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MD - Mindfulness and SPHE

Enhancing both student and teacher well-being.

About the Course

Mindfulness – the word on everybody’s lips. Join us this Autumn to discover the essence of mindfulness and prepare to make it part of your own life and the lives of your students. Add a real 21st Century dimension to your SPHE lessons. Engage in and experience some guided mindfulness practices, prepare to integrate it into your SPHE lessons, and acquire some great child friendly mindfulness exercises to explore with your class next year. Future historians may well decide that the introduction of mindfulness to the Western world was one of the most significant events of the early 21st Century. Help make history. Join and drive the revolution!

NOTE:

The online format of this course enables you to study at a time and place that best suits your own needs.

You can access your course anytime until March 31st 2024.

Within this highly interactive web based course, a dynamic learning experience awaits, where you can interact with your fellow course participants through the in-course chat forums and communication tools provided by the CPD College learning system.

Our friendly and knowledgeable tutors actively support each course, providing expert interaction, guidance and feedback for all participants on chat questions and assignments which call for critical reflection, self-analysis and a reasoned response. 

On successful completion of your course, you can download and print off your CPD record and certificate of completion.

We look forward to welcoming you to your course.

Learning outcomes

This course aims to:

  • Identify the benefits of a mindfulness approach to the S.P.H.E. curriculum and utilise mindfulness as a means of engaging with and delivering on the objectives and content of SPHE programme.
  • Equip teachers with the knowledge and skills to practice mindfulness in their own lives in order to organise and arrange objective based mindfulness practices for their children as an inherent part of S.P.H.E.
  • Source and utilise guided mindfulness practices.
  • Create opportunities to help children recognise and manage feelings and emotions, to develop self-confidence and a positive self-esteem, to manage anger, conflict and self.
  • Create objective based, structured S.P.H.E. lesson plans and utilise every opportunity to integrate with literacy e.g. SPHE Word Walls, talking about feelings in contexts, writing a letter to a bully, exploring emotions through poetry, reading stories to explore relationships etc.
  • Teach a range of methods for counteracting the stress response in the body through the experience of relaxation using techniques such as mindfulness.
  • Look at, review and score one’s own ‘Teacher Practice in SPHE’ as part of the SSE process.
Modules
01 -  What is mindfulness? We explore mindfulness in detail, we identify and itemise its benefits and its essential qualities. 
02 -  Mindfulness and education: The role of mindfulness in education and the powerful impact it can have within the objectives of the SPHE curriculum.  How mindfulness can help us to support the holistic development of children. 
03 - Teaching mindfulness: To teach, we must become practitioners. We present a series of mindfulness exercises and lessons that can be taught in our classes. 
04 -  Happiness: Exploring the state of happiness, the chemistry behind it and how mindfulness can help. 
05 -  Managing and dealing with stress: How we can cope with stress and teach others how to cope with the help of mindfulness. 

The Journey Ahead

We invite you now to take time to be still, to be quiet and to reflect a moment on the following thoughts, just a small taster of the wealth of what follows in the course itself:

LISTENING WELL: much of the time our minds tend to drift freely from thought to thought, which can compromise our enjoyment of passive pursuits, especially those involving listening, or being a spectator. As a corrective exercise, tune into a radio station that is playing songs. Take a couple of songs at random and concentrate on the words. Think of the singer's situation. Enact in your mind the story implied. This is a simple exercise in focus, and a good antidote to mild anxieties.

THE ART OF NO: there are two sides to living in the moment. One is to see and take the best opportunities that present themselves to you. The other is to say no to any invitation or request that seems to mitigate against the values and goals that you have set yourself – of course, this does not mean saying no to people who ask for favours or support. Resolve to decline time wasting distractions and dangerously seductive temptations. Say yes to the good life and no to all its pale imitations.

SWEET SMELLS: scientists believe that our emotional reaction to certain scents may be related to the close connection of the olfactory organs and our limbic system, which controls instinctive behaviour. Capitalise on the power of scents by using evocative fragrance in your home, in your classroom, - buy or gather fresh, sweet scented flowers, or bake a cake redolent of spices, or experiment with different types of incense. Smell is a beautiful territory within the realm of the senses.

QUIET THE MONKEY: doing too many things at once disperses your energy, creating a state known as “monkey mind”: your consciousness resembles a restless monkey, jumping from branch to branch. Inwardly, watch your shifting mind for a few moments. Then focus on a specific mental task or topic with full concentration. The monkey will be still – at least for a while.

………….. and there is a rich bounty of wonderful insight and inspiration, focus & relaxation items, and more, all signposted for your MINDFULNESS journey with us this Autumn.

'This course did far more than meet my expectations. This course should be obligatory for all school staff. I have thoroughly enjoyed the course. It has given me plenty food for thought! That sounds ironic but I was aware of these thoughts! Seriously, this course has impacted my life in a very big way. I have shared videos with my mother and friends and neighbours. It has helped each and every person address issues without ever having to speak in depth about them. I can't thank you enough for designing such an interesting, helpful and life changing course.' - Treasa, 2020