Advertise on podcast: The Therapeutic Teaching Podcast with Shahana Knight

Classrooms are outdated, overwhelming and cluttered and often create barriers for children. It is normal to walk in to a classroom full of display boards, laminated posters, washing lines and work on the walls. The room is lit by bright overhead lights and the furniture is made up of plastic chairs and standard classroom tables. These rooms don't have the children's wellbeing and mental health and the heart. In fact they can often create barriers to learning and cause children to want to leave them! We now have more school refusers than ever before. More children struggling with their behaviour and more children struggling to concentrate. The world is changing- but the classroom hasn't! In this episode I... -dive in to why I created the therapeutic classroom approach tell you all about my first classroom make over. -talk about the highs and lows of the therapeutic classroom approach becoming popular -tell you about the time I nearly stopped it all and gave up -tell you about some amazingly exciting news- I am launching a shop!!! -give you my top tips for your own classroom spaces I hope you LOVE this episode. I'd love to hear your comments below. Watch the video version if you can- there's footage of the story as it unfolds. ***More information*** Sign up to find out more about my brand new therapeutic classroom furniture store: HERE Read my therapeutic school approach book: Here Visit the therapeutic classrooms store: HERE Become part of our community and follow us: Tick tock Instagram Facebook Pintrest Youtube

Everybody is talking about trauma informed practice in schools but what does it actually mean? There are a lot of misconceptions about what trauma informed practise is and so today I'm going to explain it all for you! In this episode I will: Reintroduce the podcast after a long break since season one Touch on why education needs to change and how things are not working Explain what trauma informed practice is- giving lots of real life examplesTouch on belief systems and thought processes based on our life experiences Explain why telling children off isn't trauma informedTouch on fight flight freeze and how children's behaviour is often linked to the brain and traumaDiscuss the misconception that trauma informed is a woolly approach with no rules or consequences How to work with brain science - not against it!How to tweak your responses and languages to be more trauma informed Give you lots of examples, tips and ideas to take away More resources and support (some are free!!) Buy my book here Buy my audio book here Read my articles published for Head Teachers Update Here Explore my free help hub - full of resources, videos and help guides Here Watch my classrooms make overs and learn more about my therapeutic classrooms Here Buy furniture for your classroom Here Learn more about my work www.tpctherapy.co.uk- whole school courses, award and support www.therapeuticclassrooms.co.uk- Classroom/ school make over service and furniture store

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

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

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.

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

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/

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

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...

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

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

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

On today’s podcast, we are going to look at 4 ways children communicate stress that you might not know.   As a collective, children’s stress levels are likely to be higher now than they have been in a long time. This episode explores different factors that can cause higher stress levels in children and then we will unpick how this might manifest itself day to day. When you see a child in the classroom fidgeting or messing with their shoelaces it is easy to assume this child is being silly or even that they are choosing to behave that way. However, if we look a bit closer, there is often more to it than that! Let’s look at 4 specific ways that children in your class might be communicating stress and touch on what you can do to help.   Press play now!

"I am not a leader" you might say. But you are!!   It is so easy to forget that we are all leaders in our own unique way. Whether you are an Executive Head, Headteacher or SENCO, whether you are the CEO of a business or employee..a mother or a father.. You are leading. What you say, what you believe and how you communicate influences the people around you. It has meaning.. Imagine you are stood in the sea, what you do creates small ripples around you that extend out and impact others. Those ripples can become waves. What waves are you creating? This year, choose to lead with more intention. What can you do to make a difference? How can you use your unique strengths & interests to inspire those around you? A good leader uses their influence to guide others, create positive change in thoughts, beliefs and practices.. You can do that. In whatever role you are in. Your leading either way. So use your words, stories, passions and unique self to step into a year of inspirational leadership and let's get those waves going! Every one of us has the power to create change..So as Gandhi said - "Be the change you wish to see in the world"

Happy New Year's EVE!!!   Today’s episode is really special because we are going to set our new year's intentions together! This year has been rough but it is important that we look back and take stock. Let’s think about what we have learnt and how we have grown and then lets set some intentions for 2021.   Did you sign up to take part in this challenge in advance? If so, check your emails – you will have received a workbook from us. You can download this, print it off and join in! If you missed the signup link, then you can download the workbook.   https://support.tpcteach.co.uk/new-year-eve-workbook   What you need:   The workbook (OR a pen and paper) A cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate (with cream and sprinkles) – optional but nice! Somewhere quiet so you can think and concentrate   I can’t wait to get into this episode with you today - press play now!