Dr. Patricia Sherwood - 30 Apr

First published 2008

by ACER Press, an imprint of

Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd

19 Prospect Hill Road, Camberwell

Victoria 3124, Australia

https://shop.acer.edu.au

Text Patricia Sherwood 2008

Illustrations Tara Sherwood 2008

Design and typography ACER Press 2008

This book is copyright. All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Copyright Act 1968 of Australia and subsequent amendments, and any exceptions permitted under the current statutory licence scheme administered by Copyright Agency Limited (www.copyright.com.au), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, broadcast or communicated in any form or by any means, optical, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Edited by Susannah Burgess

Cover and text design by Divine Design

Typeset by Desktop Concepts Pty Ltd

Printed in Singapore

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Author: Sherwood, Patricia.

Title: Emotional literacy: the heart of classroom management/Patricia Sherwood.

ISBN: 9781742865478 (eBook)

Subjects: Early childhood education.

Emotions in children.

Emotions and cognition.

Dewey Number: 372.21

Disclaimer

All names of persons in this book have been changed and the case studies are unidentifiable composites which represent themes children present in therapy rather than any identifiable childs case.

To all children in the world whose heart stories have not been heard in their families or in the classroom and who weep silently or scream louder while they struggle to learn with their heads and master their bodies.

May their hearts, heads and bodies dance together in learning centres where the stories of the heart are honoured.

To all teachers everywhere whose hearts have longed to expand to find a space for the hearts of the children in their classroom and who know that feelings are the bread of childrens lives.

May they be inspired with a way forward that is filled with hope, promise and possibilities for a rich feeling life in their classrooms.

To all parents who have struggled to find a space in schools and classrooms for their childrens hearts to sing and flourish.

May they celebrate the coming of spring with a new language of emotional literacy and a new promise in educational settings.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Tara Sherwood (aged 12), whose beautiful heart and colourful soul created the illustrations for this book. Her work gives colour and form to the voices of the hearts of children everywhere and has been my teacher in some of the many aspects of emotional literacy.

Thanks to Janet Ristic, whose wisdom from her years as teacher and deputy inspired me to write with passion and who assisted with the parentteacher research project on classroom experiences.

Deepest gratitude to my teachers who have naturally promoted heart-centred classrooms with heart-created spaces, especially Teresa Daley and Sr Xavier.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND THE ILLUSTRATOR

Dr Patricia Sherwood is a Director of Sophia College where she trains counsellors, teachers and human service workers in counselling and the non-verbal languages of emotional literacy. She is qualified in special education, counselling and psychotherapy and has a busy clinical practice in Western Australia and Queensland. She specialises in children, adolescents and relationship counselling. Dr Sherwood supervises over 15 free community counselling centres throughout Australia, staffed by the students and graduates of Sophia College, where children and adolescents are the most frequent clients.

Dr Sherwood is also a researcher at Edith Cowan University, and has lectured in the fields of psychology, social work, human services and education for over 30 years. She has developed a number of innovative training programs including a diploma and advanced diploma of holistic counselling, a graduate certificate in artistic therapies and a certificate in emotional literacy.

Tara Sherwood is fluent with the languages of emotional literacy, some of which she has taught her Mum. She plays the flute, composes her own music and plays in the school band. She loves to create songs and sings everyday. Tara loves nature, swimming in the dam with her labrador Sam, going to the beach and walking in the forest with Sam and her pet lamb. Since she was a small child, Tara has used colour and drawing to express her frustrations and joys. She knows how to get angry and how to move through it. Tara summarises school by saying: I need to learn how to solve problems, not how to fill in boxes. Her ambition is to save the environment and contribute to world peace.

INTRODUCTION

Emotional Literacy is essential reading for parents, teachers and carers of children who have a deep commitment to the happiness of children and to educational processes that enliven childrens hearts, minds and souls and which create holistic learning communities.

It is literacy for the whole child, not simply the childs mind. This is literacy for the feeling life, and it provides languages for the heart, which is at the centre of the wellbeing of each of us and especially our children.

Designed to turn classrooms into heart spaces, Emotional Literacy offers a range of non-verbal and specific artistic exercises that gives children the tools and languages to explore and manage their feelings. These exercises work because they are centred within a childs body and this overcomes the problem of the child knowing what the right behaviour is, but feeling unable to do it in challenging situations.

Children learn to identify the basic emotions of childhood: anger, fear, grief and loss, and aloneness in their bodies. They acquire tools to manage these emotions and to transform them into peace, safety, joy and connectedness with simple expressive exercises using sound, colour, movement, gesture, clay, sand and sensing.

The exercises are tailored for use with the individual child or for group activities. The model is designed to create an emotionally self-managing classroom in the long term. A place where the children identify their feelings and can move to a corner of the classroom designed specifically for them and where they can work through a particular feeling whether it is anger, grief and loss, fear or aloneness.

This book will be of interest to all teachers and parents who feel that they need fresh inspiration when working with the escalating problems of bullying, both from the experience of the child being bullied and the child doing the bullying. Here are body-based, non-verbal exercises that can make a difference to a childs experience very quickly.

Emotional Literacy promises a brighter future: for as children grow into adults they have tools to deal with their anger so that adult violence and abuse is minimised; they have processes for dealing with their grief and loss so that the incidence of depression may be reduced; they have tools to deal with their fear so that anxiety and stress in their adult lives may be minimised, and they have processes for reconnecting with meaning so that the despair arising from aloneness need not be their journey. We are on the verge of a Brave New World where those who flourish will be those who read their hearts stories and use holistic processes to transform difficult and challenging emotions into courageous and flourishing lives. Emotional Literacy: The heart of classroom management lays the foundation stone for a healthy future for our children.