I was reflecting today on how much emotions can impact our ability to learn. A past experience where I had been in conflict with my lecturer, and had a bit of a mild 'slap on the wrist' made it impossible for me to concentrate throughout a seminar later that day. I spent the whole 2 hours replaying the conversation, wondering if she was still angry, wondering if she was avoiding eye contact on purpose and not coming to my group because of what happened. Really exhausting and stress levels running high throughout. My recollection of the content of the seminar was patchy to say the least when I reviewed the notes - I simply didn't have the head space to learn and do all that emotional analysis.
It was good to remember this - gives an insight into what some of the pupils at school may be experiencing. Some of the pupils in my class have experienced bullying, bereavement of a parent, being a looked after child, or a total recent change of culture and a new language - way more stressful than my mild incident.
