The Therapeutic Teaching Podcast with Shahana Knight Shahana Knight

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.

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. 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.

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...