Educating the Heart
North Cascades Institute has always believed that the route to conservation passes through the head and the heart — “we take children outside to fall in love with the world,” Saul Weisberg, our executive director, has remarked, “so that they learn to care, and take care, of this special place they call home.” With this is mind, our communications coordinator attended the Heart-Mind Summit last week in Vancouver to learn about efforts underway in BC schools to “educate the heart” of young students. As the Vancouver Sun reports, “It turns out that children who learn to be kind and resolve conflicts, who live free of fear and anxiety, who are compassionate and present in the moment, grow up to be happier, healthier and more productive in nearly every way that social science and psychology can measure.”
Attending the Youth Dialogue session at John Oliver Secondary School, our staffer Christian Martin expected to learn more about the new Heart-Mind Index, to be inspired and perhaps get a peek at one of his heroes, the Dalai Lama, who was in town to promote these efforts. What he didn’t expect was this encounter in the school library!
Read more about BC’s Heart-Mind education experiment at www.vancouversun.com.
Heart-Mind Online provides resources and activities that build capacity in parents and educators so they in turn can support the children in their care in areas such as anxiety, stress, managing conflict, friendship and other key domains of a child’s Heart-Mind well-being.
“Heart-Mind Online is a really exciting project,” says Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, interim director of the University of British Columbia’s Human Early Learning Partnership. “It is so important for parents and educators alike to have a place where they can find practical resources and tools, rooted in science, that really educate the heart. These competencies, like empathy, altruism and compassion, are so critical not only in childhood, but also later in life.”
Top two photos by Christian Martin; bottom photo by Thandi Fletcher/Metro Vancouver.