Great website!

Someone just shared a great  website for a place called the The Garrison Institute’s Initiative on Contemplation and Education with me (thank you Jess), that relates to the theme of this blog.  It seems like a educational program for teachers to cultivate resilience factors in order to prevent burnout, facilitate more creative teaching and provide community support for teachers.  I think its a wonderful idea.

Its pretty relevant too.  Last year, I attended an event sponsored through the Ziegler Center at Yale that focused on policies related to children's mental health and pre-school education.  One of the most fascinating things I saw was a study relating pre-school teacher stress to the diagnosis of ADHD in children.  From the preliminary data, it seemed as though there was an inverse correlation between a teacher's level of support and the diagnosis of ADHD given to the children in that class at any point in the future.  Crazy right!  One of the people I was with explained it like this, "if a teacher is distracted and is unable to pay attention to his/her students, it can induce a neurological change in vulnerable children that ultimately leads to ADHD symptomatology."  In other words, when children are taught by unsupported teachers, their brains don't grow well.

This resilience program above might be a really good thing.  If the data above holds up, calm, supported teachers could lead to happier, healthier and more resilient children!