REBTOZ

Wassup? Ms Withers Mr P’s been thinking about Ms. Smithers and her work with children in the early childhood setting. As a Rational Emotive Behaviour Educator, she is keen that her young charges understand that their thinking is connected to how they feel and act. She does this via the Have a Go Spaghettio! pedagogy, which is based on Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). REBT provides the counselling paradigm used by   counsellors and psychotherapists to help people identify the unhelpful and self-defeating habits of thinking that undermine their progress in life and living. It is called: The ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance . Mr P. wants to find out how the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach addresses the issue of bullying in schools. He asks her to explain how she and her Have a Go Spaghettio! colleagues address bullying at her school. Ms Smithers explains. According to REBT , the ‘bully’ does not or may not show respect to others in ways that cause the victim ext...

Mr Popoffalot has popped by for another chat about the Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper approach to personal development in learning and life in general. Mr P. has interviewed Ms Smithers before, and he is eager to follow up and learn some more. #earlychildhoodeducation #haveagospaghettio #rebt #generalsemantics #counselling #teaching

Mr Popoffalot of What's Up? News has popped by for another chat about the Have a Go Spaghettio! Success Helper approach to student personal development. Mr P. has interviewed Ms Smithers before, and he is eager to follow up and learn some more. Mr. Popoffalot ‘How are things going Ms. S.?’ asks Mr. P. Ms. S. replies: Well, we’re well into the term and classroom discourse is very Have a Go Spaghettio! rich. All the students have set their personal Success Helper goals for the term, the Have a Go capability they want to work at. E.g., Ahmed has a Red Success Helper goal, Bridget, a Yellow SH goal, etc. They each have identified a habit of thinking which may be Brain Bully stopping them from doing stuff because they might be too scared, worried etc. Mr. P. A great idea. So, they decide what they want to get better at. This gives them agency. Yes indeed. Agency or locus of control, where personal goals are set and work planned to realise them. Locus of control and frustration...

Mr. P. Popoffalot Mr Paxton Popoffalot (Mr. P.) has organised an interview with Have a Go Spaghettio! expert and Rational Emotive Behaviour Educator Ms. K. Smithers. She is using her school planning time to accommodate Mr. P. who is a journalist for the local newspaper, What’s Up? Mr. P: Thanks Ms Smithers. I’ve heard about the Have Go Spaghettio! program you use in your classroom, can you tell us about it. Ms. S: It’s a Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy based program, which teaches children about the thinking – feeling – doing connection. Albert Ellis, creator of REBT said the future of psychotherapy is in the school system, and we are doing it! Ms. K. Smithers Mr. P: Sounds complicated. How is this idea or principle conveyed to your young learners? Ms S: The key is to make the complex simple and fun. These young constructivists are the architects of their trajectories in life. They can have agency in their deliberations, learn to manage frustration and develop what Albe...

  Headwork Ahead is a sign that Ms. Smithers has standing in her classroom. It’s a visual reminder that monitoring how we feel, behave and how we think about what’s happening around us is an ongoing matter of mindful mind maintenance that can become an automatic, intuitive practice. Nevertheless, we need to be vigilant because Brain Busting Brain Bully is an opportunist and lurks around every corner! Have a Go Spaghettio! is a constructivist-based teaching and counselling pedagogy. It’s based on Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and General Semantics theories. Each posit that how we see ourselves, others and the world is a construction, a mind made virtual reality that can either be far removed from how the world is or is pretty well aligned with it. General Semantics introduces the notion that the ‘map is not the territory’ meaning that our constructed ideas about how things work are just that, a simulated internally fabricated model, the map that we believe represents the ...

Angus’ experience to date had taught him that he was inherently stupid and along with other associated self-generated conditions he decided he was in essence a no hoper. How did he ‘know’ this? Because the information he received from others and the meanings he made of  it, led him to conclude he was a hopeless case. Therefore, he anticipated failure and rejection. And he expected that the world would ‘be’ unfair and if anything good came his way, it was an accident, fate. He had constructed a predominantly Brain Bully sense of who he was, an irrational assessment of his nature, his capabilities; he had a bad self, and he deserved failure and the derision of others. His anger, depression and anxiety were attached to a belief construction that was informed by messages received which he deemed were true and correct. His significant adult mentors and others informed his belief constructions and his take on reality was set, and it was not a very healthy one. Angus didn’t get some ...