Tools & Tips

A few of the standard tools I use to support moving through teaching in a therapeutic way can be found here.

If you are interested in the use of any of the tools, strategies, or practices noted here, or anywhere else on therapeuticteaching.com, reach out! There are a variety of ways to engage in therapeutic practice for yourself and with others, as I offer personal and professional development through my private practice, courses through on campus initiatives in the College of Education, University of Saskatchewan (Graduate and Undergraduate), and through my community development work: coaching, consulting, counselling, and more.

Dr. Judy’s contact information can be found here.

Welcome! I am your guide through the art and science of therapeutic teaching.

Let’s get going . . .

As an educator, mental health practitioner, and researcher, my philosophy is rooted in decades of bridging therapeutic strategies that all humans can implement to teach themselves and others about mental health and well-being.

Most of my classroom experience has been in general classrooms – but in high needs environments – where students struggle with, and need, consistency, routine, well-being support, and more. In my 18 year stint in K – 12 classrooms, I quickly realized that if I simply pursued my teacher agenda, students struggled to learn and get along (with me and each other); so I researched and developed practices that aligned us, taught well-being skills, and built foundational knowledge around relating, connecting, communicating well, and supporting self and others through human centered practices.

Therapeutic teaching started with taking the temperature of the room, teaching students to listen and learn from their peers’ emotional states, and reflecting on how to help one another when it was safe and appropriate to do so. These temperature checks opened up all kinds of opportunities for conversations around the big three emotions: mad, sad, and scared. In a classroom, or any group that gathers, there are the dynamics of emotions at play in everything we do. Behaviours manifest from underlying emotions, actions and choices are made as a result of bossy emotions, and motivations to care, understand and support are helped or hindered by the impact of emotions. Emotional beings are what we are, and I quickly learned that knowledge around the power of emotions was critical in educational settings.

As we take the temperature of the room, I remind students that even the most skilled humans are essentially still raw nervous systems meandering throughout their day. We ebb and flow with the direction of the day, though are often living at the whim of emotions – as raw nerves – so to speak. That said, we aren’t at the mercy of our emotions or nerves. We can control this aspect of ourselves by using our cognitive (advanced) brain to override thousands of years of wiring – our primitive selves. Conquering emotions is something we can do, and in fact, it’s something we have to do, in order to access well-being.

We start with checking in . . .

Temperature & Stress

This is a daily practice in my classroom. We check in and share how we are doing and sometimes what we are doing about it. We also share well-being ideas and strategies we try, and sometimes talk about barriers we face as well. What’s important here is to know your personal baseline:

Do you typically ride high with energy or anxiety?

Are you more like an ‘Eeyore’ aka, someone with low mood and affect?

What’s important is knowing how you’re doing compared to how you are typically doing – not compared to how someone else is typically doing.

Therapeutic Teaching Tips

Take a look at the TEN therapeutic modalities noted below. As a trained teacher and therapist, I have pulled strategies from the pages of therapy that work well in educational contexts or workplaces. These modalities include:

Nature-Based Interventions: the sun, the trees, and the earth-wind-and sky all have healing properties in them. Find your source of good for you energy and use it daily.
Bibliotherapy: Not a novel idea (pun intended) – I use books to help me teach about difficult things – from suicide and self-harm to addictions and divorce. Therapeutic teaching involves knowing when and how to use books as tools for therapy, but there are many resources on this.
Art Therapy: Expressing oneself through the arts is an age-old act of self-care. When you give your art away, you can help others too!
Mindful-Based Practices: From the Buddha to understanding your brain and its vital function – these are key principles to teach yourself AND your students/kids.
Attachment-Based Therapies: From how the ‘Five Love Languages’ can help us with communication, relationship, and connection – to – how research in choice theory and control theory can hep us manage classrooms – and understanding of attachment rooted research is key for educators.
Trauma & Compassion Informed Practice: Vital to therapeutic teaching is understanding the art and science of healing. We need to know that trauma is pervasive; many, if not all, humans suffer. We need to understand triggers AND glimmers and offer hope and healing through our work. We can do this as teachers – without crossing over into therapy – but – we need to know the difference and the scope of our role.
Cognitive Behavioural (CBT) and Dialectic Behavioural Therapies (DBT): These therapies offer much to the conversations around goal setting, thought-stopping, understanding emotions and feelings, and how thoughts (and mind over mood) are integral to well-being. Teachers (and parents) can work with a trained practitioner (such as myself) to understand the sheer power of certain tools from these modalities in the home and classroom!
Behavioural Approaches (BA): Most kids with behavioural concerns can be helped tremendously by therapeutic teaching methods. Observing behaviours and finding the roots (needs, motivations, etc.) are key to helping kids heal and grow. What do you need and How can I help are my go to questions as a teacher. Stay out of blame and shame – that leads to burn-out – and help humans heal by seeking to understand what they need!
Music, Rhythm, Movement, and Play: These are key components to happiness. Did you know the opposite of play isn’t work . . . it’s depression. If we don’t have fun, we can’t grow and heal. Integrate these elements into your daily classroom practice in any manner that speaks to you and your students!
Learn, Grow, Reflect, Cope, and Heal yourself – before, during, and following these practices in your own cycle of on-going well-being!

Be Proactive

There are many problems in the world – we get it. But our job as leaders and caregivers is to be problem solvers! Here’s why . . .

Ask yourself: Are you problem-focused? Or are you a problem-solver?

Simple Pedagogy

Therapeutic Teaching is a pedagogy – it is both a method and a practice. I have outlined some core components here; however, reach out if you are interested in a pedagogy of healing through inquiry and influence.

Sample Therapeutic Lesson

My therapeutic lesson plans are always integrated: health and mental health can be taught in schools through history, maths, the sciences, language arts, and more! Here, I have created a template for a lesson on Residential Schools. With the help of a local artisan, Ally, from Ally’s Creeative Bakeshop I integrated the painful reality of residential schools through an act of Truth and Reconciliation – teaching for Truth and Reconciliation. These are hard conversations to have, but they are necessary – so I teach teachers with Ally’s TRC Cookie Kit how to have these hard conversations while participating in something creative and therapeutic.

Cookies and a Portion of the Lesson Plan care of https://www.allyscreeativebakeshop.ca/ in Saskatoon, SK.

Unpacking our Lessons

If you have perused the site (if not, go back and do some reading!), you will know reflective practice is at the heart of therapeutic teaching and healing-centered practice. This is hard work, and we can only grow and be better through reflection. Always ask yourself as you are panning, executing, and reflecting on your teaching/practice if your work met your goals, cause more help and healing hen harm, and supported your growth and the growth of others. If you make mistakes, you’re human. Go back, repair, and fix and return stronger!