Latest News
Letter from Bryony Landsbert, Educational Psychologist
Posted on: 22/04/2020
Team work, learning at home and celebrating each small success
Dear Young People, Parents and Carers,
I hope you managed to have a reasonable Easter – I appreciate some of you will have found it really hard.
We’ve all have been trying to find our ‘new normal’ for a few weeks now. Everyone has experienced major changes and thought about what’s important. Lots of adults have been juggling lots of ‘important things’, like looking after both the older and younger members of the family. No-one I’ve spoken to is finding this easy. In a way I think that’s a bit comforting – If you’ve been finding the last few weeks hard you are normal!
‘Important things’ in the last few weeks have been ensuring our families have the basics and are safe, whilst working out who is ‘on our team’. Your team will need to:
- Include everyone in your household, and through the wonders of modern technology your closest family and friends.
- Respect each other and work together to reach common goals
- Look after each other practically and emotionally (this might mean time alone as well as time together).
- Learn how best to do all this as you go.
- Have fun together and celebrate success.
Success makes people feel good and this often happens when we learn. Learning and success will look different in each household. In addition to ‘home learning’, quality time together playing games and learning life skills and new hobbies is incredibly valuable. I know lots of parents are feeling they aren’t teachers, but they teach every day. They teach children to cook or ride a bike, how to be friendly, the importance of doing school work, how to keep going when they’re stuck, and much, much more. Alongside the school work, please take this opportunity to teach and learn skills that will last a lifetime and celebrate having done so.
Getting started with learning is often the biggest hurdle to success. Below are questions to think about when started and completing tasks. These are relevant to all home learning, whether it’s school work or learning a new skill/hobby, and not just in the next few weeks, but always. It might be an idea to see how many of these questions you already know the answer to and talk to your ‘team’ about how to answer the others.
WHO is in your team?
- This might be friends, friends parents, teachers, youth workers, family.
- Who can you ask for help if you are stuck? Can you imagine what they’d say? If not ask them. Don’t worry about asking… they’ll be glad to help.
- Who will encourage you and be pleased you have succeeded? – Tell/show them – it’ll make everyone feel good!
WHAT will you start with?
- Something you enjoy or something that feels possible (it might be asking questions, multiple choice or something you’ve done before).
HOW…?
- How can you find help? Research on the internet, or ask someone you know online or in person?
- How will you celebrate each other's success?
WHERE will you do your activity?
- You’ll need to make sure this works for everyone else in the house too. School work in one place and leisure time in another?
WHEN will you do your activity?
- Again, this will need agreeing with others in your house because they have things they need/want to do as well. Will you have a noisy time and a quiet time? A daily timetable? What will work for everyone?
With best wishes to everyone in your team, Bryony xx
-
What is an Educational Psychologist? Psychologists enable success. As an Educational Psychologist I enable success with learning.
-
Who does Bryony work for? The Didcot Partnership of Schools (Didcot and the surrounding villages) work together to employ me. When life is ‘normal’ I visit each school and work with teachers and students.
