Mindful Emotion Coaching for Immersion Schools

Public Health Somerset have funded us to provide additional interventions in both Dunster First School and Milborne Port Primary School.

• core Mindful Emotion Coaching training for six members of staff  (see below)
• consultation with EHCAP about whole school approaches to wellness
• six sessions of either coaching or supervision for staff
• half day INSET in Emotion Intelligence provided by SSE Educational Psychology service
• option to either train one member of staff to run Tuning in to Kids or Tuning in to Teens Parent Groups OR support running a Tuning in to Kids Group for staff in the school
• Tuning in to Kids Manual
• copy of Mind Hug by Emily Arber and The Brain by Ali Hart
• copy of 'five to thrive - why people need people' (Kate Cairns Associates)
• Alex Timson Trust booklets re attachment
• one to one video link coaching for the Head Teacher  
• on line data collection    (for end of year evaluation)

The core principles we are working from are:

- responsive relationships and positive experiences build sturdy brain architecture and promote healthy development, starting before birth and during infancy

- toxic stress disrupts the developing brain and other biological systems with lifelong consequences for learning, behaviour and health (more likely to have heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, addiction)

- the foundations of resilience can be strengthened in young children through reciprocal 'serve and return' interactions that scaffold the life skills of self-regulation, emotion regulation and executive function

As adults around children in schools and communities we have the opportunity to model responsive relationships and scaffold life skills and to identify toxic stress (safeguarding). 

In order to do this effectively we need to first build our own self regulation and executive function skills. In our training we use ( for example) - The Hand Model metaphor, Mindful Exercises, River of Wellbeing, Family of Origin Exercise.

The training draws on resources put together by Tuning in to Kids in Melbourne as well as research by two key American thinkers- Dan Siegel and John Gottman. We have brought together the essence of their work and created a short psycho-social behavioural change intervention which is easy to teach and reproducible. The content for the One Day Introduction can be found within our free e learning modules.