Understanding Schools: Supporting Teachers and Therapists in Making Sense of Staff and Student Relationships and Organisational Dynamics

This compelling collection shines a light on the personal, professional, and organisational challenges that shape life in schools, revealing how a deeper understanding can build a more emotionally intelligent school culture.

The book delves into the psychological and emotional aspects of working in schools and navigating what can be complex and multi-layered relationships with fellow staff, students, and parents. Each contributor applies their considerable knowledge of school dynamics and explores the ways in which our past – conscious or unconscious, remembered or forgotten – shapes our interactions with others, for better or worse. Drawing directly on lived experience, the book explores peer relationships, approaches to understanding students’ mental health and its impact, and the ways in which parents’ own histories – especially of education – may help or hinder effective home–school collaboration. Chapters conclude with reflective questions for personal and professional growth, sparking curiosity and prompting the reader to better understand the complexities of everyday relationships.

Knowing ourselves, understanding how relationships work, and making sense of the links between family and institutional dynamics can make a real difference to how we experience the workplace as well as how we get on more generally. Refreshingly conversational in style and applicable to every sphere of life, this volume will be valuable reading for trainee and early career teachers, line managers, support staff, and therapists, especially those offering supervision or consultations to school staff.

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.