Teaching and learning with the heart and brain in mind from a distance

Teaching and learning with the heart and brain in mind from a distance has it's challenges, especially in the circumstances we find ourselves in currently with our global pandemic. I'm taking some time today to put down some thoughts that I hope offer some support as we navigate uncharted territory for many of us. 

Despite all the shifts and changes we are seeing around us one thing hasn't changed, I still believe the heart of teaching is all about relationships. Perhaps more than ever we need to be connected with our learners and their needs. We need to be aware. 

One way to help us connect with our learners is to consider the magic brain. This is the work of Glenn Capelli and is a great construct to help us understand the brain and consider behaviour and learning from a place of empathy. 


I could talk a lot about the magic brain (and you can read more about it in other posts, see here and here) but for now I'd like to focus on what we may see between the thinking room and the other rooms in the current climate. To learn and manage big emotions we need to be in our thinking room. When we are under stress we can drop to the lower rooms of our brain where it is harder to respond intelligently to what is happening around us, we can become highly emotional; flighty, feisty, or withdrawn. Families may find this situation stressful and find the pressure of 'school at home,' or as we are saying 'bubble school', difficult to deal with. One strategy I have taught all my students and their families is the Stop, Breathe, Think then Do strategy. It is simple and all based around opening the doors of the magic brain so we can think more clearly.

Getting our brain ready to think and learn is a useful place to start, not only for our children, it's great for us as well. I like to keep in mind that happy healthy teachers tend to have happier healthier learners who tend to do better socially, emotionally and academically. So making sure you are doing what you can to support your own health and wellbeing (and if it feels hard, just start small) is worth the effort... if you can't do it for yourself, remember what a great difference it can make for your learners. 

Teaching and learning will be different to what we are used to if we normally teach in face to face classrooms. The changes we are faced with could be daunting or exciting. They can be considered challenges to overcome or opportunities to stretch and grow. I have no doubt that there will be times that it gets hard, but it won't all or always be hard. I acknowledge that there may be times when we feel angry, stressed, overwhelmed; I hope there are also times when we feel energised, excited and positive. As you have no doubt heard before we cannot choose our circumstances but we can choose where we focus our energy. 

One of the greatest drains on energy I find is complaining, when I complain without actively engaging in solution finding the gloom seems to settle over me like a heavy grey blanket and it sucks the joy from any situation I find myself in. It's OK to have these low times, it is said we cannot have life's joys without it's sorrows, but we don't want them to cloud over everything for too long. When I find myself in the gloom I try to refocus my energy on something positive, I also work through Stop, Breathe, Think and Do. I offer myself some self care- choosing healthy options even if I'd rather eat a whole block of chocolate (by the way I'm not bagging chocolate... it can be great, especially if you really savour the pleasure of eating it). 


One way to exercise self care, and care for others, is to remember that the situation we are in right now is new for everyone in some way, shape or form. The word unprecedented is used often to describe this situation, and it is. Please be gentle and kind, with yourself and others. Pace yourself, breathe, ask for help, talk about your feelings, just take one step at a time. As we plan the tasks for our learners keep KISS in mind: Keep It Simple & Slow.  

Coming back to our magic brain, as we are planning for what we are doing for our children who are learning from home or in physically distanced environments at school we can look at what each room of the brain needs. 

Connection and belonging: 

This helps to create a sense of security for learners, that they are in a safe place with people who care about them. This helps to open the door of the red room. 

• What classroom traditions can you continue? Small things can give a sense of continuity and confidence to our learners. 
• How are you going to communicate with your learners? This might be a great opportunity to get comfortable on camera. 
• What personal touches can you add to help connect and engage with your learners? Perhaps you share a link to something one of them are passionate about, maybe you find areas of similarity and celebrate it. 
• Can you inject some fun or laughter into your connection? Try a silly outfit or tell some jokes. Share something funny from your life or experiences lately. Try to offer some lightness.

Structure: 

Structure helps tame insecurity that comes from uncertainty, and uncertainty tends to make us emotionally vulnerable. I tend to have a looser structure but we have little routines and traditions to be supportive- for our learners and their families as well as ourselves. This will help open our emotional glitter room door. 

• Can you offer some predictability into your work with your learners? Perhaps post a regular morning message each school day. Let your learners and families know when to expect posts or communications from you. You might use a consistent format for communications. 
• What is your feedback going to look like? Consider how often you will respond to the work your learners share, again a sense of predictability and relationship is part of this. 
• How will you communicate with and support your learner's families over this time? You might consider a regular schedule for messages. It may be worth finding what format works best for the families you are working with, some may be limited with access to devices etc, some may need more communication from you and others less. 

Challenge: 

The brain loves challenge, and if we are in our big blue thinking room we need it, it loves to stretch and so when we are planning consider how we can give learning opportunities that offer that. 

• How will you engage thinking in the learning tasks you offer? Think about asking big, hairy questions. Choose topics that you think will appeal to your learners. By all means offer a variety of tasks so that your learners and their families can choose low stress options but think about how you can engage thinking. 
• Can you provide learning tasks that engage thinking for everyone? Individualised tasks might be a tall order especially when teaching from a distance so perhaps we are better to set open-ended tasks. Think about the low-floor/high-ceiling approach that Jo Boaler advocates. 

Right now, for most of us, we are in a unique situation. This is new. My hope is that through this time we might discover new skills, appreciate ourselves better, and build stronger relationships with some of our learners and their families. 

Take care of yourselves and know that the work you are doing is really appreciated by so many. 

Ten Cs for teachers to stay well while staying at home for work :) Part 3

And to finish this blog series of 10 Cs to stay well while staying at home for work. The focus this time is on our mindset. 

Challenge:

At the moment we have been presented with an opportunity for us to learn new things and to do things differently, we may not have chosen the circumstances but we can choose to embrace the opportunity to stretch our brains. Our brain does love to be challenged- this will come from taking risks and making mistakes while we learn, just like we ask our learners to do in our classrooms every day!

We might have the challenge of creating a work space in our homes, as a wee tip I am fond of using my ironing board at times as a substitute desk 😊 (it doesn’t get used for much else very often to be honest!) We might have the challenge of how we work with our own children needing us as well, I’ve been getting my boy to join in on the challenges I set my class and occasionally film him doing things to share with the class, he also sometimes joins in on my songs or listens to me read the novel I am for my class. We have the challenge of what to do for our classes, how much work to set and how to meet all the diverse needs in varying circumstances. My suggestion is to start off by keeping it simple and going slow, we are all new to this.

Contribute: 

We all offer value and I encourage you to share your gems with others, and there are so many ways you can! You don’t have to learn all the new things, share the load by sharing the wisdom with your colleagues. Even when we work from home we have the capacity to collaborate, there are tools we can use to help us do this more easily and we might even come up with ways to work together effectively that we can use after all this is over!

Also consider the unique skills and talents that you have and how you can use these to connect and engage with your learners- you might record yourself singing favourite songs to share with your class, you might write poems or stories for your class about things that you know will appeal to them, you might create art or do cartoons, you might be great at sewing or crafts and you can share examples of what you are making… the only limit is your imagination.

Change:

Let’s be honest teaching shifts and changes all the time so teachers are not strangers to change! Change by its very nature can cause uncertainty and be distressing. It can also lead to excitement, energy, and growth.

We are in a privileged position to support our learners to navigate this very different learning environment by being champions of change. We can show them how to embrace change, how to be calm and connected when faced with uncertainty.

Working from home is a change for many of us, it has a range of benefits as well as challenges, as with any changing circumstance.  What are you going to focus on?  

Choice: 

In every moment we have the power to choose, I know it is a bit of a cliché but I’ll say it here again because it is a useful mindset to adopt, we cannot choose our circumstances but we can choose our attitudes.

We can choose to see all the problems we are faced with in the coming weeks; we might be feeling overwhelmed or stressed, which are perfectly normal emotions especially now, but if we feed this negative energy then all that we do will be coloured by this negativity, instead of rose tinted glasses we'll be wearing grey, gloomy lenses instead. We can choose to see the opportunities that come from setbacks; the opportunities to create something new, the opportunities to learn new things, the opportunities to give positive energy at a time when many people may be struggling, the opportunity to continue doing our important work.

A shift in perspective doesn’t mean denying our feelings, it means giving ourselves time to feel our feelings and then making choice about how long we are going to give any particular feeling the floor. If watching news or social media feeds fuels our anxiety then choose to switch off. If you are feeling uncertain (and who isn’t at the moment) choose to focus on what you can control, even just one little thing. 

Working from home can be seen as a burden or a privilege. We haven't chosen it but we can choose to make the best of the circumstances. 

1. Focus on creating a healthy internal environment for your work- create calm, act with caution around negative habits, and make sure you make time to chill out. 
2. Focus on your work- remember your can-do-ness (you've got this!), let yourself get creative and connect with others regularly. 
3. Focus on your mindset- face challenges with a sense of optimism, contribute and collaborate, be a champion of change and always remember the power of your choice. 

Take care out there everyone. 

Ten C’s for Teachers to stay well while staying at home for work 😊 Part 2

Continuing with our 10 C’s... 

Can-do-ness

This is about self-belief and self-efficacy; you are a competent teacher and this situation doesn’t change that. Teaching is likely going to be quite different, and there will certainly be challenges, but the heart of what you do hasn’t changed… you are still building and maintaining relationships.

Remember, you’ve got this!  

It helps to spend some time thinking about what your strengths are and how you can use those strengths in different ways. For the areas that you are uncomfortable with, this is a time to ask for help, there are a number of people out there ready and willing to help us.

Create

There is a myth out there that only some people are ‘creative’, and the rest of us just aren’t. Creativity isn’t just about being able to make masterpieces, it is something that is an innately human endeavour. We are creative when we play with ideas, when we whip up a meal, when we put together an outfit, when we plant a garden, when we make art, when we tell stories, when we plan a lesson… you get the idea. Even a small amount of creativity where we take risks and embrace our mistakes can be great for our brain and sense of self.

We have been given an opportunity to have time to really get creative in our work and play which could be a little bit exciting. It doesn’t have to be straight away, you might not be ready yet, but the opportunity is there. Perhaps start small and work your way up.  

Connect

This is huge. Connection with others is a physiological need; we can’t survive, let alone thrive, without other people from the time we are born. Consider how you are connecting with colleagues, students, your friends and family. As many are saying at the moment we may be physically isolated but we don’t have to be socially isolated.

Relationships are key for us in teaching, always have been, always will be.  How we relate to our learners is important- our communication channels might be different now but the need to form and maintain connection remains the same. One of the differences is that our communications may be more open, with more engagement with the family of our students and more personal as we are visiting each other’s homes (albeit virtually). This could be hugely positive in creating stronger links between families, learners and their teachers. 

This is a big question for us to consider and keep in mind as we plan ahead. What do we really want for the learners in our care? 

Ten C’s for Teachers to stay well while staying at home for work: Part 1

A while back I was what they called a tele-worker- I worked from home for part of the time and travelled for the rest. It was a great lifestyle and I really enjoyed working from home. Fast forward a few years and I have studied and learned a bit about teacher wellbeing as well as returning to full time classroom teaching. 
Now we are faced with a time of uncertainty where many of us will be working from home for a portion of time, how long we aren't really sure yet. I know that for some of us this will be new and that can be unsettling. So I have gathered some thoughts from my learning over the years here, I hope it is helpful.

Calm:

Calm really is a superpower especially when working from home. There will be frustrations at times and the capacity for overwhelm is huge too. I am noticing at the moment there is so much information and so many companies sharing their products and services that it’s easy to become overwhelmed by it all.

Take a breath and, if you can, focus on one thing at a time. Ask yourself “what is the most important thing for me to do right now?”. The answer may simply to focus on your breathing for a while and that’s OK… big, juicy, deep breaths are great for your body and mind.

Caution:

Here are three red lights I found for when you are in the work zone at home:

• ·       Sitting too much- it is easy, especially when using devices for communication, to sit for too long which isn’t great for us in the long term. One way to make sure you don’t sit too long is to set an alarm to get up and move every 20-30 minutes.
• ·       Bored eating- when you have a kitchen near your workspace, and I know some of us might even be working in our kitchens, it is easy to reach for a chocolate biscuit because we are bored. There’s nothing wrong with the odd chocolate biscuit but high energy/low nutrient foods are not an ideal regular food. Try to have a little snack bowl of fruit and nuts readily available and remember to drink water regularly.
• ·       Distractions can be everywhere… especially if you are looking for them!- The flexibility of working from home is fantastic, you can make more choices about when and where you do the work, I love that. But it is easy to be distracted by TV, other people, housework, other projects and so much more. Remember that the brain cannot focus on two things at the same time, so if we are multitasking we are actually rapidly switching focus which can be taxing on our energy. You can get through more, faster if you focus on one thing at a time.

Chill out:

One of the other pitfalls from working from home is that you can be working all the time, it can be hard to switch off but switching off is really important. It might be that you only do work in one particular spot in your house so that when you are away from there you are not working. Or you could log out of work apps or switch off devices at a certain time. Or maybe you schedule your day so there is specific work time and specific down time. Whatever works for you, but please make sure you switch off, it’ll make you more productive and a happier human being 😊

Also, as educators we are in a giving profession and for many of us giving is easy. In order to be able to keep giving however we need to carve out a little time for ourselves. It might be that we create a calm soothing space to chill out. It might be that we do some reading, a hobby, something physical, meditation… you get the picture. This is not selfish, this is refuelling so you can keep doing what you do best!

I'll follow up with some more around our work life at home.