Meet Ben Harper – The Importance of Emotional Literacy

Meet Ben Harper – The Importance of Emotional Literacy

Ben Harper is the National Peer Mediation Coordinator at Quakers Britain. He is passionate about supporting emotional literacy in young people and plays a key role to support the CMC Peer Mediation Working Group.

Born and raised in Sheffield, Ben was the first in his family to go on to higher education taking a degree in English Studies before planning to start teacher training. However, his plans changed during a gap year which saw Ben undertake community work in inner city Birmingham. The role, which included working in after school clubs, exposed Ben to the challenges faced by children from different socio-economic backgrounds and ethnic cultures which promoted an inequality that Ben felt needed to be addressed both outside as well as within the classroom.

Ben was soon offered a pivotal role as a Learning Support Mentor for a local authority in Sheffield. Working in schools with a high level of need, this pastoral role was designed to help raise attainment, reduce exclusions and improve attendance. A formative experience during this time was the opportunity to work in a multi-agency environment. During this time Ben learnt from working with other professionals to include family support workers, police officers, speech and language therapists, and child and adolescent mental health workers.

This dynamic way of working within a multi-agency team helped to cement Ben’s passion to support equity in education. Ben saw first hand that each child comes to school with a different experience of life behind them. As Ben explains, “not every child has a secure financial background, not all children benefit from the involvement of loving and supportive parents, some children have less physical resources due to learning or physical disabilities.  Other children will have experienced trauma or struggle with language barriers. Even where English is a first language emotional literacy to express feelings is something that can be hard to find during childhood.  All this impacts on behaviour and a child’s ability to thrive and become their best selves.  It can also impact the school climate and the teaching environment which can affect pupils and teachers alike”.

With this wealth of experience behind him, Ben’s next move was to the voluntary sector where he managed an organisation that provided alternative education provision to support children at risk of exclusion.  The work of his team was different and therapeutic often involving art and cooking. Ben describes his time with Cellar Space as follows; “The point was to make a connection, to develop a better understanding of children who were often lacking confidence, suffering from anxiety and displaying extremes of behaviour. In this space my team were able to help children to develop confidence, be more resilient and we could support those who had fallen behind and couldn’t see a way back.”

Teacher training followed and Ben spent time as a teacher in primary education, using his career insights to support both schools and children. It was during a period of working freelance for an organisation in Sheffield, CRESST, that Ben was introduced to Peer Mediation in schools. He could see immediately the relational benefits of such a programme which bought together so much of his learning around the importance of language and emotional literacy for young people as well as the benefits of increased confidence and resilience.

Ben is now engaged by Quakers Britain as their National Peer Mediation Co-Ordinator and has already made his mark generating resources for trainers to promote their work to schools and also setting up ‘Train the Trainer’ sessions to help others develop the expertise to deliver peer mediation programmes in their local areas.

Ben explains that “a restorative climate in schools goes a long way to creating the type of environment where teachers and pupils can both thrive. Peer mediation can often be a catalyst for the creation of that environment which can also create a ripple effect to the wider community, going beyond the classroom and providing the skills to enable children to navigate conflict during their lifetime.”