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About Teaching through Emotions
Teaching through Emotions is a rare form of relief for educators. Rare because it focuses on the bedrock of teaching — relationships — and rare because it turns negative emotions into understanding, compassion, and effective plans of action.
It’s not psychotherapy, and it’s not life coaching. It’s more like psycho-coaching: using psychological frames to coach teachers through tough feelings to more attuned and effective teaching.
In a nutshell, Teaching through Emotions is about using your emotions to feel better and teach better.
How does teaching through emotions work?
When you engage with a TTE psycho-coach,
you get to speak the truth about your teaching experiences — with no blame, no judgment, and with utter confidentiality
you receive empathy and validation
you figure out what is going on in troubling situations
you come up with a plan of action that will defuse the troubling situation
you enlist a partner who has your back
you turn negative feelings into compassion
you feel seen, heard, and appreciated
About Betsy
I’m a teacher educator and a psychotherapist, a combination of skills that allows me to see classroom behavior and teacher experience through an amazingly helpful lens: the psychodynamic lens. By “psycho,” I mean having to do with emotions and unconscious expectations of ourselves and the world; by “dynamic,” I mean having to do with relationships and the ways we fit together with other people, for better and for worse. I have been helping teachers and administrators (and parents and even students!) build their psychodynamic muscles for almost two decades.
I have seen the SEL movement for students blossom but marvel that teachers have been left out. I am devoted to the idea that teachers need support in developing and maintaining their Social Emotional Competence so they can flourish in classrooms just as we hope students will. Teaching can be incredibly difficult and wearing for teachers. But there are few jobs as important. I help teachers do that job with hope, joy, and success.
Here are my vital statistics:
I have a Ph.D. in education from Stanford University and a MSW from Smith.
Over the past 30 years, I have taught in teacher education programs at Stanford University, Dominican College, Connecticut College, and Bennington College; I have directed teacher education programs at Stanford (STEP) and Bennington (the MATSL).
I have been a psychotherapist for children and adults who have experienced sexual abuse or domestic violence, for college students, and for adults at a public mental health agency.
Also for the past decade I have run Teacher Support Groups and done individual psycho-coaching with teachers and administrators at various schools from early childhood to college.
