Thursday, December 2, 2021

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/03/2021

  • tags: SEL anxiety stress

    • Anxiety severely limits –and often blocks– all logical and rational problem-solving regions of the brain. So, don’t expect to talk someone out of anxiety or rationalize with them. When students don’t respond to verbal coaching, they aren’t being difficult or defiant. The biology of their brain simply makes it impossible for them to think with reason.

       

      To help a student break out of an anxiety spell, get them moving! Aerobic activity is the fastest, most effective way to break the virtuous cycle of anxiety.

       

      Next, get them talking about the problem. Have them describe what the problem is, why it is bothering them, and how they feel about it using a feeling wheel. To get our SOAR® Feelings Wheel, sign up for our “How Do I Feel?” Curriculum Kit in the blue box on the right of this page.

       

      This process does many things, it: draws the problem up to higher regions of the brain, minimizes the sense of “threat,” gives students a great sense of empowerment over the situation, and helps them better identify potential solutions.

       

      Finally, build their skills. Build their skills for managing the anxiety and skills for managing the situation that triggered the anxiety. To learn more about skills for overcoming stress and anxiety, check out the SOAR Social-Emotional Learning Curriculum.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 10/08/2021

    • Research about child trauma shows how important it is that children are in caring relationships with stable and supportive adults. In order to be ready for those relationships, that means in schools: "the adults need to feel cared for, connected and grounded in order to have the capacity to show up for kids,” said Venet.
    • In order to check in and make sure that educators feel that they can do all they need to do within the hours of the work week, she advises that school leaders provide space for teachers to ask questions, ideate and reflect with their principal or school counselor. “We have a cultural expectation that people aren’t working after hours.
    • Another way to support teachers’ working conditions and workload is “tap in, tap out,” a self care strategy from Fall-Hamilton Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee. In this technique, educators form a text message group to contact whoever is available to temporarily fill in for them whenever they need to take a moment to step out and regroup during class.

       

    • “Too often, teachers perceive trauma as something that comes from ‘outside of school,’” said Venet. “Much of the research and writing on trauma frames it as resulting from factors schools cannot control.” When effectively applied, trauma-informed education means critically examining how oppression at schools causes trauma in students. Oppression can happen outside of schools as well as within schools, caused by peers in bullying situations, individual teachers and curriculum. 

       

    • making sure students know what is available to them when they are struggling whether it’s having flyers on the wall, information on the school websites, or informed teachers that can point them in the right direction.
    • High achievers affected by trauma are especially at risk for being overlooked, and adults often misinterpret their coping for resilience. 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 05/30/2021

    • To be sure, we benefit from a multilingual, multinational school community and from bilingual, French, and International Baccalaureate programs. But we believe any motivated school can offer an internationally minded education. At French American, we call it cross-cultural cognition — the ability to think, feel, and act across cultures.
    • We aim for students to understand and appreciate identity as a rich mix of national, regional, cultural, ethnic, religious, gender, orientation, socioeconomic, and other factors. This keeps the focus on what we have in common so we don’t become ensnared by differences, stereotypes, and simplifications that incite conflict at home and abroad.
    • Languages are loaded with culture, attitudes, tradition, history, etiquette, and more. To learn another language is to gain an alternate perspective, increase empathy, and become open to cultural cues.
    • We also honor our students’ home languages. If we are educating global citizens, we are affirming the value of each child’s identity, including his or her language.
    • Rather than pushing international faculty members and students to assimilate into our school culture, we encourage them to share their cultures with us. We believe having an educator or fellow student share his or her personal cultural background significantly enriches all students’ experiences.
    • Middle schoolers in our Arabic and Mandarin language classes do not just learn the language; they are exposed to our educators’ cultures, thereby developing an understanding of different countries’ lifestyles, customs, and attributes.
    • At French American, we define cross-cultural cognition as the ability to grapple with challenging and abstract concepts from science and math to humanities, social science, and arts in more than one culture.
    • In pedagogy, this can mean highlighting the different ways that cultures approach the academic disciplines — and even learning itself.
    • We have seen how an international school approach to identity, language, community, curriculum, travel, and sustainability can shape the character of our students for the benefit of our communities — in this country and across the world.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.