1st Edition
Understanding Schools Supporting Teachers and Therapists in Making Sense of Staff and Student Relationships and Organisational Dynamics
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Graham Music
Preface: Reflections on thinking
1 Understanding school dynamics and their impact
Sue Kegerreis
2 Excitement and anxiety, hope and doubt: Navigating new beginnings
Lyn French
3 Shaping a professional identity: From surviving to thriving
Prue Barnes-Kemp
4 Our relationship to – and with – authority: Past and present influences
Josephine Evans
5 Thinking together: Reflective spaces for teachers and therapists and why they can be difficult to use
Lyn French
6 Daring to teach: Keeping the flame alive
Darra McFadyen
7 The role of psychodynamic coaching in supporting the emotional experience of being a teacher
Norma Gould
8 Working in a shifting landscape: Loss and change
Prue Barnes-Kemp
9 Hidden hurdles: How anxiety impacts learning
Sue Lund
10 Proceeding without certainty: How ‘not knowing’ can help us better understand troubled students
Kate Graham
11 What do we really mean when we talk about providing a ‘secure base’ in schools?
Melanie Light
12 Reflections on therapists and schools working together
Stefania Putzu-Williams
13 We’re in this together: Facilitating collaborative home–school partnerships
Mihoko Arayama
Epilogue
Lyn French and Sue Lund
Biography
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 (www.aspaceinhackney.org).
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.
“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 and ‘in our own skin.’”
Graham Music, psychotherapist, trainer, and author of Nurturing Natures (Routledge, 2024)
