Heading 1NDMTSS Conference
Description
Teachers have always needed to know and practice protective strategies in their social emotional first aid kits to manage the daily stressors of working on the front lines of a human-service oriented profession. That need has never been greater given the massive increase in uncertainty and unpredictability in the teaching profession and in one's personal life due to COVID.
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In short, teaching is emotional labor-- the effort required to manage and metabolize strong emotions like anger, shame, guilt, anxiety, and overwhelm, as well as generate and stoke positive emotions like joy, hope, and compassion.
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Stress significantly diminishes a teacher's capacity to regulate their negative emotions and cultivate positive emotions. Ironically, teachers who leave the profession often cite their inability to cope with their own emotional reactions to loss of control, unpredictability, and lack of purpose in their teaching as the primary reason for burnout.
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There are many, many strategies and practices rooted in cognitive and affective neuroscience and social and behavioral sciences that teachers can learn, practice, and integrate into their personal and professional lives as teachers to metabolize stress, manage negative energy, protect themselves from the burnout cycle, and find joy in teaching the whole year through!
Learning Objectives
In this session, teachers will:
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Explore the core elements of the teacher burnout cycle and learn how to protect one's self from the 2 paths to burning out,
The Present Teacher Restoration ProjectTM
The Present Teacher Restoration ProjectTM
is a self-paced, online adult Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and self-development professional learning program that focuses on providing our educators and educational caregivers (all staff members working in educational settings) with evidence-based restoration practices that heal and stave off burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury while strategically strengthening their relationship to their calling, purpose, and soul's mission to serve in schools.
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We teach who we are. (Parker Palmer)
Personally, educators and educational caregivers deserve to be supported in their social and emotional well-being efforts. Compassion fatigue, burnout, and moral injury are very real "costs of caring" in our profession, and we believe providing educators with opportunities to cultivate and understand their own SEL and well-being needs is critical to creating spaces of care for everyone in our schools.
Our well-being is communal and collective. When the adults in the school setting are supported in their social and emotional wellness, that energy of support extends to students, parents, and the greater school community. Adult social and emotional well-being is an educator's greatest professional asset because adult well-being strengthens relationships with students.
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Research confirms that healthy teacher/student relationships correlate to increased student learning and increased teacher effectiveness and job satisfaction.
"The Present Teacher Restoration Project has helped change the mindset of my staff from surviving to striving. My school experienced significant trauma last year as two staff members died from COVID-19. Jennifer created a space for my staff to heal, care, and restore their love for teaching. I recommend that every school in Minnesota take advantage of this excellent professional development for educators. I also recommend the 30-minutes modules for educators who like to go at their own pace."
Elementary/MS Principal
Experiential and Embodied Learning
Integrating experiential learning, healing-centered design, adult Social and Emotional Learning theory, neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, and mindful movement practices, teachers and school staff explore evidence and experience-based strategies to transform the stress of the profession into opportunities for stoking critical competencies of educational caregiver well-being:
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The 4 hour self-paced, online experiential curriculum supports our educators in the practice of metabolizing current stressors as a source of fuel (vs. depletion) to stoke mental health, emotional resilience, self-efficacy, and self-integrity.
Educators engage a series of 8 (30 minute) modules that are customized to be a slow and low dose of weekly skill and inspiration support for the cultivation of the 5 competencies of adult SEL (self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness) and the core competencies of educator well-being.
Outcomes
Provide educators and educational caregivers with practices, strategies, and experiences rooted in mindful awareness for the deepening of self-awareness, self-compassion, and emotional resilience so that they can routinely adapt to the stressors of the profession in a functional and flexible way to stave off burnout.​
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Cultivate the 5 core competencies of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) to remain calm in chaotic teaching moments, see student (and peer) behavior through the lens of compassion and curiosity, and leverage stress as opportunities to condition critical consciousness.
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Guide educators and educational caregivers in how to strategically access their inner resources of calm, resilience, healing, and joy for counteracting the onset and manifestation of burnout and compassion fatigue while increasing their innate capacity to actualize happiness, passion, and joy in their calling.
Educators earn
4 "clock hours" of professional learning engagement in this online, self-paced training.
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Module Components
Each 30 minute training module engages the intellect, calms the mind, and restores balance to the body.
15 minute educational training video
5 minute guided mental health meditation
10 minute guided gentle yoga/mindful movement practices
Downloadable PDF "Put Into Your Practice" Handouts
Teacher Testimonials
This training was a life saver!
This course has been immensely valuable to me. As a person who works in the mental health field, I call the PTRP a wheatgrass shot, as it is a condensed boost of all that self-care, mental health training, mindfulness trainings I have learned throughout the years.
School Counselor
Everything I learned in the PTRP can be applied to my teaching and well-being immediately!
I can implement the tools I learned with students, and they would be able to replicate them on their own for their own benefit.
Elementary Teacher
I loved going through the PTRP modules!
This training gave me practical wellness tools that helped me with my stress levels, and it also addresses one to be self-reflective and honest in one's teaching practice to bring about more inclusiveness and equity.
High School Teacher
I found the series to be calming, centering, and hopeful!
I’m interested in this workshop because my husband, who is also a teacher, could not praise it enough for helping him stay in the job.
