{"id":11571,"date":"2019-02-26T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/?p=11571"},"modified":"2019-02-22T09:35:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T17:35:56","slug":"how-to-inspire-other-educators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/2019\/02\/26\/how-to-inspire-other-educators\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Inspire Other Educators"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cassette<\/p>\n

This article was originally posted on EdSurge<\/a>\u00a0and is reposted with permission. The following is the latest installment of the\u00a0Toward Better Teaching advice column<\/a>. You can pose a question for a future column\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Dear Bonni, How do you help inspire other educators? Sometimes the problem isn't my students\u2014it's my colleagues. If they seem bored or tired, the students pick up on that and then think that all classes are tedious.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Working at a small community college<\/em><\/p>\n

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Our emotional well-being matters as teachers. Not only because (if we are going to do it well) facilitating the learning of others requires a lot of energy. But also because if we are experiencing feelings that are not conducive to the work of learning, we can inadvertently transfer those emotions to our students\u2014just as they might catch a cold from us if we\u2019re sick.<\/p>\n

Daniel Goleman\u2019s research illustrates the way our emotions are contagious. In his book,\u00a0Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (2006)<\/a>, he describes how we humans are hard-wired to connect with one another. Those connections can be a pathway for our emotions to strongly influence another\u2019s, in positive or negative ways.<\/p>\n