STLinATL

Goals: This presentation seeks to give an overview, based on my personal experience, on strategies to use to bring SEE learning and a focus on compassion into our teaching by modeling behaviors and sharing stories from our personal lives to enhance what I call the student's HQ (happiness quotient, an area I explore in my Maymester course on "Happiness and Well Being").

Content will largely revolve around first defining "compassion" and why it is needed in the world now more than ever and then, second, asking participants why they teach as a way to get at their core beliefs. I will then collate these core beliefs and compare to my own 9 core beliefs (listed below), which will be displayed in a ppt. I then envision a "roundtable" discussion about how to model/integrate teachers' core beliefs in regards to compassion in the curriculum and how to display them in the classroom.

My core beliefs:
1. Be flexible and courageous/follow your heart
2. Be compassionate/the importance of passion in our lives
3. Be a good person/do the right thing
4. Value friendships
5. Teach how to love as well as how to learn
6. Emphasize long term influence over short term gain
7. Life is about relationships
8. Learn from the past
9. Choose your goals wisely lest you achieve them before age 40 (Dr. James T. Laney, Emory University address)

Takeaways: The main takeaway will be somewhat unconventional. Instead of overloading participants with book and article lists and social media sites, I want to emphasize that the best and often most under-utilized source in this area is YOU!! Know your core beliefs and use those to model compassion, life-long learning, and global citizenship.