s challenges, Poppy has gone on to do incredible things such as authoring books, visiting #10 Downing Street, and welcoming a refugee family from the Ukraine into her home.

Join us as we explore Poppy's inspirational story and learn valuable insights and tips to use in our own lives.

 

Links to Poppy and her work:

Twitter: @poppygibsonuk

Poppy’s book: A Home for a Ukrainian 

SPECIAL: Paul Dix Interviews Shahana Knight

Have you been following my Therapeutic Classrooms Approach? Last Year the amazing Paul Dix interviewed me on Teacher Hug Radio! We managed to get a copy and so here it is,  just for you on our Therapeutic Teacher Podcast. 

In this quick 15min chat, Paul and I talk about the first school who was brave enough to hand their classroom over to me to be transformed, what a therapeutic classroom is and why we need more of them in the UK! 

Find out more about The Therapeutic Classroom Approach:

Follow Shahana's Head Teacher Update diary entries which follow the story of Shevington Vale ( her first school) and then others that followed.  https://www.headteacher-update.com/search-results/shahana-knight/81/1/

Watch our Reinventing Classrooms You Tube Channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/@tpctherapyltd5124/videos

Visit our website:

https://www.tpctherapy.co.uk/therapeutic-classrooms

 

Learn more about Paul Dix and his work and the Teacher Hug Radio here:

https://www.pauldix.org/

https://teacherhug.co.uk/

 

 

Episode 20 - Reinventing break and dinner times

Dinner time and break time is a chance for children to blow of some steam and have a run about, right?.. Hang on.. Is that right? Or is it a time where many feel anxious and unsettled? Where the fast pace and demands to join in with games and run about can be the opposite of what they actually need. A time when they find themselves in trouble because they are struggling to manage the chaos that break time brings.

The truth is we need to reinvent break and dinnertime and acknowledge that some children need that time to self-regulate. To be calm and gather their thoughts. To refocus and just be still for a moment before the lessons and the pressure starts again.

In this episode, we will explore the reasons why free play at break and dinner time don't work for all children and how you can begin to implement ways for the children to use the time to find ways to regulate themselves and process their morning. Ready to move into the afternoon.

If you told me after a hard morning to go and run around outside it would be the last thing I needed. I'd want a quiet peaceful cup of tea for 10mins to collect my thoughts. If we can acknowledge that for ourselves then we need to begin acknowledging that for our children. 

 

The Path Meditation is a 7 minute guided Meditation, let me know what your class thinks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACOlnosx8_o

Episode 19 - Random acts of kindness in the classroom

It has been a rough year for our children and sometimes happy hormones have been hard to come by. This week's episode is all about doing random acts of kindness for the children but also with the children for others.

 

Encouraging kindness is part of developing emotional intelligence and a very important skill for life. This week we will look at specific random acts of kindness to try which will : 

 

1. Increase feelings of happiness, connection, joy and positive mindsets in the children! (Which is what we all need right now)

 

2. Encourage the children to promote acts of giving and sharing in the joy of others. 

 

We all need a bit of joy right now. Here is how you can help...

Episode 18 - What lockdown has taught us about trauma

Lockdown has been a rough year for us all, we have felt anxious and powerless. We have felt alone and at risk.. many of us have battled with our wellbeing and our mental health as a result. Feeling low, teary or withdrawn, getting angry, frustrated and snappy. We can feel the effects. One year of collective trauma has impacted us all emotionally and mentally. But it is important to remember, we have had one year...just one… what about those children who have had a whole life of trauma? Who feels alone, anxious, powerless and at risk every single day? This is a good opportunity to step into their shoes, drawing comparisons from our own experiences to what it might be like for them. This will help you support them when you go back to school and also for years to come. The impact of trauma is long-lasting and we have all had a taste of it. Let’s not forget, not everyone's trauma will end after lockdown.

In this podcast, we explore comparisons between lockdown and trauma in relation to:

What it feels like to always be disappointed
What it feels like to have no control
How anxiety can grow
Developing a negative mindset

We have had this for 1 year and there are so many lasting effects. We now get a small sense of what it might be like for children experiencing trauma all their lives. No wonder things feel so hard!!!

We need to utilise these experiences to best support our vulnerable pupils and put their frame of reference at the heart of the day-to-day. When we don’t live it, it is hard to appreciate how hard it is – use this as your opportunity to get some insight.


Take our free course to help you prepare your support for them in the months to come:

https://support.tpcteach.co.uk/free_1111


Take our full therapeutic teaching course and learn how to focus on wellbeing and mental health as part of your embedded practices and core aims:

https://www.tpctherapy.co.uk/therapeutic-teaching-course


Book on to our wellbeing curriculum platform and use the resources and lesson plans to support the children:

https://www.tpctherapy.co.uk/wellbeing-curriculm

Episode 17 - Teach children to express themselves and not just for a week

This week is children’s mental health week and the focus is expressing yourself. It is a great time to do lessons and assemblies on this with the children BUT it goes well beyond that. In order to learn something we have to do it over and over again, it takes time and repetition to really take on a new way of doing something. This is why we spend so much time focusing on handwriting and reading. If we really want children to learn to take care of their own mental health by expressing themselves then we have to teach them how to do that in a multitude of ways to help them truly learn how. A lesson on expressing yourself through art or a drama session isn’t enough, in fact, it is more of an introduction.

 

In today’s episode, we are going to discuss 4 key ways that will really teach children to express themselves as a means to support their mental health.
1. Creating a feeling of being comfortable with a creative medium

2. Adding small daily practices into your day with the children in school that promote self-expression

3. Teaching children to use self-expressive tools to regulate themselves when they need it most

4. Modelling self-expression

 

If we really want to make a difference to children’s mental health and give them the tools to express themselves then we must commit to this every single day.

If you love today’s episode please share it with someone to spread the word and help this podcast reach more people

 

Episode 16 - 3 behaviour management strategies that don't work with children

The number of children with some sort of attachment disorder in school is rising. You may well have had many an inset day on attachment over the years but I often find people don't actually know how to support and guide the children in their class who might be struggling.

In this podcast episode, we are going to take a close look at 3 specific things that can trigger a child's attachment style behaviour and result in them shutting down or not learning.

If you want to know more about attachment disorder. Enrol in our online CPD module - attachment disorder in the context of the classroom for £24.

 

https://support.tpcteach.co.uk/education