Praise worth giving

• Date: April 29, 2025
• Time: 14:00 – 16:00
• Cost: BSA Full Member – £135, BSA Affiliate Member – £170 , Non-member – £270
• Audience: Head, Deputy Head, Head of Boarding, Governors, Pastoral staff
• Platform: Zoom (online)

Course outline:

“Well done” no longer works with students whose social and emotional learning has suffered COVID and the rise of TikTok. To nurture positive behaviour today, boarding staff, teachers, and other educators need to use effective praise. Level up your leadership by refining how you praise, criticize, and question your students, players, and advisees. Learn potent alternatives to throw-away comments, such as “Good job” and see how smart communication can rapidly improve all young people’s performance and mental health.

Training topics will include:

• The framework of healthy vs. unhealthy pressure, within which adults state expectations and offer praise
• School-based examples—from parents, teachers, boarding staff, and peers—to illustrate key differences between effective and ineffective praise
• Ways to use praise to strengthen connections with students, boost their mental health, and improve their behaviour.

Learning outcomes:

•  Spot the hallmarks of ineffective praise and commit to eliminating it from your interactions with students
• Improve the quality of the praise you offer to students, by practicing the “Five Ss of Effective Praise.”
• Detect the positive interpersonal changes fuelled by effective praise; add your signature style of effective praise to your updated behaviour management toolbox.

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Speaker:

Chris Thurber

Dr. Christopher Thurber is an award-winning writer and thought leader who has dedicated his professional life to improving how adults care for kids and to enhancing the experience of adventurous young people who are spending time away from home. A graduate of Harvard and UCLA, Dr. Thurber has served as a psychologist and instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy since 1999.

An entrepreneur from a young age, Dr. Thurber founded Prep4School.com and Prep4Camp.com to teach young people how to prevent intense homesickness and make joyful, successful transitions to boarding school and summer camp. One of his first Prep4 videos won a Telly Award for Best Non-Broadcast Instructional Video.

His best-selling family resource, The Summer Camp Handbook, was recently translated into Mandarin to help launch the youth camping movement in China. And his most recent book, The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure: A Positive Approach to Pushing Your Child to be Their Best Self, was described by The Atlantic as “a tour de force” and “the rare parenting book that respects both parents and children.”

Schools, camps, and forward-thinking organizations on five continents have invited Dr. Thurber to deliver keynotes, contribute articles, and lead workshops for all audiences. He and his wife, Simonida, are the proud parents of two boys (Danilo, b. 2002, and Sava, b. 2004).