A Six-Week Programme for Teachers & Every Staff Member
Just 15 minutes each, simple enough for staff meetings
We regulate through connection
Free Nervous System Regulation for School Staff
A six-week nervous system regulation programme built specifically for teaching staff, support staff, office staff, lunchtime supervisors, and anyone else who spends their day around children. Because a regulated classroom starts with a regulated adult – that’s staff wellbeing and pupil wellbeing solved together.
Some schools choose to bring the full Calm Coach offering to their whole community. Others start simply with staff. Either way, this programme is completely standalone and can make a meaningful difference on its own.
Each session is around 15 minutes, pre-recorded, and simple enough to watch together in a staff meeting.
All of the videos are available below.
Why Do Staff Need It?
Children read the adults around them constantly, often well before anything is said out loud. When an adult feels calm, connected and regulated, children can often sense that too, creating a steadier environment for everyone in the room.
It works the other way too. A classroom of children who have arrived from a difficult morning, a rushed journey or an argument with a friend can, without meaning to, affect the nervous system of the adult in the room throughout the day. So this isn’t only about what staff can offer children. It’s about supporting staff themselves, because they are navigating the emotional atmosphere of the classroom too.
It’s also part of the evidence a school increasingly needs. Every mainstream school in England must publish an Inclusion Strategy by 31 December 2026, showing how it is creating calm, accessible learning environments. Staff regulation is what helps make that possible in practice. A classroom is only as steady as the adult leading it, so bringing this programme to your staff team supports the same outcomes your Inclusion Strategy needs to demonstrate. And because it’s free, it does that without touching your Inclusive Mainstream Fund allocation itself.
Week 1 — Understanding Your Nervous System: Staff are introduced to the Window of Tolerance and the upstairs/downstairs brain, and why regulation makes learning possible in the first place. Heart breathing is taught as the anchor practice, the one tool every session returns to, alongside why a shared, whole-school approach carries more weight than one person doing it alone.
Week 2 — Completing the Stress Cycle: Staff learn why composure held together in a hard moment still has a cost, and why stress that’s never physically released can stay stuck in the body. Shake and Sigh is introduced as a quick way to complete that cycle, for themselves and for pupils who need to move before they can settle.
Week 3 — The Power of Connection: Staff learn the three types of regulation, self, co-, and social, and how a single calm adult can shift the tone of an entire room. The Self-Hold is introduced as a discreet technique for the moments before a difficult conversation, alongside the idea of connecting before redirecting.
Week 4 — The Wandering Mind: Staff learn why the mind ruminates and wanders, and that noticing a thought is different from believing it. Sensory Anchoring, two quick, unnoticeable techniques, gives them a way to interrupt that spiral, along with a first look at passing the same skill on to pupils.
Week 5 — Rewiring: Staff learn Hebb’s Law, that repeated patterns become automatic, and that new ones can be built alongside the old. A body scan becomes their tool for noticing tension earlier, a skill that matters more for staff carrying a full day of other people’s stress than almost anyone else in the building.
Week 6 — Your Body Has Been Keeping Score: In the final session, staff learn that the body can carry stress long after a difficult moment has passed, and are introduced to orienting and the physiological sigh, two further ways to help it let go. The programme closes by bringing the full toolkit together, one last time.
One-Minute Reset: A simple one-minute breathing practice to help settle the nervous system, create a calmer environment and get children ready to learn. Ideally use it before registration or during form time. It can also be used whenever your class needs a quick reset, particularly after busy periods, transitions or when things feel a little overwhelming.
Just one minute. A simple reset for calm, connection and readiness to learn.
Built With Every Member of Staff In Mind
Every nervous system is different, and that’s especially true for neurodivergent staff and pupils, who may experience stress, sensory input and regulation in their own particular way. Heart breathing, the anchor practice used throughout this programme, is a genuinely accessible tool for this. It requires no talking and no cognitive processing, just a hand on the heart and a slow breath, so it works whether a staff member or a pupil finds verbal or cognitive approaches to calming down easy, difficult, or simply not how they’re wired. This also means staff can model and use these tools confidently with neurodivergent pupils, knowing the practice itself doesn’t depend on the kind of verbal reflection or discussion some children find genuinely hard.
What Each Session Looks Like
Every session combines a short settling practice, an accessible piece of theory, and a guided practice to close. Nothing requires prior experience of breathwork, mindfulness or therapy. It’s designed to be genuinely usable by a busy staff room, not just theoretically appealing.
We know there will be scepticism in any staff room, and that’s completely fair. Nobody’s asked to take anything on faith. One minute, twice a day, is a small cost against a full teaching day, and what it tends to buy back is a class that starts from a steadier baseline, which usually means less time spent settling behaviour later in the session. Staff are welcome to judge that for themselves once they’ve tried it for a few weeks.
What This Gives Your Staff
- Free nervous system regulation for school staff, at no cost.
- A genuine understanding of their own nervous system, not just their pupils’.
- Practical tools they can use privately, discreetly, at their desk or in the classroom.
- A shared language across the whole staff team for talking about stress and regulation.
- Support for staff wellbeing that sits alongside, not separate from, the school day.
What’s Missing From Most Staff Wellbeing Provisions
Supporting the Adults Who Support Children
Education Support’s Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025 found that 76 per cent of education staff describe themselves as stressed, and 77 per cent report symptoms of poor mental health because of their work.
Schools already provide wellbeing support in many different forms, from Employee Assistance Programmes and counselling to wellbeing initiatives and staff support schemes. But there is also a need for practical, preventative support that can become part of everyday school life.
That’s where The Calm Coach staff programme sits.
The six-week programme is free for schools, and is designed to give staff practical tools they can use in real time; before stress becomes overwhelming. Every session is also available to watch at home, so staff can revisit the practices or catch up if they miss a session.
The aim isn’t to replace existing support. It’s to add something practical, accessible and preventative to the wellbeing support schools already provide.
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