Sooo many choices for holidays today!  Aardvarks sounded the most fun, so here are some fun facts about them:

• Name means ‘earth pig’
• Feeds on mostly ants and termites
• Their tongue can be up to a foot long

​Big Idea: It’s inevitable that we are asked questions we’d rather not answer.  Maybe it’s been a bad day and someone asks, “How are you?” when they know something’s up and won’t take “fine” as an answer. Maybe someone asks a seemingly innocuous question, but the actual answer is long and involved, or perhaps someone asks a question and the answer is confidential.


Here are two things to remember the next time you find yourself in this situation:

1. Tell the truth.  It may not be the WHOLE truth, but make sure that what you say is not a lie.  Remember that people will hear what they want, and you can use that to your advantage.  
2. You don’t have to give up information you don’t want to.  Just because someone asked a question doesn’t mean you have to give up personal or confidential information.

So, what do you say?


If you are asked uncomfortable questions regularly, keep track of the most common, and create responses in advance.  Here are four techniques to help pseudo-answer a question you’d rather not answer:

1. Bridging.  Politicians are masters with this technique.  Let’s say you’re on the negotiating team, and someone knows you just had a meeting and asks for the scoop.

• Acknowledge the question.  “I’m glad you asked because we are taking this year’s negotiations very seriously…”
• ‘Bridge’ to something else:  “...I can’t give a lot of information on that right now, but what I can say is ______.”

 

1. Adjacent Answers.  When someone asks a question and you know that the real answer is more than they’re looking for, or more than you want to deal with at the moment, you can tell them something that’s true, but not exactly an answer to what they asked.  Since most questions are asked in passing, the questioner will probably take it as the actual answer to their question.  
   
   
   For example, someone asks, “How are you today?”  You’re not fine, so you don’t want to lie and you don’t want to get into a conversation, so you reply (for example), “Spot (your dog) didn’t chew up my shoe this morning before I could put it on, so that was a great start to the day!”  All that was true - you just didn’t get into the fact that after putting your shoes on, the day went downhill fast.
   
   
   
2. Just Say It.  Sometimes, people can’t (don’t?) take hints or pick up on social cues, so you have to be more direct.  Or maybe you just like this sort of answer.  In this case, use your “I Statements” and tell them you don’t want to answer:

• “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
• “I would prefer to talk about something else.”

 

1. Humor.  Use humor to let them know that you don’t want to answer without saying so:

• “Shhhh.  That’s a secret!”
• “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
• “If I only knew…”
• “That’s a very long story, and a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to explain.”

This week, try this:  Think about the questions you are commonly asked and you feel caught every time.  Take the time to formulate your answer in advance so you won’t feel like a awkward aardvark the next time.

Quote:  "Only a few people care.  The rest are just curious."  (Unknown)

Educator Resource:  March Book Study on TeachIllinois starts today (but it’s not too late to start!) - Implicit Bias: An Educator’s Guide to the Language of Microaggressions by Anni Reinking.  7 PD Hours (FREE!).

Educator implicit bias is often experienced by students of varying identities as microaggressions. In this book the authors define implicit bias and microaggressions, identify ways students of varying identities such as race, gender/LGBTQ+, religion, socioeconomic, ability, linguistic and family dynamics, experience microaggressions in schools, and offer an educator’s guide to using culturally responsive teaching as an antidote to microaggressions. We also provide specific ways to interrupt microaggressions in schools.

Anni Reinking is an Illinois author, and has presented at our Directions Conference several times.
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Dad Joke:  Did you hear about how people in Athens don't wake up until noon?  They say dawn is pretty tough on Greece.​

ccording to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most difficult tongue twister is


The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.


If you want to be all educational, tongue twisters are a good way to work on pronunciation, too. Here are some curated for just that purpose.

Big Idea:  Regulation sits squarely in the self-management section of the CASEL wheel. Humans regulate just about everything in our bodies.  Our blood pressure and blood flow, the level of hormones, water, and energy in our bloodstream, as well as the amount of stress on our muscles is all regulated by our brain and organ systems.  


Like those physiological symptoms, we also have the ability to regulate our emotions and the way respond to stimuli (our behavior).  When we become hyper-aroused, our brain and body work in concert until we are back to normal.  Likewise, when we become hypo-aroused, our brain and body work together to bring us back up to normal.  This is self-regulation.


As adults, we (theoretically) have the skills to self-regulate; skills that have taken a lifetime to learn, and that we are still honing. Kids don’t start having the ability to self-regulate until about the third grade. Instead, kids rely on co-regulation.  Basically, their nervous systems are learning from ours how to self-soothe and stay within our ‘normal’ zone.


You’ve seen kids fall and then look up at you to see how they should react.  If you freak out, they start crying.  If you tell them it’s OK, just shake it off, they’re fine.  We need to make sure that we have the self-regulation skills that we can let them borrow our nervous system for regulation. In this way, co-regulation comes before self-regulation.


Dysregulation is the lack of skills necessary to bring one’s nervous system back to equilibrium.  Some adults live in a perpetual state of dysregulation and have no idea what it’s like to have inner calm.  You’ve probably met them - after you’re around them, you notice that your system is off.  Maybe you don’t stop and name it as dysregulation on their part, but you probably feel dislike, or pity, or just ‘some kind of way’.  It’s actually your nervous system being put out of whack by their nervous system.  


This week, try this:  The next time you feel frazzled by an email, student behavior, or your dog, NOTICE and NAME your emotion.  Be as specific as possible.  If you are feeling angry, maybe it’s frustration, and if you did a little deeper, perhaps you can distinguish between being infuriated and annoyed. Language matters!

Quote:  "Self-regulation is a better indicator of success than intelligence or talent."  (Lawrence Steinburg)

Educator Resource:  Trauma-Informed Relationship-Focused Schools Conference - March 6 & 7, 2024 at The Knowledge Center at Chaddock (Quincy, IL).  


You're welcome to attend day one either virtually or in person. Day two is exclusively in person. Whether you can only attend the pre-conference workshop or the conference itself, that's perfectly fine. We're happy to accommodate what works best for you! Both the Pre-Conference Workshop and Conference address common challenges in education, such as feeling overworked, understaffed, or unsupported, and provide strategies for reaching students and managing behavior.


INFORMATION    TICKETS    SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION

Dad Joke:  It was so cold yesterday my computer froze.  It was my own fault; I left too many windows open. 

Chocolate Mint is so delicious, I thought it was from, y’know, the Cradle of Civilization. Wrong! Peppermint Patties weren’t developed until the 1940’s, and Girl Scout Thin Mints (1953) helped propel the flavor combo.  The best ice cream flavor ever wasn’t developed until 1973 by a culinary student, Marilyn Ricketts (how do I nominate her for sainthood?).

How do you feel about chocolate mint?

Big Idea:  Last week, I was asked to pop into a virtual session for new teachers, who are reporting that they are feeling overwhelmed, to conduct a breathwork session that they could also do with their students.  

I asked if I could have some more time to address this feeling of overwhelm, because when you name it, you tame it.  I also feel that February is a good time to talk about the feeling of overwhelm, since I often experience it this month myself.
When you look at the word overwhelm, there’s a root word, whelm, which I don’t think I’ve ever used.  Google says that it’s archaic, and it means ‘to cover or engulf completely’.  Add the prefix ‘over-’ on top of that and you get… well…  a lot.

Overwhelm is a common feeling these days.  As jobs get bigger, our usual response is to work harder and put in longer hours.  Add onto this the fact that our own kids’ lives are getting bigger, too.  The result is that the complexity of our world has surpassed our brain’s complexity circuits.  

This doesn’t mean we’re stupid, it just means we need to re-evaluate how we are making sense of this new world that we live in.

The cognitive impact of these feelings can range from forgetfulness to a racing mind. We can also become worn out - what scientists call cognitively fatigued - which presents itself as more easily distracted (i.e. picking up your phone more often), or ‘snail brain’ when it seems that decisions are harder to make.  Emotional regulation is more difficult, too, often making us more fragile than usual.
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This week, try this: The next time you feel overwhelmed, have a think and pinpoint the primary source of your overwhelm.  Then ask yourself these questions:  1) How soon can I get rid of this one thing? 2) Is it something I can even fix/do? 3) Am I being a perfectionist? (Done is better than perfect!).

Quote:  "Overwhelm happens when we lift our gaze from the path in front of us and believe that all the starts in the galaxy are our responsibility."  (Matt Weld)

Educator Resource:  SUICIDE PREVENTION - Free Training - From ISBE.  Training in the QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) Protocol.  These trainings meet the requirements related to mandated training for school personnel.  You can get PD Hours or CEUs at no cost. Asynchronous OR Virtual. Register by 3/1/24.  INFORMATION & REGISTRATION

Dad Joke:  For Valentine's Day, my wife gave me a deck of sticky playing cards.  I'm having a hard time dealing with this!

Although it’s really just an empty food, Jell-O remains a favorite.
Especially salads made of Jell-O, like Cranberries in the Snow, a family holiday favorite with cherry Jell-O. Or Pretzel Salad with strawberry Jell-O and and a pretzel crust. Or one of my faves, Aunt Marge’s Green Jell-O Salad that has pineapple, pimento cheese spread, and lime Jell-O (was someone cleaning out their pantry when they created this?).


What’s your favorite recipe with Jell-O?

Big Idea:  Whenever I would complain to my mother that I was bored, her response was invariably, “Go outside and find something to do.” And, invariably, I found something to amuse myself outside, even if it was something simple like spending hours looking for arrowheads (never found one) or arrowhead chips (found lots of these pieces of debris from the making of arrowheads - although they just could have been naturally occurring, too, now that I think about it).


We explored Boredom in our last Mindful Monday (as suggested by a regular participant).  Of the four definitions that I’d found online, the vast majority of the people on the call agreed with this one: “A condition characterized by perception of one’s environment as dull, tedious, and lacking stimulation.”


Further research showed several interesting tidbits about boredom:

• Boredom peaks in the early teens, and is at its lowest in one’s fifties.
  
• Characterized by the Paradox of Choice:  options are not necessarily freeing and don’t make us happy.
  
• Became more of a thing in the Industrial Revolution (1760 - 1840), when our days became segmented into work time and non-work time.
  
• ‘Boredom’ as its currently used didn’t appear in literature until Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853).   During the Victorian Era, it became a popular theme.
  
• The challenge that boredom presents is “What is going to be meaningful and useful in your life?”
  

Psychologist think that we feel boredom because we don’t connect with any of the options before us.  As soon as we start doing something that is meaningful to us, we are no longer bored. My sister and I got really excited by finding those ‘arrowhead chips’, so we were not longer bored.


Here are four ways to avoid boredom:

1. Don’t fight it. When you do, you layer suffering on top, so now you have two things to deal with.
   
2. Create a new routine.  Our brains are stimulated by what’s new.
   
3. Find purpose.  Boredom isn’t an absence of things to do, it’s the struggle to find value in the available options.
   
4. Avoid passive consumption.  If you’re enjoying it, great!  Just make sure it’s intentional.
   

This week, try this: The next time you’re at a loss for something to do, don’t pick up your phone. Sit with the feeling and be curious.  Ask yourself, “Am I really at a point where I don’t know what to do?”  If you really are looking for something to do, try doing something active but without external stimulation - no TV in the background, no music, nothing.  Let your mind go on its journey and see where it goes; I’ll bet it will go somewhere that’s meaningful to you.

Quote:  "The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom."  (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Educator Resource:  SEL Day 2024 - Friday, March 8, 2024. If you go to selday.org, you can sign your school up.  You’re actually just adding your name to a list of schools that are pledging to do something to promote SEL on this day.  They also have toolkits to help spread the word.  
Some other good SEL resources, especially for those in Illinois:
SEL4US - Advocates for SEL around the State and has some resources on their website.
Coalition of Schools Educating Mindfully (COSEM) - They have a whole library of resources including tons of recordings, as well as monthly virtual circles you can join.
Your SEL Hub - I am part of the Area 5 Hub, and there are 6 plus Chicago Public Schools.  They have access to resources, personnel, trainings, etc.
Mindful Practices - A group out of Chicago leading the way in Collective Well-Being, and who have done a lot of work here in Area 5.

Dad Joke:  My wife fainted on the baggage carousel at the airport.  Fortunately, she came around.

It’s also National School Counseling Week.  Thank your school counselor!


I’ve always harbored a personal abhorrence to pork rinds - simply for what I thought they were.  Today I decided that I should do a little research to see if I was overreacting.  Nope.  Still not going to choose to eat deep-fried pig skin.  Interestingly, however, they are found in cuisines all over the world.  In Brazil, they are torresmo. In Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico, they are chicharrones.  In Newfoundland, they are scrunchions, and nearby in Quebec they are oreilles de crisse (Christ’s ears).

Big Idea:  If you are a longtime reader of JumpStart, you’ve probably noticed that I’m all about strategies, through the ‘This week, try this’ section and the weekly Educator Resource.

Today, let’s focus 100% on a strategy, Root Cause Analysis, that is a component of Curiosity, one of my Top 3 SEL Strategies.

As a kid growing up in Western Montana, Spotted Knapweed was The Enemy. Originally from Eurasia, this plant quickly found root in the dry hillside of the state.  
It took over the grazing lands of the cattle ranches, pushing out native species and being inedible to cattle and just about everything else.  My mother, a staunch home environmentalist, learned that one of the best ways of control was to pull them up before they could set seed.  

The challenge was that knapweed bloomed at the height of summer which is also the driest time of year, which means that the soil is rock hard, which means that it was hard to get the taproot, all of which made it’s eradication from our little acre a prime candidate for the annual Summer Chores List.  

One summer, Mom put a bounty on the knapweed on our property:  10 cents for each confirmed taproot.  Ever the opportunist, I found the easier ones to pull, developed a pretty successful strategy for pulling, and would head out in the morning before it got too hot.  One fine morning I headed out determined to make some cash.  Within an hour or so, I had wilted knapweed plants neatly stacked in piles of 10 with their roots all facing the same direction for easy counting and verification.  

Mom came up the hill to check my progress and was a) pleased at how much had been eradicated, and b) not pleased at how much this was going to set her back (this was the 70’s, and we were living on a teacher’s salary).  That morning, I was heartily praised, and she ended up lowering the offered price, and moved to a price/job model.

Just like with knapweed, the only way to really get rid of your problems is to attack them at the root.  A common example is this:  let’s say you ran a red light and got a ticket.  Who’s to blame?  How can we make it so it won’t happen again?  The easy solution would be to get on social media and type up a rant about traffic and the police and your boss, etc. until you felt better.  Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

Instead, let’s employ the 5 Whys Strategy.  With this tool, you keep asking why (generally takes about 5 times) to determine the root cause of something that has happened so that you can take action.

PROBLEM:  I got a traffic ticket for running a red light.
WHY did you run the light?  I was late.
WHY were you late?  I overslept.
WHY did you oversleep?  My alarm didn’t go off.
WHY didn’t your alarm sound?  My phone was dead.
WHY was your phone dead?  I didn’t charge it.

Theoretically, you could keep asking why for a long time.  It takes common sense to stop at a point where you can take action and prevent the problem from recurring.

This Week, Try This:  The next time something happens and you’d like to place blame, ask ‘Why?’ five times.  Most likely, you’ll end up with something that is tangible and workable.

Quote:  "Problems are not solved on the level of problems.  Analyzing a problem to find its solution is like trying to restore freshness to a leaf by treating the leaf itself, whereas the solution lies in watering the root." (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)

Educator Resource:   5th Annual Women in Leadership Conference: March 5, 2024 (registration at 8:30), Double Tree Inn, Mt. Vernon, IL.  $125, 5.5 PD Hours. 

Join ROE #3 and ROE #13 for our fifth annual Women in Leadership Conference! We will gather to learn, engage, and grow through networking opportunities, viable breakouts, an engaging panel discussion, and our inspirational keynote, Sara Boucek.  This conference will be held on March 5, 2024 at the DoubleTree in Mt. Vernon, IL from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. The cost to attend this conference is $125/person and lunch and a light breakfast will be provided.  Registration and breakfast will begin at 8:30 a.m.  Payment needs to be remitted to:  ROE #3, 1500 W. Jefferson St., Vandalia, IL 62471.

Dad Joke:  I got hit in the head with a can of soda.  Luckily, it was a soft drink.!

Big Idea:  Considered a virtue, this skill helps us with interpersonal relationships as well as self-management.  This dual nature - with both an internal and an external component - is because there are 3 types of patience:

1. Interpersonal Patience:  Whether others’ bad habits or (as you view them) shortcomings, sometimes it’s difficult to have understanding for other people.
   
   
   
2. Long-term Patience.  Whether you have goals that will take a while to come to fruition or you are waiting to hear from test results, sometimes things just take time. That’s hard to bear, often causing one to lose motivation, become discouraged, and bleed into your interpersonal skills.
   
   
   
3. Short-term Patience.  Sometimes a webpage doesn’t load, or traffic gets heavy, or your kid gets sick right before you leave for school.  These short-term annoyances are the unavoidable wrenches that get thrown into your schedule and require you to put on your ‘Patience Pants’ and take a deep breath.
   

What you feel when you don’t have patience is impatience.  Curiously, impatience is not an classified as am emotion but rather a feeling. It’s the conscious embodiment of  the emotion frustration which is a subset of anger.


How do you increase your patience (spoiler alert:  it takes practice!)? My favorite and easily practiced strategy is to continually increase your acceptance of discomfort.  When you feel chilled, lean into it and experience the chill for a while.  When you feel hungry, keep yourself that way for an hour or so.  


The more we are able to tolerate ‘negative’ feelings when we are not overtaxed, the more likely we will be able to tolerate a similar negativity when it looms large.

This Week, Try This:  The next time you feel frustrated, take a break.  It can be difficult to stop the cycle, but physically changing your body’s position, going outside (or inside) focusing on your breath, reading something random and unrelated, etc. will stop the endless spiral of frustration and ground you back into the present.

Quote:  "Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting." (Joyce Meyer)

Educator Resource:  February Book Study on TeachIllinois: Emotional Inheritance:  A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma, by Gailit Atlas. (9 PD Hours) Starts Monday, Feb. 4, 2024. Asynchronous over 4 weeks.  FREE!


The people we love and those who raised us live inside us; we experience their emotional pain, we dream their memories, and these things shape our lives in ways we don’t always recognize. Emotional Inheritance is about family secrets that keep us from living to our full potential, create gaps between what we want for ourselves and what we are able to have, and haunt us like ghosts.


In this transformative book, Galit Atlas entwines the stories of her patients, her own stories, and decades of research to help us identify the links between our life struggles and the “emotional inheritance” we all carry. For it is only by following the traces those ghosts leave that we can truly change our destiny.  [From Amazon]

Dad Joke:  What do you call a paper airplane that can't fly?  Stationery.

While I’m a wimp and order all my food with zero stars, my son (22) is, and has been since he was a little guy. He’s the one who orders 4-stars at Thai restaurants and goes through the hot sauces gift boxes within days.  He is consistent with his favorite however:  Dave’s Hurtin’ Habanero.  What’s your go-to hot sauce?

Big Idea:  Over Christmas Break, my kids asked me how many times each day I think about the Roman Empire.  According to the Internet, men think about the Roman Empire several times each day. Hmmm.
 
I guess I’m not manly enough. 

Part of my recent foray into the realm of Identity and its importance in, well, EVERYTHING has been a little side tangent into toxic masculinity.  I’ve been reading from all viewpoints, and there is not single definition for what ‘toxic masculinity’ means and where the demarcation is between ‘toxic’ and regular ol’ masculinity.

Perhaps we should just go with the idea that toxic means ‘poisonous or very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.’ (Oxford)

Then maybe we can define toxic masculinity as being something like, “when one’s identity with being a male internalizes the traditional traits of being male to the point where it hurts both other people and the individual.”

My very wise wife and I had a conversation about this over dinner the other night, and she posited that there is also toxic femininity.

Instead of looking to place blame, maybe we should accept that it’s a thing and figure out how to prevent it from taking root in the next generation.  

Any ideas?

This Week, Try This:  Once again, I think the strategy here is curiosity.  If you hear a masculine friend make a comment about refusing to do something traditionally feminine (like laundry, talking about emotions, seeking therapy, etc.), ask them why they feel that way.  You may end up being shut down, but you might just plant a seed.

Quote:  "Toxic masculinity has nothing to do with being masculine; it is a fear of being perceived as feminine." (Farida D.)

Educator Resource:  Supporting Students through 504 Plans, IEPs, and Accommodations - January 30, 2024 3:30 - 4:30 pm The content of this course is targeted towards educators in the classroom, but all school community members who support students are welcome!

Nearly 20% of children and young people ages 3-17 in the United States have a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder. Teachers are important in helping implement student accommodations in the classroom setting. We’ll discuss the differences between 504 plans and IEPs, along with recommendations for accommodations that may be helpful in common mental health conditions. We’ll review ways educators can help support students needing additional services. This event includes a Q&A session with facilitators. If you’d like to submit a question for the panel before the event, please do so here: https://forms.gle/13iwvawYirgijtXs8
Facilitators:
• Garseng Wong, MD and Christy Ky, MD, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellows at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago & McGaw Medical Center at Northwestern
• Khushbu Shah, MD, MPH - Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Attending at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago & McGaw Medical Center at Northwestern University
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Dad Joke:  Why don't some couples go to the gym?  Because some relationships don't work out.