Final Reflection

I have been working on the final report for our TLLP.  This is our report to the Ministry of Education about our learning.  I was expecting to have a lot of space to share my learning, but it’s a rather short form.  Thankfully I can write as many words as I want here!  🙂

One of the questions asked was, “What new professional learning did you acquire as  a result of this project?”

This is what I wrote: “The learning in this project has given us the skills that we need as adults to support our students in a productive way. Learning Stuart Shanker’s “Five domains of stress”, has helped us recognize how to effectively support a student who is showing signs of stress, and help them get back to a calm state where they can return to their learning. We are proactive instead of reactive.”

That barely scratches the surface.  Anyone who has been reading this blog all along can tell you that I personally learned a lot about self-regulation and how to manage stress – my own, as well as the stress that is evident in my students and colleagues.  I shared in a few different presentations this year that I have not had to evacuate my class all year.  Last year I evacuated every day in the month of October, and quite a few more times after that.  The big difference here is that I have learned to be a stress detective. I can identify the domain in which a student might be feeling stress, and then I can help resolve or remove the stress.  I have learned to recognize the warning signs of an impending melt-down.  I have learned to anticipate a problem before an event (such as an assembly) and have learned what I can do to make sure that the child who may struggle is supported so his/her stress level doesn’t get out of control.  I am proactive instead of reactive.

As we have all shared at various points this year, the biggest change has been in me.  I feel like I have always known to be understanding of the difficulties a child might be facing in and out of the classroom.  But I haven’t always been as aware of how my personal stress is carried over into my classroom.  I have found myself many times this year recognizing that I feel stressed, taking some time to identify the stressors in my life and working to resolve them.  Walking my students through some of these same steps has changed things for us in class as well.  It was so great to see that when we were working on our One Page Profiles many of the students were articulating self-reg strategies they need to use in order to be successful.

Finally, I have loved learning alongside my colleagues.  We came together around a common problem and had a common goal:  we wanted to support our students emotionally, not just academically.  We shared some laughs. We disagreed about a few things.  The experience of being able to work so closely with the women in this group is everything I had hoped it would be last year when I was applying for the TLLP.  Each brought a different perspective to the group which helped me in my learning journey.

I am sorry this project has to end.  I am looking forward to my own personal path forward as I continue to use and learn about Self-Reg.  In the past few months we have had to stop presenting because of a supply teacher shortage.  I am sorry the project ended this way because it feels undone.  However, I’m hopeful that none of us is going to move on to other things and wander away from our Self-Reg journey.

Everyone Gets What They Need

Now that report cards are looming, I feel a great urge to update all the blogs!  After months of not being sure what to write, all I can think about are things to blog about.  I used to call this procrastination, but have since learned this is part of my own self-regulation.  I have to get all of the junk out of my brain in order to think clearly about my reports.  If you’ve ever used the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, you will know I am not the only person who needs to do a “brain dump” in order to think clearly.

But that’s not what this post is supposed to be about!

Last week we conducted an after-school session of some staff members of our school.  We wanted to teach them more about Self-Reg, and they were keen to learn more even though we had to do it after school.  We fed them well, which seemed to be payment enough.

One of the things we had to cut in order to keep it under 2 hours was this delightful video by Shelley Moore. She is a researcher, teacher and consultant who focuses on special education.  She has created this lovely set of videos she calls “Five Moore Minutes”, which are meant to help educate people about inclusion and supporting students.  In this video, titled “Decriminalizing Supports”, she talks about how we need to support every child, not try to be equal with supports.

We were going to include this video because it really speaks to the need to think about what individuals need, rather than focusing on making things equal and same.  It talks about kids getting what they need BEFORE they have to somehow prove they “deserve” it. This is what Self-Reg is all about!

Why Now?

The other day in a presentation someone asked why we are seeing so many self-regulation related problems now.  What about our society has changed? That’s such an excellent question! Anecdotally, any teacher who has been around for a while can attest to the fact that we definitely do see a higher incidence of these now than we did 10 or 20 years ago. That leads us to ask one of Dr. Shanker’s favourite questions:  Why? And why now? I am going to write about a couple of things that I think are really prevalent now, but weren’t 10 or 15 years go. I’m sorry it sounds like an assignment for a class, but I wanted to include some sources to back up what I am including. This isn’t just my opinion.

Technology and Kids:  Part 1

In the fall, we all watched a video at a PD day that highlighted an experiment known as The Still Face Experiment Basically, mom interacts with baby and everyone is happy.  Mom stops interacting and holds her face still and baby is very unhappy.  Go watch it again and think about how often we see parents interacting with their phone instead of their child. I was in line for a ride at Magic Kingdom recently and stood behind two brothers, about age 8 and 10, and they beat the crud out of each other for at least 15 minutes while mom used her phone to do I don’t know what.  Maybe she was booking Fast Passes for something, which I get, but I think it illustrates how easy the phones can make it for parents to ignore their children. Even if parents are thinking the child is busy with their own thing, the parent isn’t interacting with the child. This means the child isn’t learning to read facial expressions and understand tone of voice, and lose out on chances to learn about the give and take of a conversation because the parent isn’t interacting with them. The child might actually be ignored to the point where they miss out on a chance to learn that their caregiver is meant to help them when they are upset.  Their neural processes get all mixed up and instead of learning that something like a block tower falling down is easy to recover from, the falling block tower becomes a really huge deal that leads to a really huge reaction. Then one day that child is in kindergarten and someone else knocks his tower down and….well, you can picture it from there. In addition, spending a few minutes watching little kids in class with an iPad will show they can carry on a conversation without ever looking at the person they are speaking to. Even if you are limiting tablet time in class, you’ve likely seen students do this and know, like I do, that this is probably going on at home too.  If you don’t believe me that this is a problem, check out this article from Psychology Today by psychotherapist Sean Grover.

Technology and kids:  Part 2

Let’s get this out of the way right now: I am writing this while my children play games on the tablet and computer. The games and videos they are allowed to access are very limited.  We don’t do violence around here! (Well, not counting brother vs. sister violence.) Every teacher reading this, from k-12, can talk about students who play a lot of violent, aggressive, fast paced video games. I once had a grade 2 child tell me his parents knew that “Rated M” means mature and they felt he was mature enough for “Grand Theft Auto”. Instead of explaining how this relates to self-regulation, I am going to link to an article by Dr. Stuart Shanker.  I will give you this one quote:  

The problem here is that these games have a powerful effect on the limbic system and the brain stem: the mammalian and reptilian brains. Neither is equipped to distinguish between “game” and “reality”: between “real threat” and “make-believe”. The former is searching for predators or prey in exactly the same way that it would do in the wild, while the latter is primed to respond with an instant spurt of epinephrine and norepinephrine to increase heart rate and blood pressure: over and over and over. What’s more, these systems remain on high alert during sleep, which may be one of the reasons why we see Ivarrson’s results: that is, it takes some time for these primitive systems to register that the “danger” is past. And, of course, prolonged fight-or-flight has a blunting effect on the prefrontal systems that subserve appraisal, self-control, and prosocial behaviour.”

 There is a lot more information the article, but even if there wasn’t, I feel like this is enough to say that the increased use of technology by humans of all ages is enough to help explain why we are seeing an uptick in the number of children who struggle to self-regulate. Remember “Pong”? I don’t either! I’m way too young. But nobody was shooting fast action assault rifles in Pong in 1984. 

Here are a few blog posts and articles you can read if you’d like to think more about this:

Aviva Dunsiger, an ELK teacher, writes about using Dash and Dot in her class and the dysregulation that came with this activity. 

And just because it’s important to think of both sides, here’s an article about how tech can be really useful as a regulation tool in the classroom.  

One thing that is talked about in the book “Self-Reg” by Dr. Shanker is that an iPad might seem to regulate a child. It might seem to calm the child.  But what happens when the iPad is taken away?  Is this followed by a huge show of dysregulation?  If it is, then this is not the tool for that child.

GET OUT!

There are whole books written about how important it is for humans to spend time outdoors.  I think we can all agree that humans spend more time indoors now than in any previous generation. We work inside, we stay inside when it’s cold, we have a lot of fun stuff to do inside.  We have busy, planned lives that involve jumping from activity to activity. We have regulations that keep children indoors when it is too hot or too cold. The more I am thinking about this the more I feel like I need to get my kids off their tech and outside.  For the sake of time, I am going to link here to several articles you can read about this if you are thinking this might be something you’re wondering more about.

https://childmind.org/article/why-kids-need-to-spend-time-in-nature/ http://childnature.ca/forest-school-canada/

https://www.otffeo.on.ca/en/learning/tlc/report/take-me-outside-an-early-years-urbanrural-environmental-inquiry/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2444866416301234

This is final one is a long read, but if you jump to page 22, you can read about the connection between outdoor time and mental health. https://lawson.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/YE_Systematic_Review_Gifford.pdf

 

Final Thoughts

These aren’t all the reasons.  But I think I have highlighted some things that are different now in our society than they were 10, 15 or more years ago.

A few weeks ago there was a show on CBC that was all over social media.  A teacher talked about how violence in the classroom had effected her.  Below is a link to the follow-up show. There is some information that fits with this post and helps to explain some of the “Why? Why now?” when we are trying to figure out all the difficulty with self-regulation we see in classrooms, and society.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/sunday-edition/segment/15681184?fbclid=IwAR1jlYmsXLpLHEMvviVaCj321L_NCJ1AeTB_5SfahlNrY2e3RLW4Y6dTcoI

Final, Final thoughts:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=117&v=1XDVDyDJ3s0

A Small (Self-Reg) Moment

Look: I could talk to you for a few weeks about everything I know about self-regulation. But that isn’t what this is about. This is about how much learning about self-regulation has impacted every day of my life.

Several years ago, when I was teaching the class I was teaching when I first started participating in the March Slice of Life Challenge (2007), a boy in my grade 3/4 class made running car noises for three days straight.  On day one, I tried everything I could to distract him.  On day two, I mostly ignored it thinking he’d give up.  He was an attention seeker, and I was NOT going to give him any attention for this behaviour!  On day three, I lost my cool. He had, by this time, recruited the other 3 boys in the class into his game of “Annoy Mrs. Corbett and all the girls”.  They were all making running car noises at the same time until they’d collapse into a fit of giggles.  On day three, it wasn’t funny any more.  I yelled at the three of them in the hall like I have never yelled before or since.  I walked away from it feeling embarrassed by my behaviour but also feeling assured that I had shown them who was boss.

Day three was a Friday, so when we returned on Monday I wasn’t sure if the car noises would start up again or not.  They didn’t.  I’ll never know if the boys forgot about it, or just moved on.  I’m quite certain my temper tantrum did nothing to solve the problem.

I was reminded of this the other day when a child in my class made a running car noise. But this time, because I’ve spent a lot of time learning about self-regulation and more importantly Self-Reg I recognized the attention seeking behaviour as something I needed to respond to.  Instead of thinking, “I’ll ignore it until it stops, wait for a positive behaviour, and then give attention for that.”  I went straight to the child and said, “What’s up?  Is everything ok?”

It wasn’t.  So we walked through the problem and instead of turning into three solid days of running car noises (I bet you are tired of hearing me say “running car noises” and you are probably getting a feel for how it felt to hear the actual running car noises for, you know, THREE DAYS STRAIGHT!)  This child and I walked away feeling better.  I was not embarrassed by my behaviour.  Judging by the dwindling number of attention seeking incidents, I think this child feels better about these interactions too.  I’ve become someone s/he can get help from when things are hard, rather than someone that needs to be obeyed simply because I am older than the other people in the room. I feel like I have earned respect instead of demanded it.

 

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Group Work

We have repeatedly struggled with group work this year in room 10.  I matched them up, then rearranged them, then moved them to opposites sides of the room from each other, then moved them back.  Each iteration of the monthly learning partnerships and table-mates ended in frustration.  That might be an exaggeration.  Some of them did okay.  But for the most part we have been having trouble.

A few weekends ago, I sat down and did some stress detective work.  Why, I asked myself, did we continue to have difficulty?

I started by looking at the symptoms and signs of stress:

  • Whenever things feel apart for a group or partnership someone would cry and express the they felt nobody liked them.
  • Or, someone in the group would feel that they didn’t get any turns and nobody would listen to them.
  • Or, someone would say they had to do all the work.
  • Or, someone would say they didn’t get a turn.

On top of this, the volume in the room would get be way beyond “rock concert” level.  I already know that sound is a stressor for some of my people, and one of the things that I saw happening was that those people would get louder…and louder…and louder.

Looking at all of these symptoms, I felt that there were some really specific social, emotional, cognitive and biological stressors at play.

  • Social:  The children wanted to be seen as competent and capable by their friends (don’t we all?), and when someone else didn’t give them turns there were no opportunities to show their capabilities.  Another huge social stressor was that if someone disagreed it was seen as a huge offence. There were several who would come to me in tears saying, “They say I am wrong!” and then we’d figure they were wrong and they’d admit that, but still couldn’t believe someone had the audacity to point it out.
  • Emotional:  Tied to the stuff above were some pretty serious feelings: annoyance, disappointment, rejection.
  • Cognitive:  Having to negotiate with people can be tricky.  I felt that my students, at least a good chunk of them, literally didn’t know how to do that.  They didn’t know how to say they disagreed without shouting “NO!!!” or “YOU’RE WRONG!”  They literally didn’t get why their peers were having emotions because of something they said.
  • Biological: As I said before, quite a few of my students are very sensitive to loud noises. It hurts their ears.  Also, some of them can’t listen to one thing if there are other things going on in the room. I am actually like this.  If you are driving with me and want to talk, we will have to turn the radio off!  I can’t listen to both.

So there we were.  I felt good about my list of stressors.  Now, what could I do to reduce the stress?  I decided to have some explicit lessons on how to be a good partner.  I wanted the things we talked about to fit along with the stresses being exhibited in the room.  This is what we came up with:

I knew I was on to something when they had a lot of trouble contributing to this anchor chart.  I had to give them the first two.  They knew everyone shouldn’t argue, and that they should get too loud.  But the other ideas on the chart seemed like new knowledge for us.  Number 8 led to some really good conversation!

Three times now, before I have sent them off to work with a partner on something, we have reviewed our list. They have done pretty well!  I feel like we need to further discuss how to disagree with someone in a way that moves the discourse further along while also not offending.  It’s tricky for some adults!  But I feel confident we can get there.

After our activities, I have reviewed the list too.  I have complimented them on their volume, and on the “no arguing”.  Now I need to go around and watch for some specific examples I can highlight.

For me this is a Self-Reg success.  I feel like my detective work has led me to recognize some lagging skills that were leading to a whole class problem.  Now we are on our way to acquiring the skills we need for success in the future!

Enough about me! Let’s talk about me.

My Grandma used to have a sign like this (it feels like it was exactly like this!) handing on the wall in her office at work:

Taken from http://www.quotemaster.org/Paddling 16 Jan 2019

She worked as the County Clerk for a long time, and I don’t really know what that means other than to say it was an elected position, and people spent a lot of time coming in mad about things, but leaving satisfied with her help.  She ran unopposed for the last 10 terms of her career.   I mostly remember the above sign because I couldn’t believe my grandma had a swear word on her wall IN A PUBLIC PLACE!  I thought about it again this week when I was using some of my self-reg skills in the classroom.

 

I’ve been thinking about it specifically because for a long time, this was me. On the outside, things mostly looked OK.  There were certainly a few times when a good friend would look at me when I sat down for lunch and say, “You look terrible.  What’s up?’  (Good friends do that for us!!)  But mostly I was carrying on.  However,  I was a wreck on the inside.   I wasn’t sleeping. I was eating lots of junk.  My house was never in order.  I was putting so much energy into making everything look okay that I was exhausted beyond exhausted.  A few Junes ago, in fact, I was expecting to be diagnosed with some horrible disease over the summer.  That’s how terrible I felt all the time.

Thanks to what I have learned about self-reg, I figured out some ways to manage my own stress.  I am now more like this duck:

It’s taken a lot of work to get to that point.  Of course I’m not lying around relaxing all the time.  I’m a bit stressed by report cards right now, and a bit frustrated by the mess on my desk.  But over all I am managing my stress well.  It’s got me thinking so much more about how to teach stress management skills to kids.

During a presentation at a recent staff meeting, we asked people to rate an activity on a scale of 1-10 with 1 meaning the activity would not relax them at all, and 10 meaning it would really help. One of the options was to participate in a sports activity.  I will honestly say I would be a zero, maybe a 1, for this activity.  But lots of people were an 8,9 or 10.  It really got me thinking about how important it is to let kids – or maybe I mean help kids – choose activities for calming, and not try to force something on them.  It’s also got me thinking about how easy it is to allow people to think everything is okay when it isn’ t.  Kids can do that too.

Podcast #4

A few of us got together yesterday to work on a presentation we are going to be giving to the staff at our school soon.  We started our time together by recording a podcast!  All of us are noticing such big differences in our work with students.  We had no trouble at all talking about it.

A few people have told me they are listening to these podcasts.  Thanks!  We are uploading them to Soundcloud, and that service is blocked on our school server.  If you are having trouble getting it to work, this is probably why.  You’ll have to listen at home while you’re doing dishes, or on your phone while you run, or in your car on your way to places.

 

Misbehaviour vs. Stress behaviour (part 2)

I’m reading our new book, “Calm, Alert and Learning” by Dr. Stuart Shanker. I just finished chapter 4, which is called “The Social Domain”.  Social stressors are especially hard for me personally, so they are the ones that I feel I can relate to the most when I am thinking about how children are behaving, and the stressors they might be experiencing. On page 85, he writes:

  • “It is essential that we look at students through a different lens, to shift from thinking in terms of behaviour management to figuring out why we see certain behaviours and what can be done to help these students learn to self-regulate.”

He is, at this point in the book, writing about a workshop given to teachers to help them understand self-regulation.  He goes on to explain that the important thing to keep in mind when it comes to a child’s behaviour is to focus on 1) the cause of the behaviour, and 2) how to mitigate the stressors on the child…(also page 85)

I have so enjoyed having two weeks at home.  We were on a vacation for the first week, and even though we were around other people (strangers!) almost the entire time, I didn’t have to be social with very many of them.  And the people I was being social with were all family.  The second week was spent in the house. Literally!  I don’t think we left more than once. I have enjoyed this.  This morning, however, I am getting ready to go back to school and thinking about how different it is going to be.  I have to talk to people all day (which I don’t mind, it’s just a little bit of a stressor for me.) I have to actually think about the clothing I am going to put on (though I think most people wouldn’t mind if I arrived at work in a t-shirt and yoga pants!)

As Charlotte often reminds us, behaviour is communication.   I’m already anticipating some behaviour that I may see in class today.  It will be hard for people to get up early today so they might be a bit tired (biological stress),  they will be thinking about getting back to hard work (emotional stress), they will be working (cognitive stress) and they will be around other people all day (possible social stress.)  This morning I am reminding myself that any misbehaviour I might see today is likely caused by some stress on the system, and that I should look carefully at these behaviour and try to figure out what the children might be trying to communicate to me.

 

If it’s not one thing, it’s another

A funny thing happened this week.  Last week, I nearly lost my mind.  But then this week, which has actually been a more challenging week, I’ve come home from work feeling pretty good about our work.  So, what was the difference?

I’ll start by channelling my inner old lady and telling you about all of my problems. This is one of my go-to strategies when I am reframing my behaviour.  This helps me remember that there is a lot going on at any one time, and that it’s OK to feel overwhelmed by it all, and to feel like I just want to go to bed at 7:oo p.m. and start over tomorrow.

Biological:  I’m tired.  Not “teacher in June” tired, but “teacher in December” tired, which is pretty close to the same thing. I’m not eating the best foods, and the Christmas goodies haven’t even arrived from Nana yet.  I feel like I’m getting some sort of cold in my head, but it’s not quite there yet.  I feel a bit of the foggy brain for no particular reason (other than the sleep and the not-quite-a-cold feeling.)

Cognitive: See foggy brain above.  I’ve had 3 math PD sessions, and a TLLP meeting in the past two weeks.  I love them, but there’s more to think about.  I am also trying to finish up a book that is sort of okay but not that great but I want to finish it anyway (you know the kind!) I am also starting to think about report cards coming up, and all the things I need to finish up and assess before the middle of January. This is all part of the regular job, but it takes up brain space nonetheless.  Oh, and I’m trying to get organized for our Winter Break vacation.

Emotional: The holidays bring with them a variety of emotions.  I’m excited, but I’m trepidatious, and I struggle between not wanting to spoil my own children while still helping them enjoy the holidays.  I don’t want to be a  Grinch about things the other kids’ parents are doing, but I want to impart our values about Christmas not being about things.  I feel like I am doing the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time.

Social: To quote the Grinch, there’s a lot of noise, and singing, and feasting.  (Not an exact quote!)  And am I going to this party? or that party? or this thing? or that thing.  NO!  I am going to be at home in my pyjamas!  (That is what I want to say, but then I have emotions related to being a Grinch.)

Pro-social: There’s a lot of emphasis at this time of year on noticing what other people don’t have.  That makes me feel a lot of empathy for them.  I feel sad for people who are missing family, or who can’t afford enough gifts for their children. I am happy, but it’s all tainted with a little bit of sadness.

So there I was, on a Thursday afternoon, with all of these stressors sitting squarely on my very tense shoulders. I was trying to juggle having three different activities going in the class – grades 2s with me, grade 3s on Google looking at pictures for their research, and some kids not wanting to do either.  Just as I launched into the most brilliant thing I could possibly say all week, someone stood directly in front of me and asked to go to the bathroom 4 times.  I said yes 3 times and tried to carry on with my teaching, but the yes was not received.  Finally the 4th time I said, “JUST GO!” I knew it had come out more harshly than I would like.  I knew that this child probably hadn’t heard the previous 3 yeses because of a variety of reasons. But it was too late to take back those words.  My volcano mouth had already erupted.  I took a deep breath. I took another. I consciously changed my tone of voice, and did that thing all teachers do where I immediately changed my trajectory.  I looked around and realized that if we did what we were doing in a little bit different way, it was probably going to be less stressful for all of us.  Then we did that.  And it was less stressful.

And after school I was out of the school in my car before the last bus left, and now I am at home in my comfy pants cooking dinner and writing.  That’s been my response to the stress this week:  self-care.  That includes forgiving myself, taking care of my family, and appreciating that kids are willing to forgive easily.  (And also I will make them pancakes next week so we can be guaranteed life-long friendship!)

5 Steps of Self Reg

This past week was a busy one in room 10.  And by “busy”, I mean BUSY! I’m sitting in my kitchen on Saturday morning processing it all from a bit of a distance and trying to make sure I am restoring my energy so I’ll be ready for Monday.  Stuart Shanker has created the “Five Steps of Self-Reg” model for dealing with stress. In my learning this year I have come to understand how important it is to sit back and take a careful look at stressful events using these 5 steps.  They really help me manage the stress for myself, and help children in my class to manage their stress. One of the most useful things I have learned is that taking care of my own self-regulation is key to success.

Downloaded from https://self-reg.ca/individualtoolkit/

It’s important to note that though they are called “The 5 Steps”, a person might not actually engage in all 5, and will certainly not need to use them in order.  Some things need to be done in order. For example, I need to recognize a stressor before I can remove it – although I suppose a stressor might actually be removed from an environment and only after the removal does a person realize it was the thing causing the stress.  See? It’s all very circular!

Step 1:  Reframe. Instead of thinking about how hard my week was, I started by thinking about how hard it was for all of us.  I wasn’t in there alone. And while there were certainly times when I thought the whole week was a failure, there are some really large pockets of effective, productive work mixed in there.  So I am already reframing my thinking and instead of saying, “WHAT A HORRIBLE WEEK!” I’m thinking, “WOW! That was busy!” No – I really am.

Step 2: Recognize. I can easily recognize what the stressors were, but what sort of person would I be if I wrote them all down in this public space and shared them?  Suffice it to say, I have recognized my stressors. 

Step 3:  Reduce the stressor.  I’ve already reduced the stress in my life by taking the day off.  I know that I never have to work on a Saturday, but I often do. I brought a big bag of stuff home with me, but it’s sitting in a corner and I am ignoring it until tomorrow.  And I have not checked my e-mail even once today, even though not checking it is a bit of a stressor for me. I am purposely ignoring school. I am, at the same time, thinking about some of our big stressors as a classroom community and thinking about how to make next week less busy.  If we could only schedule snow days for Mondays or Fridays that would be a great start! I did already start this on Friday by doing art in the afternoon, even though it wasn’t on the schedule! And on Friday I also had a “catch-up” day so everyone could get caught up on their writing before I moved forward.  I think that will help us have a fresh start on Monday.

Step 4: Reflect. I have reflected a lot this week!  I have looked at some of my reactions to the busy-ness in the room and have thought about how things could be done differently and how I could react differently.  I have reflected on all of the stressors I have recognised, and I have thought a lot about how to reduce our stressors. And I have reflected on the stress reduction techniques I have tried.  

Step 5:  Respond: Restoration and Resilience.  Now it is time to apply all of my thinking and get ready for a great week on Monday.  I need to finish tidying up the house (always a stress reducer for me), I need to eat some healthy food, and I need to get some extra rest.  My lesson plans, which I will not write until tomorrow, will have more “breaks” incorporated into them.

Every day in December gets a bit more hectic than the last.  The stress can really pile up, especially if the weather is acting up and we are out of school a bit – these disruptions in schedule are always a challenge. The stress is not going away.  By putting the 5 Steps of Self-Reg into action, I’m already feeling better about next week.

Read this to learn more about restoration.

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