Adults too need spaces to express, explore, and work through the overwhelming demands of their jobs—demands they often rationalize as ‘just part of the job,’ when in reality, they aren’t.
Nudge Club initiated a teacher community network, bringing teachers together in a shared space once a month to meet and find connections through their experiences working in education. During these facilitated Teacher Community Meetups, teachers cover topics related to education, practical teaching and learning strategies, classroom management techniques, and, discuss key challenges they face. The conversation is structured to empower teachers into approaching their strategies and challenges with a problem solving framework:
These meet-ups end with shared strategies that teachers and school faculty can implement, as well as successful strategies to enhance student engagement. This is made possible because of the nature of our Teacher’s Community Meetups supportive of teachers and their various needs, collaborative as we bring together teachers from different schools and who teach different subjects, and engaging. We do the complicated work of creating frameworks, facilitating activities, and putting people in dialogue do that they don’t have to. A teacher’s sense of support has proudly been our responsibility, and that, in turn, translates to real change in their own classrooms.
The community meet-ups were rich with valuable insights, as teachers shared practical strategies and ideas that could benefit not only their peers but faculty at any school. To capture these learnings, we’ve developed a helpful toolkit that educators and faculty everywhere can use.
Empathy mapping helps teachers—often overburdened with the work of managing students, learning, management, admin work, and a flurry of everyday tasks that demand immediate attention and who don’t have the capacity or space to reflect on the interpersonal dynamics of students—to momentarily step into the shoes of students and understand their perspectives. When we receptively understand other people’s feelings, we can create learning environments that are far more inclusive.
This strategy is best used with a group of 3–5 educators, but a version of this exercise may be adapted to one person.
Teachers and educators confronting unique challenges are also confronted with how to navigate complexity. Comfort, biases, and personal beliefs and value systems that we take for granted usually take center stage. However, different situations require different approaches.
We’ve found that a careful curiosity can help us revisit our approach to solving problems by stepping back and re-evaluating both the situation and ourselves. Download our handy guide, The Art snd Science of Asking Questions, below.
These meet-ups serve as a support system for teachers, offering reflective and interactive activities centered around well-being, classroom resilience, and inclusivity. If you would like to host these meet-up in your school please contact us.
