Dr. Jose Parappully, the Director of
Sumedha Centre, facilitated a Workshop for the teachers of St. Theresa Senior
Secondary School, Kathogdam, Nainital, on 29-30, June.
There were about seventy teachers
participating in the Workshop divided into two groups for each day, high school
teachers on the first and the primary teachers on the seconond.
Dr. Parappully organised the Workshop
around the theme “Education of the Heart: Becoming an Emotionally Sensitive
Teacher.” Starting with Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligence,
the Workshop used the concepts of basic emotional needs from Self Determination
Theory and the concepts of Mirroring, Idealising, Narcissistic Wounding
and Empathic Responsiveness from Self Psychology to help the teachers look at
the level of their emotional sensitivity and provided tools and approaches to
enhance it.
On the second day, as most of the teachers
were dealing with very young children, he gave greater importance to attachment
dynamics and styles as presented in Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, and emphasised
the need for teachers to be available, responsive and helpful to children’s
emotional needs, so that they can develop secure attachments that will help
them to explore their environment with confidence and develop as competent
persons.
He used videos and songs related to the
themes to deepen the participants awareness and insights and provided them time
for introspection and interaction. He also used meditation practices and Vedic
mantras to help teachers learn to distress.
In their feedback, the teachers observed
that they found the Workshop very useful, describing it as very “effective,
inspiring, and enjoyable.” It helped them, they said, to become “more sensitive
and responsive” to the students’ needs, and has created in them greater
awareness of the impact their words and behaviour have on students. They found
the Workshop a “a confidence building exercise” in preparation for the new
academic term they begin on July 2.
