Worm, Slug, Maggot and Leech are deeply troubled by the way they look!
Wishing for a miracle, they are befriended by a mystic meditating stick insect who makes incredible things happen through the power of her mind and positive thought.
She has an important life lesson for the troubled creatures, but will they heed her wise words?
This is the blurb for one of Polly’s children’s books, teaching littles about the important life lessons of diversity and inclusion. We think we could all learn something from these words, big or small, old or young.
Polly’s background is in education, specifically teaching children and young people permanently excluded from their mainstream schools, many of whom experienced complex emotional and behavioural difficulties. Working in this environment frequently presented Polly with situations of high conflict and rapidly escalating hostility that required empathy, respect and the ability to communicate with great skill, and enabled her to train and practice Non-Violent Crisis Intervention Techniques, Restorative Approaches, and later to take a formal accreditation in Alternative Dispute Resolution, becoming a Mediator in 2007.
Since then, Polly has worked extensively as a community, workplace and special educational needs and disability mediator, as well as delivering mediation focused training across the private, public and voluntary sector. She has worked as a Peer Mediator teacher in schools, and most recently worked alongside the Civil Mediation Council and the College of Mediators to write and deliver an advanced training course for qualified mediators, wishing to carry out mediations in the field of special educational needs and disability. She has successfully mediated numerous cases in which both parties were entrenched in longstanding disputes regarding bullying, harassment and employee relations, as well as those in which all hope for anything other than grievance and disciplinary measures were lost.
Polly is extremely passionate about mediation, viewing the process as a valuable opportunity for empowerment, cohesive problem solving and the development of positive communication and mutual understanding. She is highly regarded for her approach – she is professional and assertive, yet warm and engaging, and wholly committed to fairness and neutrality.
She is committed to all matters of social inclusion and as a result, became a published children’s author, having written and illustrated two children’s stories with themes around diversity, self-esteem, and disagreement resolution.
Polly lives in Hertfordshire with her husband, two daughters and their little dog, where they spend as much time in the great outdoors as possible.
