Understanding Schools: Supporting teachers and therapists in making sense of staff and student relationships and organisational dynamics
Our most recent book shines a light on the personal, professional, and organisational challenges that shape life in schools, revealing how a deeper understanding can build a more emotionally intelligent school culture.
The chapter authors delve into the psychological and emotional aspects of working in schools and navigating what can be complex and multi-layered relationships with fellow staff, students, and parents. Each contributor applies their considerable knowledge of school dynamics and explores the ways in which our past—conscious or unconscious, remembered or forgotten—shapes our interactions with others, for better or worse. Drawing directly on lived experience, the book explores peer relationships, approaches to understanding students’ mental health and its impact, and the ways in which parents’ own histories – especially of education – may help or hinder effective home-school collaboration. Chapters conclude with reflective questions for personal and professional growth, sparking curiosity and prompting the reader to better understand the complexities of everyday
relationships.
Knowing ourselves, understanding how relationships work and making sense of the links
between family and institutional dynamics can make a real difference to how we experience
the workplace as well as how we get on more generally. Refreshingly conversational in style
and applicable to every sphere of life, this volume will be valuable reading for trainee and
early career teachers, line managers, support staff and therapists, especially those offering
supervision or consultations to school staff.
Available to order via Routledge and on Amazon.
This book gives hope that all of us working in education, as well as those we work with, can find a type of ‘belonging’ in school, one that allows us to feel more at home within ourselves
Graham Music, Psychotherapist, Trainer and Author of Nurturing
and ‘in our own skin.
Natures (Routledge, 2024)
Editors
Lyn French, Director of A Space
Lyn French is a psychotherapist, supervisor and author with over 25 years’ experience in
school-based psychotherapy, including a decade teaching in the field. She is the Director of
A Space, a psychotherapy provision working in partnership with the Education Service at the
London Borough of Hackney. With a first profession in the arts, she is committed to keeping
therapeutic thinking creative, contemporary and relevant to everyday life.
Sue Lund, Lead Therapist & Supervisor, A Space
Sue Lund is a lead therapist and supervisor with A Space. Following two decades as a headteacher she trained as a psychotherapist, a role that has deepened her interest in the emotional aspects of teaching and learning. She brings this combined expertise to her supervision work with both teachers and therapists, enriching their practice with her dual perspective.
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