3 Empowerment Moments at School
When students feel understood, they will be more intrinsically motivated to take risks with learning which is essential to student lifelong success.I have learned how coaching “myself” as a teacher can lead to internal calm, confidence, and clarity which in turn creates a connected and empowered classroom.
The need for connection with our fellow humans is backed heavily by scientific data. Humans not only need strong connections, but they cannot thrive without it. (Dr. Dan Siegel)
As a teacher, I observe on a daily basis that the social experience is often the hardest part of school for students, administrators, and teachers. We are all looking to have our fundamental NEEDS met in a highly stress-producing environment. This will decrease our sense of well-being, self-agency, confidence, fairness, and our ability to positively relate to each other. When we disconnect from each other, that is when things tend to move into chaos in my classroom. So it has been important for me to learn how to work with students who move into disempowering emotions and treat others poorly. With the push towards streamlining education to produce better high-stakes testing and scores, there is no time to work on daily social interactions, and this, in itself is what is hurting learning more than anything.
What is the potential impact of knowing how to truly created connected, empowered learning environments? As I learned how to support the well-being, self-agencey, confidence, equity, and relatedness with my students, I found that this is more effective in inspiring learning and growth than focusing on test outcomes, or even behavioral outcomes.
I am now a firm believer, after learning the Empowerment Education® System of W.E.L.L.-Being and shifted my teaching style to Empowerment Coaching & Learning as an certified Empowerment Coach in the classroom, that developing social, emotional, and cultural skills by focusing on emotional intelligence is more important than any of our other curricula, even language arts, considering our brains are hard wired for connection, and we need it to learn. Humans are also hard wired for learning language but not learning HOW to feel, express, and especially how to accept ourselves especially after growing up in systems that focus on comparison, and being better than others. . It catapults learning of everything because students feel safe and passionate about what they are learning. This new-paradigm philosophy changed everything to me.
Below are 3 examples of how I SHIFTED into connection and how that empowered my students.
(1) Teacher to Student Connection
One day, while conducting a writing conference with mary, a kindergartner, I decided to do a little experiement using connection since I was learning how powerful it is. I shifted my energy to having no attachment or judgement to where she was or needed to be. I had been learning HOW to "accept" and "validate" so I began to say things like, "how are you feeling about your reading?" and really listening from my heart to what she said without trying to get her anywhere. As she read her book, I let her know how much I appreciated her reading to me, even though she might not know a word. When she came to a word she didn't know, I waited patiently with no energy that I needed to hurry or that she was wrong. I allowed her to share her journey as a writer and never provided judgment or praise for her work. (I had learn to not use general praise because it doesn't work...it creates her need to do it for me, not for inspired self-learning.) Instead I held total acceptand for and allowed her growth mindset to flourish. At the end of our conference, she looked up and saigh, "You know, I remember what you said once about using lowercase letters!" as she pointed to the All-Capital Letter Title. Through total connection (acceptand and validation), she was able to remember a previously learned skill without even lecturing or correcting her. She also asked for the first time, if she could do our session again, something no student had ever asked me to do.
(2) Student to Student Connection
One day I picked my kindergarten student up from art class to discover that Adam had been reprimanded for trying to steal chalk from the art room. Immediately afterwards, Adam became withdrawn and unmotivated. He reverted back to behaviors from the first week of school that I had helped him shift using my new trauma-informed positive integration skills. He turtled himself into a tight ball and when spoken to, he would hid under the desk, lie on seats, or be silly and uncooperative. I got curious about his behavior and not mad or frustrated. I was learning that the fastest way for his brain to shift into learning mode was for me NOT to be in disconnection with him. So at center time, while others were playing house or building with blocks, he remained withdrawn. I deliberately sat at the table he was under and talke with other girls who wanted to try drawing with chalk again after their art lesson. I got black paper out and they began showing me how they had made a skeleton in art class. Suddenly, a mouse voice came out from under the table, "I just can't do a skeleton." Adam popped his head up to see what Michelle was drawing. He frowned and hid again. I saw that Michelle instinctively supported him with her wisdom. "Adam," she said without looking up, "when I first began to draw, I never liked my drawings either. I can show you how to make the skeleton." He then slithered up and halway sat in the chair next o Michelle. She slie a paper over and told him to put his name on it. He grabbed the chalk and scribed his name. "First you do a line for the spine," she began. He followed. By the end, we was drawing skeleton on his own and was back to his fun and cheery self. He then told me, that he wanted to bring the chalk back to the classroom to practice and was too embarrassed to try in front of the others. I helped him go to the art teacher to tell her his story, so she could understand why he took the chalk, which because she was so angry at him, he didn't want to say, because he felt to shameful that he couldn't draw the skeletons to being with. I have learned that as and Empowerment Coach, we must allow things at times to unfold naturally, because things like this will begin to happen all the time, without me trying to control the situation, or "teach Adam a lesson."
(3) Teacher to Self Connection
Monday mornings can be a time I become emotionally triggered in the classroom. It's early, loud, and parents are allowed to bring their capable student all the way into the classroom to say hello, which is great, because I get to connect with the parents, but at the same time, takes time away from me being prepared for my already tightly planned day. Students are talkative and hyper because they are happy to get back to our class and see each other. Sometimes, I notice that I feel pressure to perform and get everything that I am required to do done, so I don't get "in trouble". It almost feels like I am a student in school to with all the pressure that the education system demands of me. I can feel the pressure in my chest and am learning to coach myself when I feel this "emotional trigger". I notice when I am in this pressured feeling in my chest, I loose sight of the joy and excitment that the students and their parent have in my classroom as well as my ability to truly connect with them. Then I practice allowing those emotions to be there and ask myself a very important question to help me understand what is getting me stressed. "What must I believe to feel this pressure, right now?" I have a part of me that needs to always "good" or "right". I can feel how badkly I want to make a different in these students lives, and when the system says that doing all of these prepartion things are more important than connecting with the parents and students, I can witness that I turn away from connection and make my day about pleasing the system. It never works. I let me stress take over and I can feel it. I begin to breath into a new belief that I truly believe, "There is nothing more important than building the relationships with the students and their parents." "Of course I want everything and everyone to be all right, and I had learned growing up that I had to keep everyone happy and alright and feelig good by working myself to the bones. But now I can shift myself and stay in connection and always....always...the day goes better, when I shift my focus on connection, curiosity, un-attachment to the outcomes, and move into flow instead of control, manipulation, and trying to prove how great I am. So I have learned, the hard way, that connection is the best way to make it all right and that connection increases my confidence as an educator.
As I pay attention to my internal reaction to the noise and perceived chaos, I allow my feelings to surface and give myself some empathy, knowing where I learned the 'pressure' in my chest. I being to reconnect to the beauty that exists in my room. As I give myself this short self-coaching session, which we call The WAVE, I am able to have flexibility and oppeness to wherever the day may take me and my students. I end up having a very fun and high learning day with my students, never looking exactly the way I planned.
Theses examples reveal how an approach response can be initiated through connection. As studnets and teachers are given the space to connect, self-regulation occurs, and students live more and more in their higher brain or learning brain where they are calm, confident, connected, creative, curious and competent. I love when my classroom becomes a well-oiled, self-regulated flow of inspiration and learning. This is happening more and more and I get out of my own way by continuing to practice connecting with myself, my students, my co-workers, and the parents.
I stand strong in the vision that our education system shifts into a new-paradigm of connection and empowerment as the most important variable for learning, living, and life!
