SUPPORTING EMOTIONAL HEALTH

Well-being or health is the experience of fitness, joy and prosperity. It includes stable mental health, high life satisfaction, a sense of meaning or purpose, an ability to manage challenges, anxiety and stress. It further formulates our emotions, thoughts, actions, and experiences. For example, when we think positive, we tend to have greater emotional well-being. When we pursue meaningful relationships, we tend to have better social connect. The health checks of our emotions and thoughts have to be conducted on an everyday basis especially when we are going through the global pandemic.

As educators, we are mindful of emotional well-being of the students which has been impacted in multiple ways by sudden closure of schools. Foremost important task of an educator becomes to take the students in confidence and teach them the ways to conquer their fears and anxieties. We must design ways to condition children for problem-solving, flexibility, compassion, mutual understanding and being communicative.

Students need to be involved in talks of improving the community, culture, and environment. Sometimes the children come up with an unconventional approach. This kind of democratic atmosphere will certainly give enough space for young minds to grow and explore.

Children need to articulate and communicate their needs and apprehensions. As educators we can always extend our support, attention and patient listening to respond to their notions and dogmas, which sometimes may seem trivial but hold high importance for a child. Encouraging children to pursue their interests, hobbies and objectives despite a few restrictions around will cultivate adaptability and self confidence in them. 

Think of it like this: Imagine you are in a car. Your engine works great, and maybe your transmission works pretty well, too, but your brakes don't work. Because your brakes don't work, it doesn't really matter how well your engine works; you're still going to have trouble going about driving. The same is true for your emotional well-being. Emotions are agile and instant in nature. You just need to learn to manage them. We are the managers of our emotions. Just a few managerial skills are required to sort and segregate them. Make folders of the useful emotions and discard and delete the unwanted ones. Why to bother our neurons to tackle with the mess of our emotions. This will make our living simple and purposeful.