Services for Teachers and Schools

Classroom Spirits offers consultancy services, courses and written material to teachers and other professionals working with children aged from 4-18 years of age, encouraging and helping them to develop and up-date their management skills, style and understanding of all children's personalities.

  The aim and focus is to help teachers and professionals alike to improve their management of the classroom. It is also to motivate and inspire children to develop a love of learning and to demonstrate what they need to do to improve their performance and results. This is achieved by understanding children's needs, desires and fears, by managing their behaviour positively and by motivating them according to their needs. As a result teachers have no need to exclude, control or discipline children harshly and children have no need to play truant, disrupt lessons or even to be "badly behaved".

Children of Today

  The core of every teachers job is the management and development of children. Some of these children can make a teacher's job and management role a joy and a pleasure and others can make it an effort, a struggle or even a nightmare. How are they managing to make it such a tough task? What are these children doing and how are they choosing to behave? Are these children choosing to disrupt, interrupt, withdraw, sulk, argue, shout, fight, cry or even walk out of lessons? Having these children in a classroom will challenge any teacher's management skills and can have a negative effect on the other 9, 19 or 29 children in the class as well. So, what is the answer?

The answer lies in learning to understand more about children. It is discovering things like:

• What makes them tick
• What drives them
• What inspires them
• What concerns them
• What they "need" in a given situation
• What makes them feel good about themselves
• What they relate to
• What can help them
• What and who they trust
• What is hindering their development?

  Children, like us, have developed and created views and beliefs about themselves in their developing years which they then continue to re-enforce throughout their lives. It is these views and beliefs, which have created a data bank of knowledge within a child's memory bank. It is this internal thinking to which a child will refer daily. Now children, like adults, have negative as well as positive stores in their internal thinking bank. Stores, which help determine a positive or a negative outcome, experience, result, opinion or behaviour.

  By discovering more about what goes on below the surface in relation to personality, needs, emotions and feelings it is much easier to help children to understand themselves, manage situations positively and help them to begin to relate to other children and adults in positive and constructive ways. By developing your understanding of children you are shifting from control and discipline towards trust and understanding and it is trust and understanding which allows you to:

• Tap into the present situation
  
  
• See it as it really it is
  
  
• Drop your control tactics
  
  
• Step out of "your way" and into the way that is for the good of all the children you come into contact with.

Responding to Children Positively

  Many teachers may feel that it is almost a contradiction to view negative behaviour as positive. But is this what is being addressed here? Are we asking you to overlook, ignore or disregard the negative behaviour? No, we are not.

Responding to children positively isn't about overlooking or ignoring the bad bits or giving insincere praise or compliments. It is about understanding the child and managing the situation positively. Understanding children is about developing an awareness of their individual personality traits and how these combine to create the unique individual and then managing them accordingly.

The Four Personality Traits

  Classroom Spirits has a unique profile for children. It is called the BUTLER PROFILE and has won approval across the board from teachers, professionals, colleges and institutions alike. It is a safe, accurate, simple and positive way to identify, clarify and highlight a child's needs, fears, motivators and preferred management style, in order to get the "best " from the child.

COMPETITIVE CHILDREN (In summary)

COMPETITIVE children seek opportunities to get on and get ahead and achieve tangible results in spite of any opposition or conflict. COMPETITIVES are good at taking action, accepting challenges, solving problems and taking risks. However, COMPETITIVES are not so good at sacrificing self for others, being careful or deliberating before deciding.

CHATTY CHILDREN (In summary)

CHATTY children are positive, lively, charismatic individuals who are desperate to be recognised for who they are and like to encourage others to be who they are as well. They are good at talking to and including others, helping others and radiating optimism. However CHATTY'S are not so good at working alone, concentrating on the details or going beyond people problems.

FEELINGS CHILDREN (In summary)

FEELINGS children are creative, determined, sincere, loyal individuals who want to be and work in a stress free manner and stable environment. They are good at exhibiting patience, loyalty, composure and are good listeners. They are not so good at multi-tasking, being dissatisfied and reacting quickly to change.

THOROUGH CHILDREN (In summary)

THOROUGH children have an insatiable desire for knowledge, facts and information and can use this to achieve outstanding results and standards of work. They are good at being diplomatic with people, adhering to rules and procedures and avoiding trouble. They are not so good at making decisions, acting independently or allowing others to "be" themselves.

Why Profile Children?

  Without a profile you are either second-guessing or operating in the dark. Without such in-depth knowledge and understanding it is difficult to know if you're getting it right, getting your message across or satisfying another person's needs or desires. Profiling brings it all into the open and makes it much easier to "reach" another individual and help them learn all or some of the following life skills.

Ten Important Life Skills

1. To understand and accept who they are
2. To appreciate their value and worth
3. To realise their full potential
4. To realise that it is OK to speak up for themselves
5. To break old patterns of behaviour or thought
6. To get in touch with their needs
7. To realise that it is OK to change
8. To realise that they can ask for help and to help others
9. To become self-reliant
10. To move from a negative view of themselves to a positive and more fulfilling one.

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