Serving your students starts with
taking care of their most important asset: YOU
 
Perhaps you’ve heard or felt this, but aren’t sure where to start or how to keep it going. The Radiant Educator is designed not only to revitalize you in the moment, but also to empower you with practices to sustain your health and energy throughout the year, helping you flourish as a teacher and as a person. All of us—teachers and students alike—are bombarded by sources of stress and distraction. In this two-day experience you will learn how to foster calmness, focus, and connection in yourself and your students, promoting rich learning as well as deep engagement, energy, and joy.
 
IN THIS WORKSHOP YOU WILL . . .
- Deepen your emotional intelligence to help you stay balanced and energized throughout the year
- Use mindful practices such as visualization, light yoga, and forest therapy to amplify your self-care toolbox
- Experience brain breaks and quick activities that boost energy and engagement
- Harness the power of your voice to capture attention and maximize your vocal health and longevity
- Learn to move your body in ways that promote alert calmness for your students and you
- Craft a personal and powerful vision to guide your next school year
 
WHEN
Summer 2020
WHERE
TBA
HOW MUCH
TBA
YOUR FACILITATORS
We have spent the last fifteen years learning to apply our experiences in K-16 education, coaching, acting, yoga, mindfulness, dance, music, and visual arts to our daily practice as educators and as humans. Through The Radiant Educator we are bringing this experience to teachers from diverse settings and training backgrounds, because we believe every teacher and learner can be empowered by tools to decrease stress and increase joy.
Faith Laux
is a world language educator and trainer who is passionate about empowering teachers with the ‘soft skills’ that were often overlooked in our university studies. Faith has led workshops in social and emotional intelligence, classroom management, and visual arts. She believes that each of us has the power to create the life we deeply long for.
is a veteran language, music, and martial arts instructor crazy about helping teachers and learners succeed with less stress and more joy. As he designs programs and consults for schools, districts, and non-profits worldwide, Justin is diving ever deeper into mind-body-&-voice skills that make the work of teachers and leaders more peaceful, effective, and sustainable.
“This was so powerful, timely, and necessary. There is such a huge need for more of this in our worlds to keep us from dying on the vine.”
“It was therapeutic to connect with other educators who experienced many of the same emotional ups and downs as me. I have a bunch of resources and new tools that I know will make me a better teacher and human. Faith was a perfect facilitator, with fantastic empathy and energy.”
“Justin is one of the most inspiring teachers, and humans, I've had the pleasure of knowing.”
“More of this is needed to support teachers! We operate so often in a vacuum that it's helpful to establish connections and empathy and deepen our sense of humanity.”
“It was crucial to see the real-world application of the techniques, to see the techniques come alive.”
“Justin is my new hero. I mean, I really enjoyed watching him work and hearing him speak. He's authentic, intelligent, sincere. The real deal.”
Day 1 (9am-4pm)
Morning seminar topics
- Introduction, icebreakers, building community
- The power of breath for maximizing calmness + focus
- Brain breaks + student engagement
- Emotional intelligence in the classroom
Lunch 12-1pm
Afternoon seminar topics
- Body movement, location, + posture for optimal attention & flow
- Classroom yoga – demo + debrief
- Visualization – practice + subject-specific classroom applications
Day 2 (9am-4pm)
Morning seminar topics
- Body scanning + progressive relaxation
- A new look at making mistakes
- Forest therapy
Lunch 12-1pm
Afternoon seminar topics
- How to use and sustain your voice
- Harnessing the power of vision
- Bringing these skills into the hands of our students
APPLICATIONS TO STUDENT LEARNING
- Strategies to heighten awareness, maintain focus and hone other executive functions increase students’ ability to visualize and process complex scenarios and information, such as intricate narratives and arguments in social studies, language arts, and world language; word problems in math; scientific process and experiments; and demanding procedures in the visual and performing arts.
- Participating teachers learn to train their students in anxiety-reducing and attention-focusing techniques that allow learners to attend to course content and tasks with greater focus, endurance, and resilience. This results both in deeper learning in any given unit of time, as well as more total time on task due to the reduction of distractions that tend to disrupt learning time.
- Active countering of stress and anxiety has a double positive effect on the working memory students need in order to process, develop, and assimilate knowledge and skills: First, it frees space in working memory that would otherwise be actively occupied by stressors (from both outside and within the classroom). Second, there is ample research showing that stress not only hijacks units of working memory, but actually reduces the working memory’s starting capacity. Simply put, an anxious or stressed brain cannot process or assimilate anywhere near what an unstressed brain can.
- Stress and anxiety have demonstrable ill effects on teachers’ and students’ health. Strategies by which teachers can maintain physical, mental and emotional well-being during planning and delivery of instruction allow teachers to respond more consistently and wisely to individual student needs. They are able to maintain a high level of instruction even during the most difficult stretches of the school year, notably mid-fall, late winter, and the final month of the year. These strategies also allow teachers to respond to difficult classroom management situations more calmly and effectively.
- An emotionally intelligent teacher is the first step to having emotionally intelligent students. Healthy classroom environments depend on the creation of a classroom culture that allows children to develop emotional intelligence competencies. A few important factors are the ability to name emotions and develop an internal emotional literacy. Each emotion has encoded within it important data that we can use to create interpersonal connection and satisfaction. It is through understanding the message of our emotions that we are empowered to act in ways that connect with our best judgment.
- Students are only as good as a teacher’s ability to serve them. Forest therapy builds skills of sensory awareness and the ability to approach any given moment in a grounded way. It open us to the possibility of discovery in the here and now. This way of being supports a healthy and innovative classroom environment, empowers the teacher to stay grounded, and provides emotional stability. Within forest therapy the forest is our teacher. Whatever is present in the here and now within us, and outside of us, is our teacher. Being open to this dynamic flow can have powerful reverberations for us as educators to also remember that our students are some of our greatest teachers.
- An essential component of learning is to feel safe enough to make mistakes and be able to reframe them in a way that allows learning to occur. When we learn to reframe mistakes it lowers stress and increases our cognitive processing capability. Reframing mistakes also boosts self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation.