Autumn 2003
Celebrate!
by Rebecca Gwynne
Here come the holidays!
Okay, quickly take inventory of the feeling process taking place as you run the emotional gamut from childish excitement (and this is a good thing!) to shopping dread and possibly even depression. Amidst the celebrations and feasting the holiday season is known to take down the best of people. Adult learners in transition often may feel more stress at this time of year. One way to keep them connected to the classroom and grounded in the group is to remind them how much they are respected and appreciated.
Appreciation feeds the heart. Encouraging a job well done, effort, enthusiasm, cooperation, helpfulness, commitment, patience, attitude, creativity, dedication or other characteristics that are appropriate to your classroom dynamics support the learning experience by nurturing the learners' emotional needs. Not only does their positive attitude add to the class experience and their retention of the material, but experiencing appreciation positively affects their future professional lives.
The best way to teach appreciation is to model it. Teachers demonstrate it in their attitude of respect and how they acknowledge another's achievements. The behaviors you model now carry over into the learners' professional practices. By thanking the receptionist who brings in the timely note, the learner who volunteers personal time to classroom maintenance, and the learner brave enough to go first, the instructor models how to acknowledge others. Expressing acknowledgment with a sincere attitude demonstrates integrity and respect. Students who are encouraged to show appreciation for each other naturally fall into demonstrating appreciation to their clients. In fact, the instructor is building good business skills because appreciation is a key element of good customer service.
One small choice made by the instructor snowballs into a whole way of being for a larger number of people. It's relatively easy to think of ways to model. It's not always so easy to model at this time of year when stress can be potent. As the instructor, you have the responsibility to take care of yourself to maintain a positive attitude to anchor the class. It's the perfect opportunity to exemplify the quality and joy of living through self-care.
Have a wonderful holiday season! We give our sincere thanks to all of you teachers out there who are improving the quality of healthcare by your commitment to continually honing your teaching skills.
Classroom Caper
TOPIC: Customer Care Contest
Objective: Get creative marketing ideas flowing.
Procedure: Tell the class there's going to be a contest. Each group (2-6) puts together a marketing idea that emphasizes customer care and appreciation. The groups take about 10 minutes to prepare. Let them know that they will be presenting it to the class and that presentation style and substance counts.
Have the contest and awards ceremony. Be prepared to give prizes for things like: the Best Presentation, the Idea Most Likely to Make the Most Money, the Most Creative Idea, the Most "Conscious" Idea, or whatever other fun thing occurs to you. Find merit in each idea and acknowledge every group. (Yet another way to show how much you appreciate the people in your class.)
Discussion: Ask the students what their favorite ideas were and why.
Materials Required: Presentation supplies and awards.
Time Required: 20-40 minutes.
Holiday Self-Care Tip
Plan ahead.
Decide ahead of time what traditions are really important for you to observe and stick to the plan unless there is a really good reason to deviate. Ask yourself what is in your best interest and balance that with taking care of those around you.
Mission Statement
Teacher's Aide is a cooperative venture among all of us who teach business: a support system to make our job easier, more effective and fun. This newsletter is a forum for exchanging creative techniques on teaching business as well as a resource for exercises, handouts, quotes and tools for use in class. We welcome contributions, so please send them today.
Announcement
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON THE SCIENCE OF TOUCH
ISST 2004
"Towards an Integrative Medicine"
Meet internationally known speakers, broaden your understanding and explore new techniques by taking part in hands-on workshops. Enrich your network and open yourself to new professional horizons.
If you're a practitioner or researcher who supports the integration of complementary approaches in the healthcare field, you simply cannot miss the 2nd International Symposium on the Science of Touch.
For more information:
Website: www.isst2004.org
E-mail: info@isst2004.org
Voice: 514-272-2254 or 877-776-4778
"We believe that the age of integrative medicine has arrived, that is to say, a medicine which takes greater account of the realities and needs of each patient and provides both the competencies of traditional medicine along with those of the complementary approaches, such as massage therapy."
-- Dr. Gaboriault
New Teacher's Manual
The Ethics of Touch
Teacher's Manual
The Ethics of Touch Teacher's Manual is now available on-line free of charge to schools requiring the book. We make teaching ethics easy and fun! Customize your ethics curriculum to meet your learners' needs within your time requirements.
The manual is indispensable: informative with its goals, objectives, COMTA competencies and test questions; creative, which appeals to the natural instincts of those who enter the complementary health care fields; and filled with lots of activities that inspire teaching and make learning the material fun.
Reduce your paperwork and planning time! We've made it easy to plan your classes with Lesson Plan Builders, Handout and Overhead Masters, and Teaching Tips.
The Ethics of Touch
We are pleased to share the success of The Ethics of Touch with you. It sold over 9,000 copies in the first six months of publication! More than 150 schools are using The Ethics of Touch and it continues to receive great reviews. Check out Sohnen-Moe Associates, Inc for more reviews and book details.
- Ethical Principles
- Boundaries
- Dynamics of Effective Communication
- Dual Relationships
- Sex, Touch and Intimacy
- Ethical Practice Management
- Business Ethics
- Special Considerations In Cases of Trauma
- Supervision
- Appendix A: Forms
- Appendix B: Specialized Protocols
- Appendix C: Codes of Ethics
More Rave Reviews!
Yoga Journal
September/October 2003
by Phil Catalfo
EVERY YOGA TEACHER, student, bodyworker, client, health-care practitioner, and patient would do well to read this book. It examines the myriad ethical considerations in any professional relationship that involves touch, and goes a long way toward illuminating the necessary caution and appropriate methods to use in order to respect boundaries, communicate effectively, and generally proceed with integrity.
Spirituality & Health: The Soul/Body Connection
July/August 2003
... You can find a chapter on the subject [Client's Bill of Rights], as well as discussions of all areas of ethics, in the just-published, first-ever such text for somatic practitioners, The Ethics of Touch: The Hands-on Practitioner's Guide to Creating a Professional, Safe and Enduring Practice by Ben E. Benjamin, Ph.D., and Cherie Sohnen-Moe. This readable, comprehensive manual discusses every aspect of a practitioner-client relationship, including boundaries, communication, sex/touch/intimacy, trauma considerations, business, supervision, sample codes of ethics from various modalities, and much more.
Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Alliance
The Forum
Fall 2003, Volume 10, Number 4
by Ann Bailey
Finally a book on ethics written especially for us, health professionals who touch the body as a mean of delivering care. It is relevant, practical, and long overdue. This book is unique because the authors recognize that even the most skilled and careful practitioner can make errors in judgment. Benjamin and Sohnen-Moe address the ethical pitfalls that can occur and explore how to handle a given situation to avoid negative results.
The overall purpose of ethics, as stated by the authors, "is to guide professional practitioners so that clients' welfare remains the first priority." They succeed in keeping this principle foremost throughout the book, bringing conclusion to each example by asking us to consider what is in the best interest of the client. But they don't preach or admonish us. They give us tools and resources for recognizing and sorting through ethical dilemmas. For example, we can take a self-assessment test to discover where our personal and professional boundaries are. Or, we can work through a personal ethical dilemma using their Six Stages of Clarification. They include a full discussion on how to set a healthy structure for fees and bartering. The authors also lead us through the maze of complex relationships where we try to juggle professional, social or family roles. They give us parameters and guidelines for navigating the risks inherent in dual relationships.
As acupuncturists, most of us did not receive adequate ethics training in school, and if we did, it usually focused on the legalities of unethical advertising and insurance billing. These authors go beyond the usual topics and have collected input from experts in their fields. The result is a refreshing and in-depth examination of topics.
The book is practical. Each chapter closes with a summary, "Chapter Highlights," as well as a page or two of "Discussion Questions and Activities." The latter can be useful for personal reflection or for sparking a classroom or in-service discussion. Sidebars on each page refer to additional information elsewhere in the book. The margins also contain pertinent quotations from inspirational leaders, website resources, and special alerts to emphasize key points for the reader.
The authors know that ethical situations arise for all practitioners at one time or another. Fortunately for us, they have written a timely and thought-provoking guide that should be in every school library and every practitioner's office.
Classroom Celebration Tips
- Examples of appreciation: applause; certificates acknowledging fulfillment of student contract; awards; verbal thank-you's; "learner of the week" announcement and name posted.
- Secret Celebration Fairies: In honor of Winter Celebrations initiate secret appreciation pals. Each person has a name assigned or drawn out of a hat of another person in the class to honor each day or at other specified times. How to honor or appreciate the person is up to their pal though some parameters should be given lest it become too burdensome.
- Decorate with non-religious based items. Most winter holidays incorporate light due to the short days. Candles are always inspiring. Hanging lanterns, reflective garlands and symbols of light all bring the awareness of the light within to the space. Even a simple light string will add joy.
- Have learners generate holiday gift ideas for their clients. Make sure they consider if the gift is appropriate and ethical. Fun examples include: Stress-O-Meter/Mood cards; bath fizzles; laminated pocket reflexology cards; affirmation cards; and aromatherapy samples.
- Give a little gift that says something about who you are, such as a stick of incense wrapped in pretty paper with a string. Or you could print an inspiring saying and wrap it in a tube with ribbon. Candy often goes over well, perhaps even candy made with honey or organic sweetener instead of sugar.
- Encourage learners to put together a community "appreciation" project.
- Incorporate appreciation with the season by having your learners explore ways to show appreciation to each other and to their future clients.