Balance Your Teacher Life: Personal Growth Tips, Habits & Life Coaching to Empower Educators to Avoid Burnout

The Power of Co-Regulation: How 5 Minutes of Mindfulness Transforms Classrooms with Kailey Leftko of Educalme.com

November 14, 2023 Grace Stevens Episode 15
The Power of Co-Regulation: How 5 Minutes of Mindfulness Transforms Classrooms with Kailey Leftko of Educalme.com
Balance Your Teacher Life: Personal Growth Tips, Habits & Life Coaching to Empower Educators to Avoid Burnout
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Balance Your Teacher Life: Personal Growth Tips, Habits & Life Coaching to Empower Educators to Avoid Burnout
The Power of Co-Regulation: How 5 Minutes of Mindfulness Transforms Classrooms with Kailey Leftko of Educalme.com
Nov 14, 2023 Episode 15
Grace Stevens

Can 5 minutes of mindfulness a day really transform your classroom? 🧘‍♀️

🎙️ In this week's episode, I chat with Kailey Lefko, co-founder of EduCalme.com, about using mindfulness and emotional regulation strategies to create calm, focused classrooms.

This wonderful discussion is full of science-based strategies proven to empower students to manage their emotions and behaviors and also on how to ground yourself as their teacher.

My favorite part? ⬇️

🔑 Kailey explains the science behind co-regulation - how our emotions and energy impact others around us. When teachers show up to class stressed or anxious, students pick up on those cues, leading to a stressed classroom environment. Like I always say,  "Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans."

🎧 Listen to this inspiring discussion about the power of mindfulness in education
and learn all about Educalme's plug-and-play program that gives you the tools you need without the need for any additional planning or training.

 🎁 Kailey also shares how you can try EduCalme's intro lessons for free. 


Resources mentioned in this episode: www.educalme.com

To learn more about The Elevated Teacher Experience visit: www.gracestevens.com/elevate

To watch the FREE video masterclass on The 5 Mistakes You Are Making Setting Boundaries as an Educator go to www.gracestevens.com/boundaries



Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life? Check out the Elevated Teacher Experience here
Check out the best-selling Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers book here
And the #1 new release for educators Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries book here

Wanna get social?
https://www.tiktok.com/@gracestevensteacher
https://www.facebook.com/GraceStevensTeacher
https://www.Instagram.com/gracestevensteacher

Old school: Website : www.GraceStevens.com (courses, blog & freebies!)

Show Notes Transcript

Can 5 minutes of mindfulness a day really transform your classroom? 🧘‍♀️

🎙️ In this week's episode, I chat with Kailey Lefko, co-founder of EduCalme.com, about using mindfulness and emotional regulation strategies to create calm, focused classrooms.

This wonderful discussion is full of science-based strategies proven to empower students to manage their emotions and behaviors and also on how to ground yourself as their teacher.

My favorite part? ⬇️

🔑 Kailey explains the science behind co-regulation - how our emotions and energy impact others around us. When teachers show up to class stressed or anxious, students pick up on those cues, leading to a stressed classroom environment. Like I always say,  "Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans."

🎧 Listen to this inspiring discussion about the power of mindfulness in education
and learn all about Educalme's plug-and-play program that gives you the tools you need without the need for any additional planning or training.

 🎁 Kailey also shares how you can try EduCalme's intro lessons for free. 


Resources mentioned in this episode: www.educalme.com

To learn more about The Elevated Teacher Experience visit: www.gracestevens.com/elevate

To watch the FREE video masterclass on The 5 Mistakes You Are Making Setting Boundaries as an Educator go to www.gracestevens.com/boundaries



Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life? Check out the Elevated Teacher Experience here
Check out the best-selling Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers book here
And the #1 new release for educators Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries book here

Wanna get social?
https://www.tiktok.com/@gracestevensteacher
https://www.facebook.com/GraceStevensTeacher
https://www.Instagram.com/gracestevensteacher

Old school: Website : www.GraceStevens.com (courses, blog & freebies!)

  Hey teacher friends today I have a treat for you. I have a guest and not just any guest but the fantastic Kaylee Lefkoe who as well as being a seasoned teacher is co founder of the EduCalm online program. I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not but she is going to teach us all about it and I know it's going to sound too good to be true but I promise you it has been evaluated by a third party.

to really demonstrate this program improves self regulation, focus, resilience, classroom management and more. It is push button. You don't need training in how to do it. Everything is available for you and she's going to tell you how you can get free access to it. But it's a great tool for helping empower students to manage their own emotions and behaviors.

and to help you ground yourself so that you can be there for your students. So I can't wait to get started on today's episode and introduce you to Kayleigh.  Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance. 

If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, You have found your home in the podcast universe.  I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show. 

If you would introduce yourself to the listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do.  

Yeah. So my name is Kayleigh Lefkoe. I'm a teacher. I'm the co founder of EduCalme, which is a program that supports teachers and students with their wellbeing in the classroom. And I am also the co host of the Balanced Educator podcast.

So did you want to hear a little bit of how I got to where I am now or just those credentials? No, 

no, no. Tell us all about the 

journey. Sounds good. So yeah, I was the keener teacher that when I graduated university, I could not wait to get into the classroom. I love science. and biology. And I could not wait to share that passion with my students.

But I learned really quickly as many first time teachers learn that once you get into the classroom, there's a whole bunch of stuff that we didn't really learn in university. And that is that we don't just have robots in front of us ready to learn our awesomely laid out lesson plans. We have humans with emotions and lives outside of the classroom that come in and aren't always ready to learn. 

So the beginning of my career, I was really burning myself out trying to balance like how to support my students with their social emotional skills so that they were ready to learn how to manage the huge tasks of being a teacher, which you know, has a never ending to do list. And as I was feeling myself starting to reach that burnout point, I was like, okay, I love this career.

I want to stay in it. But what. can I do to find balance here? Because this isn't working. It's not sustainable. So in my quest to find something to manage my stress and anxiety I found mindfulness and what was so cool is that it was so easy to integrate in my day. So what I would do is I started the routine of, I would drive to work and in the parking lot before entering the school building.

I would listen to a five minute guided mindfulness practice. And this little five minutes of breathing, paying attention to my thoughts, paying attention to my emotions, was paying huge dividends. I couldn't believe how much it was changing my ability to manage the stress of my day, to support my students, and also giving me these skills that was helping me to support my students when they were having big emotions helping me to give them pointers on how to stay focused and on task in the classroom.

So  as a teacher, I was like, Hey, this thing is changing my life. This simple practice of, you know, just learning how to breathe, learning how to focus on myself for five minutes. It's so little.  Man, if I had had this when I was growing up, things would have changed so much. So of course, I want to share this with my students now.

So I decided, hey, let's practice mindfulness in the classroom with my students. And in the beginning, it crashed and burned. I did all the wrong things until I eventually just kept working at it, trying different things until I found kind of like a formula that really worked in the classroom. And I was seeing these same transformations in my students as I had been seeing in myself.

And all of a sudden classroom management got easier. My students were more focused. It felt like more of a community in the classroom. We weren't fighting each other. We were working together instead of against each other. So after transformations in the classroom and even having my colleagues pop their head in and be like, What's going on?

Why is your class doing so well now? They're normally jumping off the walls and, and now they're really focused. What's your secret? And I would explain what I was doing. You know, we're just practicing mindfulness five minutes a day every morning and it's making a huge difference. And then, and then I would see my colleague's eyes glass over like, Oh, I have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't know how I would do that. So my best friend and teaching colleague Josiane and I decided she had also been doing the same experimenting with mindfulness in her classroom, but in elementary school and I was in high school we decided, Hey, we found a formula that's really working. Why don't we create something that allows other teachers to do this in their classroom too, without having to do, you know, the. 

the teacher, yoga teacher trainings and, and all the mindfulness learning and all the professional development that we had been doing. So that's what we did. We built a program that's created for the classroom where teachers just log into our website, press play, and they learn alongside their students.

So it's a guided mindfulness  practice. This that teachers and students do together that supports everyone in the classroom to manage their emotions get their brains and bodies ready for effective teaching and learning, and in a way that's ready to go. So teachers don't have to be an expert to be able to do this.

They can learn alongside their students and everyone is just. feeling better in the classroom, reducing that teacher stress, reducing the student stress and making the classroom a more enjoyable and calm place. So that's what I do now. I support other teachers with the Educom program and I do. 

Podcasts and workshops and all sorts of things to support teachers and their students. 

All right. Okay. So I love so much about what you just said. So first off people should know that I met Kaylee because I was actually on her podcast and I was so impassioned by her mission as. Somebody myself who had put mindfulness and tried to get it into the classroom and yet had to duct tape together the resources, find this here, find this there, find this somewhere else.

So I'm a big proponent of it. So, but there are a few things I'd want to like back up and spend some time on. The first thing is you said. Five minutes. And I think people are really skeptical. Could something that is just five minutes really have that big an impact? And so what I would have to say to that is yes, but it has to be consistent. 

Right? You can't do it five minutes. Like you can't do one set up and one, you know, each body. Right. And it needs to be in my experience, like, you don't wait till the kids like  completely out of control, throwing the chair as. I have had to be like, yeah, let's bust out some breathing, right? Like the whole thing is like, I've had people ask me in the past you know, what strategy do you have when I'm starting to, you know, panic and I'm, I'm having anxiety?

Listen, I'm somebody who's had panic attacks my whole life. Regrettably, I'm going to tell you. That's like one foot off the edge of the cliff. There's nothing you can do when it's happening, right? You just gotta like, have confidence that when you fall you'll get up again. But like, there's no strategy you can employ right then.

The point is when you work on the mindfulness it's like prescriptive. It's to stop it from happening, right? To stop it from happening. Yes. Proactive. Not like to fix it. Yeah, when it's happening. So five minutes.  And there was something else that you said that really struck me that I loved. First of all, I want to add one thing like years ago when I was writing my book, I did a lot of research on mindfulness because I always tried it in the classroom and back then like people thought it was a little woo woo, you know,  what is she doing in a classroom?

And I went and dug and I found I live in San Francisco and I found the evidence of a school who had implemented meditation instead of detention. And they had reduced, it was older kids, they had reduced their suspension rates  70%. And that's when people started like, being like, okay, we let her do what she, what she's doing, because there is, there is data to back it up.

So, but what I like to do, you said you teach the older kids. And then Josianne teaches the little kids. It's good for everybody. Right? Yes. Good for you. So, tell me a little bit about this whole, explain to everybody the idea of co regulation.  Yeah. Because we hear all the time, the new word, buzzword, dysregulation, oh the kids are so dysregulated.

It's a nice word for saying, like, so stressed and out of control, so tell us about co regulation please.  

Yeah. So first thing yeah, as you said, we've probably heard the term dis regulated, which means your, your system isn't in regulation, isn't, you know, feeling good, running well right now. We're starting to hear more self regulation.

So the goal is we want our students to be able to self regulate, meaning they're able to manage their emotions and behaviors. independently. So in order to self regulate, that means we need to have the skill of first recognizing what an emotion feels like in our body. So we're going, you know, how does  my, how does my heart feel?

How does my mind feel? How do my arms and legs feel? So, you know, if I am calm, my shoulders might feel relaxed. My muscles feel relaxed. I'm breathing normally. I can breathe deeply and I feel kind of settled in my body. If we're angry, for example, we might feel our heart racing, we might feel our fists clenching into, or our hands clenching into fists.

We might feel tension in our muscles. So our emotions have a really big impact on our body and how our body functions in this moment and in the space that we're in. So if we want our students to self regulate, they need to be able to recognize, Hey, what's my body doing right now? And then the next step is they need to be able to know, okay, if I am feeling anger right now, what is a tool that I can use to reduce this feeling of anger in my body and return to a state of calm where I am feeling, you know, calm, focused, and ready to learn.

So those are big Skills that we're asking of our students, and in fact, their brains are still under construction to be able to do these skills. So a lot of the times, and especially with the younger kids, they really can't self regulate. So We like to think of teaching this self regulation skill as we would teach something like reading in the classroom.

Yeah. So we wouldn't punish a student that came into our classroom in kindergarten because they're not able to read. We wouldn't punish them for not having that skill yet. We see our students coming into the classroom and can't read yet. Our thinking as a teacher is, oh, okay, I need to do a number of things to teach them the skills required to be able to read independently.

So what's that going to look like? It's going to look like practicing a little bit every day, practicing in different situations, giving them little pieces of the skills that they need that build on each other so that eventually they can read independently.  Now, the same is true with regulating our emotions, regulating our body. 

We can't punish our students for coming into the classroom and not being able to do that. Rather, we should say, hmm, what are the skills that I need to teach them so that they can eventually get to the point of being able to self regulate? regulate. So those skills look like taking the time to recognize what does my body feel like, describing those feelings and sensations, and then teaching them and not just telling them, but actually letting them practice in their body.

Just like, you know, we would, we don't just tell our students how to throw a ball. They need to practice with their body, throwing a ball. You can explain to them as much as you want. You can explain to kids as much as you want that they need to breathe deeply, but they need to. feel it in their body to be able to do it.

So what does this look like for teaching self regulation? It looks like giving them the chance to practice breathing strategies, to practice sitting and recognizing and feeling their body and moving their body in different ways that help them feel the sensation of regulating their emotions. And then once they've built those skills and practiced in lots of different ways, when that anxiety attack comes or if it comes, they actually have practiced, Oh, what do I do when my body feels this way?

Ah, right. I can do five finger breathing or I can do sun breathing or belly breathing. Now, co regulation.  is the understanding that our emotional system  doesn't just stand alone on its own. We are always in communication with other humans around us. So say for example, I as a teacher...  walk into the classroom after my mind is racing about all the things on my to do list.

So I walk into the classroom and I'm thinking, Oh, I have to do, you know, I have to finish these corrections and call this parent. And, Oh, I can't forget to do that. And I can't forget to do this. As I'm having those thoughts. My brain is communicating to my body. There's a danger here. There's something I might forget.

I need to be on high alert. So our brain tells our body through these thoughts that we're having to get into kind of a higher arousal state. So kind of a stressed state where our heart is beating faster. Our. Brain gets hyper focused on problems. We're, we're pumping blood to our muscles so that we're ready to fight or flee this danger that we're perceiving.

So our body now is in the emotional state of stress. Now, the motion that we're feeling in our body affects our actions. So just imagine in your mind someone walking into the room that you can tell they're stressed. So maybe I am moving a little bit like sporadically, I'm having a hard time focusing.

Maybe a student comes up to me and I, sorry, I don't have time right now. Like just go to your spot, I'll come to you later. And you can see that dysregulation in my body as an observer.  So  because we as humans are constantly co regulating, our brain is wired to work. As a group, so we're taking in the emotions of others constantly and that's affecting our personal emotional state.

So say for example, you know, in the same example where the teacher is walking in stressed and then the student recognizes, Oh, okay, my teacher is having these sporadic movements. They're having a hard time focusing. They're kind of flittering around the room. Oh, what's going on? Is there something wrong? 

Do we have something that I should be worried about? Is it going to be a bad day today? Are they going to be upset today? Am I going to have to worry about getting yelled at today? So now their mind is going, they're thinking these thoughts of, Oh, there's a danger here. So their body now is going into  the stress response that is required for a dangerous situation.

So their heart is pumping faster. They have a hard time focusing. Instead, they're focusing on problems or dangers. They're looking for dangers. And. Their heart is pumping fast and sort of pushing them to want to fight or flee. So that can look in our students as kids that have a really hard time sitting still, they're sort of moving around, they're having a hard time focusing, or it could be the kid that shuts down and they're just kind of you know, off in la la land. 

So now that's the emotion that they're feeling in our body, their body, and that turns into an action for them. So as teachers now we see them acting  dysregulated.  We're seeing the, the,  the effects of their emotions in their body. So this is an example of co regulation. Now, I really, I want to pause here and say, teachers,  you are human and it's not your fault if you walk into the classroom stressed and your students like seem to feed off of that. 

Rather than thinking of this as like, Oh my gosh, I'm the problem. You're not the problem. What I want you to understand is there's a solution that we can understand how our bodies work together in checking in on each other's emotions and responding with our own thoughts, our own emotions, our own actions.

And instead of just letting this be like a runaway train in the negative way, we can say, okay, this is how our body works. Our bodies as a group  like to,  in the same way we are taking in the cues of each other. So let's use this system to our advantage. So that can look like, okay, at the beginning of the day in my classroom, I know that I tend to feel stressed and my students tend to seem dysregulated as well.

Why don't we co regulate in a, in a. productive way so that all of our systems, all of our bodies and minds are calm, focused and ready to learn. So what kind of activities can we do? What kind of scene can we create in the classroom? What kind of atmosphere can we create? What kind of routines can we create that allow us to actually start with maybe some deep breathing? 

Some co regulation strategies where we're all moving and breathing together, getting our minds and bodies focused in the present moment, getting our emotions in that calm state together because it's easier that way. It's like if you're trying to practice yoga alone versus going into a yoga studio and practicing in a group, that group think, that group emotion makes it easier for us to relax.

So we can do that in our classrooms. We can co regulate with our students to get ourselves ready for a productive day. 

Oh my gosh. I love that so much. And again, I want to stress in case people are like, I don't have time for that. Oh honey. You don't have time not to, right? Exactly. My whole thing, everybody knows it's the hill I'm going to die on.

I mean, you said it all nicely and scientifically. I say it a different way.  Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans.  I say it again. And again, and again, how you show up is the determining factor between kids, wanting to learn, wanting to be excited to be there, feeling that you are calm and consistent so they know what to expect, right?

When you show up frazzled, exhausted, low key resentful, I'll just say it. I'm a teacher. It happens, right? And so, and none of that is your fault. The system is insane, right? We know that. It's like, it is, the demands put on teachers  and it's, it's a lot, but we chose to be here. And if we want to stay here, I'm all about the empowerment.

Let's learn some skills. Some skills, right? And especially it can just take a few minutes. I remember I came home, I had a tiny little love heart cut out  that a student had made me when I was teaching fourth grade. It was really, really tiny and in tiny writing they'd written something and I brought it home and I showed it to my partner and I just had tears in my eyes.

And he said, Oh, did you get a love note? And I said, Read it.  And somebody in tiny writing and they'd slipped it on my lesson plan book on the way out the door said, Sorry, we stressed you out today, miss.  I felt terrible.  Like, what a burden to place on children. And yes, was I stressed? Absolutely. Was it their fault?

No,  you know, they weren't helping some of their behavior, but again, where did it come from? It came from me, right? And it's not going to fix everything. I mean, I can be as Zen as anything and show up and there'll still be some child who, you know, I can't control what happens. outside the classroom, right?

Kids come in upset, kids come in with drama and trauma in so many things on their minds. And that's why I like your idea of as soon as people come in. I used to first thing in the morning have on the big you know, the big smart board I'd put on and it was a, the kids would like, Oh, try and look through a window and see what it was.

I would go on YouTube. God bless the people who put them on there. Beautiful, like calm music in the scene. So we had a galaxy theme. So sometimes it would be the galaxy. But sometimes, you know, I'm in California. It doesn't get very cold here in winter. I would put in a snow scene or the Yule log, right?

Just so kids feel cozy, but calm. And then when they come in or we sit down and I'd be like,  let's do our, like a little pattern interrupter, I'll yeah, take five breathing, something, just a few seconds, just a few seconds. So that I realized my. You know, I'm wearing my shoulders like earrings, right? Like, my shoulders,  the stress in my body is like, okay, they're here now, it's fine.

The copies aren't made, if this hasn't happened, they're in now. Like, it is what it is, we're going to roll with it. So, I love absolutely everything about what you said. And you said, like I said, you said it so elegantly. And me always. Check myself, right? That, that like,  like I felt so bad, that little love note and bless my partner that he thought they wrote you a love note.

And I'm like, no, no,  like that felt terrible. So,  so tell us about Educom. Like, so it's a website, it's an app you put it on your phone, or is it just a website they 

go to?  It's just a website. So, you know, most teachers are, you know, projecting things in their classroom, using things in the classroom on a, on a desktop or a laptop.

So we've created it more for, for that view. You can use it on your phone, you know, as well, but I think most teachers are using a computer at school. So yeah, it's just a website. You log in and we have a library of lessons. There's, it's divided into themes so that you have practices, two to five minute practices for the entire school year.

So basically your routine is you come in in the morning, you have kind of your startup routine with your students. So maybe that looks like having them call music playing when they come in. And them sitting at their spots, and then you start the day with Educom. So you say, all right, everyone get into a comfortable position, distractions away.

Here is your time to rest. You know, this is your you time, some time for you to just check in with yourself, slow down. And so we can start the day from a good way. You press play and there's either audios or we have some videos as well. And you just listen to this two or five minute. You can choose the length that works for your age group and your you know, the, the time constraints that you might have, press play, you listen all together.

And through these daily practices, you and your students are first off having the chance to calm your bodies so that the brain. is ready to learn because when brains are stressed, they are not ready to learn. Essentially, we are shutting off the doorways to the learning centers of the brain when we're stressed and we're dysregulated.

So it's like a warm up for learning. Our students are becoming more calm, their brain is opening the door, and then after this two to five minute practice, then we're ready to start the day. So it becomes just part of the daily routine. You just walk in, you, you know, start, say your hellos, press play, and then move on with your day.

Now, the beautiful thing about our program is that, as I said, there's enough content for the whole school year. So every day you're in this routine of just pressing play, you don't have to think about, you don't have to find something online. Find a video, okay, what's gonna fit, what's the right length, what is appropriate for the classroom.

Everything has been created by teachers for the classroom. We use this in our own classrooms and there are, you know, teachers worldwide using this program. In their classrooms. So it's made to build on each other. The skills build throughout the year. And so you're getting calm, but you're also learning specific tools for managing emotions.

So we are doing different types of breathing exercises different types of visualizations. Affirmations, we're learning about how the brain works. So we're, there's units on growth mindset there's units on the five senses. How do we use our five senses to connect to the present moment? There's breathing visuals.

So something that video that you watch that is very calming, that helps you to connect the breath, the breathing with a beautiful visual. So there's a variety of content that's going to keep things fresh, keep things interesting not overly repetitive, but repetitive enough that it's just this routine that your students expect.

So they know, and this is the beautiful thing that just like makes my heart sore when I think about it. Imagine being a student that knows That every morning when they get to school, they come into a classroom and they have the chance to sit  and find a space of calm. No matter what happened in the morning, you know, most kids, most humans, mornings tends to be chaos, right?

You're trying to get out the door. You're trying to get organized. You're, you're tired. You're cranky. You're dealing with traffic. You know, mornings are tough for a lot of people. So imagine coming into the classroom and knowing that first five minutes is a moment to connect with yourself, to connect with your classmates, to connect with your teacher in a positive way before we're being forced to, you know, do  challenging learning.

We have the time to just warm up our brain and get ready for the day. So yeah, you're pressing play and then throughout the year your students are building these amazing skills that are going to support them, not just while you're practicing, but throughout the day. So the beautiful thing is, you know, you, you did the practice in the morning, you learned a new breathing strategy.

Okay. Now, an hour later, your students are starting to get wrangly and they're having trouble focusing and you can just pause and say, Hey, I'm noticing we're having a hard time focusing. I think we could use a breathing strategy or Hey, let's get our brains. back on track and ready to learn. And so you practice that breathing strategy together.

It takes less than 30 seconds. And yet, you know, you've taken a pause,  breathed for 30 seconds, and now we're focused and ready to learn again. So as you said, you know, this time, this idea of I don't have time.  Empirically, with evidence, we know that we actually gain more time for teaching when we start with teaching our students how to regulate themselves.

Because now, throughout the day, they're employing these regulation strategies alone, self regulating, so we have to use less interventions to get them back on track, to get them refocused, to manage behaviors. They're better able to do it.  And so we end up being able to teach more of the academic stuff when we take a moment to prepare the brain and body. 

So, yeah,  that's how it works.  

I really appreciate it because as somebody who, you know, it's becoming much more recently. I feel much more since you know, since we had our little, you know, lockdown experience that turned out not so great for students, right? That, you know.  Teachers, administrators, educators in general are more open to the idea of spending time on social emotional learning during class.

But you know, to actually have the tools, you know, I'll never forget one time I had a student and he did have a lot of trauma in his background. And one time he was just, you know, he's sitting on the floor and he's  He's been really unkind to another student, physical with them, and I'm having to do with that, but I can see he is so, like he's curled up in a ball, and he's sobbing and he can barely breathe, and  you know, I'm supposed to hand him the reflection sheet?

You know what I mean? Like, he doesn't, I even asked him, I said, do  you know why you're upset? Not like asking him, why did you hit the person or what happened? I just said, you seem really, really upset right now. Do you know why you're upset? And he was sobbing and he was just like, no! Like he had no idea why he was upset.

And yeah, to hand him the little reflection sheet. And tell them to go sit in the corner and fill it out. Like, come on man, I need some tools.  

Most adults wouldn't even be able to do that, right? Like how often do you have a bad day and you can't quite pinpoint why or you snap at your partner or someone that you love and, and you're like, why did I do that?

Like reflection, self reflection is a skill that takes practice. We can't ask students to use these skills if we're not teaching them first.  100%, 

100%. So I am so thankful from a teacher perspective,  from a personal human perspective, but especially as a teacher perspective, because I did in the classroom want to use these tools.

I had a pretty limited repertoire myself. Like I knew what worked for me. I was willing to put the time in. I knew what worked for my students, but I had no confidence that when they went on to the next grade. That those skills would be encouraged and to have a tool that is plug and play. One less thing we need to worry about.

Like I, lesson planning, it takes so much time. Like, yeah, if there's something I can do and just hit  play that is amazing. So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Oh my gosh, what, you know, we rarely see. Yeah, that's one of the things about teaching, right? It's not like we make widgets, right?

At the end of the day, we don't, you know, I'm a big quilter. There's something beautiful about taking scraps and making it something beautiful. And at the end, you have this finished product. Well, teaching isn't like that, right? We know it's rare. It's rare. It's magical when it happens, but we don't. Always see the impact that we have, but I can tell you that what you are teaching and what you are doing for educators and students really, really, really makes an impact.

So I want to thank you for that. So tell people where can they find you? Where can they find out more?  

Yeah, so you can find everything at educalm. com.  So that's spelled E D U C A L M E.  And from there, you'll find that we have a free trial. So for our full program, if you sign up for the free trial, you'll get unlimited access to the first unit of the program.

So in that first unit, you're going to get a quick little training video for you as the teacher, 15 minutes that'll get you totally understanding what the program is how to use it in the classroom. And then you have the introduction to mindfulness unit for your students that includes the those daily audios that I was talking about.

But in the program, we also have a bunch more stuff that can be used if you want to, you don't have to, the audios are really the key part here. But you know, we're teachers, we like to think of how can we make this transdisciplinary. So there are, you know, Beautiful posters that go with each unit. There are lesson plans for you, the teacher, to understand, like, why is it that we're learning this in the audio?

So we explain what the learning outcomes are. There are printables for students. So reflection booklets that allowed them to reflect on the practice that they had. So you can use that as a writing activity, a journaling activity, something that you can really integrate into your actual curriculum. So it can go with the languages, your health programming, things like.

That some schools now are actually have social emotional learning programming. Mm-Hmm.  In the curriculum. So, you know, it'll link to your curriculum and all sorts of other extra bonus activities and projects and stuff like that just for fun. So that's kind of just in addition to the audios. So the free trial gives you access to that first unit forever.

So it's never gonna run out. We're never gonna take it away from you. You can use it for as long as you want. Now, if you're like. Wow, I love this. I want more. I want an audio for every day of the school year. I want a bunch of different types of themes. Then you can sign up for a membership to the full program and that's going to open up the library to give you access to everything in there and all the stuff that we continue to add.

We also have our podcast. So, you know, podcast listeners, if you enjoy listening to teaching podcasts we have a large library there as well. You can find the information.  And yeah, everything you need to know about us or want to get from us, the free resources and stuff like that is on our website, educalme.com.



All right. And in the show notes, I'm going to put the link to that, obviously. And then again the podcast is The Balanced  Educator. 

Balanced Educator, which is all my, I balance your teacher life. I almost have. Yeah, we're all about balance. We're all about, wow, it's what we're missing, right?

It's what we're missing. I mean, we should not, I just did that whole, oh, I kind of went. offer a deep dive, got a bit passionate about it, about we should not have to be martyrs, right? I don't know how we bought into it that like, we have to sacrifice everything in our life to be a good teacher. The absolute opposite is true, right?

Yeah. So bringing it back full circle, your energy teaches more than your lesson plans or as a Kayleigh explained to us co regulation. So I really want to thank you for your time. I appreciate your mission and listeners. We will see you next time.