Course Intro audio

The course "Inspired Connections" aims to help coaches and educators understand trauma responses and youth development to create supportive environments. It is based on the Empowered Play method, which combines joyful movement with personalized learning. The course teaches self-regulation tools and emphasizes the importance of needs, emotions, feelings, and skills. It includes introspection and appreciation for others' challenges, as well as understanding different types of learners. The course also focuses on using helpful language and provides case studies and a workbook for practical application. Hey, and welcome to Inspired Connections. I am so excited you're here to learn more about yourself and how you can best support your students. My name is Farrah, and I created this course after many years working as a personal trainer, preschool PE teacher, and youth coach, as well as raising two competitive athletes. These various outlets not only allowed me to engage with many different types of coaches and coaching styles, but also the parents of the students being coached. Through these experiences and conversations, I found there is a lack of understanding in trauma responses, coupled with a lack of knowledge in youth development, creating environments where poor communication, useless consequences, and lack of solutions were occurring. When we don't know how to handle challenges in ourselves, our classes, or in our students, we run the risk of being hurtful and not helpful. You've already taken your first steps in establishing a happier, healthier environment for your students by signing up for this course. Now let's get started. Our approach is based on the Empowered Play method. Rooted in evidence-based practices, Empowered Play blends joyful movement with personalized learning, cultivating whole person development in youth. This unique approach integrates each student's strengths and values, fostering their journey towards reaching their full potential. Inspired Connections is one of the pillars of Empowered Play. Get ready to learn the most effective ways to support the whole person through playful movement. This course teaches, blah, blah, blah. This course teaches the series, I don't like that either. This course teaches the series, tools, and applications that are most effective in understanding how to connect with yourself as well as your students to create a supportive, healthy, and engaging environment for successful communication. Learning how to utilize self-regulation tools will enable you to not only grow as an individual, but also confidently model and support a healthy, happy, and playful life. Understanding the importance of needs, emotions, feelings, and skills provides a map of how to achieve that life. There are two components to this experience. One is an introspective dive into one's own challenges, triggers, and reactions. The second is an appreciation for others' challenges, triggers, and reactions. Understanding our own position provides an opportunity for growth in regulating our emotions, feelings, and responses. Understanding others' positions provides an opportunity for support, potentially through co-regulation, empathy, and connection. So what does Inspire Connections mean? At the core, it's understanding that we, as coaches, caretakers, and educators, are supporting the growth of a whole human being, enabling us to fully engage all areas of their development and empower them to be their best selves. We want to be the person who fosters potential by creating an environment where individuals can develop at their natural best. As I mentioned, this course will ask you to look inward at your past experiences and current responses to challenging situations. This can be a difficult process, so to help us along the way is our friend, Emily. A former youth athlete herself, Emily was excited to finally find a side job working with youth in addition to her marketing career. However, she found working with youth in sport and physical education was much more difficult than she anticipated. While she had the physical capability to teach the classes, she lacked the emotional, behavioral, and social components to understand her students when they got frustrated, misbehaved, or completely disengaged altogether. Realizing she needed education in self-regulation and social-emotional learning to become better equipped in helping herself and her students manage challenges and find beneficial solutions for long-term success, Emily enrolled in the Inspired Connections course. As we go through this course, we will follow Emily on her journey of self-discovery and introspection, observing as she learns the skills and language required to support herself and her students along the way. Now, let's check out our major players in the course. The whole-person playful movement engages the entire person in a joyful manner. The emphasis is on enjoying the process of moving and learning. This approach recognizes that movement is not only beneficial for physical health but also mental and emotional. It considers one's talents, values, and interests and uses that information to help them engage in individualized playful movement. It promotes self-expression, creativity, and mindfulness, allowing students to connect with themselves authentically. Play is the way nature designed youth to learn. Values are a person's principles or standards of behavior, one's beliefs of what is important in life. Values are a person's principles or standards of behavior, one's beliefs of what's important in life. Values are individual beliefs that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behavior. Oftentimes, people are predisposed to adopt the values with which they are raised. Character strengths are authentic, joyful, and energizing to the user and enable optimal functioning, development, and performance. They are our values in action. This cycle for self-regulation is a guide to help you notice your internal responses, practice calming strategies to acknowledge your feelings, and utilize them as signposts to choose the best power play for yourself and empowered action for a collective solution. We will break down each of the components of the cycle. I am triggered, where you may experience thoughts or environmental distress or overwhelm. I notice, where you acknowledge your body reactions and will learn about somatic intelligence. I calm, you soothe your trigger through breathing or a safe space, and we will discuss various ways of calming the body. I feel, moving the experience from I am to I feel to determine how to shift to what you need and which need is not being fulfilled. Power play is a positive choice and making connection. Empowered action, beneficial solutions resulting in a teachable moment. Different types of learners. Everyone is unique in how they take in and retain information. You may already be aware of your own preferences and how you enjoy learning and coaching. By supporting your students in how they learn, it dramatically affects their ability to connect with the topics you're teaching, as well as how they participate with the rest of the class. After thousands of hours of classroom observation, educational researchers Fleming and Mills identified four types of learners, visual, auditory, reading-writing, and kinesthetic. These styles have been expanded upon over the years to include verbal, logical, social, and solitary learners. While there are distinct categories, there is overlap between each of them, and remember, life is multimodal, so there are no hard and fast boundaries. Helpful language. There are many words and phrases that have traveled with us since childhood. Think about how those words caused you to feel. Were they helpful or hurtful? Changing our actions also requires our verbal responses to be thoughtful and intentional. How are you speaking to your students? Is it kind, respectful? How can we achieve our desired goals and allow our students to feel empowered, understood, and appreciated? We will review phrases to take us beyond be nice or good job. Remember we want to grow them, not minimize them. Case studies. To solidify your learning and bridge the gap between theory and practice, we'll conclude the course with real-world case studies. These will allow you to see how the concepts, theories, and strategies we've covered actually play out in a messy, complex situation. Workbook. Actively engage with your course workbook throughout this experience to solidify your understanding. It provides opportunities to review key concepts, practice what you learn, and ultimately master the material. Are you ready? Let's connect, inspire, and support those around us.