Empower yourself with Self-compassion: a guide for teachers

Self-compassion for teachers 

It is true that the teaching profession attracts generous people. Teachers are generous with their time, dedicating extra hours to planning, marking and creating to make their students enjoy classes and learn in the best way possible. Teachers are generous with their colleagues, often helping to share materials, bring in cakes and biscuits to the staff room, and attend meetings after hours. Teachers are also generous with parents, taking the time to help them to understand more about their child’s progress. Yet, many teachers are not generous to themselves – they easily get stressed out, blame themselves if a lesson doesn’t quite go as planned, focus so much on their profession that their personal lives can be negatively affected. This is why, on this ‘Teacher’s Day’ on 27th November, I would like for teachers to think about, and then hopefully practice, self-compassion. 

What is self-compassion? 

When a family member, friend or colleague goes through a tough moment in life and you feel nothing but a sense of concern, and wanting to help and support that person, this is showing compassion, not judgement or pity. Self-compassion is to direct that love towards yourself when you face similar hurdles, rather than being angry at yourself, telling yourself off or feeling inadequate. It also involves facing the problem and the feelings involved, rather than ignoring it or burying it inside yourself where it will eat away at your self-confidence and sense of worth and will likely manifest itself later as anger. 

Why is it important? 

Living a life where your inner critic’s voice is the dominant voice is not a nice way to live! Nobody would choose that, and yet so many of us fixate on the negatives, rather than the positives. For example, if we had a good day at school and then one thing went wrong, we would fixate on that one thing rather than remembering all the good that had come before or after it. Such thinking can out us into a bad mood, cause anger, depression or a feeling of wanting to give up. It is interesting to note is that students are very perceptible to how their teacher is feeling, and it has implications for their learning. A study carried out by Moskowitz & Dewaele, 2019 showed that how students perceived the contentment of their teacher was directly and positively linked to their attitude, motivation and relationship with their teacher. If we can practice self-compassion, we will directly be able to help our students learn better. 

Self-compassion stages 

Self-compassion has been theorised to have three components, each with a positive pole and a negative pole: 

  1. Self-kindness versus self-judgement. This is where you would talk to yourself as if you would a student – you acknowledge a mistake for what it is but do not let something that happened consume you.
  2. Common humanity versus isolation. This is connected to the common phrase: ‘a problem shared is a problem halved.’ By seeking out people to socialise with and talk to, you can be reassured and be helped but keeping away from people will only put the problem front and centre of your thoughts. 
  3. Mindfulness versus over-identification. This is where being calm and centred is better than over-dramatising a problem, thus letting it consume you. 

 How can I start to be more self-compassionate? 

It is really difficult to change deeply rooted habits, and to be self-compassionate is to start a long process of change, but one that is really worth it. There are great books and courses on mindfulness and self-compassion that you can read and attend that will offer you much better insight and help than I can write in this blog. However, if you want to start right away, here are some practical tips to begin with: 

  1. When you make a mistake, talk to yourself as you would a friend – be compassionate, rational and kind. I often find talking aloud if I can’t find a friend lets those emotions out into the universe and I can vocalise my what-ifs and doubts to help myself to rationalise what happened, rather than let it be emotion-driven.
  2. Breathe. Breathing in for 5 second and out for 10 seconds helps the oxygen get to the brain, the adrenalin to calm down and I can process things much more calmly, rather than over-identify (see step 3 above).
  3. When you leave the classroom, say out loud to yourself one thing that you were happy with or grateful for that day to focus the attention, rightly, on the good aspects. You can also write this thought down in a diary and then you can have a collection of good memories of the school year. This can also help you to write nice reports too at the end of term as you have a record of some great things achieved in class. 
  4. Do something active. Doing sport (don’t groan!) truly does help. It doesn’t have to be a marathon but getting off the bus two stops earlier and power-walking home gets the stress out, the endorphins up and you feel much better. 
  5. Seek out people to feel better – have a coffee, play board games, go for dinner. Get distracted, and as time passes, you’ll see it wasn’t that bad whatever was causing you stress.  

 

Why we should develop Emotional Intelligence in our students

Creativity

With all of the demands on us as teachers to help our students improve their English we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that language is not the only thing going on in our classrooms.  As important as improving students’ linguistic competences is, we know we are also getting them ready for using that language in the real world.  And take a look around – the world is a pretty chaotic place (VUCA if you will) which can put a strain on the most resilient of us.  Though no one is asking us to be professional psychologists, taking into account some of the principles of the Emotional Intelligence movement is a good idea if we want to help our students become happy, productive and resilient in addition to linguistically proficient members of society.

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Five things to love about teaching English

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No two people have quite the same experience of teaching English.  My own history includes mostly private sector teaching to adults and teens (so this post might not reflect your situation exactly).  But regardless of the context you teach in, many of us, and this is undoubtedly true of any profession, might get to a time when we question why it is that we are doing it, or maybe we forget why we got into it in the first place.

For native speakers there is the added “I’m JUST an English teacher” issue to face as well, as in: I’m JUST teaching something that I didn’t have to put any real effort into learning myself, or Am I JUST taking the easiest option?  Shouldn’t I be more of a go-getter in world of increasing “go-getting.”  I would bet that this thought has crossed the minds of a fair number of you out there.  Perhaps if you are a NNS (non-native speaker) of English you haven’t had this same feeling, and the things listed below are somewhat more obvious to you.  If so, scream and shout about them!  Kick up a fuss about your profession!  And get your colleagues stoked about their job!  Because there are a great many things to love about being “just” an English teacher.

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3 ways to bring assessment for learning into your classroom

rocketWe all want our students to become more independent and responsible for their learning, but this won’t happen without the right support. Enter assessment for learning! As opposed to assessment of learning (think end of term exams, categorisation of students, awarding a number), assessment for learning sees learning as a journey: what does my student know, where are they going, what do they need to get there? Let’s look at three simple ways that good teachers employ assessment for learning.  

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ACEIA 2016, Seville: a resounding success!

Over 700 enthusiastic teachers from all over Europe attended the ACEIA 2016 conference in Seville on Saturday 12 November.

Antonia plenary

Under the banner ‘Creative Minds Inspire,’ the event was headlined by Pearson’s Antonia Clare, one of the award-winning authors of Speakout 2nd edition, with her inspirational plenary session ‘Language, Learning and the Creative Mind.’ Antonia examined the ways in which learning a language is in itself such an inherently creative task and looked at how to engender creativity, both on the part of the learner but also on the part of the teacher.

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Looking for a lesson idea? Try Cockney Rhyming Slang!

Bus London - Cockney Rhyming Slang

Would you Adam and Eve it? The trouble and strife’s on the custard and jelly!

To the uninitiated, and almost certainly to most Americans, such a phrase sounds like gibberish, but your average Brit would understand the expression of disbelief (Adam and Eve: believe) that his wife (trouble and strife) was on the telly (custard and jelly), slang in itself for TV. Welcome to the world of Cockney Rhyming Slang!

Where is Cockney Rhyming Slang from and how does it work? Continue reading

Famous English teachers

Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Bronte

Picture the scene. You’re teaching a class of rowdy eleven and twelve year-olds, trying desperately to elicit some vocabulary or practise a grammar point. New to young learner classes, you haven’t quite got a handle on discipline yet and are worried that the restlessness bubbling away in front of you might at any second boil over into chaos. Left to their own devices – for example, should you to need dash off to the staff room for a set of photocopies – you’re worried your charges will run amok, un-taming the classroom and turning it into something out of Lord of the Flies. You might, at just such a moment, be sorely tempted to change career. If so, then there’s a veritable list of former English teachers in whose footsteps you might want to follow. One of them was the author of Lord of the Flies himself, William Golding. It was his experience of teaching English to unruly boys at an all-boys school in Salisbury, England, combined with the horrors he had witnessed in the Second World War, which inspired him to write his famous dystopian novel. Continue reading

Achieving universal primary education

IMG_3822 (1)In the year 2000, the United Nations Millennium Summit established eight goals for improving the lives of the millions around the world suffering poverty, hunger, disease and the effects of environmental degradation. Thousands of NGOs and civil society organisations took part in the process that drew up these Millennium Development Goals, and every single UN member nation (189 at the time) committed to achieving them by 2015.

Goal 2 was to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

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To La Rioja with love :)

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of collaborating with La Rioja region.

The Department of Educational Innovation has included a blended course of CLIL methodology addressed to all the teachers interested in implementing bilingualism in their classes (or already implementing it!). Continue reading