\u201cWith nearly 35 million children across the country at risk for toxic stress, what if the person giving the biggest daily dose of healing treatment for toxic stress isn\u2019t a doctor or a therapist, but a teacher?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marcus Buckingham and Kathy Higgins (see article summary below)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SIW Follow up<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Great job to Lorin and our PBIS team for a really powerful SIW on Wednesday.\u00a0 I am really excited about this work because I feel like you are all very well poised to master this concept at a systems level.\u00a0 Many of the training opportunities in this area (Collaborative Problem Solving, CPS) tend to focus on the secondary population. While it\u2019s still important to see the value at this level, the need to practice and observe elementary models is more important to our everyday work.\u00a0 Because you do such a good job with the relationship-building with students you already employ these skills naturally in many situations. Not only can we use these techniques to have a stronger impact, we can model and teach these skills to our students. We are teaching empathy with our practice.\u00a0 We are teaching problem-solving at the highest cognitive level with our everyday actions. Most importantly we are living up to the mantra of reaching every student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to also make it clear you are not doing anything wrong by using Plan A or Plan C.\u00a0 These are necessary courses of action for many circumstances. The value in Plan B comes in for the long-term impact on learning the desired skills and behaviors and the preservation\/strengthening of the relationship, however it\u2019s not reasonable to expect to use Plan B every time.\u00a0 The biggest barrier to consistently using Plan B is time. When time makes you use Plan A or Plan C, do not let yourself feel bad about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another tricky part of this conversation has to do with consequences. This is a really challenging piece for me. We have a lot of work to do as a society to adjust our paradigm for behavior and consequences. Traditional approaches do not work and they are especially ineffective with the students who are most at risk. The reason they don\u2019t work is that the word consequence is really just a disguise for punishment. The other reason they don\u2019t work is that the need for imposing a consequence comes more from the power struggle between the adult and the kid, rather than a desire to teach. It\u2019s really difficult to admit this fault in ourselves, but we\u2019ve been conditioned for decades to normalize this approach so it is understandable that we feel this way. It will take work individually and collectively to shift mindsets, but I think we can agree that the work is worth it. I also want to be clear that I am also working on this as much as any of you. I grew up with the same conditioning as you, so this presents the same challenges to me as it does to you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The last point I want to make on this topic; keep perspective.\u00a0 We have the tendency to let the few negative behaviors dominate the airspace.\u00a0 Too much focus on these few behaviors can easily become toxic and interfere with your ability to self-care.\u00a0 The reality, based on numbers is a very different story. The number of students who demonstrate independence, healthy emotional regulation, and incredible kindness far exceeds the few who are not there yet.\u00a0 Let\u2019s make this dominate the perspective as it should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Linked below is TED talk by Stuart Albon. It\u2019s a longer version of the one shared on Wednesday. It\u2019s well worth the 20 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n