Who are Teaching with Heart?
Philip Hills
Rachel Farrelly
Teaching with Heart is a organisation created by Philip Hills and Rachel Lawley. Both are counsellors with a personal interest in the world of education.
The idea for Teaching with Heart emerged when Rachel and Phil reflected on the way that, as counsellors, they were encouraged and supported to engage at depth with the emotional work they were doing. The counselling profession required them to focus on their own personal development, self-awareness and emotional resilience.
But the work of teachers is just as emotionally demanding as the work of counsellors, and teachers do not receive dedicated time or space to reflect on and process their emotional work. Indeed, Phil's own experience of becoming overburdened by stress and anxiety in the final years of his teaching career highlighted how useful it would be to create a space where teachers can work through their fears, anxieties and joys, as well as their deeper motivations and beliefs.
Phil and Rachel set up Teaching with Heart to offer a simple way for schools to provide space and time for staff to reflect on the emotional work of teaching.
It is our belief that by helping teachers - a term we use to mean all staff who work with children and young people - to find their voices, schools can become more authentically themselves, and provide a better, more human education for their children.
Phil and Rachel are both Registered members of the BACP (British Association of Counselling Psychology), and are committed to adhering at all times to the BACP's code of ethics. Details of this can be found here. They both have up to date enhanced DBS certificates.