Betsy Burris is founder of Teaching through Emotions, an organization that supports teachers not just in surviving their toughest emotions about teaching but in turning those emotions into effective, rewarding, and sustainable teaching and learning experiences. Teaching through Emotions takes an explicitly psychodynamic approach to classroom difficulties, as its central premise is that healthy relationships are the bedrock of successful teaching and learning. The work, put simply, provides SEL (social-emotional learning) for teachers.
Burris works with teachers at all levels, pre-school through grad school, individually and in small support groups. She has written a book about this work called “The Feeling of Teaching: Using Emotions and Relationships to Transform the Classroom.” After graduating from Princeton, she earned a PhD in Education from Stanford University and an MSW from Smith College. She is a teacher, teacher educator, instructional designer and psychotherapist.