The Principal's Handbook

How You Can Create an Emotionally Regulated School with Molly Funk
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.
From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work life balance, I'm Barb Flowers. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority.
Welcome everyone to the principal's handbook. I'm so excited to be here today with Molly Funk. We're going to be talking about some dysregulation strategies and what dysregulation looks like in school. So this is going to be an exciting conversation and I have learned so much about this.
So I hope that you learn something and [00:01:00] have some takeaways for your school as well. Molly, go ahead and start by just telling us about yourself and your experiences in education. I'm so excited to be here, Barbara. This is, this is great work. So thanks for having me and thanks for engaging with me in this, in this important topic.
I have been working with schools, the last 12 years in the capacity as a consultant and coach in the area of teacher and leader effectiveness, Professional learning rounds and also early literacy in schools. but prior to that, I, like most of us , was a first grade teacher, was an elementary teacher, and then, a literacy coach and reading recovery, you train teacher, before spending 10 years in the principalship, um, specializing really in turnaround work.
So I was a principal in five schools in two counties. in 10 years, before moving into [00:02:00] the space of professional learning and coaching, and that was an organic development for me. I really fell in love with working with the adults who are making the magic happen in the classroom. And decided that was, where I wanted to shift.
I think it's important to mention that as you know, all things have changed since the pandemic. , it's been a journey for the last four years supporting schools and how I think we ended up here talking about regulation is it didn't matter the space I was invited to. Whether it was an urban school or an urban school district or rural or elementary or middle or high school, the conversation continued to shift back to how do we support the Children and the adults who are showing up to do this work, and we couldn't talk about anything else.
And there was a great need that I was feeling from my colleagues in the world of principal [00:03:00] leadership. To start talking about this. Oh, I got interested in it. I'm a parent. I have four amazing, , teenage young adult children now. but they were once little humans and one of them, One of them was diagnosed very early with some special needs, including sensory processing disorder.
And so my exposure to nervous system dysregulation, began, as a parent and learning from, um, the beautiful, amazing, wonderful, support personnel who were providing ABA therapy and occupational therapy and speech therapy and those types of things. So, that really opened my perspective to how we support adults and children.
And I love this idea. I know you're doing a lot of work with mind body wellness, and that's something that Is so important in everything that we do. And yet we're not talking about this in schools. And there's so many things that I've just learned from you over time. And I'm [00:04:00] like,, these are all things that we should be doing.
We all need these because we know it's a huge problem that we have teachers being burnt out. We have a problem with teacher retention. We have students who are dysregulated and it appears that there's lots of behaviors and we have parents who. Aren't always supporting the teachers.
So there's a lot of frustration in schools right now that I think this idea of what you're learning about mind, body wellness and regulation all can be so helpful. So talk to us a little bit about the idea of mind, body wellness and how that all goes together. Thank you. As I explored how I was going to continue to work with schools, I realized there was a lot I didn't know.
And so my exploration was both professional and personal experience. And landed me in a mind body medicine PhD program. So, that's my current academic work and research interests. So I'm a novice. [00:05:00] So I appreciate you asking me and, I hope that people, give me grace as I, I speak about things that I'm continuing to learn and research about, and hope that this work allows me to continue to cross the disciplines between the two.
The world of mind, body, wellness, and education, psychology, , behavior change. So in the world of mind, body wellness, we're really talking about whole person wellness and you and I have been around education long enough to understand this whole child initiative, right? And that was really thinking about the child as a whole.
But we really haven't addressed that mind body connection and as technology improves, as research improves, we now know things that we didn't know before. I always go back to the great Maya Angelou's quote, right? When you know better, do better. We know better. If we look outside of the scope of education and the way things that we have done it and the place that we need to look is in [00:06:00] that mind body wellness world.
We used to think that our mind controlled our body. We now know that it's really a bi directional highway, our nervous systems, and it's actually 80 20 that 80 percent of the messages are going from our body into our brain. So, And if we think about how we work , with humans in schools, little people, adults, right?
We're really trying to get at their thinking brain and not really addressing whole person of mind body experience. What's going on for them, , from a physiological space when they show up yelling at us, right? I'm sure a lot of , your principal listeners, have had a teacher walk into their office and they are.
Disregulated. Yes, we've all experienced that. Right? And they're probably dysregulated because either a little human or a parent or a colleague showed up to them dysregulated. So when you're talking [00:07:00] about dysregulation and they come to you dysregulated, explain to us what that looks like.
Because for me, I've been learning a lot about this. But at first, I'm like, I don't really know what that looks like to be dysregulated. Yeah. So when we talk about regulation, we're talking about nervous systems. So there is one, cranial nerve that leaves our brain. It is called the vagus nerve, and it runs from, , the base of our skull all the way down, through channels in the rest of our body, right?
So it's our messenger from our brain to our body and our body to our brain that circulates. nerve, when it's dysregulated shows up as what we often think about as a sympathetic response, fight, flight, freeze, and, maybe even fawn, that acquiescing, right? Just giving up. and we see that in [00:08:00] children and we see that in adults.
So physiologically, those symptoms are easy to identify. Have you had a little person walk in your office with their fists clenched mm hmm. Yeah, right? Physiological response. To threat their body is responding as if they're a threat. That little almond shaped part of our brain called the amygdala, the survival mechanism that shows up as a sympathetic response when that is activated.
That's when we start seeing heavy breathing, rapid heart rate, sweating, , a lot of adults get that response that's like, you know, they get blotchy, red fleshness, and by the way, many adults are very self conscious about that. Like they know that that happens. So thinking about what is happening in our bodies that tells us.
That we are starting to move from a regulated space into a dysregulated. The way I like to think about it is, [00:09:00] with children we often use one of those thermometers. It's like, where am I feeling? And if you have an ASD classroom in your building or have ever worked with an ASD student or a dysregulated student, we might have them rank.
Where am I on this barometer right now? My emotion, right. It's right. And, and our emotions and our body go together. When those things start happening in our bodies, it's really about. So I'm moving up that that barometer and at the top is a 10 and imagine that as being like on fire. So when someone's body and nervous system has shifted into that sympathetic state, fight, flight, or freeze, they are on fire.
And the work that we need to do in schools. is provide presence to that person who basically what I consider is putting a wet towel over the top. How do I show up in a way that helps calm their fire? Not add gasoline to it. And that's such a great [00:10:00] point because, you know, I have this conversation a lot that there's so many emotions happening in the building with teachers, they have so many responses to kids or , initiatives in the building, and they can come to you so emotional.
And then if you, as the leader. aren't handling that in a calm way, then you're upping that emotion even more. So it can be really tricky. You have to be able to manage your emotions so much as a leader because you're setting that tone for the building. Yeah. And unfortunately, If you think about it, you know, let's say,
child gets frustrated in a classroom, could be with the peer, could be with the teacher, doesn't matter. And I'm picturing a middle schooler or a high schooler and, you know, they're a giant, you know, I'm out. Peace out. They walk out of the classroom. I'm out of here. The way the teacher handled that the, the child took the space to walk away.
Then [00:11:00] the teacher gets down to the principal's office and was like, he walked out of the classroom, he yelled. And then. The teacher's dysregulated. So now we have a dysregulated child with a dysregulated teacher. And how the principal shows up, and this is where the power comes in the principalship and in leadership, is how do we support putting the towel over the fire on the teacher?
And support the adults in helping the child also then dysregulate, right? I mean, I'm losing the word right now. Deescalate. Deescalate, right, right, right, right. Thank you. So we have that power, right? And then of course we have to contact the parent. How do we show up to the parent? who now has to deal with a child who walked out of a classroom, the potential consequences that come with that, and not really understanding what happened.
And so they're likely going to be dysregulated. [00:12:00] And if we call them during the workday, we don't even know how, what was going on for them before that, right? So we are all humans that have these experiences outside of school that may raise those barometer marks, and I might walk into school. As a seven as a teacher, right, right.
I had a child who threw up all night walking out the door and my, you know, I locked my keys in my car and all those things cause us to become dysregulated, which are reasonable things. Yeah. So on the one hand, I think you mentioned this idea of, you know, what do we do? And I think that's part of what we've talked about.
There are really two components to this. One is, what do we do to. support our own regulation? And on the other hand, what do we do to support someone else's dysregulation? Yeah. And that, I mean, that's , the tricky part of being a principal, right? We are trying to take care of ourselves, but yet we also have to take care of The teachers [00:13:00] and the students as well.
So being able to help everybody in that scenario to show up as their best self so they can handle these situations when they come up.
Yeah, sure. A few years ago, , at the NAESP national conference, our speaker was barbed wire. And I believe her title was the vice president of, of DEI at Apple. And she said, our job as leaders is to take care of the people who take care of the people. That's good. And that's really what this is all about.
How do we show up and take care of the people who take care of the people? So what can principals do? Because as I think about, we hired a district counselor and she is amazing. And the first thing the teacher said was, is she for us? Because they were like, we need a counselor and we have a wonderful school counselor.
They love talking to her. And getting input from her about how to handle situations and even their own personal lives. Like I've seen that more and more that teachers are going to administration, they're going to counselors and they're wanting [00:14:00] that help for their personal lives, which is great.
So how do we support them though? When there's only, you know, one administrator, one counselor in a building, lots of teachers. How can we support them? And what can we do?
I think, , you know, that, that's really the crux of our conversation in this work, we're not going to be able to support schools as systems unless we really start addressing The systems and I, that's really what's unique about our conversation. and even this can conceptualization of the emotionally regulated school.
It's not just the children. It's not just the grownups. It's not just mindfulness Mondays or those things. This, this is a system wide practice. That allows each person in the system to learn, practice, and engage with tools, to be well [00:15:00] themselves. And then I think, I'm hoping we're going to talk about the three C's today, and that's really, as a person in the system, how do I show up for others in a way that supports that?
And, we're going to start to have to take care of the adults in schools. In order for things to shift, and this allows us to show up for one another, right? There's only one counselor. I love it. In a middle school, I walk in any middle school on any given day. During every teacher's prep and during lunch, all of the staff are in the counseling office talking to the counselors.
That's because they get to go have someone show up for them and validate their experiences, bring this idea of co regulation to their dysregulated state so that they get to go back into their classrooms and be their best for their students. And I love that you brought up this idea of co regulation because I know that that's what we're trying to do in schools in a [00:16:00] systematic approach where we can Bring the regulation so that everybody is regulated and it's creating this system that regulates itself.
So talk to us about the three C's that help with that co regulation piece. Sure. I think that the magic, I will say, is in the co regulation piece, what is sustainable? What is sustainable? And by the way, generative in schools. Once we teach people practices for regulating themselves, And then the three C's for supporting co regulation with other people, including adults and children,
this isn't distinguishing between the human experience here. once we teach that, it's generative. It costs nothing to support this. It is generative. And so when I talk about co regulation, The three C's is , really about three steps, that we can use to show up for [00:17:00] another person.
There is a caveat here, though. There's a number one rule. When we notice someone is dysregulated, it could be a little person, it could be a teacher, it could be a parent, those physiological signs that we talked about. The, fast breathing, fast talking, sweating, body moving, talking with her hands,
I always picture pig pen from Charlie Brown, with the cloud swirling above her head. To me, that's what dysregulation looks like. Dysregulation in people who go internal always shows up for me as a clenched jaw and clenched fist. When I see that, I know the person is dysregulated. So all of those symptoms tell us this person needs our support.
Sometimes we notice those things in our own body when they come to ask for our support or they need support. And so the number one rule here that I'll go back to this is If you notice yourself having any of those [00:18:00] symptoms or signs or responses during your conversation, it's time to disengage. You're not regulated enough to provide that support.
And it's not because you're doing it wrong. It's because you're human, right? There's no judgment here. I am feeling triggered, dysregulated by the situation, by how this person is showing up for me. And I need to take a break back, so don't feel bad. And so we need to make sure that we're honoring where we are in a situation, it before showing up.
And if you can't do it, maybe you have an assistant principal. Maybe there's a counselor. Sometimes it's the admin, the office professional, right? The secretary, who's that frontline person who's able to show up. So it's really about teaching each person. So let me get into the three C's. The goal of the [00:19:00] three C's is to get a person's thinking brain back online quickly,
so if they're in fight, fright, or freeze, how do we get their thinking brain back online so they can return to the classroom, return to the work that they have ahead of them? Typically it takes about 20 minutes for a person to fully, De escalate and regulate themselves. That's not often the grace and the time that we have in schools.
If you do 20 minutes is a great, way to think about that. The first C is to show up calm. , and that's really where we talk about showing up. From a physiological space and also validating the emotions and the experience of the other person.
The second C is remaining curious. And this is where we get into asking good questions and things that we do or don't do that support the other person's, de escalation [00:20:00] and regulation. And by the way, that supports the safety and relationship. And finally, this third part is reengaging that thinking brain, and that's from a space of creativeness.
How do we empower the person to be part of their own problem solving and really trust that they have everything that they need when they're regulated to make good decisions? I love the idea of , all of those, because they're very simple. You just have to be intentional. I'm thinking about, as you said, being creative as a new principal, I was just wanting to solve everything for everybody and just give them the answer, as principals were problem solvers, but I love that idea of being creative and putting that on them so that.
They're able to continue to do the work on their own without you, because there is only one principle. If you're constantly solving problems for everybody else, it, it takes up so much of your time and energy. So teaching them to be able to do that, I think is so important. Yeah. And we often hear that old [00:21:00] adage, right?
Give a man a fish. He eats for a day. Teach a man to fish. He eats for a lifetime. And that's really what this is about. It's about creating that co regulating system that is generative. But it does come at a shift in our beliefs. Where we don't know people as well as they know themselves.
Right. And that includes knowing little people. We have to teach them to trust themselves. And that really supports even, like I said, going back to Maslow, right? Moving through that hierarchy up to this optimal wellbeing. There's that place of self esteem, self efficacy, motivation, and action. That is internal for each person.
So this process will support that. Would it be okay if I talk through each one a little bit? Yeah. We want to hear more. So tell us what that looks like. The first C is calm and the goal, again, of showing up, in a [00:22:00] calm way is to co reg regulate that physiological distress and to validate the emotions and the experience of the other person.
So let's start with the body part of it, the physiological part, our bodies in our presence support. The other person. Barb, if you came to me and you were like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe what just happened. My own pace of my breath is something I have control over.
How slowly and deeply am I breathing? And that in itself tends to support regulation of the other person. It's contagious. The slower I breathe, the slower I talk, de escalates and co regulates for the other person. The other pieces are posture. So what does my physical body look like? Am I sitting in an open stance?
I tend to [00:23:00] default to opening my hands. I open my hands and I lay them open on my lap. I am providing an open presence. for that person. Our bodies tend to mirror each other. So there's the physiological piece. but that mirroring will happen. and you've probably seen this to be true as an administrator, as a teacher, it's really important that there's nothing between us and the other person.
We need to be sitting knee to knee, either side by side or in, , need a D need any, looking at one another. So principals got to get out from behind their desks. Teachers got to get out from behind the desk. That's a barrier, physical barrier actually, to that co regulation. And the second part of CALM is validation.
And we validate using a strategy I love that comes from, , the world of working with children who are [00:24:00] dysregulated in some, home environments, potentially that, are, you know, controlling or unhealthy. , and the person who coined this phrase is Dr. Christine Cochiola, who is a protective parenting coach and social worker and researcher.
So for validation, we use, , the acronym VEST, V E S T, and that stands for validate. With empathy and a soft tone. The goal isn't that we agree or validate that their actions were okay. Our goal is to show up and validate that their experience and their emotions are real. They are real for them and that's what they need to hear.
So even if I didn't agree that this child walked out of the classroom, I do not believe this was a healthy response to being frustrated. I can validate that they're upset and frustrated and by the way overwhelmed. Yeah, you're really overwhelmed right now. I can see that. And I'm thinking as you're [00:25:00] talking about that validating, that's how you're building that relationship and that trust.
If you're validating them, then they're going to feel like they can open up to you versus getting more upset and feeling like they have nobody who listens and that they can trust. So I think that's super important. Yeah, and the validation is the beginning to that relational safety that really shows up in the next C, curious, right?
So we set this container by validating , that you see them, they are, they are real and true and what they're feeling is real and true. Then we move into the second C, which is curious. And this is really where we build that relational safety, understanding their perspective, and raising their self awareness.
It's a basic psychological human need that we all have to feel seen, heard, and valued. It's not a skill that we teach. We don't even teach that to principals, to teachers, to parents, but it's a [00:26:00] basic human need, right? We know we teach , the food groups. We teach how to eat healthy, how to exercise, but we don't teach how to support each other's emotional and psychological well being,
no, it's a huge gap. So how do we teach that? By modeling and supporting that. And so from a curiosity standpoint, we remain curious and ask open ended questions. And the goal is that the person feels understood, and that we understand them.
I've put together a little list of do's and don'ts, how we do that. For this, we must stay out of judgment. And one of the big don'ts, and I'm going to put this out there right now because it's a big one. Don't use the word should. It's, like, we talk about kids go, he said the S H word. To me, should is the S H word that's gotta go.
Should implies judgment. And this [00:27:00] connection will not work if we imply judgment. So if you want to get rid of one word, get rid of should. Well, in my own coaching, I try to teach adults that we shouldn't be saying to ourselves, this is what we should or should not do.
Doing that puts this expectation that then we, feel bad if we didn't do something. And that brings on that people pleasing. So instead doing things because. That's what you want to do, or it is the thing that is best for you, you know, that's a really powerful statement, Barb.
Thank you for that. Because when I say eliminate should, and I'm talking in the context of co regulation, that judgment on others, the best way to eliminate that from your vernacular to eliminate should as self talk. In my home, if we hear the word should, shoulda is actually a verb.
I'm like, you're in it sounds like this. Ooh, that sounds like shouldaing. shouldaing [00:28:00] is how we talk, right? Like, ooh, you're shouldaing. shouldaing is Where I'm passing judgment based on the expectations of other people and other systems, not what is internal to me. And when we get curious and we remain in curiosity in order to co regulate, the staying out of judgment and raising self awareness for the other person is allowing them to listen to their internal voice.
What is going on for me so that I can make good decisions about what to do next? No more shitting.
Yeah, it comes, that comes from people policing. Okay. It does, it does, and by the way, it's culturally conditioned. So there's no judgment on if we do that. Mm hmm. So what we can do as a collective, as a system, is to begin eliminating That, from, , the way we talk about ourselves, the way we model talking [00:29:00] about ourselves with others, , and then when we show up in this space to be really mindful that that word should, especially with children, doesn't come up.
Yeah. So let me talk about some of the do's. Some of the do's are, , well, the number one is staying curious. Our goal is to understand their experience. That's it. In the moment, what is going on for them right now, and that they need to understand that in order to move through the dysregulation.
So while it's important we understand, it's more important they understand what's going on for them. Yeah. , we can do that by asking how, what, and when questions and avoiding why questions. I don't know about you, but how many times have you heard an adult say to a child, why would you do that? And they never know.
And they're like, I don't know. They don't know, right? , they don't know. So [00:30:00] avoid asking why questions, but do ask what, how, and when questions. One of my favorites is what's going on for you right now? And allow the space for them to talk. Another one works really well with teenagers, in my opinion, and this is personal experience as well as professional, is what else?
When they start talking, just ask, what else?
Ask for clarification. Kids use words like mean, he was mean to me. Or, she disrespected me. Yeah. Are these sounding familiar? Yep. Even when we think about adult interaction, what are some of the words that would show up that are, , I'm going to say ambiguous in nature?
Like what do you hear from your, the adults in your world when they're, when they're, think it's just frustration from different things, so they'll say I'm frustrated about this, or I don't like this. And it is like, kind of a general thing that they'll say. And so [00:31:00] it's like you said, getting curious about well, what do you mean by that?
What does that look like? Yeah, explain that to me. Because, I feel like it's just a general statement that I don't, I don't understand why you're upset about that. So you have to kind of dig to explain more so that you get to the root of what's going on there. Sure. And what you just described as people saying, you know, I was frustrated or I was angry or that that's actually very healthy.
If someone's showing up. Using an I statement and then we get to ask and be curious about whatever, she was mean, she disrespected me. When we notice, people will often focus on others behavior. The goal of the curious section is to help them focus on their own response. To that behavior.
Yeah, so this is really asking those good questions And one way we can do that that I love to do is use the person's words To support that conversation. So you said you were frustrated. Tell me more about that. [00:32:00] What did that look like? How does that feel for you and keep them in this present moment?
This is not the time from a don't perspective to make it about you. Do not talk about yourself, what you would do, how you would handle it. This is to understand their experience. So no advice giving. And one way we can do that is limiting those yes, no questions, right? , and this is hard when working with children and that's staying out of lecturing.
And for the parents out there, which many school personnel or parents, we love children all the way around, staying out of lecturing and discipline at this point, understand their experience. And it builds our relationship, which goes back to that. Psychological relational safety that is noted to move a person through dysregulation, the co regulation.
All of these things you're talking about, , are super simple things that if we can just change. I think as principals, , [00:33:00] what needs to happen is to help change the mindsets of people. It's going to be modeling this so that they can see, I know for me, if I do this with a teacher, then they'll be able to see the benefit of it and how they show up when I talk to them like that, to then be able to do it for students.
So I think it is that modeling piece and being intentional about it. The thing that we do know, right, and we know about teaching is we understand, the zone of proximal development. We understand what, , it looks like to release control, from modeling to independent.
How do we get people from just modeling this to independent? And that's that space in the middle. And that's where it comes from supported practice. It also comes from explicit instruction. How do we do this? And then the reflection on the work. So after having an experience, potentially like you're talking about with an adult, I would reflect on how did this feel for you [00:34:00] today?
What worked with you? Was there anything in here that you noticed about yourself? And then we speak to each other, including children, have the capacity to reflect on the process, to reflect on the three C's, which we didn't get to creative that I can do really quickly. I know we're running out of time. It has to be a double track agenda.
I'm going to model it. We're going to practice it. I'm going to release control. And that the work is getting to it being an independent, generating, co regulating system, where all are well. What if children are interacting with each other like this? Yeah. That is amazing to even think about, I'm dealing with right now in fifth grade, they can be so mean to each other, you know, it's like the way they talk to each other.
So if we could help them, build that language and, and have that emotional intelligence, I think that goes with that. , but go ahead and keep telling us about creative. [00:35:00] Tell us about that seat and what that looks like. Yeah. So once we bring calm presence, right, body, and then we validate them, we stay curious and we have built that safety in that relational container.
We can now support their self awareness to help broaden their perspective and facilitate kind of this empowerment about what are they going to do now? How are they going to get back to the classroom? How are they going to call that parent? How are they going to do these things? so we want to allow people to be collaborative in that problem solving process.
and through that, we have to truly trust that they know themselves better than we do. And that the way that they move through this is by owning their choice of how they move through this. So, one way, That is really powerful is, helping them identify all of the possibilities, even the ones that aren't probable or likely.
And it's really [00:36:00] about our job as the facilitator of this conversation to open the window to all the possibilities that they can see for themselves and then reflect back the mirror to them so that they can stand in that choice. So windows and mirrors when we get creative, so from a window perspective, when people are dysregulated, they tend to have a, a black and white mindset,
and you can hear that in their language. It shows up as either or, that one student who walked out of the classroom might say, I'm never going back in her class again. You ever heard a class say that? Oh yeah. You ever heard a teacher say, I want him moved out of my room? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Or a parent says, I want my kid out of that class.
Right? The either or. So we can spend time helping create all the possibilities. Yes, that is one possibility. What else is out there? What's another possibility? Well, I [00:37:00] don't know. There's no other option. I'm not going back in our room. Okay. So I guess you could go to virtual school. Well, that's not a good option.
But it is an option, right? Okay, so what are all the options, even if they're ridiculous? Let's put them all out there. And so include those improbable or unlikely solutions. And if someone is stuck, especially a kid in what are the solutions, I like to put the ridiculous one out there. Well, you could drop out.
I mean, if you wanted to, and then you could get a GED, that's a pathway to adulting. That would be fine. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to go to Oh, okay. Now we have somebody who's Got a reason to problem solve, right? And so once we put all those out there, reflecting back to the person, what they've said, and this really brings us back into their body.
So it might say,
when you say, you want to, Go to virtual school. How does [00:38:00] that feel in your body when you say that, right? Really raising the self awareness. Is this where I'm landing that I want to go to virtual school? Ooh, that doesn't feel good. Like, or it feels yucky, okay. So you want to go back in the classroom and you want to stay at your school and you want to get a diploma.
Okay, great. So we're there. You've decided all those things. How would it feel to be supported to do that? What would you need to make that happen? Whoa. What would you need to make that happen?
And what we don't do is ask people, what do you want? What do you want as an outcome here? And what support do you need to make that happen? And that's the mirror part. We keep giving it back to them, reflecting, helping them reflect on what they want and what they need. Yeah. I love that idea of mirrors and windows.
Windows to look outside, other options and mirrors to reflect back in. That's such a, a powerful thing to teach people to do.
And culturally [00:39:00] speaking, our culture perpetuates, you know, we have kids who are fake news, fake news. Believe everything you hear. What if the goal is to teach people to listen to their gut, to follow their intuition, to stand in that place of choice? I'm choosing to go back into this classroom.
My teacher didn't make me, the principal didn't make me. I'm making a choice. And if we could start teaching young people and all of us to stand firmly in our choices and know why we're making the decisions that we make, and that they feel good in our whole body as we make them really does build systems where people are more regulated because that in itself helps people feel in alignment with.
That regulation. Yeah. And as you're talking, I'm thinking it takes you out of that victim mindset of I have to do this. I don't have a choice. You know, my mom's making me the school's making me [00:40:00] whatever it is versus them being empowered to have that choice and feel like they actually get to decide and you're going to have more buy in.
They're going to do better in that class moving forward. Being so intentional, it makes such a huge difference in what those interactions will look like moving forward. And think about the teacher perspective. How often do we hear teachers say, well, the state said we had to, or the district.
Another, another word to be aware of, and you probably already do this, is when people start talking about they, Ask the question, who is they? Yeah, who is they? because they are the voices from everyone else. Influencing this person's behavior and their own regulation. , I just dealt with that recently.
They were like, well, we have to do that. I'm like, well, who told you that? . I didn't say that as the principal. Where did that come from? And they're like, well, we don't know . So yeah. [00:41:00] I think that's so powerful it's easy to blame, they, by the way. Mm-Hmm. because then we don't have to own our choices.
This is hard work. It's hard to say, I am making choice here. I am in choice to do these things. Well, then you're accountable when it's your choice. Then now you're accountable for your choices and you can't blame anybody.
Yeah. So the mirror is about what supports do you need to make this happen? Right? Because we've already established relation relational safety. Right. So I'm with you. I got you. You've got this., I like to use in this. Honestly, I use this with adults and children alike. It's you have everything you need inside of you to move through this.
What supports do you need or want from me to help make that happen? Yeah. Well, this work that Molly and I are doing, we're so excited because we're going to start going out to schools. We [00:42:00] have, , sessions that we'll do at schools in person and virtual, and then coaching that goes along with this because What our vision for this is and how this looks is that we're really trying to be more intentional so that we can move beyond mindfulness Mondays, thoughtful Thursdays, all great things, but we need more, , we can't just, Talk about it once, teach the skills once, and then never talk about it again.
And I know as a principal, I don't do the mindfulness Mondays because that's happening in the classroom. So it's, it's not really even a system wide approach that's going to help create systems of regulation and co regulation that just keep going and building.
We'd love the opportunity to come work with you, talk with you about how we can help you create these systems of regulation. Molly, do you have anything you want to add with that? I think I also want to put out there that, that this is [00:43:00] not research that's being done. This cross disciplinary work.
So if you go look for this, it's not out there, Barb and I are tackling something that we're using the, the disciplinary cross disciplinary research to support, What we believe is necessary before it's all done. I think there, there's also an invitation to partner if you're interested in willing to partner on what it could look like from an action research perspective to design and be a part of that process that's open to, we want to partner with the You with your schools, with your students, your teachers, and your families to create these.
Self regulating systems. We're open to whatever that could look like. I think it's probably a better way to phrase it. This is an adventure and we invite people to partner with us on it. Yeah, and I think the fun thing that [00:44:00] Molly and I love about doing this work together is we just bring such different.
And so we would love to be able to work with your school and talk with you about how we can support, you and and what you want for your school to create this self regulating system. And if you want to learn more about what that could look like. And learn more about the three C's, you can click the link in the show notes.
We do have a PDF that you can download and you can get more information with that in it, as well as three strategies that you can use to help regulate someone, whether it's an adult or a student, but it's three strategies that you can start using now. Simple things that you'll be able to implement at any time.
Is there anything else, Molly, that you want to add? We could talk all day. I think we need to do this again. Definitely. There will be more podcast episodes for sure. So, well, thank you everybody for tuning in today to The Principal's Handbook, and we will see you next time. Thanks.
[00:45:00] Mhm. Mhm.