CATESOL 2021 State Conference

Plenary  3

8:30 a.m. PDT

Saturday

November 6, 2021

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Chill like a Teacher: Activities to Promote Mental Well-being for Teachers and Students

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ABSTRACT

After more than a year locked inside, teachers and students are finally returning to the classroom. Teaching is tough under any circumstance and an accumulation of multiple bad days can lead to long-term stress, feelings of being overwhelmed or teacher burnout. So what can we do to avoid this? This workshop will offer techniques and strategies for long term self-care, as well as strategies for checking their emotions/mental well-being before going into the classroom, and finally emergency strategies that can be used in the moment. Teachers will also reflect on how these strategies can be implemented in their own classrooms to help students manage their own mental well-being and to promote self-care for all.

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BIO

Jaydene Elvin, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and TESOL Coordinator in the Department of Linguistics at California State University, Fresno. She is also the Coordinator of the Hub for Language Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of Act Like a Teacher. She earned her MA in TESOL (2011) from Western Sydney University and her PhD (2016) from the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Australia. Jaydene‘s research and teaching interests include: second language speech perception, spoken word recognition and production; acoustic-phonetics in under-described languages; and drama-based techniques for teacher training and its implementation in ESL classrooms. As part of her Act Like a Teacher program, Jaydene utilizes drama based techniques to help pre-service and novice teachers to move, speak, think and react like teachers. She also provides workshops that promote the mental well-being of teachers and social emotional learning for teachers and students.