Understanding Schools

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.

• Acknowlegements Foreward Preface: Reflections on Thinking Contributor Biographies 1. Understanding School Dynamics and their Impact 2. Excitement and Anxiety, Hope and Doubt: Starting out in a school-based role 3. Shaping a professional identity: From surviving to thriving 4. Our Relationship to- and with- Authority: Past and present influences 5. Thinking Together: Reflective spaces for teachers and therapists and why they can be difficult to use 6. Daring to teach: Keeping the flame alive 7. The role of psychodynamic coachinig supporting the emotional experience of being a teacher 8. Working in a shifting landscape: Loss and change 9. Hidden Hurdles: How Anxiety Impacts Learning 10. Proceeding without certainty: How 'not knowing' can help us better understand troubled students 11. What do we really mean when we talk about providing a 'secure base' in schools? 12. Reflections on therapists and schools working together 13. We're in this together: facilitating collaborative home-school partnerships 14. Epilogue

“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)