Blog

We’re all about helping you see reasons to feel good.

Part of that involves appreciating all things you do that make you feel powerful and confident. Reflecting on these moments helps you see your talents and abilities and gives you motivation to try new things. This reflection time can help boost your confidence.

Consider the power of affirmations. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, an affirmation is:

Affirmation: (n) A statement intended to provide encouragement, emotional support, or motivation, especially when used for autosuggestion.

(Autosuggestion is the conscious repetition of particular thoughts or statements to oneself in order to change one’s pattern of behavior, as when attempting to break a habit.)

When you affirm someone else, you support him. And when you affirm yourself, you provide motivation to yourself and boost your confidence. In this way, affirmation is a powerful tool. Add some affirmations to your week. Take a few moments to make a list of all the reasons you appreciate your students and coworkers. At home, list off the reasons you appreciate your child or other adult in the home.  Focus on their qualities and actions rather than their appearance or other physical traits.

We have a Pinterest board filled with ideas to get you started. Here are just a few:

Affirmations to Boost Your Confidence:

• It is enough to do my best.
• I can do better next time.
• I am capable of so much.
• My challenges help me grow.
• I can make a difference.

Affirmations to Boost Your Child’s Confidence:

• I’m proud of you.
• You make me happy.
• I trust you.
• That’s a great question.
• I’m grateful for you.
• I blew it. I’m sorry.
• You’re right!

Now, go dream up a few for yourself, write them on post-it notes, and stick them where you’ll see them. Read them out loud to yourself — they just might change your outlook for the day.

Whether your children are younger or teens and making college plans, our weekly prompts help teachers and families strengthen relationships both in the home and outside it.

The life skills of listening and responding from the heart, learning to regulate emotions through breathing, and building empathy will help in all relationships. You’ll all move through life more easily: at school, in relationships, in your careers. These skills will help you work through conflict, but it’s helpful to learn how to work together as you encounter conflict.

You also need to learn how to remain present amid conflict and learn how to work together towards a resolution.

The Mindset
Conflict comes, even in great relationships! Just because things go sideways from time to time doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. Instead of beating yourself up or blaming your child (or co-worker, student, or significant other) for the difficulty, consider a better question: “How do you navigate this in the best way possible?”

The Visualization
Imagine for a moment that you have an old-fashioned yard stick: a nice long, straight 3 foot measure. When you come to a disagreement with someone, it’s easy to sit face-to-face with them and confront them about the “problem.” You’re putting that 3 foot divider between you and standing toe-to-toe to see who will win. You become combatants.

The Outcome
What would happen instead if you sat beside your child so you could face the difficulty together? Shoulder-to-shoulder. This time, you’re shifting the line from between you to in front of you. Now you can stand together against the issue at hand.

This perspective shift can do great things to your family, classroom, or work dynamic. You can now successfully work through any conflict. Suddenly you’re a team ready to take on the world together.

We teach students to take a few deep breaths before they start their sharing time. There are so many reasons this practice is helpful to people of all ages. Most importantly, deep breathing activates our vagus nerve, which helps us calm down, think more clearly, and heal. This short video explains the basics and is great to share with your kids!

Deep breathing helps our brains function better. It can help us recall information and instructions, calm us down when we’re afraid or angry, and fall asleep more quickly at night. It can even help with anxiety and depression!

• 9 Facts About the Vagus Nerve. This fascinating article from Mental Floss walks readers through all the amazing things the vagus nerve is responsible for — it does far more than just start our relaxation response.
• Dacher Keltner on the Vagus Nerve. In this video, UC Berkeley psychologist and Faculty Director of the Greater Good Science Center shares his research on the vagus nerve, a key nexus of mind and body, and a biological building block of human compassion.
• 9 Ways Deep Breathing Supercharges Your Body and Mind. Deep breathing affects almost every single system in our body. It not only helps us feel better, it also helps us heal!
• How Mindfulness Practices are Changing an Inner City School. This Baltimore school has embraced the daily practice of mindfulness. It shows transforming success rates and kids are taking more responsibility for their actions. The same could be true in your own home!

Mindfulness practices take time, but the benefits begin immediately! These habits you’re building with your kids will follow them their entire life.

When was the last time you laughed together with a friend or family member?

Laughing together might sound like a frivolous, silly thing to do, but laughter is valuable. Families, classrooms, co-workers, friends… everyone needs some laugh time every single day.

Not only does it help you feel better in the moment, science proves that laughter is beneficial on a wide variety of levels. And the benefits of laughter aren’t limited to kids. Every single adult can reap the reward of laughter in a multitude of ways. Laughter relieves stress, lowers blood pressure, and increases memory and learning. It also improves concentration, creativity, and learning! Laughter can boost our immune system, too. It’s one of the best ways we can bond with one another and lower walls that may be present.

There’s a lot of research on laughter, and how good it is for our bodies and our minds:

• How Laughter Affects Our Health. This article explains why one of the key components of healthy relationships involves laughter.
• Happier in Five Minutes. This Tedx talk teaches you how to laugh for no reason at all, why you should consider making it happen.
• Babies Laughing at Dogs. Because sometimes we all need someone to help us laugh.
• Did Laughter Evolve to Make Us Healthy. In this National Geographic video, researchers look at what laughter can do for our health.

It might seem silly to schedule your laughter, but until it becomes a habit, there’s a good chance you aren’t doing enough of it. Consider penciling “FUN” onto your calendar. No one else needs to know that’s what you’re doing, but by doing so you’re experiencing the many benefits of laughter, and providing that opportunity for others, as well. Here are some suggestions:

• Watch a comedy with a family member or friend
• Watch a few videos on street magic
• Hunt down some screaming goats
• Go for a walk with a child and try some silly new steps together
• Read some spoonerisms
• Have a pun content
• Have a laughing contest. (It will start with forced laughter but it probably won’t be long until you’ve laughed to tears!)

No matter what else happens during your day, make sure you’re taking the time to enjoy the benefits of laughter. Your body and your mind will thank you!

The spotlight shines even more brightly on classroom climate these days. The Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) allows us to focus on social emotional learning with a little more intention and provides the funding to back up an effective educational plan. But when we try to shift classroom climate, the process must start with the mindset of leadership. In the classroom, that means it’s up to teachers!

Below, you’ll find four mindset practices that have the potential to shift classroom climate in powerful ways. As you build these four mindset practices into your own day, you can pass on these skills to your students. Specifically, they need tools to help them connect with others, particularly with those whom they view as different from themselves. As this skill grows, you’ll shift classroom climate more and more naturally.

1. Greet Students Daily

Stand at the door to welcome students by name. This gives a great message to all students that they are important to you:

• You’re happy to see them.
• You notice specific things about each person. (For example, when someone is back after being absent by saying, “Jake, nice to see you back again!”)

2. Build a Welcoming Committee

For younger grades, assign a few students each week to be the welcoming committee. Their job is to make sure that every student who walks in the room gets a “Hello, <name>” from another student. Over time, have students enlarge that greeting by complimenting the student on a skill or attribute. “Hello, <name>. I like your smile today!” (This is not a fashion-focused compliment.)

3. Assign Group Activity

Including activities daily that invite students to work in groups, particularly by changing those groups every week to help students who would otherwise not connect to work together.

4. Encourage Brainstorming

Structure group activities so everyone contributes. Teaching the value of brainstorming and how to add ideas without saying “that won’t work” because maybe even if it won’t, it will give someone else an idea that works.

Not only will these four mindsets help shift classroom climate, when implemented they can provide a sense of safety for students.

A rising tide lifts all ships.

This idiom carries such truth, doesn’t it? It’s one that rings true in schools. When students are thriving, the adults in the building are happy. Even more, when the adults in the building are thriving alongside the students, everyone flourishes.

Helping School Staff Thrive

School climate is getting more press of late, as schools implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Many accountability plans include school climate, but how do we measure it? What are best practices? You want your school to ooze positivity, and for people to feel this positivity the moment they step through the front doors.

Administrators ask, “What can I do to be helping school staff thrive?”

Teacher Stress Levels are Rising

A recent poll by the American Federation of Teachers reveals that 61% of teachers are stressed out. 58% say that their mental health is not good. In the same poll, more than half the teachers admit that they don’t feel the same enthusiasm about teaching as they did when they began. Chronic stress shows up as irritability, mood swings, exhaustion, and other physical and mental health symptoms. It leads to withdrawal from colleagues, increased absences, and high turnover rates. One study states that almost half of teachers change careers within the first 5 years. Of the ones who remain, 57% are disconnected from their teaching role and their students’ needs. Students feel the impact of teacher stress daily.

On a more positive note, engaged teachers lead their students to higher academic achievement.

Adults Need to Grow their SEL Skills

A CASEL study concluded that schools have better SEL outcomes when they also cultivate SEL competencies in adults. When we’re helping school staff thrive by engaging them in SEL at the adult level, classrooms experience more positive developmental outcomes. This adult learning can also reduce burnout among staff.

5 Radical Minutes not only teaches SEL to the students, we also provided weekly staff prompts to engage your staff in the same manner. When they engage in 5 Radical Minutes for Staff, they learn SEL skills as they interact with their peers each week. This 5-minute time at the beginning of any staff meeting can shift your school climate in powerful ways.

SEL Skills Benefit ALL Individuals

We know that to change habits or to learn new skills, the single most important factor is reinforcing the neurological pathway of that improved behavior or skills.  “Practice makes perfect” applies here!  5 Radical Minutes is most effective for students when all adults in the building pair up with a student. This process changes both how adults listen to students and also increases student trust such that they have more courage to approach adults when they need help or want to work something out.

When all staff in the building take part in 5 Radical Minutes prompts, two things happen:

1. Staff relationships improve and new or isolated staff come to know others in a way that builds trust.
2. Staff experience the effectiveness of the program in the same way students experience the program in the classroom.

If you know an administrator, we’d love it if you shared this article with them! We know they have a huge responsibility on their shoulders. We’ve put together some free resources on our website and a Pinterest board for them.

Our youth face so many pressures!

Whether it’s taking the brunt of adult frustration or anger, or coping with poverty, homeless, or drug addiction, they often come to school distracted. They’re also perceptive, so they feel of the pressures those around them. The anxiety they feel is real. These pressures interfere with their ability to concentrate in school. Some challenges even make school seem irrelevant in comparison. As a result, we need to help youth concentrate.

With younger youth, use the concepts below as an activity. With older youth, use them as a framework for conversation. For both, the process encourages them to find their own way through the transition into school.

Use language easy for the child to understand, given the developmental stage and language capacity.

Most of us know people with challenges.

“Lots of us have challenges in life. Many families struggle with a range of issues. Some students have parents who work two jobs, some only have one parent at home. Others have siblings or parents who use drugs or alcohol. Any of these family challenges can affect us.”

These challenges can make it difficult to concentrate.

“Some students might be sitting at their desks right now trying to figure out how to help their parents. Or wonder if their family member is okay. These thoughts can make if difficult to concentrate at school.”

School can make us smarter so we can figure out better solutions.

“When we focus on academics, our brains make new connections and we become smarter and learn to think more dynamically. We learn how to brainstorm and try new things. This allows us to figure ways to cope with challenges outside of school. These skills can help us for the rest of our lives.”

Teach the following 3 steps to help youth learn to concentrate more easily.

1. Establish the difference between school and everywhere else.

“There’s a difference between school life and home life. When we’re at school, we’re here to learn about academics. Along the way, we make friends and learn about life and relationships. When we’re at home, we’re learning about life and relationships, and maybe not so much about book learning or academics.”

Step 2. Establish your visual reminder.

After some discussion and a few open-ended questions, encourage your younger students to find a small image in a magazine. No one else in the school will know what the image is about, but each student will use this image as a reminder to leave their problems behind for a time.

Step 3. Learn to leave your challenges outside the door.

“Now that we know the value of academic learning at school, we will use our image to help us remember to leave our challenges outside the door. Can can even tape them right to the classroom door! Those problems will be there when we’re ready to go home. When we leave these challenges outside the door, we’ll be able to be present and ready to learn in the classroom.”

Use this activity in reverse to help youth concentrate away from school.

Students who struggle or are bullied at school can take a break from it when they’re home by following this same process as they walk out of the school.

Kids need to feel safe, valued, connected, and purposeful.

Life is full of paradoxes and opposites. No better words so aptly describe the start of a brand-new school year. School staff smiles optimistically at the sunny beginning amid the shadowy concerns for student safety. You plan for new programs despite the budgetary constraints. You watch the irony of students trying to act naturally. For us at 5 Radical Minutes, we must balance our prevention program and crisis response training. Despite the paradoxes and ironies, there are two things we know for sure: we all value a fresh start and we all need to make schools feel safe. To accomplish this, school must be a place where kids feel valued, connected, and purposeful. Teachers and staff play a big role in this.

4 Ways to Help Make Schools Feel Safe

As teachers and staff, you have an enormous opportunity to influence school climate. These changes are outward facing, but they start on the inside. There are many ways to shift your mindset. We explore four below.

Practice Gratitude

Start your day with a gratitude mindset. This may be a quiet moment as you get dressed. You might add a few things to a running list on your phone as you prepare your morning coffee. Maybe you jot down 3 things in your daily planner as students show up. However you mark your gratitude, be intentional. Allow gratitude to be the focus of your thoughts as early in your morning as possible.

Keep Yourself Centered

Take a few minutes to get centered. Breathe deeply 3-4 times to slow all the things going on in your mind and body. Keeping your emotions in check and staying calm throughout the school day will not only allow you to teach more effectively, you’ll be more available to your students.

Find a Positive Focus

You have a choice in how you look at your day. You can dread certain aspects, focus on your fatigue, and assume that one of your more troubled student will act up in class again. OR you can walk into your day assuming that you’ll do something kind for someone. Whether or not you realize it, you are reaching all of your students every day, both by what you do and by what you don’t do. Choosing to be positive will allow you to touch the lives of your students powerfully!

Build Community

Once you’re at school, look for every opportunity to build community and to guide students in building their own community around them. Notice times your language could be more inclusive. Add more suggestions for ways students might work on things together during problem solving, reinforcing the message, “Two heads are better than one.”

Implementing each of these things in a systematic yet heartfelt manner will help make schools feel safe, and students feel valued, connected, and purposeful. 5 Radical Minutes serves as a tool to help make this happen.

The teachers at Ground Zero on 9/11 were newly into their school year.

Some were so young, it takes your breath away to imagine their courage. Many were first-year teachers. All were barely into the school year, just matching faces to names and mastering desk cubby assignments. Some were at rug time, some were reading to their students, and some were teaching math. Others led music or browsed the school library with students on 9/11. Then there were all the aides and clerical staff. There were OT and PT specialists working with special needs students and administrators in the wheelhouse. They all held a different role for each select group of students.

They quickly switched role from teachers to saviors of their students on 9/11.

Suddenly, they were all remarkable, caring adults who — without having a choice to consent or decline — became the saviors of their students on 9/11. They pulled down shades to draw attention away from the burning towers. They brought students into the hallways so they couldn’t see what fell past the windows. And when they realized that everything was tumbling down around them, these teachers responded courageously.

Teachers, administrators, therapists, secretaries … all set out into the war zone of falling fire and debris, hand-in-hand with their students. They counted them at the end of every block to ensure they were all still together. Bits of burning plastic melted to their clothing. Toxic dust covered their bodies.

All students on 9/11 were delivered safely to friends and family.

Most headed north, but some loaded students onto boats that left for unknown locations. Students went to Stanton Island and students to New Jersey. Angels of mercy cared for each and every one as they arrived. They brought comfort and warmth to them in gymnasiums and churches, and protected these New York’s students on 9/11 until they could reunite with family.

We know the stories of many brave, strong protectors on 9/11. But the teachers in Lower Manhattan also did what no one ever drilled for them to do. They saved every single one of their students on 9/11, all without any major injuries.

Fire fighters are rightfully honored in the 9/11 legacy. But we must also pause to recognize the miracle of school staff. From Vesey Street and Liberty, to Church Street as well. On this day, all left the positions for which they’d been trained and became saviors and guardian angels of the youngest among us.

If there was a miracle amid the horror, it was that every child made it out. All by virtue of the remarkable souls who happened to be the teachers and staff of Lower Manhattan.

How Mindfulness Helps Our Bodies AND Our Brains

There are so many reasons mindfulness and deep breathing is helpful for people of all ages. And science agrees on the benefits of mindfulness. Mindfulness and deep breathing activates our vagus nerve, which helps us calm down, think more clearly, and heal. This short video explains the basics, and is a great one to share with the kids in your life!

Another of the benefits of mindfulness is that it helps our brains function better. It can boost our recall of information and instructions, calm us down when we’re afraid or angry, and fall asleep more quickly at night. It can even help with anxiety and depression!

Below are a few resources that recount the science and subsequent benefits of mindfulness:

• 9 Facts About the Vagus Nerve. This fascinating article from Mental Floss walks readers through all the amazing things the vagus nerve is responsible for — it does far more than just initiate our relaxation response.
• Dacher Keltner on the Vagus Nerve. In this video, UC Berkeley psychologist and Faculty Director of the Greater Good Science Center shares his research on the vagus nerve, a key nexus of mind and body, and a biological building block of human compassion.
• 9 Ways Deep Breathing Supercharges Your Body and Mind. Deep breathing affects almost every single system in our body. It not only helps us feel better, it also helps us heal!
• How Mindfulness Practices are Changing an Inner City School. This Baltimore school has embraced the daily practice of mindfulness, and it’s transforming success rates and kids are taking more responsibility for their actions. The same could be true in your own home!

Mindfulness practices take time, but the benefits begin immediately! These habits you’re building for yourself and the kids in your life will benefit you all for your entire life. We’d love to hear about your mindfulness practice and how it’s helping you. And if you’re a teacher using experiencing the benefits of mindfulness in the classroom, tell us your story!