Digifear

 I wonder if we had completed a national teaching survey in January 2020 asking teachers to estimate how consistently they would use digital tools or remote learning activities, what the results would have been? As we know lockdown has had a massive impact on the ways learning is delivered and accessed, and 2020 will go down in memory as a catalyst change with lasting effects or one to forget (or maybe both!). 

Talking with teachers the past few weeks, many have found the experience of delivering online exhausting and challenging. In the movie The Matrix, Neo sits opposite Morhpeus and is offered a choice of two pills. “You take the blue pill, the story ends… you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland.” If you offered teachers the choice, what percentage of them would take the blue pill? I think many would, and the return to normality would be welcome not just in our professional lives but also in our personal lives. 

As far as i know, we are not in the matrix but we can continue down the rabbit hole to see how far it goes. Even if a small mindset shift occurs as a result of lockdown this will have been positive. Many have witnessed the possibilities of technology, even if they may not be a fan of online delivery. 

Now the situation is even somewhat more confusing, what do we do in September? What do we do to support summer catch ups? For those institutions with digital strategies I believe the impact will be manageable, but for those who have not taken digital seriously, this will cause some serious stress and anxiety. 

It's very important to keep a positive mindset in challenging times that's for sure and this can only help in creating a solution. There are many unknowns at present which does not support future planning, but we know not all plans always go how we want them to. I’d class myself as an optimist, but I believe education leaders need to plan for the worst and hope for the best. 

Tim Ferris the best selling author and podcast presenter has highlighted the benefits of fear setting. You can access the blog post and TED talk on this link https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/. If we can work backwards from our fears we can look at the solutions we need to put into place to ensure the train stays on the tracks. Solution focused mindset is key here.

Innovation is messy, time consuming and rarely inexpensive both in time and fiscal terms. This shouldn’t deter school leaders and all levels of the teaching pyramid trying something new, risking failure being vulnerable and learning from the experience. I have no data to go on but i wonder how many teachers have tried something new and failed in this lockdown period? I believe this to be a good thing, even better so if trying new things is encouraged and reflected on by senior managers. 

Small elements of fear can be good when it is self imposed. Teachers need to feel encouraged that attempts at innovating practice will not lead to negative ramifications. Culture is so important in setting the platform for performance. In the right kind of culture people feel safe and feeling vulnerable is showing courage and being brave in attempting new things. 

For more on vulnerability check out this TED talk from Breene Brown: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability?language=en

Visualisation Part 2

 Nearly three years ago I relocated to West Yorkshire from the South East to move into my first home with my fiance. I left a Head of Department job at a college in Kent to make the move, but had no employment in place for my arrival. I was feeling pretty positive about this (even though i am risk averse) and thought i'd be able to pick up a job pretty quickly in the north. We moved into our new house in June, i was still finishing my notice period in Kent and did not move until the following month. After a painstaking drive up the M1 on a Friday night I arrived in Leeds. The next day I flew to Malta, not because Leeds is so bad, it was just my summer holiday. I touched down in Luqa ready to begin the holiday, good food, plenty of wine / beer / spirits to prepare my plan to conquer the north (or so I thought). 

Upon returning to Leeds, the job front was pretty slow. Nothing was really exciting for me to apply for, or just didn't meet the criteria I was looking for. I eventually started a new job in October after three months of searching. The job turned out to be wonderful but the three months of being unemployed for the first time in 10 years made me very uneasy. I think all in all I attended 15 interviews and in total received two offers. Many of these interviews were for positions that I didn't want. I had received great feedback from many, and comments such as “we think you're over qualified for the position”, i find that one so annoying. You can see the qualifications I have before you make me travel across Yorkshire for a conversation. For one interview, I received feedback via email that wasn't from my interview…..I’m sure many of you reading might be able to relate to these frustrations. 

To keep my mind busy I had plenty of decorating to get on with at the new house, after two weeks of that I knew I needed to get a job pretty quickly before I went mad. By this time I was feeling pretty low and began to doubt my skills and attributes. I’ve enjoyed reading in recent years and a friend recommended I read The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield. After reading many self-help books telling me to take cold showers and get up at 4:30am, I was sceptical. This book i place as my saving grace. It allowed me to re-frame my situation and allowed me to practice strategies to help support my goals. The two key things i took from the book which i still use to this day were visualisation and meditation. 

Visualisation and meditation were not new to me, I knew what they both were. I thought meditation was performed by Buddhist monks and not unemployed teachers, by this point I was willing to try anything. Coming from a sporting background, visualisation was something I used often when playing football. Reading the guidance in the book and trying the techniques, it dawned on me I had been using visualisation techniques before every interview, completing a rehearsal of my performance, but what i wasn't rehearsing was the job offer coming through. Positive thinking, thinking i was going to get the position just wasn't happening, i was in a negative spell with a lack of offers coming my way. The meditation helped me develop a new sense of calm and control, as well as clarity in my thinking. Before the interview for the job I was offered, I actually wrote a whole page of A4 paper that read you will get the job, you are great over and over again. The interview process was by far the hardest i have had to go through but i felt very positive that this time i was getting an offer….. And I did. Since this time I have built a new routine of visualisation and meditation into my day to day life. 

In his book The Morning Miracle, Hal Elrod speaks of the SAVERS approach to mornings. 

Silence

Affirmations

Visualisation

Exercise

Reading

Scribing

I try to do this as much as possible every morning, in particular visualisation, meditation and reading. I find this sets me up well for the day ahead. This structure has been very beneficial to me in my own life. When I worked with students this year we spoke about their morning routines. Many didn't have a routine, many it was get up get dressed get to college. No time for breakfast or mental preparation, which resulted in many landing in my classroom at 10am on a Friday asking me what time Greggs opened. Developing personal strategies of getting the best from yourself is very important in life but seems to be something that is overlooked when we work with students.

Mental rehearsal involves imagined, mental practice of performing a task as opposed to actual practice and research is showing our minds can't actually tell the difference between our own simulations and the actual event. Take for example, a learner retaking GCSE maths at college. I worked with a learner called Lola a few years back who was on to her fourth retake. The poor girl was feeling so negative about retaking it was a stressful experience for her. She eventually passed thanks to what I can only put down to visualisation and affirmations. Lola had moved from a negative mental rehearsal to a positive one, much like myself in searching for a job. She went from i can't do this, to I’m going to pass and she did. Tools such as visualisation, mental rehearsal, affirmations and meditation could really help learners focus and relieve anxiety and stress so why are we not using them more?

To try to answer the question above is difficult. I think there are many reasons why these techniques might not be used readily, for example they are personal to the individual. People might perform meditation in different ways. I’m not saying we should all make students do a quick meditation every lesson, but giving them the awareness of what techniques are out there and how they can help could be very beneficial. 

A particular issue I think with younger people now is, there is rarely a time where they let their minds wander. They are usually on smartphones or some sort of technology in this ever connected world. I spoke with one of my teaching groups earlier this year about their daily screen time. The results were in all honesty quite shocking. One learner was averaging around 8 hours a day screen time. Being the teacher I am, I asked the student to work this out on a yearly basis. Those of you good at mental arithmetic will have worked out, its around 2920 hours or around 122 days. Shocking!

If we could harness some of this screen time into me time, I feel students would benefit greatly from it. Visualisation, meditation does not have to be long, it can be 5 minutes long. I'm sure this student could have spared the 5 minutes away from Snapchat to complete this. 

The pressure on young people now is intense. Are we failing them by not teaching them about coping strategies? More importantly, these are life skills that need to be developed to support each individual as they go through life. There will be interviews, times of stress, times of unrest, times of happiness but a learner who understands how to prepare is a learner who has a better chance at accomplishing the goals they set for themselves.

English and Maths students taking retakes in college are amongst some of the most under motivated and anxious due to previous failures. If we can re frame their situation (re-framing is often used in therapy and sometimes referred to as cognitive re-framing) and support them in feeling more positive about their studies this can only be a positive thing. There is only one thing worse I can think of that's worse than an academic test and that's a driving test. God i hated learning to drive. My instructor was a keen historian - but the focus of his work was American serial killers. One lesson he brought a book to show me a killer from somewhere in the deep south of America and showed me a picture of this guy. “Don't you think he looks just like you?” The only thing that kept me going was i knew one day i'd be out on the open road on my own. I had visualised it. I passed first time and I would recommend Kevin, my instructor to anyone in Kent.

To conclude, we visualise all the time, but its not always purposeful. In many instances in fact its negative thoughts or images we see. Many aspects such as self belief and confidence come into play when visualising successfully. Let us work with learners to show them the doors of opportunity and make them feel positive about themselves. We can only do this by trying these techniques and letting those in our charge experiment with them. 

Thanks for reading