The Therapeutic teaching approach acknowledges that there is always a feeling behind every difficult behaviour a child displays, and that our role as adults is to help guide and teach children to understand this, rather than telling them off and punishing them for struggling. The course upskills everyone in school to support the child in understanding their own mental health and wellbeing. We take the focus away from trying to stop negative behaviour and on to what is going on behind that behaviour.
Therapeutic Teaching Course
Our signature course helps you help the children! Giving them the skills to take control back and not let their feelings hijack them!
Our CPD Certified Therapeutic Teaching course is a six-part, whole school course designed to help you embed an approach to behaviour that is trauma informed, attachment aware and based on neuroscience. Making a real tangible difference to every child’s mental health and life skills.
Our course offers a step-by-step approach to supporting children’s behaviour which is underpinned by science but delivered in a relatable, realistic way. It is perfect for embedding a whole school culture and approach to support children’s mental health, wellbeing, and behaviour and is delivered directly to everyone working at the school.
The Course Will Focus On:
“After only three weeks I could give you hundreds of examples of the amazing, wonderful effect this is having on our children”
Head Teacher
Course Modules
The training is made of six key modules that form the pillars of our Therapeutic teaching approach and helps you understand how trauma, stress and adversity impacts children in school and how you can adapt your approaches, policies, environment, responses and reactions to behaviour, to ensure everyone is working from a trauma-informed, attachment aware framework.
With a focus on supporting every child to become self-aware and emotionally intelligent and giving them the strategies to understand their own emotions and behaviour and giving them the skills to self-regulate and manage this for themselves. This course helps you help the children! Giving them the skills to take control back and not let their feelings hijack them! We specialise in closing the gap between theory and practice and helping you have the tools, strategies, and knowledge you need to begin making changes straight away.
Childhood Trauma and the Brain
Learn about childhood trauma and how it impacts a developing brain. Find out what happens when children are stressed or overwhelmed. Why they have meltdowns and struggle to manage their behaviour, and the impact on internal processing. This module guides you through what is going on behind the behaviour and is underpinned by neuroscience and child development but is delivered in an easy to digest, practical and relatable way. This module lays the foundations for the approach and is full of ah-ha moments.
Insecure attachment in the context of the home
Yes, you may have done attachment before, but not like this. This module builds on from module one and explores how insecure attachment impacts children’s behaviour, thoughts, feelings and perceptions and how their early experiences continue to inform their relationships and reactions to difficult situations. This session closes the gap between theory and practice with relatable real-life scenarios and examples throughout. With a keen focus on the school environment and strategies we use to ‘manage’ behaviour that do not work for children with insecure attachment, and what you can do instead.
Therapeutic Response Skills
This module pulls everything that has been learnt to this point together and explores what you can do to adapt your responses and strategies to become more therapeutic and trauma informed. This session unpicks common responses we have as teachers that don’t often work with children who are struggling, and what we can do instead. The focus of this session is to learn to see behind the behaviour and see the feelings, thoughts and perceptions instead. We shift from focusing on behaviour and wanting to stop it, to focusing on the feeling behind it and helping a child through it. We pull from session one and look at how we can use neuroscience to help children develop their own self-awareness and emotional intelligence to begin to be able to identify their feelings and how those feelings are impacting their behaviour so they can manage it.
Connection Vs Disconnection with regard to behaviour
This session pulls the whole approach together and offers a step-by-step guide to responding to children who are struggling with their emotions, feelings and experiences which is reflected in their behaviour. We explore how to set boundaries in place of punishment and use consequences that are therapeutic, with a focus on teaching life skills through boundaries, rather than reinforcing rejection through punishment. This session questions the normal ‘go to’ strategies schools use and considers trauma informed and attachment aware approaches in their place. With lots of examples of scenarios to help embed the approach to help you figure out how to respond to difficult behaviour. This final session in the course series, will leave you with a road map you can take away and begin to implement. Complete with a template connection and self-regulation policy for schools to replace the behaviour management policy.
Creating an Emotionally Intelligent Class
Learn about emotional intelligence and how focusing on developing EI in your children can predict better outcomes and life skills than academic achievements. This module links to the government guidelines on health, relationships and sex education and will inspire you to put wellbeing at the heart of your classroom. Find out how you can increase emotional intelligence in the children you work with and help them become more self-aware and empathetic by following the specific incentives, strategies, resources, and support in this module.
Creating a Therapeutic Environment
Learn how to create a therapeutic environment throughout your school which puts well-being and mental health at its core. Find out how changing your classrooms, hallways and outdoor areas can increase feelings of safety and promote self-belief which in turn positively impact learning. Ensuring your school is meeting the needs of each child through its design. This session is the module that inspired our therapeutic classrooms approach but focuses on the small, low cost things you can to do make a difference straight away.
“We went on to the therapeutic programme – this was mind-blowing, a real game changer for us!”
Headteacher
About the Course Creator
The course is written and delivered by Shahana Knight, an award-winning childhood trauma specialist who has a background in psychology, therapy and education and who has experienced her own childhood trauma. Shahana is the author of ‘The Therapeutic School Approach’ and writer for Head Teachers Update Magazine. Shahana and her work have appeared on BBC teach and BBC Newsround. Her focus is always on the practical things you can actually do to make a difference to the young people you support, and the outcomes of her courses directly impact every child.
This is a pre-recorded online series of modules that come with support documents – this is not in webinar form but is more like a ‘netflix’ experience complete with videos/ visuals to bring it all together throughout.
“I just wanted to say thank you so much! This has been the best training I have ever done and I am a SENCO, so I have done lot’s of training, some really good training, but this has been the most impactful!”
SENCO
How the Course is Delivered
The course is accessed through our online training platform, this allows you to be in control of how you roll out the training in your organisation. We know that sometimes ‘online training’ comes with negative connotations and experiences, but our training has glowing reviews and we have found greater retention of information through the online modules than our face to face courses.
Benefits of Our Online Learning Platform
Purchase Options
Lifetime Access
We know how much time and energy goes in to embedding an approach across a service and we want to make sure you can continue to uphold the standards and culture you create after your initial year of training with us. Following your first year, you will have life time access to the platform and resources for a small fee of £50 a year. This means you can enrol new members of staff to ensure the ethos and practice is not lost.
What’s included
check_circleCPD Certified Online Course Modules
check_circleSupporting Resources
check_circleAssessments and Certificates
Additional Live Workshops Options
We know how valuable it is school staff to be able to come together to discuss practice. It brings the course modules to life and helps them further apply theory to the day to day interactions with the children. Our workshops encourage teachers to reflect on the course modules and to have an opportunity to talk about their own experiences with children in school.
How it works
check_circleSessions are engaging, interesting, and inspiring and will leave teachers with insight, strategies, and a sense of empowerment.
check_circleSessions are booked in a block of four and delivered after you have completed module 4.
Face to face workshops are subject to availability and location. Workshop length can be discussed on an individual need basis
Free Resources
Our resource hub is available to you no matter what your role, whether you are a school, professional, carer, parent or even a young person looking for answers.
