What A Sweet Day

Yesterday a strange coincidence happened, I had been booked to run a day on Inspiring Leadership for Assistant and Deputy Heads conference in the beautiful Fanham Hall in Hertfordshire. The conference was organised by the London East Teacher Training Alliance (LETTA).

Sometimes I like to give a little party bag as a present when people are leaving so what I sometimes do is buy a packet of love hearts each and ask people to give some out to friends and colleagues on the course. But this time I had also brought a massive sweet jar of flying saucers.  I was going to use these for my Golden Moments when you concentrate on the intensity of a taste and the calmness of your breath and you mindfully realise how lucky we are just to have our senses and how our senses give us joy.  By melting a flying saucer in my mouth, when the fizz of sherbet hits my tongue, it takes me back to loads of happy memories as a child. Anyway, I was running the conference but I noticed that lots of the delegates looked as though they were chewing something and nearly all of them had a really lovely happy look on their face, and I couldn’t quite work out why.

Later, when I went for lunch and looked around at this incredible hotel, what did I find was alcoves with lots of jars of old-fashioned sweets in that anyone could help themselves to. So my delegates had squirrelled away packages of gorgeous tastes and memories …. And certainly didn’t need mine!!

It made me think though that I bet some top hotels have been advised by psychologists to provide childhood sweets as they will always associate that hotel with happy memories as a result. So there you go … and it was a very sensory hotel – a bit like a very good early years setting but for adults. They had log fires burning, endless chilled water with lime on tap, and … wait for it .. A JAPANESE GARDEN where you could stroll over little bridges, dart in and out of trimmed hedges, and pop into a Japanese tearoom. Coincidentally again, in a week or so I am actually off to Japan so I felt that this was a very good omen!!

So lovely ones, if you are reading this, nip down to your nearest shop and buy the sweets of your childhood, sit down, close your eyes, put your hands on your tummy, breathe in 1…2…3, now breathe out mindfully through your lips and enjoy gorgeous tastes and memories.

Website Manager’s Notes

1. Jenny Mosley is available for INSET training days, Working In School Days and for longer projects involving several schools for schools training like the Peterborough Model Above.
2. If you are interested in booking just a day of training, Jenny runs open training conferences around the country throughout the year. Jenny also excels as an educational presenter at schools conferences, LA conferences and Headteacher conferences.
3. The areas of Jenny’s expertise include training for positive behaviour for learning, training for midday supervisors and lunchtime supervisors to promote calm dining halls and healthy, active playgrounds, also training for promoting social and communication skills for learning and training for mental health and wellbeing.
4. Jenny’s resources support all her areas of training and are available form her webshop.
5. To contact us please phone 01225 767157 or email circletime@jennymosley.co.uk or use the contact form on our website. We look forward to hearing form you.
6. Do see Jenny’s Calm Dining Halls articles in Headteacher Update and the TES.