Developing Emotional Awareness and Learning lessons help youths
By Ian Birch
Samaritans have announced a new programme for schools aimed at increasing emotional awareness amongst 12-18 year olds -- with another of its programmes aiming to reduce young suicide.
DEAL (Developing Emotional Awareness and Learning) programme helps schools develop the skills that young people need to cope with life's challenges and develop their emotional health and wellbeing.
The resources aim to help students to develop an understanding of the meaning of the term ‘emotional health’ as it relates to them, and their friends/family/peers. The lessons also seek to help students to identify coping strategies for stressful or difficult situations they may face, and to reflect on the positive and negative consequences their choices could have.
Celebrity supporter Danny McNamara of Embrace has produced an audio download as part of the project which explains how he dealt with emotional stress.
DEAL provides lesson plans which can be used not just by PHSE staff but also other teaching staff and the lesson plans are downloadable from Samaritans website at http://www.samaritans.org/our_services/work_in_schools/lesson_plans.aspx
There is also an optional poetry module which comes as four lesson plans where children can learn how to express themselves and their feelings through poetry.
Claire McFadden, from Shimna Integrated Colleg in Northern Ireland, has used DEAL. She told Samaritans:
"I have the opportunity to deliver a 12-hour Personal Development course to students aged 14-15, with curriculum statements directly linked to managing emotional health.
"These lesson plans approach subjects that are difficult to talk about, but for that very reason really need to be talked about. They are well structured with lots of detailed instruction for the teachers”.
As someone who's been in contact with Samaritans in the past and is a Samaritans supporter I really welcome DEAL and hope that it will go a long way to filling the gap in the national curriculum which it's designed to fill.
