hello i'm susan hopkins i'm the
co-author of self-rage schools a
handbook for educators with dr stuart
schanker and i'm going to speak to you
today
about the relationship between self-reg
math and the new math curriculum in
ontario which includes a
social emotional learning strand when i
first saw this new strand i thought it
was terrific
news but i also thought immediately
about teacher stress and so i'd like to
talk to you a little bit
about how self-reg can give you a new
lens to think about the social emotional
learning
but also some of the house in terms of
what you can actually do
as math teachers whether you are in a
grade two class and you have the
students
most of the day or you're in a grade
eight class and you're a specialist math
teacher
social emotional learning is part of the
work that you do
and you're doing this already and you
may not even realize that you do it
every time you take a moment to make
sure you've connected with a student
when they walk into your classroom for
the first time you do it every time
you take a few moments to think about
what you're going to do before you dive
into the time that you would like
focus and attention on to whatever it is
that you're teaching in the moment
you do it every time that you take
yourself a little extra breath
you know when somebody is asking you the
same question for the 50th time
you know we're beginning to think about
all of this but there's no doubt that
that adding social emotional learning to
the math curriculum a new math
curriculum at that
is a source of stress for many educators
you know we're living through a time of
higher anxiety than
normal anyway because of the realities
of
2020 and it's important to understand
that anxiety has been a
much talked about issue in education for
a long time
there's a really big difference between
anxiety as a disorder a diagnose
disorder
and the experience of anxiety so first
of all i want to share that anxiety
serves a purpose
it is a way of communicating a
communication system that happens in our
brain and body
we've all felt the anxiety that's
actually normal or maybe even healthy
serves a purpose you go for a job
interview feeling a little bit anxious
about that
causes all sorts of brain body changes
that actually serve a purpose
what we're worried about is when is when
the signs
of anxiety are getting in the way in the
way of student learning
and what we're equally as worried about
is
is our educators you know we're looking
at a at a high
anxiety time already now we're going to
add to it a curriculum
that has a strand for social emotional
learning and you know the big question
is
how so i think that there is no doubt
the areas in this new curriculum are
important areas so
just imagine if every student you worked
with was able to manage
you know identify and manage their
emotions i'm reading from the strands
here
was able to recognize sources of stress
and and
cope with the challenges could maintain
positive motivation and perseverance
could build healthy relationships and
communicate effectively
develop self-awareness and
self-confidence
and thought critically and and
creatively just imagine if if students
were able to do all of those you could
get to your math curriculum right even
with the stress of having to learn a new
a new curriculum and even with some of
us
experiencing high math anxiety right
just imagine that we had all of that
i were when i was in my doing my
practicum in the late 90s i was in
british columbia and i went
worked in a grade a grade 7 classroom so
i remember being given
this first curriculum area which was
math and
and i had the textbook it was grade
seven and it was a school in uh
in vancouver and having this real stress
response around the math and what was
interesting
you know i've been a long time since i
looked at grade seven math and for sure
there was a little bit of diving in and
having to remind myself of certain
things
but what was really interesting was that
i didn't feel
overwhelmed by the science lessons that
i had to teach
and yet all of those involved me needing
to do new learning
there is no doubt that for some of us
not all but for some of us
there is something unique about math
that raises up in anxiety
in us and there's all sorts of fantastic
work about that and we will dive into
that somewhere else
but here i just want to acknowledge that
high math anxiety is a real thing
it's not just in children it's in
ourselves as educators as well
and that this is within a time of
anxiety anyway
in our society as we respond to the
pandemic in our own ways
as well as a brand new curriculum if you
are feeling a little stressed right now
i understand and i think that's an
important thing to recognize
as as a very normal response
the debilitating part comes when we
don't know what to do about it
so it's like how how do i you know
meet all those things how do i help
children build relationships how do i
develop self-confidence how do i create
motivation how do i get
kids to manage emotions when i'm
supposed to be teaching math
including social emotional learning in
this curriculum
is a terrific move figuring out how to
do it
is the challenge and it'll be a
challenge of a different proportion for
different teachers if you are a grade
one teacher
and you have students all day long you
could actually you could thread this
throughout everything you do
what do you do if you're grade six and
you teach just math
how do you work in that specialization
well self-right can help
sell frank is a five domain model so
that's what i'm going to introduce you
to in the second video
it's a holistic way of looking at human
experience yours
mine and ours together biological
emotion
cognitive social and pro-social are the
five areas that we look at
and then in the third video i'll
introduce you to the five practices of
self-reg which are really what we
focused on in the self-rigged schools
handbook
reframe behavior recognize and reduce
stressors
reflect and become stress aware and
respond and that's about restorative
strategies which are really
an important part of figuring out how we
look at math curriculum social emotional
learning
and in this context of a higher anxiety
time in our own teaching and the
learning of our students