I used to play teacher as a kid. I had my cabbage patch dolls and stuffed animals all lined up, eager recipients of my brilliant eight-year-old instruction. It was always more difficult to play teacher with real humans. If I convinced my brother or a friend to join in, I didn’t like how it went. I wanted quiet, motionless learners. Wouldn’t that make your job so much easier? Unfortunately, we are not trying to educate...
Teacher Regulation…Can we build it? Yes, We Can!
I am so excited to welcome Ginger Healy to the BraveBrains blog to share some support for that ever-elusive skill: self-regulation. Ginger has been a friend and colleague for years. She is currently the program director for the Attachment and Trauma Network where she co-anchors the podcast “Regulated & Relational” and speaks across the nation on trauma-informed schools, therapeutic parenting, and community engagement. She also gives great hugs! Dysregulation Dysregulation. The reality is that no...
Understanding the BRAIN -> SENSES -> BEHAVIOR Connection
Everything we feel, think, say, and do is related to the information coming in through our senses, and we have more than you might think. All BEHAVIOR comes from the BRAIN The BRAIN is getting information from EIGHT SENSES Understanding our SENSES will help us understand BEHAVIOR Let’s break this down a little further. Here are some of the BEHAVIORS you might see in the classroom: Fidgeting, wiggling, getting up and wandering around Grumpy, complaining,...
Making Sense of Meltdowns
How learning about sensory processing changed... everything. My brilliant little 4-year-old son was asked to draw a house at preschool and burst into tears. Bursting into tears was a common occurrence for him, as was picky eating, banging into things, difficulty transitioning from one task to the next, slouching posture, and what I came to realize were a whole host of sensory red flags. Sensory processing difficulties occur when the brain has trouble receiving, interpreting,...