This book provides a comprehensive guide to designing and delivering a safe, confident and inclusive mental health curriculum for primary and secondary schools. It offers support strategies for staff, ensuring they feel equipped to teach sensitive and sometimes challenging topics, explores how to support social and emotional learning across the curriculum, and discusses how to work with parents and carers to broaden the impact of mental health teaching outside of the school. Written with an intersectional perspective to meet diverse student needs, it includes case studies to demonstrate how key topics can play out in classrooms, reflective questions to deepen your understanding of important issues and a set of flexible lesson plans, designed to work across age phases, that can guide your medium-term planning. This is essential reading for all teachers and school leaders with an interest in supporting high-quality mental health teaching in schools.
Amy Sayer has previously been a senior leader and mental health lead in a large secondary school for years. She is currently a freelance mental health and neurodiversity consultant and trainer for educational settings ranging from Early Years up to university level. She is a Lead Associate for Diverse Educators and a trainer and writer for West Sussex Mind. She works part-time at LVS Hassocks supporting autistic students with their mental health and wellbeing. She also supports trainee teachers as a Subject Lead and Wellbeing Coach for Inspiring Future Teachers and writes for a range of educational journals. She is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching for her work with mental health in schools. She is the author of Supporting Staff Mental Health in your School and delivers training for leaders about developing staff mental health and wellbeing in schools.
Part I: Building a Meaningful Mental Health Curriculum Chapter 1: The landscape of school mental health Chapter 2: The leadership and management of school mental health Chapter 3: Supporting the delivery of your mental health curriculum through staff training Chapter 4: Curriculum teaching and learning to promote resilience and support social and emotional learning Chapter 5: Working with parents and carers to support your mental health curriculum Part II: Lesson Plans Chapter 6: Feelings and emotions Chapter 7: Coping strategies for tricky feelings Chapter 8: Self-care for supporting mental health Chapter 9: The importance of sleep Chapter 10: Food and mood Chapter 11: The importance of exercise Chapter 12: The importance of healthy relationships Chapter 13: Types of mental ill-health Chapter 14: Support for your mental health
