Sumedha Outreach –Thailand 2018. 3. TEACHERS’ PROGRAMME: MEDITATIVE PRACTICES AND SELF-AWARENESS

The third invited programme that Dr. Jose Parappully, Director of Sumedha Centre conducted in Thailand this year was at Bangkok, the capital city.

It was for the teachers of the Holy Infant Jesus Convent School on 16^th February. Seventeen  teachers including the Manager of the School, Sr. Jane, participated.

The programme focused on personal growth of the teachers and was entitled: “Enhancing Personal and Professional Efficacy Through Meditative Practices and Self-Awareness.”

Keeping with the topic time was devoted to learning and practicing Meditation and Meditative Prayer, especially Centering Prayer, and growing in Self-Awareness through reflection on one’s life journey with the help of the video film “River Mee.”

A fourfold approach of Input, Introspection, Interaction and Intercession was followed.

Participants recognized the necessity of taking quiet time for themselves in their busy day for personal and professional effectiveness. They found Meditation and Centering Prayer very useful tools.

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.

TEACHERS’ WORKSHOP St Theresa Senior Secondary School, Kathgodam

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.