What is Heart-Centered Teaching?
You want to be the best teacher you can be for your students.
You care about your students and you want them to succeed in your classroom and in their personal lives.
You want to create a warm, welcoming classroom environment that your students look forward to coming to every day.
But there is so much on your plate.
It can often feel like you’re doing everything you can just to get lessons planned and the bare minimum covered each day.
So how are you supposed to improve your teaching skills, connect with your students, and make the seriously huge impact you really want to make?
You need to become a heart-centered teacher
A heart-centered teacher does everything rooted in empathy, care, and compassion.
The truth? You’re probably already a heart-centered teacher at your core.
The harder truth? The overwhelming demands on you and lack of support may be holding you back from showing up as the heart-centered teacher you truly are and want to be.
That’s why I created the Heart-Centered Classroom approach – to help kind, caring teachers like you develop the classroom routines, common language, and basic structures you need to put into place to allow you to show up as a heart-centered teacher.
Today I’m sharing the core components of heart-centered teaching and how you can implement these strategies in your classroom to help you:
- Connect better with your students
- Enjoy teaching that feels light and easy again
- Help your students develop their social-emotional skills
- Stop the behavior management struggles
- Make a bigger impact
Heart-centered teaching starts with your environment
Close your eyes and think about your happy place.
What about this place brings you peace and joy? Think about how it sounds, smells, and looks.
Why do you feel happy here? Think about the emotions it evokes – peace, calm, joy, excitement, etc.
You want your classroom to become your students’ happy place!
That means creating a classroom inviting that is peaceful, calm, and joyful. Turning your classroom into an environment that is warm and welcoming – where your students look forward to being each day.
This doesn’t mean you need a Pinterest-worthy classroom that looks spotless.
It does mean you want to create a classroom where every student feels safe and included.
Relationship-focused, student-centered routines and procedures are a great way to create a positive classroom culture.
You can also encourage teamwork, give students plenty of opportunities to collaborate, and teach your students how to positively communicate with one another.
Remember – a heart-centered classroom is all about how you and your students feel. You don’t have to spend time sewing cute curtains, creating complicated center manipulatives, or putting together intricate bulletin boards to create a positive classroom where students love to be.
Heart-centered teaching prioritizes relationships
Empathy, trust, and respect must be at the core of your relationships with your students.
Young students can be particularly challenging. They are just beginning to develop their own personalities, becoming aware of their feelings for the first time, and learning how to interact with others.
That’s a lot for a small child to handle!
They will not always be gracious, patient, or reasonable. (Okay, they may never be those things!)
They will have tough days. They will lash out, have big feelings, and challenge your every last ounce of patience.
Heart-centered teachers understand this about their students. They meet their students' challenging behavior with patience and empathy. And they build strong relationships with their students so they can handle their hard days and enjoy their good days.
The relationships you build with your students help them feel seen, appreciated, and valued. Heart-centered teachers understand that every student has unique interests, skills, and values and they spend time intentionally discovering these things about their students.
Good relationship building should lead to more personalized learning opportunities for students, too!
Heart-centered teaching includes reflection
A heart-centered teacher’s work is never done.
But not in the exhausting, overwhelming way it can feel when you’re drowning in standards, lesson plans, IEPs, and paperwork.
Heart-centered teachers know that every day is a chance to reflect, learn, and grow.
Like their students, heart-centered teachers embrace a growth mindset and are inspired to be better and continue learning every day.
Self-reflection practices help heart-centered teachers remove their ego from the equation and focus on what’s really working – and not working – for their students.
When a heart-centered teacher looks back on the day, week, or quarter, they are honest about what they did well, how they supported their students, what they could do better at, and how they missed out on their students’ needs.
These self-reflection exercises don’t lead to feeling like a failure, instead, they help teachers do more of what’s working well and change course when something needs to improve.
Embracing your heart-centered teaching practice
Like anything, becoming a heart-centered teacher takes intentional thought and consistent practice.
It’s not an objective you can meet once and check-off your to-do list. You’ll implement heart-centered teaching practices as often as possible, continuing to develop your skills and priorities. This approach is about constantly being willing to learn, reflect, try something new, and improve as you go.
Creating a warm, welcoming environment, building strong relationships with your students, and engaging in self-reflection exercises will put you on the path to heart-centered teaching.
The more intentional you are about developing heart-centered teaching habits and strategies, the more you will enjoy your job and the more your students will benefit!
Serious about becoming a heart-centered teacher? Join the Heart-Centered Toolkit Waitlist now!
I created my Heart-Centered Toolkits to walk you through exactly how to have a heart-centered classroom because so many teachers (including myself at one point!) need support and direction when creating a safe and supportive heart-centered classroom.
Click here to join the waitlist so you don’t miss out when doors open!
Lead your class with confidence and joy, showing up as the teacher you were meant to be each and every day. The Heart-Centered Method gives you all the strategies, language, tools, and support you need to create the classroom environment you’ve always dreamed of.
Adopting a heart-centered approach completely transformed my classroom behaviors, and I’m confident it will do the same for you.
