Resilience and Well-being Strengths for Teachers

Description

Concept by Natalie Croome

Some people thrive in a crisis. Other people flourish in a state of well-being. Neither of these two states can be maintained consistently and they vary at any given time, in different aspects of our lives. We are constantly in a state of flux and change, perhaps now more than ever.

Resilience can be described as a set of strengths we can employ to drive us towards achieving a balance between the highs and the lows that we experience, in life and at work. Together with well-being, it allows us to make teaching and learning sustainable and meaningful during times of change, crisis, and challenge.

While we cannot maintain a constant level of well-being, we can lead students and teachers to recognize when a state of well-being exists, and when drawing on resilience strengths is useful or necessary.

In this course, we will share and discuss the importance of teachers’ understanding and taking responsibility to develop their resilience strengths to help them navigate their way towards a heightened and more stable state of well-being.

Through exploring strategies such as emotional management, a positive mindset, changing the internal narrative, and building empathy and compassion, participants will discover how to rebuild resilience and render their life more enjoyable and manageable.

By identifying and analyzing the strengths necessary for achieving well-being and behaving resiliently, we will collaborate to find ways of navigating emotional highs and lows in ways that promote mental, emotional, and physical health.

Learning outcomes

The course will help the participants to:

• Identify and analyze the strengths necessary for achieving wellbeing and behaving resiliently;
• Appreciate the differences and connections between wellbeing and resilience;
• Appreciate the personal empowerment that comes from adopting a growth mindset;
• Develop awareness and skill in taking regular measurements of personal states of wellbeing and monitoring internal narrative;
• Recognize that emotions can be managed and supported through the activation of a set of resilient behaviors;
• Share wellbeing and resilience experiences through the creation of analogies and storytelling;
• Develop compassion and empathy towards themselves and others;
• Face and deal with fears head-on;
• Build a bespoke resilience toolkit to apply at work and play.

Tentative schedule

Day 1 –  Course introduction

• Introduction to the course, the school, and the external week activities;
• Icebreaker activities;
• Presentations of the participants’ schools;
• Share and connect through “who we are“ and “who I am”, strength-based activities.

Day 2 – Exploring how wellbeing and resilience work & monitoring your internal narrative

• Appreciate the wellbeing and resilience are not the same but strongly impact each other;
• Experience, reflect on, and construct wellbeing and resilience analogies and storytelling frameworks.

Day 3 – Inquiring into your own mindset and identifying your strengths

• Explore fixed and growth mindsets;
• Develop descriptions of scenarios that expose our current mindset and collaborate to experiment with a range of possible responses to challenging and stressful situations through role plays and storyborading activites;
• Describe ourselves and each other using strength-based vocabulary;
• Construct empowering conversations focused on “When I am at my best” declarations;
• Experience the positive power of Appreciative Inquiry.

Day 4 – Managing your emotions and cultivating compassion

• Appreciate that emotions are powerful but temporary;
• Reflecting on how and why our behaviours and the behaviours of others trigger certain emotions;
• Naming, embracing and accepting your emotions and how they affect you, mentally and physically;
• The Life Cycle of an emotion – interrupting, acknowledging, managing and moving past them;
• Experience how moving the body, mindful breathing exercises and being kind to yourself and others can bring relief, calm and acceptance.

Day 5 – Exploring wellbeing and resilience actions and strategies

• Investigate the I, we, and them of well-being through consideration of emotional, physical, social, workplace, and societal perspectives:
• Explore possible actions you can take in your context to strengthen and develop resilience behaviors;
• Select a “Resilience Strengthening” strategy and create a plan of action for implementing it…at work and/or play.

Day 6 – Course closure & excursion

• Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussion;
• Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance;
• Excursion and other external cultural activities.