What is Gentle Teaching?

Summary

Gentle Teaching is a set of values, goals and strategies that teach valuing and participation. It is also a process that places bonding and companionship at the center of all interactions. It is a means to support people to regain personal control with respect and dignity.

Gentle Teaching focuses on four primary goals of support:

• supporting the individual to feel safe
• supporting the individual to feel engaged
• supporting the individual to feel unconditionally valued
• supporting the individual to return unconditional valuing 

Another aspect of Gentle Teaching is the incorporation of the Psychology of Interdependence, which has to do with how we exist as human beings, how we see ourselves, how we see our relations with important others, etc.

The Psychology of Interdependence is based on the following three assumptions.

• Each human being is made up of a mind, a body, and a spirit.
• Each human being hungers for a feeling of being with others and having a feeling of companionship. 
• Bonded relations are the fundament for developing human basic values into a moral life and into personal life goals.

When we enter into relationship with a deeply wounded person, someone who is angry and or violent, we discover our own handicaps, our fears, unforgiveness, spirit of rejection, etc.. Finding and loving the heart of the other person not only heals their broken-ness and wounds, but heals our own handicaps as well.

Dave Yeiter
email:  yeiter@earthlink.net
phone: 603-899-9863

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