Colourful Classrooms

Currently 1 in 10 children suffer from mental health issues. Nationally around 34% of teachers struggle to deal with the mental health challenges their students present with.

We know that CAMHS is over-subscribed and waiting lists long.  All this means that schools are now expected to be the first port of call for such issues. However, teachers have very little training, or time, to handle mental health issues and the curriculum does not currently address developing good mental health in any structured and meaningful way.

In response, we have designed an 8 week programme to work with groups of young people from school Years 5 to 13 with the aim of building their emotional resilience, self-awareness and resourcefulness.    

The team behind ‘Colourful Classrooms’ consists of Kate and Jeanette.  Kate’s passion for this work evolved from when she discovered that her eldest daughter had dyslexia, dyspraxia and processing issues – there were very few resources to support her daughter at school.

Jeanette, who recently joined Kate, has a background in psychology and was initially a Montessori teacher before working in Training and Development for over 20 years. In South Africa she facilitated workshops supporting children and young adults to build emotional intelligence. Both Jeanette and Kate are also highly experienced facilitators and coaches in their field and well-trained in a variety of different techniques which lend themselves beautifully to helping children build emotional resilience.

The programme was piloted in a local Hertfordshire school in the 2018/19 school year and Rebecca Latta, the Assistant Head who sponsored the programme said the following about it:

The  Colour Rocks team worked with a small group of our year 7 and 8 students who presented as vulnerable in a variety of ways. The notion of different colours representing feelings and emotions was a clever  way to help the young people involved to understand and express how they were feeling.

 

The children involved engaged well with the sessions and spoke enthusiastically about the activities they had taken part in. It was pleasing to see a growth in confidence across the group and this was evidenced by several coming to express and suggest changes and additions to the school environment and activities. Great student leadership! Also several parents  commented on the fact that their child seemed much happier.

 

The pastoral team are pleased to note that all the students in the programme have made a very positive and confident start to the next school year. Many are displaying  more confident engagement in lessons. School attendance has improved for two of the students considerably. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Colourful Classrooms, let’s talk.