Inclusive leadership: managing emotional baggage in the classroom

Life experiences inform our mindset. They help construct our beliefs and what many of us refer to as our ‘emotional baggage’ – those past emotions or unresolved traumas that sit in our subconscious and trigger us to feel and react. These beliefs and baggage come with us wherever we go – and that includes into the classroom and lessons, where teachers are particularly vulnerable to the consequences, as psychotherapist Dr. Liz Mellor reveals.

I began our conversation, for the Music Education podcast and this article, by asking Mellor what role our experiences, beliefs, trauma and emotional baggage can play in music lessons and teaching. Her response was poignant and thought-provoking, pointing out that when we teach music, ‘our whole histories come into play’. Essentially, she’s saying that our past experiences play a role in the classroom. This can be a hard pill to swallow. Yet while it might not be something teachers hear very often and is likely to be uncomfortable to hear, it is a widely accepted idea in mainstream psychology.