EIS Health and Wellbeing Event - 30 April 2016

Supporting the Social and Emotional Wellbeing of Lecturers and Teachers

Dundee and Angus College, Gardyne Campus
Saturday 30 April 2016

Description of the event:

The event at Dundee and Angus College is centred on lecturers and teachers and offers a range of workshops that will support their social and emotional wellbeing. 

The Curriculum for Excellence rightly places the health and wellbeing of our learners centre stage, acknowledging the role that wellbeing plays in the learning process. 

However, in this new holistic approach to learning and teaching, teachers’ wellbeing is often overlooked.

Evidence strongly suggests that learning how to enhance our social and emotional skills can help teachers remain well, balanced, and healthy while avoiding bad stress and burnout. 

Let’s put that into practice and have some fun doing so.

The event will feature a keynote from Larry Flanagan, EIS General Secretary.

The workshops are now finalised and a list of the workshops available are included in the list below.

Workshops:

1. Building Your Resilience

We all experience ups and downs in life, times of light and times of shade, and dappled times when the two are intermixed.

This workshop gives you practical tips on how to build your personal resilience, so you can roll with the punches better, learning not to take things too personally. 

We will explore the attitudes which characterise resilient people and how you can develop these, if you wish.

Facilitated by Rachel Weiss

2. Alleviating Stress at Work through Self-Awareness

• How does playing to our strengths on a daily basis keep our stress levels low?
• What if we all played to our strengths in the workplace?

Facilitated by Maggie Clark

3. Embodied Awareness

This workshop will enable one to become more attentive of sensations and dynamic posture.

Exercises will be gentle and designed to guide your attention into how your embodiment is feeling in terms of tension, heat and habits. 

We may explore some breathing exercises, as well as walking, sitting, and reactions to others’ presence. Some light stretching and relaxation will also be explored. These exercises will enhance your self-awareness which is a key social and emotional skill.

There is no fitness level required and the session is open to all.  Wear loose, comfortable clothing if you wish to attend this workshop.

Facilitated by Lee Lappin

4. Mindfulness: A Key Social and Emotional Skill

This session will briefly explore what social and emotional skills are and how they can support teachers in their emotional labour. 

Mindfulness is a practice that can help us become more aware of our emotional states, build more positive relationships with students and colleagues and simply to slow down. 

We will explore the latest fascinating scientific research, a number of short practices and the underlying tenets of mindfulness. 

You will be provided with many follow up resources and options for further study, so you can continue with your own practice once you are inspired!

Facilitated by Susan McAvoy to view Susan's presentation from the day please click here