A teacher colleague invested a lot of time teaching her year 3 students that thinking, feeling and behaving were all interconnected. As Albert Ellis, creator of REBT said (I paraphrase here): ‘We make ourselves more anxious than we need to be when we think events and things are worse than they really are.’ The teacher did a lot of groundwork to persuade her young group that they make themselves more upset than they need to be. She read books that had characters who helped themselves get better when they changed the way they thought about something. She reminded them often that it was their/our estimation of an event, how we thought about it that was key. ‘If they came to know this they can do something constructive about their discomfort,’ the teacher thought. She changed her language; rather than asking ‘what makes you angry?’ she would say ‘what are you thinking about what happened that’s making your feelings so strong?’ She didn’t say ‘don’t be angry’ either as she knew her st...
Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy was developed by Dr. Albert Ellis in the 1950's. Educators are beginning to rethink how they address behaviour in schools. Slowly we are appreciating that if students are to learn how to better manage themselves emotionally and behaviourally more successfully then REBT has a lot to offer through RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOUR EDUCATION