We are proud to announce that Jean Hamilton, Acknowledge Alliance Resilience Consultant, has been honored with the Public Service to the Community Award from the Delta Kappa Gamma (DKG) International Society for Key Women Educators of Area IV (Southern San Francisco Bay Area). Congratulations, Jean! Educators she works with at San Miguel Elementary School and Fairwood Elementary School in Sunnyvale School District nominated Jean and she was recognized for her dedicated work and community impact. In her 22 years of working at Acknowledge Alliance, Jean has made a profound difference in the lives of many teachers, principals, administrators, district leaders, and students. She shares some inspiring lessons she learned from the field below. Her reflections come from her experience in facilitating many Teacher and Principal Resilience Groups and from being a therapist.
1. People come first.
What would decisions look like if we put people first? What would educational policies be like if we started from how they impact people? How do we use this as a guiding principle in our work in schools? People are human and humans have certain inherent characteristics: we want connection. We are caring and we want to work together. We also have feelings, whether good or painful. We’ve all experienced hurt of some kind: loss or grief, fear, loneliness, being left out, physical injury or pain, embarrassment or shame, trauma, and the list could go on.
In making the connection between mental health and academic learning, it’s important to remember that there’s a connection between feelings and thoughts. How we are feeling affects our thinking and how we learn. How we are thinking affects our feelings. They are intertwined.
Young people learn when they are feeling good about themselves. Teachers teach best when they are feeling good about themselves. This is where we want to put our attention if we are to help young people be successful in school: learning how to deal with our own feelings so we can better help young people deal with theirs.
2. Relationships matter.
Our work at Acknowledge Alliance was founded on the belief that, next to parents and families, teachers spend the most time with young people and that if we support teachers and the other adults in schools, this would directly impact the lives of young people in positive ways.
One of the protective factors highlighted in the resilience theory is that if a young person has at least one caring adult who knows them, has high expectations for them, communicates a sense of belonging, recognizes their strengths, and gives them opportunities to be themselves, this builds resilience and the capacity to face challenges with self-awareness and confidence.
We took this theory and applied it to building relationships with the adults who work in schools. As a Resilience Consultant, this is what I do: I get to know teachers. I listen to them. I acknowledge their strengths. I tell them what I see that they’re doing well. I value them, I appreciate them, and perhaps most importantly, I like them.
3. Listening is a healing act.
Listening brings about change. Listening is a collaborative act. It is an act of empathy. I believe that if we truly learn how to listen to each other, that’s when healing can begin to take place. Listening communicates that you trust the person you’re listening to, that you respect them, and that you care.
What if we taught others to listen, to be fully present with, and to give aware attention to each other? Classrooms would look different. And so would our schools.
Here’s a note from one of the teachers I’ve worked with in a teacher group. It illustrates the power of listening, connection, caring, and resilience:
"The most beneficial part of the group was building relationships with my colleagues. There is something very important about teachers connecting with other teachers since very few people truly understand what we go through as teachers during the school year. Therefore, being listened to and heard by those who live it and get it was very beneficial for me.
I built resilience and realized that I was not alone in my struggles. I learned that I needed to take care of MYSELF, too, in order to take care of my students at school. I learned that whatever feeling I was feeling was OKAY and should be recognized and addressed. I use this on a daily basis with my students."