{"id":5282,"date":"2020-02-04T10:29:41","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T10:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=5282"},"modified":"2021-06-15T16:32:11","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T15:32:11","slug":"teacher-find-your-brave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/teacher-find-your-brave\/","title":{"rendered":"Teacher \u2013 Find your brave!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Wendy Cobb explains how the Faculty of Education is supporting teachers to support emotional health and wellbeing in the classroom.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>The theme for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk\/\">Children\u2019s Mental Health Week <\/a>2020 is \u2018Find your Brave\u2019.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We often associate bravery with lone acts of courage or stoicism in the face of extreme acts of violence, both physical and emotional.&nbsp; Like for instance the many heroic tales we have heard in recent weeks of the survivors of Auschwitz and of the many more who lost their often very young lives. The words \u2018Lonely\u2019 and \u2018brave\u2019 often sit alongside each other in great works of historical literature and cinematography .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Place2B, a national children\u2019s\nmental health charity reminds us that bravery comes in all shapes and sizes and\nis different for everyone.&nbsp; It is not,\nhowever, something that needs to happen alone. \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk\/about-the-week\/\">Bravery can\nbe about sharing worries and asking for help, trying something new or pushing\nyourself outside your comfort zone. Finding your Brave can build your\nconfidence, self-esteem and make you feel good about yourself.\u2019<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong><em>Bravery can be about the little acts we do together that make the world a better place.&nbsp; At the Faculty of Education, those little acts have included an emphasis on sustainability, physical and mental wellbeing and emotional awareness. With the ongoing pressures of accountability within the ever-changing policy context we are constantly uncovering new challenges to the development of positive learning relationships. Yet, slowly and steadily through united acts of bravery we have gathered a network of like-minded people and over several years we have witnessed a significant shift in the dialogue within our teacher education programmes which has begun to position emotional awareness and the development of positive learning relationships more centrally within our courses.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Put simply, what we are talking about is the development of wellbeing though social connectedness, yet sadly some of the current national responses to perceived mental health issues are driving us further apart.&nbsp; We are today in danger of drowning under a plethora of policies and theories that make relatively simple solutions complex, overwhelming and impossibly scary. The media and national policy response to a stated \u2018mental health crisis\u2019 has for too long been largely centred on reactive responses.&nbsp; We now have endless examples available to purchase, sign up for or download of mental health assessments, wellbeing toolkits, and even sample school \u2018stress policies\u2019 which frankly stress us out.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, we lose our brave and cry\nout, \u2018It\u2019s too much, I\u2019m just a teacher, I don\u2019t have what it takes to be a\nsuperhero!\u2019, although of course we often <em>are<\/em>\nheroes in our day-to-day teaching lives. Superhero teachers can change a child\nor adult\u2019s world through a kind word or a compassionate touch; or by simply\nlistening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our charity partners, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.familylinks.org.uk\/what-we-do\">Family Links Centre for\nEmotional Health<\/a>,&nbsp; underpin their\nnurturing programme with a simple set of constructs and emotional health\nbeliefs that support positive classroom relationships. The constructs are not\nthe complete picture, but they are a good place to start.&nbsp; Let\u2019s not make wellbeing harder than it needs\nto be.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, teachers, continue to be\nbrave! But don\u2019t be lone heroes.&nbsp; We all\nneed to connect.&nbsp; After all we are all\nhuman, so we all belong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We<strong><em>ndy Cobb is Senior Lecturer and Emotional Health Project Lead in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.canterbury.ac.uk\/education\/faculty-of-education.aspx\">Faculty of Education<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wendy Cobb explains how the Faculty of Education is supporting teachers to support emotional health and wellbeing in the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":5286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,3902],"tags":[2797,3261,3257,2033],"class_list":["post-5282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-research","tag-childrens-mental-health-week","tag-health-and-wellbeing","tag-positive-learning-relationships","tag-teaching"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Jeanette Earl","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2020\/02\/Childrens-Mental-Health-Week.jpg","postExcerpt":"Wendy Cobb explains how the Faculty of Education is supporting teachers to support emotional health and wellbeing in the classroom.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5282"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7550,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5282\/revisions\/7550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}