Let Gratitude Grow

November is our month of gratitude. There is not a better time to put into practice some mindful gratitude.

Much like mindfulness, gratitude can help our students with neuroplasticity (the ability for the brain to change and improve).

Remembering back to our beginning mindful education, we know that the prefrontal cortex in our brain is not fully formed until our early 20s. This means that our students biologically will struggle with filtering our negative thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts. 

This is where our mindfulness comes in, helping our students work on growing and building up their prefrontal cortex.  Mindfulness is training our brain to be aware, without judgment, and then learning to let go of negative and create more positive.

A daily practice of gratitude can help remap connections in our brains. Much like mindfulness gratitude is a practice to help build up our prefrontal cortex.

Gratitude can help heal childhood wounds.

We have been exploring the reality that our classes are filled with high ACEs scores and students who do not know how to be courageous due to limited vulnerability.

Practicing mindful gratitude is a task that involves 3 Es. Emote, Express, Exercise. Take time to pause each day, bring to mind at least three things you are grateful for, note these things, and then embrace the feeling of gratitude toward these things.

Emote means to feel with great passion or to theatrically feel the emotions.

Express means to let others know what you are grateful for, share your gratitude with others, say it out loud, or write it down.

Exercise means to practice your gratitude and make a commitment to daily add to your gratitude list.

For the month of November as we focus on gratitude, I encourage you to take time to practice mindful gratitude with your class.

I challenge you to create a list, journal, or your own gratitude garden and have students list daily a gratitude.

I also encourage everyone to work on a flower for the school Gratitude Garden.

Let’s help gratitude grow in our students and ourselves.

No Shame in being Vulnerable

Why should we practice mindfulness with our students? Why should we teach them heartful mindfulness?

If we took the time last week to look at the ACEs questions and think about our students than we are aware of the trauma that exists in our classrooms.

Brene Brown, a researcher on shame, vulnerability, and courage states that the number one casualty of trauma is vulnerability. Those who have experienced or are experiencing trauma do not know how to be vulnerable. Brene goes on to share that without vulnerability there is no courage.

We have previously addressed cultivating courage in our students. How can we help our students with courage if we first have not helped them be vulnerable?

We need to create classrooms in which our students grown their courage and vulnerability.

One of the greatest traumas stopping vulnerability for our students is, shame.

Students 5^th grade and younger will define shame as being unlovable and this results in shame causing trauma.

Shame is highly connected with bullying.

Brene’s research found that 85% of people can remember a time they were shamed in school and this experience made them question their abilities, limiting their courage. We as educators have the power to cause great heartache for our students when we use shame or allow shame into our classrooms.

There is some good news too. Brene’s research also found that 90% of people can remember a teacher, administrator, coach, or another school staff member who made a positive impact on their lives and helped them believe in themselves. We as educators are powerful forces in the lives of our students.

When asked to list the biggest influences in their life’s students list, in order:

1.     Parents

2.    Teachers

3.     Clergy

4.     Peers

Educators are the second most influential forces in the lives of youth.

This takes us back to our original questions.

Why should we practice mindfulness with our students? Why should we teach them heartful mindfulness?

We need to create what Brene Brown calls a Daring Classroom. We need to open the lines of communication and reduce the occurrence of shame. We are highly important in the lives of our students.

For this week lets utilize heartful mindfulness to express kindness and compassion toward our students and teach our students to show kindness and compassion to others.

Engage in a random act of kindness this week.

Take time to plan it out. Note everything that is important when doing an act of kindness for others. Model this act by doing a random act of kindness for your students this week.

Leave a note on their desks with a heartfulness message. “You are worth teaching.” “You are needed in this classroom.” “You belong with our class community.” “You are cared for and wanted here.” “You matter.” 

Being vulnerable toward your students opens a line of communication, teaching them that in your classroom it is not only acceptable to be vulnerable, but that it is encouraged.

Once you have modeled this Random Act of Kindness Mindfulness, help your class create an act of kindness of their own.

This is our last week of our month focused on Bullying Awareness, lets utilize this week to increase kindness and reduce pain, hurt, and shame.

For further information regarding a Daring Classroom by Brene Brown I encourage you to watch the YouTube link included below. It’s a half hour well worth your time and attention.

https://youtu.be/DVD8YRgA-ck

ACEs and Mindfulness

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, the 1^st Surgeon General of California and pioneer in childhood trauma and ACEs, talks about her BIG 6 Powerful Tools for fighting an overactive stress response.

Her 6 are:

1.     Sleep

2.     Exercise

3.     Nutrition

4.     Mental Health

5.     Healthy Relationships

6.     Mindfulness

2/3 of the population have experienced significant trauma. If you score 4 or more on the ACEs you are more likely to have physical health problems throughout your life.

https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/  This link is to the 10 questions doctors ask when evaluating your Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACEs. If you feel comfortable enough take a look and think about yourself and your score. Then utilize your heartful mindfulness and think about your students.

If we think about our students and their possible ACEs scores, we should then consider how we can help with the BIG 6 Powerful Tools. We can suggest good sleep, we can provide recess, we can talk about healthy snacks and meals, and we have social workers who aid with mental health. There are two of the six that every teacher can help with every day at school. We can form a healthy and positive relationship with our students, and we can teach them mindfulness and utilize it daily with them. We can provide 2 protective factors in the lives of our students.

Many of our students have an overactive stress response, an overactive sympathetic nervous system. We can utilize mindfulness to fight the sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze, or faint) and strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system (rest & digest).

Mindfulness strengthens the parasympathetic nervous system.

Building healthy relationships with our students creates what is called a Buffering Relationship. You do not have to be related to someone to be the best buffering relationship in a student’s life. Buffering relationships aid the parasympathetic nervous system which regulates our stress responses.

Did you know you can then help change how your students’ DNA is read in the body??? We can’t change the DNA itself, but we can change the epigenetic markers on the DNA. Dr. Burke Harris likens DNA to being a music note and epigenetic markers are the notations telling you how to play a note. You can help change how DNA is read. You can help create a beautiful melody inside your students.

You can change how stress is read on your students’ DNA. You can either add stress markers, or you can erase stress markers. Dr. Burke Harris explains that the epigenetic markers will tell our bodies to read a strand of DNA over and over or skip it all together.  

This week’s challenge is to focus on building positive relationship with your students. Welcome them back into class after a stressful incident. Provide a hand shake, high-five, or hug. Provide them with mindfulness. This week begin to change the messages on your students’ DNA.

A great mindfulness activity for this week is to take a mindful walk. Walk with your class around the inside of the building or the outside. Give them instructions to remain silent and notice the sounds around them. Remind them to take slow easy steps, giving themselves time to observe the world around them. I like to take mindful walks with students and encourage a deep breath in as they step with one foot and a deep breath out as they step with the other foot.

Once your walk is over and you have returned to class, explore the mindful findings. Ask your students if there was a sound they had never noticed before, or an object that was new to them.

Mindful walking helps us pay close attention to not just where we are going but the journey we take to get there.

If you are interested in learning more from Dr. Burke Harris check out the Podcast Experts on Experts with Dax Shepard. It is such a good listen I listened to it twice!

We All Need Confidence

You may or may not be familiar with the Superhero Pose which is also known as Power Posing and that’s OK because we are about to explore it together.

Researcher Amy Cuddy out of Harvard University explored the idea of Posture Feedback. Participants in her study were asked to engage in either High Power Posture or Low Power Posture. While in these poses the participants were asked to complete tasks and then rate how they felt about themselves and their quality of work. Those in High Power Posture felt more confident in themselves and in their work. After researching how the participants felt Cuddy also investigated changes in the physical body. It was observed that those in High Power Posture poses reduced their levels of Cortisol. As a light refresher for your memory, Cortisol is our stress hormone. Cortisol is responsible for: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Faint. Cortisol is our natural built-in alarm system that helps control our moods, motivation, and fear. We need some cortisol in our system, but too much creates health concerns and limits our brains ability to reason out our actions. The study also was able to observe that those in High Power Posture had increased levels of Testosterone. Testosterone gives us a sense of power and confidence.

It takes a lot of confidence and courage to stand up for what is right and support a student who is being bullied. 30% of students admit to being a bully. Over 70% of students report seeing bullying occur at school. Over 70% of school staff report they too have witnessed bullying. Only 20-30% of those being bullied report it to adults.

When a bystander intervenes, the bullying stops within 10 seconds 57% of the time.

We need to help our staff and students find their inner superhero and help fight against the bullying and stand up for each other. A great mindfulness activity to help us with this task is the Superhero Pose.

Practicing a Power Posture or also called Superhero Pose is an easy and quick way to help gain some confidence in our ability to stand up for others and do what is right.

Our Superhero Pose takes 2 minutes of standing with your feet shoulder width a part, hands on your hips, shoulders back, back straight, head held high, and taking some good deep breaths.

While engaging in the Superhero/Power Pose we can utilize other mindfulness skills we have been working on. We can teach our students and ourselves to repeat mantras of positivity. Utilize “I Can” “I Am” and “I Will” positive talk statements. “I can show respect today.” “I am a respectful and responsible student.” “I will stand up for others.” Utilize the two minutes of the superhero pose to speak out your heartful mindfulness, wishing yourself and your students to have a positive and productive day.

My challenge for you this week is to practice the superhero pose daily. It only takes 2 minutes a day. Use it to start the day, transition from lunch or recess or snack time, or another high energy time. Stand tall, calm, and quietly sharing positivity in your mind or aloud.  Let’s take a Superhero Stand Together Against Bullying.  

Puzzling

According to a Harvard University study, our minds wander 47% of the time. Nearly half of our attention is taking a trip away from the present. How do combat this and help ourselves and our students gain a better focus?

Mindful activities are a great way to enjoy a mindful moment and train your brain to become more present.

Putting a puzzle together takes time and focus. The bigger the puzzle the more time it takes. The more complicated the puzzle the more focus it takes.

We are all a puzzle. We are all a piece connecting us to a larger puzzle.

Let’s use this week to connect ourselves with each other while connecting together the pieces of a puzzle.

Many of our students feel as if they do not fit into our school, their own homes, and some their own bodies. Bullying often reinforces these thoughts and feelings. According to Stopbullying.gov, bullying most often is not the simple act of a single student bullying another student. Most often what is seen is known as the Group Phenomenon, this is where a group of students support the bully in their negative actions toward another student.

While we explore bullying this month lets continue to utilize our mindfulness to create unity and bring forth calm. When considering the group phenomenon we can see the need to teach our students how to work together and stand up for each other.

This week I encourage you to utilize your morning welcome time to complete a class puzzle. This is a great way to teach your students about how to work together, wait for each other with turn taking, standing up for each other  by encouraging words when they notice a struggle, and staying with each other, not giving up when they feel the task becomes too difficult.

Let the students work together to figure out the best way to start the puzzle, how to organize the pieces, and work side-by-side. Provide encouragement, if you observe a struggle to start the puzzle, offer an idea or encourage the students to give you an idea of how to start. Teach by example and join your students in the activity and use encouraging words to support effort and determination.

As the students work remind them of mindful breathing when they get frustrated with a puzzle piece. Puzzles can be difficult, taking a moment to pause and take a deep breath can help refocus. Remember, our focus wanders nearly half of the time, use deep breathing to refocus during this time.

Give the students a set amount of time each day. When the time is up make some observations on how much they have accomplished together. Ask them how they feel about the progress. Inquire about the teamwork. Make observations about how much more work was accomplished as a team and suggest that without teamwork it would not be as much of a success. If you have observed a struggle with teamwork, or notice students not participating have a class discussion about how to encourage, support, and work together to complete a task. This would be a good time to use some “Just Like Me” or “May you” statements. “I noticed James struggling. I struggle at times too. Just like me James wants to do better at puzzles. Just like me James deserves another chance tomorrow. May you find a calm focus tomorrow James.”

I like this mindfulness activity for October as a way to increase supporting each other, working together, and talking with our students about helping not hurting each other. This is a great interconnected activity that allows lots of heartful mindfulness. As the puzzle is interconnected and cannot be completed without each piece., so too is your class interconnect and cannot be complete without each student and teacher.

Let’s continue to help teacher our students practice our Bullying Awareness Month theme “ Fortis Stands for You” and help them learn to stand for each other.

If you would like to work on a puzzle and are in need of one, please come see me. I have a shelf full of puzzles that can be checked out to your class!