In our opinion, as future teachers, working and developing these three points is fundamental. If talking about schools, they doesn’t work with these aspects at all, and if they do, they only focus their attention into corporal health.
So, to know how to work properly with these topics, firstly we must understand their meanings:
Mental health is the balance status between a person and its sociocultural surroundings, that warrantees ones intellectual and working participation, and promotes social relations to achieve a well-being and a good standard of living.
Corporal health is based on physical well-being, taking care about the absence of diseases and infections and the amount of physical activity an individual does.
In addition, social health is the ability that someone has to maintain healthy social relations with the family, friends, neighbours, colleagues, etc.
So, our idea is that, by means of many practices as mindfulness or relaxing techniques, the teacher can help the students to improve these three aspects. There are many objectives we can achieve using this methods at class or at home:
- To be conscious about the body and knowing how to relax it. This point is crucial to keep calm in certain moments of stress like exams.
- To learn how to get over anxiety and tension.
- To recognise good and bad feelings and learn how to balance that emotions.
- To control impulsiveness.
On the other hand, projects such as workshops can stimulate children and, at the same time, could be adjusted to the daily routine of the class, without setting aside the lesson.
Also practising sports is important as we have said. Nevertheless, in our opinion, it still doesn't have the importance it should have.
All these strategies should be improved along our lives, therefore, as teachers, in collaboration with parents, we should be responsibles of initiating this process.
To conclude this entry, we have also done a slideshare where you can find additional information about this topic.
I agree with the post. We are future teachers and we have to consider how to develop all health stages.
ReplyDeleteDespite the fact that this post is for primary school, I agree with you and I think that in Pre-school Education it happens the same thing, it seems that it’s more important the corporal health than the emotional health; but you can’t have a real corporal health if you don’t feel well emotionally.
ReplyDeleteAs future teachers I think that it’s our job that this can change radically. We can work all the aspects without leaving any of side because all of them are important. As it says the famous phrase: Mens sana in corpore sano
I agree with you Maria, and I think that if these methods start since students are in pre-school, maybe parents will ask for it in primary education too and we will teach students to be healthy people in all the aspects of their lives, something that I thik it's very necessary.
ReplyDeleteAndrea and Edu – good work, both of you! As I’m sure you can imagine, I broadly agree with almost all of what you say. Perhaps my only doubt is regarding mental health, which I don’t think is only a matter of social adaptation (if so, what would “mental health” mean, for example, in the context of a Nazi society?) That said, I think this is a very good piece of work, all the more so for being the first!
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