Background

Park House School’s culture and ethos builds on the values and behaviours associated with sport and high performance and is central to its vision for the rounded personal development of its young people. Gazing contacted Park House after reading a blog post that explained how the school maximised pupils’ potential and achieved excellence by embracing the lessons learned through the book Legacy, written by one of our founding partners, Dr Ceri Evans. Soon after, a member of Park House’s staff attended a Red2Blue Coaching Certification workshop and returned enthused and energised about the model’s potential in an educational setting.

What we did

Gazing began working with the school in 2020 to develop a unique, incremental programme designed to build and develop mental resilience across a large group of students. After introducing Red2Blue to students the goal was to facilitate workshops with all the teachers to provide an in-depth understanding of Red2Blue to help develop them within their own role as well as supporting the students with their mental skills. Once the initial workshops were completed, we planned to Red2Blue-certify a group of students and selected teachers to lead the further development and application of the model.

Then, the pandemic hit, and we were forced to change plans. While we had to pause the in-person training, it was clear to the school’s leadership that the whole school community could benefit from an input designed to build resilience. Gazing developed a bespoke webinar for all students, parents, and staff, presented on 14th May 2020.

The Results

The webinar positioned Red2Blue as a framework to support mindset and deal with the various pressures of the pandemic. It focused on building the resilience needed to manage the situation and to refocus people’s attention on the critical tasks and helpful activities linked to resetting and moving forward.

The response was outstanding, with one parent’s comment capturing that of many: ‘Thanks so much for yesterday’s webinar. It was so timely and has really helped us to think together as a family about what we can consciously do to control our situation’. As the world returns to ‘normal’, we look forward to resuming our work with Park House School to develop a wider business partnership model for Red2Blue. The idea is to generate revenue through series of corporate sessions in the local community to fund the continuation of the school-based programme.