Know Yourself
Naming what is actually happening inside, before reacting to it.
← emeeqo for Schools
The curriculum
What we actually teach.
Five strands running from Class 6 to 12, delivered in three rooms — students, teachers and parents — so the whole building ends up speaking one language instead of three.
Five strands, Class 6–12The five strands
Sequenced, and revisited deeper each year.
The same five ideas an eleven-year-old and a seventeen-year-old both need, said very differently at each age. They map cleanly onto the five CASEL competencies your school may already know — we simply give them names a student will actually repeat.
Steady Yourself
The pause, the body, and what to do with a feeling that has already arrived.
Read the Room
Reading another person accurately instead of guessing — and checking when unsure.
Build the Bond
The flagship strand. Saying the hard thing so the relationship survives it, and repairing it when it breaks.
Choose Well
Deciding under pressure — screens, comparison, risk, and the crowd.
Curriculum map
The same three ideas, three ways.
Parents keep the evening; students and teachers get their own version of the same thinking. This is what makes a shared language possible — everyone is working on the same idea in the same term.
| The idea | For parents — “Understand Me” | For students — “Understand Yourself” | For teachers — “The Teenage Brain in Your Classroom” |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Why they pull away | Why your teen went quiet — silence is protection, not anger. Say the feeling first. Ask one real question. | “Why does it feel like no one gets me?” You are not alone. How to say what you feel. How to talk to your parents. | The quiet child. Why a student shuts down. Make the classroom feel safe. Notice the one who has gone silent. |
| 2 · The brain & the body | The teen brain, growing till about 25. The full bucket. Talk about the problem, not the child. Be askable. | “Why do I overreact?” Your brain is still growing. The 20-minute pause. Handling stress, screens and comparison. | The teen brain in class. Describe, don’t attack. Drop labels like “lazy”. Spot a struggling child, and when to refer. |
| 3 · The reset is you | Presence over rules. Praise the effort. Give choices. Be the calm they borrow. | “Who am I becoming?” Confidence from effort, not marks. Making good choices. Small habits that keep you calm. Who to go to for help. | The steady adult. Connection before correction. Praise effort, not the child. Safeguarding and referral in practice. |
What a student walks away with
Five tools they keep for life.
Feelings Weather. Naming the state you are in before it drives the next ten minutes.
The Pause. The twenty minutes between the feeling arriving and the thing you would regret.
The Repair. How to go back after you got it wrong — the single most useful social skill there is.
Real-or-Fake check. Testing a thought against the evidence instead of believing it because it arrived loudly.
Choice check. A short question to run before a decision made under pressure or in a crowd.
Underneath all five sits one belief we work on relentlessly: that a young person’s worth is not their marks. In a country where 81% of students name exams and results as their main source of anxiety, that is not a soft message — it is the load-bearing one.
What a teacher walks away with
One lens and four moves.
The lens is a single sentence — a big feeling with slow brakes — which is what adolescence actually is, neurologically. Once a teacher has it, behaviour that looked like defiance starts looking like something they can work with. The four moves are what they do next.
Describe, don’t attack
Name the behaviour and the event, never the character. “The work isn’t in”, not “you’re careless”.
Drop the label
“Lazy”, “rude”, “attention-seeking” — labels stick to a child for years and explain nothing useful.
Settle first, teach second
A flooded brain cannot learn. Thirty seconds of settling buys the whole lesson.
The quiet word
The private two-minute conversation that reaches a child no public correction ever will.
Plus spot-and-refer: recognising the child who needs more than a classroom can give, and knowing exactly who to hand them to. Teachers consistently tell us this makes the job lighter, not heavier — which is the only way a staff room adopts anything.
How it runs
Grade bands, practice, and proof.
Grade bands
Sessions run in age groups so the language fits — roughly 11–13 and 14–17, with a separate band for Plus Two. Schools commonly pilot one band and widen from there.
Game-led, near-zero prep
One core game per session. Students practise rather than listen, and your staff are not handed an hour of preparation they do not have.
Measured, both ends
Before/after emotional fitness across six relational dimensions, at cohort level — proof your school can show, and data we learn from.
How the measurement works →The full-year program
What a partnership includes.
Student sessions — six per term, fortnightly, run by grade band, game-led with near-zero prep for your staff
Teacher orientation before anything else, plus two refreshers across the year
A parent evening each term — our “Understand Me” workshop, hosted by your school
The emeeqo practice space for every student — private missions, mood log and toolbox
Before/after emotional fitness measurement and an end-of-year impact report
Available as add-ons
Extra parent workshops, or a termly parent session
Counsellor support and train-the-trainer for your staff
Additional grade bands
emeeqo family membership for parents
What we need from the school
Written parental consent for students — we provide the form
A wellbeing or life-skills slot, and a room (or a Zoom link)
A named school wellbeing lead to coordinate, and your counsellor to hold the referral pathway
A copy of your safeguarding policy, so we align with it rather than around it
Start with a pilot.
One teacher orientation, one student session for a single grade, a before/after survey and a short impact note — then a plan for the full year, built with you.