Self-Care for Writers

My teaching background is the elementary panel so I found this article, Self Care for Graduate Students when Time and Energy are Tight, by dissertation coach Kathryn Peterson about stress in the graduate program fascinating.

I recently completed my doctorate and published a book, and could relate to some of the points in her article. Although our doctorate program didn't have the 'publish or perish' pressures, I agree with the author that working on a long-term writing project is like running a marathon. Writing can be stressful. It can take a physical and mental toll on your body and your energy.

Stressors can include:

• biological stressors: so much sitting - aching shoulders, creaky joints
• cognitive stressors: researching, reading, synthesizing so many articles and so much data; putting it all together in a coherent fashion

• emotional stressors: the review process.  You submit something you think is pretty darn good and it comes back with so many suggestions for revisions, and questions. It can feel a bit like a personal attack when someone 'attacks' your writing.

• prosocial and social stressors: the enormous amount of time and energy spent on a long-term writing project means less time for family and community. 

One of her suggestions is to write down five easy, low cost, short-term ideas for self-care on an index card and keep them in your bag or post them on a whiteboard in your workspace.  Then use them to restore balance and recharge energy when your tension is high and your energy is low.

Some suggestions for low cost, short term self-care include: a hot cup of tea, a walk outdoors, playing with a pet, holding hands with a loved one, reading a chapter in a non-work related book. 

I like the idea of having those strategies for refilling your energy tank posted on a whiteboard or written on an index card and carried in your bag.  When energy is low, it is so easy to revert to old habits like junk food, energy drinks, and mindless screen time. Having a strategy card readily at hand may help me to choose healthy strategies for restoring energy when my tank is low!

Empty fuel tank gauge image from: vectorstock.com/2807186

Beyond Behaviour Charts

In my work as a consultant, I wish I had thought of using a behaviour chart like this with educators.  What better way for them to see and feel the impact that this approach can have on student engagement and motivation. Imagine if at your next staff meeting your administrator called you out in front of all of your colleagues and made you move your clip for scrolling through email on your cell phone, digging through your purse, or talking to the educator seated next to you.  And imagine how much more upset you'd be if your transgressions were actually work related - checking email for a field trip confirmation, looking for a pen to write notes during the meeting, talking to your colleague about the meeting content!

Behaviour charts do not help educators to determine the underlying causes of behaviour.  Instead of dealing with the problem, we are only reacting to the symptom.  If we don't address the cause, the 'problem behaviour' is most likely going to continue to happen.  So the child who is rummaging through their desk when the teacher is teaching a lesson - maybe they are looking for a pencil because it helps them to remember instructions if they write them down, maybe they need a fidget toy in their hands to help them listen - we'll never know if we don't ask.

And while behaviour charts may shame students into compliance, they do not help students to develop skills they need to be successful in school and life, like self-regulation.  Often, instead of focusing on the behaviour, the use of behaviour charts focuses on the child. The child who is frequently moving their stick into yellow or red is seen by their classmates and, often in their own mind, as 'the bad kid.'  

See Aviva Dunsiger's great blog post on this idea: When and How Do Perceptions Matter?

For the child who is seldom asked to move their clip, having to do so can impact their learning for the rest of the day.

So what can educators do instead of using behaviour charts?

• when thinking about student behaviour, ask 'why and why now?'  All behaviour is communication, so what is the student telling us with this behaviour? 
• reframe behaviour: Is this stress behaviour or misbehaviour?
• keep conversations about behaviours private, when possible
• build community in the classroom rather than compliance. A great resource for this is Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community by Alfie Kohn or the articles listed below
• help students to develop skills of self-regulation in age appropriate ways. What does calm feel like? How does being calm help them learn? What helps them to feel calm? What are classroom appropriate ways that they can use to manage their energy states, emotions, behaviour and attention in ways that are socially acceptable in the school and classroom context?
• read and reflect on our own practice.  

Here are some articles that discuss why to remove behaviour charts as well some alternatives to use instead. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments or to send them to me in a DM. 

Tear Down Your Behaviour Chart by L. Jung and D. Smith, Educational Leadership, September 2018

Hey Teachers, Stop Using Behaviour Charts. Here's Why from PBS

Death to the Behaviour Chart! 3 Reasons to Resist the Lure of Punishments and Rewards - Education Week Teacher

5 Reasons I'm Against Behaviour Charts (What I Do Instead) from WeAreTeachers.com

When Behaviour Charts Don't Work, Throw Them Out from Edutopia

Step Away From The Stickers - a previous blog post I wrote for the MEHRIT Centre

NOTE: Jon's original tweet generated a lot of discussion on Twitter and, if you follow him, you can see the responses he posted to clarify his Tweet.  His post, and my blog, are not meant to blame and shame teachers but to prompt educators to reflect on what we do, why we do it, and the impact our actions may have on our students. 

December Reflections

December is a time for reflection on the year past, and even though I'm retired, this has been an amazing year of professional growth and challenges. My OneWord for 2017 was 'stretch' and I vowed to stretch myself, personally and professionally, out of my comfort zone. I've continued to 'stretch' this year as well.

Rather than list all of them, I've selected four instances that pushed me out of my comfort zone professionally this year:

1. Finished my doctorate! I began this journey before I retired, knowing that I would need a continued intellectual challenge in my retirement. Boy, was it challenging!  But I did it - even though it was difficult and there were times when I wanted to quit, I did it!  Walking across the stage at Western's convocation and meeting all of my online classmates and professors in person was a real thrill. My doctoral work explored Enacting Self-regulation Expectations in Kindergarten Programs Using A Distributed Leadership Framework, and I have published a few articles based on this work. I hope to continue publishing in 2019.


2. Speaking of publishing, my book, Lab Class: Professional Learning Through Collaborative Inquiry and Student Observation became available in August 2018 and it was chosen as Learning Forward's Summer Book Club selection. What a thrill to hold a copy of it in my hands!  It is based on work that we did in our board, engaging as co-learners with educators using a collaborative inquiry approach to professional learning. Going through the publication process with the team at Corwin Press was exciting and scary at the same time - lots of revisions, lots of questions - but totally worth it in the end.

3. I was a guest on not one, but two podcasts on voicEd.com.  I'd never been on a podcast before, and they are kind of challenging.  You're talking with other people whom you can't see. I've read that over 90% of communication is non-verbal and in a podcast you don't have any of those visual cues - head nods, eye gaze, etc - to support the conversation. Luckily the others with whom I was chatting were very experienced podcasters and the hour flew by.  Thanks to Stephen Hurley & Doug Peterson for inviting me to join them on This Week In Ontario Edublogs, and to Stephen Hurley & Susan Hopkins for allowing me to join them on the Voices of Self-Regulation podcast.

4. I have presented at lots of conferences over the years, both locally and provincially, but this year I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and did something different.  Instead of presenting a workshop, I facilitated a conversation which is much more open and fluid.  And, to make it even more challenging, it wasn't at a Kindergarten conference or a self-reg conference (which are my strengths) but at the Bringing IT Together Conference, which is a technology focused conference with lots of intermediate and secondary teachers. I was worried that no one would attend my session, or that the people who did attend wouldn't have much to say.  I needn't have worried - I had a great group and they engaged in a very fulsome conversation.

Here's hoping that 2019 offers many more opportunities to continue to stretch and grow!


Thanks to Lynn Thomas for inspiring this blog post, and to Doug Peterson who posted the link to her blog in This Week in Ontario Edublogs.  I always get so inspired by the blogs he shares!

Self-Regulation and Art

Image from Surrealistic Reality

Each person has different strategies for restoring their energy and their sense of calm after dealing with or even while dealing with stress. Earlier this month, I wrote about exercise as one of my go-to strategies.

This image popped up on a social media feed today and I was reminded of how we can use the arts for self-regulation. The arts can encompass a wide range of activities - drawing, sketching, painting, sculpture, music, fabric arts, writing, singing, composing music even culinary arts. 

For some people, it is restorative to create art while others are restored by listening to music, reading poetry, or viewing art. 

One stumbling block for me was the idea that art had to produce something and the something I produced had to be 'good.'  Instead of reducing stress, this mindset made art more stressful for me. As a kindergarten teacher, I was a firm believer in the importance of process over product. It was all about allowing students to explore different media and being expressive. So why wasn't I able to grant myself the same permission to focus on exploration instead of focusing on the final product? 

There are a number of very creative, artistic people in my family who create beautiful art that they can display in their home or give as a gift.  I had to stop comparing my artistic efforts to theirs, and turn off the voice in my head that said, "You're not good at art."  Gradually I began to enjoy the process again.  Now I like doodling in my bullet journal, putzing about with paint, writing poetry, and other creative endeavours for their own sake and not as a means to an end. Drawing, painting, and writing are tools I have added to my self-regulation toolbox.

Do you use the arts as a stress reducing strategy? 

What arts do you like to use to reduce stress?

Do you enjoy the process and/or the product?

Running & Self-Regulation

It was cold today.
And a little bit windy.
There was rain in the forecast.
I am coming down with a cold.
I have a sore throat.
My sinuses are stuffy.

But I put all these excuses aside, got on my cold weather running gear, and went out for a leisurely 5K run late this afternoon.  Not pushing myself to go fast, just putting in some miles.

I ran a half marathon last weekend - over a week ago - and haven't run since.  It was time.

Part of this is willpower.  I pushed myself to put on my running gear and get out the door.

Part of this is self-regulation. I know that running makes me feel better.  It's a great stress reliever. I feel strong and healthy after a run. There are nights when I think I'm too tired to run, and yet after my run I feel energized.

As the weather turns colder, I will keep running a few times a week - just as long as the roads aren't icy.  And then it will be time to switch to the gym for my fitness fix.

Do you exercise to reduce stress?  
What is your go-to exercise? 

From Quotefancy.com

The Importance of Risky Play for All Students

"Bravery is learned, and like anything learned, it needs to be practiced."
                 Caroline Paul


I saw this brief video clip of Caroline Paul, former firefighter and now best-selling author, on Facebook recently and was thinking about another post I had seen about the importance of risky play for children.

(Text of this sign: 

Risk & Play: When you take a risk, your brain changes. Do you remember climbing to the top of a tree? Or swinging as fast as you could until you felt like you might fall off? These risks are more than fun - they help brains develop. Risky play combines fun and stress - turbo-charging brain development.

It can be stressful to climb to the top of the tower if you haven't done it before but learning to handle that stress will make you more resilient under future pressures.

Risky play develops your executive function, the parts of your brain in charge of decision-making. Deciding whether or not to jump off something tests the limits of your judgement. The only way to learn to make good decisions is by practicing making decisions.

Bumps and scares are the vivid feedback you need to improve your judgement. Thankfully, you'll get better and your brain will have developed from the experience).

Risky play does not mean that we are putting children in danger. It means we are allowing them to push themselves and feel a bit of fear, and then overcome that fear. To climb, to jump, to hang upside down, to run so fast it feels like you might fall over, to swing so high that it feels like you just might go right over the top of the swing set!

Do we socialize our girls to avoid risk while encouraging boys to engage in risky play? What lessons are our students taking from our messages around risky play?

The full video of Caroline's TED Talk can be viewed below:

As educators, we need to be mindful - do we provide opportunities for girls and boys to engage in risky, physical play?  We want to ensure that all students will be resilient, confident risk-takers.

For more research on this topic, check out these online books and articles:

The Overprotected Kid - The Atlantic

No Fear - Growing up in a risk aversive society by Tim Gill

Is it our fears that are stopping kids? - Aviva Dunsiger

Self-Regulation and Play-based Learning

Enter any kindergarten classroom and you will see children engaged in different types of play – painting at the easel, sculpting play dough, splashing at the water table, playing house in the dramatic play centre.  Some children stay for long periods at one centre, while others move from place to place. The teachers circulate through the room, talking with the children and supporting their play.

Why a play-based program? Children are naturally curious and play allows them to explore, create, build, wonder and ask questions. In kindergarten, educators set up the classroom so that children are actively learning language, math, science and more through play.

How does a play-based kindergarten program help children to develop self-regulation? Just as play is a natural way for young children to learn language and math, it is a natural way for them to deal with and recover from stress.  Kindergarten educators provide many different materials and play spaces in the classroom, and allow the children to decide where they want to play and for how long. With support from the adults in the classroom, children learn which play materials help them to feel calm and which energize them.

The children at the block centre use lots of energy as they carry the blocks and move around in the zoo they have created. Their teacher knows that this will help them to be calm when it’s time to sit for lunch, as they will have released so much energy during play.

The young boy sitting quietly in the book centre is learning to self-regulate.  He has found a place in the classroom where he feels safe and calm. A recent arrival to Canada from Syria and just beginning to learn English, he isn’t ready to play just yet. 

By playing with different materials in the classroom, children learn to self-regulate.  They learn to recognize when they feel stressed and which activities will help them to feel calm. They move away from play areas that they find too loud or stressful, and choose play that meets their needs. Each student is unique, and what is calming for one student may not be calming for another student. One child may find working with play dough calming, while another child may prefer to pour sand at the sand table. With so many materials to choose from in a play-based kindergarten program, each child can find what works best for them!

(Revised -original version can be found in Self-Reg Parenting, Volume 1; Issue 3)

Honouring the 'Wild Child'

image from pinterest.com

This poster, using text from Wild Child by Jeanne Willis, reminded me of the first week of school in kindergarten year after year.  That first week I would find shoes scattered throughout the classroom - the children were not used to wearing them after spending their summer footloose and fancy free, and would kick them off at the first opportunity. And quite frankly, I wasn't used to wearing shoes after a summer spent barefoot or in flip flops. 

How can we welcome our youngest learners to our schools and still honour their wildness?  Some ideas that immediately came to mind for me were:

Play-based learning - large blocks of uninterrupted time for child-directed play-based learning with open-ended materials

Outdoor learning spaces - finding ways to incorporate the outdoors into our day as often as possible, even in urban environments 

Inquiry-based learning - allowing student wonderings and questions to lead our learning. Educators may bring in natural objects, ask questions or share their own wonderings to spark inquiry.

How else can educators provide a positive learning environment for students without taking "all their wisdom and wildness away." 

Slow Down and See From A Child's Eyes

Leah McDermott posted this on Facebook and Vicki Parnell shared it to the Self-Reg Parenting Facebook page:

Image from Dissolve.com

I wanted to tell him to hurry up... but I paused and asked instead. His response: “I want to see if the vultures think I’m a dead animal.” I hadn’t even noticed the vultures flying overhead... I was so focused on finishing the task and moving on to the next thing that I was missing everything. 

How many times in a day do you tell your child to “hurry up?”

Rushing out the door. Get your shoes on. Eat your dinner faster. Walk quicker. Chin up, eyes forward, let’s go! We’ve got to HURRY…..

To where? To what?

Do you stop and ask yourself what you’re rushing for? What is so important that you are pushing your child so quickly through their childhood?

And do you ever wonder why?

Why they are moving so slowly. Why they are staring off into space.

I stopped hurrying. And I asked. And these are just a few of the answers I got:

“I’m counting my peas.” (not eating dinner)

“I’m trying to decide which shoes are the best shoes.” (taking forever to get shoes on)

“I’m singing to the birds.” (lagging behind on a walk)

“I’m watching this worm to see how fast it can dig.” (not coming in for a bath)

Leah notes:

In fact, we can learn a lot from watching our children. From asking ourselves why we are rushing constantly. Why we are so concerned about the next moment instead of focusing on enjoying the present one.

This really resonated with me.  I remember when our girls were younger and we were hiking at Bay of Fundy National Park. Hubby, eldest daughter and I were marching along at a brisk pace, while the youngest dawdled along behind. But she kept pointing out things we were missing - a snake hiding in the leaves, a stick shaped just like 'her letter' M - and I realized that instead of hurrying her along, we needed to slow down and really be present. We were treating our hike as another task to complete.

As we head back to school in the next few weeks, it is easy to fall back into the 'hurry up, hurry up, you're going to be late/miss the bus' frenetic pace. And it can be easy to see a child's behaviour as reluctance, defiance, or just annoying.  Instead, in self-regulation we ask 'why this behaviour and why now?' As Leah's post points out, it may not be lack of compliance or stalling tactics. It may just be a child's curiosity and wonder at the world. Let's allow ourselves to slow down and join them.

Make It Happen

Doug Peterson's recent blog post pointed me in the direction of a blog by George Couros in which George shared a flow chart for making initiatives happen:

He proposes four steps to make things happen:
1. Identify what you want to do
2. Find someone else who is doing it and learn from them.
3. If number two doesn't work, figure out how to make it happen yourself.
And most importantly:
4. Want to make it happen.


Doug proposed an even simpler flow chart:

I'm sure that there are people who will say, "Yes but......"

I get that this flow chart is perhaps an oversimplification.  But that's a good thing! If we want to make things happen, then we may have to stop making them overcomplicated.  Not every change requires a task force, a committee, a feasibility study.  Sometimes, to make things happen, you just need a person or a group of people who are 100% committed to making it happen. 

Yes, we need to think about barriers and issues, and there may be policies and procedures that we have to follow, but we don't always have to wait until an idea has been examined from every possible angle, with every 't' crossed and every 'i' dotted, before proceeding. 

Here's one small example:

A grade 6 teacher had a class with many students who seemed to have great difficulty in paying attention in class. They were fidgeting, with a myriad of excuses for getting up - sharpening their pencils, getting a drink, borrowing an eraser from a friend, etc.  After checking with her principal, she used some classroom funds to purchase three large yoga balls for alternate seating.  She discussed the purpose of the yoga balls with the class - they were to help them learn, not for playing. The teacher and the students devised a schedule - the day was divided into three 100 minute blocks so every 100 minutes, three different students could have a turn using the yoga ball as a seat. Students were free to pass, if they didn't want a turn.

The impact on student learning was immediate. Students who were formerly 'wanderers' were now able to stay focused. And students who had been quiet and not participating began to participate when they were sitting on the yoga balls.  It seemed the yoga ball seats helped down-regulate some students and up-regulate others.

After about six weeks, the students wrote to the principal, advocating for funds for more yoga balls and explaining how the yoga balls had impacted their ability to learn. 

This teacher saw a need, she figured out what she thought would be best for her learners, and she made it happen.

Restoration & Resilience

Yesterday I had the honour of being invited to join Doug Peterson (@dougpete) and Stephen Hurley (@Stephen_Hurley) for their weekly podcast This Week In Ontario Edublog (#twioe) on VoicEdRadio (@voicEdRadio). It was great conversation and we talked about a wide range of topics from county fairs, self-regulation, educational leadership, and grades versus feedback. But just like a job interview, about an hour afterwards I thought of MUCH better answers to some of their questions. I messaged Doug and he said, Yeah that happens a lot.  Why don't you write a blog post with what you wished you said?

My biggest 'woulda, coulda, shoulda' moment was in regard to Stephen's comment about dealing with stress that he experienced as a result of dealing with technical issues at the Self-Regulation Summer Symposium. Now I was at the symposium and I would have never guessed that anything was going wrong; Stephen looked calm and in control at all times. But, apparently, behind the scenes there were multiple technical glitches.

Afterwards I thought, that was a perfect opportunity to talk about Restoration and Resilience.While we can reduce stressors as much as possible, there will still be some days or moments that are more stressful than we expected. Even at the Self-Reg Symposium there is going to be stress. We need to know what helps us to restore our energy after dealing with stress.  This can vary from person to person. At the summer symposium, they had a wide range of activities available for participants to use to restore energy after a busy day of learning

• knitting stations
• jigsaw puzzles
• make your own stress ball station
• colouring books
• bikes
• kayaks and canoes
• yoga
• zumba
• board games

Other people might have restored their energy by going for a walk or reading quietly in their room.

So if I had a 'do-over' I'd ask Stephen what strategies he used to restore his energy and get back to calm so that he was ready to tackle whatever stressors the next day at SRSS2018 might throw his way.

Two great examples of how what restores us varies from person to person:

Baths - There are lots of people who relax by having a bath. Since the time they were little, my girls love 'spa bath' - we'd float rose petals from the garden in the water, dim the lights, put on soft music  and they'd relax in the tub forever. In my self-reg course, lots of people said they relaxed by taking a bath. I don't find baths relaxing. I'm just bored.  And I sit in the tub and wonder how other people find this relaxing. And why doesn't this work for me?

Massage - I love massage and find it very relaxing.  Other people can't stand going for a massage - they hate the weird music, they don't like having to lay still, they don't want someone else touching them. Not only do they not find it relaxing, some actually find it stressful. There are the physical stressors of touch and sound and scent but it's also stressful because there's a social stressor because you're supposed to be enjoying this and relaxing and why aren't you? 

We each have to discover what helps us to restore our energy, knowing that works for someone else may not work for us. And what works one day for us may not work another day - that's why it's important to have a range of restoration strategies. What are your strategies?

The First Follower

Often when people learn about self-regulation, they begin this journey with a goal of helping others – students in their class, their own children – but what ends up happening is that self-reg impacts their own life as well. When we start to see others with soft eyes, we turn that same lens on ourselves.  Instead of chastising our own lack of self-control and willpower, we ask ourselves “Why this behaviour and why now?”

And once we realize what a profound impact self-regulation is having on our lives and our relationships with others, we want to share self-reg with everyone!!! Principals want to share it with their staff, teachers want to share it with colleagues and parents want to share it with other parents.

At the Self-Regulation Summer Symposium, Catherin Lethbridge spoke about this during her presentation: “From a single tweet to system-wide implementation….lessons learned.”  In her work as a school administrator, she fundamentally believed that the well-being of students is directly linked to the well-being of the adults in the building. She knew that if self-regulation was to take hold in her school (and later across the entire district) that she had to begin with the adults. Adults are the ones who help students by co-regulating, and you can’t help someone else if you are dysregulated yourself.

But she also knew that to shift the paradigm from behaviour management to self-regulation, she had to issue an invitation, not a demand. She believed that this type of paradigm shift would occur, not as the result of a top-down mandate, but by creating a group of people who willing to join in the learning.

Catherin shared this video of The First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy to illustrate her point:

As a leader who is looking to share a vision, whether that vision is self-regulation, inquiry based learning, or some other shift in thinking and practice, we don’t need management to mandate everyone on board.  Mandates often lead to superficial implementation, not long-lasting, deep implementation. We need to create invitations and find those first followers, who will then help to create a space where others feel safe to join.

When our board introduced Interactive White Boards many years ago, we began with four primary teachers who didn't have a lot of technology experience but who accepted an invitation to be part of this project. Initially they received support from Doug Peterson, myself and other members of our program department, but quickly they took ownership of their own professional learning. Just like the self-reg learners, these four teachers, our first followers, became advocates and started offering workshops in our board and across the region to share their enthusiasm about IWBs as a powerful teaching and learning tool.

Think about your vision for change. Who are the people inside and outside of your school, your community or your organization?  How are they engaged in the work? Might some of them be your first followers?