"Good Teachers....."

Twitter can be a great professional learning tool. I log on at least once a day and browse through the tweets from educators and organizations that I follow and usually click on to two or three articles, blogs or other resources to read. I also love having a peek into other educators' classrooms and administrators' schools and the student learning that they share. Other people post short tweets meant to be inspirational.

Yesterday, the responses to one of these inspirational types of Twitter posts caught me by surprise. Danny Steele, who often posts these types of Tweets posted:

Good teachers will spend some time this summer thinking about how they can improve their lessons next year. That’s just what they do.

— Danny Steele (@SteeleThoughts) May 25, 2018

Which lead to a lengthy response:

The rest of us crap teachers will use summer to rest and take a break without feeling guilty about not thinking about work. That's just what we do. https://t.co/llVbSvNBV5

— Doug Robertson (@TheWeirdTeacher) May 28, 2018

Usually I avoid 'twitter drama' but this response thread intrigued me. I don't imagine it's what Mr. Steele intended but when you say 'good teachers do.....' are you thereby creating another set of 'bad teachers' who don't do whatever you've described? That's certainly how some teachers interpreted his words. In this case, he stated that they spend 'some' time thinking about how they can improve their lessons, not that they spend every moment of their summer thinking about work. And certainly lots of teacher do think about how to improve their lessons but they also take time to focus on their family, their health and all the things that may have put on the back burner during the school year. From a self-reg perspective, the end of the school year is a time of incredible stress. Teachers are frantically trying to 'cover' the remaining curriculum expectations, wrap up year end events, prepare final report cards, all while wondering what their assignment for next year will be. What subject will be they be teaching? Will they be at the same school or will they be transferred due to enrolment changes or other factors? Who will be in their class? Do they upgrade qualifications? Apply for a new position? Seek some additional responsibilities? And some teachers are doing this while teaching in stifling hot classrooms since many of our school buildings are old and unairconditioned. Our words have the power. We must choose them wisely.

What is calm?

 I used to go to yoga classes at the gym fairly regularly and I found the shivasana part at the end of the class challenging.  Shivasana is corpse pose - you lay flat on your mat on your back, arms just out from your sides, palms up and you breathe slowly while the teacher talks you through a relaxation exercise.  You scan your body, part by part, and release any tension.  The lights are usually dim and the music, if any, is quiet.  I struggled with shivasana.  I would lay there and think about all the things I needed to do when I left the gym, and go over an argument I had with one of my kids, or think about a challenge I was dealing with at work.  Then I'd force myself back to my body and a few seconds later I was busy 'monkey mind' again. I forced myself to stay on the mat, even though some people left before shivasana.

After a long time, maybe a couple of months of yoga class, I was lying there on my mat at the end of class one day and the instructor said, 'when you're ready, move your wrists. When you're ready, move your ankles...' This is the beginning of the end of shivasana - then you slowly return to sitting position and do some breathing but the class is ending.  And as i was laying there, I thought "I'm not ready! I don't want to move yet."  I was so relaxed.  I think that's when I realized, 'This is what calm feels like."

In self-reg, our goal is to help students (and teachers and parents) to get to a place where they are calm, alert and ready to learn. Students can't learn if their limbic alarm is kindled. No one can learn if they are in a state of fight, flight or freeze. But how can we support people in being calm, alert and ready to learn if they don't know what calm feels like? If they can't recognize what it is to feel calm?

In today's hyperkinetic, multitasking, always connected society, where many of us reach for our phones the moment we feel the slightest twinge of boredom, how do learn what calm feels like? How do we help students recognize what it feels like to be calm?

Resources for Outdoor Classroom Day

When is Outdoor Classroom Day?
May 17, 2018

What is Outdoor Classroom Day?
Outdoor Classroom Day is a global campaign to celebrate and inspire outdoor learning and play. On the day, thousands of schools around the world take lessons outdoors. In 2017, over 2 million children in over 100 countries took part. (from https://outdoorclassroomday.com)

Why Outdoor Classroom Day?

Children in some school districts have less time outside as time for recess has been cut back in order to spend more time on academics even though we know that recess and outdoor time is important for physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. Outdoor learning increases engagement, reduces inappropriate behaviour and allows students to engage in meaningful, relevant, purposeful active learning.

Outdoor learning boosts student and teacher well-being

Outdoor learning boosts children's development - a BBC article

Importance of outdoor education in adolescence

Children Using Nature for Self-Regulation in Urban Environments

A Research-Based Case for Recess

The Death of Recess in America

Almost Half of Preschool Children do not Play Outside Each Day

Last Child In The Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder


Resources

Resources from the Outdoor Classroom Day website which can be sorted by age group and subject area

Natural Curiosity: Building Children's Understanding of the World Through Environmental Inquiry - a free downloadable book for Kindergarten to Grade 6

Ready Set Wonder: Nature Prompts for the Early Learning and Child Care Educators - a free downloadable book from the Back to Nature Network
(also available in French at http://www.back2nature.ca/readysetwonder-version-francais-de-attention-prets-a-lemerveillement/)

Into Nature: A guide to teaching in nearby nature - a free downloadable book with lesson ideas for students in kindergarten to grade 6 from Back to Nature Network
(also available in French at http://www.back2nature.ca/teachers-guide-into-nature-french/)

101 Nature Study Ideas

25 Mighty Girl Books about outdoor discovery

9 books that will inspire your little animal to get out of the house and into nature

7 books to inspire nature play

What are your favourite resources or activities for outdoor learning? What will you and your students be doing on Outdoor Classroom Day?

Self-Reg and Aging

While I began my self-reg journey from the perspective of an educator, thinking about how self-reg could help students to achieve their fullest potential, I quickly realized that self-reg begins with the self - with me and my own self-regulation. Yesterday, I used self-reg from the perspective of a daughter during a visit to my dad.

Last week, my husband took a week off from work and we spent the entire week in London getting his condo ready to sell.  He lived in it for a few years when he was working in the city, then he had tenants in it for a few years and, for the past three years our girls have lived in it while they attended post-secondary school.  Like most renovations, it is taking longer than we anticipated and we are doing most of the work ourselves - ripping out carpeting, installing laminate floors, removing panelling in the basement and putting up dry wall. Needless to say, there were lots of stressors as we worked together on this project each day and then collapsed into bed each night.

At our own home, we are still returning to normal after a flood while I was away on vacation two weeks ago. The interior of our home is fine, but the garage is filled with all of the seasonal decorations that were salvaged and scrubbed clean after the crawlspace beneath the house filled with lake water. Unfortunately, there was also the emotional stress of losing many holiday decorations - my grandmother's ornaments that hung on her tree and now ours, decorations the girls had made when they were younger, ornaments that we had picked up on our travels - all were ruined and discarded.

I usually go to visit my dad twice a week to help with his banking, run personal errands and just chat about what's happening with folks we know. My dad is dealing with his own stressors that come with aging. He decided to move to a retirement home last fall, and while he chose a lovely place, it's not the same as being at home. The challenges of having to be dependent on others for so many things, especially since he decided to stop driving last fall. He still reels from the loss of my mom (12 years younger and always so much healthier than him), and the physical challenges of aging.

Yesterday as I was preparing to leave, I knew that I had to stop for a moment and restore some of my own calmness.  If I was to bring all the stress and tension I was carrying with me to my visit with him, it would only add to the stress and tension he is already feeling.  By making a conscious effort to approach this visit with compassion and empathy, as well as taking the time to return to a place on the Thayer Matrix of less tension and more energy, I was able to arrive at his retirement home relaxed and calm - even after encountering 3 different construction projects on the road during my short drive!

As an educator and a consultant, I used this same tool. Whether heading into a classroom of kindergarten children or an auditorium of educators gathered for a professional learning session, I needed to take time to reflect on my own energy and tension before beginning my work with others.

Just as I was about to post this blog on Twitter, I saw that Stuart Shanker has shared this quote:

And I responded:

And in another instance of serendipity, I found Nancy Niessen's blog post: Reframing is Ageless yesterday when I was reflecting on this link with self-regulation and my dad.