Newsletter June 2010
Contents
Welcome
World cup fever
Supporting SEAL
Evaluations
Growing in emotional maturity
What's in store?
Register With Us
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A sunny welcome everyone
As the endless to-do lists give way to summer break, let's remember to congratulate ourselves on what has worked and learn from what might not have done. From our experience, establishing an emotionally literate school
is an evolving process. Though this may seem like a roller coster at times, the students' successes make it all worth while.
Roll on the summer holidays! Best wishes, Sue Allen |
World cup fever
 Recent news has highlighted a secondary headteacher who
agreed to shorten lessons and bring forward a GCSE exam to enable his 1,200
pupils to get home in time for kickoff in the match between England and
Slovenia. The controversial decision was taken after a request from pupils who
are given a say in the running of their school through its Student Voice.
It
sometimes feels like we are in a constant battle with young people to get them
to listen and in the spirit of 'be the
change you want to see' and
leading by example, this headteacher has listened to his students. |
Supporting SEAL
We
attend SEAL network meetings to talk to SEAL co-ordinators about emotional
literacy and the materials and programmes we have written to develop this in
schools. We are creating a document which takes the SEAL Learning Outcomes with
all the subsections and linking each one to specific units in our KS3 programme It's OK Being Me so that schools can
see exactly how using VisionWorks can help to deliver SEAL. This will be available as a free download on the
website by the end of term, www.vision-works.net
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Evaluations
VisionWorks is currently travelling the length and breadth
of the country to run evaluation sessions with staff and students. We are noticing a real
difference in the success of this work depending on how committed the school
and the staff team as a whole is to developing emotional maturity. 
In schools
where the staff are willing to embrace the programme and commit to teaching it
regularly and with an understanding of its value, the results are encouraging:
improved behaviour, communication, relationships, raised empathy and improved
attendance.
In schools where there has been a less enthusiastic whole school
approach, there is less change. I guess this is obvious: the more we give to
something the more we gain from it, whether it is our job, relationship, sport
or developing an emotionally literate school. Ruthie Alexander-Morgan |
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Growing in emotional maturity
Recently we have been working with a new Academy in
Wolverhampton which is setting up a skills curriculum in September 2010. Year 7
students
will spend one full day a week learning and developing their emotional literacy, their PLTS and their Functional Skills in literacy, numeracy and IT.
Part of this collaboration involves defining a continuum of emotional maturity
to clarify the 'levels', just like any other area of
the curriculum. To view VisionWorks' new emotional maturity continuum click here.
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What's in store?
 With the new coalition government we find, yet again, that education is in a state of flux. Do we or don't
we want to become an academy? What are the implications? How will the LAs fare?
What will happen to the many initiatives started by the last government?
However, you can rest assured that there is no change
here. We continue to believe passionately that teaching emotional intelligence
is a life skill that all students deserve to learn. We're still here and here
we'll stay! Do keep looking at the updates on the website and we always
appreciate feedback.
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Register with VisionWorks
If
you haven't already registered you're missing out on a host of downloadable
resources, assembly ideas and sample modules from our programmes. Register at www.vision-works.net
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