The 60 minutes workshop will give participating educators a peak into my classroom Mental Health practices as an educator who teaches engineering students courses of Soft Skills. The workshop is a blend of knowledge sharing, perspective shifting and introducing and practicing practical strategies that any educator can introduce in their classroom, and help their students talk about, but also cater for their mental health.
The workshop is structured to highlight the importance of integrating mental health activities and awareness strategies in the classroom, and invites educators to practice some of these activities, and reflect on how they can integrate them into their classroom teaching. The first part of the workshop is an icebreaker where educators are invited to pick one emption, via a zoom poll, that often shows up in their classrooms, or an emoji in the chat. This activity will create a bounding experience for empathic educators and connect over the real human experiences of their students that can be invisible, and might make learning harder if not addressed. The second activity of the workshop will invite participants to engage in an honesty exercise, where they have to use an anonymous Padlet to share one challenge they think their students are going through, and one thing they wish their students knew about them, as their educator. This activity invites educators to engage in an empathic, but also vulnerable exercise that can remind educators that both parties do carry weight, and that needs to be kept in mind as they navigate mental health awareness in their classrooms. The third part of the workshop is a mini talk, chat reflections, where participants share their observations and context and what they noticed among their students, and what could be the causes. This sections is going to be facilitated using promoting questions to simplify and structure the discussion. Participants are then introduced to activities they can try with their students like mood mapping, pause and process or journaling prompts. One of these activities, depending on the time left, will be practiced and debriefed as a demo. Educators are invited to rework a lesson plan or classroom activities to include a mental health exercise through brainstorming in breakout rooms. This segment is eld by questions such as where could I pause for an emotional check in? how do I normalize conversations around mental health? etc. The session ends with a reflection circle where educators are invited to share one practice they will try next week/ month/ start of academic year in their classrooms.
Please click on the facilitator’s name in the session info to view their bio.
This session will be recorded and shared on the website and on our YouTube channel
