By Deborah Farmer Kris November 30, 2021 Washington Post
When my dad shook me awake at 2 a.m., I grumbled my way out to the backyard and onto the quilt he had spread out for me and my four siblings. Moments later, a streak of light sliced the sky. And then another. For hours, until the sun lit the horizon, we watched the cosmic dance of the Perseid meteor shower.
My 9-year-old self would have described the night as “awesome.” That’s a good word choice, because awesome has a powerful emotional correlate: awe.
Awe is what we feel when we encounter something vast, wondrous or beyond our ordinary frame of reference. It evokes a sense of mystery and wonder. And, given its documented benefits, awe might be our most overlooked, undervalued emotion.
Psychologist Dacher Keltner, the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley, has spent years studying the beneficial effects of awe on our physical, mental and emotional well-being. “It makes us curious rather than judgmental. It makes us collaborative. It makes us humble, sharing and altruistic. It quiets the ego so that you’re not thinking about yourself as much.” It also calms the brain’s default mode network and has been shown to reduce inflammation. In other words, he says, don’t underestimate the power of goose bumps.
With pediatric health experts raising the alarm about children’s mental health, helping kids experience a little more awe, as my father did on that chilly morning, could become part of our collective response. Here’s how experts say we can infuse more of this emotion into our everyday lives.
Slowing down childhood
According to research out of Stanford University’s Challenge Success, children and adolescents need regular PDF — playtime, downtime and family time — for healthy development. This prescription dovetails with Keltner’s findings.
“How do you find awe? You allow unstructured time. How do you find awe? You wander. You drift through. You take a walk with no aim,” Keltner says. “How do you find awe? You slow things down. You allow for mystery and open questions rather than test-driven answers. You allow people to engage in the humanities of dance and visual art and music.”
Unfortunately, today’s highly structured, competition-oriented child-rearing culture is largely a “failure in awe,” Keltner says. If every hour is filled with activities, pressures and obligations, then children will have less time to wonder, wander or tune in to their emotions and surroundings.
As a bonus, feeling awe might even support academic performance. “One of my favorite findings suggests that awe might help spur curiosity about the world,” says psychologist Craig Anderson. In one study of more than 400 high school adolescents, “the more awe that they felt, the more curiosity they expressed and the better they performed in school.”
How do we experience more awe?
You don’t have to take your kids to the Grand Canyon or stand in the Sistine Chapel to experience awe, Keltner says. People commonly feel awe when they spend time in nature, listen to or make music, view or create art, contemplate big ideas, engage in meaningful rituals or enjoy community experiences that make them feel as if they’re a part of something larger than themselves.
Noticing systems and patterns, such as musical harmony or the formation of geese in flight, can also be awe-inspiring. “The mind in awe is picking up these systems of complicated, interrelated entities working together,” Keltner says. “People are like, ‘God, I saw these tide pools. I was blown away.’ They look at clouds, which are these complicated systems of water droplets. Right now, the Golden State Warriors are playing this great basketball. When you talk to fans, they’re like, ‘Hey, did you see the way they move?’ That’s a system.”
Sometimes, slightly reframing something can turn an everyday activity into a more healing one, particularly in this difficult time in history. “For our culture in this moment of climate crisis and stress and covid, the most important message is, ‘How do I go find awe right around me, perhaps just by going on a walk?’ ” Keltner says. “Go out and find some awe on your walk. Get outside, pause, reflect, slow it down.”
In fact, in a 2020 study, older adults who took weekly 15-minute “awe walks” for eight weeks reported increased positive emotions and less distress in their daily lives.
For his research on awe, Anderson took more than a dozen white-water rafting trips with war veterans and teens from underserved communities, a group that “reported higher levels of [post-traumatic stress disorder] symptoms than our veterans did,” he says. He found that experiencing awe in nature predicted improved well-being in both groups, including a decrease in PTSD and stress levels. “The awe that we feel in the outdoors could actually be a useful part of our health-care system,” Anderson says.
Do screens and social media produce or limit awe?
That’s a complicated question, both Keltner and Anderson say.
Keltner notes that screens usually serve as a “gateway to awe rather than a direct experience of it.” They can help us find artists, musicians and places that we might not otherwise discover. “The protests against the killing of George Floyd, which were awe-inspiring, came out of screens in many ways,” Keltner says. And films such as Louie Schwartzberg’s “Fantastic Fungi” allow viewers to observe the natural world in a way that wouldn’t be possible without technology.
But most of the apps we use are not designed to make us feel awe, Anderson says. Nor do they prioritize our well-being. Instead, “they’re designed to keep us in front of the app.” In addition, the social-evaluative nature of social media is at cross-purposes with the healthy “smallness” that comes with awe. If you want to feel the benefits of “noticing things like the flowers blooming or the light filtering through the leaves on the trees,” Anderson says, “your attention can’t be wrapped up in a phone.”
Can we improve society?
Perhaps surprisingly, the most common source of awe is other people’s goodness. “It’s kindness and courage” Keltner says. “We really have this capacity to be moved by other people.” Fred Rogers famously described how this source of awe can be emotionally protective for children: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me: ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ ”
In turn, several studies found that experiencing awe can make us kinder, more generous people. For example, participants who briefly stared at tall, beautiful trees — as opposed to staring at a building — were more likely to help a stranger who dropped their belongings. As Anderson says: “My hope is that awe can be an emotion that we leverage for the greater good of our communities, of our country and of people around the world.”
For many parents, pressing the pause button to make more room for awe will take some adjustment. I think about all the times I’ve yelled at my kids to hustle while they were, say, glued to the asphalt, staring at the wildflower growing through a crack. But when you ask parents to think of their favorite parenting experiences, they often speak about quiet moments of awe: wandering through the park, watching fireworks on a hill, snuggling together during a thunderstorm.
Recently, perhaps trying to channel my nature-loving father, I dragged my kids on an autumn hike. They grumbled, too, but after an hour of scrambling over rocks, kicking leaves and watching herons stalk prey, one of them turned to me and said: “Next time I don’t want to come, please remind me of this feeling.” And I can, because that feeling has a name.
Q:I’m not a parent, but I am a high school teacher. There is a strong undercurrent of anger among our students. I’m trying to create a safe space in my classroom. I have a good rapport with my students, but when I’m in the hallway or a large study hall with 200-plus children and only four adults, I’m nervous. Some of the students are, too.
Schools are understaffed, children are not okay, and we teachers are not okay (and we’re blamed for everything). Kids came back to school buildings in bodies that are two years bigger but with socialization and maturity levels in the pre-pandemic past. Our administration alternates between telling us to hold a firm line with discipline and to not give consequences unless the violation is extreme.
I’m not a counselor. I’m patient and kind, but I’m also voiceless. I’m exhausted from the public vilification of teachers and the added work from the teacher shortage. How can we call attention to these issues? Politicians aren’t interested, parents are exhausted, unions aren’t believed. We have a huge problem here.
I’m so worried about our students that I’m not sleeping. Anxiety may make me another teacher who leaves the profession (after 33 years). I love my students. I want to help, but we are drowning. And the constant tension is frightening. Thank you.
A: Thank you for writing in. I feel your fatigue through this note. And before we get into what to do about your burnout and fear, I want you to know that, although you are not a parent to these children, you have an important parenting influence. The content of your classes is important, but your compassionate and safe presence is arguably more important, especially now.
As a former teacher and school counselor, I know how frightening it is to feel disempowered, so let’s get you support.
To begin, you are not alone. I recently read a piece from NPR detailing teachers’ exhaustion, the lack of substitutes and the all-around need for rest. Everyone who works in a school seems to be on the edge, including staff members who disinfect the buildings and administrators on the front lines.
You report a lack of sleep, fear for your safety, serious anxiety and a feeling of “drowning,” so we first need to address your most direct needs. Please make an appointment with your doctor and get a thorough checkup. It may sound as if this has nothing to do with your stress at school, but it’s important to have someone look after you in a holistic manner.
I also want you to take a look at your routines at home. Food, sleep, movement, water and alcohol intake: Take a peek at your basic self-care habits. I am not intimating that you are stressed because you may not be taking care of yourself; instead, I want you to focus on what you can control first. Doing everything you can to calm your nervous system will help you respond rather than react to the problems at school.
After you refocus your attention on yourself, find your alliances at school, either with other teachers, administrators, you name it. Then try to create doable solutions together for the unease and anxiety you are feeling. Acknowledge that you are doing the best you can in a very difficult situation, that you have good relationships with the students in your classroom and that everyone is struggling. Ask your peers how they are working to feel safe, in and out of the classroom. My hope is that, in sharing your ideas and support, you will feel buoyed by the ideas and camaraderie.
As a group, go to the administration in the spirit of sharing and working together in a proactive and transparent manner.
Here’s the deal: Every person’s deepest desire is to belong. To do so, we need to feel safe. If you don’t feel safe in your workplace, you cannot do your job well, let alone connect with these children. Your nervous system will be too jumpy, and you will make decisions out of panic rather than ones based on logic and sense.
Approaching the administration with solutions will help jump-start a conversation rather than create a “demand and defense” feeling, because the administration, in many cases, is as underwater as you are. We are also in a rare situation with the pandemic, job losses and teachers leaving the field.
Although I know it would need to be handled carefully, I think the “Dads on Duty” model, which began in a Louisiana high school, is something plenty of schools can look at. After a rash of violence and arrests, volunteers came together to walk the school grounds, and rather than “police” the school, they act in a calming, fatherly and “get your bottom to class” kind of way. They joke, laugh and are generally kind to the children, and with more eyes on the students, violence was curbed.
Of course, protocols must be created and background checks have to be done, but the idea of a community coming together to support its students, teachers and administrators is a common-sense, affordable and clear way to up the adult-to-student ratio when these children need it most.
Solutions such as starting Dads on Duty, partnering with local organizations, uniting teachers and involving parents all need to be harnessed, discussed and put into action.
We are now back to you taking exquisite care of yourself to do this. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so please look after yourself first. There are solutions to be found to ensure everyone feels safer in your school, and we (I am speaking for the collective here) do not want teachers to quit.
Rest, then get to work with your fellow teachers. Good luck.
In the United States, as many as half of today’s 5-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 100, and this once unattainable milestone may become the norm for newborns by 2050. Yet, the social institutions, norms and policies that await these future centenarians evolved when lives were only half as long and need updating. In 2018, The Stanford Center on Longevity launched an initiative called The New Map of Life, believing that one of the most profound transformations of the human experience calls for equally momentous and creative changes in the ways we lead these 100-year lives, at every stage. We can meet challenges that longevity creates if we act now, guided by these principles:
Age Diversity Is a Net Positive
The speed, strength, and zest for discovery common in younger people, combined with the emotional intelligence and wisdom prevalent among older people, create possibilities for families, communities, and workplaces that haven’t existed before. Rather than dwelling so anxiously on the costs incurred by an “aging” society, we can measure and reap the remarkable dividends of a society that is, in fact, age-diverse.
Invest in Future Centenarians to Deliver Big Returns
We can invest in future centenarians by optimizing each stage of life, so that benefits can compound for decades, while allowing for more time to recover from disadvantages and setbacks. The pivotal years between birth and kindergarten are the optimal time for children to acquire many of the cognitive, emotional, and social skills needed for a healthy, happy, and active life.
Align Health Spans to Life Spans
A key principle of The New Map of Life is that healthy longevity requires investments in public health at every life stage, and health span should be the metric for determining how, when and where to invest. Addressing health disparities means investing not only in better access to healthcare, but in the health of communities, especially those affected by poverty, discrimination, and environmental damage.
Prepare to Be Amazed by the Future of Aging
Today’s 5-year-olds will benefit from an astonishing array of medical advances and emerging technologies that will make their experience of aging far different from that of today’s older adults. And while there is no way to stop the process of aging, the emerging field of geroscience has the potential to transform how we age, by seeking to identify—and “reprogram”—the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms that make age the dominant risk factor for certain diseases and degenerative conditions.
Work More Years with More Flexibility
Over the course of 100-year lives, we can expect to work 60 years or more. But we won’t work as we do now, cramming 40-hour weeks into lives impossibly packed from morning until night with parenting, family, caregiving, schooling and other obligations. Workers seek flexibility, whether that means working from home at times, or having flexible routes in and out of the workplace, including paid and unpaid intervals for caregiving, health needs, lifelong learning, and other transitions to be expected over century-long lives.
Learn Throughout Life
Rather than front-loading formal education into the first two decades of life, The New Map of Life envisions new options for learning outside the confines of formal education, with people of all ages able to acquire the knowledge they need at each stage of their lives, and to access it in ways that fit their needs, interests, abilities, schedules, and budgets.
Build Longevity-Ready Communities
The impacts of the physical environment begin before birth, with advantages and disadvantages accumulating over the entire course of life, determining how likely an individual is to be physically active, whether they are isolated or socially engaged, and how likely they are to develop obesity, respiratory, cardiovascular, or neurodegenerative disease. We must start now to design and build neighborhoods that are longevity-ready, and to assess potential investments in infrastructure through the lens of longevity.
The Road Ahead
Meeting the challenges of longevity is not the sole responsibility of government, employers, healthcare providers, or insurance companies; it is an all-hands, all-sector undertaking, requiring the best ideas from the private sector, government, medicine, academia, and philanthropy. It is not enough to reimagine or rethink society to become longevity-ready; we must build it, and fast. The policies and investments we undertake today will determine how the current young become the future old—and whether we make the most of the 30 extra years of life that have been handed to us.
The “New Map of Life” Project Longevity changes everything
Longer lives present one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century and one of the greatest opportunities. To fully reap the gift of longevity and the real possibility of living well to the age of 100 and beyond, transformative change is needed from early to late life. Investments in science and technology are essential. Just as essential are investments in novel societal supports, policies, and norms that will enable people to optimize century-long lives. New models of education will be required, including but extending beyond traditional formal education. The concept of “work” and “retirement” must be redefined; the nature of family will include multiple generations; we need to promote practices that keep people healthy and socially engaged; we must better appreciate the link between early and late life; we need new policies for health care and financial security; re-design where we live, work, and travel; and we need to conceive of ways that people can best accommodate the rapid increases in the speed of new technology transfers. Importantly, these supports, products, and services must have wide reach in the population so that the majority of people – not just the privileged few – reach advanced ages physically fit, mentally sharp, and financially secure.
Why do we need a new map of life?
Demographic changes alone demand attention. World population, currently 7.6 billion, is projected to reach 8.6 billion by 2030 and 9.8 billion by 2050. California population will be 51 million, an increase from the current 39 million. The three-stage linear model of life – education then work followed by retirement – won’t work. The new life course will need to be flexible and have multi-stages with a variety of careers and transitions. Fluid life patterns will emerge as longevity promotes a redefinition of time. Seismic societal changes will be needed to the underpinning structures in areas such as education and learning, health, employment, housing, socioeconomic policies. And these changes must be addressed through the sociological lens of diversity and inclusion, ethnicity, the family and intergenerational relations.
How do we start the conversation?
The premise of this project is that we cannot achieve what we cannot envision. The complexity of the change we need must not be underestimated. We need to collaborate in a more networked, interdisciplinary way to have the greatest impact and identify solutions. What tools, models and frameworks do we need to transform communities, states and countries to benefit from longevity? How do we create a mindset for the new map of life?
Questions we will ask:
• Changing the narrative: How do we create a new narrative, imagery and language that values people at different stages of life – moving away from current obsolete language? How do we rid chronological age from the life script, removing age stereotypes and benchmarking by age?
• Education and learning: How do we give children the skills to survive in an age of rapid knowledge transfer and equip them for a new world of work? What are the needs for life-long learning? What is the role of intergenerational learning? How do we re-design education so that longevity is on the curriculum? (UN figures June 2017 https://www.un.org/development/…/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html )
• Economy/financial policy: What is a productive long life? What new models do we need to finance the longer life? What is the role of universal income? How can people best build financial assets? How does family governance change when families come to have four and five generations alive at the same time? How do we bridge the income divide – poorer people have lower life expectancy.
• Communities: What do longevity-friendly communities look like and how do we pursue the development of livable cities and aging in place? What is the role of libraries? Is there a place for more innovative social entrepreneurship? Value of supporting intergenerational relationships and programs. What do we expect for civic engagement?
• Media: What roles can news media, journalists and writers, advertising and entertainment industries play in helping the redefinition of life course and rethink images of aging? What campaigns are needed to stimulate public dialogue?
• Education and Work: How do we break the traditional model of education to support new and different models of life-long learning. How do we re-think work and changes in HR policies and practices? How do educators and employers respond to the demands of an age diverse student population and workforce? What are the new norms for using talents of older people? How is retirement re-cast and the role of encore careers developed? How is voluntary work valued and promoted? Where are the skills shortages?
• Health: How can research inform and stimulate personal health choices that enhance 100-year lives? How can we develop personal resilience – plasticity, adaptability, flexibility, willingness to engage with the new lifespan? How to harness the benefits of the health and wellness revolution – medicine, genomics and technology?
• Business: How to develop products and services which are relevant across the full life span?
• Legislation and policy: how to support fluid life patterns which are not bounded by age prescribed in legislation? If the timing of key life milestones (start of work, marriage, home ownership, starting families) are changing and eroding, do policies need to reflect the new milestones?
The Project
Our goal for the five-year project is to generate significant changes in how we collectively think about and talk about living long lives. We will see a different narrative being played out in the media. We will see progress being made at the federal, state and local levels in creating the “policy infrastructure” to support living longer lives and living them differently. We will see changes in the way individuals, educators and employers think about education, jobs, work and the role of work. We will see businesses creating new products and services to support and enhance this new view of the life course.
The Plan Stage 1: Drawing the Map We will start the conversation by convening a small group of experts who are distinguished scholars and leaders in their fields of education, health and public policy, government, economy, finance and social policy, science, technology, work and employment, housing and communities, transport, media and advocacy, corporate and financial services, philanthropy and not for profit sectors to envision an ideal century long life. The aim is to address key questions that lead to consensus-building and concrete next steps for future action. Our goal is to create a template for developing a “new map of life” that could be used by other countries, regions or communities to make a map relevant to the dynamics of their population.
Stage 2: Identifying new models, solutions, and needs Following the meeting and the initial synthesis of ideas, we will constitute seven (possibly more) working groups on central topics identified in the meeting. Groups will meet for two years. Each group will be led by a full-time post-doctoral level researcher who is advised by a small group of researchers, policy makers, and stakeholders who have deep expertise in the subject area. The working groups will delve deeply into their respective areas to consider policies, technologies, norms, and scientific advancements needed to optimize functioning in very long lives. We anticipate that the foci of groups will include education, work, finance, health, social engagement, intergenerational relationships, as well as ones that focuses on human interactions with the physical environment (climate, resources) and overarching working groups that focus on culture change and communications. The task of each core will be to develop a detailed and idealized map from birth to death that maximizes the quality of life in the core area along with models that can help to achieve them. Finally, the groups will identify policies, interventions, and social norms that can correct negative trajectories when they present. That is, each core will identify on ramp/off ramp policies, norms, etc., that can help to remedy problems before they spiral downward. SCL will convene these scholar-led groups on a bi-weekly basic so that the group leaders interact across the core areas and get feedback from other groups. Quarterly, SCL will convene the leaders along with the experts to garner input from the broader group of advisors.
Stage 3: Taking it Global Next, we will convene longevity leaders around the globe, in regional meetings in Africa/Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America to share best practices, and expand the thinking globally. While different regions have different demographic profiles and different social constructs by mid-century all regions of the world are aging, less developed countries. Our aim is to have “New Map of Life” models that are relevant to the diverse populations around the world. In this phase of the project we will join with leaders in Europe, Asia, North and South Americas to articulate region – and in some cases state – level changes that support long life.
Stage 4: Communications Essential to achieving our goal will be the need to actively and strategically communicate this vision for a new life course. We will need to enlist the support of the private sector, non-profits, regional and community leaders, in presenting this to the general public. The New Map of Life will turn us into catalyzing agents in creating a new model that will support century long lives
Stage 5: Monitoring We will define ways to monitor progress and create a repository for best practices that can be shared with communities of all sizes to develop their own regional maps. We will begin to instantiate the changes needed to support long life.
Sponsorship Funding Funding will be used for o Convenings (5 worldwide convenings), Communications, working groups, materials, travel, staff
Nearly half of teens said the pandemic had a negative impact on their academics
By Moriah BalingitOctober 29, 2021 at 8:03 a.m. EDT Washington Post
Before the pandemic, high school had been defined for millions of teenagers by familiar rituals: meeting new friends, big games, agonizing over college admissions, prom, yearbook signing, graduations, tearful goodbyes.
Now, the pandemic has become the signature feature of high school for this cohort of adolescents. The forced isolation and lockdowns wrought havoc on teenage lives and shaped them in ways they will never forget.
Unlike adults, many of the eventsand milestones they missed out on are irretrievable. Vacationsand family reunions can be rescheduled. But once a school year is lost, it is gone forever.
Some teens were forced to grow up faster because of the pandemic. Teenagers became de facto caretakers for younger siblings. They became activists, moved to protest in the streets by the murder of George Floyd. They got jobs to support families when the breadwinners were out of work. And as many as 140,000 children lost a parent or caretaker to covid-19.
Against this backdrop, some teens struggled in school, many of them managing virtual classes with teachers who were learning on the fly. Students who were lucky enough to return to in-person classes still had to contend with being quarantined or having their schools shut down. But amid this doom and gloom, there was a silver lining: Some students actually liked remote learning. They preferred being home, or having the flexibility, or feeling less frantic about college. Students who felt chronically overscheduled finally had time to stop and breathe. For some, that space allowed them time to figure out who they were.
For students already facing challenges in school, the shutdowns and virtual learning often made things worse.Some students stopped showing up altogether, or did so infrequently. Experts fear dropout rates will rise.
Now, the vast majority of teenagers have returned to classrooms. In September, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told Congress that 96 percent of schools were back in-person.
About half of teens age 14 to 18 said the pandemic had a negative impact on their academics, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. A third said it had no impact, and about 1 in 6 said it had a positive impact. Teens in urban communities were more likely than those in rural communities to say the impact was negative.
The poll revealed other fault lines: Nearly a quarter of teens of color said the pandemic had a positive impact on their academics — compared with 14 percent of White teens.
So what, exactly, was happening when high school was disrupted for millions of teenagers? Five young people give us some insights into how the pandemic affected their academics — and the things they learned outside of the classroom.
Catherine Wong, 15, 10th grade, Los Altos High School in Los Altos, Calif.
I was in eighth grade when the pandemic started. I was really happy, actually, when the schools first closed down. There was absolutely no organization, so basically there was no school. Before the pandemic, my whole life was basically homework and getting good grades. I would sometimes work until 11 p.m. It was very high-stress.
But when high school started virtually, it was just less serious. It was more, like, stress-free and flexible. They shortened the amount of time that we had in school. The tests were open-book, so they weren’t really reflections of how much you could memorize. It was just more about applying what you learned. Most of my classes didn’t have finals because my teachers all decided to be nice about it because of covid. They were actively trying to help us not fail.
It kind of made me see how crazy I was before — like, every single day I’d be doing homework forever. It was kind of obsessive. But during virtual school, I had a lot more free time. I did a lot of clubs. I did speech and debate, mock trial. I started knitting.
Now that I’m back in school, a lot of my teachers enforce the fact that they’re reverting back to how it was before the pandemic. It’s pretty stressful. The homework load is definitely a lot more. But I’m not as stressed out as I was before. My focus is less on good grades now regarding colleges because over the pandemic, I was able to see how they don’t only care about good grades. There are other factors that come into play.
I think, to an extent, I don’t want my life to be just “you got to get good grades.”
Gemma Lim, 16, 11th grade, Syosset High School in Syosset, N.Y.,
When I was at home, it was hard to not only pay attention but understand what was happening in school. Being at home every day felt monotonous. So I just had no motivation to do anything in school.
When virtual learning first started, I tried brushing my teeth, getting dressed and going downstairs to eat breakfast before going to class. But after a while, I just started getting out of bed. My procrastination got worse, and I started turning in assignments late. I was supposed to be taking this hands-on class where we would be building sets for the school plays. But since I wasn’t there, all I did was watch them build sets from home, on my computer. I couldn’t do anything from home. I just sat in silence the whole period.
Everyone was still trying to figure out how everything worked. One of my teachers didn’t realize that they were muted. So the whole class, we couldn’t hear them. And I guess they had our volume off, so they couldn’t hear us. So it was kind of just us waving on our cameras and being like, “Hey, you’re muted!” Chemistry was really hard. Our teacher would walk around to the front of the class to write on the board. And since her computer was in one spot, I wouldn’t be able to hear her.
I had to go to a lot of guidance counselor meetings because my grades were dropping. All I could do is sit there and be like, “How the heck did this happen?” And then, “How do I fix it?” But also, in my head I was like, “Why did I do this to myself?” I did so horribly, and I can never get those grades back. The counselor asked me how I felt. I was staring at her over the Google Meet because I couldn’t answer her. I don’t know how I feel.
During class I would listen, but it felt like everything was going in one ear and out the other, and I couldn’t keep any of the information. Before the pandemic, I loved playing the violin. Then when the pandemic came, I had no motivation, and then on top of that everything just felt like work. So playing the instrument just wasn’t fun anymore for me.
When school reopened last school year, I had the option of going back to in-person classes. ButI didn’t want to go back to school. I honestly didn’t want to see my teachers because I knew that they knew that I was failing, and I didn’t want to see them face to face after that.
I’m trying to think of something positive. I was able to talk to my friend who was in my class, and made my friendship better with her. I probably wouldn’t have learned that I like creative writing. Being in that class was really nice. But other than that, it just kind of passed very quickly. So many people are saying how 2020 just didn’t exist. There is not much I can say that is positive about it.
Tala Saad, 16, 11th grade, Kentucky Country Day School in Louisville
Strictly numbers-wise, I think it negatively impacted my academics. I’m starting to find out this year that there’s a lot of foundational stuff that we just didn’t have the time to get to in a virtual setting. Virtual school was definitely more challenging. Just trying to focus on what was happening virtually … there was always something chaotic globally happening that was drawing your attention away from school.
French was one of the most difficult subjects to learn virtually. Just kind of the stress of learning a world language through a virtual setting, when so much of it is dependent on context and talking to people and engaging yourself in the language. During my French final freshman year, my WiFi kept cutting out, my computer was dying, and the paper I was writing on, the ink smeared. My teacher called me after watching me through the Google Meet. She said: “You know, I can see you’re clearly stressed. You’re panicking. Go outside. Take a walk.” She let me retake the test.
Then we get to sophomore year, and we’re still virtual, and it just kind of felt like this was never-ending. You know, I think people, including myself, were genuinely thinking that we were going to go through all four years of high school online. And you know, it’s the time that everybody’s like, “These are some of the best years of your life.” And all of the sudden, your time got so much shorter.
Did the pandemic change me? Oh, 100 percent. I used to be an athlete, and that was my main thing before this. There was school, and there was soccer. I was always interested in engineering, and so when we went virtual, I took home the school’s 3-D printer. My dad is a pulmonologist, and he is in the covid unit. They needed face shields. So I started printing them. What was meant to be like 15 or 20 face shields, just to see if we could do it, exploded into over 600.
I’m part of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. We serve as advocates for students across Kentucky. I wish that policymakers would listen to us more. The absolutely critical part that somehow people seem to keep missing is — go to the students, talk to the students. Because nobody knows what’s best for students and what the students need better than the students themselves.
Liv Koulish, 18, freshman, New York University (2021 graduate of Baltimore City College high school)
I would say it’s way more nuanced than just negative or positive. I can’t tell you one thing I learned on virtual school, but I can tell you a whole bunch of things that I learned about myself and about the world around me — which I feel like in a lot of ways, it’s a lot more important than the stuff that we were learning in school at that time.
Still, I feel like doing virtual school was actually in some ways very helpful for me because it gave me more time by myself to kind of explore what I personally wanted to do. Before the pandemic, I was very involved in a lot of things in my school. I was a very social person.
I used to run track and play lacrosse, and I would always be at school. I would have to wake up very early to take a 5 a.m. bus. After school I would either have a meeting with [youth activist group] GoodKids MadCity or speech and debate, and then I would rush off to sports practice. I was absolutely exhausted.
When the pandemic happened, it really slowed me down. I’m trans, and I feel like being alone for the past two years has helped me come to terms with it. As a nonbinary person of color, there was a lot I hadn’t unpacked. I was struggling a lot with just understanding myself as a trans person and understanding that it was okay to be trans, like, period. High school is intense — like, it is not a safe place to figure out who you are as a trans person.
But I also failed a class for the first time. I was busy finishing up requirements for my International Baccalaureate diploma, and a month later I got my report card, and it said I was failing English. And I was like, what? Apparently there was some diorama we had to do, and I didn’t end up doing it.
I’m starting to really love the person I’m becoming. And I feel like I wouldn’t have started to become this person if it weren’t for the pandemic. So yes, it comes with some baggage, but at the same time I kind of found some beauty about it in some ways.
Mandell Blackstone, 17, junior, Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans
I started off sophomore year at Benjamin Franklin virtually. We took four classes a semester, and instead of 90-minute classes, they were 45 minutes. It was less overwhelming. But it was strange starting a new school virtually. I went to campus to grab a laptop from the school, and other than that, I only went onto campus for basketball. Other than that, nobody was really on campus.
I had to take a shower, get something to eat and make sure I got everything ready for the day after. And then I had to do my homework. I would usually stay up until 1 a.m. When they went online, it was a big change for everyone. It was way more work than in-person.
One of the main struggles was being able to stay focused while also at home and being able to sit in front of the screen and just listen. Sometimes it would just go in one ear and out the other. It was a bit difficult. I was not good at paying attention on virtual.
Sophomore year, I didn’t really socialize as much because we were mostly online. You just see people’s faces in a box. You don’t really talk to them that much. Junior year, that’s when I started to socialize more in-person because in-person is really my thing. Some people like socializing online, but in-person is my forte.
The biggest challenge of the pandemic was not that I was depressed but just, every day became the same thing. It kind of became, like, boring and saddening because this isn’t what I’m used to. This isn’t what I want. Mental health and staying focused, all of that was a bit challenging. Just waking up and going on a computer screen for hours — it was very challenging.
The pandemic definitely changed how schoolwork and classwork were distinguished, and how it was given and received. Covid gave them the chance to see that, hey, our kids actually learn better when they have a little bit of a break. So now on Fridays no homework can be assigned, and we just review.P
Photo editing by Mark Miller.5 CommentsGift Article
By Moriah BalingitMoriah Balingit is an education reporter for The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2014. She previously covered crime, city hall and crime in city hall at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Twitter
I Grew Up Poor. How Am I Supposed to Raise My Middle-Class Kids?
Contributing Opinion Writer New York Times November 28th 2021
Every year on Thanksgiving, my children experience something I rarely did when I was growing up. They see their father, mother and siblings all gathered around a family meal with plenty of food to spare. It is so utterly normal to them that they do not even note it. Thanksgiving is just another day of warmth and security.
I have many happy memories of the meals prepared by my single mother and my extended family during the holidays. I know well the debate between turkey and ham as the central dish. I was taught to recognize the difference between good and mediocre macaroni and cheese. I remember spades tournaments, games of dominoes and the rich tenor of Black male laughter. My family found happiness even when it was hard to come by.
The difference between my childhood Thanksgivings and those of my kids is the world that existed around the holiday. My mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was in elementary school; she couldn’t work full time, so we lived mostly on government assistance. Our home was in Huntsville, Ala., some 100 miles northeast of Birmingham, the site of so many pivotal events of the civil rights movement. My little corner of the city, Northwest Huntsville, still bears the scars from redlining and the inadequate desegregation of its schools during the civil rights era.
Violence complicated school, parties and sporting events. As far back as I can remember, I’ve known how to look into a person’s eyes and tell the difference between someone who is willing to fight and someone who is comfortable with much worse.
I loved my neighborhood and fought anyone who tried to reduce us to a series of stereotypes. But the violence exhausted me. I felt as if it would kill me if I didn’t leave — maybe not physically but spiritually. I needed more. I needed space.
Education was a path toward finding that space, and, in some sense, I succeeded. I made it to college and graduate school, and then became a professor. But now I find myself in a difficult, bewildering position: My children do not know how to read a room, observe the set of a jaw or assess the determination of a glare. They wave at strangers and are apt to start up conversations, assuming that the other person bears them good will. They speak about college and futures as lawyers, doctors and teachers as a matter of course. They open the refrigerator and expect to find food. And I sometimes find that I don’t know how to be their father.
This tension is pressing, because this fall, after years as nomads — first because of my wife’s military career and later because of the rough and tumble world of academia — we purchased a beautiful home that we expect to live in for a while. Two of our children entered a private Christian school. We have obtained what many consider to be the American dream. I’m not sure what comes next for me or for them. What has been lost among all the things we have gained?
I can tell them stories of growing up without enough to eat and moving from home to home because we couldn’t afford to pay our rent. I can speak to them about having classmates killed. I can teach them about living in areas defined by redlining and food deserts, but they’ve never had white bread, government cheese or fruit punch as steady parts of their diets. These sound like things experienced by a character in a play, not a part of the life lived by their father.
My children do not understand my world, and I do not understand theirs. I do not know what it’s like to be a child waking up in a home with two college graduates at the helm. I do not know what it’s like to expect birthday parties, Christmas trees (real, not plastic) and tons of presents. I don’t know how things like family vacations or trips overseas spark young imaginations. I didn’t take my first plane trip until college.
I don’t know what it’s like to spend so much time unafraid. Sometimes, I go to my children’s rooms at night and watch them sleep, just to see what it looks like to have dreams that are seemingly so free of nightmares.
I am who I am because I had to struggle and suffer. I came from the mud, and even now I remember how the dirt tastes. When my mother told me that my grandfather grew up as a tenant farmer, I could drive past cotton fields in Alabama and imagine what his life was like. The land was bursting with memory. My children and I have returned to the South and to the very neighborhood where I grew up. I once drove my two oldest kids to the home I used to live in. But the land, the dirt and the concrete don’t speak to them the way they do to me. The ghosts do not haunt them.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of treating poverty as some kind of learning experience. Black and brown people need to have paths to success that don’t involve overcoming a legacy of racism and structural injustice. We need more ordinary roads to flourishing.
And yet, I cannot help believing that my children have lost something: the determination born of suffering. I wish that I could give them that feeling. That suffering was the context within which my mother taught me about the value of education. It formed the background of my pastors’ sermons in the Black churches of my youth. The only God that I have ever known was one who cared about my Black body and my Black soul. That suffering was a unifying factor in all my deepest friendships. Those bonds are special because of what we survived.
How do you parent when you were raised in a context of fear and your children are not afraid? (It’s an odd dilemma when you’ve worked your entire life to ensure that they will not be.) I am not sure. Ask me in a couple of decades. I do know that I can begin by realizing that I don’t have to parent them out of my own fear. Not everything Northwest Huntsville taught me was good for me. To this day, I find it difficult to trust and relax. The hard exterior that I developed is of little use when my daughter or son needs a hug.
Still, I can teach my children the most important lesson my mother taught me: Our circumstances do not determine our worth. My kids are not in some ontologically different category than poor kids. If they are ever tempted to look down upon others, I remind them to see the face of their father on the visages of the poor.
The life I live is the complicated legacy of a survivor. I want to instill in my children the sense of Black possibility and responsibility that arises in the hearts of those who escaped the fire. It’s the fierce urgency born of a gratitude to God that we survived, coupled with the knowledge that it shouldn’t be that hard. It is a message that I needed when my belly was empty. I hope that my children listen now that their bellies are full.
At my family’s Thanksgiving, we all go around the table and name something we are grateful for. I am thankful for my wife and children. I am thankful for the life that they live. But I am also thankful for the things I suffered that made me who I am and for the ways that such suffering does not let you go. It ties you to all the other hurting people of the world. It gives your success a vocation and a purpose: to create more happy families gathering for family meals.
Single-family zoning preserves century-old segregation, planners say. A proposal to add density is dividing neighborhoods.
By Katherine Shaver November 20, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EST Washington Post
On the edge of downtown Silver Spring, Dan Reed and his neighbors have been discussing how the Maryland suburb should look and feel, conversations that have flared into sometimes heated debates over race, class and the pace of change.
Reed bristles when he hears that allowing more multifamily housing and townhouses like his would “disrupt, destroy and displace” neighborhoods of single-family houses. To Reed, an urban planning consultant, it’s the same language used to enact 20th-century zoning codes, still in use today, that effectively perpetuated segregation by pricing out lower-income residents.
It’s fine to argue about the effects of increasing density in neighborhoods, Reed said, “But all of the stuff we’re talking about is built on this foundation of racism and exclusion. We can’t escape it.’”
Montgomery County planners agree with him. Eyeing a shortage of housing and soaring home prices, they have proposed changing zoning to make it easier to build duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings alongside the suburban ideal of detached houses with ample yards. For a century, they say, limiting lots to one house has not only driven up housing costs by restricting the supply of land, but prolonged de facto segregation and the race gap in generational wealth derived from homeownership.
If changes are approved, Montgomery would join a growing movement nationwide that seeks to promote racial equity and add more lower-cost housing by abolishing or relaxing single-family zoning. Efforts gained traction last year following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The idea of building more homes closer together is testing the essence of suburbia — places born of a quest for living space, greenery and freedom from crowds. It has ignited a firestorm in liberal Montgomery, a once majority-White, upscale bedroom community to the nation’s capital that has prided itself on progressive inclusivity as it becomes more racially diverse and less wealthy.
“It’s a really thorny issue,” said Montgomery planning director Gwen Wright. “I think many people believe the purpose of a suburb is to provide one house on one lot with a picket fence and privacy.”
At least 10 cities, including Minneapolis and Portland, have loosened single-family zoning laws or are considering doing so. New laws in Oregon and California require cities statewide to allow for different housing types in single-family zones, while Arlington County is studying the idea and Prince George’s County is about to. Similar zoning proposals died in recent Maryland and Virginia legislative sessions.
The Biden administration proposed $5 billion in grants for governments that eliminate state and local zoning it says “contributes to the racial wealth gap” and restricts lower- and moderate-income housing. The social spending plan that passed the House on Friday includes a reduced $1.75 billion for such grants.
“When you exclude people based on income, you are also excluding people based on race,” said Jenny Schuetz, a housing economist at the Brookings Institution. “That may not be the intent, but that’s the effect.”
But what might sound like a laudable goal has proved a tough political fight, even in left-leaning jurisdictions facing severe housing shortages.Advertisement
In the District, planners recommended the city allow more duplexes, triplexes and other “gentle density” in single-family zones — especially in higher-cost areas near transit, jobs and schools — when recently updating a long-term growth plan. However, the D.C. Council sidelined the proposal, calling for additional studies following opposition from residents in single-family neighborhoods, both majority-Black and White.
Andrew Trueblood, director of the D.C. Office of Planning, said the idea might have fizzled because it came up late in a years-long process, adding that planners will try again when the plan is rewritten in 2025. Nexttime, he said, they will explore the idea neighborhood by neighborhood.
“Having these more nuanced, important discussions is something we’re going to have to do,” Trueblood said. “But I think it’s going to be hard. There are going to be people who feel threatened one way or another, on both sides.”
A ‘toxic atmosphere’ around zoning
In Montgomery, any zoning change would take effect countywide. However, the issue has captured particular attention in neighborhoods around downtown Silver Spring because relaxing single-family zoning also is being considered as part of updating the area’s community plan.
It could be the first such plan in the county, planners wrote, “to acknowledge and begin to address the deep disparities in wealth and homeownership that were shaped by a legacy of discriminatory lending practices, restrictive covenants and single-family zoning and its secondary impacts on neighborhoods that is still being felt today.”
Some zoning change advocates have accused opponents of being “lip-service liberals” who stick Black Lives Matter signs in their front yards but resist the possibility of more economically or racially diverse neighbors. Opponents often are portrayed as older, mostly White, longtime residents with the political power to exclude others. At a recent rally outside county planners’ headquarters in Wheaton, about 40 protesters carried signs that read “Save Our Neighborhoods” and shouted, “Stop rezoning!”
“I’ve been doing this stuff for about 20 years in Montgomery County, and we’ve never had this kind of toxic atmosphere around a particular issue,” said Alan Bowser, president of the Montgomery County Civic Federation.Advertisement
The group has said altering single-family zoning would cause “drastic and unprecedented changes” to neighborhoods, spark gentrification and not provide truly affordable housing.
Bowser, an attorney who lives east of downtown Silver Spring, said he and other residents understand the “terrible” racist history of some neighborhoods, including those that had racial covenants. He said the house he bought 26 years ago for $185,000 probably would fetch more than $750,000, but that doesn’t mean he or his neighbors are exclusive or wealthy.
“These neighborhoods aren’t all-White — they’re not even affluent,” said Bowser, 69, who is Black. “My street is a bunch of young couples with kids. There are Ethiopians, African Americans, a woman from the Congo. Our neighborhood in East Silver Spring is very diverse, so I don’t see in 2021 the segregated aspects to it. If anything, it’s segregated not by racial divisions, but it’s the ability of people to buy these houses.”
Reed, who is half-Black and half-Indian — and who lives a mile from Bowser — said opponents don’t appreciate that today’s race and wealth gaps between neighborhoods often stem from segregation.
Reed said he could barely afford the $445,000 townhouse he and his partner bought in East Silver Spring in 2019 — it took searching for two years, working five jobs between them, and building up equity in a condo the county had required the developer to set aside as lower-income. Across the street from his townhouse community are detached houses that sell for more than $700,000, often above asking price, he said.Advertisement
On historical maps showing where redlining occurred, he said, “The red line went right down my street. So it’s no surprise that 70, 80 years later [this] whole stretch was apartment buildings and the townhouses where I live. The legacy of these things remains intact, and we have to confront that.”
Gray Kimbrough, an economist and fellow East Silver Spring resident, said more people need access to the kind of home he and his wife bought for $360,000, which they recently sold after nine years for an “absurd” $780,000. Soaring home prices, he said, are a direct result of a housing supply limited by a zoning code that grew out of racial covenants.
“It has the impact of excluding people that are more likely to be non-White and poorer than you,” said Kimbrough, 40, who is White. “Maybe [opponents of relaxing single-family zoning] don’t want to be racist, but that’s the impact of what they’re doing.”Advertisement
Longtime residents say they can’t speak publicly about wanting to retain the spacious, relatively bucolic feel of their neighborhoods without being unfairly labeled as racist or elitist.
“It’s completely untrue, and it’s hurtful,” said Bill Scanlan, president of the Woodside Civic Association. “It’s a message that’s very effective, but it’s untrue.”
During a recent tour of Woodside, Scanlan said many residents move there because it’s a 10-minute walk to Silver Spring’s Metro station, ethnic restaurants and a vibrant atmosphere. At the same time, he said, they enjoy homes with large yards for kids to play in. Detached houses in Woodside have sold for an average $1.17 million this year, while townhouses have fetched an average of almost $812,000, according to data from real estate broker Liz Brent.
Scanlan and some other Woodside opponents of looseningsingle-family zoning say they support building affordable, subsidized townhouses and apartments on a county-owned parcel along Georgia Avenue at the edge of their neighborhood. But they say there is no evidence that allowing higher-density housing at market rates would make their community more economically or racially diverse.Advertisement
A county analysis showed that — partly because of high land costs — a new large duplex in or near downtown Silver Spring would sell for about $855,000. A developer told officials in the Town of Chevy Chase that new duplexes there could sell for $1.23 million — less expensive than many new single-family houses but beyond the reach of most buyers.
That would help developers and home builders, say opponents, while residents would be left with the consequences of denser housing: more parked cars clogging streets, fewer trees, stressed water and sewer pipes, more students jamming overcrowded schools and more flooding from storm water running off larger parking areas. Worse yet, they say, is the planners’ proposal to allow some higher-density housing “by right” — meaning builders would no longer have to seek planning board approval or solicit public input, leaving neighbors unable to object.
“We’re not against duplexes, or triplexes for that matter,” said Scanlan, 65, a retired broadcaster who is White. “We’re concerned about the impact of density on a lot of things in the neighborhood.”
Kimblyn Persaud, founder of EPIC of MoCo and a leader of the opposition, said she’s worried her Wheaton neighborhood, with lower land prices than closer-in areas like Silver Spring and Bethesda, would be among the first pursued by developers.
Persaud, who is Black, said her neighborhood is already racially and economically diverse. However, she said, she’s worried luxury duplexes would replace older, smaller and more affordable houses, driving up property taxes while displacing the lower-income residents whom planners aim to help.
“We have affordable housing now, and we want it to be protected,” Persaud said. “We don’t want gentrification on such a large scale.”
Montgomery planners say new, unsubsidized duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes would provide more “attainable” options for middle-income buyers, as opposed to affordable housing for those with lower incomes.
The alternative, planners say, is continuing to see more larger and pricier custom homes — often dubbed “McMansions” that sell for up to $3 million — that have been replacing smaller, older and less expensive houses torn down in sought-after inner suburbs.
The county would still need to pursue more subsidized housing for lower-income residents, Wright said.
Under the preliminary Montgomery proposals being considered, duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes would have to be “house-scale,” with the same height limitations and setback requirements of detached homes. They also would be required to blend with neighborhoods, possibly such as by having one door at the street entrance.
Quadplexes would be limited to within a mile of Metro, future Purple Line or other rail stations. They also could be built within 500 feet of a major road with a planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line, as well asnear Connecticut Avenue and part of River Road inside the Capital Beltway.
Stacked flats, townhouses and apartment buildings with up to 19 units — whichcould be up to four stories high — would be allowed on some single-family lots that abut those future BRT corridors, as well as Connecticut Avenue and part of River Road inside the Beltway. These larger structures would require planning board approval, as well as public input. Minimum off-street parking requirements, which are two spaces per single-family house, could be reduced for higher-density homes, based on their proximity to transit.
Wright said planners expect that growth in new “missing middle” housing would be “incremental,” based on the 200 or so houses razed in the county each year.
Housing experts say cities that have eliminated or relaxed single-family zoning haven’t seen a flurry of duplex and triplex construction.
Rebecca Lewis, an associate planning and policy professor at the University of Oregon, said it’s too early to know the full effects of Oregon’s 2019 law, which allows up to four units per single-family lot, depending on a city’s population.
Zoning is one of many factors that determine the cost — and pace — of new home building, she said. Even so, Lewis said, other benefits of opening up single-family neighborhoods, such as promoting racial equity and combating climate change by helping more people live closer to mass transit and jobs, could outweigh potential negatives.
“It’s not going to change neighborhoods overnight,” Lewis said. “It’s going to take decades to really show an impact, and that impact is going to be gradual. I think that’s one way to address the sort of fear-based concerns about neighborhood change and gentrification.”
Experts say it’s also too soon to know how much, if at all, zoning changes can better integrate single-family neighborhoods racially or economically. Development trends can take decades to play out as homes turn over, experts say, and it can be difficult to separatethe effects of zoning from other factors in the housing market.
A study by Iowa State University assistant planning professor Daniel Kuhlmann found that property values in Minneapolis had increased 3 to 5 percent one year after the city eliminated single-family zoning in late 2018. But researchers say longer-term data will be necessary to determine whether, or how quickly, the overall housing supply becomes more affordable, infrastructure gets overwhelmed or residents get priced out.
“A lot of us are interested in racial equity, and we hope these changes might result in more integrated neighborhoods,” said Yonah Freemark, a land use and transportation researcher at the Urban Institute. “Frankly, there’s very little evidence that shows that if you change the zoning, you’ll make [neighborhoods] more integrated. We need more evidence on that.”
Montgomery planners say they aim to recommend any zoning code changes to the county council by the end of the year, and both the council and planning board would hold public hearings before any votes. The idea also is included in a proposed update of the county’s long-term growth policy document, known as Thrive Montgomery 2050.
Montgomery council member Will Jawando (D-At Large), who is Black, said the county must relax single-family zoning, as well as stabilize rents for lower-income residents. He said developers should help pay to fix problems that additional housing can impose on aging infrastructure and crowded schools.
But Montgomery, he said, also must reckon with its discriminatory past.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to beat people over the head and say ‘The only reason you’re against this is because you’re racist,’ ” Jawando said.“Are there people who are against this because they’re racist? Sure. But is everyone? No. I think it’s more that where you live is deeply personal, and change is hard.”
Today’s guest post is the first in our AmeriCorps Alums Founders Club series and comes to us from Brad Meltzer’s 20th anniversary of AmeriCorps speech with Volunteer Florida. Brad is the #1 New York Times bestselling thriller writer of The Inner Circle, and the host of Lost History on H2. His non-fiction children’s book include I Am Amelia Earhart, I Am Abraham Lincoln, and I Am Rosa Parks. Find more about him at BradMeltzer.com and @BradMeltzer.
When I was 24, I thought I was invincible.
When I was 24, I was dating the most beautiful girl at Harvard. (I knew her before Harvard. She was my high school sweetheart. Now she’s my wife.)
When I was 24, I had $30,000 in outstanding student loans.
When I was 24, I wanted to direct movies (I had just seen this new movie PulpFiction); I wanted to meet JFK (I had just seen Forrest Gump); and I wanted to go to prison (Shawshank Redemption.) It was a good year for movies.
When I was 24, I wanted to write novels.
Brad speaks at Volunteer Florida’s 20th anniversary of AmeriCorps event. (Photo Credit: Volunteer Florida)
When I was 24, my mom hadn’t died from breast cancer.
When I was 24, my dad hadn’t died from heart disease.
When I was 24, I wanted to vote for Nelson Mandela, who that year was elected the first black president of South Africa.
When I was 24, I didn’t care what anyone thought about me. Unless it hurt.
When I was 24, I never filled my car up all the way at a gas station in order to save money.
When I was 24, I got 24 rejection letters on my first novel. And when I was 24, I said, “I don’t care. If they didn’t like that book, I’ll write another. And if they don’t like that one, I’ll write another.” A week later, I started on my second novel, The Tenth Justice. That one actually sold.
When I was 24, I volunteered for a service day put on by this organization called City Year.
When I was 24, I firmly believed that anything was possible.
When I was 24, a man named Eli Segal—my mentor—asked me to co-write an oath for this brand new organization they were calling AmeriCorps. It’s the oath that’s still taken today. To this day, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of working on.
When I was 24, I had no idea that I would watch the words I wrote come out of the mouths of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
When I was 24, my favorite line of the oath was this one: “Where there is adversity, I will persevere.” It was strong. It was defiant. It never quit.
Today, 20 years later, I love the next line just as much: “I will carry this commitment with me, this year and beyond.”
Back then, it was a hope. Today, it’s a reality.
Happy 20th birthday, AmeriCorps. I owe you forever for what you gave me. And I owe Eli even more.
Making sure our own needs are met is as important as taking care of those we love most. When turning your attention toward yourself feels challenging, there are simple ways to move through the discomfort. Explore our new guide for tips, practices, and reminders on how to engage in self-care.
Self-care means asking yourself what you need and following through on the honest answer. Practicing self-care can be as simple as getting to bed earlier on a work night, or as hard as taking a look at some of the habits you’ve created for yourself and their long-term effects.
What Is Self-Care?
Self-care is the practice of taking an active role in protecting our own well-being, pursuing happiness, and having the ability, tools, and resources to respond to periods of stress so that they don’t result in imbalance and lead to a health crisis. Self-care means asking yourself what you need, and following through on the honest answer. Self-care can be as simple as getting to bed earlier on a work night, or as hard as taking a look at some of the habits you’ve created for yourself and their long-term effects.
The History of Self-Care
The “radical” concept of self-care was born during the civil rights era, a time when brave individuals were fighting the relentless enemies of prejudice and discrimination. These American heroes created the first real communities of care, standing strong together in the face of seemingly impossible challenges and unspeakable treatment.
It can’t be lost on us that one of the concepts they were fighting for was (and remains) the basic human right to self-care. People of color were often denied medical treatment at hospitals and healthcare centers. The government had turned its back on them. Self-care, quite literally, became a matter of life and death. They were fighting an exhausting battle and the only support to be found was in each other and within themselves.
The basic idea of being able to care for oneself, of having the time, money, and resources necessary to do so, was born out of the civil rights movement.
How to Build a Self-Care Movement
1) Let’s destigmatize mental health. We need to change the way we look at mental health and make sure every person has access to the caregivers, transportation, treatment, and funds needed to properly address mental health.
2) Commit to sharing your self-care knowledge. We all have daily routines and personal challenges. But let’s stop trying to go it alone. When we take the time to create space in our schedules for others; when we organize and meet up with our friends and social groups; even when we exchange a few thoughtful emails, we’re building communities of care and, therefore, fueling the self-care revolution.
3) Help define the standards. The slow adoption of self-care in our culture is in big part due to a lack of definition. We don’t know what the standards of self-care are, or should be, because they’ve never been clearly established. Once we define the standards for self-care, it will legitimize our cause by providing a clear roadmap for people to follow. They’ll be able to create a plan, measure their progress, and make changes along the way based on realistic and achievable goals.
4) Understand that exhausted leadership is poor leadership. Exhaustion leads to shorter attention spans, increased emotional volatility, and poor decision making—Not exactly the qualities of a great leader. That’s why it’s vital that our efforts in leading the self-care movement are sustainable. If we burnout, it will be replicated by our staff, volunteers, children, and others in our sphere of influence. To create a culture of self-care we must be willing to model a sustainable work pace.
5) Ask reflection questions to yourself and your team. In the effort to move from reflection to action, and to build momentum to climb that next peak, we should ask ourselves key questions that will help us improve our own self-care habits and that of those around us. These questions may include:
How does the quality of my leadership diminish due to the lack of my own self-care?
Which habit(s) negatively impact my self-care and what new behavior can I substitute it with?
Do I have a self-care plan in place to ensure I follow-up on this new behavior and have I shared this plan with others who will hold me accountable?
How will I track my progress along the way?
How can I best support my staff/volunteers/friends/family members in their endeavors?
The modern self-care movement needs to start as a practice to avoid burnout, rather than as a response to it. The movement must demand that individuals put their health and wellness first without feeling guilty for doing so.
Why Is Self-Care Important?
Self-care can be an intervention tool that keeps you from being completely sucked into the vortex, saving you when you find yourself standing on the precipice gazing into the dark abyss.
3 Reasons You Need a Self-Care Plan
A Self-Care Plan is a fail-safe, created by you, and filled with your favorite self-care activities, important reminders, and ways to activate your self-care community. Here’s why it’s important to create your own Self-Care plan:
1) Customizing a Self-Care Plan is a preventative measure. By designing a roadmap that is unique to you, in moments when you’re NOT in crisis, you’re directing your best self to reflect on what you may need (and have access to) in your worst moments. The reality is that only YOU know how intense your stress levels can get and what resources are available to you.
2) Having a plan takes the guesswork out of what to do and where to turn in moments of crisis. From a mindfulness point of view, it helps you respond instead of react to the situation at hand. When you have a plan in place, you’ll feel more in control of your circumstances and life won’t feel quite as chaotic. (It also makes it easier to ask for help from those you share your plan with.)
3) A Self-Care Plan helps you stay the course. You’ll find it far easier to stick to your personal care strategy and avoid falling into the trap of making excuses. Having a plan helps you establish a routine, ensuring that you and your self-care partners don’t wind up in isolation. Instead you can check in with each other, hold each other accountable, and share the responsibility to support one another.
How to Create a Self-Care Plan
Your Self-Care Plan is a roadmap that you can carry in your back pocket. It’s there to help you walk your talk as well as help you find your way back to equilibrium by providing a clearly defined route back home if you find yourself on off-track.
1) First, create an activity list organized around different parts of your life. One of the easiest ways to start is by breaking up this daunting task into several categories, for example:
Work
Physical Fitness
Emotional Life
Relationships & Community
For each area above, write down the activities or strategies that you can call on, that are authentic to you and contribute to your well-being.
Some examples include spending time with friends, being active, mindfulness meditation, and finding the confidence to create healthy boundaries (here’s a template). Have fun, be creative, and most importantly, be real with yourself about what works for you and what doesn’t.
2) Second, note any barriers that may be in your way and how to shift them. As you write down each activity, ask yourself what barriers might get in the way of you being able to accomplish it.
3) Third, share your plan with your closest friends. Don’t forget to rely on your network of self-care buddies, your community of care.
How to Practice Self-Care
The main idea is that neither “fighting” nor “fleeing” are sustainable. More than that, they are responses we can move away from, we can evolve beyond. We often hear that our brains are hard-wired for fight-or-flight, that “we evolved this way,” but we know now that we continue to evolve. Our brains can be rewired.
How can we evolve beyond fight-or-flight? By choosing to move toward two new responses: empathy and action, which all starts with self-care.
A Few Ways to Practice Self-Care Today
Grass-roots meditation activist Shelly Tygielski offers three ways to practice self-care so we can recharge, refresh, and rewire for action.
Allow yourself to (finally) unplug from the news and social media for a few days. Turn off your alerts and push notifications, turn off the TV, and don’t access social media. If you must access it for work or otherwise, limit your time and do not engage or comment on posts. It’s not forever—it’s a few days of peace and being off the grid.
Recognize when you are in need of self-care and then respond to that need. Sometimes taking time for self-care may impact the lives of those around you (for example, you need to take the day off from work or ask for someone to watch the kids). Inform those around you that you are responding to a personal need but do not feel the need to ask for permission.
Have a self-care checklist ready that has dozens of options tailored just for you. These self-care options can range from scheduling a mid-day call with a friend to drawing a bubble bath. Having this list ready is important because when you are on the verge of burnout, you may not have the capacity to come up with the options at that moment.
The Most Courageous Self-Care Act: Learning to Say, “I Need Help”
Are you the type of person who’s too busy driving from place to place to stop and fill that gas tank with the beaming low fuel light? Too busy rushing about to take a moment? Too guilty to take a pause even though it’s clear you need one? Perhaps, you don’t feel empowered enough to demand a break? Or, maybe you’re just so caught up in your day that it’s easier to ignore all the signs telling you it’s time to pause, breathe, and assess the situation.
Being able to identify the need for a “personal moment” is critical. However, the reality is most of us are already pretty good at this part of the equation. Where we tend to fall short is acting on our own recognition. It’s not enough just to notice that low fuel light inside your head. You have to do what it’s telling you—pull over, put it in park, and refuel. This isn’t always easy and, in fact, often requires a good bit of personal courage.
3 Self-Care Tools for Claiming Your Healing Time
1) The Confession Statement: Name it to Tame It
In a nutshell, the “name it to tame it” or “confession statement” allows you to acknowledge your fears internally, while openly admitting your needs to a confidant. A confession statement might go something like this:
“I’m a little nervous to admit this and I hope you will accept it, but I need to take a step back. I need a quiet moment to find clarity of mind and spirit.”
You, the confessor, finds a welcoming and non-judgmental ear. Your confidant knows that he or she is being trusted with your vulnerability, freeing you of burdens that inhibit your self-care. It’s a pretty good feeling all around.
2) The Pre-Ask: Asking For Help or Space Before You Actually Need It
Most people refuse to ask for help or acknowledge that they need a little space until their anxiety is already at a boiling point. Let’s go back to the “low fuel” light analogy. When the light comes on, you know you’ve only got about 30 miles before running out of gas. But, hey, that’s still 30 miles! No need to start looking for a gas station immediately. Why worry about what’s going to happen down the road, right? In the case of self-care, it’s the accumulation of stressors that haven’t been addressed that flick on that light. These stressors get more and more critical as you head down life’s road, piling up and piling on until you find yourself with an empty tank—or burnout.
In other words, don’t wait too long. Let those you trust know when you feel like you’re approaching the point of needing help or a step back. Give them time to ready themselves so that they can be more effective when you do reach out.
A pre-ask invites someone to accept your request for help, space, or time before you actually ask for it.
3) The Kindness Factor: Remember That People Love To Help
Think about the last time you helped someone, or were willing to recognize their need for space. Chances are you came out of the experience feeling a powerful sense of gratification, goodwill, and pride. That’s because we humans actually love helping each other. We’re hard-wired for empathy. We like doing good things for one another, which is why acts of kindness large and small happen all around the world every single day.
It stands to reason, therefore, that there are plenty of people in your life who at one time or another would have been happy to help you had they been asked. They would have gladly watched your kids, assisted with the project you were stuck on, or just given you the space you needed to take a moment of reflection. The problem was never their willingness to help you. The problem was and is your fear and inability to reach out with the ask.
People who want to help are out there. But you have to open the door and invite them inside.
Emotional Self-Care for Difficult Times
Acknowledge the hopelessness you feel, refrain from wearing a mask of happiness, remember that nothing is permanent and that clinging to anything—whether it be hopelessness and despair or our plans to change the world—confines us to suffering.
This too shall pass.
How to Engage in Emotional Self-Care
1) Connect with others who are passionate about the same issues. Whether it’s your self-care buddies, community of care, or a local organization or campaign you are volunteering for, surround yourself with people who can understand how you feel. Venting alone doesn’t help. But combine complaining with action? There is a winning recipe!
2) Put good deeds back into the universe—directly. Focus on creating that human connection, on giving back, and on showing others that there is still kindness in the world.
3) Curate your methods of staying informed. Truly evaluate how much news you are absorbing and be mindful of how the news affects you—physically, mentally and emotionally.
How to Manage Difficult Emotions Without Suppressing Them
When it comes to regulating difficult emotions, there are two ways most people respond: they act out or they suppress. If you act out with a strong emotion like anger, you will most likely create undesirable consequences in your relationships, your work, and even your play. The ripple effects of acting out usually provoke more anger around you, which leads to more difficulty. The consequences of suppressing those big emotions can be even more dangerous.
What many people aren’t aware of is that there’s another way to regulate our emotions: Feel the feeling in real time.
On one level, emotions are like energy waves, varying in shape and intensity, just like ocean waves. Their nature is to arise and pass away pretty quickly, like all natural phenomena. If you attempt to interrupt this process, through acting out or suppressing, several things can happen. Tragically (and ironically), efforts to “talk yourself out of your emotions” often results in “increased rumination and perseveration.” In other words, you will keep thinking about and holding onto those emotions you’re trying to avoid. Anyone who’s had a deep tissue massage has empirical evidence for how the body holds suppressed feelings. Suppression gets held in the body and creates a host of downstream effects including anxiety, depression, stress-related illness, all the way to substance abuse and suicide
The Embarrassing Truth of Self-Care
Contributing editor, Anne Alexander, shares some cringeworthy reasons why self-care might just be something worth considering.
Self-care can be a touchy subject. It certainly was for me.
I used to think that “self-care” was for privileged, entitled, lucky folks who were out of touch with the lives of real people. And that made me angry. Jealous and snarky. I conjured self-care as something for Lululemon-wearing stay-at-home mommies heading off to pilates vs harried, hectic, frantic single working mothers like me who were barely keeping it together.
Yep, I was one of those people who sneered at self-care.
Instead, I ran myself ragged, giving all of my time, energy and attention to my work, my kids, keeping up with my bills, the house, the dog, until my frantic, precarious world exploded in one horrifying moment. I got “downsized.” Let go. Laid off from a job that I had moved my family hundreds of miles to take, the one that paid my bills, kept a roof over our heads, where I loved my colleagues, where I tap-danced like mad to turn around the company’s stomach-churning financial problems. In one short conversation, I got jolted out of a job that I thought was the center of my being.
As the shards of my life got blown to smithereens, I discovered—if I’m being embarrassingly honest with you—that there had been one very important missing ingredient all along. That ingredient was self-love.
Self-love. Ugh. Another awkward subject. Self-love is even harder to talk about than self-care. In fact, the sound of self-love can still give me the creeps; it makes me feel weak, pathetic, and vulnerable. Like it’s an admission to being such a loser that no one loves you, so you’ve got to love yourself your own damn self. How pathetic is that?
Well, pathetic, or not, what I learned is that ultimately, everything, including self-care, grows out of self-love. You first have to care enough about yourself to take care of yourself. You have to know that you matter in order to treat yourself like you do. And for some people, like yours truly, learning that was a long, slow journey with a priceless payoff.
Self-Care Practices to Use Every Day
Rethinking Our Self-Care During the Pandemic
Shelly Tygielski explains why intentional care for yourself is needed, now more than ever.
Besides disinfecting and washing my hands, I made a list of the best ways I could take care of my heart and spirit in these times, putting that proverbial oxygen mask on first before I tend to my family, my community, and the world.
Here are eight things that are on my extensive list:
1. Stick with my normal, daily meditation practice. It’s easy to lose track of time when the days blend into one another, but now more than ever, my twice daily meditation practice (20 minutes at a time) is so important. Also, I no longer have the excuse “I don’t have time” these days—all I seem to have is time, I just need to remain disciplined.
2. Maintain contact virtually by creating a schedule. Now is a great time to make sure that we check on the ones who matter to us, and those who we rarely get to see in person because they are so far away. However, it’s very easy to lose track of time—especially across time zones—so having a set schedule of times to check in, hang out and even eat “dinner” together can help to restore some social structure to the day.
3. Get outdoors. If you are blessed to live in a place where there are parks or waterfronts (that are not closed during the pandemic) and you can access them with walks, runs, and bikes, it’s a blessing that should not be squandered. Each day I commit to getting outdoors and moving for at least an hour, plus taking a barefoot walk on grass.
4. Give myself permission to cry. This is actually a point on my usual Self-Care Plan, which seemed appropriate to migrate over in these times. I know that I will inevitably feel sad, disheartened, or downright hopeless at times, but I also know that giving myself permission to feel these emotions fully and turn towards my suffering will help me release any pain or tension and help me see the sun through the clouds once again.
5. Create a venting-hour. Just like some families have adopted a “happy hour,” we’ve adopted a “venting hour.” It sometimes only lasts five minutes but being that we are all stuck together in close quarters for the next few weeks or months, we make sure that there is an “airing of grievances,” (just like in Seinfeld’s fictitious holiday, Festivus), so that nobody keeps anything inside. I found that it reduces the build-up of tension and makes sure that there is no resentment, which is possible for even the kindest amongst us.
6. Limit how often and through what means I access the news and information. I have personally noticed how I feel when I watch the news or hear certain people speak, so now, I limit myself to 30 minutes of news per day on the television with a news anchor and station I trust. Otherwise, I mostly get my news online by reading articles and transcripts of press conferences. I also make sure to not watch the news before I go to bed, because it can get me all worked up, which is counterproductive.
7. Be of service to others without depleting myself. Within a few days of people in my community being laid off, I started to get emails and see posts on social media from my friends and community members who were scared about having their basic needs met—food, medicines, and other essentials. I realized that because I did not share those concerns, I am in a position of privilege to help others and that I can use my platform to help neighbors, community members and even strangers. I put my grass-roots activism skills to work and launched the Pandemic of Love project, a mutual aid community that has connected more than 10,000 families in need with patrons who can offer help.
8. When all else fails, ask myself: “What do I need at this moment?” This is my default question—the one I immediately ask myself when I sense that I am not feeling right, physically or mentally. I just pause, take a long, slow deep breath and ask myself this question. In this space between, I almost always find the answer.
Each day, invariably, I find myself looking at this list. It provides me with a measure of comfort, reminds me that I am in control, and that in times of crisis, I have the choice to either be my own worst enemy, or my best ally. I choose the latter.
4 Self-Care Habits to Practice at Work
We are our own worst critic—and it could be holding us back in the workplace. Here are four ways to stop being so hard on ourselves and use simple moments during the day to wind down when we feel overwhelmed.
Practicing self-compassion is as important as applying compassion to others. When feeling self-compassion becomes challenging, try the following approaches:
1. Use lunch as an act of self-care. When you eat, take a moment to notice this nourishment you’re giving yourself. You have the power to choose to eat something that makes you feel good. Bonus: research shows that when you make a healthy food choice, noticing the positive feelings this gives you serves to reinforce the behavior, making you more likely to choose healthy foods the next time.
2. Remember that, just like you, we all feel like frauds. When you find yourself in self-deprecation mode, calling yourself names, telling yourself that you can’t do something well enough, and generally being a bully to yourself, remember that most people suffer from this “imposter syndrome,” the feeling that we are just pretending, that we don’t really belong, that we will be found out, that our true inadequacy will become obvious to the people around us, who are, for some reason, being tricked for the time being. The fact is that everyone you work with, no matter how self-assured they seem, experiences self-doubt. This is the human condition. And these are just thoughts, so you don’t have to believe them.
3. Be a friend to yourself. As corny as that may sound, it’s a trick my business school students have found incredibly useful. When you notice you’re being hard on yourself over a problem, imagine a dear friend coming to you with the same problem. How would you respond? How would you offer support? What would you say? How would you regard your friend? Now try giving these responses to yourself.
4. Ask for help. Many of us are caught up in the idea that we need to “be a professional,” which we equate as being stoic, handling things on our own. In this mind-set, we don’t think to ask for kindness or validation. In fact, we would likely refuse to accept it. Over time, though, this “I’ve got this” attitude begins to wear thin, and we realize we can’t do our jobs alone. Experiment with giving someone else the chance to support you. If this is a completely foreign idea to you, then I suggest you do it even more. People like to help! Think of how you feel when you get to help others. Helping people makes us feel good about ourselves and connected to others. So, instead of defaulting to “No, thanks” or “It’s okay, I’m fine” when someone offers you something, try saying yes.
The school year is under way and as educators, students, and families fall into a new, yet familiar rhythm, the business of learning begins. Despite many teachers’ best planned lessons, best decorated boards, and most innovative stations, they may be dismayed to find that some of their students are simply not learning, are having trouble paying attention, or are even too emotionally dysregulated to engage in the basics of math, writing, and reading. There are a lot of good reasons this could be going on, and we often jump to ADHD, ODD, laziness, or any number of common “culprits” behind such behaviors. While we’re quick to label, we often forget to investigate why those behaviors might be showing up in the first place, and frequently overlook the impact of toxic stress and trauma on our students.
How Stress and Trauma Affect the Brain
When we think about our students’ learning brains, we might imagine an upstairs and a downstairs. The upstairs brain, namely the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is our academic brain, and helps us with executive functioning skills like planning, organizing, regulating, and inhibiting impulses. The downstairs brain consists of our limbic system (including the amygdala), which is responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response and bypasses the PFC so our bodies can respond quickly to threats of danger (perceived or real). What does this look like?
Cortisol and adrenaline, stress hormones, flood the brain
The muscles contract and eyes dilate
Palms may get sweaty
Heart rate increases
The body is ready to fight, run away, or freeze to survive. The most critical thing to remember is that our brains and bodies are wired for survival. Even though we’re not all necessarily facing predatory animals in the wild, our brains respond the same way to other events in our lives. When the brain is under stress and feels like it needs to be in fight/flight/freeze mode, the upstairs brain turns off, and the body relies on the downstairs brain. That means those higher-order, executive functioning skills are inaccessible. Usually, a stressful event results in a brief elevation of cortisol, and this can help us perform better (think: “getting in the zone” for a sports game, performance, or test). While good in small doses, large amounts of stress can be toxic for our brains and bodies. When we’re faced with trauma, our brains are constantly in this state of toxic stress.
Trauma can include one of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) identified by researchers in a CDC-Kaiser Permanente Study. These are:
Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse
Neglect
A parent who is incarcerated, gets a divorce, has a mental illness, has experienced domestic violence, or abuses alcohol or drugs
Trauma can also include witnessing community or neighborhood violence, bullying, immigration/migration/refugee status, and institutional trauma (from the foster care system or juvenile detention), among other toxic stressors.
Change the future of education. Educators, explore how to bring mindfulness to your K-12 classroom.
In the chronically stressed brain, the cortisol tap is always on, flooding the system, and acts like poison to the brain of a developing child. When cortisol is present, energy and resources that should be used to make new connections for learning are instead rerouted to the parts of the brain dedicated to survival. Meanwhile, the amygdala becomes even more sensitive once it is activated, meaning a traumatized child may have hair-trigger responses to unprocessed emotional memories related to their trauma or stressors.
How Students Respond to Trauma
Imagine you have experienced a major trauma without a safe adult to help you process your feelings and experiences. Now, imagine that you are in a classroom with a new teacher, 25-30 new peers, and a lot of expectations to behave in a certain way. How would you respond?
Unfortunately, many of our students deal with this exact situation every day. An estimated 45% of children have one or more ACEs; approximately 10% have three or more. Yet, only about 20% of children with mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders actually receive care from a specialized mental health care provider, like a psychiatrist or psychologist. In the absence of support, children develop survival mechanisms that help them control their environments and feel safe. All individuals have very different methods of coping with difficult situations.
A good number of us are “internalizers,” meaning we prefer to keep to ourselves. We might hide our feelings from others, or push them down and away. Others are “externalizers,” meaning we seek to express our emotion outside of ourselves, perhaps through our behaviors, actions, and interactions with others. In either case, pure, unprocessed emotion or traumatic experiences can cause damage. Keeping things bottled up can lead to depression or anxiety. Spewing feelings out can lead to aggressive encounters and words or actions that feel out of control.
8 Practices Teachers Can Use to Support Students
Luckily, as Eric Jensen, author of Teaching with Poverty in Mind, stated, “the brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to positive, enriching effects.” This means, you, as a teacher can help the student. While you may not be a therapist or cannot change the history of your students, you can help them to feel safe, valued, calm, and hopeful in your classroom. That’s pretty powerful. Here are a few ideas to create that in your classroom using a mindful approach.
Take a deep breath, and shift your frame of reference for students. Rather than asking “What is wrong with this child?,” ask, “What has happened to this child?” You may not get straight answers about this, but trauma-informed teachers don’t need to know what the trauma is to know how to understand, support, and encourage a child.
Create awareness by understanding the trauma response. Hyper-vigilance, fear, shame, and guilt are typical reactions to trauma. Corresponding behavior is usually not purposefully manipulative, defiant, or avoidant. Rather, it is adaptive and functional for the child for him/her to get what they need. Understanding behavior this way can help you think through other ways for your students to get their needs met.
Practice self-awareness by knowing your own triggers and know how to regulate yourself. You can help a child regulate their bodies when you regulate yours. It’s a bit like a superpower, and it has a fancy name: interpersonal neurobiology, but the concept is quite simple. When an adult is calm, regulated, and using their prefrontal cortex, students can co-regulate with the adult, helping to calm their own limbic structures and engage their prefrontal cortex. In other words, by being in the presence of a calm and regulated adult, children can become calmer and their brains and bodies can learn from the adult’s regulation.
Build relationships with students not based on academics. Find out what they like to do, who their favorite pop or rap star is, and what movie they want to watch. You’ll find that once your students know you care about them as people, they’ll care about what you say and teach them.
Teach your students about their brains, their stress response system, and basic coping skills they can access in your classroom, like soothing themselves, breathing mindfully, and asking for help.
Create a space for calming down. A calm corner is a place in your classroom where students can go to de-stress or help regulate themselves after experiencing a big emotion. Calm corners should never be used as punishment, but only as a tool to help students. You can include stress balls, paper to tear up, sand timers, Hoberman spheres, mirrors to identify emotions, and other mindful tools.
Provide students with choices. This can be as simple as asking, “Do you want to use a pen or pencil?” or “Would you like to sit over here by me, or by the bookshelf where it’s less distracting?” Most children, especially those who have experienced trauma, have had very few opportunities to make their own choices. By ensuring their voices are heard and giving them options, students can feel a greater sense of power and agency, thus calming their limbic systems down.
Be aware of potential triggers when practicing mindfulness with your students. For instance, give them the option to look down at their hands or the floor rather than closing their eyes, as keeping their eyes closed may be a trigger. Additionally, ensure that all mindfulness practices are an invitation and a choice. If a student is not able or willing to participate in a breathing exercise or mindfulness activity, do not force them to or threaten disciplinary action. Rather, take a moment to get below their eye level, let them know you are there for them, and give them a suitable alternative choice.
Above all, know that you cannot control the experiences, fears, and traumas with which your students enter your classroom. You can, however, influence how safe you help them feel with you and in your room.
For more ideas, check out some of these great resources on trauma-informed teaching and trauma-informed classrooms.
Dr. Poonam Desai is a Certified Instructor of Mindfulness, with more than 300 hours of training completed. She has maintained a practice of Vipassana Meditation, as taught by S.N. Goenka, for over ten years and has completed six 10-day meditation retreats in addition to several other shorter retreats. Dr. Desai is a licensed psychologist and a licensed specialist in school psychology in the state of Texas. She has worked in the fields of education and mental health for over ten years and was a mental health trainer and psychologist at Momentous Institute. She believes mindfulness and compassion are the two things that will change the world, but also that the first revolution is always internal.
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