Noël Janis-Norton, founder and director of THE NEW LEARNING CENTRE in London, is a learning and behaviour specialist with over 30 years' experience in Britain and the United States as a teacher, special needs advisor, consultant, lecturer, head teacher, parenting coach and facilitator and author.

Noël is a mother, a foster parent, and a grandmother. She is passionate about parenting and learning, and her mission is to empower children and adults to fulfill their potential. To achieve this she uses, and teaches parents and professionals to use, highly effective and thoroughly tested parenting and teaching techniques.

Noël is internationally known for her unique CALMER, EASIER, HAPPIER methods which teach families how to become more harmonious and which help teachers to bring out the best in their pupils. For many years Noël has been fascinated by how to help children to do and be their best. Her parenting and teaching programs were developed through study and research, but also through her own extensive observation of exactly what parents and teachers do and how they do it, and what the results are, both short and long term.

The New Learning Centre's CALMER, EASIER, HAPPIER parenting and teaching programmes are a refreshing mixture of common sense about children and child development and specialised knowledge about specific difficulties with learning and behaviour.

The CALMER, EASIER, HAPPIER parenting methods are the subject of the book, "How To Be a Better Parent" (Random House), by Cassandra Jardine, a journalist and mother of five. Jardine wrote this book because she was so delighted and impressed by the improvements in behaviour, attitude and motivation in her family that resulted from putting the new methods into practice.

As well as consulting and leading workshops for teachers and parents across the UK and in the US, Noël is still very much a hands-on practitioner. As the Director of The New Learning Centre in London, she continues to teach, to work with families, and to train professionals. Her team of skilled, highly experienced learning and behaviour specialists have helped many families whose children and teenagers were experiencing problems, ranging from mild to severe.

Noël has written two books for teachers. They are full of proven techniques that teachers can use to rapidly improve the learning, behaviour, motivation, confidence and social skills of their pupils.

Her first book for parents is "Can't Smack? Won't Smack?". In it she explains why the old ways of disciplining children don't work, what the new "positive, firm and consistent" ways are, and why they work better.

She has recently written her fourth book, also for parents, entitled "Could Do Better". This book teaches parents how to help their children do their best at school and with homework.

All of the books are published by Barrington Stoke.

Miriam Chachamu

Miriam served as the Assistant Director of The New Learning Centre until 2007. She is now an independent consultant and therapist, using her experience and multi-disciplinary knowledge to enrich and extend the services provided by the Centre.

She is an enthusiastic, skilled and insightful teacher and family coach. Having three children of her own, Miriam encounters on a daily basis the issues parents face today. She uses the Calmer, Easier, Happier skills extensively in her own life and brings her own experience as a parent to her work. She is inspired by the difference that these skills make to families.

Miriam's approach to parenting is practical and solution focused, yet she can also offer individual or couple therapy when required. She is a qualified a Systemic Family Psychotherapist and a Human Givens practitioner and, and is a registered member of the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy (UKCP). Her first book for parents ‘How to calm a challenging child’ will be published in November 2008 by Foulsham.