A teacher attended one of our Magical Teaching courses.
The following week, she was faced with a child who was at risk of exclusion over an issue he could not leave alone. The boy persisted in picking an argument with a member of his peer group. He believed that someone had said something about him and he just couldn't let it drop. He continued day after day in and out of the classroom until it became almost an obsession. The more he persisited and was told that he had it wrong, the more it fanned the flames, until he became louder and more disruptive and at risk of becoming dangerous.

In the past his teacher had tried to deal with the boy by taking direct control and asking him to be quiet and to leave the matter alone. This had only a momentary effect, then the child would resume the behaviour.

This time the teacher decided to take a different tac and after lesson sat down with the boy, matching and mirroring him to gain rapport and help him relax, she then began to let quietly spoken words do the work. She asked him a few powerful questions ‘what will happen if you do find out? And what will happen if you don’t ?' By allowing him time to really think about and consider these questions she allowed his unconscious mind to explore and work through his responses thus helping him solve his underlying problem of not knowing. He soon began to realise that his issue was anxiety about how he would react if he did find out and not really about who had said what. This same process was used with the child on several subsequent occasions when his anxiety caused difficult behaviour and each time reportedly to better effect than previous methods.

A primary school teacher came on a Presentation Skills course, he felt he needed a little help when presenting to large groups. In his own classroom he was fine but when it came to presenting at assembly with his peer group seated around the edge of the hall he often experienced an uneveness of voice as his voice box tightened with anxiety. On occasion he would also lose his train of thought and suffer embarrassing silences. He was hoping to go for promotion, so felt it was essential to improve in this important area.

On the course he learnt how to make his presentations more dynamic and interesting with the use of metaphorical stories, by engaging the audience he gained confidence and began to overcome his previous problems. This was a great outcome, but it got even better. He began to use metaphorical stories in the classroom to get his point across and noticed some extrodinary results, particuarly with pupils who were usually inattentive. He had always used story telling as a great way to unwind with younger pupils but taking time to use stories with mainstream subjects got some great results. The stories communicated directly with the children's unconscious mind and embedded the learning. His pupils become entranced and show much greater enthusiasm for all subjects.

A young girl came to me with a confidence problem. I asked her to think of a time when she had been confident, but she couldn’t do this, so because I couldn't take her back to this time, I asked her to think of a celebrity or pop star who looks confident. That she was able to do immediately, so she was obviously in touch with the idea of 'confident.'

We talked about the person she had chosen and I got her to feel more and more confident by encouraging her to walk from one side of the room to the other like this confident person.  I asked her to feel in as much detail as possible what it felt like, and to tell me what she saw, what she heard, what she smelt even.  I asked her to imagine a time in the future when she was going to take that feeling of confidence with her, and we decided on a trigger that would help bring back that feeling of confidence. She told me  that she now feels a lot more confident and her teachers have confirmed this.

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