Welcome to the first course of our MOOC titled,
The Teacher and Social and Emotional Learning from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
This first module was titled,
The Teacher's Social and Emotional Learning.
I'm Dan Liston and with my colleague Randy Testa.
We'll provide an overview of module one's themes,
readings and learning activity,
by posing this central question: why
focus on the teacher's social and emotional learning?
We're going to examine the rationale for
the following claim which comes from the writing of Arthur Jersild.
"To facilitate students' social and emotional learning,
a teacher must know the pupil as a person.
This means that the teacher must strive to know him or herself."
Today, we're going to elaborate on the importance of the teacher's understanding of self;
especially one's on social and emotional terrain.
Our guiding premise here is that
deeper teacher self-understanding facilitates deeper student relations,
and greater chances for the transformative possibilities for teachers and students.
Randy has a mini-presentation to tease out the origins of these premises.
It concerns Sigmund Freud's daughter,
Anna, and her work with little children.
Take it away Randy.
Anna Freud was the youngest child of Sigmund and Martha Freud.
As a young adult in 1918,
she entered analysis with her father.
And by 1922, she had become a full fledged member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
Anna Freud made her father's profession her own and child analysis her specialty.
Anna Freud wrote a very important book titled,
Psycho-Analysis for Teachers and Parents,
first published in 1935.
In it, Miss Freud took her father's central analytic premises and apply them to teaching.
She attempted to explain to educators how and why
psychoanalysis could help teachers better their work with children.
In particular, it was the idea of transference,
that is, the unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another.
In the case of psychotherapy,
from patient to therapist,
and in the classroom,
from children to their teachers;
which when applied to education was of such importance.
The corollary to transference, countertransference,
refers to the unconscious transference of
feelings from the therapist to patient and in schools,
from teacher to student.
In Psycho-Analysis for Teachers and Parents,
Miss Freud gives concrete examples of how
transference and countertransference play themselves out in classrooms.
Miss Freud's genius is a careful explanation of a stunningly simple truth.
"The deepest impulses driving children's responses to their teachers,
and teachers' responses to the children in their charge are unconscious-
which is to say,
unknown to them both − unless teacher or child undergo
a certain kind of inner work whereby unconscious motivations are made conscious."
Unfinished business we have with people from our past plays itself out in the
present with people who remind us of those with whom we have this unfinished business.
The idea of teachers becoming more aware of their emotions and
perhaps unconscious motivations underlies this course.
We're not suggesting that you need to go into Freudian or any other kind of
psychological analysis but we do hope you'll see
the need for a greater awareness of your personal emotional terrain.
We begin here because we've noticed an irony,
a tendency in the ready-made social and emotional learning programs
to overlook the social and emotional well-being of teachers.
Absent are the materials to help teachers
understand and modulate their inner responses to
their students before beginning the work
of social-emotional learning on behalf of their students.
Two readings and a video will elaborate these ideas.
Both Randy and I have found Arthur Jersild's chapters rich and engaging,
and Tish Jenning's essay timely.
Here's an excerpt from Teacher's College Record Obituary of Arthur Jersild.
"Arthur Jersild was a developmental psychologist who spent decades
studying the ways in which schools can foster self-awareness in children and teachers.
One study, involving interviews with 3,000 students ranging from fourth grade to college,
revealed that children have more self-awareness than is commonly perceived.
Jersild discovered that students had a great deal of
common understanding in matters pertaining to their own character traits,
their emotional tendencies and feelings about other people."
Here's a quote from Arthur,
"The little child knows what it is like to have his feeling hurt,
to be sad or to be disappointed with
as much the same basic meanings as are experienced by the post-graduate student."
Jersild also urged that teacher preparation programs should
help teachers face their own conflicts and anxieties.
His analysis of teacher's self-understanding in his book,
'When Teachers Face Themselves,'
was published in 1955 by Teachers College Press.
Now, why are we starting off with material from the
1930's and 50's as well as material from this decade?
The reason is actually pretty simple.
These are foundational writings and
their authors speak truths about teachers and teaching.
Teaching is emotional labor and it is high time we recognize that.
For more than 80 years,
thoughtful teachers have said so.
Now, it is time to MOOC it.
And we don't expect you to agree with everything you read or view in this MOOC.
But we do hope that you will find yourself challenged to think,
feel and respond to the ideas and sentiments expressed.
So with that in mind, off we go.
For the first learning activity,
we'll ask you to consider what insight and understanding you might need
in order to teach well and champion the students in your charge.