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“What new professional learning did you acquire as a result of this project?”

I am so grateful to have been asked to participate in the TLLP this year. The learning and growth that I have experienced as a result has made me a much better educator. Last year I had the opportunity to travel to Toronto with my teacher leader to take part in the TLLP Training workshops. This experience was amazing. Having the opportunity to connect with other educators in the province and hear about their projects was very motivating. Learning how to organize and manage our own project from the finances to the group meetings to sharing our learning with others was a great experience. I now feel more confident to put myself out there and be more open to sharing my ideas and thoughts with others.

Researching self-regulation, reading Stuart Shanker’s book and sharing thoughts and ideas with my colleagues opened my eyes to a whole new aspect to classroom management. I learned that to be an effective teacher with regards to self-regulation, you need to be a good self-regulator yourself. This was huge for me. Learning how to manage my own stress and taking care of my needs both at school and at home have made me a more patient, calmer teacher.

Another important step for me was taking part in the many workshops with colleagues (planning agendas, gathering data, sharing materials, recording pod casts and writing a blog). It was neat being involved in those workshops first hand and not just as another body in a large group of people. I became confident in sharing my ideas and opinions with others. We also had the opportunity to travel to other schools and share our learning. This was a very powerful experience. Just being able to help our colleagues who struggle with the same behaviours we have was very rewarding.

 

“What was the impact of your TLLP learning, if any, on your students? How do you know?”

 

I feel that because of my learning, my students became more aware of their needs, their feelings and those of their classmates. I had a very emotional group of students this year, so I felt it necessary to work with them to identify their feelings and deal with them in appropriate ways. We used charts to identify our feelings every morning and then we openly discussed them with each other and worked through problems we might have been facing. I knew this was working when I started seeing students checking in on each other or letting me know that someone’s emotion for the day had changed. Our classroom environment became more pleasant and calm. We did lots of talking and worked through all our social/emotional troubles. It even worked on me, which was totally cool.

 

“What questions or goals do you have to sustain your learning?  What are your next steps?”

 

I did a great job working and learning with my students this year, but I have had these kids for two years. I already knew a lot about them. I wonder what this will look like next year when I meet a whole new bunch of kiddos. How will I begin the year? What behaviours will arise? What if they are not emotional kids, then what? Last Fall my administrator suggested that I look at Zones of Regulation for my classroom, but I felt that reading Self-Reg and working on the TLLP I would have enough to keep me busy. After a year’s worth of research and practice and discussions, I think I am ready to give this other program a try. I feel like it will be a great starting point for my new group of students. I will also endeavour to have one-on-one lunch dates with each student the first few weeks of school to get to know a little more about them.

 

As for sustaining my learning? I hope that we can continue to meet as a group and with other colleagues on a more informal basis to help and support each other with regards to self-regulations and our new students. I feel like we have so much more to learn and so much more to share. I also wonder what we could do to inform parents…

A few months ago I had posted about an emoji board that I had created in my class. This would allow the children to identify their feelings first thing every morning and allow me a chance to check-in. Well it has been a big success! I even had to create a new magnetic version as the first one got ripped up pretty quickly. The children absolutely love it. They remind each other to use it, they check where their friends are and they even check on me, cause I have a name tag also. One day, I put my name over the sad emoji, as I had been away the day before and the report from the supply teacher was not ideal. I had at least 5 children come up to me first thing to find out why I was sad and what they could do to help. This is happening everyday in my room. The children are also moving their name from one emoji to the other if their emotions change (recess causes lots of issues at times). This has been a very useful tool for this group of children and definitely something I will consider with future groups. I am curious to know if anyone else has a similar system in their room and what that looks like. Feel free to share in the comments please.

Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a great deal of reflection on how our work around Self-Reg is providing me with a new vocabulary that enhances the work I do. While working with students, it certainly shapes my approach in problem solving but being able to give students the words to sometimes validate their emotions is empowering. In age appropriate and developmentally appropriate ways, I can sit alongside our students and discuss their stressors and help them to recognize potential sources of their challenges. With staff, it has really helped guide many of our conversations. We’ve all experienced a time when a student’s behaviour has gotten the better of us or has generated personal frustration. Being able to shift from what begins with educators asking me “What are you going to do about this student?” expecting an office based solution, to a collaborative conversation around “Let’s consider where this student may be experiencing stress right now?” This approach takes away blame, provides deeper understanding to everyone involved and guides our next steps in a more purposefully and intentional manner. Finally, with the parent/guardian community, this new vocabulary only strengthens their understanding of how we as educators work to support kids. Rather than parents hearing negative comments about behaviour which can easily be internalized (parent guilt gets the best of us!), they hear us exploring the five domains as a means to help and support. Parents experience us taking the time to know their children better, appreciate our recognition that there is a difference between misbehaviour and stress behaviour, and see us explore longer term solutions. I look forward to seeing how my further learning around Self-Reg continues to deepen my professional language.

I’ve been stuck on one word lately, and that’s choice. I really need to think about how I’ve been using that word. As an educator, I use it a lot! I picked up the phrase somewhere, and now I don’t know how many times I’ve told a child that, “You’ve made a bad choice when you chose to do ____.” What I’m thinking about now, though, is the realization that that child likely didn’t make a “choice” at all. Having a meltdown is not a “choice.” Going into fight or flight is not a choice. Being in red brain is not a choice, and even if it were, any choice made while in red brain has to be suspect. These kids are not choosing to come to school and have a terrible day, so how confusing must it be for them when we talk to them about the bad choices that they made!

So I’m reworking how I will use the concept of choice in my conversations with students. I’m going to reserve it for positive movements that a child might make; choices as to what they’ll write about, or what format their writing will take or what they might do for a well-deserved break afterward. But I’m not going to burden them with the shame of thinking they made a choice when they were really just reacting to something life had thrown their way that they just didn’t know how to manage.

I am so happy to say that the technical difficulties I encountered with accessing this edublog are in the past!

Today was exciting for the group!  We were involved in a rich dialogue as we plan towards sharing our new learning with others. I always enjoy the process of building capacity with my fellow colleagues, and to have an opportunity to impact the collective lens and mindset of others with Shanker’s work is crucial in this day and age.  As other members have stated, we are not only learning about how to help students’ co-regulate but we are being reflective practitioners and are learning to recognize our role, and our stressors that may come into play when a student is struggling.

I am anxious to share Shanker’s five domains with others and together navigate new learning as we blend these domains into our current pedagogical approach with students.  As teachers become more comfortable with reframing behaviour and learning the reasons behind the behaviour, I know a shift is on the horizon.  I look forward to our next session whereby we get to document stressors/behaviours and have the chance to engage with our students in meaningful, and supportive conversations!  Thanks to Lisa for leading today!!

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.

Another fantastic day of thinking and learning alongside the Sunset Staff and Charlotte.  Today’s work was ‘messy’ compared to the first two sessions but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t productive.  The ‘messy’ means we started to wonder, started to question, started to think deeper which is important for great work to happen.  One of our tasks today was to apply the five steps to a child.  It was very difficult to move past step 2 without the child and it reinforced again for me how our learner’s needs to be at the centre of all the work we do for it to feel relevant and authentic.  It was also difficult to move past step 2 and not consider the interconnectedness of the 5 domains.  Looking only at 1 domain in isolation of the others seem to make the process of going through the 5 steps challenging.

What a great session we had today with Lisa Cranston! Lisa is a Self-Reg Foundations Program Facilitator at the MEHRIT Centre and you can read more about her here: https://self-reg.ca/about-us/. I am doing a lot of reflecting this evening on how the five core domains of experience impact not only our students each and every day but how they also impact our own actions and reactions as adults each day. My thoughts are also revolving around the notion that our job is never to remove all stress completely but to support our students in getting to a space where the stress load is healthy. Thanks for coming to North Bay Lisa!

Our NNDSB Behaviour Counsellors joined us for this session.