20 October 2014

I have been dreading today a little as I had to go to an inservice and they are never very fun after a week off of work.  However, as inservices go, it was not too bad.  We were learning about how to support mental and emotional health of our students which included a lot of research about early childhood development, brain function and how to communicate with someone struggling mentally/emotionally.  

I found the early childhood development part more interesting as a parent - the emphasis was on reinforcing 'resilience' in children - the ability to bounce back from adversity as shielding forever from adversity is impossible. And indicators of how to tell if particularly children have either a healthy mental/emotional state or difficulties.  

The thing I took away from the brain part was the fact that teenagers' brains are provenly different from young peoples' and adults.  They're more 'adventurous' 'risktaking' (ie., rash, reckless), more dependent on social interactions, less aware of consequences, more forgetful, more tired, for a reason.  A huge mental shift happens in teenagers where brain synapses are quite literally pruned away while pathways used more often are strengthened.  They showed a baby's brain map, the map of a 6-7 year old and the map of a 15 year old.  The baby's was blank except for a few synaptic lines, the 6-7yo was so spidery-webby you could hardly see the white background for all the black brain synapses and the 15yo had stronger lines, but remarkably less of them.

A person's brain isn't fully developed until they reach 22-25 years of age as well - good to keep in mind when dealing with the youngun's!

Communicating with someone struggling with mental and emotional stress - they suggested 5 guidelines.  If you notice an indicator of stress, just observe 'I've noticed that.....' they may not want to talk about it, but it gives them permission to bring it up with you later and it shows that you care. Next, listen without giving your own opinion or trying to fix them.  Sometimes, people don't need advice, they just need to be acknowledged and heard.  Next, ask them 'What is one thing that would make your situation better?'  It's important to ask this rather than 'How can I help?' because this question empowers the person, rather than implies they need to be fixed.  Finally, summarize just what you have heard them say and thank them for sharing their thoughts with you.  In a school situation, depending on the information learned, there is the added follow-up of if the situation needs to be referred to another person in the school for the childs' safety.

The afternoon session was about collaborative learning - how to engage all children in a group - tactics to get them to self-teach and peer-teach.  There's an opportunity for one or two people from the service to attend a 2 day conference in Stirling about collaborative learning.  I asked for details after the session as I think those general teaching strategies are amazing.  I hope they choose me to go in a way, as I could see the knowledge and experience to be really useful when giving presentations, managing any groups of people - even teaching Sunday School!

But enough of a summary of today's thinking - pictures of last week on holiday in the next post!