Bootcamp 2022

Teaching Social Emotional Learning through a Christian Perspective

By Dr. Jane Sinden

Date and Time: Wednesday, August 17, 2022 at 9:30 am Eastern

As a Professor in Education and Kinesiology and a researcher in the area of emotion, I am passionate about emotions and helping others understand their emotions. While the Ontario Curriculum has taken an important step in its emphasis on social emotional learning and mental health, needed is a more thorough understanding of emotions and how to teach students more confidently in all grades. It is sometimes difficult to teach our students about social emotional learning and mental health if we do not understand our own emotions. For example, when we are asked to teach our students about negative stigmas and healthy ways to express emotions, we should examine our own habits and beliefs about emotion. God calls us to understand our own emotions (through experience, scripture, and the Holy Spirit) so that we can teach others in more humble, authentic and perhaps more vulnerable ways. More education and support is needed to help teachers in their personal journeys toward understanding their own emotions and then provide practical ways to connect their knowledge and experience with curriculum, especially through a Christian framework. I hope this workshop will help educate and equip teachers by examining the following:

1) What emotions are (how they differ from feelings for example),

2) The structure and direction of emotion with respect to God’s creation,

3) What our emotions and ways we may express them may be telling us

4) The difference between healthy processing vs unhealthy or maladaptive processing of emotion,

5) Negative emotion beliefs, norms or myths,

6) Addressing fears and mortifying inordinate affections, and

7) Some Practical suggestions for teaching.

Learning Goals: Understanding what emotions are and what they may be telling us, breaking down negative emotion norms, addressing unhealthy/maladaptive processes or responses, mortifying fear and inordinate affections, and suggestions for practice.

Presented by: Dr. Jane Sinden, Redeemer University

Speaker Bio: Dr. Jane Sinden is a wife, a mother, and a new grandmother. She has also been a professor at Redeemer University for 17 years. Her research is in the area of emotions in sport and exercise, however her research and experience extends beyond the sport and exercise settings. Jane's passion for understanding emotion started over 20 years ago when she was training as a National team rower. She pursued a PhD to better understand why she (and other athletes) developed unhealthy methods of dealing with their stressful emotions, and trained irrespective of these unhealthy methods, She openly shares her experience battling an eating disorder and other self destructive behaviours, and disregarding her health for the purpose of achieving high performance in sport. In addition, she regularly shares her testimony to others about how she was lead to surrender her life to Jesus, and hopes her story can bring others to know the healing power and love of Christ.

Audience: All educators

Session Materials:

• Slides: Teaching Social Emotional Learning Through a Christian Perspective
• Study: The Normalization of Emotion and the Disregard of Health Problems in Elite Amateur Sport
• Study: The sociology of emotion in elite sport: Examining the role of normalization and technologies
• Study: The Structure and Direction of Emotion in Elite Sport: Deconstructing Unhealthy Paradigms and Distorted Norms for the Body