On September 12, members of the Cornerstone community engaged in a discussion with Professors Eduardo Muñoz-Muñoz and Helene Chan about the effect of bilingual education on social-emotional development. After briefly reintroducing what Cornerstone is and what the school stands for, Professors Muñoz-Muñoz and Chan asked participants to reflect on why they chose the path of bilingual education for their children and how they see it affecting their children.
Professors Muñoz-Muñoz and Chan then introduced the Wellness Wheel, a model highlighting ten areas that must be integrated in a balanced manner in order to build a healthy integrated mind-brain state. Such areas include meditation, exercise, nutrition, sleep, routines, joyful activity, meaningful work, social connectedness, nature and environment, and gratitude and service. They emphasized the effect that a student's emotional state has on language acquisition. Speaking a new language includes many layers aside from simply understanding vocabulary and grammar such as cultural implications and social etiquette. All these layers to consider can be stressful, so a balanced emotional state is necessary to start learning a new language. The Wellness Wheel helps students of a new language build up healthy habits to maintain a happy and healthy mind. Participants reflected on what activities they were already practicing in their lives and which areas they would like to focus more attention on.
The session ended with the professors asking participants to choose one area that was identified as needing more focus and setting a concrete plan to better implement that area in their lives.
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