Childlike Confidence

 

During our recent teacher training session for the Helen O’Grady Midrand and Pretoria franchises, one of our own teachers turned motivational speaker, Maryka Roux from ButtonUp shared these truly inspirational ideas about how we, as teachers, can help our students become and remain more confident. As it is with most of Maryka’s motivational talks, one just can’t help feeling stronger and ready to tackle the new year with super enthusiasm!

We couldn’t help but share…Hope you also feel like a confident, smashing, amazing human being!

“You are here – YOU ARE A TEACHER - because you are strong, confident and able to be a teacher that enables children to also understand that they are confident smashing amazing human beings!

Being confident is not just about not being shy; being confident is about understanding and embracing who you are and being the best version of yourself to enlighten others’ lives and we teach children to understand that confidence. Because if they are not confident in who they are, they will not be able to be confident portraying someone they are not. They must know who they are first so that they do not loose themselves in their character.

I am confident that we can do that – but the only way we can do that is if we know who we are and let go of the things that described us otherwise, if we go back to our original design of innocence and purity and fun and laughing at random things and not stressing about money and education, because all of the things that has crept in with being students or adults has stripped us from being kids.

So just as we teach children to be mature in who they are, we have to learn to be childish in who we are not. The more we become childlike the more they can relate. Keep your confidence in who you are but get rid of the scars. And finally, we need to stay confident in who we are whilst being children at heart.

How do we do that?  By having CONFIDENCE:

C – CHILDLIKE

O – Only one of you - Own who you are/ Obliviousness

N – Never lose yourself (even when you are acting)

F – FUN / Free, have fun with the kids but also have fun in life – laugh at your own jokes 

I – individuality is important

D – don’t demand respect deserve it and dress up and dance (3 D’s)

E – every child is important including your heart – look after yourself so that you can look after them (equality)

N – notice every child and everything around you – be in awe

C – Care and show you care

E – Excellence – do everything as if it’s for the last time”

                                                   With Thanks to Maryka Roux and Button-UP!

What a fabulous day of Training we had....we are so lucky to work with such dynamic and awesome human beings!

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                                                        The 2020 Pretoria and Midrand TEAM!!!!

Happy New Year, Happy new beginnings!

At the start of a new year, and as it happens this time round also a new decade, we are so focused on starting fresh, leaving our old self behind. We love the thought of somehow escaping all the things we don’t like about ourselves and our lives and creating a new life in a new year. What a wonderful opportunity to reinvent ourselves!

In our Drama classes we give children the opportunity to reinvent themselves every time they come to class. They dress up, rehearse roles, become characters and explore life situations that they might never experience or be exposed to in their everyday life. It gives them the platform to discover different aspects of their personalities, likes and dislikes, how they would react to certain circumstances and even, often unbeknownst to us as teachers, help them make sense their real life   problems and see the situation from different angles.

Every Drama teacher can attest to the way some children just blow you away with their improvisation skills or characterisation when given a topic they have never explored before.  Sometimes they are as surprised as you are! They have unlocked something inside themselves: a way of speaking, moving and behaving or how to solve a problem they have never had to contemplate. And they don’t have to wait until the next New Year to do this, they can be a new version of themselves each week!

I hope this year we can let our Drama students’ creativity soar to higher heights, and we can help them explore who they are in all their facets, moods and talents, in order to become who they really want to be.