Education Scotland, the national body for supporting quality and improvement in learning and teaching, has unveiled a new resource called The Compassionate & Connected Classroom.
It’s been designed to support the mental wellbeing of upper primary pupils who are coping with trauma and to build teachers’ confidence to explore these issues.
It’s hoped the themed literature, which is available online to download, will help kids appreciate that adversity and trauma really can happen to anyone – and fully understand the possible impact it’s having on their wellbeing.
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Another aim is to allow youngsters to develop compassion, empathy and tolerance in their own relationships with others.
They will also learn they have the right to be protected and supported by the adults in their lives.
Ultimately, it should provide them with long-term strategies and personal coping skills to help deal with the challenges they will inevitably face in life and develop their own resilience.
But it’s not only the kids who will be learning to be compassionate and to connect with others.
Teachers and parents, too, will be helped by the programme to recognise the importance of positive, nurturing relationships – strong links that protect children from the impact of trauma.
If you’re hoping to grow your own career in education with a new role from s1jobs, there are many ways to harness the power of compassion in the classroom.
As with most successful learning strategies, it all begins with one simple act: being a good role model.
No matter if they’re five or fifteen, kids are constantly watching their teacher and by showing politeness, patience and understanding for all of the people you interact with you’re setting a tone and a standard that encourages empathy.
You can also create opportunities for collaboration between the kids by developing group projects in the classroom. This allows them to work together, share tasks, and understand one another’s strengths and weaknesses – without judging! – and ultimately underlines how partnerships lead to better outcomes.
A teacher can also explain how a character in a story might be feeling to get their youngsters thinking about a situation from the perspectives of others.
And, where appropriate, these stories could be from their own lives in order to connect to the children on a more personal level. An empathetic teacher is, after all, a human one.
Compassion and connectivity enables teachers and children to learn and grow intellectually, socially and emotionally together.
If you’d like to be part of a process that helps both youngsters and adults to thrive, why not look at the Education/Teaching vacancies on s1jobs?