Getting Unstuck: Taking Care of the Whole Child – a Conversation with Jocelyne Chirnside
“We’ve got to think: what’s our purpose? Are we educating children to pass the test? Or are we educating them to be ready for life?”
Today on Getting Unstuck
One word kept coming into my mind as we were interviewing today’s guest, Jocelyne Chirnside: passion! Jocelyne is a social and emotional learning consultant, and the developer of “Bridge Builders” - an online program that helps children and adults learn how to manage their emotions and mitigate interpersonal problems. She is also the author of Empowered for Life - a book focused on conflict resolution and reducing bullying.
And she is totally passionate about the work she does and the need for it to become a primary tool in every educator’s toolkit.
Let’s listen in as she explains.
“As a professional, I saw that there was a huge focus on testing and accountability of curriculum. And while we were focusing on important elements of learning, we were missing something that was a really critical part of kids holistic development, and that is their ability to be resilient.”
The Essential Point
This is a rich conversation about the social and emotional needs of children. Standing in the way of their healthy development are a number of obstacles of our own making.
• Primary among them, as educators, we tend to put more emphasis on the standard curriculum and testing than we do on the social and emotional development of children. The danger here from a neuroscience standpoint is that if a child’s emotional needs aren’t supported, they will be challenged in the more traditional aspects of school. Their emotional make-up will act as a filter that impairs or activates their learning.
• We don’t universally educate teachers-in-training on the needs around conflict resolution, and how if unchecked, such conflicts can lead to bullying.
• We don’t routinely understand or take into account how a child’s personal history and memory, and the stories they tell themselves will impact their behavior and learning.
• Teachers and parents don’t have or use a common language about children’s behavior, so it’s rare that they can reinforce each others effort to support children.
“I think we need to build into coaching social emotional skills, the equipping, the encouraging, and the accountability within the school system of how we support teachers, you will only rise as high as the person who flourishes in these skills and you will stay you will struggle as low as the person who flounders with these skills. So your job in changing and supporting teachers in the environment is education is to motivate and encourage the ones that are going to flourish and love this whole social media. motional skills and are your mentors”
For More Information
Empowering Life Skills organization
Empowered for Life book
Bridge Builders program