this capacity for themselves.
Understanding ourselves – our minds, bodies and emotions is a key life skill and one that can legitimately be a core part of learning in schools. In order for this to be meaningful, the more we as teachers understand and can take care of ourselves, the better job we will do in the classroom – and this is especially true for those children who may have missed out on some aspects of social and emotional development at home. A sensitized, self-aware teacher can give children a crucial second chance to develop their emotional and social intelligences - and the research is showing that this happens not so much through what we teach, or through cerebral engagement with SEL programs, but through the way we interact in carefully crafted learning environments. Ours is indeed a ‘caring profession’.
Kevin Hawkins is a former middle school principal now working as an educational consultant and teacher trainer in the fields of Social Emotional Learning and Mindfulness. Kevin will present a range of workshops on these topics at the ELMLE Warsaw conference in January 2015.
kevinjhawkins1@gmail.com
We all deal with stress in different ways – for some it’s running, dancing, playing music or hiking. Mindfulness does not replace these activities, but as a portable skill it can enhance your preferred ways of de-stressing and furthermore we can take it with us into the meeting or the classroom. If you would like to explore this area further the course book by Mark Williams “Finding Peace in a Frantic World” is an excellent resource. Better still, check out local availability of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) courses - which are a training more than a therapy. They deal specifically with understanding ‘the exhaustion funnel’, burnout and depression. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses also can also be highly effective in doing exactly what their title suggests.
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