Peer Listeners
The Appleton School has started a programme with the help of students to help the students with their day to day problems. The students who have trained as Peer Listeners are volunteers who have had 5 hours training from Childline which consisted of:-
Confidentiality: This means that anything discussed with Listeners will stay within the programme and will not be brought to the attention of other students.
Body Language: This consists of body positioning, eye contact with the person you are listening to and the use of body language.
Training: To become a Peer Listener you spend one school day (5 hours) out of lessons. Every listener has a green badge with a smiley face on it.
In the training sessions, you learn many different skills to become a good listener. We learnt through role play sessions, discussion and other fun activities. This also helped to build our own self-confidence.
Email us: We now have an email address that is checked regularly by our leader listeners. This means you can keep any problems anonymous and still get advice. We hope it will be easier than talking face to face. Our new email address is peerlistening@theappletonschool.org.
Listeners have dealt with many different issues some of the problems have been name calling, verbal abuse and bullying.
Being a Peer Listener can give students a sense of pride, a new responsibility and great sense of satisfaction knowing that they are helping other people; which is a Listeners overall role to provide help for other students.
The peer listeners are only one part of our Fairplay approach. All staff have received training on the peer support method of conflict resolution and our comprehensive policy outlines further strategies if they are required.
PEER SUPPORT TRAINING PROGRAMME Skills and topics covered over the 5 hours included:-
- Active listening techniques.
- Basic empathy.
- Reflective responding.
- Summarising.
- Open questions.
- Confidentiality, boundaries and disclosure issues.
- Support