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Newsletter June 2015
Welcome
NEW! Online webinars
The seven Cs
How are babies made?
FREE new download - Staying healthy
Register with VisionWorks
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 Welcome
Welcome to this sunny last term of the year. My tutor groups used to love this:
A smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen,
for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away.
Some people are too tired to give you a smile.
Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile
so much as he who has no more to give.
Author Unknown
It's no accident that the smile emoticon is a sunny face! the VisionWorks team |
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NEW! Online webinars
 We are excited to announce our new series of online webinars on Boosting Positive Mental Health in Schools: An effective framework for implementing emotional wellbeing.
We offer 5 in total this year, starting June 23. These 60-minute online sessions with Sue Allen and Janet Grant, teachers and creators of our materials, cover the essential elements of this topic. We will explore strategies, principles and ideas to improve everyone's classroom experience. Tues 23 June - Promoting positive mental health - the key elements Weds 8 July - Leadership and Communication - shall we get engaged?
Mon 14 Sept - Managing behaviour - could there be a better way? Tues 13 Oct - Neuroscience - how are recent findings relevant in the classroom? Weds 18 Nov - Stress busting - is teaching making you ill? REGISTER here to join us from the comfort of your own home and explore these vital issues of emotional wellbeing. |
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The seven Cs
 If this title means anything to you, you will already be aware of Educating Ruby, the book by education professors Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas. Their vision is that children will emerge from school competent in "the seven C"s: confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication creativity, commitment and craftsmanship. They reinforce Daniel Goleman's findings in 'Emotional Intelligence'. In the TES Professor Claxton is quoted as saying, "Far more than grades, it's character traits that determine how well you do in life...Pedagogy trumps curriculum".
Slowly, slowly we are moving from an education system designed to train the workforce in the 1800s and moving towards the needs of people in the 21st century.
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How are babies made?
 There are often articles in the Western press about the excellence of Chinese education and the major achievements of Chinese students which are held up as a model for our children. However in China there are particular areas which are not mentioned and sex education is one of them.
My husband is teaching in China this week and he was told this: "A mother in Wuhan decided to give her 11-year-old son a sex education lesson for his birthday. Being a nurse, she researched material online and put together a power point presentation about the journey of sperm. The boy's classmates were so impressed by his new found knowledge that his mother was invited to the school to deliver one of the first sex education classes in China to 300 fifth and sixth graders. It was a hit and cleared up many misunderstandings; some children had been told that they were born in the same manner as the Monkey King who had come from a rock. Another favourite was that the children were freebies given away by telephone operators."
Whoever and wherever we are there is always more to learn! Sue Allen
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Staying healthy - NEW download
This addition to the FREE download library offers students an opportunity to think about ways of staying healthy in mind, body and emotions. While it is a broad overview, it enables kids to realise that we don't have to wait for something to go wrong before we think about looking after ourselves.
Staying healthy is a starting point for learning to take care of our health proactively. It's also a rare opportunity to talk about mental health openly, instead of it being the skeleton in the cupboard. As you can see in the diagram, there will always be students who need intervention. However, if we give them a solid foundation of resilience, self-knowledge and tools, maybe we can change the statistics.
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Register with VisionWorks
Register at www.vision-works.net for a host of FREE downloadable resources, assembly ideas and sample modules from our programmes.
More information
  VisionWorks for Schools now has its own Facebook page. All you have to do is like us and you will have regular updates of workshops, webinars, current EI news and more! We would love to hear from you too.
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