Matt Bawler, Early Years Development Lead at The Villa School and Nursery, discusses its positive approach to ensuring good mental health
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, 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. These are 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 do better across all areas of the academic curriculum. 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. 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’, ‘I will’.
Within the area of resilience, we have found particular success 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 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 were to say to you, ‘Old McDonald had a….’ or ‘Twinkle, twinkle little….’ I am pretty confident that your mind would instantly give you the next word because it has become so ingrained. 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 growth-mindset thinking.
It’s not just the children noticing the difference; parents are too. Comments from recent parent surveys and interviews have included: ‘It’s allowed her to become more confident and capable and patient in her own self’ and ‘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”’. Another parent told us: ‘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’.
This is a journey, and we are far from our destination, but we step forward determined to provide our early years children here at The Villa School and Nursery with the best possible foundations for the future.
The Villa School and Nursery thevillaschoolandnursery.co.uk
Further reading: Growing evidence – a major new study into education
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