Packing For our Trip
All frequent travelers know that the success of a journey can depend in large part on how well we prepare.
Packing can take some time and forethought and I hope we can be patient with each other as we get ready for our epic journey.
Here is Our packing list:
3. Understand our ACES Score
4. Believe that, “If kids can do well, they will do well.”
5. Nurture a willingness to grow
This is the most important thing we need to bring on our adventure.
A willingness to grow.
According to Hallett and Skrla in Serving Students Who are Homeless:
Faculty and staff must not only understand and buy into the needed changes; they must also experience a type of personal growth that goes beyond simple acquisition of new information.
The type of learning [they] are talking about is known as transformational learning, as was described by Mezirow (2009).
While you will learn lots of facts on this journey, our primary teachers will be fictional characters.
We will practice Transformational Learning aimed at increasing our own Emotional Intelligence.
This learning doesn’t exist solely on a thinking level.
This learning lives holistically.
On a visceral level.
Mind, body and spirit.
In order to to be transformed through learning we need to summon the courage to look authentically at ourselves.
We must look at our own thoughts with radical acceptance.
If we first accept where we are, what we think, and acknowledge our biases, then we can begin to challenge and transform them without judgment or shame.
This adventure is one through which we retain our own agency.
Throughout this trek we will find “Choose Your Own Adventure” moments where there are curated topic-relevant options for us to choose from.
Agency and choice are key components in trauma informed teaching that we will model on our journey.
Now that we have our packing list, let’s begin by stowing away some resources for our nervous systems.
Item 1: Coping Skills
Along the path we will face many challenging topics. We may cry. We may get activated. We may enter a fight/flight/freeze/fawn cycle.
We may need tissues. We may need a break.
We can collect some tools through image, video, and text that will help us stay present and available for this adventure.
First we are going to collect two breathing techniques and then a grounding exercise to add to our resource kit.
- Box Breathing
- Extended Exhale
- 5-4-3-2-1
Box Breathing: We can collect one of these
Extended Exhale: And choose one of these
Grounding Technique: And practice one of these
At any time during this adventure if you find yourself becoming tense, anxious, or overwhelmed, please feel free to click back to any of these techniques so that you can stay in your learning brain as you travel through along the road of empathy. To get back to this section, click on the lotus flower icon.
Now that you have some tools for relaxing and focusing when we start to deal with challenging content, let’s move on to packing a new framework for thinking into our backpack.
The Ladder of Inference
The ladder of inferences thinking model makes explicit how we come to our beliefs and opinions in any given situation. It was originated by Business theorist Chris Argyris at Harvard University in the 1970s.
It is now used across disciplines to help everyone from teachers to CEOs to identify their own biases and decision making patterns.
Choose Your Own Adventure
All of these videos present the basic concepts of the ladder of inference. Enjoy one and then let’s continue to unpack the ideas a bit further.
We can see from our video resources that the ladder of inference shows us how when we have an experience in real time our brain’s next step is to select observable data.
The data we select is influenced by all the experiences we have had before now.
Confirmation bias can also play a role here in what data we select and what data we filter out.
According to the American Psychological Association, confirmation bias is “the tendency to gather evidence that confirms preexisting expectations, typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence.”
On the next rung we add meaning.
This step is influenced by the data we selected which was influenced by our preexisting beliefs and experiences.
If it sounds like the ladder is also a loop, that’s because it is.
There is a potential problem here.
What if the loop is errant?
What if we select the “wrong” data and exclude the “right” data?
How do we stop the loop?
How do we ensure that our beliefs are not biased?
Like an ant mill, where social ants follow each other in a circle until they die of hunger and exhaustion, circular thinking can be the death of reason and fairness.
All along our journey we will see posted road signs that remind us to check our ladder of inference. When we see this icon, we will be reminded to check in to see if our conclusions are being informed by gentle, empathetic questioning or by assumptions, personal experience, or cultural biases.
Because all good teachers are reasonable and fair, we naturally want to explore the information our mind is programmed to filter in and filter out.
Where do our beliefs and assumptions come from?
One way to find the genesis of our beliefs is to look back at our road map and trace our own origin story. Remember this argument from the mid 1800’s?
Which comes first?
Turns out, there is an area of science which answers this question. Not the chicken and egg question. That’s still open for debate.
But in terms of how we form identities, ideas, and behavioral patterns many answers lie in the science of epigenetics.
What is Epigenetics?
We learn from these resources that epigenetics can explain why two people with the same genes, like twins, can have such different life stories.
We are going to identify and explore what we believe and look for some of the foundational experiences and core beliefs that underpin our thinking.
Let us pause for a moment and consider the ways in which we see these things playing out in our own lives.
One thing that plays a significant role in our epigenetic outcome are our ACES.
Have you heard of ACES?
Our Adverse Childhood Experience Score is the measure of some of the things we may have been through, the things that might have happened to us, that are shown by research to have significant potential impacts on most people who experience them.
Please take a few moments now to take your own ACE score.
Here is a good place to take a self scoring-quiz.
Pause, Breathe, and Look Within
How are you feeling?
Do we want to take a break and use a grounding skill?
Perhaps you are ACES free. If so, congratulations.
Perhaps you have at least one ACE like 61% of Americans.
Perhaps you are feeling frightened or confused by your score.
Feel free to pause here and return to the journey when you are ready.
According to a a study by BMC Public Health, the majority of individuals experienced at least one adverse experience (57.8%). Approximately 42% had an ACE score of 0, followed by 22.9% (1 ACE), 12.8% (2 ACEs), 8.2% (3 ACEs), 5.7% (4 ACEs), 3.8% (5 ACEs), 2.3% (6 ACEs), 1.2% (7 ACEs), and 0.3% (all 8 ACEs; not shown in tables). Table 3 presents the prevalence of ACEs by demographic variables among all eight ACE categories, as well as a total ACE mean score.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09411-z
Let’s gather a little more information
Now we know that Adverse Childhood Experiences are traumas, significant events, that affect our behaviors, physical health and mental health over the course of our lives.
Our ACES have a substantial impact on our Ladders of Inference.
They impact our students’ Ladders in all the same ways.
They impact our students’ parents and their Ladders, too.
They impact everyone.
But, they are not a curse or a promise.
The negative impacts can be mitigated through mindfulness, mental health care, exercise, and eating well.
The positive impacts can be magnified and harnessed to produce post traumatic growth. This is called resilience, and it can be developed and cultivated after negative events and adversity.
For you, for me, for all of us.
So far we have gathered some coping skills, explained the Ladder of Inference, and identified our ACE score.
Now we need to collect a lens for looking at students, especially students whose ACES may manifest in non-preferred behaviors and be challenging in classroom settings.
We know that behaviors are communication, but, do some students just not want to do well? Do ACES make it impossible for some kids? Are they hopeless?
A Telescope to Look Through
“If kids can do well, they will do well.” -Dr. Ross Greene
Dr. Ross Greene’s work is rooted in the idea that if kids can do well they will do well.
The core of his theory is to look at the student as intrinsically good and to focus on behavior as communication. According to Greene, if we solve the problems that cause a student to demonstrate undesirable behaviors, we will solve the core problem and the behavior will change naturally.
So, if kids can do well they will do well then why don’t all kids do well?
Because they can’t.
Because there are things in their way. Things like ACES. Things like chronic stress. Things like homelessness.
How can our understanding of these things influence our practice as teachers?
We may not be able to solve the student’s housing crisis. But, there are lots of problems that we can solve on a school level. Can you think of a few?
We will identify what we can do to solve problems unhoused students may have that are within our sphere of influence.
“Problems that have yet to be solved.”
On the website, Lives In The Balance, you can take a guided tour, a short detour, any time you feel you may be interested in learning more about that work.
https://livesinthebalance.org/educators-tour/
Pause, Breathe, and Look Within
Now that you know your own ACE score can you gently reflect on your own school journey?
Can you think of a time when looking through the telescope (the belief that if a child can do well they will do well) would have changed how a teacher saw you?
Is there a time when an ACE was in your way and no one noticed?
If you could rewrite that moment, what would you want the adult to do to help you remove the obstacle to your success?
If you don’t “buy” all of this so far…that’s totally okay. You may not believe that if kids can do well they will. You may have a plethora of evidence collected in your mental map to support your differing beliefs. That’s a perfect place to start.
You don’t have to change one bit during this journey if you choose not to.
Many people think many different ways.
This journey is simply an invitation to explore your current beliefs without judgment and entertain potentially new ideas without defensiveness.
Starting where you are, without judgment but with compassion for your own journey, are you willing to pack the last tool we need?
Are you willing to embrace a growth mindset?
5. Nurture a Willingness to Grow
A growth mindset means that you believe that you can grow and change and adapt and overcome regardless of the subject area or content.
Imagine you are one of the many people who are afraid of homeless men on street corners. Imagine you have grown up being told people who are homeless are bums and vagrants. Maybe you always thought all homeless people are drug addicts.
That’s completely ok.
A growth mindset means you’re willing to accept yourself where you are and you believe you can change any time you decide you want to.
Fostering a growth mindset means knowing you are not all right or all wrong, and neither is anyone else.
This is a safe place to be honest. This is safe place to be wrong. This is a safe place to learn.
And, this is a safe place to grow.
Congratulations! Our bags are packed.
We have our coping skills to stay grounded on our path.
We know about the rungs on our Ladder and have identified the danger of loops.
We took our ACES and we know how heavy they can make our pack.
We learned that if kids can do well, they will do well and that homelessness is trauma that can get in the way.
And, we planted the seeds of a growth mindset in ourselves.
Our bags are packed, now off we go!
On our first leg of the journey we will look at understanding what homelessness means to us and how it might be experienced by others.
Learning Brain vs Survival Brain
Students learn best when they feel supported and loved.
Students learn best when they feel like they are in an environment where they are safe.
Who we are is a direct result of who we were in the past.
Now we know that ACES and all trauma impacts the brain and how it functions, or doesn’t function in learning environments.
This knowledge is something we can tuck into our bag as we collect the next tool for looking at ourselves and our students, a telescope to see the student’s potential.