How POWERFUL could fit into my preschool syllabus and how it could be implemented.

As a preschool teacher and principal of my own school for nearly 20 years now, I have experienced many forms of bullying amongst children of all ages as well as in adults.

I do believe that experiential preventive and interventive programmes (such as Powerful ) during the early childhood years are important building blocks to help children develop the skills that enable them to form healthy friendships, display healthy behaviour and handle aggressive behaviours.

Powerful can certainly assist in offering just that, and by implementing this wonderful tool into my school, it will instruct children on pro-social skills, such as sharing, helping and educating them to prevent bullying situations from occurring and also, how to deal with these situations should they arise.

Knowledge, expression and understanding of 'feelings', whether good or bad, is the key to becoming powerful and coping with more resilience in all circumstances of life.

I would like to implement Powerful as part of my daily school syllabus by creating a fun and exciting theme, based around 'bullying' and 'feelings/emotions', whereby the children will be encouraged to role play everyday situations in an attempt to learn how a pro-active approach can assist them. We can do this roleplay through speech and drama classes, music and movement classes, fantasy play, creating their own puppet theatre plays and even during story time where characters of books can be discussed and applied to life situations, from a Powerful viewpoint.

Much emphasis will be placed on the importance of showing empathy and kindness to one another and using positive incentives and creative ideas, where each child gets a turn to feel part of the rewards earned.

As we work through this concept more ideas will come to mind and I’ll gladly update you on these in time.

I feel confident that this wonderful opportunity to implement Powerful will make a big difference in many little lives. I am looking forward to seeing it prosper.

Marissa Spolander

Principal of Pooh-Bears Preschool