Summary
Happiness is a teacher's best tool. But so many school teachers are now experiencing poor mental health due to the high workload, stress and over-scheduling that has become a part of our modern education system. How can we change this culture within our school system and protect teachers' wellbeing and happiness?
In this podcast episode, we interview former head teacher Simon Bolger (That Wellbeing Guy) who is determined to start a wellbeing revolution and make as many schools as possible great places for children to learn.
Important links:
Visit Simon's website here: That Wellbeing Guy
Join our Inner Circle membership programme: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/inner_circle.php
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Show notes / transcription
Simon Bolger 0:00
So if you are that individual teacher, what I think is a really good thing is if you're feeling that you're being I call it run over. And we've all had days where we feel like we're being run over. And actually if somebody says to you, hey, you're right, it's absolutely fine to say you know what, I'm really not today. And if you swap that around as well, if you are a member of staff and you spot someone else and you think you know what they look like they're being run over be that person that says, Hey, are you alright? Is there anything I can do to help?
Simon Currigan 0:23
Welcome everybody. My name is Simon Currigan. And welcome to another episode of school behaviour secrets. The show that proves the bar for producing an educational podcast is lower than it's ever been. And I'm proud to think that we did our little bit in our own way to lower that bar even further. I'm joined today by my number one co host, Emma Shackleton. Hi, Emma.
Emma Shackleton 1:22
Hi, Simon.
Simon Currigan 1:24
I was just wondering,
Emma Shackleton 1:25
is this a question you've got for me by any chance?
Simon Currigan 1:28
It's like you read my mind go on, then I'd like to ask you apart from answering my questions. What part of daily life causes you the most stress?
Emma Shackleton 1:37
An easy question at last. For me, I think what causes me stress is trying to fit everything in. Everyone seems so busy these days. And I'm not very good at relaxing as I have got a tendency to feel like I need to always be on or doing something. Work is wonderfully busy, and so is home and social life. So it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming to try and do it all. What about you, Simon? What do you find stressful?
Simon Currigan 2:04
Well, the stuff that used to bother me so much when I was younger, but being late for things like you know, our role involves going around Birmingham in the Midlands and driving around lots of schools, and being unexpectedly late and not being able to do anything about it. I don't get angry about it. But I do find it much more stressful than I used to.
Emma Shackleton 2:20
It's frustrating when you're just stuck and you can't do anything. I know
Simon Currigan 2:24
I need to be somewhere please move and then you can't trapped in the three columns of traffic that are moving absolutely no go
Emma Shackleton 2:30
on then how is this question related to today's podcast?
Simon Currigan 2:33
Well, today we've got my interview with Simon Bolger, who used to be a head teacher, and then left to start the organisation that well being guy and work with schools and teachers to tackle the chronic problem of stress and burnout in the workplace. So
Emma Shackleton 2:48
if you're listening to this, and you're feeling overwhelmed by the pressure and stress of work right now, today's show is going to be perfect for you.
Simon Currigan 2:57
Exactly. Because if you're stressed out or in a bad place emotionally, you're not going to be able to support the kids in your class, either with their emotions or teaching or learning or, well, anything else. In fact,
Emma Shackleton 3:10
this sounds like a really important and timely interview. But before we press play, I've got a quick favour to ask when the show is over. If you know of two or three colleagues that you think would find this information useful, please open your podcast app and hit the share button. And then your podcast app will help you send direct links to this episode so that other people can get the help that they need to. And now here's Simon's episode with Simon Bolger, also known as that well being guy.
Simon Currigan 3:41
I'm excited to welcome Simon Bolger to the podcast today. Simon's a former Primary School head teacher who's on a mission to start a wellbeing revolution in our schools. He wants Communities in Schools to be well led, well loved, well taught and well placed for future challenges. He left his role as head teacher in 2019, to start the organisation of that well being guy. And he's determined to support as many schools as possible to become great places for children to learn, and for adults to work. And he now operates as a teacher, speaker, consultant, coach and writer Simon, welcome to the show.
Simon Bolger 4:18
Hello, Simon. Nice to see you this morning. Oh, it's
Simon Currigan 4:20
great to have you on the show today. And today we're going to focus more on teacher well being. So I want to start by asking there's obviously been a lot of change in schools recently with a pandemic, but education has been taking its toll in the long term when it comes to teachers mental health and their well being. So taking that long term view, what do you think are been the big causes of that?
Simon Bolger 4:42
Well, let's start with what the teachers are actually telling us. Every year the education support partnership, they conduct a survey that's called a teacher WellBeing Index survey, and in 2021, from around three and a half 1000 staff members that survey found that 77% of school staff have experienced symptoms of poor mental health due to their work. We've got 70 2% who are saying that they are stressed and that rises to 84% for senior leaders 46% go into work even when unwell and that's called presenteeism and 42% think their school culture has a negative impact on their well being. And then we've got 54% of staff who have considered leaving the profession. So this tells us that workload, presenteeism and school culture are some of the biggest culprits for the decline in the mental health and well being of school staff added on to this, we've got the extreme external accountability, which is fueling the workload crisis, we've reduced budgets, and then the retention of staff as well. And it's hard and sometimes in education only say it feels like you're trying to hit a bullet with a smaller boy that was riding a horse blindfolded.
Simon Currigan 5:40
So why do we persist with this approach? If we know it's sick? And when you go to schools and you teach, you speak to senior leaders, and you speak to teachers, they know it's not healthy? Why do we keep doing it, I think you
Simon Bolger 5:51
also, you fall into this trap, where this is what we've always done. So this is what we're going to keep doing. And I find that in some schools I go into, and it might be something like a pupil progress meeting and the data is inputted by the staff, then the data is then given back to the staff while senior leaders, then the staff are asked to then handwrite their data out again. So your three lots of data input is happening there. And I'll just say, why are you doing it like that? And I'll always just hear that, well, that's how we've always done it. So why would we change it? What if you did change? What if you just change this a little bit? Do you think your staff could be any happier? Or do you think we could be more effective in what we're doing? And sometimes you say that, and you can see the look on people's faces when they realise actually, yeah, maybe we could. And that's just one small aspect of school life. Imagine if we apply that to so many different styles and dimensions of school, like the difference that we can actually make?
Simon Currigan 6:34
Could you talk a little bit about when you speak to teachers bringing you up to date with a pandemic, what kind of changes and additional stresses do they talk about what kind of specific things that are making life even more difficult for teachers well being at the moment, I think,
Simon Bolger 6:48
from my experience of working with lots of teachers around the country, the biggest culprits are that excessive workload accountability and toxic cultures as well. So workload expectations are driven by school leaders and the behaviour of our leaders sets the tone for the culture of the school. And if we create a culture where we expect staff to stay late, work lots at home and engage in excessive paperwork and meetings and data input, then it will eventually take its toll on our teaching community. And we can talk about taking personal responsibility for our own well being, which certainly has its place, we can read all the self help books and personal development books in the world, but without actually engaging our school leaders and ensuring that they're on board with the initiative will never really secure the cultural change that we need to ensure staff members are unable to flourish in their roles every day. And unfortunately, I sometimes hear about schools who believe well being is providing yoga and yoga for staff, and then expecting nobody to feel stressed or show any signs of feeling stressed. And if they do, then, you know, they're either singled out or criticised for it for me, we really need to make sure that our school leaders are the ones who get behind the initiative and believe that well being essential for securing high performance of staff, and enabling those staff members have everything they need to provide that world class experience for children. And if staff are suffering from burnout, stress and overload, then that's never going to happen as
Simon Currigan 7:59
I think we talk a good game in schools about children's mental well being and mental health nowadays. But actually, like you say, when it comes to our staff, it's almost we have a different set of expectations. And we will paper over the cracks with small initiatives. And we're not looking at that culture. So how do we start that culture change? If you're a sort of middle leader in school right now, and you're listening to this and you're looking at your staffing score? How do you start the ball rolling,
Simon Bolger 8:22
you have to start small, I think that's the key because often I work with like you say, middle leaders, like he says, leaders, faith leaders, and sometimes well being those are wellbeing champions that they're called in some schools. And they say to me, Well, what am I supposed to do in my position to be able to influence the culture? Well, that's just it, you have to just influence it in small ways. And I kind of liken it to this, that the ocean is made of drops, and we need to focus on those first, the ripples, and the waves will come later. So if you're a middle leader, you have to do everything that you can to empower your team, you have to do everything that you can to influence the people that are around you. And the way that you do that is if you want the spark and other people, you have to take care of the spark in yourself. So if you are getting out of bed every morning, you know determined to be you know, the best middle leader in the world, we've got to have moonshot goals, if you get out of bed, that ambition in the morning, and making that choice, and that's going to leak out of you and into the people around you and into your team. And what we want to do is start that wave across your school. And the idea is that other people will pick up on that and hopefully we can start to influence our more senior leaders to be able to be on board with that cultural shift and that cultural change.
Simon Currigan 9:23
Okay, then. So let's move this to individual teachers. Now. Why did they get stuck in terms of poor mental health, he started talking about taking personal responsibility for our own mental well being what stops them moving towards being less stressed and being more happy in the workplace?
Simon Bolger 9:39
Well, I said earlier that 42% in their schools, culture has a negative impact on their well being. The other key thing that comes out of that is that half of all members of staff in school are aware of their school has a mental health and wellbeing policy. So it also comes back to actually asking for help being that person to go out and say Look, I'm sorry, I'm struggling. This is hard. I need a bit more time because They're worried about the consequences that they'll face because of that. And I think having been a teacher for a number of years, you get into that I call it guilty teacher syndrome. Sometimes it's actually if you're unwell, sometimes it's actually easy to just go in and just try and get through the day and teach the lesson and have that they often try and sort it out. And because we get stuck into that, we don't know how to speak up, and we're not empowered enough to speak up. I think that's a generational thing that has stuck within schools for generations, that, you know, it doesn't matter who you are, and where you are on your career, it's kind of passed down that actually, you're a teacher, and this is your job, and you need to get on with it. But what we need to do is we need to challenge that narrative. And we need to try and change that narrative as best as we can. So if you are that individual teacher, what I think is a really good thing is if you're feeling that you're being I call it run over, and we've all had days where we feel like we're being run over. And actually if somebody says to you, hey, you're right, it's absolutely fine to say you know what, I'm really not today. And if you swap that around as well, if you are a member of staff, and you spot someone else, and you think you know what they look like they're being run over be that person that says, Hey, are you alright? Is there anything I can do to help? Sometimes you might not be that right person, sometimes you might need to escalate it and say, Look, you know what I've seen Simon, he looks like he's really struggling, I think someone could just really do having a word of him, just escalate it and pass that on and look out for each other. Because I kind of think that because of the excessive accountability that we're feeling, sometimes that's lost in some of our schools. And that's one of the things that we really, really need to change.
Simon Currigan 11:20
You work with scores on implementing techniques from positive psychology? What is positive psychology? And how does it differ from normal psychology? And how can adults in school use it?
Simon Bolger 11:29
So positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology that is in the late 1990s. And this guy called Professor Martin Seligman, he chose to think for a term when he was the president of the American Psychological Association. So he and another psychologist called the highly six sent me highly. He's the psychologist who wrote the book flow, which is all about flow theory of flow states. They describe positive psychology as the scientific study of what makes life most worth living. And they focus on both individual and social well being as well. Now, Seligman have done a lot of work on the science of flourishing. Now, flourishing is essentially you being at your best. We've all had days when we've been at our best when we get out of bed in the morning and show that determination and zip to be at our best. And I say zip stands for so Zed, IPI. So that stands for a zeal, inspiration and positivity. So we get out of bed, and we want to grab that in the morning. But the key is to try to learn to have more days like that, and fewer days where we feel a bit more or a bit beige. So positive psychology has some different dimensions. And they can include self discovery, where we identify what makes us tick. And we can use that to our advantage, where we develop our potential. I liken this to a process called ignition, where we supercharge our strengths, and we enable ourselves to use those more often, and understanding our purpose and having a sense of feeling part of something bigger than ourselves. Now I call these belonging cues where as a head teacher, I worked to communicate to staff that I see here trust in need them to achieve our shared goals. And what that really is that sets the tone for the culture as well as Seligman talks about internal voluntary change to achieve lasting levels of happiness. I phrased this simply as predisposition over position, if we can challenge our predispositions there, maybe we can more positively influence our experience of life achieving a state of flow where we feel that intense involvement in an activity and time literally flies by we, as teachers can create this for ourselves. And for the children we teach as well, is most simple. I ask what sort of person do you want to be? Why do you want to be that person? And how will you prove to yourself on a daily basis that you are that sort of person?
Simon Currigan 13:24
So what sort of actions can we take? Or what kind of habits can we develop in our practice? To help us use those principles to help us feel better on a day by day basis? What are the practical things that we do in the classroom or in school to sort of use those techniques
Simon Bolger 13:38
that first of all, we need to be kinder to ourselves. So when I lead training sessions, I always say put your hand up if you talk to yourself, and then a few people do and I say, if you didn't put your hand up, you're a liar. And then those people in their head they say, No, I'm not. And they prove my point for me. Sure, you are your own personal motivator, our biggest critic and own worst enemy, and we're focus goes energy flows. So we might as well focus on speaking thinking about ourselves, and a more positive manner to be present in an age of distraction as well. It is challenging, but it's definitely worth it. Like everything around us the news, Netflix, social media, your phone, they're all trying to attract your attention and trying to steal your focus. And sometimes we forget that we actually have a choice about where we focus our attention, to try to be present in your relationships with your family, your friends, your colleagues, your own children and the children we teach is absolutely crucial. We need to look after ourselves physically, as well as emotional or movement is good movement and the power of exercising no matter how little is actually astonishing. I think it's true actually says you'll never regret a workout. I think we can all agree that that's true. Circles of control and influence are some really important. I'm going to borrow a little equation from the author Paul McGee, who you should definitely get on this podcast. By the way, Paul says E plus r equals O. So it's the event plus my response, which gives me the outcome is not necessarily the event that gives the outcome. So that's a really nice, nice, fun thing for us to think about.
Simon Currigan 14:53
Can I dig in a little bit more actually. So he said about the stories we tell ourselves about the things that have happened and being more intentional about how we react to an event. So maybe the head teacher comes in and done some assessment on our desks and says, you know, I need those in two days. Is it what we say about that? And how we respond to it that affects how we then feel?
Simon Bolger 15:11
Absolutely. Let me give you an example. I was I was a head teacher at the time, it was one of my middle leaders who won't mind me telling you this either. The children came in one minute late from the end of lunchtime, and that teacher was there. Why are you wanting like Where have you been for woman they were meant to be do pick, cancel, PA, we don't have time to get changed, right? Handwriting books all often the whole afternoon is ruined. And it was like a minute past one, I went and just sort of said, I don't think the whole afternoon is actually ruined. And what happened is that you've gone from zero to 100. And that's what tends to happen. Now I call this the heart process. There's something for each letter of the word heart. So we've got what happens, the emotion that I experience, the action that I take the result I get, and then what happens time and time again. So let's just rewind what happened. The children came in late the emotional response was I'm cross angry, annoyed, frustrated, the action that I take right or cancel everything, we're gonna sit, do handwriting hop, nobody speak to me, nope, nobody Look at me, this is this all ruins that sort of thing, then the result that you get all the kids are going to be on edge, midday supervisors who brought the kids in, they're going to think it will walk, you know, tiptoe around that person, there are members of support staff going to be there, and then even for yourself how you're feeling. And then the time and time again, how are you feeling in that moment? You know, if you have three moments like that a week over the course of the whole school year, you quit having trouble revenue. So what I say is we need to break the heart. So we do that by spelling the word differently. So we get what happens if kids come in late? Well, that's fine. But what we need to do is we need to intercept that emotion with thinking and sometimes we kind of forget, don't we that we are responsible for our thoughts. We're not necessarily responsible for our emotions. And it comes back to what you said time it's the stories that we tell ourselves. So if I intercept that moment and ask myself, Okay, I'm going to insert this we're thinking, what actually happened in that moment, that meant the kids came in a minute late and asked myself, this is another thing that this author Paul McGee says, he says, is my response appropriate? Is my response proportionate, but actually remember stuff, they could just say to themselves, I wonder if everything was okay at lunchtime, go to that midday supervisor. Let the kids come in late with everything. All right. Was there were a behaviour issue? Was there a safeguarding issue? Was there an accident? Is there anything I can do to help you but work isn't over in a minute late, actually, we'll just get ready superfast up and then we had to get ourselves outside. So now that I changed the way that I've thought about the moment, that story that I told myself, I've reframed it, and rephrased it, I've got completely different emotion. Now because of that, I can take a completely different action. Because of that I get a different result. If I do that time and time again, I know, you know, that's not necessarily a high pressure situation. But I know in situations like that, that I can respond effectively, in that type of moment.
Simon Currigan 17:37
What sort of habits should we avoid doing? We've started to touch on this, we need to be more intentional about how we're responding to events, what other sort of things should we be doing? Or stop doing? That's the key part of the question, really.
Simon Bolger 17:47
So I actually do this as part of my training, I say, can you come up with 10 habits that we should avoid doing? And this is what I found over the course of the last sort of two and a bit years. These are the top 10 answers that I hear. So number one, stay inside all day to move as little as possible. Three, spend more than you earn four, take yourself in life too seriously. Five, look for reasons why things won't work. Six, always find someone else to blame. Seven always consume and never contribute eight to be jealous of the lucky and successful. Nine, never smile at someone first, and 10 be unreliable. And then when we do this with children as well, what we do is exactly the same thing. They come up with that. And then we say right, what can we do, that's the opposite of that, that's going to help us to try and be the best that we can on a daily basis. So the benefits
Simon Currigan 18:32
of improving well being for individual teachers then are fairly obvious, you're going to feel better, you're probably going to have a bit more confidence, you're going to be less stressed. But again, bringing this back to the middle leader who might be listening to this or the senior leader, one of the whole school benefits of investing in and implementing this kind of approach at the whole school strategic level.
Simon Bolger 18:50
Wellbeing isn't just about being nice to staff members. It's not about how to do a day or here's a lovely sort of wicker basket, put in the staff room filled with delicious exotic guava and dragon fruit. And off we go to the staff toilet, there's a lovely selection of delightful body shops. So there's none of those sorts of things. It's about creating a cultural chemistry that transforms tired burnt out individuals into cohesive, motivated and happy teams that can accomplish amazing things together at its most basic level. If school staff are not happy, engaged and motivated, then what is that actually going to do for the children? And what
Simon Currigan 19:23
is the impact of that going to be then once you transform this group of people who are tired burnt out into a more motivated coherent group of people? What's the benefit going to be for like the kids? What sort of changes are we going to see in school?
Simon Bolger 19:35
So this is great thing in terms of flourishing when you are at your best. You're positive habits and your positive attitude, it can leak out of you and into the people around you. So if you imagine that you come in in the morning and you're there and the kids coming in first thing for registration, you've got your back to the desk, you're tutting, you're trying to get the Sims register to load, you're kicking the tables, it won't load up and you're thinking I'm having the worst day ever already. The kids are gonna pick up on that and I actually believe that if you spent some time I'm in a school and wandered around, you can actually match up the children to the staff members because the children over time they catch that attitude of those members of staff, especially if you're there on the door, building that rapport with their children. Morning. How are you nice? See, you're like you're here are those new shoes? Do you see the football the weekend I fantastic, wasn't it? If you're having those types of conversations actually building rapport, the kids catch up on that quite quickly, at its most basic as well, they'll be picking up that message of that teacher really cares about me, that teacher really knows about me, that teacher will really look after me that teachers in a great mood, and they can catch that themselves as well. And I think if you're a head teacher, and you walk into a room where that sort of thing is taking place, this amazing thing called Pro lawyer is gonna kick in and pro lawyer is the opposite of paranoia. And it's the thing that people say nice things about you behind your back, talking kick in there. As you as a head teacher, why don't you know what you should go into Sharon's classroom, you should see the way she greets the kids the way she speaks to the kids, the privacy, the energy levels in there, which is fantastic. If you want to see some really enthusiastic teacher, Sharon's your person to go in and say, and actually slowly that can start to build a culture as well as that secondhand praise. That's another really powerful thing. So if you're a teacher, or you're a middle leader, that's the place to start. You've got to take care of that spark in yourself, first of all, and what that does that can ignite it in the people around you.
Simon Currigan 21:11
If you're a teacher, or a school leader, listening to this podcast, what's the first step you can take today? To start improving? Well, being in school,
Simon Bolger 21:18
the first step, start with the end in mind, right? Ask yourself, what type of school do we want to be? If I was to walk around your school, when it is at its best? What would I see? hear and feel? I tried to find out in three words, if you can, if I were to ask the staff what I'd see, hear and feel what would they say get them all together, and try and come up with just those three words. And actually, because you put a parameter and a restriction on the way that you're going to define it, it actually makes people think more closely and more deeply about how they would actually define what it's like to be in their school. And then if you're a teacher, what would you like your staff members to be able to say about your school? Well, that doesn't give some staff ownership or being able to set the culture and direction of the school. When you do that, you're empowering them, you're starting motivation, and you're raising engagement, and they're all the foundations for those higher levels of wellbeing, it's going to get you onto that trajectory of a high level of well being, then ask yourself, why do we even want to be that type of school? What type of impact we want to have? Can we put it into one clear sentence, and it might be at this school? We are? We do this by? And then you can finish that with? So that and you're looking at that? What that how and that why now, this is the question to ask yourself, What will we do every day as a school to prove we are that type of school? And that can link back into the types of habits and behaviours that we've talked about, that you can put into place on a daily basis?
Simon Currigan 22:34
How can our listeners find out more about your resources, you've clearly got a structure and a programme for helping schools make this happen? how can listeners find out more about you and the kind of services that you provide,
Simon Bolger 22:44
or offer live face to face training or some online training options as well, and I have some premium resources that are available as well. So you can visit my website at WWW dot that wellbeing guide.org You can email me as well Simon at that wellbeing guide, or let me know that you know, you loved this podcast or you hate your deal, you're indifferent to it, you can let me know how you thought it went. You can find me on Facebook as well. I'm on all the other social media channels. But Facebook is my preferred channel because I often find the other channels to be a little bit too noisy. If you follow me on Facebook, if you just type in that wellbeing guy and look for the purple logo and the yellow stones, you'll be able to find me
Simon Currigan 23:15
and we ask this of all our guests who is the key figure this influenced you? Or what's the key book that you've read? That's had the biggest impact on your approach to working with kids.
Simon Bolger 23:24
Now surprisingly, it's not actually a book about happiness or well being but bounce and blackbox thinking by Matthew Syed have had a huge impact on me over the years I met Matthew, it was about a month before I do to become a head teacher and I wanted all these say all these things to me and actually just sort of stood there and my mouth wide open. So I was just so delighted to meet him. Now bounce in particular taught me three key ideas that I've carried through my career for years. And those ideas are that talent is a result of hours of purposeful practice and not innate talent. The expert knowledge comes from experience. There's an equation that I've formulated that I've used in schools for a long time. And it says knowledge times effort equals skill and skill times effort equals achievement. So effort is needed twice over. And if you want to be world class at anything or good at anything, you have to embrace failure. On a personal level, you know, that influenced me I wanted to put the test the principles within balance and how my repeated behaviours could shift my mindset. So I bought myself a Rubik's Cube I'm sure we're all familiar with what I said about learning to solve it based on a few sides definition of purposeful practice. Now he says purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach, and not quite making it. It's about grappling with tasks beyond those current limitations and falling short again and again and then trying to fix it. Well, I stuck with it. I failed lots of times I made lots of mistakes, but I tried to continually fix where I was going wrong. And in time after all those setbacks as hours of research, reading practice and getting into a flow state, I learned how to solve the cube. So now my personal best for solving the Rubik's Cube is 52 seconds. So I think more than anything what this teaches us is that the school and staff wellbeing is a lot like the cube is a tricky and challenging question. But ultimately, it's totally worth it.
Simon Currigan 25:02
Simon, I think that's a brilliant note on which to end the podcast interview. Thank you very much for being on the show. And I'm sure our listeners will find what you've said today. So useful and so practical. And you've given us so many things we can take away and start using straightaway. Thank
Simon Bolger 25:14
you very much. Thank you. So I'm, it's been a pleasure and privilege to speak with you today. Keep up the good work. And I wish you all the best. Thank you.
Emma Shackleton 25:20
You know, in that interview, Simon makes so many good points about the importance of taking care of our mental well being and what we can do in schools to move away from a culture of burnout and stress, there's definitely a thing or two I need to take on board from that interview, I'll add it to my to do list just kidding.
Simon Currigan 25:40
I'll drop direct links to Simon's website and Facebook page in the show description.
Emma Shackleton 25:44
And if you're feeling stressed with behaviour in your class, we've got a range of resources to help inside our inner circle. We've got 35 video training and resources on subjects like how to use emotion scaling, which is all about helping kids take action when they are experiencing strong emotions like anger or anxiety. We've also got how to coach pupils through strong emotions, which shares a simple framework for teaching kids the skills to manage big emotions for themselves, and not overreact to situations. And we've also got how to de escalate, which is our deep dive into successfully managing pupils when they've lost control of their emotions and actions.
Simon Currigan 26:31
We've even got a training on using mindful moments to help kids and potentially adults surf strong emotions, and release stress. And right now you can get access to all of that training all those 35 videos and resources. With that inner circle membership, you can get your first seven days for just one pound. And you can cancel your subscription at any time.
Emma Shackleton 26:51
So if you'd like to take advantage of that offer, visit beaconschoolsupport.co.uk. UK and click on the big inner circle picture near to the top of the page. We'll also drop a direct link in the show notes.
Simon Currigan 27:04
Finally, if you've liked what you've heard today, make sure you don't miss next week's episode. Open up your podcast app now and hit that subscribe button or follow as it's now called in Apple podcasts. And then your podcast app will make sure every future episode is downloaded and waiting for you. So you never miss a thing. And to celebrate, why not encourage young relative to start a collection of laminated rocks, kick off their collection by presenting them with some fragments of shale oil or coal or if you really want to ignite their passion want to go the extra mile and give them some example of chemical cherts that really are gorgeous chemical church. You know it those cheeky little Amadeus just
Emma Shackleton 27:44
Okay, okay, I'm stopping it there. Thanks for listening to this week's podcast. I hope you have a brilliant, less stressed week. And we look forward to seeing you in the next episode for school behaviour sequence. Bye bye
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