When it comes to wellbeing and mental health, our society still largely follows a ‘reactive’ response model. Much akin to firefighting, we wait until there is a problem for an individual before trying to step in and fix it.
Here at the Villa School and Nursery, rather than simply waiting for mental ill health to arise, we have been busy developing a more proactive and positive response model for all. One that deliberately goes back to the start to plant seeds at the foundation stage. Seeds that, when watered over time, will grow strong roots and develop into trees of the future that will not easily be shaken when the storms come.
Over the last five years, our team at The Villa have been on an exciting journey that is now yielding significant results. Not only are we seeing our children developing strong foundations in wellbeing and mental health; but we are also consistently experiencing a knock-on effect with children going on to succeed and do better across all areas of the academic curriculum as a result. This can be seen both with the Early Learning Goals at the end of Reception and the children’s increasing progress as they move up through the school.
Through collaboration with experts, we have developed a body of work that seeks to translate key thinking and skills in a way that young children can access and take on in a meaningful way. Using pedagogical research, we have based our provision around three core strands of child development: Self-esteem (How I see myself), Character (How I engage with myself and my world) and Resilience (How I respond to setback and challenge). We teach this to the children as, ‘I am’, ‘I can’ and ‘I will’.
Within the area of Resilience we have found particular success using growth mindset in helping our children to shift their thinking and the way they respond to challenges. As part of this, we have created a set of key phrases that are introduced to the children as ‘Steps to Success’. They are taught in order and build up as a progression on top of each other to help establish strong foundations in habitual thinking.
These phrases act like memory hooks and enable children to quickly access powerful thinking that can help them to face challenges with a positive mindset. If I was to say to you, ‘Old McDonald had a….’ or ‘Twinkle, twinkle little….’ I am pretty confident that your mind has instantly given you the next word because it has become so ingrained as an internal reflex response it takes little to no effort to think and know it. That’s how it works with these phrases. Over the last period, we have seen children go from tears and frustration to consistent proud success by slowly building in these foundations of positive growth mindset thinking. It’s not just the children noticing the difference; parents are too!
From recent parent surveys and interviews:
‘I love it. Wish we had something similar as kids. She’s sunny and positive and resilient!’
‘I have seen a huge improvement in overall attitude to learning, going from very negative to now a positive mindset. I have also seen a vast improvement in willingness to have a go and take a risk.’
‘I think my child’s understanding and the development of her mental wellbeing has been amazing! It’s allowed her to become more confident and capable and patient in her own self.’
‘I hear my child say “I can't do it YET” with a big smile, or explain that, “Everyone makes mistakes, that's how we learn!”’
‘The feeling I have is that, between The Villa and us at home, we are building these super humans who will be amazingly connected to themselves, be conscious of their feelings, respectful of others but also have all the skills they will need to succeed in this world. Not just to get by but actually to thrive!’
Sadly we don’t have space to go through all of the phrases we are using in detail here but if you would like to know more, feel free to get in touch. This is a journey and we are far from our destination but we step forward determined to provide our early years children with the best possible foundations for the future.