Today’s guest post is the first in our AmeriCorps Alums Founders Club series and comes to us from Brad Meltzer’s 20th anniversary of AmeriCorps speech with Volunteer Florida. Brad is the #1 New York Times bestselling thriller writer of The Inner Circle, and the host of Lost History on H2. His non-fiction children’s book include I Am Amelia Earhart, I Am Abraham Lincoln, and I Am Rosa Parks. Find more about him at BradMeltzer.com and @BradMeltzer.
When I was 24, I thought I was invincible.
When I was 24, I was dating the most beautiful girl at Harvard. (I knew her before Harvard. She was my high school sweetheart. Now she’s my wife.)
When I was 24, I had $30,000 in outstanding student loans.
When I was 24, I wanted to direct movies (I had just seen this new movie PulpFiction); I wanted to meet JFK (I had just seen Forrest Gump); and I wanted to go to prison (Shawshank Redemption.) It was a good year for movies.
When I was 24, I wanted to write novels.
Brad speaks at Volunteer Florida’s 20th anniversary of AmeriCorps event. (Photo Credit: Volunteer Florida)
When I was 24, my mom hadn’t died from breast cancer.
When I was 24, my dad hadn’t died from heart disease.
When I was 24, I wanted to vote for Nelson Mandela, who that year was elected the first black president of South Africa.
When I was 24, I didn’t care what anyone thought about me. Unless it hurt.
When I was 24, I never filled my car up all the way at a gas station in order to save money.
When I was 24, I got 24 rejection letters on my first novel. And when I was 24, I said, “I don’t care. If they didn’t like that book, I’ll write another. And if they don’t like that one, I’ll write another.” A week later, I started on my second novel, The Tenth Justice. That one actually sold.
When I was 24, I volunteered for a service day put on by this organization called City Year.
When I was 24, I firmly believed that anything was possible.
When I was 24, a man named Eli Segal—my mentor—asked me to co-write an oath for this brand new organization they were calling AmeriCorps. It’s the oath that’s still taken today. To this day, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of working on.
When I was 24, I had no idea that I would watch the words I wrote come out of the mouths of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
When I was 24, my favorite line of the oath was this one: “Where there is adversity, I will persevere.” It was strong. It was defiant. It never quit.
Today, 20 years later, I love the next line just as much: “I will carry this commitment with me, this year and beyond.”
Back then, it was a hope. Today, it’s a reality.
Happy 20th birthday, AmeriCorps. I owe you forever for what you gave me. And I owe Eli even more.
Making sure our own needs are met is as important as taking care of those we love most. When turning your attention toward yourself feels challenging, there are simple ways to move through the discomfort. Explore our new guide for tips, practices, and reminders on how to engage in self-care.
Self-care means asking yourself what you need and following through on the honest answer. Practicing self-care can be as simple as getting to bed earlier on a work night, or as hard as taking a look at some of the habits you’ve created for yourself and their long-term effects.
What Is Self-Care?
Self-care is the practice of taking an active role in protecting our own well-being, pursuing happiness, and having the ability, tools, and resources to respond to periods of stress so that they don’t result in imbalance and lead to a health crisis. Self-care means asking yourself what you need, and following through on the honest answer. Self-care can be as simple as getting to bed earlier on a work night, or as hard as taking a look at some of the habits you’ve created for yourself and their long-term effects.
The History of Self-Care
The “radical” concept of self-care was born during the civil rights era, a time when brave individuals were fighting the relentless enemies of prejudice and discrimination. These American heroes created the first real communities of care, standing strong together in the face of seemingly impossible challenges and unspeakable treatment.
It can’t be lost on us that one of the concepts they were fighting for was (and remains) the basic human right to self-care. People of color were often denied medical treatment at hospitals and healthcare centers. The government had turned its back on them. Self-care, quite literally, became a matter of life and death. They were fighting an exhausting battle and the only support to be found was in each other and within themselves.
The basic idea of being able to care for oneself, of having the time, money, and resources necessary to do so, was born out of the civil rights movement.
How to Build a Self-Care Movement
1) Let’s destigmatize mental health. We need to change the way we look at mental health and make sure every person has access to the caregivers, transportation, treatment, and funds needed to properly address mental health.
2) Commit to sharing your self-care knowledge. We all have daily routines and personal challenges. But let’s stop trying to go it alone. When we take the time to create space in our schedules for others; when we organize and meet up with our friends and social groups; even when we exchange a few thoughtful emails, we’re building communities of care and, therefore, fueling the self-care revolution.
3) Help define the standards. The slow adoption of self-care in our culture is in big part due to a lack of definition. We don’t know what the standards of self-care are, or should be, because they’ve never been clearly established. Once we define the standards for self-care, it will legitimize our cause by providing a clear roadmap for people to follow. They’ll be able to create a plan, measure their progress, and make changes along the way based on realistic and achievable goals.
4) Understand that exhausted leadership is poor leadership. Exhaustion leads to shorter attention spans, increased emotional volatility, and poor decision making—Not exactly the qualities of a great leader. That’s why it’s vital that our efforts in leading the self-care movement are sustainable. If we burnout, it will be replicated by our staff, volunteers, children, and others in our sphere of influence. To create a culture of self-care we must be willing to model a sustainable work pace.
5) Ask reflection questions to yourself and your team. In the effort to move from reflection to action, and to build momentum to climb that next peak, we should ask ourselves key questions that will help us improve our own self-care habits and that of those around us. These questions may include:
How does the quality of my leadership diminish due to the lack of my own self-care?
Which habit(s) negatively impact my self-care and what new behavior can I substitute it with?
Do I have a self-care plan in place to ensure I follow-up on this new behavior and have I shared this plan with others who will hold me accountable?
How will I track my progress along the way?
How can I best support my staff/volunteers/friends/family members in their endeavors?
The modern self-care movement needs to start as a practice to avoid burnout, rather than as a response to it. The movement must demand that individuals put their health and wellness first without feeling guilty for doing so.
Why Is Self-Care Important?
Self-care can be an intervention tool that keeps you from being completely sucked into the vortex, saving you when you find yourself standing on the precipice gazing into the dark abyss.
3 Reasons You Need a Self-Care Plan
A Self-Care Plan is a fail-safe, created by you, and filled with your favorite self-care activities, important reminders, and ways to activate your self-care community. Here’s why it’s important to create your own Self-Care plan:
1) Customizing a Self-Care Plan is a preventative measure. By designing a roadmap that is unique to you, in moments when you’re NOT in crisis, you’re directing your best self to reflect on what you may need (and have access to) in your worst moments. The reality is that only YOU know how intense your stress levels can get and what resources are available to you.
2) Having a plan takes the guesswork out of what to do and where to turn in moments of crisis. From a mindfulness point of view, it helps you respond instead of react to the situation at hand. When you have a plan in place, you’ll feel more in control of your circumstances and life won’t feel quite as chaotic. (It also makes it easier to ask for help from those you share your plan with.)
3) A Self-Care Plan helps you stay the course. You’ll find it far easier to stick to your personal care strategy and avoid falling into the trap of making excuses. Having a plan helps you establish a routine, ensuring that you and your self-care partners don’t wind up in isolation. Instead you can check in with each other, hold each other accountable, and share the responsibility to support one another.
How to Create a Self-Care Plan
Your Self-Care Plan is a roadmap that you can carry in your back pocket. It’s there to help you walk your talk as well as help you find your way back to equilibrium by providing a clearly defined route back home if you find yourself on off-track.
1) First, create an activity list organized around different parts of your life. One of the easiest ways to start is by breaking up this daunting task into several categories, for example:
Work
Physical Fitness
Emotional Life
Relationships & Community
For each area above, write down the activities or strategies that you can call on, that are authentic to you and contribute to your well-being.
Some examples include spending time with friends, being active, mindfulness meditation, and finding the confidence to create healthy boundaries (here’s a template). Have fun, be creative, and most importantly, be real with yourself about what works for you and what doesn’t.
2) Second, note any barriers that may be in your way and how to shift them. As you write down each activity, ask yourself what barriers might get in the way of you being able to accomplish it.
3) Third, share your plan with your closest friends. Don’t forget to rely on your network of self-care buddies, your community of care.
How to Practice Self-Care
The main idea is that neither “fighting” nor “fleeing” are sustainable. More than that, they are responses we can move away from, we can evolve beyond. We often hear that our brains are hard-wired for fight-or-flight, that “we evolved this way,” but we know now that we continue to evolve. Our brains can be rewired.
How can we evolve beyond fight-or-flight? By choosing to move toward two new responses: empathy and action, which all starts with self-care.
A Few Ways to Practice Self-Care Today
Grass-roots meditation activist Shelly Tygielski offers three ways to practice self-care so we can recharge, refresh, and rewire for action.
Allow yourself to (finally) unplug from the news and social media for a few days. Turn off your alerts and push notifications, turn off the TV, and don’t access social media. If you must access it for work or otherwise, limit your time and do not engage or comment on posts. It’s not forever—it’s a few days of peace and being off the grid.
Recognize when you are in need of self-care and then respond to that need. Sometimes taking time for self-care may impact the lives of those around you (for example, you need to take the day off from work or ask for someone to watch the kids). Inform those around you that you are responding to a personal need but do not feel the need to ask for permission.
Have a self-care checklist ready that has dozens of options tailored just for you. These self-care options can range from scheduling a mid-day call with a friend to drawing a bubble bath. Having this list ready is important because when you are on the verge of burnout, you may not have the capacity to come up with the options at that moment.
The Most Courageous Self-Care Act: Learning to Say, “I Need Help”
Are you the type of person who’s too busy driving from place to place to stop and fill that gas tank with the beaming low fuel light? Too busy rushing about to take a moment? Too guilty to take a pause even though it’s clear you need one? Perhaps, you don’t feel empowered enough to demand a break? Or, maybe you’re just so caught up in your day that it’s easier to ignore all the signs telling you it’s time to pause, breathe, and assess the situation.
Being able to identify the need for a “personal moment” is critical. However, the reality is most of us are already pretty good at this part of the equation. Where we tend to fall short is acting on our own recognition. It’s not enough just to notice that low fuel light inside your head. You have to do what it’s telling you—pull over, put it in park, and refuel. This isn’t always easy and, in fact, often requires a good bit of personal courage.
3 Self-Care Tools for Claiming Your Healing Time
1) The Confession Statement: Name it to Tame It
In a nutshell, the “name it to tame it” or “confession statement” allows you to acknowledge your fears internally, while openly admitting your needs to a confidant. A confession statement might go something like this:
“I’m a little nervous to admit this and I hope you will accept it, but I need to take a step back. I need a quiet moment to find clarity of mind and spirit.”
You, the confessor, finds a welcoming and non-judgmental ear. Your confidant knows that he or she is being trusted with your vulnerability, freeing you of burdens that inhibit your self-care. It’s a pretty good feeling all around.
2) The Pre-Ask: Asking For Help or Space Before You Actually Need It
Most people refuse to ask for help or acknowledge that they need a little space until their anxiety is already at a boiling point. Let’s go back to the “low fuel” light analogy. When the light comes on, you know you’ve only got about 30 miles before running out of gas. But, hey, that’s still 30 miles! No need to start looking for a gas station immediately. Why worry about what’s going to happen down the road, right? In the case of self-care, it’s the accumulation of stressors that haven’t been addressed that flick on that light. These stressors get more and more critical as you head down life’s road, piling up and piling on until you find yourself with an empty tank—or burnout.
In other words, don’t wait too long. Let those you trust know when you feel like you’re approaching the point of needing help or a step back. Give them time to ready themselves so that they can be more effective when you do reach out.
A pre-ask invites someone to accept your request for help, space, or time before you actually ask for it.
3) The Kindness Factor: Remember That People Love To Help
Think about the last time you helped someone, or were willing to recognize their need for space. Chances are you came out of the experience feeling a powerful sense of gratification, goodwill, and pride. That’s because we humans actually love helping each other. We’re hard-wired for empathy. We like doing good things for one another, which is why acts of kindness large and small happen all around the world every single day.
It stands to reason, therefore, that there are plenty of people in your life who at one time or another would have been happy to help you had they been asked. They would have gladly watched your kids, assisted with the project you were stuck on, or just given you the space you needed to take a moment of reflection. The problem was never their willingness to help you. The problem was and is your fear and inability to reach out with the ask.
People who want to help are out there. But you have to open the door and invite them inside.
Emotional Self-Care for Difficult Times
Acknowledge the hopelessness you feel, refrain from wearing a mask of happiness, remember that nothing is permanent and that clinging to anything—whether it be hopelessness and despair or our plans to change the world—confines us to suffering.
This too shall pass.
How to Engage in Emotional Self-Care
1) Connect with others who are passionate about the same issues. Whether it’s your self-care buddies, community of care, or a local organization or campaign you are volunteering for, surround yourself with people who can understand how you feel. Venting alone doesn’t help. But combine complaining with action? There is a winning recipe!
2) Put good deeds back into the universe—directly. Focus on creating that human connection, on giving back, and on showing others that there is still kindness in the world.
3) Curate your methods of staying informed. Truly evaluate how much news you are absorbing and be mindful of how the news affects you—physically, mentally and emotionally.
How to Manage Difficult Emotions Without Suppressing Them
When it comes to regulating difficult emotions, there are two ways most people respond: they act out or they suppress. If you act out with a strong emotion like anger, you will most likely create undesirable consequences in your relationships, your work, and even your play. The ripple effects of acting out usually provoke more anger around you, which leads to more difficulty. The consequences of suppressing those big emotions can be even more dangerous.
What many people aren’t aware of is that there’s another way to regulate our emotions: Feel the feeling in real time.
On one level, emotions are like energy waves, varying in shape and intensity, just like ocean waves. Their nature is to arise and pass away pretty quickly, like all natural phenomena. If you attempt to interrupt this process, through acting out or suppressing, several things can happen. Tragically (and ironically), efforts to “talk yourself out of your emotions” often results in “increased rumination and perseveration.” In other words, you will keep thinking about and holding onto those emotions you’re trying to avoid. Anyone who’s had a deep tissue massage has empirical evidence for how the body holds suppressed feelings. Suppression gets held in the body and creates a host of downstream effects including anxiety, depression, stress-related illness, all the way to substance abuse and suicide
The Embarrassing Truth of Self-Care
Contributing editor, Anne Alexander, shares some cringeworthy reasons why self-care might just be something worth considering.
Self-care can be a touchy subject. It certainly was for me.
I used to think that “self-care” was for privileged, entitled, lucky folks who were out of touch with the lives of real people. And that made me angry. Jealous and snarky. I conjured self-care as something for Lululemon-wearing stay-at-home mommies heading off to pilates vs harried, hectic, frantic single working mothers like me who were barely keeping it together.
Yep, I was one of those people who sneered at self-care.
Instead, I ran myself ragged, giving all of my time, energy and attention to my work, my kids, keeping up with my bills, the house, the dog, until my frantic, precarious world exploded in one horrifying moment. I got “downsized.” Let go. Laid off from a job that I had moved my family hundreds of miles to take, the one that paid my bills, kept a roof over our heads, where I loved my colleagues, where I tap-danced like mad to turn around the company’s stomach-churning financial problems. In one short conversation, I got jolted out of a job that I thought was the center of my being.
As the shards of my life got blown to smithereens, I discovered—if I’m being embarrassingly honest with you—that there had been one very important missing ingredient all along. That ingredient was self-love.
Self-love. Ugh. Another awkward subject. Self-love is even harder to talk about than self-care. In fact, the sound of self-love can still give me the creeps; it makes me feel weak, pathetic, and vulnerable. Like it’s an admission to being such a loser that no one loves you, so you’ve got to love yourself your own damn self. How pathetic is that?
Well, pathetic, or not, what I learned is that ultimately, everything, including self-care, grows out of self-love. You first have to care enough about yourself to take care of yourself. You have to know that you matter in order to treat yourself like you do. And for some people, like yours truly, learning that was a long, slow journey with a priceless payoff.
Self-Care Practices to Use Every Day
Rethinking Our Self-Care During the Pandemic
Shelly Tygielski explains why intentional care for yourself is needed, now more than ever.
Besides disinfecting and washing my hands, I made a list of the best ways I could take care of my heart and spirit in these times, putting that proverbial oxygen mask on first before I tend to my family, my community, and the world.
Here are eight things that are on my extensive list:
1. Stick with my normal, daily meditation practice. It’s easy to lose track of time when the days blend into one another, but now more than ever, my twice daily meditation practice (20 minutes at a time) is so important. Also, I no longer have the excuse “I don’t have time” these days—all I seem to have is time, I just need to remain disciplined.
2. Maintain contact virtually by creating a schedule. Now is a great time to make sure that we check on the ones who matter to us, and those who we rarely get to see in person because they are so far away. However, it’s very easy to lose track of time—especially across time zones—so having a set schedule of times to check in, hang out and even eat “dinner” together can help to restore some social structure to the day.
3. Get outdoors. If you are blessed to live in a place where there are parks or waterfronts (that are not closed during the pandemic) and you can access them with walks, runs, and bikes, it’s a blessing that should not be squandered. Each day I commit to getting outdoors and moving for at least an hour, plus taking a barefoot walk on grass.
4. Give myself permission to cry. This is actually a point on my usual Self-Care Plan, which seemed appropriate to migrate over in these times. I know that I will inevitably feel sad, disheartened, or downright hopeless at times, but I also know that giving myself permission to feel these emotions fully and turn towards my suffering will help me release any pain or tension and help me see the sun through the clouds once again.
5. Create a venting-hour. Just like some families have adopted a “happy hour,” we’ve adopted a “venting hour.” It sometimes only lasts five minutes but being that we are all stuck together in close quarters for the next few weeks or months, we make sure that there is an “airing of grievances,” (just like in Seinfeld’s fictitious holiday, Festivus), so that nobody keeps anything inside. I found that it reduces the build-up of tension and makes sure that there is no resentment, which is possible for even the kindest amongst us.
6. Limit how often and through what means I access the news and information. I have personally noticed how I feel when I watch the news or hear certain people speak, so now, I limit myself to 30 minutes of news per day on the television with a news anchor and station I trust. Otherwise, I mostly get my news online by reading articles and transcripts of press conferences. I also make sure to not watch the news before I go to bed, because it can get me all worked up, which is counterproductive.
7. Be of service to others without depleting myself. Within a few days of people in my community being laid off, I started to get emails and see posts on social media from my friends and community members who were scared about having their basic needs met—food, medicines, and other essentials. I realized that because I did not share those concerns, I am in a position of privilege to help others and that I can use my platform to help neighbors, community members and even strangers. I put my grass-roots activism skills to work and launched the Pandemic of Love project, a mutual aid community that has connected more than 10,000 families in need with patrons who can offer help.
8. When all else fails, ask myself: “What do I need at this moment?” This is my default question—the one I immediately ask myself when I sense that I am not feeling right, physically or mentally. I just pause, take a long, slow deep breath and ask myself this question. In this space between, I almost always find the answer.
Each day, invariably, I find myself looking at this list. It provides me with a measure of comfort, reminds me that I am in control, and that in times of crisis, I have the choice to either be my own worst enemy, or my best ally. I choose the latter.
4 Self-Care Habits to Practice at Work
We are our own worst critic—and it could be holding us back in the workplace. Here are four ways to stop being so hard on ourselves and use simple moments during the day to wind down when we feel overwhelmed.
Practicing self-compassion is as important as applying compassion to others. When feeling self-compassion becomes challenging, try the following approaches:
1. Use lunch as an act of self-care. When you eat, take a moment to notice this nourishment you’re giving yourself. You have the power to choose to eat something that makes you feel good. Bonus: research shows that when you make a healthy food choice, noticing the positive feelings this gives you serves to reinforce the behavior, making you more likely to choose healthy foods the next time.
2. Remember that, just like you, we all feel like frauds. When you find yourself in self-deprecation mode, calling yourself names, telling yourself that you can’t do something well enough, and generally being a bully to yourself, remember that most people suffer from this “imposter syndrome,” the feeling that we are just pretending, that we don’t really belong, that we will be found out, that our true inadequacy will become obvious to the people around us, who are, for some reason, being tricked for the time being. The fact is that everyone you work with, no matter how self-assured they seem, experiences self-doubt. This is the human condition. And these are just thoughts, so you don’t have to believe them.
3. Be a friend to yourself. As corny as that may sound, it’s a trick my business school students have found incredibly useful. When you notice you’re being hard on yourself over a problem, imagine a dear friend coming to you with the same problem. How would you respond? How would you offer support? What would you say? How would you regard your friend? Now try giving these responses to yourself.
4. Ask for help. Many of us are caught up in the idea that we need to “be a professional,” which we equate as being stoic, handling things on our own. In this mind-set, we don’t think to ask for kindness or validation. In fact, we would likely refuse to accept it. Over time, though, this “I’ve got this” attitude begins to wear thin, and we realize we can’t do our jobs alone. Experiment with giving someone else the chance to support you. If this is a completely foreign idea to you, then I suggest you do it even more. People like to help! Think of how you feel when you get to help others. Helping people makes us feel good about ourselves and connected to others. So, instead of defaulting to “No, thanks” or “It’s okay, I’m fine” when someone offers you something, try saying yes.
The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers’ best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading. There are a lot of good reasons this could be going on, and we often jump to ADHD, ODD, laziness, or any number of common “culprits” behind such behaviors. While we’re quick to label, we often forget to investigate why those behaviors might be showing up in the first place, and frequently overlook the impact of toxic stress and trauma on our students.
How Stress and Trauma Affect the Brain
When we think about our students’ learning brains, we might imagine an upstairs and a downstairs. The upstairs brain, namely the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is our academic brain, and helps us with executive functioning skills like planning, organizing, regulating, and inhibiting impulses. The downstairs brain consists of our limbic system (including the amygdala), which is responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response and bypasses the PFC so our bodies can respond quickly to threats of danger (perceived or real). What does this look like?
Cortisol and adrenaline, stress hormones, flood the brain
The muscles contract and eyes dilate
Palms may get sweaty
Heart rate increases
The body is ready to fight, run away, or freeze to survive. The most critical thing to remember is that our brains and bodies are wired for survival. Even though we’re not all necessarily facing predatory animals in the wild, our brains respond the same way to other events in our lives. When the brain is under stress and feels like it needs to be in fight/flight/freeze mode, the upstairs brain turns off, and the body relies on the downstairs brain. That means those higher-order, executive functioning skills are inaccessible. Usually, a stressful event results in a brief elevation of cortisol, and this can help us perform better (think: “getting in the zone” for a sports game, performance, or test). While good in small doses, large amounts of stress can be toxic for our brains and bodies. When we’re faced with trauma, our brains are constantly in this state of toxic stress.
Trauma can include one of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) identified by researchers in a CDC-Kaiser Permanente Study. These are:
Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse
Neglect
A parent who is incarcerated, gets a divorce, has a mental illness, has experienced domestic violence, or abuses alcohol or drugs
Trauma can also include witnessing community or neighborhood violence, bullying, immigration/migration/refugee status, and institutional trauma (from the foster care system or juvenile detention), among other toxic stressors.
Change the future of education. Educators, explore how to bring mindfulness to your K-12 classroom.
In the chronically stressed brain, the cortisol tap is always on, flooding the system, and acts like poison to the brain of a developing child. When cortisol is present, energy and resources that should be used to make new connections for learning are instead rerouted to the parts of the brain dedicated to survival. Meanwhile, the amygdala becomes even more sensitive once it is activated, meaning a traumatized child may have hair-trigger responses to unprocessed emotional memories related to their trauma or stressors.
How Students Respond to Trauma
Imagine you have experienced a major trauma without a safe adult to help you process your feelings and experiences. Now, imagine that you are in a classroom with a new teacher, 25-30 new peers, and a lot of expectations to behave in a certain way. How would you respond?
Unfortunately, many of our students deal with this exact situation every day. An estimated 45% of children have one or more ACEs; approximately 10% have three or more. Yet, only about 20% of children with mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders actually receive care from a specialized mental health care provider, like a psychiatrist or psychologist. In the absence of support, children develop survival mechanisms that help them control their environments and feel safe. All individuals have very different methods of coping with difficult situations.
A good number of us are “internalizers,” meaning we prefer to keep to ourselves. We might hide our feelings from others, or push them down and away. Others are “externalizers,” meaning we seek to express our emotion outside of ourselves, perhaps through our behaviors, actions, and interactions with others. In either case, pure, unprocessed emotion or traumatic experiences can cause damage. Keeping things bottled up can lead to depression or anxiety. Spewing feelings out can lead to aggressive encounters and words or actions that feel out of control.
8 Practices Teachers Can Use to Support Students
Luckily, as Eric Jensen, author of Teaching with Poverty in Mind, stated, “the brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to positive, enriching effects.” This means, you, as a teacher can help the student. While you may not be a therapist or cannot change the history of your students, you can help them to feel safe, valued, calm, and hopeful in your classroom. That’s pretty powerful. Here are a few ideas to create that in your classroom using a mindful approach.
Take a deep breath, and shift your frame of reference for students. Rather than asking “What is wrong with this child?,” ask, “What has happened to this child?” You may not get straight answers about this, but trauma-informed teachers don’t need to know what the trauma is to know how to understand, support, and encourage a child.
Create awareness by understanding the trauma response. Hyper-vigilance, fear, shame, and guilt are typical reactions to trauma. Corresponding behavior is usually not purposefully manipulative, defiant, or avoidant. Rather, it is adaptive and functional for the child for him/her to get what they need. Understanding behavior this way can help you think through other ways for your students to get their needs met.
Practice self-awareness by knowing your own triggers and know how to regulate yourself. You can help a child regulate their bodies when you regulate yours. It’s a bit like a superpower, and it has a fancy name: interpersonal neurobiology, but the concept is quite simple. When an adult is calm, regulated, and using their prefrontal cortex, students can co-regulate with the adult, helping to calm their own limbic structures and engage their prefrontal cortex. In other words, by being in the presence of a calm and regulated adult, children can become calmer and their brains and bodies can learn from the adult’s regulation.
Build relationships with students not based on academics. Find out what they like to do, who their favorite pop or rap star is, and what movie they want to watch. You’ll find that once your students know you care about them as people, they’ll care about what you say and teach them.
Teach your students about their brains, their stress response system, and basic coping skills they can access in your classroom, like soothing themselves, breathing mindfully, and asking for help.
Create a space for calming down. A calm corner is a place in your classroom where students can go to de-stress or help regulate themselves after experiencing a big emotion. Calm corners should never be used as punishment, but only as a tool to help students. You can include stress balls, paper to tear up, sand timers, Hoberman spheres, mirrors to identify emotions, and other mindful tools.
Provide students with choices. This can be as simple as asking, “Do you want to use a pen or pencil?” or “Would you like to sit over here by me, or by the bookshelf where it’s less distracting?” Most children, especially those who have experienced trauma, have had very few opportunities to make their own choices. By ensuring their voices are heard and giving them options, students can feel a greater sense of power and agency, thus calming their limbic systems down.
Be aware of potential triggers when practicing mindfulness with your students. For instance, give them the option to look down at their hands or the floor rather than closing their eyes, as keeping their eyes closed may be a trigger. Additionally, ensure that all mindfulness practices are an invitation and a choice. If a student is not able or willing to participate in a breathing exercise or mindfulness activity, do not force them to or threaten disciplinary action. Rather, take a moment to get below their eye level, let them know you are there for them, and give them a suitable alternative choice.
Above all, know that you cannot control the experiences, fears, and traumas with which your students enter your classroom. You can, however, influence how safe you help them feel with you and in your room.
For more ideas, check out some of these great resources on trauma-informed teaching and trauma-informed classrooms.
Dr. Poonam Desai is a Certified Instructor of Mindfulness, with more than 300 hours of training completed. She has maintained a practice of Vipassana Meditation, as taught by S.N. Goenka, for over ten years and has completed six 10-day meditation retreats in addition to several other shorter retreats. Dr. Desai is a licensed psychologist and a licensed specialist in school psychology in the state of Texas. She has worked in the fields of education and mental health for over ten years and was a mental health trainer and psychologist at Momentous Institute. She believes mindfulness and compassion are the two things that will change the world, but also that the first revolution is always internal.
Essential Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies for Managing Stress in the Classroom (and Virtual Classrooms) By The Editorial Team
According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), child trauma is when a child witnesses or is involved in an event and, as a result, feels intensely threatened. A traumatic event or situation exceeds an individual’s ability to cope. Several types of psychological or physical trauma can lead to extreme distress. Sources of trauma can include (but are not limited to) bullying, natural disasters, and sexual abuse. The National Survey of Children’s Health states that 35 million children in the United States have experienced one or more types of childhood trauma.
One way to consider trauma is as a continuum in frequency and severity, from a single event to multiple events occurring over and over again. The three types of traumas are acute, chronic, and complex. Acute trauma occurs as an isolated event, such as a severe accident, medical procedure, or being a victim of a crime. Chronic trauma is when stressful or threatening events are experienced repeatedly, such as domestic violence. Complex trauma results from multiple and ongoing traumatic events such as abuse or neglect, living with alcoholism or substance abuse, and suffering from financial, food, and/or housing instability.
Impacts of trauma
Trauma has both short and long-term effects on a child’s brain and body. Reactions to acute trauma may include shaking, crying, or being easily startled. It may be easier to see and understand a child’s response to an acute traumatic event because it happens immediately, and one can grasp the reason why the child is distressed.
Chronic and complex trauma can be more challenging to detect in the classroom. A child may appear to be reacting to the situation at hand, but in reality they’ve been triggered by something else. Trauma can affect the body and brain in the following ways:
Body development: Trauma can lead to living in a near-constant state of extreme stress or fear. This heightened stress response means the child or adolescent can seemingly overreact emotionally, behaviorally, and/or physically to something that another child may not consider stressful. Children who have been traumatized may also over-respond to stimuli and be extremely sensitive to light and sounds.
Brain development: Trauma often leads to difficulties with language, communication, and processing new information. Reasoning skills are often delayed because of trauma as well.
Emotions: Emotional struggles are common with a trauma history. Children or teens may have difficulties expressing and managing their emotions, quickly exploding and struggling to calm down once upset.
Behavior: Trauma affects the ability to develop healthy attachments and relationships. Distrust, manipulation, argumentative behavior, and impulsivity can be common in youth who have been traumatized.
The trauma-informed approach
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reports that approximately one in every four children will experience a traumatic event before the age of 16. This means each classroom could have multiple children struggling to deal with various traumas. To create a trauma-sensitive school, where every classroom is safe, healthy, engaging, and challenging for each student, educators must incorporate a trauma-informed approach. This involves first learning about trauma and how it affects children’s behaviors, learning, and relationships. Then educators set about intentionally creating an atmosphere that supports each student, demonstrates empathy, and teaches resilience.
What is being trauma-informed?
First and foremost, being trauma-informed means that one has a level of understanding about trauma and its impacts on an individual’s brain, body, emotions, and behavior. It is a commitment to learning more about trauma and viewing the individual as a person and not their behavior. Without being trauma-informed, a teacher may misinterpret a child or teen’s behavior in the classroom. Being trauma-informed recognizes that the undesirable behaviors are attempts to soothe emotional dysregulation, and this is often done unconsciously on the part of the trauma-impacted individual. It shifts the question from “What is wrong with this child?” to “What has happened to this child?”
Having a trauma-informed lens
A trauma-informed lens is a perspective of how the instructor views the child and the classroom. With a trauma-informed perspective, a teacher can consider alternatives as to why a student might be acting in a certain way, and the teacher can respond in a way that will not cause additional trauma to the child.
Guiding principles of trauma-informed care
SAMHSA released a report containing the six guiding principles of trauma-informed care. Both in-person and virtual classrooms can apply these guiding principles. These principles include:
Safety: Throughout the school and in each classroom, all people (administration, staff, and students) need to feel physically and psychologically safe.
Trustworthiness and transparency: Decisions are made and implemented with the primary goal of building and maintaining trust between administration, staff, students, and their families.
Peer support and mutual self-help: An atmosphere of support is key to building trust and empowerment and in establishing safety.
Collaboration and mutuality: Everyone—administration, staff, and teachers—has an essential role in developing a trauma-sensitive school. This responsibility is not just for those in therapeutic positions; instead, everyone must do the work to create a trauma-informed workplace.
Empowerment, voice, and choice – everyone in the school strives to empower others and recognizes that each student is unique, and both require and deserve an individualized approach. For example, when emotionally dysregulated, a student may be asked what they need to feel better. Providing the student an opportunity to use their voice and select what they want or need empowers the child or teen to recognize what they need, express those needs, and feel calm and heard when those needs are met.
Cultural, historical, and gender issues – Ignoring stereotypes and biases and ensuring that both teaching and other interactions with students and staff are culturally sensitive and responsive is a crucial part of trauma-informed schools.
One must note that these elements of trauma-informed care are not merely a one-time task to be checked off of a list. Instead, a true trauma-informed approach is a series of ongoing, deliberate interactions that put the child as an individual at the forefront and not the exhibited behavior.
Trauma-informed best practices in the classroom
Studies have shown that classrooms can implement several best practices to maximize the support that students need. These evidence-based trauma interventions include:
Recognize the signs of trauma
Signs of trauma in the classroom may include a child having difficulty focusing, struggling with creating and maintaining friendships, being overly tired, and/or having poor self-regulation. Students with excessive absences, changes in their school performance, and withdrawing from activities or others may also be signs that a child has been affected by trauma.
Provide consistency and structure
Daily schedules should be structured and contain elements of academics, entertainment or play, and physical exercise or movement. Also, weaving in aspects of self-regulation skill building such as breathing exercises, mindfulness and journaling can be quite helpful so that students can learn to develop these skills and implement them on their own as needed. Consistency is key to helping a child feel secure.
Providing an overview each day of the schedule and lessons for the day can also reduce anxiety for those children and teens who may become easily distracted, wondering or fearing what might come next. This quick and straightforward task may help return a bit of control to the child as they can mentally prepare for the day.
These tips also apply to virtual classrooms. Consistency and structure can also be provided by setting expectations and goals together as a class, define responsibilities, and regularly checking in with virtual students to see how they are faring.
Utilize social-emotional learning
Social-emotional learning, also called SEL, is the process through which students develop skills in critical areas. These areas include self-awareness, self-control, social awareness, interpersonal skills such as feeling and demonstrating empathy for others, effective listening and communication, and making responsible decisions. SEL skills are critical for student success in school, life, and future work.
When reading a story to the class, discuss how characters might think or feel.
Assigning responsibilities and tasks to each student builds a sense of self-worth.
Starting the day with an affirmation can set the tone for a positive learning environment as it encourages positive self-talk and promotes a growth mindset.
Journal exercises help students identify and express their feelings or opinions, and group discussions can promote healthy and respectful disagreements.
Use restorative practices over zero-tolerance policies
Trauma-informed programs realize that zero-tolerance policies are ineffective and harmful. Zero-tolerance policies focus on the offense and are rooted in punishment. The child or teen is punished for committing an infraction with detention, suspension, or expulsion. It removes the student from the classroom environment but does not consider the student as an individual and what might have led to the misbehavior. Zero-tolerance policies disproportionately affect students of color, perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline, and do not provide the support or services the struggling student needs to achieve.
Rather than a single technique or tactic, restorative justice is a paradigm shift in how schools consider discipline and how students who break the rules are perceived and addressed. The goal is to create a new disciplinary system that is highly supportive while also being highly controlled. This system is rooted in respect, healing, empathy, and accountability. Restorative practices seek to do just that – restore relationships and environments. Instead of focusing on punishing the offending student, the focus shifts to repairing relationships between the offending student and the victim or repairing physical damage that may have occurred.
Restorative practices use support systems, including talking circles and peer juries, to create an environment where the student can hear how their actions affected the other party, and the offending student can respond. This approach humanizes both parties and encourages keeping the misbehaving student in the fold rather than excluding them from the school community. It also allows the student to be involved in finding a way to make amends instead of having a punishment doled out upon them. Restorative practices rebuild a traumatized student’s relationships with authority figures, reform their belief in fairness, and build their capacity for conducting themselves with integrity.
Research shows that school-wide use of restorative practices has long-term, positive impacts on student behavior, attendance, and achievement. Drop-out and truancy rates decline, and students report being happier while in school. Utilizing this trauma-informed positive behavior support can create an entirely different school environment, especially for students affected by trauma.
Implement a trauma-informed pedagogy
Trauma-informed pedagogy is the practice that keeps trauma and how it affects learners at the forefront when designing and implementing teaching strategies. For instance, during this time of uncertainty and social isolation with the COVID 19 pandemic, educators can recognize that these stressors may compound upon existing trauma and lead to students having a more challenging time completing even basic tasks, being motivated, and engaging with other students.
A trauma-informed pedagogy also provides content warnings before discussing potentially triggering topics. The educator also prepares themselves in advance on how to respond if a student is triggered. It allows students to opt-out of participating in these discussions and reassures students that they can opt-out without any penalties. Trauma-informed pedagogy also describes and teaches grounding techniques for students who may feel overwhelmed. These types of practices help to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students.
Teacher self-care while being trauma-informed
In order to create a supportive, trauma-informed classroom, it is imperative that instructors not only identify and deal with their own trauma but also regularly engage in self-care. Self-care techniques can vary based on the educator’s preferences, but examples include exercise, traveling, reading, meditation, yoga, seeing a therapist, and participating in creative or artistic pursuits, such as dancing or painting.
Secondary traumatic stress
Failure to prioritize self-care can lead to burnout or secondary traumatic stress. This is significant stress that develops as a result of caring for others with a history of trauma. Hearing about various traumas each day can weigh on an educator, resulting in both physical and mental difficulties that can severely interfere with one’s life.
Warning signs of secondary traumatic stress include:
Difficulties sleeping/having nightmares
Excessive fatigue
Physical aches and pains
Lack of motivation and/or decreased productivity
Difficulties concentrating
Isolation – avoiding people or activities that once brought joy
Feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, or anger
Secondary traumatic stress is not a permanent condition. Prioritizing self-care, talking to supportive family, friends, and professionals, and finding healthy outlets to relieve the stress can all help. In time, these difficulties can resolve, allowing for a clear and healthy mindset ready to support and encourage hurting students.
Professional development and training
Training is necessary in order to develop a trauma-informed classroom. Professional development training is a perfect opportunity to learn about trauma and examine ways to build a supportive environment and trauma-informed communication skills.
Trauma-informed professional development and training topics
Trauma-informed training for teachers can include a variety of topics surrounding trauma, including:
The different types of trauma
How trauma affects a child’s development
Ways trauma can manifest in student’s actions in the classroom
How to and how not to respond to undesirable behaviors
Developing a trauma-sensitive classroom
Developing a trauma-informed lens and teaching pedagogy
School-wide techniques and programs that can be implemented to be responsive to both student and staff stress and trauma
For those who want to become even more well-versed in recognizing and managing trauma-based challenging behaviors in the classroom, options exist for both post-graduate certificates and even a degree in trauma-informed teaching. Spending time learning as much as possible about trauma and how to best support traumatized children in the classroom can have positive and lasting results on both students and the educator.
Byer, L. (2016). Restorative practices in the school setting: A systematic review. Retrieved from Sophia, the St. Catherine University repository website: https://sophia.stkate.edu/msw_papers/564
Brother Hatchel doesn’t see so well anymore. And he has a prosthetic leg. So brothers Navy and Klugh guide him along the outdoor railing of the historic school where their fraternity chapter meets.
Using two canes, Hatchel, 74, who is wearing his black-and-gold Alpha Phi Alpha ball cap, maneuvers down the walkway, with Navy, 76, and Klugh, 74, guiding him: Turn right, careful, watch your step.
The three Silver Spring men have been “brothers” most of their lives — members of the same elite black fraternity as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And as they anticipated the dedication of the $120 million King memorial , they were proud to point out that the idea was born in a modest brick rambler on East-West Highway.
Thursday night, officials announced that because of Hurricane Irene, the dedication of the memorial will take place not on Sunday as expected, but in September or October.
In 1984, members of the local Alpha chapter — Iota Upsilon Lambda — hatched the plan for what has become the granite memorial at the Tidal Basin.
There, over coffee in the dining room of an Alpha member and American diplomat named George H. Sealey Jr., a half-dozen chapter members asked the question: Why not a memorial to King on the Mall?
Now, 27 years later, as the idea bears fruit, only two of the original six are alive. Many of the chapter brothers of that generation — men who grew up with segregation and who guided the fledgling project — are elderly and frail.
But this month, sitting at a table in their meeting hall, Robert Hatchel, a retired school principal, Harold Navy, a retired architect, and Andrew Klugh, a retired government mathematician, recalled how the plan began and the early obstacles it faced.
Navy is one of the two living original planners, according to the three men and the fraternity. The other is Eddie L. Madison Jr., a former government and communications executive, who lives in Eugene, Ore.
The others, in addition to Sealey, were Alfred C. Bailey, Oscar Little and John Harvey.
The gathering place was Sealey’s dining room.
“We used to meet like twice a month,” Navy said. “We would all come in after dinner, and we would have coffee. . . . We started, and every month we would make some progress. It was like a stepping ladder.”
“We had never had a black honored on the Mall,” he said. “Here was Martin Luther King, in our generation. We thought this was a man that was a quality individual that had given his life to try to have betterment of the races.”
In addition, King had been a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. “That was another motivational step for us,” Navy said. “It was a brother that we want to see honored.”
Alpha Phi Alpha is the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans. It was founded at Cornell in 1906 and is open to qualified applicants long after they have left college. It was Alpha Phi Alpha that created the foundation that went on to build the memorial.
Navy and Klugh were Alphas when they attended the 1963 March on Washington and had heard King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Navy was one of the spectators who climbed a tree along the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to get a better view. “I had never seen such a crowd in my life before,” he recalled.
Klugh said: “I came back from that march so pumped up and so proud to be an American that particular day. It was amazing.”
Sealey, who died in 2004 at age 82, was a World War II veteran, a member of the Peace Corps and the Foreign Service, and a man of ideas.
“George came up with the idea” for the memorial, Klugh said. “He started talking to people, and as it began to mushroom he brought other people in, like brother Navy here and others, to be a part of that group.”
Later in 1984, the chapter brought the idea to an Alpha convention in Cleveland.
“The membership didn’t support it initially,” said the fraternity’s current general president, Herman “Skip” Mason Jr. “Because it was a really ambitious project.”
But after gaining broader support, the fraternity embraced it. “Then it began to take a life of it’s own,” he said.
And always behind it stood the brothers of Iota Upsilon Lambda.
The chapter was formed in 1970 and it won the chapter-of-the-year award seven times in a row. “We had a lot of independent thinkers,” Navy said. “We were taught as young brothers, ‘There’s nothing you can’t do.’ ”
Still, some of the men had doubts about the memorial. “I didn’t know what would happen,” Hatchel said.
Navy said he never doubted, but also never expected a memorial so huge it’s “a shocker.”
“Here is a man we honored, and we started years ago trying to make it happen,” he said. “I did not ever think we would have something so grandiose with such a permanent location,” and not far from where he watched the King speech from a tree almost 50 years ago.
All three men have visited the memorial. Hatchel has felt the rough surface, and chief architect Ed Jackson Jr., also an Alpha, described the memorial for him.
“It’s kind of like, ‘Pinch me,’ ” Hatchel said. “I don’t feel like it’s really true, but it is.”
Opinion: For a model of how to teach on the subject of American racism, turn to Frederick Douglass
By Michael Gerson
Columnist Washington Post
November 8, 2021 at 2:39 p.m. EST
Among other things, the birth of America was one of history’s greatest acts of hypocrisy. A nation dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal” was at the time also a prison for hundreds of thousands. Randomly place a pin on the country’s historical timeline and you are likely to hit some crisis related to this founding defect.
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In the early days of the republic, it was not uncommon to ask if the American form of government was worth saving. Abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and a young Frederick Douglass regarded the U.S. Constitution as a pro-slavery document. The Constitution, “dripping as it is with human blood,” Garrison proclaimed, was the most “heaven-daring arrangement ever made by men for the continuance and protection of a system of the most atrocious villainy ever exhibited on earth.”
Clearly, critical race theory was not required to raise questions about the systemic nature of American racism. Garrison condemned any participation in the constitutional system, including voting, as a compromise with evil. Some Black leaders of the time found the American experiment so fundamentally corrupt that they advocated Black separatism and the return of Black people to Africa.
Uncomfortable conversations about racism are an inbuilt feature of American life. And they have resulted in certain categories of modern thought.
First, there are those who believe that, through the cataclysm of the Civil War and the triumph of the civil rights movement, the United States has largely fixed its structural defects. The 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, in this view, now provide a relatively level playing field for human accomplishment. Racism has become a matter of individual citizens holding prejudicial views. Therefore, the purpose of historical education is to inculcate colorblindness.
Second, there are those who believe that racism has been baked into American society for hundreds of years and will not be easily removed. The cumulative results of bias, in this view, can be seen in American institutions — housing, justice, lending, policing, education, wealth accumulation — that put many minorities at severe disadvantage from the moment of their birth. Therefore, fighting racism requires a positive effort to expose and undo systemic racism. This is not merely a matter of cultivating certain attitudes; it dictates positive actions against injustice.
Third, there are those — mainly in academia but not limited to it — who believe that American democracy and liberal individualism more broadly remain a cover or excuse for racial and economic exploitation. This is not only a critique of American institutions but also of American ideology. A free, equal, democratic society, in this view, is not an ideal that the White majority fails to meet; it is a myth used by the powerful to maintain power. And only the application of greater power to overthrow the existing order is an adequate response.
The first view — which seems to be held by many conservative parents — strikes me as badly inadequate. Colorblindness is an important commitment for individuals. It is not a sufficient tool for understanding the legacy of racism. I should have been taught as a child (but was not) that my monochrome suburban life was not a natural or neutral condition. It was constructed by generations of laws and rules that surrounded me with working institutions and segregated the community in which I lived.
The problem comes when the second and third views get conflated in practice. There are fringe forms of anti-racism that engage in a kind of power game. The purpose is to cultivate guilt and encourage ritual self-denunciation leading to self-disempowerment — a goal that should override every liberal norm, premise and institution.
I don’t see much evidence that this mode of education is widespread in American public schools. But it would be a troubling development. This is not only because it would offend some White parents. It would make genuine historical education about our country’s racial past, and genuine efforts to address ongoing injustices, more difficult.
Some of the most important questions related to racism were present from the start: Could the deep defects of this country be addressed by the more determined application of American ideals? Or were those ideals merely excuses for exploitation and bigotry?
The older Douglass answered differently than his younger self. He eventually broke with Garrison over the nature of the Constitution. “Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” Douglass said, “the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.” His fight for an anti-slavery Constitution and his embrace of political abolitionism shaped his century.
Douglass remains the model for dealing with racism — in his righteous anger at systemic corruption in the American experiment, and in his belief in the redeeming power of American ideals and institutions. A sound education will cultivate both.
As children grow older, play remains important for learning and development. Read how to encourage play for children.
Play is often defined as children’s work. It is through play that children organize and make sense of the world. Play also helps children work through tensions in their lives. Play brings out children’s creativity and so much more.
Think of the importance of play in your own life. As a child, you probably engaged in active play like riding bikes, climbing trees, or jumping rope. You probably also engaged in quieter play like drawing pictures, playing board games, and constructing elaborate structures. You learned much from these experiences, including building your strength and imagination, taking turns, and following rules. Many of us can appreciate the value of play for children under five, but it might still be a stretch to appreciate play for school-agers. And yet, play continues to be important in the lives of children as they enter school. As a matter of fact, play continues to be important even for adults.
WHY IS PLAY IMPORTANT?
Lev Vygosky is one of the foremost child development theorists. Vygotsky believed that play was critical for children’s development. Jean Piaget, another key theorist in children’s development, sees play as building vocabulary, concentration, flexibility, and empathy, among other qualities. Stuart Brown, yet another theorist, describes properties of play. According to Brown, true play is apparently purposeless, voluntary, and free from time constraints. Note that he says “apparently purposeless,” with “apparently” being the key word. Many of us are goal-focused and outcome-driven and might have trouble justifying an activity that is apparently purposeless. Yet we all need unstructured play time, and school-agers are no exception. We also know that while play may look purposeless, it helps children in so many ways. Consider these examples of children learning through play:
Sylvie had a recent visit to the hospital. When she comes home, her dad finds that she loves to play hospital, where she is the doctor and one of her friends or parents is the patient. Sylvie is using dramatic play to work through the stress of being hospitalized.
Michel is into building. Whether it is connecting blocks or straws and clay, Michel builds elaborate structures. He is learning about engineering as he makes his structures. Sometimes his friend, Manuel, helps during their playdates. When that happens, they both also learn cooperation and collaboration.
Dominique loves to play in the dirt. She digs, makes mud pies, crafts structures, and gets really dirty. Dominique’s creativity is developing as she forms structures with mud.
LEARNING THROUGH PLAY
So how do we encourage play for school-age children?
Make sure children are not over-scheduled. Leave time for open-ended, unstructured play.
Engage in play with your child when you can. Be willing to participate in pretend play; dress up, act silly, and be creative.
Follow your child’s lead. Take direction from your child and strive to follow what she wants to do, not necessarily what you want to do.
Respect when children want to play on their own. Sometimes children at play want to be on their own and sometimes they want to play with others. As children play and learn, be sure to look in occasionally to see if their preferences have changed and they are now looking for a playmate.
Provide “loose parts.” Loose parts are exactly what they sound like: they are typically lots of small pieces that can be played with in open-ended ways. Often, but not always, they are natural items. They tend to spur children’s creativity because there is no one right way to play with them. Here are just a few examples of loose parts:
A basket of small smooth pebbles of different colors
A small container of fabric scraps of different colors and textures
Small blocks, spools, or balls collected in a basket
A collection of shells, corks, wood pieces, or nuts in the shell
The importance of play doesn’t diminish as preschoolers become school-age children. Remember that play is how children learn and offer plenty of chances for schoolagers to play.
MORE ON PLAY:
Learn about the importance of outdoor play for development and find activities to do with your school-aged child.
Every year, school systems adopt new educational interventions and initiatives. This can be overwhelming to educators, as it puts a strain on time, resources and emotions. A no- cost, high impact intervention that is easy to integrate into classroom practice and curriculum is improv.
Yes, improv, the comedic art form made of short games where player create a scene, story or situation spontaneously. This is an amazing and transformative educational tool.
If you want to create a trauma responsive classroom, help all your student break through their resistance to writing, create an inclusive classroom community based on trust, respect and that embraces diversity, apply improv. What’s amazing is that improv offers those benefits and more, simultaneously and by playing even the most basic improv games.
What Is Improv?
Before we get into our list of 23 reasons, let me define improv. The kind of activities I’m talking about here are called “short-form comedic improv.” They only require a small space and a couple of minutes; can be integrated with curricular content so there is no time off task; and engage the entire class simultaneously.
Although recognized for their ability to create comedic ideas or situations, improv is not about being funny and it is important to note that the laughter produced is shared and joyful and never at the expense of others.
Improv produces educational benefits because of improv’s specific rules and structures. These short (1-3 minute) games are similar to improvisational theater games and role-playing activities, but they differ in that they explicitly framed by the rule of “Yes, and.”
How Does Improv Work?
When people enjoy a improv as a comedic art, they are focusing on the spontaneity of the performance. Although spontaneous, improv games, are more structured than you realize.
It is the structure provided by the rule of “Yes, and….” and other structures that creates the spontaneity which sometimes results in comedic moments. The “Yes, and…” rule requires that each player unconditionally and without judgement accept the offer given by all other players and add to it. The act of “Yes, and- ing” is not teaching people to agree with everything in real life but is instead an exercise in listening completely to each other and then explore others’ offers and its possibilities.
Benefits of Improv for Schools and Teachers
In the following list, I’ve grouped the 23 benefits of improv into three broad categories: benefits for schools and teachers, benefits for the learner, and emotional intelligence benefits.
When people think about improvisation (improv, for short), they generally think about the benefits for the individual—benefits like improved self-confidence, creativity, and collaborative skills. And certainly, those benefits are real (see the next two sections).
But people often fail to think about the broader benefits that the regular use of improv can have for the classrooms in which it’s used and for the entire school. So, let’s start with the big picture.
Here are eight ways that the regular use of improv can benefit schools, classrooms, and teachers. Improv…
1. Supports the Democratic Values of the Education System
Schools are society’s number one enculturation tool. As such, schools across the country seek to create cultures that honor democratic values. What teaching approach could be more democratic than one (like improv) that engages all students simultaneously and honors each individual’s contribution? Imagine the impact school-wide if every teacher in the school used improv regularly in their classrooms!
2. Acknowledges and Supports Diversity
In a society as diverse as ours, it’s especially important that teachers use teaching approaches that honor and promote student diversity—and improv does just that. The structure built into all improv games allows students to lend their own unique ideas and perspectives to shape the performance. Learning to open up and give of one’s self while simultaneously learning to accept the ideas of others who differ from us develops the kind of open-minded mindset that teachers seek to develop in their students.
3. Builds Classroom Community
Educators have been talking about the importance of building classroom communities for a long time. We know that, if you get the community right from the beginning of the school year, everything else (both academic and non-academic) goes much more smoothly. One teaching approach that goes hand-in-hand with building strong classroom communities is collaborative learning. Educators understand that collaboration helps students learn how to work together for the good of the group. Improv does not only offer practice collaborating but develops the skills necessary for student to engage in successful collaboration.
Unlike cooperative learning, where students can sometimes hide behind the efforts of others, in collaborative improv they co-create as equals. They learn they are responsible and accountable to each other at all times. Students learn how to take turns stepping up to speak (taking the attention) and stepping back (giving the attention) to let others have their say. Communication, attunement, empathy, trust, respect and more are all practiced. Improv rapidly transforms the classroom into a supportive community of learners.
4. Creates a Trauma Responsive Environment
Thanks to recent trauma informed trainings, teachers understand that behaviors detrimental to academic success may be manifestations of trauma. Unfortunately, knowledge alone does not equip teachers with classroom practices to create an environment helpful to students suffering from trauma. Improv, with its ability to create a sense of safety and belonging, develop mindfulness and co-regulation, develop empathy and resilience, decrease anxiety and depression and more, creates a trauma responsive environment. It helps students get into a better mental state in which to learn. As teachers, we seldom know which students are suffering from past or ongoing trauma. We don’t know what kind of trauma or how it is affecting them. The practice of improv creates an trauma responsive environment for all students.
5. Increases Intrinsic Motivation
Educators often bemoan the lack of intrinsic motivation in their students, complaining that students have to be forced, threatened, or bribed to engage and learn. Not so. Today’s students are just as likely to fully engage with their learning as students from the past. The keys to such engagement are relevant curriculum and engaging instructional approaches.
Improv offers an instructional approach that builds intrinsic motivation—as long as the curricular content being processed during the particular improv game is relevant. Using William Glasser’s (1988) framework from his book, Choice Theory in the Classroom, as a lens, improv provides for all five of the key motivating factors all humans share: (1) improv satisfies students’ survival needs by structuring the activities in such a way that threat is reduced and trust in others and confidence in one’s self is increased; (2) it satisfies students’ needs for autonomy by allowing for self-expression, choice, and creativity; (3) it satisfies their needs for belonging by providing opportunities to collaborate with others, which, over time, builds community; (4) it satisfies their needs for power/competence because of it simple guiding frameworks within each game and because students draw upon their own experience and knowledge; and (5) while not every improv experience may feel enjoyable, the supportive playfulness and laughter, satisfies students’ needs for fun. Thus improv, if used regularly, can be a powerful tool for building intrinsic motivation in all of the school’s students.
6. Supports Discovery Learning
Most classrooms, most of the time, could be described as “top down.” The teacher makes the majority of the decisions—what to study, how long to spend on it, how the material is presented, how learning is to be assessed, etc. And much of that is as it should be. But this fact only makes the rare opportunities for students to learn inductively and discover meaning that much more important. And improv provides just that. While the general parameters and content of an improv game may be set beforehand, there’s no telling what students will discover about the content and themselves as they play the game. When students regularly get to be in charge of the direction of their learning (even if it is just for a couple of minutes at a time), their attitudes toward learning are often more positive.
7. Is Easily Integrated into the Curriculum
As I already noted, improv games are short (:30-3 minutes each), they require only a small space, and they engage the entire class simultaneously. Sure, it takes a little longer to introduce a new game to a class the first time, but you only have to do that once with each game structure. After that, you can just announce, “We’re going to be playing ‘Yes, And—Shared Memory’” (or whatever the game is you’ll be playing) and the students know the structure. Today, when many of the suggested activities in the curriculum require long stretches of time or the use of some technology that has to be booted up before one can use it, activities that teachers can implement in am instant are appreciated.
8. Makes Teachers Better Listeners
Oftentimes, we teachers think we have all the answers. After all, we’re putting together the curriculum, the unit plans, and the lesson plans. We know what we want the students to learn and we know how we want to get them from point A (not knowing the material) to point B (knowing the material). The danger is that, when we figure all of this out in advance, we can fall into the trap of telling all the time, which can shut down our willingness to listen. Students have their own background knowledge, they have their own learning needs, and they have their own stories to share. Using improv regularly forces us to hear what our students create in the moment, and this can be a surprising experience. We can often learn more about our students in a two-minute improv game than we can in a whole unit of instruction delivered the traditional way.
9. Gives Teachers a New Vocabulary for Classroom Management
Traditional classroom management language tends to have a lot of “No’s” and “Don’ts” in it. Classrooms structured on “rules and consequences” (even when these are developed jointly between teacher and students) thus can sometimes come across as oppressive environments. Classrooms that use improv regularly, however, offer teachers another set of terms to address classroom behavior—a vocabulary that’s focused more on building the kinds of classroom communities we say we want.
Two side-coachings of improv are the skills of “giving attention” and “taking attention.” Student are empowered as they learn they have the power to give and take attention. This may seem obvious to the teacher, but often the class feels powerless as the teacher struggles and often fails to manage students who disrupt. Those who want to learn are often frustrated with what they perceive as the teacher’s lack of ability to control the class. With the practice of improv, students quickly realize the power they have. They are now empowered and see their role and responsibility in creating an enjoyable and effective learning environment.
Benefits of Improv for the Learner
Here’s a list of ways improv can help students learn more, improve academic skills, and become more confident as learners. Improv…
10. Fosters Creativity
Education says it values creativity, but does it? How open-ended are most assignments? In school, students spend a lot of time trying to find the right answer, self-correct, and edit their work, but how often do they get to truly use their creativity? The initial stage of any creative act requires one to generate ideas without judging. Only once a solid set of “raw material” has been generated in such a fashion can revising and editing work profitably. The “Yes, and” structure of all improv games gives students practice in idea generation without editing, which develops the proper mindset they will need to create in all areas of their lives.
11. Deepens Learning
The wide variety of improv games give teachers a great deal of flexibility for retrieving information and transferring this learning to new situations. For example, the whole category of expert games (such as Hot Seat, Flip and Flop, and Expert Interview) require one or more students to act as an expert while other players challenge them or bombard them with questions or opinions they must answer or respond. This makes for an engaging (and challenging) review of material.
12. Makes Learning Concrete
Another way improv can improve learning is by making abstract (and thus difficult to learn) ideas, concepts, or processes more concrete. Any process or sequence, or anything that has individual components can be made concrete and taught through games (such as Yes, and, Describe It Another Way, or some of the Story games.) Such games can also be used to assess whether students really understood the initial teaching or not.
13. Builds Writing Fluency
Many students struggle with writing. Improv can be a powerful tool for getting over an occasional writer’s block or a chronic reluctance to write. Teachers often do not know if a student’s reluctance is due to a literacy deficit or a social-emotional issue. Improv addresses both simultaneously. Students develop social-emotional skills that can impact writing. At the same time, a scaffolded use of the games helps students transition rapidly from collaborative speech to individual writing, an essential and often developmental progression (DeMichele, 2015). More information about this approach can be found in my book Improv ‘n Ink: Overcoming, “I Don’t Know What to Write!”
14. Allows Different Students to Shine
Some students will respond positively to improv games and surprise you with their quick wit and natural performance skills—and the students who do so are very often students who don’t shine at most other academic tasks. Teachers new to improv are always shocked by this phenomenon. The great thing about this is that these students who are finally given a way of interacting with school content that matches their personalities and learning styles often blossom right before your eyes, gaining confidence and feeling pride in themselves that they’ve never experienced before.
Emotional Intelligence Benefits of Improv
Teachers often choose to add improv games to their classroom repertoire because of one or more of the academic benefits listed in the previous section. But the benefits don’t end there. Improv also confers a whole host of social-emotional benefits on students, as well, and it could be argued that these benefits are even greater than the academic benefits.
Here are a few of the powerful emotional intelligence benefits you can expect. Improv…
15. Teaches Students to Collaborate
You can’t play an improv game by yourself. Every game structure requires input from each participant, and from the audience, as well. It’s truly a collaborative event where responsibility is shared, and everyone is accountable to each other. So much of education is done individually that students don’t get enough practice at learning how to work effectively with others. A good description of most improv games would be: “working together with others to produce a creative product or solution in a short period of time.” That would also be an accurate description of the work environment in most businesses today, which is why business leaders consistently name collaborative skills among the most prized attributes for new employees.
16. Helps Students to Learn Resilience
The development resiliency is so important to the success of our students not only in the classroom, but in life. Currently, our culture attempts to protect students from feeling the failure for fear their self-esteem may be irreparably damaged. How can they learn and practice reliance if they are never given the opportunity to fail? Improv is the answer for this. Because improv is intrinsically motivating, as described in benefit number 4, even when students “fail,” they jump right back up to participate again. They practice resilience.
Failure in improv may be when a student freezes or denies “Yes, and.” Because they still feel a sense of belonging, autonomy, security, competence, and fun, they don’t quit, but jump up to participate again. And what is really cool is they are not failing in secret. They are failing in front of their peers. They learn they can survive failure. They learn to be resilient.
17. Helps Students to Develop Mindfulness
Mindfulness is being adopted in classroom practices—and for good reason. Studies have shown that mindfulness practice (focusing on the present moment through some type of focusing mechanism, such as one’s breath, a sound, or an object such as a candle flame) develops the ability to tune out distractions and focus on the needs of the moment, which is a skill very useful in all areas of life.
Improv games support the development of mindfulness skills as they require players to stay in the moment, listen to the offer of the player preceding them, and say “Yes, and” to that offer in some way. The moment a player loses focus on the present moment and lets his mind wander, he loses the thread of the game and consequently receives immediate feedback as the energy or flow of the game stops. Every time a student plays an improv game, he develops the skills necessary to achieve focus in any area of his life.
18. Helps Students Become More Comfortable with Public Speaking
Everyone knows that public speaking is one of the biggest fears for many people. Getting up in front of a class of one’s peers can be scary indeed, especially for those students who are naturally shy, who feel like they don’t have great vocabularies, or who are second language learners. Improv provides a safe structure within which to build confidence in speaking before a group. Since no single student is ever “on stage” for very long in any improv game, they get practice in short doses and in an engaging, non-judgmental, and often fun environment.
19. Makes Students Better Listeners
As described in the section about mindfulness above, to perform well in an improv game, a player must stay in the moment, listen to the player who precedes them, and then say “Yes, and” to that offering. The listening skills developed by regularly playing improv games are highly valuable in life outside of school as well, as listening intently so that the person speaking feels truly heard is a powerful way to build positive relationships.
20. Builds Trust
Many students have trust issues. Home environments, abuse, bullying…the list of situations that could lead to a lack of trust is long. And it’s often hard for these students to open up and become a part of a classroom community because of these issues. The regular use of improv can help these students learn that not all people are out to hurt them. The unconditional acceptance created by the frame of “Yes, and…” nurtures a trust in one’s self, as well as a growing trust in others.
21. Builds Empathy
I’ve already talked about how improv improves listening skills. But it goes way beyond that. To truly listen to another player, you have to not only be tuned in to what he’s saying, but also be tuned in to his body language and emotions. This attunement is the first step toward developing empathy. Add to this the overarching rule of improv (“Yes, and”) where all players unconditionally accept what the previous player offers (again, verbally and emotionally), and you can see how regularly playing improv games can develop empathy. And in today’s often contentious environment (politically, socially, culturally, you name it), there’s probably no skill more needed than empathy.
22. Teaches Students Self-Regulation
Some students have trouble with impulse control. They think of something they want, and they immediately act on it—whether that action is to the detriment of others in the environment or not. Obviously, this often gets them in trouble.
Improv games provide a structure in which such students learn that, for the game to proceed successfully, they must inhibit their needs to be the center of attention or to say whatever they want to say whenever they want to say it. Regular practice listening and accepting the offers of others, relinquishing control so to add to those offers and appropriately giving attention until it’s their turn to contribute, can be helpful in building impulse control.
23. Helps Students with Oppositional Mindsets
Students who tend to be oppositional often receive more benefit from improv than anyone. This is because these students’ natural reaction to just about any situation is to disagree, argue, or rebel. The primary rule of “Yes, and,” on the other hand, requires that they agree with whatever the preceding player says and then add on to it. Learning to listen, accept and explore an idea is a fantastic practice for these students.
Why Wouldn’t You Use Improv?
There you have it. Twenty-three reasons why improv is a powerful tool for supporting the goals of schools and teachers, for developing academic skills, and for developing positive social-emotional habits.
So, the only question remaining is, “Why wouldn’t you use improv?” Improv provides so much value, is so easy to learn and use, and it’s flexible enough to be used from kindergarten to college, in any content area, that it doesn’t really make sense not to use it!
Learn More!
As a classroom teacher, I understand the concern of having the time to integrate yet another instructional approach. Improv, however, is so easy to integrate into daily classroom practice and the benefits to learning are immediate and sustainable.
Mary DeMichele is a coach, consultant, author and improviser with over 25 years of experience in educational, clinical and professional settings. She is the author of One Rule Improv: The Fast, Easy, No Fear Approach to Teaching, Learning and Applying Improv and Improv ’n Ink: Overcoming “I Don’t Know What to Write! Mary holds a Master’s degree from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. For more information visit OneRuleImprov.com.
Teachers protest staffing shortages in Maryland school system
Montgomery County teachers and support workers are protesting staff shortages in Maryland’s largest school system, saying they are exhausted and stressed out less than two months into the school year.
Leaders of two employee unions led a rally outside school system headquarters Tuesday evening, supported by a long line of members driving cars in a procession with headlights on and horns blaring.
Car windows were taped with signs referring to “skeleton crews” in schools and teachers “drowning” in the workload. Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions, other signs said.
Amid the staffing shortages, educators say they are being tapped to cover other classes during their lunch and planning periods. They say they get less support from principals, who are tasked with public health duties related to the continuing pandemic.Advertisement
And nearly half of requests for substitute teachers in Montgomery County go unfilled, according to the school system data — which educators describe as a major problem.
“We are being set up for failure, and our students are being set up for failure,” said Jennifer Martin, president of the Montgomery County Education Association, the 14,000-member teachers union. “The demands are unreasonable.”
Martin said school system leaders failed to plan for the realities of the school year, and workers are at a breaking point. She called for greater collaboration between school system leaders and employee unions.
Teachers can get $15 for covering another educator’s class during what should be their planning period, Martin said, but she described the money as “not a professional salary” and said educators still are left with their usual responsibilities.Advertisement
“What we really need is time to do our jobs,” she said.
Pia Morrison, president of Local 500 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents almost 9,000 school system support staff, pointed to fallout for her members too: Bus drivers are doing extra runs because of staff shortages, she said, and other employees are “literally trying to do the work of an additional person.”
“The staff are being asked to do more work,” in a system that is down hundreds of people, she said.
School system officials in Montgomery County acknowledge staffing shortages — a problem that is widespread in the region and the nation.
The system, with more than 200 schools and about 24,600 employees, has vacancies for 325 teachers, about 105 paraeducators, nearly 100 other support staff and about 120 bus drivers, according to recent school system data.
Montgomery County schools spokesman Christopher Cram agreed that the system has more jobs than people willing to fill them.
“People are doing more work and stepping up to ensure administratively schools have what they need and students are getting the content they need but there is anxiety over increased workloads,” he said.
Still, he said, the system’s human resources department is working to recruit new personnel. The system continues to “actively and strategically” recruit highly effective teachers, he said, and is working with local colleges and universities to hire December graduates.
Bus driver shortages, he said, are being addressed by using supervisors and trainers to drive routes. But he said some drivers still need to make more than one trip to cover all of the system’s routes.
Union leaders say the school system could do more — especially since it has received an influx of federal funding to help ensure students get back on track with their learning.Advertisement
That money is being used to support schools, including counselors and mental health professionals, Cram said. “But you still have to find people to fill those positions,” he said.
Kember Kane, a kindergarten teacher, said that educators are trying to make the best of a bad situation but the demands are overwhelming and not sustainable.
“You can’t ask someone on life support to run a marathon,” she said.
Union leaders are calling on the school system to restore planning time and comply with requirements to give educators a lunch break.
Cram said there is “no doubt that teachers are giving 100 percent and more,” but those who are not getting lunch periods or planning periods should “collaborate with their building leadership to ensure they are maintained.”
Chelsea Van Tassell, a middle school English teacher, said the school board has yet to acknowledge the gravity of the problem.
Students need high-quality classes and support, but teachers are becoming stretched worryingly thin, she said. “It’s pretty serious,” she said, “and it’s not going away.”
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By Michael Gerson
