How to integrate emotional education in teacher training

That was the main problem addressed in the Seminar "Theatrical tools in pedagogy: partner and psychodrama for teacher training", led by the UMCE academic, Lery Mejías.

Almost a year ago, the figures warned that the 57% of the teachers were going through extreme burnout due to the pandemic that is still present. A theme that inspired the webinar "Theatrical tools in pedagogy: partner and psychodrama for teacher training", organized by the Faculty of Education and which is part of the Cycle of Seminars in Clinical Sociology: Dramatic Methods for Research in Education and framed in the Fondecyt 11180638 project.

The instance was led by Lery Mejías, an academic from the Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences (UMCE), who pointed out that the mental health of teachers has been historically challenged, since the emergence of the "anti-emotional school" during the XNUMXth century: "During the Industrial Revolution, processes began to be standardized in an effort to be more productive. Students began to be seated in rows, and the emotional dimension began to disappear."

But how do we rescue that dimension? Through psycho and socio-dramatic tools, Mejías assured. “There are three fundamental elements of psychodrama in the theory of links: the meeting; being able to let go of my prejudices, what I think the other is going to say or think; and there opens the space for the spontaneity and creativity. When Jacob Levy Moreno created psychodrama, originally as a therapeutic approach, what he sought to generate was for spontaneity to flow and get out of what he calls 'preserved culture', which has to do with the rigidity of roles”

Psychodrama is a dramatization of different problems, taking other people's roles and experiencing the conflict instead of talking about it. “It is about exploring socio-educational themes related to the teaching role through situations analogous to real life. I don't do psychodrama with a protagonist who brings a personal situation, in teacher training we bring what happens to another, a story, and we play the roles that that story brings, but not our own”.

According to Mejías, "in general, In teaching practice, emotions must be linked, and we are not preparing to address this dimension, which, according to Juan Casassus in a UNESCO study, is the variable that most impacts learning.. For this reason, the academic believes it is necessary to directly address emotions in the classroom: "Well-being is associated with emotional experience, pleasant emotions and those that are uncomfortable for us, and the healthy expression of those emotions."

"As a teacher, I have to work on my own emotional well-being to be able to accompany or support a class group, and that requires a lot of work, a lot of sensitivity and preparation," he added.

Relive the seminar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1NM-pxEDQg&feature=emb_title