KindSight 101

Ever wonder how the physical classroom environment can promote inclusion? In this episode you'll learn to make your students feel comfortable and build their trust through the way you adapt your classroom environment.

Dr. Rebecca Alber is an Instructor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education, a literacy specialist, a consulting editor at Edutopia, a compulsive reader, passionate about learning being relevant, engaging, and revolutionary and she dips into the Pacific as often as possible. you can find her on twitter @Wordlib or by searching Dr. Rebecca Alber. You can also find her work on edutopia.org

Hi Everyone!

I have a call to action. Pink Shirt Day is February 27th and I'd like to feature some fresh new ideas that teachers can use in their classrooms to boost kindness leading up to this special day.

If you want to get involved, here's what you can do:

With your smart phone, record one or a few of your favourite ideas, resources, activities, books, and lessons you like to explore with your kids at school or home to reinforce kindness.

Email the audio file to [email protected]

In your email, make sure to state your name, where you're from, and the main idea behind your audio.

I'd love to feature you on the KindSight 101 podcast!

Many thanks and please feel free to share the podcast with your friends and PLN.

Morgane Michael

In Part three of my interview with Stefanie Faye Frank, we talk about the importance of developing beginners mind as teachers as a way to teach growth mindset from the context of our own authentic experiences. Sounds scary right? Nope…it doesn’t have to be. Stefanie shares a few easy and tangible ways that you can train your brain to be more adaptable, whether you want to help your students to grow or you want to develop beginner’s mind yourself. Struggle is an essential part of learning. Lean in.

I show leaders how to help their staff adopt flexible mindsets, become more willing to learn, experiment, and tap into their brain’s highest levels of creative problem-solving.

I combine my award-winning research at NYU, and fieldwork at the NYU Institute for Prevention Science, Phelps Lab for Neuroscience Research, the Department of Defense, Albert Einstein College of Medicine with training from meditation masters from India, Africa and Vietnam, and over a decade of counseling, consulting and teaching people on how to maximize their brain’s creative powers. I use interactive strategies as metaphors for scientific principles to help leaders internalize the idea of how these insights work in their own life, so they can then apply it in their work, relationships and daily interactions.

WHO IT'S FOR

For people who want to see their staff and clients be more open to try new approaches to learning and experiment with new ways of asking questions, solving problems, dealing with failure, and how to interact with others in socially intelligent ways.

Mindset Neuroscience activates change using this 4-phase framework:

Organizational context first. Your organization's culture – including the beliefs and behaviors of leadership – have HUGE influences your employees' mindset, our attitudes, beliefs, and state. This is the starting point.

http://stefaniefayefrank.com/about/

Her videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgBcrJABukg&t=134s

In Part two of my interview with Stefanie Faye Frank, we explore the dark side of growth mindset and why it’s important to go beyond the superficial teaching of adaptability. We discuss some of the physiological clues that suggest whether a student in experiencing fight, flight or freeze and how to become more aware of our own body language in order to create a safe environment for our students.

We discuss top down extremism, which is the belief that our success lies in our ability to control our own thoughts, rewrite our stories. While this can be a powerful model, it’s important to remember that someone’s adverse and traumatic experiences can make it extremely challenging to reframe their thinking. Therefore, thinking alone is not always enough to overcome adversity. We need to be advocates for creating better circumstances at home and within the classroom so that our students can be healthy, happy learners.

We learned that when someone is in physiological distress or in a triggered stress response, they exhibit symptoms like alert or flat eyes, tension in their jaw, robotic voice (otherwise known as prosody) and that these micro signals can alert you before a child hits full meltdown or withdrawal mode.

My hope is that we can be more aware of our children’s responses to events within our classrooms and allow students the space to regulate themselves when they feel triggered.

About Stephanie:

I show leaders how to help their staff adopt flexible mindsets, become more willing to learn, experiment, and tap into their brain’s highest levels of creative problem-solving.

I combine my award-winning research at NYU, and fieldwork at the NYU Institute for Prevention Science, Phelps Lab for Neuroscience Research, the Department of Defense, Albert Einstein College of Medicine with training from meditation masters from India, Africa and Vietnam, and over a decade of counseling, consulting and teaching people on how to maximize their brain’s creative powers. I use interactive strategies as metaphors for scientific principles to help leaders internalize the idea of how these insights work in their own life, so they can then apply it in their work, relationships and daily interactions.

WHO IT'S FOR

For people who want to see their staff and clients be more open to try new approaches to learning and experiment with new ways of asking questions, solving problems, dealing with failure, and how to interact with others in socially intelligent ways.

Mindset Neuroscience activates change using this 4-phase framework:

Organizational context first. Your organization's culture – including the beliefs and behaviors of leadership – have HUGE influences your employees' mindset, our attitudes, beliefs, and state. This is the starting point.

http://stefaniefayefrank.com/about/

Her videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgBcrJABukg&t=134s

In part one of my interview with Stefanie Faye Frank, we discuss how the factory model of education and our behaviorist stimulus-response approach to teaching is holding our students back from being able to compete within the new connection economy. We discuss the importance of running our classroom like an innovation lab, where failing fast is important and taking risks through vulnerability and emotional labour is key to developing the adaptability our students need to be successful in the future.

About Stephanie:

I show leaders how to help their staff adopt flexible mindsets, become more willing to learn, experiment, and tap into their brain’s highest levels of creative problem-solving.

I combine my award-winning research at NYU, and fieldwork at the NYU Institute for Prevention Science, Phelps Lab for Neuroscience Research, the Department of Defense, Albert Einstein College of Medicine with training from meditation masters from India, Africa and Vietnam, and over a decade of counseling, consulting and teaching people on how to maximize their brain’s creative powers. I use interactive strategies as metaphors for scientific principles to help leaders internalize the idea of how these insights work in their own life, so they can then apply it in their work, relationships and daily interactions.

WHO IT'S FOR

For people who want to see their staff and clients be more open to try new approaches to learning and experiment with new ways of asking questions, solving problems, dealing with failure, and how to interact with others in socially intelligent ways.

Mindset Neuroscience activates change using this 4-phase framework:

Organizational context first. Your organization's culture – including the beliefs and behaviors of leadership – have HUGE influences your employees' mindset, our attitudes, beliefs, and state. This is the starting point.

http://stefaniefayefrank.com/about/

Her videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgBcrJABukg&t=134s

In this episode, you'll hear how Simon Sinek's brainchild Start with Why empowers teachers and educational leaders to see, hear, and seek to understand their students in order to create cultures of belonging and safety in schools. I speak with Stephen Shedletzky about kindness, the golden circle (finding your "why"), and the circle of safety.

About Stephen:

Stephen has worked with clients all over the world in education, aerospace, banking, healthcare, consumer products, hospitality, government and real estate.

Topics we explore:

Thanks for listening!

In this episode, I explore the concept of homelessness, toxic masculinity, and a revolutionary way of bridging the gap between those living in privilege and marginalized individuals with Marko, the founder of the Existence Project.

MARKO (Founder of the Existence Project)

Recognizing the importance of connection in his own life, The Existence Project is an extension of a greater calling to build empathy and humanity within the communities we care about.

The Existence Project runs storytelling workshops for marginalized people and community members who care: students, professional creatives and changemakers. Each workshop features a storyteller with a transformative experience of poverty, mental illness, addiction, or trauma. After a group discussion we build relationship to the story and each other through collaborative dialogue, drawing and writing. By sharing the voices of our participants with the public we bring hidden perspectives into community spaces.

Whether you call it compassion fatigue, compassion burnout, or empathic distress, being on the front lines with those experiencing distress or trauma is taxing, emotionally. Often nurses, teachers, and community service employees suffer from this affliction, but there are ways to protect yourself and beat empathic distress. Listen, as Dr. Alber shares her tips for overcoming compassion fatigue so that you can give with a whole heart.

Dr. Rebecca Alber is an Instructor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education, a literacy specialist, a consulting editor at Edutopia, a compulsive reader, passionate about learning being relevant, engaging, and revolutionary and she dips into the Pacific as often as possible. you can find her on twitter @Wordlib or by searching Dr. Rebecca Alber. You can also find her work on edutopia.org

“Creative thinking is the fuel for getting things going. Dreaming about the project is a huge part of the process. The actual 'doing' requires following through on the dream, but the dream is the rough sketch. I encourage people to ponder and conjure the vision, but eventually I'll nudge you to "prove your groove." Don't just say you are a writer... Write. Don't just dream about making a film... Pick up the camera and go!”

Have you ever wondered how to empower the dreamers in your life to be the fullest expressions of themselves? To take audacious leaps? To connect with their passion in a meaningful way to serve the world?

In this episode, you’ll learn the 4 questions you can ask to connect students with their purpose, the top two ways anyone can generate new and creative ideas, and the most important question everyone should be asking themselves in order to live a life of joyful intention. I am thrilled about this remarkable interview, with the best-selling, award-winning author, Peter H. Reynolds. Join us as we deep-dive into creativity, dreaming, and joyful expression.

Peter also illustrated the best selling I am Yoga, I am Peace, I am Human (which was recently a #1 NYT Best selling picture book!), and The Water Princess with Susan Verde, as well as, the Judy Moody series by Megan McDonald. Peter lives in the Boston area where he founded The Blue Bunny, a family-owned and operated children’s book, toy, & creativity store.

Peter and his twin brother Paul, launched the Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning, and Creativity (TLC). The center is a not-for-profit organization that encourages creativity and innovation in teaching and learning. You can find Peter on Twitter @peterhreynolds and by visiting his website peterhreynolds.com

15 tips to make your mark: Tell stories. Family stories. Made-up stories. You don't need a book to read with your children. In fact, if they see you improvise they will learn to do the same. Improv is key to creative thinking and innovation.

http://www.peterhreynolds.com/phr_foxtv_tips.html

Check out Peter's blog: The stellar café

https://thepenandinkblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/peter-h-reynolds-in-conversation.html

We all want to teach our students to be kind, but sometimes doing so explicitly can be harder than it looks. In this episode, you'll hear 3 tangible, actionable, and easy ways to teach kindness within the classroom that you can implement starting today.

Dr. Rebecca Alber is an Instructor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education, a literacy specialist, a consulting editor at Edutopia, a compulsive reader, passionate about learning being relevant, engaging, and revolutionary and she dips into the Pacific as often as possible. you can find her on twitter @Wordlib or by searching Dr. Rebecca Alber. You can also find her work on edutopia.org