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Have a Go Spaghettio! Counselling


Have a Go Spaghettio! Counselling

In an ideal teaching and learning world there would be a qualified counsellor in each school across all year levels from preschool to year 12. However, it would be rare to find a qualified counsellor in the junior primary setting, but that aside, what would a counsellor be charged to do in the scheme of early childhood things? Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, said the future of psychotherapy is in the school system. What did he mean by that? He was suggesting that teachers can help students understand why they act and feel as they do according to the ABC Theory of Emotional Disturbance counselling paradigm. What are their constructed beliefs about themselves, others and how the world works? And what can they do about self-defeating and destructive, deeply held irrational beliefs and how do they build new, robust and healthy rational ones? By what means do we bring a model of psychotherapy into the early childhood teaching and learning environment? That’s where Have a Go Spaghettio! comes in. It’s a teaching and learning pedagogy based on Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and General Semantics theories. It is the vehicle by which we do what Ellis invited us to do to, that is, to bring the theory and principles of a tried and tested counselling modality into the early childhood setting. REBT provides a counselling model that teachers can learn about so that they can teach their children about its basic principles. It applies to us all so teachers and students learn as they go. Teaching the basic principles of REBT in daily practice is called Rational Emotive Behaviour Education (REBE) and it alerts students to the following ideas via the Have a Go Spaghettio! pedagogy in a developmentally appropriate way:  We construct our own individual philosophies about how things are as they are.  Realities vary according to the experiences of the learner and how they are interpreted, the meanings they have made.  Some belief constructions are rational and helpful to us and others. They are called Success Helper beliefs or Brain Friend beliefs.  Belief constructions can be irrational and unhelpful to us and others. They are called Success Stopper beliefs or Brain Bully beliefs.  How we feel and behave is connected to how we think and we can learn to self-regulate by being aware of SH/BF and SS/BB habits of thinking/believing. When students are aware of their thinking nature and that it connects to their behaviour and emotions, what they learn in the classroom will be used should they require counselling support. Rational Emotive Behaviour Counselling (REBC) uses the knowledge the child has accrued in the classroom via the Have a Go Spaghettio! approach to psychological health and wellbeing to identify, challenge and change what might be irrational belief constructions i.e., what is Brain Bully telling us? Is it true? How do we know? What evidence shall we consider? What new ways of thinking will we practice to help us as we go? The Have a Go Spaghettio! method or pedagogy unfolds as follows:  Teach to the Have a Go philosophy as presented by the Six colour coded Success Helper competencies on the Have a Go! Chart.  Use the ideas and language as a matter of course.  Counselling (REBC) will incorporate students’ learning accordingly when and where needed. A whole school Have a Go Spaghettio! approach will teach our young students to help themselves and then we can claim that Albert Ellis’ entreaty that we bring psychotherapy into the classroom has been realised.
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