ep-60-strategies-of-calm2.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.
Hey, everyone! Welcome back to another episode of The Classroom Commute Podcast. Today is an extra special ride to school because for the first time on the podcast, I have brought a friend to our carpool. Today I have with me Victoria from The Mindful Apple. Victoria is a school social worker and she is passionate about social/emotional learning. As we talk today, you are going to learn about the start of her journey to where she is today, working with elementary kids. She has a lot to share about something that is a growing need in her classroom and that is mastering strategies of calm. I love her simple approach to teaching calming strategies to students. It's really made simple and tangible for students in the way that she's going to teach it to us. It's something that you can apply in your classroom right away. I love that what Victoria has to share today is not just for social workers, she's going to make it super simple and applicable to us as teachers to pass these important strategies onto our students. Be sure to stick around to the end of this episode because Victoria is going to share with us a freebie that she's made exclusively for us. It's a freebie that's going to help you take action in the classroom with strategies that she will be teaching today. I won't make you wait any longer. Let's invite Victoria to the show.
Rachael: Hey, Victoria, thanks so much for joining us today.
Victoria: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Rachael: I'm really excited that you're on the podcast today. This is a really great time for you to come on because we are dealing not just with the difference in education when it comes to how we teach virtually or hybrid, whatever it is that everybody is doing these days. We have so many other needs that have surfaced in the classroom this school year. The topics that we're going to talk about are supercritical and needed for our classroom today. Before we dive into all of that, why don't you just share a little bit about yourself?
Victoria: As Rachael mentioned, I'm a school social worker. I have my master's degree in social work and a bachelor's degree in psychology. I also hold a professional licensure in social work as well as permanent certification in school social work. I have worked as a medical social worker at the University of Rochester Medical Center. When I was there, I was a social worker for the heart transplant program. I also worked for many years in pediatric palliative care, working with children and their families, navigating life after the diagnosis of a life threatening illness. As you can imagine, that was a super taxing job. Then four years ago, I entered into the fun, challenging world of education and became my favorite job yet, a school social worker. I love it and I recently took the leap to learn, develop more, share resources, and The Mindful Apple was born.
Rachael: Yeah, I'm so glad that you did, because you've got a lot of great stuff to share. What made you switch from the medical field to the educational field?
Victoria: Sometimes I think that we have different career paths for different seasons in our life. I'm sure some of you have felt that too. It felt that my time in medical social work was coming to an end for lots of different reasons. Working with really sick children was very taxing and I was ready for a change. As a professional, I love to constantly be learning and growing. I was ready for the challenge of working in education.
Rachael: We kind of both took the long way around. You went through your different seasons of working in different settings, but still doing what you love to do, which is helping people. I did the same thing too, as far as I was in the classroom for several years and now I'm doing what I'm doing so we both took the long way around. What age group do you mostly work with then?
Victoria: I currently work in an elementary school that teaches grades K-3. My job is super flexible, which I really, really love. I like that every day is very different. My role is very diverse, I do a lot of different things from pushing into a classroom to help a teacher with a social emotional lesson. I also get called into question for behavioral support or crisis intervention. I pull students out for counseling sessions, whether it be whole group, small group, or individual. The role is just different every day and I really love that.
Rachael: Yeah, it sounds like you're in a lot of places, doing a lot of different things, which I'm sure makes it exciting every day. You never know what you're going to land into since you're doing so many different things and you're seeing so many things with different classrooms that you're in. What are some of the trends that you're starting to notice?
Victoria: Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, the trends and the things that I'm noticing became the jumping point for my curriculum. The main themes that I'm seeing on the daily are worry, anxiety, and students just really needing tools to learn how to find their calm and have some emotional regulation. I see so many students who aren't equipped with those internal strategies to manage their emotions. Specifically, I like to work with kids to try to calm their mind and calm their bodies so they can access their learning.
Rachael: Yeah, definitely. I can see how how you're seeing students who are, even in a regular year, not equipped to dealing with their emotions. It's taken to a whole other level this year with everything else that's been going on for sure.
Victoria: I mean, we're feeling it in the schools, we are feeling it in the homes and in our communities. Our students are certainly feeling it, too. I have a cute little example to share. I have this little kindergartner, his name is Max, and he really struggled in preschool last year, and he really, really struggled with the transition of coming in as a new kindergartener, especially because school just looks and feels really different this year. We have worked together a lot to identify his feelings, to validate his feelings, name what he's feeling, and be able to understand it. We've been a really successful counseling match, I guess you could say, in that I've been able to help him work through a lot of these feelings and then identify and implement strategies. All that being said, the other day when I picked him up for counseling, he said, when we get to your office, I have to tell you something. We got into my office and he was recalling the first day of school. "Remember how I was scared to come in? Remember how I didn't like it?" And then he turned to me and said, "But not anymore, because I have you." I think in his words, he's saying, 'because you helped me'. He's realizing I taught him things to help him be successful.
Rachael: Wow. That's a really validating experience. Yeah. Kids often don't have those calming strategies like Max didn't when he first came to you so, you know, you had to illicitly teach those strategies to him. Look what happened, it was a success so that's certainly validating for you. I'm sure for him as well that he now has those tools to do what he needs to do to feel okay in his environment. You mentioned just a little bit, some of the strategies that you worked with, with Max. How do you start from the beginning when you want to explain calmness to students?
Victoria: Well, I recently fell in love with this strategy, an analogy of planting seeds of calm, which you'll hear me reference a lot today. I love the idea of teaching kids that they can plant something and nurture something that can grow from within them.
Rachael: Yeah, I like that. You're going to start simple, give them concrete examples so that students can understand the basics and then go from there. I love the plant analogy. That's something that, of course, all students can grab on to. They understand the idea of planting. I also like how with planting, just like putting something into the ground takes time and patience, that growing our calm also is going to take time and patience. That analogy is really easy for kids to understand.
Victoria: Exactly. You're right, just the representation of it is hopefully eliciting calming itself. I know when I first started The Mindful Apple, I asked one of my colleagues to take a look at some of the stuff. She was just looking at the images and said, even this makes you feel calm. I was like, great, that's what I'm going for.
Rachael: Perfect. Okay, so break this down for us. How do you do two things? How do you one, help students to recognize when their bodies are not calm? And then how do you go from there to teach them those strategies so that they can actually master the calm?
Victoria: Sure. Students need to be able to recognize what calm feels like and then also recognize what it doesn't feel like and be able to discern between those differences in their bodies. Once they can recognize the differences, they can start to be able to learn the tools and strategies for calm. How to introduce that is practice, exposure, practice right along with them. I start with a planting seeds of calm lesson that really breaks it down simple for students and teaches them deep breaths, mindful visualization and positive affirmations.
Rachael: Do you mind if I actually put you on the spot here a little bit? Will you walk us through a mini mindful visualization?
Victoria: Sure, I'd love to. I have a lot of practice of doing this. I just did this recently with my students. Here's an actual excerpt from the planting seeds of calm lesson. When I start this with a student, I encourage them to find a comfortable spot, close their eyes. You can't do that because you're driving but just imagine what I'm reading now and imagine a learner hearing this for the first time. "Picture you are sitting by a sunny lake. The weather is warm. You can feel the sunshine smiling down from the sky above. Your skin feels warm in the sun's glow. You hear birds chirping in the distance. A gentle breeze stirs through the air and calms your mind. The water of the lake is gentle, rolling over the rocks at the shore. You feel calm and relaxed as you breathe in the fresh lake air, you breathe out any worries. Breathe in calm, breathe out worry.
Rachael: Wow, you're like the live version of the calm app. Next up, Matthew McConaughey. That's really great. I love that. I, myself, as an adult sitting here, I could feel myself feeling calmer as you walked me through that little visualization so I'm sure that your students are able to do the same.
Victoria: Yeah, exactly. I'm hoping that I'm eliciting calm in them and they might not know like 'that felt calm', but they might recognize, 'Hey, my body felt relaxed or I like that'. We can talk about, well, how were you feeling during that? What were you imagining when you were picturing those things? My kids, my own personal children are also like, "Hey, can you read us one of those calm stories before bed?"
Rachael: That's cute. All right. You start with something like that, where you may not necessarily address it by name what calm is but you use that story as a way to set the stage of what calm feels like, even if they can't quite articulate it yet. That sets the stage. Where do you go from there then? Where do you take them after you do a little mindful visualization like that?
Victoria: Am I allowed to have a favorite if I created the resource? I think one of my favorites is actually the drawing activity where there's two different thought bubbles. One is a mind, the other is a worried mind. I encourage my students in each thought bubble to draw your mind in this one and then draw what your mind looks like when it's worried in this bubble. I have gotten the coolest answers from kids. A couple of my favorites was 'A worried mind is spaghetti and a calm mind is ice cream' or 'A worried mind is monsters and a calm mind is the beach'.
Rachael: That spaghetti and ice cream one, that's relatable. My relaxed mine is definitely eating ice cream.
Victoria: Another resource I regularly like to incorporate are calm stories. That's like a bigger version from what I read to you earlier. These are passages that really elicit the students five senses as they listen to a calm promoting story. I have pushed in and done this whole class with an entire third grade class. I also like to do it pretty regularly in individual counseling sessions.
Rachael: Can you clarify for us a little bit? You said it's a similar to the calm, mindful visualization that you did with us just a minute ago, but this is a little bit longer so kind of just distinguish the two.
Victoria: Sure. The mini visualization that I read you guys earlier was just like an introductory. When you're introducing your students to it for the first time, you don't want to jump into a full like two or three minutes story. You want to just pare it down and let them have a little bit of exposure to know this is what it is and this is what it feels like. The calm stories takes the tool and expands it fuller to really have the students immersed in the activity once you kind of know what to expect.
Rachael: Got it, I love that. You start small and then you get a little more involved, giving them some more things to focus on in the full stories. I like that. These are really bite sized activities that any teacher can do, I know you're a social worker, you're pushing in, but anybody can read these stories out loud to their students. If it were me, I feel like I would be doing it after lunch or a special because they usually come in a little crazy and they need to be re-grounded to continue on with the rest of the day. I also think that you don't have to necessarily plan these lessons out, in the sense of 'you've got on your curriculum for Monday at 9am to do a calm story', but rather if you are starting to notice your students spiral out of control and start to lose control, if you have these in your teacher toolbox, you can just pull it out and stop whatever it is that you're doing and do one of these calm stories to kind of bring everybody back down.
Victoria: Absolutely, I think it can be both. I think you can have them planned and then once you've gone through and exposed your class to them. Then, exactly, you can read your class and know, okay, it's time for a calm story.
Rachael: Nice. You definitely can do these, like you said, with you leading it or the classroom teacher can do it as well.
Victoria: Exactly. I have lots of other tools and tricks that I love to incorporate with planting seeds of calm. There's a little chart that I like to use with students called Tracking My Calm activity. This has them really tap into that social, emotional brain and think of specific examples and situations of when they felt calm and when they did not feel calm. Another favorite that I have is the calm coloring sheets, the posters, or the bookmarks. I love visuals to really reinforce that learning for sure.
Rachael: I think the visuals are key. I know for myself and the resources that I make. I love providing not just the intentional instruction, but then also those visuals that you can give students to refer to on their own and post them all over your classroom because you never know if a student is wandering away from your lesson. At least they'll be focusing their attention onto something that's meaningful if you have something like that in your classroom. That's a great constant reminder for them.
Victoria: Exactly. Those visuals, super important and as you mentioned earlier about social workers and teachers being able to use that, I wanted to just reinforce that, absolutely, as much as I want social workers, counselors and psych's to use these resources, I really want to empower you as teachers to readily use these tools as well. I created planting seeds of calm so it could be moved seamlessly from counseling session right into the classroom.
Rachael: That's perfect, yeah, it seems very manageable and easy to implement.
Victoria: I hope so. I really believe that in order for our students to be able to tackle the academics, to access their learning, they have to first be regulated, right? Because social, emotional learning is just a foundation for all learning. We can't access something if we're not regulated.
Rachael: Absolutely, you can't teach kids in crisis mode. I know that firsthand, the places that I taught were working with a lot of kids in crisis mode. It doesn't do anybody any good to try to plow through the curriculum if there social and emotional needs are not met yet so I like that philosophy.
Victoria: Yeah, exactly. I can think of an analogy of a second grade student I had who was running and spinning around the classroom, she started getting physical with teachers. Are we really going to try to put a math sheet in front of that student? Obviously not. We have to calm her and regulate her first before she could access a math sheet.
Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. We know that students need these calming strategies. That's what we've been talking about all along here but if we are going to teach students to be calm, we need to be calm ourselves. Talk a little bit about how teachers can learn, use, and benefit from calming strategies themselves.
Victoria: I would love to, thanks for the segway because it's very important that we're also calm. We can't demand something from our students that we haven't done for ourselves yet. I think that that's another one of my passions, I love to encourage the learners, but I also love to encourage us as educators. Recently, I developed this little acronym that I shared on my blog called CALM, C-A-L-M. Collect. Activate. Learn. And Memorize.
Rachael: Okay, so walk us through that just a bit.
Victoria: Okay, so the C is Collect, that stands for collect strategies that work for you. Some of my personal favorite strategies are deep breathing, the visualization, body relaxation, positive self talk and meditation. The A stands for Activate. You want to activate those strategies you've identified that work for you. So in different situations, you're going to call and activate on different strategies. If I'm in a meeting, I'm not going to, turn on my calm app and go into like a full-blown meditation. In a meeting I might do my deep breaths or some positive self talk. The L is for Learn. You want to learn yourself, you have to know what works for you and what doesn't. This may be trying some things that you've heard and realizing, okay, that's not for me. Some of my strategies that I mentioned today, you might be, "Yes, I love that" and just know that what works for me or works for others might be different for what works for you. Last is the M, Memorize. The more you practice, the more your body will memorize and the quicker your body will start to go there more easily. Seriously, what you practice, grows stronger and you'll hear me say this a lot. It's my favorite little one liner. I probably say it at least once a day to coworkers or students.
Rachael: Perfect. We've got Collect, Activate, Learn, and Memorize. I think that's a simple but also a powerful reminder of what we need to do to make sure that we as teachers are calm so that we can encourage our students to be calm as well.
Rachael: Okay, now, before we go, let's have a little fun. Teachers, if you've already stopped and got your coffee this morning on your ride into school, make sure you put that coffee in your cup holder, because we're going to do a 60 second speed lap into the school parking lot. Victoria, you're the first one to do this since you're my first interview on the podcast.
Victoria: Ok, I'm ready! Sounds fun.
Rachael: Okay, I've got some rapid fire questions for you and you're going to answer them as quickly as you can, okay?
Victoria: Yeah.
Rachael: All right, here we go.
Rachael/Victoria: Married? Yes. Kids? 2. Pets? Dog. Calmest when? Out in nature or in Adirondacks. Favorite color? Green. Coffee or tea? Coffee. Summer or winter? Summer. Last book you read? The Winemaker's Wife. Oh, I don't know that one. Farthest you've ever traveled? Australia. Goal for 2021? Read forty books, inspire educators, be a great mom. Oh, good job. Worst school lunch? Chicken smackers, I don't even know what they are but they come with smile fries so those are tempting. Funniest thing you've caught yourself saying to a student? To a remote student, "Please don't put me in the cupboard and shut the door". Your favorite grade when you were in school? I actually really liked high school. Wow, you and nobody else, it was not kind to me. If you were a teacher, you would teach this grade? Kindergarten, all the way. Best school style that you rocked? Okay, so hopefully you guys all still have your seatbelts on because buckle up for this one. Permed hair, including permed bangs, laser background and shoulder pads, all in one school picture. I totally get the laser background too but what grade was that? I think it was third grade. Okay, I think I had it right around second or third. I think we all did. Oh, my gosh. Hilarious. Teachers in your family? Yes, many teachers in my family and surprise, including you listeners, we're related. Victoria is my sister in law. Most used emoji in your teacher group? It's probably a toss up between palm to face or the thumbs up. Yeah. Kid quote that made your day? I imagine everyone feels best when they're with you. Awww, a kid actually say that to you? And it was during an observation, which was amazing. That is perfect, queue the child. Give us a catchy one liner? What you practice grows stronger. Thanks. That was fun.
Rachael: This has been super helpful, I think it's kind of brought back to the forefront what we need to be focusing on with our students, not just the academics, but also making sure that their minds, their bodies, and their hearts are in the right place for learning. Like we've mentioned before, you can't teach students in crisis mode so we need to be, not just relying on our social workers to pull students out or come into our classrooms, but we need to be also setting the stage as teachers as well with our students. These were great reminders to support our students in growing their calm. I love the simple tools that you have available to make it happen. I love that drawing activity and the mini mindful visualizations, are just easy tools that we can use in our classroom. I love your approach to wanting to empower not just the social workers, but the classroom teachers as well. I know that you are a social worker of action and you want to give us something that we can take with us into our classrooms and implement some of these strategies right away. I know you put together something exclusive for The Classroom Commute podcast listeners, so why don't you kind of walk us through that?
Victoria: Okay, I'm excited that I could do something special for this group. I created a new resource and this little freebie is from that resource, it's a feelings journal. I wanted to give the listeners today something that that was quick and easy to implement. I think a journal is just that, the act of writing itself is a therapeutic tool. The fact that you're kind of therapeutically doing something that's therapeutic, is that therapeutic enough? That's kind of a lot. But anyways, a journal is a really simple way that you can communicate with your students their feelings. It's a quick resource that has some blank pages that you can just kind of cater to your own student needs or there's also some pages that include a writing prompt on it. I think it's a nice way for teachers to kind of gain some insight into their students and kind of have a pulse where their students are at.
Rachael: I love that. This is a printable resource, I'm assuming. What about for teachers who are doing virtual learning with their students and they don't have access to give them this journal?
Victoria: Yep, I got you. It's printable and it's access through Google slides.
Rachael: Awesome, teachers can still see what their students are writing, even if they aren't physically with them in the classroom. That's great. If you want that journal and I strongly encourage that you go and grab that, that tool that Victoria's put together for us. You can get it all over at the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/60. I also know that, in addition to this new resource, you've been working on about feelings and kind of navigating those feelings, you have put together an entire line of resources all centered around calm. Talk a little bit about that.
Victoria: Sure. I referenced that quite a few times today, and that's that 'Grow your calm line' and we've touched on different pieces of it today. It's planting and growing that calm. It's a compilation of many units that complement one another and build upon each other as you introduce calm, you give students the strategies to implement calm and then you empower your students to internalize that calm. Then the goal is once these skills are mastered, they will be tools that will last a lifetime.
Rachael: Perfect. If you do anything else today, go check that out. At the very least, make sure you download that free journal. Again, it's over at the show notes. All right, we have covered a lot of ground today. I'm really excited about the things that we've talked about today, and I know people are going to want to know more. Where can they find you?
Victoria: Okat, my website is themindfulapple.com. This is where you can find my blog and where you can sign up to join my community for your weekly brain food. On Instagram, you can find me at The Mindful Apple. And, of course, my store on Teachers Pay Teachers is The Mindful Apple.
Rachael: That's easy enough for us to all remember. Don't forget the "The" though, I often want to type in Mindful Apple, so make sure you type in the mindfulapple.com. That's great. OK, I love this conversation that we've had today. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insight. I thought that since you're The Mindful Apple, maybe you could send us off with a mindful moment.
Victoria: Okay, the mindful moment I'd love to leave you with today is, "Remember that the command center to our feelings and emotions lies within us and we are the navigators so equip yourself, equip your students with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to navigate successfully."
Rachael: Perfect, I love it. All right, there you have it. Strategies for helping your students master their inner calm. A much, much needed skill for today's classroom. Make sure you head over to themindfulapple.com and connect with Victoria. She is a wealth of knowledge and is really, really passionate about helping young kids manage their social and emotional health.
All right, that's all I have for you today. I will be back again next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now.
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