Back to school for a few hours today. It is such a different place without students there to bring the halls alive! None the less it feels like a good place. With no one present at school today, it made me think about a book I'm reading right now that I picked up at Teachers' Convention called Everybody present: Mindfulness in education. by Nikolaj Flor Rotne and Dedde Flor Rotne. I've become increasingly aware in my own practice of the need to co-regulate with kids and pre-requisitely the need to self regulate in order to be completely present with and for students. In some of the most tense situations that have arisen over the past few months I've often found myself without answers to some tough questions. How do I stop this behavior that is happening now? How do I respond to the anger this staff member is showing towards me? How do I transition us back to learning?Sometimes not having the answer is better than having what turns out to be the wrong answer. I was given some very good advice at one time and it was to "hold the space". I've come to realize that sometime the intervention is not to intervene. That the better answer might be resolving to be present without expectations of the situation being anything other than it is right now. In many potentially volatile circumstances in recent months being able to allow myself not to push forward with a preconceived agenda may have allowed me to be open to an opening or better still allow the student to find the opening for himself. What I have had to try to keep myself focused on is recognizing and supporting the child to come through the opening when they find it. It takes time. A lot of time. It takes repeating. Many many times repeating the same patterned behavior, the same trusted response. It's easy to think of this as wasted time and get anxious about the amount of work there is to do in a day. The truth is that this is the work. During TCI training (Therapeutic Crisis Intervention) a few months ago our group explored techniques and philosophies for supporting students in crisis. John, our instructor repeatedly came back to the same mantra. These are the kids that need us most and these kids simply take more. More effort, more time, more patience, planning, resources, communication, consideration... MORE LOVE.
Here are some quotes from the book that I like... so far:
- "...peace within ourselves is a precondition for peace in the world."
- "Once we've engaged in battle, we all have the tendency to keep fighting because we think there's something that needs to be won."
- "It requires the courage to be silent and sensitive to what's going on in ourselves, in others and the space in between."
- "When we're overworked and over committed, it is difficult to be fully present for the children. That feeling of "lacking something" leads to dissatisfaction, mistakes and nagging. But even when we feel pressured, we can still learn to offer our presence, and that way improve the outcomes for our students."
More on this book later...
Thanks for reading.
L
