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The background:
When I first started teaching I had no idea what I was doing. Seriously! Major thanks to my last high school teacher who invited me to be her studio assistant. She let me be a “practice partner” at summer camp, studio class assistant and group class teacher. She eventually sent me students when her studio was full. Since then I’ve studied different teachers and their methods, read lots of books, and taught classes, camps, private lessons, etc. I got two collegiate degrees! I received a lot of great teaching on how to teach, on what to teach, communication, studio policies and more. In all that time I never encountered teaching on how to help students navigate their own emotions. I’m still looking!
2019-2020 I had started casually looking into emotional and mental health for personal reasons. As I learned about emotional regulation, I began wondering if this was what was missing from my teaching. I had a few students struggling to engage in practice and lessons due to life events or the emotional trials of growing up. I couldn’t figure out how to “reach” them. Was learning to release pent up emotions from the body part of I needed to teach these students so they could play?
The result:
Due to the covid-19 pandemic my lessons were moved from in person to all virtual. Like many, my mental health nose-dived and all my students crashed into the wall of virtual learning. So, I started asking my students how they were really doing and didn’t try to talk them into better moods. I incorporated more movement in lessons to relax our bodies or focus our minds. I started using “box breaths,” a breathing technique I learned from my therapist, in lessons. That was when I started seriously researching emotional intelligence – I knew someone out there had to know more about this than I did. And I was right!
That’s why I’ve started creating these different emotional intelligence support pages. I wish I had known things like “feelings checks” and had known how to incorporate them into my teaching at an earlier age. I’ve found inspiration for making them from researching socio-emotional intelligence online, talking with my sister-in-law who is a music therapist and following a number of mental health professionals on social media. As I learn more I plan on making increasingly more specific pages for teachers, parents and students that they can use in lessons and practice sessions.
If you are someone who has more experience in this field or who is interested in talking about this subject please comment below or send me an email!