Keeping Minds Happy and Healthy: A handbook for teachers

Keeping Minds Happy and Healthy is a practical resource for teachers and shows how pupils can achieve and maintain excellent mental health. It focuses on identifying the main causes of unhappiness, stress and anxiety, by examining the difficulties a school system can inadvertently create for pupils. By developing resilience, empathic behaviour, social skills and self respect during childhood, pupils will better equipped to withstand the pressures of modern society and growing up.

With practical tip sheets and advice Keeping Minds Happy and Healthy suggests ways to create a more positive educational experience for all pupils. Pat Guy shows how schools can increase all pupils well-being, enabling them to deal with the challenging situations they face as they move through education and into the adult world.

Table of Contents

Section 1. The need for an inclusive education system that embraces and builds on pupil difference.

1. Pupils experience of education: aspects of the current education system that can demoralise pupils:-
• The development of unhelpful mindsets.
• Extroverts v introverts.
• A failure to recognise and provide for pupils with alternative approaches to learning.
• A failure to recognise the effect of chronological age on pupil performance.
• The over use of testing.
2. The links between attitude and intelligence.

Section 2. Developing pupils self confidence and emotional well being within the mainstream context.

3. Metacognition.
4. Social skills.
5. Self confidence.
6. Creativity.

Section 3. Learning rather than teaching: three possible solutions.

• Solution 1. Increased involvement in sport.
• Solution 2. Providing adequate opportunities for play.
• Solution 3. Promoting reading for pleasure.

Section 4. Ten Top Tips. Advice sheets.

• Active learning techniques.
• The brain and learning.
• Pupil advice sheet. A healthy life style.
• Developing pupils listening and attention skills.
• Pupil advice sheet. How to motivate yourself.
• Organisation. How to help pupils to organise themselves.
• Resilience. Developing pupils resilience.
• Specific learning difficulties or differences.
• Questionnaire. How I learn.
• Questionnaire. Study skills.