5116 - Connection and Calming Strategies for Today's Teachers

Speaker: Susanne Leslie, Professional Learning Specialist

Susanne Leslie: Hi, I'm Susanne and I'm a course designer here at Teaching Channel. Recently, I wrote a course called 5116 Connecting and Calming Strategies for Today's Teachers. And a couple of the takeaways teachers can carry with them include how to manage their psychological response to stress and how to manage the physiological response to stress. So psychologically using strategies like mindfulness and recalibrating negative thoughts into something more positive and then physiologically understanding what's happening physically in our bodies when we're under stress, that fight flight, freeze and fond response that we feel uh and how it starts in our amygdala of our brain. And once we recognize that stress, um understanding what to do with it and then also recognizing that stress is also a positive thing, it keeps us safe and keeps us motivated. Uh so looking at stress from a positive perspective and not just the negative perspective.

Susanne Leslie: Hi. Two things that I love about this course are the ways that it teaches us how connection helps us manage stress. So the more connected we are to one another, it helps us live a happier life and a less stressed life. Uh the other thing that I really like is that it focuses on compassion and uh gratitude and hope and how compassion, gratitude and hope help us manage our stress, so and help us flourish as humans. So when we are living a life that focuses on hope and um looks forward and not backwards, learns from our mistakes. Uh It really helps us live a better life and a less stressful life.