Concept by: Teresa Murphy
Description
As teachers you have experienced both the rewards and challenges that teaching offers, however, extra challenges have been added over the years, more admin, lack of student respect and increasing workload have probably led to stress, burnout and wondering why you are still in the profession!
This is when you need to rediscover your resilience, change your mindset and reconnect with the joy of teaching.
This course will help you do just that. You will explore how strategies such as emotional management, a positive mindset, changing your internal narrative and building compassion can rebuild resilience and render your life more manageable. Sessions will be collaborative and interactive, and you will also work individually using worksheets and journals which you will use to create your own Resilience Toolkit. This will provide you with practical, bespoke strategies that you can take back into school and even share with your students where appropriate.
By the end of this course, you will have learned how to embrace the new ‘normal’, face your fears and anxieties, find resilience, and get comfortable with the ongoing uncertainty.
Learning Outcomes
This course will help participants to:
- Develop a positive mindset towards their reality
- Find their inner resilience to cope with the current uncertainty
- Explore and monitor their internal narrative
- Face and deal with their fears head-on
- Recognise and manage their emotions
- Be more compassionate towards themselves and others
- Build their own bespoke resilience tool kit to bring back to their workplace
Tentative Schedule
The schedule describes likely activities but may differ significantly based on the requests of the participants, and the trainer delivering the specific session. Course modifications are subject to the trainer’s discretion. If you would like to discuss a specific topic, please indicate it at least 4 weeks in advance.
Day 1 – Course introduction & Exploring your mindset
Course introduction
- Introduction to the course, the school, and the external week activities.
- Icebreaker activities.
- Presentations of the participants’ schools.
Exploring your Mindset
In this module you will discuss and explore your current mindset; is it fearful and fixed? Or is it open and flexible? You will learn about how a positive, growth mindset can contribute to your daily intention going into class.
- Activities will include discussion, collaboration, cards, games, and affirmations to build awareness and promote positive change.
- Participants will use guided worksheets to explore and make notes on their own mindset and which of the day’s strategies they will use to build their own mindset.
- They will add this to their Resilience Toolkit.
Day 2 – Combatting your FEAR Factor
What are your principal fears and how do they impact your life? FEAR means False Evidence Appearing Real. In this module you will learn that naming your fears and using mindfulness will help you to find practical strategies to deal with them
- Activities will include project walls, fishbowl discussion, Headaches, and Aspirins.
- Participants will use guided worksheets to explore and make notes on their own mindset and which of the day’s strategies they will use to combat their own fear factor. They will add this to their Resilience Toolkit.
Day 3 – Changing your Internal Narrative
Our internal narrative is the sum of our experiences, beliefs, and values. In this module, you will reflect on the stories you tell yourselves about your daily professional life and how it affects your work. You will explore strategies that will help you change this narrative, and to approach usually stressful situations more calmly.
- Activities will include individual journaling, storyboards, the best-friend technique.
- Participants will use guided worksheets to explore and make notes on their own inner dialogue and which of the day’s strategies they will use to retell any damaging stories. They will add this to their Resilience Toolkit.
Day 4 – Managing your Emotions
Emotions are powerful but temporary. In professional situations that you find challenging, emotions can be a major factor. In this module, you will explore how naming, embracing, and befriending your emotions can positively affect their outcome. You will learn about the life cycle of emotion and how it can be interrupted and managed.
- Activities will include scenario building to help us identify our own experience of strong emotions and their impact on us, dramatic representation of core emotions and mindfulness practice and breathwork to help befriend and embrace strong emotions when they arise.
- Participants use guided worksheets to explore and make notes on their own expression of emotions within their cultural context; also they will note which strategies they will use to manage and regulate their own strong emotions. They will add this to their Resilience Toolkit
Day 5 – Cultivating Compassion
We’re all human, we make mistakes and hopefully we learn from them. In this module you will discover how cultivating compassion for yourself and others can positively impact your attitude towards yourself, your colleagues and your students. This compassion can then lead to creating warmer and more fruitful professional relationships.
- Activities will include art expression and psychodrama techniques.
- In the last part of this lesson, participants will share insights, lessons, and aspects of their Resilience Toolkit that they have built up during the week, and how they will apply each in their professional lives.
Day 6 – Excursion & Course closure
- Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussion;
- Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance;
- Excursion and other external cultural activities.
Audience
- Headteachers, principals, and managers of schools;
- Teachers & school staff: pre-school level;
- Teachers & school staff: primary level;
- Teachers & school staff: secondary level;
- Teachers & school staff: special needs;
- Teachers & school staff: adults;
- Teachers & school staff: vocational.
Before the course, 