Heads Up Kids were delighted to present at the recent ‘We Collaborate’ teacher conference at RMS for Girls. The conference was designed to bring together school leaders and educators to reflect, debate, share learning and connect with other professionals attending from schools across the sector and the country.
As well as presenting ourselves, we were fortunate enough to be able to participate in some of the other workshops on offer. One of the things that struck me was how so many of the topics linked back to the idea of positive relationships. How do we ensure that disadvantaged pupils are utilising targeted interventions? How do we support children who are emotionally school avoidant back into learning? How do we engage and enthuse our students? For us at Heads Up Kids it’s all about developing positive relationships in the classroom. Supporting children to develop positive relationships with staff and other pupils will allow them to engage more fully in activities and access learning.
The Heads Up Kids session focused on strengthening relationships for positive mental health. Thinking about the things necessary to build secure relationships with your pupils isn’t just down to the teacher; the children need to learn some of these skills themselves. We need to be taught the basics of how to connect with each other, how to build healthy friendships and how to work together. In doing this we are laying a solid foundation for children’s emotional wellbeing.
So how do we support positive mental health? Here at Heads Up Kids, we believe that wellbeing cannot be addressed by simply having one-off PSHE lessons or targeting the issues in isolation. It needs to include a whole-school approach of pupils, staff and families all working in partnership.
We can support schools by providing a comprehensive wellbeing curriculum, which includes training for teachers, information videos for parents, as well as complete lesson plans and resources.
If you would like to find out more, check out our downloadable resources here, or contact us to talk about how we can support wellbeing and give children skills and tools for positive mental health.
