Creating wellbeing in your classroom
26 June 2025: 9 am – 12 noon
This course introduces two practices designed to support the well-being of learners with complex needs and the practitioners supporting these individuals.
Teachers, teaching assistants and support staff working with learners with complex needs often operate at full capacity. The nature of the role can put them at risk of burnout, especially when they are supporting learners in distress or experience verbal, emotional, or physical harm themselves.
This course supports practitioners by helping them recognise and communicate their emotional and physical needs, which allows them to understand better and meet the needs of the individuals they support.
The course offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on professional and personal experiences. Delegates are encouraged to explore new strategies and approaches through guided reflective practice. Everyone leaves with practical, relevant ideas they can apply immediately in their settings.
Session 1: Understanding our needs at home
This session will introduce Compassionate Communication, the first of two practices to help delegates meet their needs and those of the individuals they support. We explain the four steps of this approach using a reflective practice. Delegates will have the opportunity to reflect on a situation from their personal life where they had unmet needs and use the practice to find more insight into new strategies that could have met them.
This session will explore:
the nature of unmet needs, conflict and harm
the nature of evaluations, observations, feelings and needs
the nature of empathy
new strategies to meet needs
Session 2: Understanding our needs at work
In this session, delegates will repeat the Compassionate Communication reflective practice process to reflect on a situation from work and find insight into their own unmet needs and the needs of the individual they support. Delegates will have the opportunity to devise new strategies to meet their needs that are relevant to their context. Group discussions will allow delegates to share insights and help each other using group brainpower and offering relevant personal experience.
This session will explore:
Compassionate Communication in the context of the workplace
how listening to the body reveals unmet needs
the practice of self-compassion
how the unmet needs of individuals with complex needs affect the well-being of delegates that support them
the relationship between distress and unmet needs when supporting a person with complex needs.
Session 3: Communicating our needs in the workplace
This session will introduce delegates to a communication practice for sharing their needs with colleagues and managers in a way that helps this message to be heard and understood. Through practising with a partner and reflecting in small groups, delegates will have the opportunity to explore how this communication technique could be helpful in their context and end the session with concrete strategies for putting this into practice after the course.
In this session, we will cover:
how to communicate using OFNR to reduce evaluation, judgement and defensiveness
the need for a compassionate workplace culture and how to contribute to this
Session 4: Understanding Well-being
This session will introduce the practice of Self-Determination theory, a straightforward and influential theory of well-being that suggests that all human beings share three fundamental psychological needs. The session allows delegates to reflect on situations when they have experienced low well-being and use group reflective practice to understand how these three needs were the root cause. The session then supports delegates in devising concrete, achievable strategies to meet these needs in their workplace context, creating a work culture that is more supportive of the needs of staff.
In this session, we will explore:
the three needs of self-determination theory
situations at work in which these needs are unmet
strategies to directly meet needs and foster well-being
9 am Admission and virtual tea/coffee to start the session!
9.05 am Welcome, introduction to the session with clarification of key outcomes.
9.10 am Session 1: Understanding our needs at home
This session will introduce Compassionate Communication, the first of two practices to help delegates meet their needs and those of the individuals they support. We explain the four steps of this approach using a reflective practice. Delegates will have the opportunity to reflect on a situation from their personal life where they had unmet needs and use the practice to find more insight into new strategies that could have met them.
This session will explore:
the nature of unmet needs, conflict and harm
the nature of evaluations, observations, feelings and needs
the nature of empathy
new strategies to meet needs
10.00 am Session 2: Understanding our needs at work
In this session, delegates will repeat the Compassionate Communication reflective practice process to reflect on a situation from work and find insight into their own unmet needs and the needs of the individual they support. Delegates will have the opportunity to devise new strategies to meet their needs that are relevant to their context. Group discussions will allow delegates to share insights and help each other using group brainpower and offering relevant personal experience.
This session will explore:
Compassionate Communication in the context of the workplace
how listening to the body reveals unmet needs
the practice of self-compassion
how the unmet needs of individuals with complex needs affect the well-being of delegates that support them
the relationship between distress and unmet needs when supporting a person with complex needs.
10.35 am COFFEE
10.50 am Session 3: Communicating our needs in the workplace
This session will introduce delegates to a communication practice for sharing their needs with colleagues and managers in a way that helps this message to be heard and understood. Through practising with a partner and reflecting in small groups, delegates will have the opportunity to explore how this communication technique could be helpful in their context and end the session with concrete strategies for putting this into practice after the course.
In this session, we will cover:
how to communicate using OFNR to reduce evaluation, judgement and defensiveness
the need for a compassionate workplace culture and how to contribute to this
11.10 am Session 4: Understanding Well-being
This session will introduce the practice of Self-Determination theory, a straightforward and influential theory of well-being that suggests that all human beings share three fundamental psychological needs. The session allows delegates to reflect on situations when they have experienced low well-being and use group reflective practice to understand how these three needs were the root cause. The session then supports delegates in devising concrete, achievable strategies to meet these needs in their workplace context, creating a work culture that is more supportive of the needs of staff.
In this session, we will explore:
the three needs of self-determination theory
situations at work in which these needs are unmet
strategies to directly meet needs and foster well-being
11.50 am Q & A
12 pm Thank you and goodbye!
This course will be appropriate for classroom practitioners from special schools and colleges, mainstream settings with specialist SEN provision and early years settings, and working with pupils with severe/complex learning needs and autism, or both.
Matt Laurie is a highly experienced Music Specialist, Rapport-Based Communication and Intensive Interaction Consultant, Community Artist, Social Learning Leader and INSET trainer. Since 2002, Matt has enabled and supported changes in practice around social inclusion in many services around the UK and internationally including residential autism services, care homes, SEN schools, acute mental health units, dementia services, hospitals, charities and community groups.
As an experienced social learning leader, all of Matt’s training sessions are socially engaged, enjoyable, practical and thought-provoking. All sessions are designed to develop sustainable communities of practice, an approach to embedding practice developed in the 1980’s by Etienne Wenger with whom Matt has trained intensively.
From his years of experience developing the provision of Intensive Interaction and Music on a long term basis in multiple settings, Matt developed the more universal approaches of Rapport-Based Communication and Rapport-Based Musical Interaction. These approaches are now being implemented in many care and education services around the UK and internationally and Matt has published articles for PMLD Link (2021), ‘The Practical Handbook of Living with Dementia (2022), and as part of a collborative approach to supporting people with autism ‘Rhythmic Relating’ (Frontiers In Psychology 2024).
For Hirstwood training, Matt is offering the following courses:
Rapport-Based Communication and Intensive Interaction
Rapport-Based Musical Interaction
Developing More Engaging Activities
Supporting Staff and Student Wellbeing in times of distress and conflict
In addition to his work in the context of sensory practice for people with additional needs, Matt also runs a local community music group, teaches peripatetic music lessons at a local secondary school, and practices and teaches qigong and zen meditation at his local classes.
The cost is £135 plus VAT per delegate. You can select multiple places on the booking form.
You can pay by credit card for this booking or request an invoice on the booking form.
The recording of this event will be in your account at online.hirstwood.com. You will access this using the email address on the booking form and your password (instructions for creating your password are in the joining information).
Here you will find:
a digital recording of the event
a transcript of the Zoom chat
These will be available for 10 days after the event.
NEW for 2025!
We will suggest practical reflective practice for this event to support you in implementing your key takeaways from this session in the classroom.
We’ll also offer a toolkit of additional resources to help, which may include further documentation, videos or links to valuable resources/websites.
Please join our Facebook Group, Sensory Support Spaghetti, to connect with us and other like-minded professionals – for everything sensory!
NEW FOR 2025!
