Social-Emotional Learnings And Mindfulness Are Backing Up The Mental Health Of TEFL Teachers
27th March 2024
A day as a teacher has never been smooth enough to glide freely. From classroom management to focusing on relationship skills with students, many stress factors work in a teacher’s life. They often practice meditation and therapy to release the hectic toxins from their minds but honestly, that is not enough.
Teachers who have pursued 120-hour TEFL courses online have shared how social-emotional learning (SEL) has helped them in meditation practices. Mindfulness and social-emotional learning is not just social awareness but help teachers with TEFL jobs to remain calm and composed even during the most distorted period.
TEFL teachers who move abroad to teach English as a foreign language to a culturally diverse batch have to keep multiple things in mind before entering a classroom. Irrespective of a monolingual or multilingual batch, there are bound to be cultural differences between teachers and ESL students. From food habits to language a major difference between TEFLers and students, there are multi factors because of which teachers undergo severe burnout.
Source: teach.com
Mindfulness, meditation, and SEL programs come into the picture at that moment. These practices help in the professional development of teachers and encourage them to live in the present moment rather than worrying about what is there down the line. TEFL/TESOL courses have always preached the utilities of these aspects so that the success rate of teachers does not get diminished owing to mental and physical stress.
Social-emotional support for teachers has always been practical. Why?
Before we jump into the reason why social-emotional learning and mindfulness have been extremely beneficial for teachers to maintain the sanity of their mental as well as physical health, let us discuss what these two things are.
According to The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), social-emotional learning is a path or an approach using which human beings control their emotions and never lose focus on their goals. By practicing SEL they become empathetic and show empathy for others, build meaningful relationships and maintain those positively, and make decisions based on their analytical and problem-solving skills.
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There are 5 core principles of SEL: Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
Mindfulness refers to the mental strength where people pay attention to what is happening in the present without being judgemental. The prime significance of mindfulness is that it helps human minds to see the world transparently. During the utmost critical phases, mindfulness helps people to remain calm by filtering out the toxic stimuli that act as inhibitors to mental health.
3 major impacts of practicing mindfulness on human beings are gathering attention, improving focus, and managing stress.
Mindfulness is different from meditation and it can be performed anywhere. It checks the entire emotion regulation process and helps to unfold moment-to-moment experiences. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is a psychotherapy that combines cognitive therapy, meditation, and the cultivation of a present-oriented, non-judgmental attitude called mindfulness.
Let’s see how SEL and mindfulness are supporting TEFL teachers:
This figure above states how SEL and mindfulness are helping TEFL teachers to throw toxicity, anxiety, lethargy, etc., away from themselves. Tackling students whose language, culture, food habits, rituals, customs, etc., are different is quite a stressful job. TEFL teachers always gather information while traveling to a new destination but we all know that theoretical knowledge is way lesser than practical experiments.
Learning the basic language of a country (beginner lever) is cool but when students speak their native language among themselves and the teacher is struggling is decode that, it is indeed a pathetic scene. Such cases cause extreme burnout and above all, home sickness is a dangerous thing. Staying away from family is not everybody’s cup of tea but for the sake of a career, many travels abroad leaving behind their families.
This picture below shows that teachers get stressed out not due to traveling but while online teaching as well.
Source: frontiersin.org
To help them, SEL and mindfulness are always there. If you’re a TEFL aspirant and pursuing the 120-hour TEFL course online, you must be aware of global English teaching opportunities. You can now travel and make your pocket hefty! Reach out at 1800-212-6400 and talk to our experts regarding your TEFL dreams and aspirations. Learn more about job opportunities, visas, classroom management, internationally accredited certifications, the career prospect of a TEFL-certified candidate, and so on!
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