Monday Motivator #29 2019-20

Teachers, How Can We Care for Our Mental Health Right Now?

We’re living through history, and the emotions are intense.

Love Teach on March 18, 2020

Wow.

If you’re anything like me, you’re experiencing a lot of different emotions right now. But chances are we are all marveling at how different the world looks than it did a few weeks, days, even hours ago. Big events canceled. Travel bans. School closures. Toilet paper becoming the nation’s hottest commodity.

This post is not about health measures or containment or COVID-19 symptoms. It’s not about curriculum or technology recommendations or teaching remotely. I’m not going to talk about flattening the curve or social distancing or exponential growth. There are 900 million other articles, posts, and podcasts for that.

This is about taking care of yourself and your mental health during COVID.

I love teachers, and even in the best of times I’m concerned about our self-care. But now, at a time when we’re all taking on the stress, anxiety, and fears of how a global pandemic will affect our children, it’s more critical than ever to remember that we cannot effectively take care of other people if we are not taking care of ourselves.

1. Be kind to yourself.

We are all learners here. This situation is new for all of us, and that means new emotions, new reactions we didn’t know we’re capable of, new fears, new bodily functions (hello, stress burps, I guess you’re a thing now). Would you be hard on the young people in your classroom learning new, tough information? Of course not. So don’t put any more pressure on yourself to learn this new way of living than necessary.

Also, I’m going to say something that could be controversial here: I don’t think those of us teaching remotely should exhaust ourselves trying to drum up ways to make learning exactly the same or better as it was in our classrooms before we left. Will we have to do things differently? Yes. Could this be an awesome opportunity for all of us to learn platforms and tools? Yes. But are our students already dealing with more stress than we could imagine? ALSO YES. They are a a generation who is aware of EVERYTHING because of the Internet and social media. But their frontal lobes are still developing, leaving them with tons of information but perhaps not a lot of emotional capacity to handle or process this in a healthy way. In short: don’t put more pressure on yourself than necessary to put on a dog-and-pony show during tough times. Simple is OK.

2. Keep your hands busy.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received when I was super anxious a few years ago was to keep my hands busy. There’s science behind it, I promise. And, when I’m doing something tactile, it’s hard for me to think too hard about anything, really. And not in the way that I zone out when I’m scrolling Instagram like a zombie, but more of a mellowing out that happens when I truly plug into creativity. My top recommendations:

• Puzzles! Y’all. I’m obsessed. My favorite brands are Galison and Mudpuppy. (Yes, I have puzzle brands.)
• Embroidery. Look up this old-made-new trend on Pinterest. So many fun ideas!
• Calligraphy
• Other recommendations: making bread or something else hand-intensive, drawing a mandala, painting or making a collage, playing an instrument (what a great time to learn on YouTube!)

3. Move your body.

Don’t worry about strenuous exercise right now if that’s not your jam. But I think it’s good for all of us to make moving a regular habit (especially if we are teaching remotely and not up out of our seat all the time like a regular school day). Go for a walk if you can. Take a fitness class on YouTube (Yoga with Adriene is a personal fave). Have an impromptu dance party to your favorite song. Ultimately just get the blood flowing and the endorphins pumping.

4. Calm your mind.

This looks different for all of us, but it’s super important to give your mind a break from the barrage of information out there. I don’t know if there has been a better time to download the Calm app (it’s free for teachers!) With guided meditations, nature playlists, relaxing songs, and bedtime stories, you’ll wish you’d have done it a long time ago. But whatever you do, try not to simply distract yourself, but truly disconnect and let your mind “be” for a while. It’s working overtime these days. 

5. Laugh.

A global pandemic is obviously very serious. But so is your mental health during COVID. As anyone who has ever cared for a family member with Alzheimer’s will tell you, sometimes you have to laugh in the midst of a terrible thing. Gloria Gaynor washing her hands to “I Will Survive.” Relatable tweets like this one:

But if you’re overwhelmed with COVID-19 information—even humor—this is my official plug for the TV show King of the Hill on Hulu. I did not think I would find this show funny, and I have laughed myself to tears. You’re welcome in advance.

6. Stay connected in the right ways.

Use the technology we do have—FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype—to check in with people remotely. Kelly Wickham Hurst, an educator I follow on Twitter (@mochamomma) had a great suggestion of using each other’s names as often as possible when in social isolation. Check in on your neighbors, the elderly people you know (especially those living alone), and others in vulnerable populations. And if social media is overwhelming you, by all means, disconnect for a while. You will know when you’re overwhelmed. You’ll be at the grocery store and see a long line of people waiting to grind coffee, and you’ll turn to your fiancé with wild eyes and say, “I can’t do this!” Or at least that’s what I did.

How are you taking care of your mental health during COVID closures? Come and share in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, why online learning doesn’t need to be perfect right now.

Monday Motivator #28 2019-20

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Taking Back Control of Your Classroom: Hitting the “Reset” Button

Classroom Management Tips & Methodologies / By Ellis Scott / Teaching Methods, Tools & Strategies

https://www.brighthubeducation.com/classroom-management/127800-hitting-the-reset-button/

A good teacher spends some time getting to know their students and establishing classroom protocol at the beginning of the school year. It’s a great time to jumpstart those teacher-student relationships as well as lay down the law. But as the first few weeks progress, there is usually a steady stream of students trickling in and out of the classroom until all of the scheduling is done. These may be new students, transfer students, or students who came back from summer vacation a little late.

The problem with these fluctuations is that not all the students were able to hear your sales pitch at the very beginning of the year. As the year continues there is often more turnover and each classroom takes on a personality of its own based on the mix of students. So what do you do when the petty, annoying behaviors start to become common place and the classroom procedures are rarely being followed?

Hitting the “Reset” Button

I suggest doing what a friend of mine calls “hitting the reset button". Basically, you revisit the expectations and maybe even some of the relationship building that you normally do the first few days of school. This is also something you should do if you happen to be moved to a different classroom (for whatever reason) within the same school. You don’t know what rules and procedures were in place before you arrived, so let students know that everything is changing with the new leadership and go over how things will work in the future.

If you plan to do this because student behavior is beginning to get worse, pay attention to how you approach it. It is important that you approach it correctly in order to get good results. DON’T tell your students that because they have chosen to act like animals you are being forced to start at the beginning and review your “rules".

How to Get it Right

The best thing to do is to pick a time that seems natural such as coming back from a long break like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or spring break. If a class is out of control and a break or long weekend is approaching, try to wait for that time. Otherwise, use a Monday coming back from the weekend. It really won’t work well if you do it mid-week.

To achieve great results, be sure you spend time planning the day well. If you choose to wing it, you will certainly run into problems. The time spent planning will payoff in fewer headaches for you and lots of extra energy (you should not feel like a semi-conscious zombie when you walk out the door to go home). When the day approaches, let students know that you are all going to hit the reset button so the rest of the year can be as productive as or more productive than the first half.

Plan Activities

Since you already know each other, you may want to do an activity that focuses on team building or the importance of rules and regulations. Then have your class (individually or in groups) list all of the procedures that are already in place. This is your opportunity to take a good look at how well you have communicated the procedures. Do the students know them or are they getting them confused with the procedures for other classes? Help them remember and/or modify them until they are all listed and all correct.

Have a Discussion

Next, spend some time discussing with them what is working and not working. What needs to be changed? It’s important here to really listen to your students. Don’t be dismissive. Maybe they have some legitimate reasons why something is not working as you planned. Perhaps a certain procedure could be modified (or even exterminated) because it doesn’t gel well with other structures set in place within the school.

The fact is that your students could be your biggest asset in setting up things that work. As a combined group, they have been through more teachers and classes than you can count. They have been in classrooms that are zoos and they have been in classrooms that were run like well-oiled machines. Perhaps the most valuable thing they can tell you is the answer to these questions… “What is working in your other classes?" and “what do your other teachers do for this?"

Those two questions can be a vital source of information for you. We all know that we should be talking with other teachers about what they are doing. But everybody is busy and sometimes, teachers who have a super successful procedure in place don’t realize that other classrooms aren’t doing the same thing. Because of this, they might not realize that their procedure is solving a problem you are having in your class because they may have never seen that behavior exhibited in their class.

As this discussion continues, let students know that they are like the committee and you are the president. Every suggestion (within reason) will be heard, but not everything will be implemented. Explain why you won’t allow certain things and even if they don’t agree, they will be more apt to comply.

If you just laid down the law at the beginning of the year as most teachers do (and should), then this process will usually do an interesting thing. At the end of the day, you will find that most of the rules and procedures you dictated to them are still on the list. However, now you have some modifications and new procedures that will work great. More importantly, you have more contribution from your students. They feel like they just helped make the rules. Very few of them will acknowledge the fact that they started with a framework you already gave them and didn’t really make many changes. So basically, the process allows them to adopt the procedures you gave them as their own.

Follow the New Rules

Be sure to immediately begin implementing all of the new protocol and the rest of the year should go more smoothly. Sometimes everybody needs to refocus and reset. The lost instructional time for this process of hitting “reset" will be made up throughout the rest of the year because you’ll spend less time correcting student behavior.

Monday Motivator #27 2019-20

Article Assessment Tools

Mindful Test-Taking

AUTHOR

Mark Levine

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/mindful-test-taking/

Have you ever lost yourself in a great book and become unaware of the sounds and events happening around you? Have you ever seen a child so engaged in playing a video game that they do not hear you calling them?

When we lose ourselves in something, we have a very narrow focus. That is because our focus is so tightly attached to what we are doing, we have very little for anything else.

Mindfulness is when we are intentionally paying so much attention to something that we become part of it. I have been practicing mindfulness in one shape or another for more years than I care to admit. Last year, I decided to try applying some of the principles to my students and their learning. This was in response to noticing that my students tended to lose focus while taking assessments in my class and in other classes. I wanted my students to lose themselves in the test.

What would this look like? My students would be so engaged in the test that their minds would not wander. They would not be thinking about lunch, their boyfriend or girlfriend, the homework they had forgotten to do, or the student sitting across from them who had the sniffles. Here is how I helped my students apply mindfulness strategies while taking tests.

The Process

It is important to realize that not all students will participate at the start. From my experience, they eventually see others using the method and join in.

To start, I talk to my students about what happens when they are reading and get lost in the story, or playing a video game and get so engaged in the game that it feels like the world around them goes away. I have had students tell me that when they are playing their instrument in band, the same thing happens to them. I have also had students who play soccer explain to me that the game of soccer is so intense that they forget anyone is watching  and screaming at them from the stands.

Once we have established what we are looking for (total focus and being lost in what we are doing), we move on to some of the methods that we can use to become mindful in our test-taking.

I explain that we have to work to focus on things that don’t naturally grab our attention. It is natural for our minds to wander. It is natural for our thoughts to stray and cling to things that have nothing to do with the task at hand. This is where the work of mindfulness and mindful test-taking comes into play.

How do we deal with the stray thoughts? As we sit down to take the test, we must commit to working toward mindfulness. By doing that, we acknowledge that there is going to be some work, especially when first starting to use mindfulness. Once we do that, we can move on to the skills we need to handle the stray thoughts that will come and interrupt us.

Being Mindful in the Midst

I tell my students to start taking the test as they normally would. When stray thoughts about things having nothing to do with the test pop into your minds, I say, look at them as if they were words or images. Notice them, as if you were saying hi to them, and then send them away as if you were releasing the words or images in a balloon filled with helium. I ask students to notice their leaving for a second and then return to the test in front of them and their thinking within the test.

Of course, this practice takes persistence and self-control at first. Like anything else that is worthwhile, it takes commitment and practice.

Since my students are not going to be taking a test daily, I weave the practice of mindfulness into their daily work. This includes their reading of text, watching video clips, and writing. I have found that one of the most important things to do while practicing mindfulness with regular class work is to have reflective conversations. This allows students to share what they struggle with. Students explain how they overcome various obstacles in letting go of the stray thoughts. What I find most interesting is that they create their own strategies for dealing with the stray thoughts and bringing themselves back to mindfulness.

When my students reach the point that they are intentional about using mindfulness in their work and are seeing it as a natural part of their learning strategies, I know that they have owned the use of mindfulness and that this will be part of who they are as learners from this point forward.

I have seen major improvements in the quality of work and in district and state test scores through practicing mindfulness. My students report feeling like the tests are more fun, almost puzzle-like, when they practice mindfulness. They also report that they get lost in time and feel like the test and time go by much more quickly. I have seen my students apply this technique to their other classes with great success as well.

Getting lost in a test. I know it sounds foreign or strange, but it is possible, and has lasting results.

AUTHOR

Mark Levine

Mark Levine is a social studies teacher at John J. Lukancic Middle School in Romeoville, Illinois. You can follow his latest thinking at Levine Writes.