Strong Spirits, Kind Hearts

Strong Spirits, Kind Hearts is the first practical teacher resource to provide comprehensive coverage of all aspects of developing strong spirits and caring young people. It is focused on middle years’ students but most lessons can be adapted for older and younger students as well. This resource describes ways to incorporate emotional and spiritual supports into daily routines and interactions with students and provides ready-to-use activities, lessons and units that can be integrated into subject area teaching. This book helps teachers to:
understand the importance of strengthening students’ spirits and how this support improves students’ learning and classroom moralebuild resilience and hope through their interactions with students distinguish between the development of strong spirits and religious educationuse approaches that are respectful of religious and spiritual diversity as well as more secular viewsimplement a wealth of strategies, lessons, and units that develop students’ compassion and sense of connection to others and the natural worldintegrate a focus on meaning and purpose within subject area lessons.

Author Biography

Sandra Finney has had many roles in her life time in education including public school teacher, teacher educator, and director of curriculum development for K -12 classrooms. Her interests include supporting students’ emotional and spiritual growth, critical and creative thinking abilities, and cross cultural understanding.