“How to BE an emotionally intelligent educator?”

TC “How to BE an emotionally intelligent educator?” aims to develop the competences of youth workers in supporting social and emotional learning (SEL) of young people through designing experiential learning activities with a positive approach to mental health.

In promoting young people’s mental health, the development of social and emotional competencies, such as enhancing positive self-esteem and self-efficacy, enhancing the management of feelings, thoughts and behaviours, building positive social relationships and fostering the ability to learn and acquire education is of particular importance. Social and emotional learning aims to facilitate social and emotional development in young people thereby supporting young people in realising their potential, enhancing mental health and wellbeing, maximising their participation in education, training and employment, and reducing health and social inequities. Focusing on psychosocial strengths and protective factors rather than behavioural problems and risk factors for mental health is also likely to be more acceptable to young people, and may relieve some of the stigma related to mental health problems.

Youth workers need a set of competencies to effectively promote the mental health and well-being of young people. Awareness of these competencies can assist in identifying areas of development for staff and assessing the quality of social and emotional learning practices. Competencies required to promote positive mental health and well-being among young people have been identified by the Council of Europe.

Objectives:

• to enable understanding of mental health as multidimensional phenomena;
• to understand youth work setting as the opportunity for nurturing a positive approach to young people’s mental health;
• to explore different realities young people experience when facing mental health issues and stigmatisation;
• to explore and understand the challenges young people face in the contemporary world in combination with developmental crises and individual coping capacities
• to learn how to reflect on identity (self-image) and develop self-awareness in a mindful way; 
• to encourage and support the personal development of emotional self-awareness and self-regulation(emotional domain) as the basis for encountering mental health issues in young people; 
• to improve the readiness of youth workers to practise empathic communication (as a social domain) in their work and learn how to raise the empathic skills of young people;
• to raise the ability how to build a supportive and encouraging environment and trustful relationships with a young person; 
• to explore personal boundaries when dealing with issues concerning mental health and wellbeing.