Let's not be so hasty to let the old year pass

A new year is coming up fast and it is a time that many look to as a fresh start and a time to make resolutions for the coming twelve months. As the song says "fast away the old year passes". 

Before you cast the old year aside though can I suggest that you take some time to first count your blessings... and if you have had a tough year, and I know a few people who have,  I am thinking that you are reading this post and have access to the internet in some way so you might just have a couple of things to be grateful for as a starter. 

Consider this: 

Found in several places but this one I sourced from:
http://www.speakupforchange.ca/why-you-are-so-lucky/

The main reason why I suggest you count your blessings first is that you will be much less likely to toss out the really good stuff you already have as you focus on the next big thing you want to be, do or have in your life. 

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to do a gratitude audit for the last 12 months or so:  

• Have I been of service to others at some stage? 
• Have I taken care of myself in some way? 
• Have I achieved anything significant for me? 
• Have I used my skills and talents in some way? (and before you say I don't have any, I believe we all do, just some of us don't recognise them yet) 
• Have I learnt something new? 
• Have I fostered positive relationships with some of the people around me? 
• Have I had any fun times? What were they? 
• Have I had any adventures? 
• Have I overcome any challenges? 
• Have I had opportunities to celebrate the success of others? 

I hope that you have come up with a few things to be grateful for and identified some of the great things about your life that you want to keep. Too often we forget to celebrate the good as it happens and taking some time to reflect with our minds and hearts tuned to gratitude can make a big difference to our whole well being. I hope that you spend more time focused on gratitude going forward so you get to experience the joy that it brings. 

This approach also helps you work out what it is that you really do want in your life. 

Ask yourself: 

• Do you want more of the same? Great stuff- keep adding to your gratitude list and stay focused on creating more of the same. 
• Who are the people that you care about and love? If you are able to, how will you stay connected with them? 
• Is there something you want to change? If so why do you want to do that? What will it look like if you make that change? (it is important to have a clear vision of the end point you are aiming for) 
• Do you want to learn something new? 
• How will you use your skills and talents this year? 
• How will you be of service to others? 
• Is there a way you could contribute to your community this year? 
• What adventures would you love to have? 
• How will you create positive relationships with those around you? 
• Do you want to stretch yourself? If so, in what way and why? 
• How will you ensure that you are as healthy as you can be? 

Once you know what you want things to look like and you know why you want to go there then you can work how you will get there and take the first step to seeing your vision coming alive. 

And the crazy thing is that you don't have to wait for a new year to focus on the good you already have or the path you want to take going forward... you can do this anytime and anywhere! The birds do not start singing a new song just because it is the first of the year nor do the mountains shift that day so feel gratitude now and dream as well. 

A personal story to illustrate: 

Last year I made some pretty clear goals going forward in about October. I had an ultimatum put to me that forced me to make a choice (much of my thinking was centred around the vision of the future I had been fostering for a little while prior to this to be fair). The things I wanted for the new adventure that I was to take were: 

• Most importantly it was to have more time with my family and enjoy doing some things around our home- I have loved spending time with our little man this year, we have gone to playcentre together and had a lot of fun. It has also been great to remodel our kitchen using recycled materials and make it a much more useful space for preparing our food 
• Take 3 months off to get my body back in balance and just enjoy a slower pace of life (I had saved up my annual leave for some time to enable me to do this)- it was great and gave me clear headspace to start blogging and do some study for fun as well as walk daily and go swimming and enjoy our kiwi summer with my family 
• Start my own business- yup, done that and have had some great opportunities to explore and play with using my skills in different settings including public speaking, writing resources for schools, and also doing adult workplace assessments
• Growing my own vegetables- we started that this season and it has been fabulous, to those of you who follow this blog you will have already read about this new passion of mine... and I am loving enjoying the fruits of our labours immensely! 
• Teach an average of two days week- this has happened in the last half of this year and I have really enjoyed teaching students from 5-17 years old, next year I will be teaching 2 days a week in a job share role which is fantastic
• Have my own chickens so we can eat our own eggs- we are on the way there, I got a little put off the idea by the fact that some people found chickens to be rather vicious with each other but have done some more research and we have plans to build our coop in the coming month or so... and the chickens will be a late Christmas gift once we get the coop ready for them
• I have always wanted to write despite feeling a little inadequate as a writer- I have had opportunities to play and learn (this blog is one way) and am learning more about this at the moment as I explore another project, it is exciting 

It hasn't always been easy, there are always ups and downs and I have had to take a few risks, but that strong vision of what I was hoping things would look like has helped me get back on course when the chips have been down. I also spoke with other people about this vision so they were able to support me and at times hold me accountable if needed. I am hugely grateful for the opportunities that I have had so far and the dreams that have been fulfilled as well as those that are ongoing and the dreams to come! 

I hope that your dreams come true in the best ways too. 

And while you are at it ALWAYS remember you are incredibly powerful because you do have choices... 

  

The growing brain

A few weeks ago I attended a course about Neurobiology and Early Life Trauma delivered by Grant Sinnamon. Although it was largely designed for counsellors and therapists as a teacher and a bit of a neuro-nerd I found the content really relevant and useful. There was so much content that was amazing but for now I will concentrate on just a couple of points.
One of the take aways from the event was that trauma in early years of brain development can present in a whole lot of different ways later on (please note in this context trauma isn't necessarily major injury or intentional harm, it may be a change or loss, it could even be the result of a minor concussion).

Brain development is hugely important for us to consider as teachers. There can be standards set and expectations established for various age groups but in reality when our children enter school they come in at their own stage of development and their progress from there could be dependent on things like any early life trauma encountered. Grant Sinnamon suggested that if a trauma occurred at a time of significance in the development of the brain then there could be an impairment but with correct diagnosis this could be remedied or mitigated at least by building or strengthening pathways that may have been underdeveloped earlier in life. He stressed that interventions must mirror development, starting from the bottom and building up.

This is a challenge for schools. A powerful consideration offered to us during this seminar was if a child is struggling in some way academically such as learning to read and it is due to an interruption in their brain development (for arguments sake think about developing left/right cross over) then putting them in intensive remedial programmes and giving them extra reading to do may in fact not remedy the situation properly and could even cause greater problems by increasing anxiety and stress related to reading as a task. So the suggestion is that we go back to the earliest point of development that seems to be interrupted, with the reading example start with crawling and build up to remedial reading programmes.

He reminded us that the brain develops from bottom to top and inside to the outside. For most of the session we talked about the brain stem development. The brain stem controls our most basic and vital functions and it is where our options are most limited: flight, fight or freeze. If through early life trauma we have created a strong pathway to react with flight or fight then that will almost be an automatic reaction to any stressful situation... think about some of the challenging bahaviour we see in classrooms, could this possibly contribute to some of what you have seen? In order to support the learner it might be that we need to strengthen other pathways that may be underdeveloped, such as learning breathing techniques to calm down and therefore be able to respond better to stressful situations by accessing our thinking part of the brain. This fits beautifully with Glenn Capelli's Three Rooms of our Magic Brain. Grant talked about blowing bubbles being one strategy to help build slower breathing in a fun, non threatening manner. Creating a safe environment for these students is vital.

He has developed a model called REPAIR(tm) and is talking about this all over Australia and New Zealand. It makes good sense, and much of it relates to how we can create safe environments for children. I do recommend if you get a chance to hear him speak it is well worth the effort.

Clearly I have only just touched on a couple of small ideas from our whole day together... there is just so much more I want to learn!

The thing is that I am a classroom practitioner, not a therapist. As a teacher I would love to learn more from Grant Sinnamon and how we can use what he has developed so we are better armed to support the children we work with. For me it is about how we support the range of individuals we work with and finding ways we can help them to build secure foundations for their learning. Knowing more about how our amazing brains work must surely help us to achieve this end.


Further reference:
Slides by Grant Sinnamon from a similar seminar- http://www.academia.edu/1688621/Early-Life_Trauma_and_the_Brain_Consequences_and_Interventions
Grant Sinnamon talking about his REPAIR (tm) Model- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBWmT_TBebA

Get Going with Growing 6

Vegetables can be pretty too.
Zucchini flower... quite lovely and the zucchini's are tasty too. 

Guess who has been eating our spinach this time??? 

We have! 

And it is great :) The taste of fresh spinach on pizza and in lasagne has been wonderful. 

Spinach waiting to become part of a meal for the family 

This lasagne was SO tasty... fresh and healthy 

We have continued to add to the garden plots... what started as four little boxes three and a half months ago is now eight boxes planted (with two more ready for new plants) and a glasshouse full of food producing plants. The apple trees are full of little apples that are steadily growing which is very exciting. I am quite surprised by how quickly things have grown and thoroughly enjoying the fruits of our labours. 

The original plots

The garden now

The weather has been really changeable which has had its challenges but earlier this week we had some really hot weather followed by warm steady rain showers, I couldn't believe the growth in the garden from that... bean seed that had just broken the surface the day before grew almost two inches over the day. Nature is amazing! 

Webbs Wonderful Lettuce seedlings

I have now planted spinach seeds and lettuce seeds and they will go into the empty plots in time. I am getting better with nursing my seeds to the next step, it is about nurturing them- giving them what they need as they grow and adjusting the care as get bigger and stronger... like any baby really. One thing that has worked for me is using egg cartons as seed trays, it makes transplanting less stressful on the seedlings and they are a little easier to keep moist once the seeds strike. 

Every day there is something new to see and, as always, learn :) 

Broccoli on it's way

Your actions scream louder than the words you use

Last week I was reading a post called What our kids learn in school (http://markmanson.net/school). It got me thinking about education and teaching again.

We are teaching much more than we have written in our planning or have milling around in our own minds... what we do screams so loudly that it often drowns out what we say.

It is said that integrity is doing the right thing even when no-one is looking. In our schools and our communities our students/children are looking so integrity becomes vital. We are teaching even when we don't think we are.

Consider the following:

• if we state that speaking kindly is important and then yell at a student or put them down 
• if we state that we need to sit quietly and listen to others, then talk to a parent/colleague at an assembly when the students get 'the hairy eyeball' for chatting
• if we state that when you do something wrong you need to apologise but refuse to admit when we make mistakes 
• if we state that it is important to reconcile differences maturely and then backstab our colleagues or glare at them in public 
• if we are teaching healthy habits and yet eat poorly 

... what are we teaching in those circumstances? 

• That the rules don't apply to us
• That when you are in a position of power the rules don't apply to you 
• That our students are powerless 
• That we are right and they are wrong 
• That you don't trust people in authority, they lie 

Of course this isn't the way it is with every teacher, or parent, grandparent, caregiver, coach. In fact I'd like to believe most of us value our role as role models. Our students/children need to know they can rely on us to stand by our words, so that when we tell them we care about them and that they are valued they will believe that too. 

Here are some small examples from my own experience and I'd love to hear your examples too as I find our stories are powerful motivators and reminders : 

Not so long ago I apologised to a student for telling her off publicly when she said something very unkind to another student. She was flummoxed and stated that she couldn't understand why I was apologising to her when she was the one who had done something wrong. I explained that I was apologising for my behaviour because how I reacted was wrong and then we were able to talk about her behaviour. 

I do this at home too, I know sometimes when I am tired I can snap or react rather than respond, when I do I apologise (not as often to my husband as I should!). My four year old is quite adept now at letting me know when I have hurt his feelings and he is right to call me on it. It is OK to be human, none of us have to be perfect.