Student Experience Conference: programme

Supporting vulnerable students with Ruth Hughes

This workshop explores how we can better equip staff to support vulnerable students in the international learning environment; with a specific focus on recognising and addressing mental health issues.

Ruth introduces a useful practical toolkit of positive psychology and coaching psychology techniques that can be used to enhance the wellbeing of all students, addressing the impact of culture shock and communication difficulties on identity and achievement.

Outside the classroom: language, learning and leisure! with Stuart Pollard

Leisure programmes offer fantastic opportunities for students to practise their English outside the classroom. Through authentic interaction with their peers and leaders, students improve their communication skills. This workshop will look at ways to enhance that learning and take it to a new level.

We will consider how a leisure programme can stretch learners and develop their English skills and more. Furthermore, we will consider how learning outside the classroom can provide a more inclusive learning environment and offer opportunities for learning to all.

Systematic behaviour management with Heather Rhodes

How do you ensure that managing student behaviour and pastoral concerns is a responsibility taken on by the school as a whole rather than tackled at an individual level?

This session will review both the planning and implementation of behaviour management. When considering planning, we'll look at how to set expectations for student behaviour and plan an appropriate staff response and look at ways of sharing our expectations effectively with students and other stakeholders.

For implementation we'll review various systems for monitoring and tracking behaviour and consider how to ensure that staff are responding to students and sharing information effectively.

A bully, a victim and a bystander walk into a school… What can they see? with Giovanni Licata

Educational institutions and their classrooms have been under scrutiny over the last decades to provide safe environments for their learners and workers. As no social space is insulated from society, schools are faced with pressing and fast-changing challenges to ensure that safety and equitability are guaranteed. This workshop will help the audience reflect and evaluate the explicit and peripheral messages that we send out to those who walk into our institutions for the first time as customers or employees. Is it safety at first sight or are we inadvertently giving the wrong message to potential bullies, victims and bystanders?

Setting up a regional safeguarding forum - the good, the (not so) bad and the "I wish I had known that” with Barbara Lewin

In 2016, Barbara established the Sussex Safeguarding Forum to share ideas and concerns, and to provide local safeguarding training. The forum now has 21 member schools and representatives from the local authority including LADOs and gives access to local training e.g. advanced, specialist, homestay, social programme, mental health awareness, and adults at risk all for one annual membership fee. Alongside the training, the forum has face-to-face meetings three times a year.

This session will share Barbara's experience of what she learned along the way. Safeguarding is at the forefront of how schools operate. In the ELT world, the complexities of where our students come from adds to the challenges. The idea of the forum was to promote regional safeguarding to work towards making the area a safe place to send students and in doing so, protect the industry in the area.

Restorative practices in an ESL setting: preventing and managing harm with Georgina Paterson

This session will follow a brief outline of restorative practices underpinning values with practical and interactive demonstrations on tackling difficult conversations with students.

The aim is to equip members with practical, simple and graded tools and phrases and repair the harm caused by miscommunications, culture clashes and even deliberate fights or arguments.

Focusing on primary and secondary prevention as well as managing conflict, this process helps to build a school community founded on trust, empathy and mutual respect.

Workshop: Implementing what you have learned with Anne Margaret Smith

The day will close with a workshop on how you can implement what you have learned throughout the conference back in the classroom on Monday. Facilitated by Anne Margaret Smith, delegates will reflect on the sessions they have attended and how to use their new knowledge to make their centres a better, safer and more inclusive environment.