EDUCATING WITH THE HEART!

Director of Sumedha Centre, Dr. Jose Parappully, facilitated a two-day workshop for teachers of Holy Cross Convent School and Junior College at Kalyan, Maharashtra on September 20-21, 2016.

The first day’s workshop was for the teachers of the High School and the Junior College. There were 63 participants.

The second day’s workshop was for the teachers of the primary and the pre-primary schools. There were 32 participants.

The title of the workshop was “Educating with the Heart.”

Parappully, former Vice Principal at Don Bosco School, Calcutta, and a  Clinical Psychologist, used insights from Self-Determination and Self-Psychology theories to emphasize the importance of creating in the school and the classrooms an environment which fosters the fulfilment of basic emotional needs such as for relatedness, competence and recognition and for teachers to be mirroring and idealizable selfobject figures in the lives of students, displaying and modelling character and competence, and capable of healing narcissistic wounding through empathic responsiveness.

Parappully used short films and songs to illustrate the insights from the psychological theories and provided the participants opportunities to reflect on their experiences as teachers and share insights with one another in small and large groups.

Participants of both days reported great satisfaction with the workshop. They found it enriching and inspiring. They were able to introspect on the ways they were relating to their students, recognize their failure to be sensitive to their emotional needs, and inspired to pay greater attention to and respond with greater sensitivity to the needs of the students.

Participants felt that the insights gained through the Workshop will help them not just to teach better but to “educate with the heart” through greater emotional sensitivity and empathic responsiveness.