Still passionate about teaching after 29 years, I am sad to see how much our students are suffering and are less and less equipped to deal with a monster that we have been fighting for thousands of years: stress. And if the answer was through an innovative course that would shed light on this monster that is increasingly part of our lives.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Are young people today more sensitive to stress than 30 years ago? I see it every day and studies abound everywhere: we keep shouting loud and clear how much our young people live with anxiety. It’s good to talk about it, to describe how our society is demanding and puts performance at the forefront of its values. But are we talking about solutions? Are we talking about the basic tools to offer to our future generations? What concrete offer do we offer to our next generation?
Working in an environment where initiatives are encouraged, I offered my school administration an optional course in Secondary III, the Plan B course on stress, anxiety and anxiety management.
The response was quick and positive. My personal training and my mindfulness certification motivated me to create this tailor-made course, responding to an emergency!
Young people like to understand, like to learn and when they feel that what is offered to them can help them, the attention is there, very much alive and real. They listen avidly, their eyes wide open, they feel challenged on all sides, all sides.
Understand stress
Learn how stress is an ally, what it is made of for each human, when it becomes our enemy and above all, what are the solutions to fight it or flee it. The solutions are so important and so forgotten. In addition to receiving theory, my students practice these solutions, determining which ones work best for them. We also discuss happiness myths and read The Happiness Trap Dr Russ Harris, the illustrated version, perfect for secondary school. We learn how emotions can be regulated, how emotions can be bombs ready to go off.
The course has improved over the years and after six years I am still improving the course and its corpus. Nothing equals the satisfaction that I read in the eyes of my students. We see the principles of self-confidence and its destroyers; the power of breathing; food and the brain; the importance of sleep and physical activity and so on.
As antidepressant prescriptions continue to rise, shouldn’t we be proactive and support our special educators, our social workers, our breathless teachers in front of so many teenagers crying out their pain and difficulty to adapt?
Our school has continued its momentum and now we offer the De-stress and progress training created by Sonia Lupien (a leading authority in research on human stress), to all the students of the first secondary, a small training of five hours that the we can give to all the students in our schools. Following this program, students deepen this training with Plan B in Secondary III.
I deeply love young people, like all Quebec teachers. While our Prime Minister informed us that the priority of priorities is education, I would add this: “Why not the Plan B course as a priority! »