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Caring For and Protecting Our Teachers

The influence that a present, compassionate, and kind teacher has a student is profound and long lasting. The research calls this the phenomenon of impact the "turn around teacher."

A healthy, present teacher is intricately connected to creating and maintaining healthy relationships in their calling. Relationships are core to effective teaching, student learning, and teacher mental and psycho-emotional wellbeing.

 

Since our calling as an educator is based on our capacity to create, maintain, and sustain attuned relationships with our students, our relationship with our own mindbodysoul needs to be in-tune.

We need professional development within our system of education that strategically support the educator in not losing themselves as they give of themselves to those in their care. 

The Light You Cast™ for Teachers is designed to meet this need so to:

  • Increase teacher awareness of early (and not so early) warning signs of burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury

  • Increase teacher awareness of protective mental heath practices (grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy) that help the teacher learn how to strategically metabolize the stress of the profession in ways that promotes perspective taking, self-confidence, self-agency, optimism, and hope

  • Increase teachers' repertoire of calming body-movement practices that soothe an over-active mind, calm the nervous system, and diminish the fight, flight, freeze, fawn reaction to stress

  • Protect and stoke the innate teacher dispositions -- compassion, kindness, empathy, unconditional positive regard -- that allow them to deeply connect with the students in their care

Elementary School Teacher

What We Know About
Teacher Burnout

  • We know that teacher quality is the most powerful school-based factor in student learning, yet teachers receive little mental health and social and emotional support or training (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2014).

  • Educators and educational caregivers report feeling unable and ill-equipped to cope with their own stress and trauma reactions to the uncertainty, anxiety, and fear they experience in their calling (Larrivee, 2012). 

  • 6 in every 10 teachers experience job-related stress either "always" or "frequently." Teacher sleep, ability to enjoy time with friends and family, and physical health were negatively impacted by burnout and toxic stress (Education Week).

  • It is estimated that the dis-ease of teacher burnout costs the system $2.2 billion dollars a year, while there are also incalculable costs to the mental, emotional, and psychological health of our teachers.

  • 67% of teachers consider burnout to be a "very serious" issue in 2022 (National Education Association).

  • Unchecked and accumulated stress in one’s professional life can reach a destructive tipping point where what innocuously begins as an “occupational identity crisis” generalizes to the entire self-concept of the teacher (Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999).

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Curriculum

The Light You Cast™ curriculum teaches the science of relationships and is based on:

Healing-Centered Design

Mindfulness

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Social and Emotional Learning Theory

Interpersonal Neurobiology

Trauma-Responsive Care

Attachment Theory

Core Restoration Practices

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The Light You Cast™ trainings guide the teacher through an interactive and engaging experience where they learn the signature core restorative practices of the Burn Clean Cycle of well-being.

REST

Healing Pillar: Regulate Nervous System and Rhythm of the Body

Engage trauma-responsive body-centered practices that teach caregivers how to harmonize, soothe, and regulate their mindbodysoul system. 

RESTORATION
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Healing Pillar: Making Meaning/Integration

Consciously metabolize

 toxic stress into self-confidence, compassion fatigue into unconditional positive regard, and moral injury into agency and purpose.

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REVITALIZATION

Healing Pillar: Connection with Others

 

Cultivate social intelligence, relationship skills, and people sense so to stay out of judgment, recognize the emotions of others, and be in-tune with those in their care.

Core Competencies

All core content sessions are customized to intentionally and scientifically cultivate the core competencies of healthy, present caregivers through our signature Burn Clean Cycle 

 * Soul Health Competencies *

Body trust, self-trust, self-authority, and self-witnessing

 

* Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) *

Self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills,

social awareness

 

* ​Mindful Awareness *

Attention, intention, attitude

 

* Embodied Equity - Resonance *

Other-awareness, perspective taking, truth telling, integrity, unconditional positive regard

Reversing the Burnout Cycle

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Curriculum Elements

The Keynote and each (3 hour)

professional development offering includes

Direct instruction on current, evidence-based foundational knowledge and research about burnout, compassion fatigue, resilience, restoration, and renewal practices.

Put Into Practice training handbook that outlines detailed mindbodysoul application practices to integrate into one's teaching and personal life.

Gentle mindful moment practices that strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system's relaxation response and soothe a busy mind.

Personal reflection and peer connection time that creates space for the individual to create personal connections and meaning.

Keynote

Banishing Burnout
Through Balance and Boundaries
*The ultimate sacrifice, YOU, is not an option.

Middle age woman with grey hair preschool teacher smiling confident standing at kindergart

Teachers are compassionate, kind, generous, and dedicated care givers who have been called to a relationship-based profession.

 

The relationships teachers have with their students are not only core to their sense of purpose, satisfaction, and effectiveness in one's calling, they dramatically influence and impact a teacher's overall sense of self and personal mental and emotional health. 

 

Given that all relationships are a sharing of energy, the primary question we will explore in this keynote is:

How do teachers strategically maintain a sense of balance and inner harmony between the opposing forces of giving of themselves in a care-based profession without losing themselves in the process? 


 

Balance is a state in which opposing forces on an object are harmonized to reach equilibrium, so that the object is stable and not about to fall over.


We need the "opposing forces" of pressure and stress to achieve balance and inner harmony!
 

Our inner system is designed to be beautifully in balance and re-establish its natural set-point of inner harmony when external pressures exert force upon it.
 

In this keynote, teachers will be guided to remember and reconnect with what inner harmony and balance feels like as they discover how to leverage stress as the catalyst to create balance and boundaries that allow them to bring more of their soul into their role.

In this highly engaging and energizing keynote, together we will:
 

  • Explore and experience the 3 R's - REST, RESTORATION, REVITALIZATION cycle of teacher mental, emotional, and soul health (*it is all connected!)

  • Engage and experience trauma-informed mind-body healing practices that calm a busy mind and soothe the nervous system so to relieve anxiety and overwhelm

  • Assess and reconnect with one's core competencies as a teacher: core values, core strengths, and core calling

  • Raise awareness of the (3) stages and manifestations of burnout, secondary trauma, and moral injury and explore the most important awarenesses about the nature of stress

  • Learn and engage our signature Burn Clean CycleTM  for metabolizing stress to stoke mental health, emotional awareness, and self-authority/purpose

  • Explore easy to apply boundary setting techniques that protect the caregivers most important assets- energy, attention, and presence

90 minute - 2.5 hour keynote

$2,500

Choose (4) 3 hour
Core Content Sessions

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Pick 4 core content sessions

All 4 sessions will be customized to strategically interconnect with the keynote and build toward a cohesive curriculum experience

Transforming Time Stress

Managing your energy and not your time

Time stress is the number one stressor for caregivers in relationship-based professions. There is a pervasive sense that there is never enough time. When we feel time-starved as caregivers, we innocently fall into the energetic trap of over-doing or doing more faster. We explore the illusive phenomenon of time stress by focusing our attention on what we can control at any moment in time - our energy. You will learn how to re-fine your relationship to this core trigger by discovering how to strategically create the "slow in the fast" of your caregiving. This training topic metabolizes the dis-ease of low self-efficacy into self-confidence through stoking: Soul Health: Self-Authority Mindfulness: Mind Awareness SEL: Self-Management Embodied Equity: Integrity

Soul Buoys 

The soul of joy and the science of hope

Core to care-giving is joy and hope. If the spaces we create and hold for those in our care are not imbued with joy and hope, we know. They know. As caregivers in relationship-based callings, we must intentionally direct our attention to magnifying the good while we manage the stress. You will discover how to strategically stoke hope and joy as buoys that lift your spirit up when the compression of the stress of the profession pushes down on you. This training topic metabolizes the dis-ease of depersonalization into self-revitalization through stoking: Soul Health: Self-Trust Mindfulness: Emotional Awareness SEL: Responsible Decision Making Embodied Equity: Truth Telling

De-toxing Toxic Stress

Understanding the nature of stress and your relationship to it

Stress is an interesting phenomenon. Some stress is good! Some stress is never good. Some stress comes from outside influences we can control. Some stress comes from outside influences we have no control over. Not to mention, ALL bodies experience “stressful events” very differently depending on how their Soul Distillation System “reads” the stressor. We will gain critical awareness of the difference between natural, care-based stressors that no caregiver can avoid and systemic stressors that are sources of toxic stress that need to be alleviated for the souls called to care-based fields to be well. In this session, we focus our full attention on the spectrum of stress and provide opportunities for caregivers to gain self-stress awareness of how different stressors impact their mindbodysoul system. This training topic metabolizes the dis-ease of low self-efficacy into self-confidence through stoking: Soul Health: Self-Authority Mindfulness: Perceptual Awareness SEL: Self-Management Embodied Equity: Unconditional Positive Regard

Soothing Soul Trauma Releasing pain, shedding shame, re-fining your soul distillation system

Your soul distillation system is as unique as your fingerprint. Critical caregiver well-being is knowing how your mental health is intimately interconnected with your emotional and soul health. This session is all about exploring the origins of stress inducing thought patterns that unconsciously produce shame-based thinking and re-storying those thoughts to be stress reducing, soul soothing beliefs. Core to re-fining your mental and emotional health is understanding how to upgrade your internal belief system to “clean emotional pain” so it does not produce shame and self-doubt. This training topic metabolizes the dis-ease of depersonalization into self-revitalization through stoking: Soul Health: Self-Witnessing Mindfulness: Breath Awareness SEL: Responsible Decision Making Embodied Equity: Truth Telling

The Gentle Power of the Wounded Healer

Cultivating Compassion & Exuding Empathy

The wounded healer is a beautiful and powerful force that is able to connect with others on a deep, emotional level. We explore the wounded healer archetype to nurture and our innate resilience as caregivers. Wounded healers are people whose painful lived experiences enable them to exude empathy, compassion, humility, and a deep commitment to igniting the spark of hope in others. This training topic metabolizes the dis-ease of emotional exhaustion into emotional vitality through stoking: Soul Health: Self-Witnessing Mindfulness: Energy Awareness SEL: Relationship Skills Embodied Equity: Unconditional Positive Regard

Soul Health as the Cornerstone of Social Justice

Soul liberation, social justice, and community healing 

"To work for peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love, because it is there that we can experience firsthand love’s transformative power.” (bell hooks) No human is exempt from experiencing pain and suffering. Our response- ableness as caregivers is to metabolize and clean our inner reactions, pains, and suffering through self-love and self-compassion transform’s stress into energetic fuel that feeds the light of compassion, love, and unconditional positive regard for those in our care. LIBERATION is both an action of healing and an act of justice. In this session, caregivers explore how to mirror their inner soul-justice practices through strategic social justice practices that bring targeted care that addresses the core needs of those who need support the most. This training topic metabolizes the dis-ease of depersonalization into self-revitalization through stoking: Soul Health: Body Trust Mindfulness: Soul Awareness SEL: Social Awareness Embodied Equity: Perspective Taking

The Light You Cast Manifesto

The impact of the light you cast

"As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our PRESENCE automatically liberates others." (M. Williamson) All relationships are a sharing of energy and information (Dan Seigel, Interpersonal Neurobiology). The light you cast, your presence, is the foundation of creating and sustaining healthy relationships. When you are in-tune with your inner systems, you are able to create resonance, being attuned, with those in our care. In this session, caregivers engage the 4 core elements for committing to their commitment to balance their well-beingness with all their doing. This training topic metabolizes the dis-ease of low self-efficacy into self-confidence through stoking: Soul Health: Self Trust Mindfulness: Relationship Awareness SEL: Social Awareness Embodied Equity: Integrity

(4) 3 hour sessions

$2,500 each (3 hour) session

Keynote ~ $2,500 

(4) 3 hour Core Content Sessions ~ $10,000

TOTAL INVESTMENT COST = $12,500

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My husband, who is also a teacher, could not praise the trainings enough for helping him stay in the job. 

Connect with Jen

Please email, call, or book a zoom session should you have any questions about this proposal.

jen.presentwellbeing@gmail.com

415-688-1057

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Jen Clifden, PhD

For more information on any of the professional learning offerings, please reach out to jen.presentwellbeing@gmail.com

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Present Well-Being LLC is a

Certified Equity Vendor for mental and social and emotional learning (SEL) consultation for school districts and mindfulness training for educators and school leaders.

 

State Vendor Number: 0001036635

Primary NAICS Code: 621330

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