Wiese Foundation, committed to the development and reinforcement of socioemotional skills in the professional and personal dimension of the teachers of Peru, created the Growing Among Teachers series.
Growing Among Teachers is part of the Educational Quality Program of Wiese Foundation, which has 13 chapters whose objective is to contribute to the management of the emotions of the teachers of Peru in the current context. In the first chapter of the series, Rosa Rondinel, Director of Educational Institution No. 6100, Santa María Reyna de Pachacámac, tells us about the emotion of sadness in the current context that the pandemic has generated: isolations and reclusions. A testimony that provides important learnings.
Sadness
Coach Nicole Perret indicates that sadness is one of the basic emotions of human beings, as people tend to dodge and avoid this feeling. However, sadness has an important function, including during mourning, because it is an emotion that leads us to introspection and, so, too, it helps to create a space for saying goodbye in the face of a loss.
What is mourning?
Nicole Perret adds that mourning is a process of emotional adaptation that
unfolds after a loss (death of a close person, loss of a relationship or of an
employment, etc.), generates feelings of absence, abandonment, drastic change
and crisis, among others. Mourning is different for each person and requires
time to heal.
Apply the UPA tool
A technique that works well when it comes to regulating emotions is related to the UPA methodology:
Understand: become aware of the importance of the message that this emotion brings you, remember that our emotions connect us with reality and give information to those around us.
Process: permit yourself to live the sadness and mourning, without judging it or wanting to repress it. Set yourself a start date and end date, according to your need.
Act: once you have understood, internalized and accepted the process, take action and find the motivation that can help you to overcome that feeling.
If you were interested by this issue, we invite you to follow the Growing Among Teachers series. The following chapter deals with the importance of affect in isolation. Don’t miss it.
