Lockdown, mindfulness and devices

Devices are apart of our everyday school life as a member of the  Manaiakalani Cluster. The kaupapa revolves around our learners being confident digital citizens, enabling them to access their learning anywhere, anytime and at any pace. Using 'Learn, Create, Share'  as the leading pedagogy to drive learners toward visible and ubiquitous learning, strong learner agency and connectedness to grow knowledge. With this in mind our students, parents and fellow staff felt that with Level 4 Lockdown taking a hold of New Zealand beginning on 25th March 2020 we'd have the online platform and technical capabilities to continue with our learning. 

 However, with Lockdown in full swing I felt unclear as to how I would be able to support and continue to build on our mindfulness routines and success without a physical presence. My worry comes from the knowledge that Māori and Pasifika have long been identified as a group who are underserved by the New Zealand education system. This is characterised by an overrepresentation of comparatively low achievement, high truancy, and leaving school early. To add to these statistics Māori and Pasific communities have the highest rates of depression and anxiety in the country, with the lowest rate of diagnosis. These statistics were what I wanted to positively influence and change and within our classroom it felt as though some small changes were happening.

Technology, devices and  specifically 'screen time' have been associated with ideas of poor mental health and having negative effects on brain development. Devices have worn the brunt of societal issues that have been around long before devices. However studies have shown just one hour of screen time could be enough to make children more likely to be anxious or depressed, less curious, less able to finish tasks, less emotionally stable and lowering their self-control. 

This now brings the question: How can I use eLearning tools to aid hauora in the classroom while distance teaching?

The beginning of online teaching

MINDFULNESS Knowing ourselves from the inside out

How do you make mental health a normalised conversation that anyone of any age can have at any time? For us in our class it was about repetition and about the language. As a class, our morning goals very quickly became our norm and pupils were forthcoming in what they wanted to share. We then turned to the language. Certain language unintentionally can contribute toward reinforcing negative connotations, behaviour and stigma. We began to look out sharing our goals while only using positive language. For example a pupil may have originally said:

"I won't distract the people around me."

As a class we decided that was focusing on the negative and came up with a few other ways of saying something of similar meaning:

"I will focus on my own work"

"I will respect my classmates by working to the best of my ability"

"I will sit beside people who I work well with."

These small changes to language within our goal setting  had a profound impact on how the pupils carried themselves throughout the day. The outwardly positive language reshaped dynamics within the classroom for the better. Pupils were beginning to pay attention to the words used throughout the day and were even noticing the words I used in certain situations. It created many class discussions where we spent time to reflect on the words we were using and what  impact that had on our inner dialogue'. 

 

Pupils started to understand the power of pausing for a couple of seconds. Evaluating their thoughts, and thinking,

'Is that hurtful or helpful?'

Why bother with Mental Health in the classroom?

As a beginning teacher in 2019 I moved from Central Otago to Auckland to work with what I considered a 'special population'. Something I couldn't get in abundance living in the South Island of New Zealand. That was working with Māori and Pasifika students. For many reasons, but mainly for my personal interest in mental health. Myself and my area of adolescence have a personal relationship with mental health amongst youth and it is well known to be something that hugely hinders the livelihood of Māori and Pasifika peoples. Namely youth males. My aspirations as a teacher were to give pupils not only the academic skills to progress in life but also social and emotional agency.

Morning Prayer circle

 

Mental health for some people is a loaded word, considered almost taboo because the literacy taught around mental health is quite often unpleasant, perplexing and bleak. However, mental health is multifaceted and under an education lens it is about providing positive experiences that provide a child's sense of self-worth and development. We learn our interactions from parents and adults around us. By the age of six years old friendships and other social relationships with peers and adults become more complex. They take on more meaning at this age, as they become more aware of the world around them and their role in it. Also at age 6, children become more aware of emotions—both their own and those of others. They understand sophisticated concepts, like not hurting someone’s feelings by, saying something scathing about a person directly to them. 

Sharing our daily morning goals

 In 2019 as a new teacher I began looking at the foundations of my class. I wanted to provide positive opportunities for promoting mental and emotional wellbeing which can be sustained and reinforced over time. So where do I begin? Breathing and structure.

Practicing our 5 finger breathing

Our structure begins each morning after morning prayer (we are a Catholic School) where we share one daily goal we wish to achieve each day. Our breathing started off with only two minutes everyday after lunch. Structure came back in with our 'Peaks and Troughs' where pupils would share something that went well and something that didn't go well. That is the extent of beginning my implementation of mental health in the classroom.

Breathing with ourselves planted 

Breathing how we feel most comfortable