The MISP can be implemented in a variety of different settings, for example primary schools, special schools, children’s centres, after school clubs, nurseries, Montessori schools and nurture groups. MISP can also be used by children and their parents.
How does MISP Benefit a school?
MISP:
- Provides a positive model for emotional health and well being
- Provides a positive tool against bullying
- Helps children receive and give nurturing touch
- Enables children to feel good about themselves, raising self esteem
- Encourages an environment of care and respect
- Teaches the difference between positive, healthy touch and negative, inappropriate touch
- Provides an inclusive programme that embraces all abilities, faiths and races
- Encourages and sustains creative and fun approaches to learning
- Encourages children to learn from each other and work together
- Supports the learning of subjects from across the curriculum
How does MISP support the curriculum?
MISP is suitable for Early Years Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and 2. But how can it fit into the National Curriculum?
Since September 2020, the Relationships Education aspects of PSHE education has been made compulsory in all schools in the UK. Every state-funded school must offer a curriculum which is balanced, broadly based and which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of the pupils. Whilst the new ‘Relationships Education’ is compulsory, it is left up to schools to decide exactly HOW they teach this.
MISP can support this. With a good understanding of the benefits of Peer Massage, pupils get to experience positive touch first-hand, therefore developing pupils’ wellbeing whilst simultaneously teaching about respectful relationships.
‘The Massage in Schools Programme is a fun, whole school, preventative strategy for promoting respect and reducing bullying. It is a strategy that I feel should be considered by all primary schools fitting, as it does, into all the initiatives’.
John Stead – NSPCC Education Advisor and DfES anti-bullying co-ordinator for West Yorkshire
How can MISP be introduced into a school?
Schools often have their own staff trained as MISP instructors. However, some schools like to have an independent instructor visit to introduce the MISP.
An independent MISP instructor will come into a school to teach a class the MISP routine. It normally takes 6-8 weeks to teach the full MISP routine. One way in which to do this is for an instructor to deliver MISP for two classes, back-to-back, for half an hour each. This means an independent Instructor may only be in the school for about an hour, one or two days a week. The MISP instructor will teach the strokes of the routine to the children, supported by the class teacher. The class teacher then carries on with practice sessions of the routine until the instructor returns to check that the strokes are being carried out correctly and to add a few more strokes on to what has already been learnt. The instructor can also teach the whole staff some positive touch activities to use as kinaesthetic learning in areas of the curriculum.
A school-based instructor will use a similar process for introducing the MISP routine into the school at which they are employed.