Dan (00:00):
Hi everyone. And welcome to the effective teaching podcast. I'm your host Dan. And today I am joined by Kailey from Educalme. Now, Kailey, thank you so much for coming and joining me today.
Kailey (00:13):
Thank you for having me, Dan, I'm really excited to chat with you and connect with your audience.
Dan (00:19):
Well, I'm actually really excited because you are gonna talk to us today about how we as teachers can essentially set up systems in our classroom to actually look after ourselves, which I think is a fantastic, particularly as we in Australia, we are starting our new school year and getting everything set up for how we're gonna go. So this will be perfect timing for us to be able to set up a system for the whole year. That's actually going to look after us as teachers. So can you first just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, you know, uh, tell us a bit about educalme and, uh, where you're based and that kind of stuff.
Kailey (00:56):
Absolutely. So as you said, my name's Kailey, um, I'm based in Canada and we I'm a teacher first and foremost and early on in my career, much like the experience you had. I hit burnout. I was doing it all saying yes to everything and recognized that this career that I loved, I wasn't gonna be able to stay in it if I didn't develop ways to find balance between my teaching and my life and to figure out how to not burn myself out. So from that experience, I discovered mindfulness and started implementing that into my life. And that had a lot of really wonderful effects in my life and because helping me to manage my emotions and to find better balance in my life, by taking the time to check in with myself, um, I wanted to start doing it with my students too, who often came to the classroom, stressed, um, having trouble managing their emotions a lot going on in their life.
Kailey (02:00):
And so they were having a hard time focusing in the classroom and that would lead to classroom management problems. So I thought, you know, this strategy is working so well for me. Let's do it with my students too. So I, um, became trained and started doing it with my students and saw amazing effects of doing this daily practice that only took us minutes. But I saw this ripple effect that went throughout the day throughout the classroom and rippled into students' personal lives, into their academic lives, into really everything. So I realized kind of like, okay, onto something here. Um, now as I was going through through this, my best friend, also a teacher was kind of experimenting with the exact same things in her classroom, but I was in a high school. She was in an elementary setting. So you're kind of like exchanging ideas.
Kailey (02:56):
And how is this working for you? How's this working for you? And we developed this formula over time that we were seeing amazing results. And then we had our colleagues coming in saying like, what are you doing in your classroom? Why are your students so calm? Why is everything going so well? Um, and we would explain to them, oh yeah, we're just, you know, teaching mindfulness every day. And then we would see kind of this wall go up and then, you know, you could almost see in their face that they're like, oh yeah, I wouldn't be able to do that. So we thought, what if we develop a program that allows teachers to learn alongside their students because, and especially now with COVID and all the extra things that are being put on our plates as teachers, all the extra stressors in the classroom, there's a couple of, of problems that are going on.
Kailey (03:45):
We're having teachers that are overworked burning out and the, the narrative right now is teachers make sure you're practicing self care. And that's so, so important, but we aren't robots that can just practice care out of the classroom and then come into the classroom and like just be a robot with no emotions all day and get through everything. Our body needs to be able to slow down throughout the day to come back to a space of focus, um, so that we're able to do our best work. So, you know, that's one issue that's going on in the classroom. And then we also have the issue where, because there's been so much interruptions to learning and systems and procedures in the classroom over the years, we're seeing a lot of more problems within the classroom with classroom management, student behaviors. So these are kind of two symptoms to what we think is the same problem, which is that we need to find ways to co-regulate in the classroom as a classroom unit and by co-regulate, I mean, finding time to come together with our students.
Kailey (04:52):
So students and teacher checking in with our emotions, using strategies to calm our nervous system so that we not in that fight in flight stress state. And when we're in that fight in flight stress state, our brain is shut down. It's really hard, almost impossible to learn new things. When we're stressed, it's hard to be an effective teacher when we're stressed. Um, so we wanna pull our body out of that stress state and get into a calm state where we're focused, ready for effective teaching and learning. So to do that, we've created kind of a system that you can use to make that part of your day. So it's not something that happens outside of the classroom. It's something that happens inside of the classroom every day as part of your routine. And then you gain these strategies that you can use throughout the, to come back to focus.
Kailey (05:44):
So later on in the day, when students are starting to, you know, lose their focus and things are getting a little bit crazy and you realize, okay, we need to kinda reenter ourselves. Well, then you've learned these strategies with your students by using the Edgecom program that you can implement, you know, in two minutes. So maybe it's a breathing strategy, maybe it's a mindful movement practice. Um, maybe it's just a moment of complete silence. Um, and by building this into the day, we're seeing huge results for teacher wellbeing, student wellbeing, academic learning, um, and this progression, this progress that happens with students and teachers throughout the year where they're really building this amazing toolkit of, of strategies to support their own wellbeing that you're gonna take with you for the rest of your life.
Dan (06:37):
Yeah. I think it's important for teachers to have those strategies. And I think it's even more important that the students have them as well, and that you can then interrupt the lesson together. And the schedule work, guys, you know, this is clearly not working. I'm getting stress. You guys are not paying attention. You're a bit all over the place. We need to implement something to help bring us back down so that we are at a level where we're ready to learn again. And when we're ready to not bite each other's heads off and not leave this classroom going, oh, I hate this, whatever it is, maths or English, or, uh, you know, whatever lesser that happens to be. I think it's fantastic to have those kinds of strategies. How do you set it up? So that at the beginning of the, the lesser, like you were saying that yeah, at a lesson for like five minutes of it, every lesson you're, you're doing something that kind of sets this up. Well, here is a couple of examples of what you might do at the beginning of a lesson to set it up really well.
Kailey (07:28):
Absolutely. So with our resources, um, it's just an audio or video that you press play on that's five minutes long. So you log to the website and our resources. We have a bunch of free resources. And then we also have a paid program that would give you a ready to use lesson for the entire school year. So you literally walk in every day, knowing you have this thing ready for you. You don't have to facilitate, you just have to participate with your students. So the routine would love. Look like you come into your classroom in the morning. You know, you have your whatever morning routines you have, whether maybe you take attendance or maybe you have announcements, um, in the morning or at this start of class. And then before getting into any of the teaching that you're gonna do, then you get into this co-regulation practice.
Kailey (08:19):
So with using our resources, it would just be all right, class time to get ready for Educalme put away any distractions. Let's sit in a comfortable position and you press play and listen with your students. Another strategy. If you're not, you know, if you want to facilitate, if you want to lead it yourself, maybe you have of those skills, you know, a lot about breathing strategies, you know, about mindful movement, you know, you know, some sort of strategies that you like to use in your own life. Then you can lead that with your students. So we have a bunch of different breathing strategies that only take maybe two minutes to do, um, that you can use with your students that are really simple. We actually have a free ebook that I'll share with your audience, that they can print out or put up on the projector, follow along with the student.
Kailey (09:09):
So it doesn't have to be complicated at all. It can be as simple as before you start the lesson taking five deep breaths together. So one strategy that, um, we really enjoy students really enjoy. Everyone really likes, and it's quite effective. It's five finger breathing. So I'll lead you through that right now so we can try it out. Yeah, sure. So if you put one hand in front of you, then use the index finger of your other other hand, and we're gonna trace our hand as we breathe really deeply and slowly through our notes. So inhale and trace up your thumb, exhale, trace down the other side, inhale, trace up your first finger. Exhale, trace down the other side, inhale, trace up your next finger.
Kailey (09:58):
Exhale, trace down the other side, inhale, trace up the next finger, exhale down the other side, inhale, trace up your pinky, exhale down the other side. And then just pause and notice how you feel. What makes there we go right now. So yeah, yeah. if you're listening at this and you're driving to not do that, yeah. just the breathing and close your hands. Keep your hands. I always like to audibly breathe when I am on podcasts so that P people can hear the breath and breathe along with me without having to follow with their hands .
Kailey (10:44):
But you know, this is a strategy that you can, you know, do every day, same time every day, until it starts building that routine with your students. And then over time, it's something that you're gonna start kind of noticing them use on their own with high school students. They're probably not gonna visibly pull out their hand and do five finger breathing, but it's something that they might be doing under the table, or just visualizing themselves, tracing their hand. As they're doing that deep breathing to manage stress, to manage anxiety, little kids, you'll see them, you know, doing it out on the playground so that they are able to manage their emotions rather than hit or, or push or punch . So it's something that they can take with them everywhere. Um, with younger kids, we really like to kind of be the one that teaches it the first few times.
Kailey (11:33):
And then after that, let one of the students in the class lead it each day, or however many times you can do it several times throughout the day. Um, and then it just takes one minute. Really? It takes about 60 seconds to do that. Breathing strategy, such a small amount of time. I talk about it, like we're pulling back the, the Slingshot, we're taking a second to pull back, but then once we let go of that Slingshot, we can go so much further. So a lot of times teachers feel like, you know, I don't have time to do some calm breathing at the beginning of class every day. Well, I would challenge you to question. Do you have time to not, do you have time to teach students that are not in the heads base or in the physiological, um, space where they're able to learn?
Kailey (12:19):
If we can take two minutes, five minutes to pause at the beginning of class and just let everyone kind of calm down from whatever morning they had or whatever class they were in before they came to you, just two to five minutes to relax. And that could even mean just turning off the lights and letting kids put their head down on their table and just have silence, complete silence. How often do we sit in complete silence in a day? So rare we're bombarded with notifications, constantly things are going on constantly. So students tend to really enjoy having this time where we're not asking anything of them, just giving them the opportunity to just be for a couple minutes, and then we can move so much further with the academics, cuz they're ready to learn now.
Dan (13:04):
Yeah. And you're not gonna waste, you know, 10, 20 minutes on trying to manage all the other things that gonna happen during that lesson. Yes. Aren't in that state, which I think is fantastic. Cause I mean, gender only what I'm trying to focus on with, with the podcast is how we can actually help our students to, you know, become lifelong learners. And I think this strategy is one of those strategies that can be helpful. It seems like it's, you know, it's focusing on, you know, centering ourselves and getting out our mind space and settling ourselves and that kind of stuff. But by doing that, you're actually enabling yourself to get into a state, but you're gonna be a better learner. And those skills that you are teaching the students become lifelong skills for them setting them up for their future where they're gonna go, well, you know what?
Dan (13:43):
I'm super stressed at work right now, but I have to get this thing done by this deadline, take five minutes, do some breathing, do some, you know, mindful body movements and suddenly they go, all right, now I can I gonna smash this out? And it's become something that helps them long term, not just something that is gonna impact them right now for that five minutes, Ashley's gonna impact them for their whole life, which is exactly right. That's so fantastic. So do you have your favorite strategy that you use? So let's say I did that. My kids still went a little bit crazy. What's your strategies to kind of bring that all back down again.
Kailey (14:20):
I really like to include mindful movement when my students are really like fidgety, like I can tell they've got energy that needs to come out. So, you know, mindful movement when I say mindful. Um, I'll define that just for those that might be new to the word mindfulness. Mindfulness is just paying attention to the present moment on purpose, paying attention to the present moment on purpose. So it's essentially just focusing on whatever you're doing right now. So putting a lot of attention on whatever you're doing so we can do that in like literally anything we do throughout the day. So when we're ha doing that, calm, breathing, that mindful breathing, we're just really focusing on our breathing. Now, when we focus on our breathing, it kind of takes our brain out of whatever thoughts we were having that were causing stress or anxiety. And it brings our awareness to, and our attention to what's actually happening right now.
Kailey (15:13):
Not the worry that we're imagining in our mind that helps our body to realize, oh, actually I'm safe right now. There's actually no danger present right now. I don't need to be in the stress response. I can reduce those stress hormones and get back into a state where I'm calm, digesting properly, thin, properly doing all the body functions that are necessary for health and wellbeing. Um, so, but sometimes like our students just have lots of energy, they need to move. So if we can move in a calm, mindful way where we're encouraging students to pay attention to how their body feels while they're moving, how that movement is affecting them and their emotional or physical state and just checking in with, okay, was that a strategy that was helpful for you? Because as you said, we wanna develop lifelong learners. So these are skills that they're gonna take with them into their lives, at work, you know, in further, further education.
Kailey (16:11):
So if we can them that managing your, your body and your mind and your emotions is the warmup to learning the warm up to performing the warm up, to doing your best and build that kind of thinking within them, then that will hopefully lead to the next generation, dealing with a lot less stress and burnout than our are generations dealing with right now, you know, can we teach them a new way of doing things, focusing on wellbeing first and then going forward. So mindful movement. It can be very simple. One of my favorite ones, cuz it's so easy, you can do it standing or sitting is what we call sun breathing. So you just have your arms at your side and as you inhale your reach your arm up and look up. So giving yourself a nice, big stretch as you exhale, bringing your arms down, inhale, bringing your arms up, looking up, exhale, bringing your arms down.
Kailey (17:10):
And then I would do that about five, maybe 10 with the students. And it's amazing how just kind of getting that movement in the body can make such an effect on our mindset and, and how things are. Um, another thing that I like to do, that's so simple is just go for a walk with your students. Especially with my high school students. I'd love to, um, usually we would do it maybe once a, when they were feeling extra, like tired that day or just kind of off. Um, and I would often give them choice. Like what do you feel like doing today to get our mind and body ready for learning and a boat once a week, they would ask to go for a walk. So we'd just go outside the door take, I would set a timer five minutes and we'd be back within five minutes. I would encourage them to like walk without talking. So it was an alone time walk and I would encourage them to use their five senses to really pay attention to what's going on around them. And we come back to class and then we're ready to learn. We could get so much more we're done. So it doesn't have to be complicated. It can just be an activity that you like doing that helps you to feel calm. And if it's something you like doing, your students will probably enjoy it too.
Dan (18:19):
Yeah. Yep. Well that is fantastic advice. Thank you so much Kailey for coming and joining me this week to help teachers to, you know, set up systems and processes that will help their classrooms stay calm and also look after ourselves and our own mindfulness and to set students up, I think, long term, can you just tell everyone where they can come and connect with you if they want to come and learn more about Educalme?
Kailey (18:42):
Yes, absolutely. So come check out our website educalme.com/welcome. And on that page, we have a free, um, PDF, uh, ebook for you with breathing strategies, some information on mindfulness. We have a free webinar. If you're interested in learning more about how to integrate mindfulness in the classroom, and we have our free ready to use resources that I was talking about, where you just sign in, press play, listen to the audio with your students. Um, and there's some free training in there as well. We also have a podcast, the balanced educator podcast and a blog. So lots of free information to help you get started on this journey. And you can find all of that at educalme.com/welcome. An Educalme is spelled EDU as in ed education, C A L M E.
Dan (19:33):
I was gonna say, make sure you mentioned that E at the end because yeah, you know. Australia's gonna be like, I cannot find this website.
Kailey (19:40):
Yeah.
Dan (19:42):
Well, thank you so much. That brings us to the end of our episode. So if you guys would like to grab the transcript or watch the video or anything for this site, I'll have links as well over to educaeme com. If you can't find it head over to teacherspd.net/98, that'll lead you on this episode. And if you enjoyed it, please feel free to leave us a review and make sure that you subscribe and come back and join us next week. Thank you so much.
