About

This site is:

1. A practical resource for classroom teachers who want to apply support-worker-style communication and relationship skills in their teaching.

2. Grounded in research from motivational interviewing, self-determination theory, and trauma-informed practice.

3. Written primarily for Grade 6 to 12 teachers, with a particular focus on participation-based subjects like physical and health education.

This site is not

1. A replacement for school counsellors, learning support staff, or mental health professionals.

2. A guide to diagnosing or treating clinical presentations of anxiety, trauma, or behavioural conditions.

3. A suggestion that classroom teachers should manage these situations alone. Where a student's needs exceed what a classroom can address, specialist referral remains the right response.

Motivational Interviewing: Developed by Miller and Rollnick, motivational interviewing is a person-centred communication method built around the idea that behaviour change is most durable when it comes from within. Its core framework, known as OARS, organizes the method into four practical skills: open questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summarizing. Research applying MI to school settings, particularly with adolescents presenting as resistant or disengaged, shows consistent positive effects on engagement and the teacher-student relationship. Reinke, Herman, and Sprick (2011) provide the most direct classroom translation of the framework.

Self-Determination Theory: Deci and Ryan's foundational work demonstrates that human motivation depends on three basic psychological needs: autonomy, the sense of being in control of one's choices; competence, the sense of being capable; and relatedness, the sense of being connected to others. When any of these needs are threatened, as they frequently are for a student who fears looking incompetent in front of peers, motivation collapses. SDT gives teachers a language for understanding why students withdraw and what conditions are needed to draw them back. Ntoumanis (2001) and Standage, Duda, and Ntoumanis (2005) apply this framework directly to physical education settings.

Trauma-Informed Practice in Schools: Brunzell, Stokes, and Waters (2016) describe how students with adverse backgrounds often experience the classroom itself as a low-level threat: unpredictable, exposing, and socially dangerous. Participation-based classes are particularly high-risk because they require students to perform in front of peers. A trauma-informed approach does not require teachers to know a student's history; it requires building predictability, warmth, and low-threat environments as a default, so that the students who most need safety encounter it consistently.