Happy Centred school visit for the Kaizen chiefs

It’s been an exciting start to the year for us at Laughology with some interesting and diverse projects and plenty more on the way through 2016.

Our year started with a collaboration between our two Happy Centred Schools; St Matthew’s Primary in Luton and Kaizen Primary in Newham. St Matthew’s ran the hugely successful pilot HCS programme and has been an HCS for three years.

It hosted a visit by teachers from our latest Happy Centred school partner, Kaizen Primary, which allowed the teachers and leadership team an opportunity to see how the programme works and the differences it makes.

St Matthew’s headteacher Jane Thomas gave the Kaizen Primary delegation a tour around all the different year groups to allow them to see first-hand what being a HCS entails. John Kirkpatrick, who is one of the HCS leaders within St Matthew’s, also ran a lesson from the HCS confidence module.

A selection of children from St Matthew’s then hosted a Q&A panel for the visitors during which they discussed the skills they had acquired from the programme and how it had positively affected their lives both inside and outside school.

Kaizen Primary School happiness tree marking the achievements of staff and children

It was a hugely beneficial visit for the Kaizen team who were given a real sense of how the programme can be positively embedded in a school’s culture. The school was decorated with HCS Happiness Trees marking the achievements of staff and children over the years and, for Laughology, it was also wonderful to see the positive impact the programme has had on teachers and pupils.

During the children’s Q&A session one young boy spoke about the positive changes he had made in his life as a result of what he’d learned and his words were both inspiring and moving.