The neuroscience of self care

Putting yourself first-why you need to

Put yourself first-being calm
Keep yourself calm

Stress response
Red brain-lower brain
Upper brain cortex

Sandpaper brain concept-
acknowledging and setting yourself back

Reactive-------------------------Rational  Empathic/logical---creative brain  

Sandpaper-build resilience-let yourself reset (recognising this and responds to it)
Moments of red brain moments (red brain-friendly staff room)
We cannot sustain having green brain all the time.

Reset really early

Give yourself a break -it deosnt take much to be sandpapred

Stress response
Stressor-assess the situation-activates the stress response (fight/flight response) -irrational
Keeping ourselves alive at red brain
Some of the children live in that space all the time
Teachers need to stay at the green brain
Takes a long time to calm down once the stressor is activated

How do we calm the children down?
Children become highper vigilant
Fight/flight response dry mouth, breathing changes, sight and hearing sharpen, stomach purges heart beats faster, blood increase in large muscle of arms legs

Checking in-resetting

Perfect practice makes perfect

1 Identify what calms you down (walk, run, yoga)
2 Do that until you create a physical calm state in your body
3 Condition this moment
4 Practice practice practice

Breathing: Deep breathing
Pulling the rope down -activate our lungs- Teach our children to take a deep breath

Wellbeing for teachers

Wellness
Relational teaching-emotional investment

"flow" Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Efficient-unstoppable-

Questions
Top 3-5 outside work activities you enjoy?
Is there an activity which you have left behind due to work?
What activities outside work and parenting define you?

Growth Mindset
S=strong
I=intelligent
C=creative

Strong: a part of wellbeing to engage our body -move for 30 min minimum
Intelligent: Creating a state of constant, inquiry, curiosity, learning (books, classes, Self authoring, language) Life long learners
Creative: cooking, music, drawing, painting...

Athletes/Artists achieve a flow state- faster and easier than others

Sense of balance
Try to tick 3 boxes when not at work
Create a behavioural pattern-bring your identity back

Impact of Early Trauma

Impact of Early Trauma by Kathryn Berkett

Change how our children are processing the world
Working with the children to help the brain change

insults into the brain-can influence their life

the first 1000 days from the conception are really important
Neuro sequential

The importance of a solid foundation- if the foundation is not solid, keeps wobbling.

Singing
Touch
Rock
Covering with a blanket

Children tend to reenact these experiences -repetitive rhythmic routines

Brain bottom to top to develop
Red brain
Green brain

Survival brain-develop for the first 2 years-learn to operate speech, eating (Am I safe?) -Attachment theory-someone cares about me, trust/mistrust
Constant chaos-telling the brain-not feeling safe (feeding, eating, touch)
Touch -essential developmental part
If not feeling safe, they develop the survival brain
Slight change of the facial expressions can be determined as a fight situation for children who were neglected
Limited in emotional abilities
They wont go to the next developmental stage
Emotional brain 



Managing brain (empathy, planning, organising) 


Early trauma can influence the children's life

The importance of the environment
86 billion cells no alcohol/drugs/cortisol (stress)  the body can protect cortisol in our body
Connections are made by experiences
Has the child learnt the language of respect/turn taking/?
By repeating the experiences, connections are made.
Myelination-become wider so it is easy to go across
Check your template (what you are taught in the environment) how they feel about themselves. if they repeat this idea-it becomes their known knowledge.
Stop and reflecting about what you are doing.
For the 1000 days- learning the templates.
We can always build new templates. It would not build if there are no experiences.

Keeping the child/yourself safe.
Teach a new template-practice numerous time to activate


How often do they go into the survival brain, and how long?
Every moment the child is calm, the longer the capacity to learn. Activating the calm

Conference Day: Special needs in literacy

Non-dyslexic person- right side brain is smaller than the left brain
Dyslexic person- leaders -neurons have to travel from left to right

2 different -surface:written dislexia, Phonological dislexia

Struggling readers/writers: Struggle with storing information as long term memory

Dog-4-10 more times written to remember, Dyslexia 500-1300 times to remember
They havent seen the word enough

STEP web was invented these words can be presented to children over and over in different ways.

Beginning of reading-oral language (child coming in at 2 and a half-year-old).  Teaching children how to talk. Not knowing labels.

2 years behind- very hard to catch up to where they need to be.

Teaching alphabet: sounds of the alphabets
Structured language way
MSL
Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic

Getting children to read back of what it is written

4 unvoice sounds k, p, t,
Pure sounds m,
q with u 

Ground/grass/sky
encoding
CVC -Zap finger spelling isolating sounds everything we write, we say them back

Memory implications 
Constant repetition-multi sensory
Sounds-very crucial -hear sounds and associate those sounds to word patterns
Listening, responding, manipulating

1 in 7 people have a learning difference -learning differently
80%=2.5 years
sequential memory-remembering numbers

Visual support implemented

To support a child with limited language, I have been using visuals and New Zealand Sign Language to support the child ways to communicate his needs/feelings.

The time schedule helps M understand what will happen that day and what is coming next. The running card is used when he starts feeling full of excitements and when he is not able to deal with those feelings. When this happens, he is jumping, running, not able to regulate his feelings. He puts the lanyard on and goes for a run around the school. Sitting on a bean bag at mat time works amazingly as possibly this hugs him in and he feels content. 

M knows some basic signs and he communicates using these signs. He is really interested in signing the alphabet and really enjoys this time. He signed 'same' and 'fish' in the same sentence the other day which really surprised me. 

Using these visuals and New Zealand Sign Language gave ways for M to be able to communicate his needs/wants/feelings. He is less frustrated and is able to regulate more often than when he started school. He is developing the routines of the day because of the time schedule. More importantly, he is developing friendships which enables him to stay in the classroom for play. 

Play-based research project: reflection 1

For the first phase of the research we would like to do the following:

• Teacher researchers (that is your team) write a reflection about the following:

What was your reasoning for starting Play-based teaching and learning in your classroom?

When I joined the Kōwhai team in May, 2017, I started working with Rhonda in the same classroom co-teaching. A play-based learning environment was already established then, and there was a lot of discussions about how we develop and support children’s play in the classroom. The reasons for having play-based teaching and learning was that there are so many learning opportunities for children. It is really important for me that children develop their own passions and be able to self-direct their own play which also leads to goal settings. Through play, children also develop learning dispositions such as curiosity, persistence, and risk-taking etc. I believe these dispositions become significant parts of academic learning.

Where did you get your knowledge about Play-based teaching and learning from?

From working at an early childhood centre for over 10 years. In the centre, we had free play philosophy, working with Te Whaariki curriculum, emergent curriculum and we supported children’s interests with dispositional learning. Learning stories were hugely important for us, whaanau and children.

What issues/challenges have you faced when implementing this at your school?

I guess the huge difference from the early childhood setting and the classroom setting is that there is only one teacher in a classroom whereas you would be working with a group of teachers in the ECE settings. When I am having a group of children doing reading, and other children are playing, I do take notice of their play and their interests but how I support their play or next step to challenge in their play has been quite difficult in a classroom setting.

Also, understanding of play for school teachers can be very different. For some teachers, playing maths/literacy games can be seen as play. For me, play is authentic, comes from children. I think there is a huge trust between the teachers and children when we let our children play and this can be a struggle for some teachers who like to control what the children can ‘play’ with.

Play through the school-What does play look like in the new entrant classes and Year 3 or 6 classes? I think we don’t really have a seamless transition in terms of our play philosophy and people see it as a new entrant thing?

What difference do you think Play-based teaching and learning has for children’s learning and transitions?

It makes a huge difference in transition between early childhood settings to our new entrant classes because the environment looks similar to where they came from and this is really important for me. The children who were in a centre setting know that they are able to choose what they want to play with, their voices are heard, and self-directed play is celebrated.

I also do think it makes a huge difference for the parents knowing that they are coming to a place that is similar to an early childhood setting.

Play-based teaching and learning provides opportunities for the teachers to really get to know our children and develop meaningful relationships with the children and their whaanau. Because the play is driven by the children, things that they are interested in, the stories they share from their interests are very important to us, and if we were the classroom with no play, I wonder if I would know about the children and their whaanau as much as I know about them now…

Supporting a child with needs

Reflection