ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how one school introduced mindfulness (‘calm time’), peer support, wellbeing ambassadors and deliberate teaching of social and emotional skills. Teachers established protected time for a weekly social and emotional learning (SEL) skill session, using role-play to show two sides to situations. One lesson was about how our brains work, looking at the different areas of the brain, the ‘brain house’ metaphor and Dan Siegel’s model of the brain ’flipping its lid’ when feelings take over and we can no longer think sensibly. In other lessons children worked on words for feelings, drawing on Plutchik‘s ‘wheel of emotions’. The chapter concludes that teaching mindfulness strategies when not in ‘crisis mode’ allows the strategies to be embedded and become more effective when those crisis points occur. Adults need to name their own emotions and model ways of managing feelings. Finally, it is important to start innovations small-scale, to allow for refinements and to take the time for challenges to be addressed before rolling out change more widely across the school.
