I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of this team. Each time we meet, I learn so much about what influences my own professional work but also how this project is influencing staff members in the school. A take-away or big idea from our conversations today was that being well-versed in Self-Reg is not an add-on to all of the other responsibilities an educator has. Our days are busy! There are consistently new initiatives and programs to support the academic growth and well-being needs of our students. Sometimes we feel exhausted before we even get started, wondering how can we do it all and do it well. Immersing yourself into Stuart Shanker’s Self-Reg is about a shift in our mindset. It’s about the lens through which we look at the needs of our students; shifting from working to enforce compliance to proactively reducing the causes of challenging behaviours and teaching kids how to do this for themselves. It is NOT about carving out more time in your already busy day to run another program or curriculum. You do not need to find extra time in your day to make this happen. Self-Reg seamlessly permeates every interaction you have with students every single day.
We as a group are already seeing the benefits to this work. Positive effects that have been identified on our own lives include a calmer head space, deeper relationships with students, increased self-awareness, knowing we are better meeting the well-being needs of our students, etc. We are also really hopeful that in the long run we are going to also see increased productivity in the classroom. For our students we are also already recognizing the potential for increased self-awareness and self-advocacy, building of their personal toolboxes, a more settled and happy school experience, just to name a few. I look forward to monitoring the growth as we move forward and celebrate the successes.
Throughout my day I find myself doing things to regulate myself, and then see the way it has helped me feel better about my teaching, more effective in my teaching, and so much more successful at supporting students. This line is really resonating with me: “….proactively reducing the causes of challenging behaviours and teaching kids how to do this for themselves.” That’s what it’s all about for me too!