INTELLECTUAL WELLNESS Brain research tells us these days that getting old and losing faculties is still a concern. However there are improvements and 'cures' being found on a regular basis. Granted we do not, as yet, have a cure for the horror of Alzheimers, or other debilitating conditions. However we are told progress is being made.
Developing and maintaining creativity in our lives is also crucial to this process. At the risk of sounding cliched, everyone is creative in some way — we just have to find it and there are some notes below which may assist.
The one piece of information which has become abundantly clear over the past decade particularly is the need for us to work at keeping our mental acuity and physical fitness. Intellectual wellness implies that we need to maintain and continue to develop our intellectual abilities, hopefully until death.
One of the best examples we have personally experienced of the impact of intellectual wellness has been the senior school attended by Julie’s mother. You are supposed to be over 55 to attend (Julie has been trying to get them to set up a 'kindergarten' for those of us 'not old enough’!) Classes are offered by anyone who would like to, and attendees vote with their feet of course. They have classes which range from Spoken Latin to Bushwalking, Wine appreciation to Tasmanian Poets, English Literature to Linguistics. And the one single feature is that, without exception these people love learning, and sharing their learning. The wealth of experience and knowledge contained among this group is phenomenal. And we can learn many lessons from it.
Expanding our own intellectual wellness is crucial for teachers. It is alarming to run a workshop and to ask the question. 'What is the last thing you consciously set out to learn' to find, often a large group, who can't respond. We cannot teach students to learn if we don't know how to do it ourselves, or we are not modelling it for them. We cannot teach students to love learning if we don't show them that we do.
So the question for you, as a teacher, and as a human being, is — what are you doing to extend your own intellectual wellness right now? If you are a science teacher have you read any poetry or plays lately (Oscar Wilde is always entertaining if you have a dry sense of humour). If you're an art teacher
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(C) Creating Resilient Educators
