Search inside yourself

I have attended an online webinar with Six Seconds that explained the meaning of searching inside oneself. Main points discussed were mindfulness, self awareness and emotional intelligence.

Search inside yourself is a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence program for leaders. This program was worked out by the founder of search inside yourself Chade-Meg Tan.

Mindfulness studies have been embedded in many universities. The aim behind this program is to help people to optimize emotional competencies to be more happy.

Chade-Meg Tan says that mindfulness should no longer be considered a 'nice-to-have' for executives. Its a 'must-have': a way to keep our brains healthy, to support self-regulation and effective decision-making capabilities, and to protect ourselves from toxic stress.

Moreover Jon Kabat-Zinn says that mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.

The presenter Robert Chender  mentioned evidence-based benefits of mindfulness training such as: enhanced self awareness, cognitive flexibility, emotion regulation, decreased stress and anxiety, enhanced focus, greater insight and innovation, empathy and compassion, increased working memory and attention, clearer perception, better decision making and better overall health and well being.

He also summarized what Salovey and Mayer say about emotional intelligence, its the ability to monitor one's own and other's feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions.

Robert Chender mentioned 5 different levels or kinds of emotional intelligence:

1- Self-awareness;knowing oneself emotions

2- Self- management(self-regulation);ability to manage one internal stage

3- Motivation

4- Empathy; awareness of others emotions

5- Leadership(social skills)

Then he mentioned the benefits of developing emotional intelligence:

1- Performance;who monitors his feelings and emotions is able to perform more.

2- Outstanding leadership; who understands others emotions are more effective.

3- Happiness; who controls his emotions is usually happy.

So both mindfulness and emotional intelligence includes self- awareness and the speaker said that self-awareness is a skill that can be developed and he said that its very important to have it, since it is a part of our emotional intelligence and being mindful.

The process of mindfulness practice:

The speaker also mentioned practices that someone can do in order to help their brains stay healthy, increase their self-regulation and decision-making capabilities, and to protect themselves from toxic stress.

1- One daily activity in mindfulness:walking to work, brushing teeth, eating( practice the mindfulness process in such tasks)

2- Practice 10 minutes each morning

3- Pause, pay attention,reflect

4- Attention at meetings, e-mail, conversation

5- Mindful practice

Importance of Cooperative Learning

Research has shown the importance implementing cooperative learning in the classroom. so researchers say when you implement cooperative learning in your classroom obviously there will be higher self esteem, retention and higher achievement in your classroom. Students are more motivated and more on task. There will be greater social support and greater level of higher level of reasoning. moreover there will be more positive psychological adjustments in your students, so they feel more safe and they are able to adapt. Well through my experience in cooperative learning as a student, I can tell that i really was able to realize the value of cooperative learning and there was a chance for me to reach and experience all the mentioned points that are agreed on by researchers. More important advantages of cooperative learning in a classroom I want to highlight are:

1- increased responsibility, so each student is dependent on himself and he feels responsible for the group success. 

2- saving time, so you can achieve the task faster.

3-leadership, all student can experience leadership

I personally as a student I enjoy and really love cooperative learning because it breaks the routine of daily individual work that dominates in most schools and it makes students more engaged and motivated. As a future teacher I will make my students have a chance to experience cooperative learning whenever its possible.

Teache'rs Day

Teaching is not an easy job, it requires a lot of patience. The teacher should have a kind of passion for teaching in order to succeed, without this passion her life and the life of her students becomes miserable. Students love the teacher who cares for them and for their feelings, they love the teacher who respects their knowledge and experiences. They love the teacher who is real and who is ready to talk about her experiences. More over they love the teacher who acknowledges them and treats them as individual human beings. So if you are really planning to become a successful teacher, try to acquire such traits and characteristics that students like their teacher to have and try to have passion for teaching and to be a patient one.

So Happy Teachers Day to all great teachers around the world.