Collaboration with Floof Couture!
We’re so excited to announce our new collaboration with Floof Couture! To bring you these tbeautiful sensory pods, we instantly fell in love. Designed to help children feel safe, calm,...
Shahana Knight |
Where it all began
Therapeutic Classrooms is an approach developed by Shahana Knight, Founder and Managing Director of our sister company Teaching Positive Connections (TPC) and of course Therapeutic Classrooms Ltd itself! Shahana is a childhood trauma and behaviour specialist and has been teaching schools how to be therapeutic, attachment aware, inclusive and trauma informed through her Therapeutic Teaching Course for over 10 years.
For many of those years, the vision of a therapeutic classroom lived in her head and although she guided schools to adapt their environments in her course - she believed it could go even further.
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In 2019 Shahana approached an innovative, forward thinking head teacher, Andy Houghton, and asked if he would be brave enough to allow her to transform his year 3 classroom. He said yes!
Shahana removed all of the standard furniture and started from scratch, creating an environment that had the children's wellbeing and mental health at the core.
The room had a huge impact on both children and staff. Shahana wrote about their journey in the Head Teachers update magazine in a series of diary entries that detailed the whole process from inception onwards. They included entries from Andy and the class teachers.
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Read Shahana and Andy's diary entries in the Head Teachers Update magazine, "The chronicles of a therapeutic classroom series" here
They filmed it too!
Shahana and the team recorded their journey, which they aired as the ‘reinventing classrooms’ YouTube series. After it aired, Shahana received emails from more schools who wanted to trial the approach. She invited the first 9 schools who were brave enough to try her approach to feature on the programme.
It was a family mission
Shahana, her husband and two children then dedicated every school holiday and many weekends to transforming spaces up and down the country. From inner city main stream primary's to special schools, SEMH schools and Prep schools!
The word spread and so did the impact
After transforming their spaces, schools were seeing a next day impact. Children who refused to come to school were coming in every day. Children who struggled to concentrate were engaged and excited to learn. Children with ADHD and autism reported feeling happier in the classroom. Noise levels went down, attention went up as did general wellbeing.
Finding the right furniture
The concept of a therapeutic classroom, and the significant impact it had on children's wellbeing and mental health, was proven time and time again!
The next mission was finding the right furniture.
After trying standard online shops and finding that the furniture wasn't durable enough, Shahana decided to approach suppliers who could make bespoke, purpose built furniture to meet the needs of her rooms and the children.
She built strong connections with suppliers who were aligned to her values and began working with them to create furniture that is comfortable, durable and sustainable, whilst ensuring it met the overall ethos and approach.
After 2.5 years of multiple designs, liaising with schools and rigorous testing, Shahana now has her own range of furniture which meets educational standards!
Therapeutic classrooms was born!
Today, Shahana designs classrooms for schools across the UK and with the help of her amazing team has opened the therapeutic classroom store to help schools find the furniture and soft furnishings they need to bring their own therapeutic classrooms to life.
When you buy from us, you know you are buying furniture that is approved by Shahana Knight and that meets the therapeutic classroom ethos and approach.
The journey has just begun
We promise to always innovate, spot gaps and fill them, use science to inform our approach, question the status quo, raise standards in the sector, improve constantly, provide the best experience we can, continue to work closely with children and staff to inform our work, always put the children at the heart of what we do!
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Join the community
Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date, follow our story and be the first to hear about new products. Our newsletter will be full of inspiration, advice and resources.
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Buy the book
Do you want to learn more about Therapeutic classrooms and the wider Therapeutic School Approach? If so, this book is for you!
Available as a hard copy and on Audible.
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Listen to the podcast
In her podcast, Shahana discusses topics such as childhood trauma, attachment, classrooms, behaviour and much more! Every episode is full of advice and strategies you can implement straight away.
Shop this classroom!
Start shopping for your own rooms! Take a look at Shahana's best buys.
Find out more about our story
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What is a therapeutic classroom?
A therapeutic classroom is a room that has been purposefully designed to put the children’s mental health and wellbeing needs at the core. They acknowledge that current classrooms are outdated,...
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Why every classroom needs a high table
Every design I do for a classroom includes a high table. Why? Because they are like magic!
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How can I create a Therapeutic Classroom with minimal budget?
How do you make low cost changes straight away to begin to move toward therapeutic classrooms and away from conventional ones? These top tips and low cost ideas will have...
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What is a therapeutic classroom?
Why is this approach so important, what is the impact and what does it mean to be a therapeutic classroom?
Contact us about a project
Do you have a project you would like us to help you with? Contact us to see how we can help!