Nurturing educator resilience to support a thriving learning community

Shona Doyle

Hello and thank you for joining us today for the session, ‘Nurturing educator resilience to support a thriving Learning Community’. My name is Shona Doyle and I'm one of the Be You Consultants with Early Childhood Australia. I've worked in many different settings of education and care and today I am the Facilitator for this session. Joining me today are Alisha Kelly and Elvia Downs, as you have already heard from Geri.  We were supposed to have another two but unfortunately circumstances beyond our control and their control has meant that Sarah Wilcox and Adam Darcy can't join us today. For today, the session’s going to explore educator wellbeing goes beyond self-care and becomes embedded across everything that we do in an early years setting.

We hope that this session allows you some space to reflect; can also affirm some of the work that's been going on in your Learning Community and perhaps spark some further actions that can be taken, and even give you a different way to look at your educator wellbeing practice and think about all the factors that contribute to educator wellbeing within your setting.

We will be listening to the stories of an approach taken by our participants today. The stories are powerful and really relate to what is possible in an early years setting. Taken from real life examples of a different research project, which began from two different perspectives to provide a whole of community support for all.

I’d just like to say that sometimes when we’re talking about mental health that unexpected feelings can arise. Will you please reach out to someone that you can trust, and also there are some help lines,  some chat lines and helplines been put into the chat for you so please feel free to use them as well. If you're sharing in the chat, please make sure you de-identify to protect people's anonymity. I'm done - let's sit back and enjoy the session.

First of all, I’d like to Acknowledge the Country that we are sitting on today and I acknowledge that we are meeting on the lands of the Turrbul and Jagera peoples of Meanjin. We're currently sitting on the north shore of Maiwar, the river also known as the Brown Snake. I respectfully ask that my presence be excused on these lands knowing that sovereignty was never ceded. We pay our respects to elders past and present, for they hold the knowledge of many generations to pass to our children and we acknowledge them as the traditional custodians of the lands and waterways of this country and the countries beyond. I’d also like to acknowledge any First Nation’s people joining us online today and extend my respects to you also. As you heard we have people joining us from all over the country. It would be wonderful if you could share your own Acknowledgement by putting the name of the Country that you are on in the chat and perhaps even using language.

So today’s session, we're going to unpack what does educator wellbeing mean? Why and how different aspects of our service contribute to educator wellbeing and how other community supports can be embedded in our practice. How to wait and demonstrate resilience, and also to discover what is right for you, what is right for us, and some practical steps that learning communities can take towards building a thriving workplace. Hopefully, from the examples that are going to be shared today.

So before we start we’d like to do a little poll. We want to really look at where you feel you're sitting at the moment. So are you exploring ways in which to extend your knowledge of ways to support educators look after their own wellbeing? Are you already embedding strategies to support wellbeing and mental health to trial and use in your service? Sustaining the ways that you have chosen to implement wellbeing? Please vote in the poll and give us an idea of where you feel that you may be sitting at the moment… So it's definitely exploring ways in which to extend our knowledge of ways to support educator’s wellbeing but still not confident.

Perhaps sometimes not confident is a good place to be because it means that you will continue to try different things but hopefully, yes, embedding strategies to support our wellbeing is actually coming up there as well. So 65% exploring ways in which to extend our knowledge and ways to support educator wellbeing but still not confident. Okay, thank you so much for sharing that with us today.

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce Elvia Downs and Alisha Kelly. Elvia is an Early Childhood Teacher of 20 years’ experience in standalone C&K kindergartens and Long Day Care settings. She began as a junior kindy teacher and worked her way to Preschool Teacher, Assistant Director and Kindy Teacher/Director.

Elvia currently works as Educational Leader for C&K Acacia Ridge Community Kindergarten and in her time teaching, she's enjoyed working with other professionals in the field in order to best support the needs of the child and the family. She has a very strong focus on a play-based learning approach and is committed to engage in learning through a child-led, child-focused curriculum. She has maintained a strong interest in catering for diverse learners and developing positive and successful transitions to school. She's passionate about connecting with teachers, children, families and early learning settings and schools to create shared goals and a collaborative approach to school transitions. A wonderful, wonderful whole of community approach.

And Alisha, Alisha Kelly is the Educational Leader and has worked with children across diverse sectors for 20 years also.  She has worked in a variety of settings including playgroups, parenting programs kindergartens and Long Day Care, which has included starting as an educator and working her way to the role of Director and Educational Leader in childcare and education. As well as child development, as being a Child Development Specialist with the Benevolent Society and the early years childhood approach where Alisha has worked together with the family and early childhood professionals in a partnership with services and support, based on the family needs and choices - very important to add choices. Throughout the years Alisha has gained extensive knowledge of the early childhood sector and has enjoyed providing quality education and care for young children. Alisha also recently completed a Postgraduate Degree in Autism Studies with a strong passion in empowering parents and supporting children and families enabling the child to have the best possible start in life.

So you can see we have two well-qualified people to talk us through their approach to their research project today. I’d like to firsthand to Elvia Downs and tell us where did you begin.

Elvia Downs

Okay, thank you and thank you everyone for joining us for this session, appreciate you, happy and listening to what we have to share today. We're really excited about sharing what we've been doing at our kindy. As Shona said my name is Elvia Downs and I was one of the early childhood teachers working in the kindergarten room at the Acacia Ridge Early Years Centre and Kindergarten during the time of our case studies implementation.

I will just start by giving a bit of context of the space and the observations made by our staff, our reflections, the research we undertook and some of the strategies that we implemented to support the needs of the children in our space. So our kindergarten class consisted of 22 children who attended from a variety of socially and culturally diverse backgrounds including some vulnerable families and children who had experienced trauma. We also had children with diagnosed additional needs as well as others who presented with complex needs and behaviours.

So the challenge that was presented to us was the strong dynamics really, that the children and the staff had recognised an increasing number of children demonstrating challenging behaviour stemming from difficulties in regulating their emotions. This was impacting significantly on their ability to engage in the daily experiences, building connections with each other, their peers and their teachers. We also observed huge impacts on the children's social and emotional wellbeing.

So after some critical reflection and observation we could also see huge impacts on the educators who were working in the room with the children and families. So the staff then posed a question of: how can we support and foster a positive state of well-being and mental health for the children and staff in our room and across our service. And also when we're looking and reflecting on what we were seeing we also thought, well, how can we build on our own and children's ability to self-regulate in times of stress and frustration.

So in looking at our observations, our reflections and also the research, the staff decided to implement, implement three main strategies in our room. So the first strategy that we implemented was a kids' yoga program. So the staff utilised a qualified kids yoga teacher to implement the kids yoga program on a weekly basis. So the program also supported the upskilling of the staff working in the room on our knowledge and our skills on a variety of yoga and mindfulness practices that could be embedded more consistently with the children which were used to do on a daily basis.

The second strategy that we implemented was a rhythm and music for self-regulation program or the RAMSR program. So one of the other, the other early childhood teacher in our room had undertaken RAMSR training and a program was implemented consistently with the children over the year. So RAMSR is a program for young children that supports their attentional and emotional regulation skills as well as their mental flexibility in addition and working memory.  The skills, they also develop skills to encourage beat synchronisation and it challenges one or more executive functions of the brain in a fun and engaging way and our children really responded very well to the program.

The third strategy that we implemented in our room was zones of regulation: so using the zones of regulation really help the children to build awareness of their internal state and also help them to develop the language for labelling their feelings and their emotions. The zones of regulation is an inclusive framework so we found it was really beneficial because it supported the needs of all children in our space. It uses colour to help children identify how they are feeling and helps the teachers and helped us as teachers as well, learn more about how the children were feeling and what resources we could implement to help them regulate if they need it.  It also helped the children to recognise their own triggers, helped the children to learn to read facial expressions of their peers and their teachers, develop problem-solving skills in a supportive and nurturing environment. So the zones were continually revisited throughout the day and the children were able to move their photos. We had photos of each of the children and they were able to move their photos between each of the colours are each of these zones dependent upon how they were feeling.

So after these or while we were implementing these three main strategies, the educators were also looking at our environment and reflecting on the environment and relationships with children and our families and considering changes that might promote social and emotional skill learning. So some of those changes that we put in place as staff, included emotion coaching with our children, providing a calm down space with our children with a variety of regulating resources that the children were able to access at as they chose or there might have been specific resources that teachers put in place that were more catered to particular children's needs.

We also looked at using physical activities to present, sorry, to promote a sense of wellbeing and calm. So we did lots of yoga and lots of mindfulness and meditation and relaxation breathing exercises just to help our children and staff too. It was really good for staff as well in their self-regulation skills.

Shona Doyle

Can you just give us a little more information about the emotional coaching and the calm down space?

Elvia Downs

Emotion coaching was really, it's really about helping children because children don't innately know how to self-regulate, so often you know, it's children coming into our spaces. We really work as co-regulators when they're going through those emotional periods in their life so whether they're having a meltdown or whatever is going on for them. It's really helping, it's using the staff and our skills to keep calm and us working with those children in a co-regulating capacity to help coach them through them understanding their emotions, and then how they can help to self-regulate, what sort of resources they might need to help self-regulate, and then sort of working as a team with the child to help them calm down.

So I guess we were using that emotion coaching as well as that calm down area. There was a whole space in our room and so our calm down space, we had a little enclosed area, ours was a tent but, we’d change it out depending on the needs of the children. Some, one of our children particularly really loved to be in a box so we used to have a special box that we painted. It had little glow-in-the-dark stars and, and scarves and he used to like to hide in there in those times when he needed to have some space.

We had a couch; we had all the emotional zones of regulation posters on the wall. We have visuals for breathing and calm down strategies. We had baskets full of fidget toys and different sensory materials and tools that children could use. So we had the stretchy sock for children to be able to curl up in if they wanted to or the brain bottles for them to use. We also had lots of emotion stories that we could sit and read with children just to help talk about those feelings that they were experiencing and helping them acknowledge it and then working through strategies to help them calm down.

Shona Doyle

Stories are very powerful to use with children especially when you're helping them to make sense of something that they're feeling and that yes, that absolutely fits with that emotional coaching too. You were talking about the fidget devices and I think, earlier, that you actually mentioned that even when you were having group time but if children needed something they could take that with them and sit with the fidget toy.

Elvia Downs

So we also had a basket of little fidgets or little resources and tools because different fidgets work for different children. Our group time mat was, the pattern on it was square because we also had a lot of children who like to sit in defined areas and they found that other children in their space was very challenging. So having those particular squares of different colours where children were able to have their own defined area to sit or settle to help them connect and engage. We had rockers for some children who had trouble sitting themselves on the mat, so that was to sort of help to support their engagement in group time. Or little wobble cushions which one particular little man used to love at the front and pop his wobble cushion and his little fidget and he was good to go. So it really depends on the needs of the children, so yes, absolutely for group time it was excellent to help encourage that engagement.

Shona Doyle

Beautiful - and these are some of the benefits you felt.

Elvia Downs

So after implementing these three strategies the main benefits that we observed in our space was definitely a stronger connection between our staff and, and the way that staff worked with each other and with our children. Stronger relationships and connections with our children and with our families. We also had a greater understanding of the needs and the challenges of the children and families in our room because you really have to have those deep conversations to be able to help work with those families and children and, and, and help develop those self-regulation skills.

The children were also using language, specific language to help communicate their feelings and emotions which was great. They're able to actually label and identify how they were feeling and communicate those needs to us as teachers and then we were able to work together to help them self-regulate. The children were identifying strategies and resources that they could use and that they could access in the calm down space, as they needed.

So we found that children are actually developing their own strategy so they could acknowledge how they were feeling. They knew that when they were feeling that certain way they might have like to go into the tent. They might like to read a story on the, on the lounge, they might like to go and get a little squishy or go and climb in the sock. Whatever it is that they needed to do and they were able to do it themselves without having us, to without having educators, to have to continue to coach them through that. They were actually able to take responsibility for that themselves, which was a huge, huge progress for us to see.

Children were also responding to visual representations. We have lots of visuals in our space: visual routines; we also, all the staff had little visual lanyards that we used to wear, that were all consistent visuals that we used to use with the children. Consistent language as well so that really helped support their transition throughout the day and knowing what was going to be happening next.

Shona Doyle

You said that there were visual representations of feelings and emotions as well.

Elvia Downs

When children were having these challenges or they might have been having it a meltdown or upset about something or stressing, lots of anger, then you're able to sort of show them that the visual image. I can see that you're feeling really angry right now and sort of move through, through those conversations with them, and definitely having that staff approach where we were using the same visuals the same language really help to build that consistency for the children. So, which is really beneficial we found.

So consistent tools and language was super important for us and super important for the children. The educators also having great success in encouraging the children to engage and connect with the program, which I guess originally, was while we were trying to implement these strategies in the first place. It was really helping them through developing those self-regulation skills and then hopefully encouraging that engagement and connection with the program. And then I guess finally, another really great thing that we saw out of it was that children were bringing these strategies that we were teaching them, home, and they were talking about it with their families and, and some of the families were even implementing some of those strategies at home, which was great to see.

Shona Doyle

And Elvia, you shared a story with me earlier about the children reflecting the language used back to them. About the bucket, yes, can you tell us that one cause I just thought that one was just lovely.

Elvia Downs

I guess part of these strategies as well that we were using in our room we also did a lot of the ‘have you filled your bucket today’ and used that story as a as a basis for sort of social emotional, social development program that we were using with our children to try and encourage kindness. That sense of kindness and that feeling of what we can do to help fill each other’s buckets and ways or things that we do that empty each other's buckets. And so what we were finding is that using that language, and then all the staff were using that language together, that the children were actually then talking with each other if they were having social conflicts or whatever. They would be saying you know, well, that such and such is emptying my bucket. You know things like that.

So they were really implementing the language from the story and, and the language that we were using consistently with them, even with each other and in their play and even at home. And we've found that that, that book specifically, actually a really amazing tool to use with children in terms of building those positive, really positive social connections with each other.

Shona Doyle

And it just shows but what you do with children matters and what you role model to children really matters because they soak it all in.

Elvia Downs

They do, absolutely do.

Shona Doyle

Thank you so much. So we have a supported approach, Alisha, and we support, we were supported by research, by Be You and by each other. Would you like to expand on that for us?

Alisha Kelly

Thank you, yes, so I'm just extending on what Elvia has been talking about. Obviously, you know that if the impacts and challenges that we know from the children; there are certainly impacts and challenges for the educators as well. So, we did a lot of reflecting and also research through a variety of ACECQA articles, also Be You and Beyond Blue as we kind of unpacked this a little bit more.

So as we know, an educator role is rewarding and very busy but also very complex, so we looked at research from Katherine James which showed that when educators were asked about their wellbeing, words such as stressed, strained, frazzled, burnt-out, not supported, undervalued, were very common themes. The educators highlighted the strong focus on the psychological aspects of wellbeing in the workplace. Educators talked about a lot of emotional work that can sap their wellbeing. They also expressed happiness and excitement despite being under pressure to complete daily routines, documentation and engaging with others.

They are constantly required to suppress their feelings such as sadness and hiding frustration and irritation, to put on that front for everybody else.

Shona Doyle

That really takes us back to what Rebecca was talking about earlier about boundaries: professional boundaries being very important.

Alisha Kelly

So after some reflection and looking at research from the different articles we also acknowledged that educators’ sense of wellbeing may be impacted or related to fatigue and pressures stemming from expectations from parents and the child. Educators can also be impacted based on the feeling of being undervalued because professional time pressures and workload, having to wear many hats and taking on many different roles and challenges have been our daily job. Managing behavioural issues, parental expectations and diverse perspectives within such a large team that you often find in our sector and unsupported work environments.

One of the big impacts too is the context of the service such as socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. And something that's been very big over the last few years is global impacts, such as COVID and the natural disasters such as flooding.

Shona Doyle

Yes, you yourself had flooding. It wasn’t just the families that were affected, it was the service, the educators. It was still going on for you as educators while families were being affected too.

Elvia Downs

There were also educators who were from flood-affected areas who couldn’t get to work. So there were lots of stresses around for families and educators.

Shona Doyle

I do know your service sits alongside the Family Centre, the Benevolent Family Centre, so you would get some support from there but then again they would be affected too. You’re also in an area that has lots of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, who have had refugee backgrounds, or they are asylum seekers cause that's one of the areas where there are services that can wrap around and support those families. It was a time of impact.

So where are you in your journey this far?

Alisha Kelly

Some of the outcomes and benefits and things, just moving forward that we noticed: is staff being so much more supportive of each other and being more responsive to each other, and really, it has really supported in the development of rich, respectful relationships and really created that shared language around wellbeing and modelling and prioritising of self-care and encouraging others to look after themselves as well. And the educators feeling more supported and developed more confidence in their strategies and in their ability to express, regulate and walk through their emotions, experiences and challenges. And also positive impact on the level of staff absences and it definitely has helped with staff retention as well, because we know wellbeing definitely incorporates both physical and psychological aspects that’s so much more than self-care and is central to belonging, being and becoming. Without a strong sense of wellbeing, it is difficult to have a sense of belonging to trust others and feel confident in being, and to physically engage and experience and contribute to becoming.

Shona Doyle

That's what the EYLF tells us that we want for children and we want that for educators too. We want that for everyone to feel like they belong and for everyone to feel like they’re valued, and it seems that what you have been doing in looking at people’s skills and their achievements and upskilling, it's given that meaning and practice to the role especially through the hard times.

This is not the end of our discussion. I have to say that we will have lots of time left over to answer questions, so please put them through, but as always, anything you think of after this session bring along to the dedicated Spotlight on the 18th of May at 2:30 Australian Eastern Standard Time.

So that's there that we will carry on this. You will have a chance to speak to Alisha and Elvia who will be available on the day. I'll be hosting that session so it's, it's only for the people that have attended today and who have been in this session with us. So you will have this context.

So now we will be able to be able to answer some of your questions. What does educator wellbeing mean, Alisha, to you?

Alisha Kelly

Well firstly it's important to understand the elements that can influence an educator’s sense of wellbeing. The concept of wellbeing is holistic and involves both psychological and physiological components. To experience a strong state of wellbeing, educators need to be supported to be both mentally and physically healthy. They need to experience that sense of belonging. Wellbeing incorporates both physical and psychological aspects and is central to belonging, being and becoming. As you mentioned before, without that it's difficult to have a sense of belonging and have that trust and confidence to engage and contribute. So, we just really encourage everyone to work with your teams to discuss what's what well-being means to them, and ask them what would help improve their overall workplace wellbeing.

Shona Doyle

It’s always really important to look at each individual and the strengths they bring to the service, because not everyone has the same strengths. Using, we did speak about this earlier, out of session; it might just be a case of tapping out and using someone else's strength for five minutes just to give you that break. We did speak about tapping out and what that might mean. It doesn't necessarily mean moving out of that environment totally, it might be moving to different tasks or moving to a different environment and you actually explained it quite well. As a teacher, you might be able to step in and to say I'll take over here and you go and do this task or that task but they're still with the children, but not that focus on that emotion that might be building for the educator.

Yes, we also spoke about, you know, that the saving from a business perspective. At the end of the day we have to look after educators because you know it saves on recruitment costs, retention you’re not losing that brains trust you have in your service and because you've spent time and energy upskilling people to do that yoga, to understand the RAMSR program. Incidentally, you can find that also in our Programs Directory on the Be You website and it’s mapped to the Be You domains so you know what Professional Learning will support you with that too.

We’re also looking at presenteeism, where people turn up for work but they’re not there, not there for the children and that can be a consequence for a service, where there is potential harm to a child, psychologically and physically.

Elvia Downs

Absolutely, and children come in, you know especially in our context of our work, as we were discussing earlier, as well they might be coming from a trauma background themselves and they're really looking for that responsible person and that safe place to be. So as educators, we actually need to be available and really emotionally available, to help support and be with those children and if our wellbeing is not being looked after or not being attended or you know. That really does impact on our children and with our families but really with our children.

Shona Doyle

So, where are you now? Let’s have another little visit to our poll. And just explore what you’re feeling after listening to Elvia and listening to Alisha. So, are you still exploring ways to extend or do you feel that you're embedding strategies to support your wellbeing and mental health or are you sustaining the ways you have chosen? I think we're still going to be exploring these because I think you have just given people some amazing ideas about what to do in their service that they might not have thought about as being part of educator wellbeing. They might just have thought of it as being part of childcare, child wellbeing. It's still there and still one of the highest. But sustaining the ways you have chosen has actually gone down. And so that means that people have actually gotten some really good ideas from today and, and perhaps thinking about where they can extend out to their community and use some of that some of the expertise that’s out there too. And normalise help-seeking but we are not all things to every person, but we can't set boundaries and we can't ask for help. Thank you.

So I think you two had a couple of questions, reflective questions that you want people to take away.

Elvia Downs

We have a couple of reflective questions that we would like to present to you that you can take away with you and have a think about it for yourself or with your teams. So the first question I’d like to pose to you would be: ‘How do we or how do you work collaboratively in your teams to create healthy and safe learning environments and a healthy and safe work environment?’

Alisha Kelly

And ‘What do you think are the biggest impacts on your wellbeing in your work environment?’

Shona Doyle

A wonderful question because once you identify the biggest impacts that’s when you can start focussing your attentions. Thank you so much for that. We have lots of time for questions if you want to feed some through, that would be amazing.

‘If leadership is a barrier to a healthy and positive work culture do you have any suggestions on how to address this?’  Oh Kelly! Wow! That is a very tricky one. Perhaps modelling?

Alisha Kelly

 

Modelling is a big key factor and I know it can be very tricky as well and it does take some people out of their comfort zone to do that as well but yeah I do agree I think that's one of the big key things in that response is, yes, that modelling.

Shona Doyle

Michelle wants to know - please clarify emotional labour. ‘What does emotional labour mean to you?’ For me it's about how much of yourself you actually put into a role or a job or a task that you have and how it drains you emotionally, or if it fills your bucket or empties your bucket.  Yes, and also emotional labour might be, it might be something worth thinking about. Is that task something that is going to empty your bucket or is it something that might be better achieved by someone else?

Elvia Downs

And maybe that too is also around that boundary setting because if you're finding that if that task or whatever it is that you're, you're investing all this emotional time and energy into is very draining. Or maybe then you need to start thinking about some of those boundaries around what is going to work for you and what, what are the boundaries you need to put in place to say: “I am, I'm not able to do that right now or I'm going to have to say ‘no’ to that.”

You know, because I think as educators, we do expend a lot of emotional energy into what we do on the daily and then sometimes where we just, we do need to have those very clear boundaries on what we can continue to keep doing. And what sometimes we need to either step back from, or create a boundary to say, that needs to wait or I can't do that right now. And I think that also comes down to a lot of in, in, in my case of where we were working in our team and our room, having that really close connection with your staff as well.

I think too with regards to Kelly's question in the leadership, and I know when it's from a leadership perspective, having that barrier with leadership. I know in our service, know that even though there was that there, there was a leadership, but it was very collaborative and a lot of coming up from staff, yeah, to make changes to create that positive work culture.

Alisha Kelly

So maybe some more of the team building opportunities as well to help connect and hear each other’s voices.

Shona Doyle

Definitely and if you have a few people delivering the same message in different ways instead of always delivering the same message in the same way with the same person, people might actually take notice.

But I want it to actually follow up on what you were saying that, you know, that emotional labour, that sometimes you just have to stop and there's a really good protective factor that educators can use when they're looking at their professional boundaries is that Stop Reflect Act framework. Where you stop and you don't have to have the answer or that solution straight away and that you take time to reflect on it, and you know, is it my role, what can I do but is it going to be too emotionally draining? Is it something I can do right now? If it's not, you get back to that person and say you can't. That's your action, is to say I will get back to you at this time and you do it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take on everyone else's, which brings me to another question.

Which was ‘How do you as leaders in an organisation look after your own wellbeing at times like that?’ Because you're looking out for the team. You put these strategies in place; you organise people to come do the training. How do you look after yourself?

Alisha Kelly

Going back to what we were saying earlier was the importance of tapping out, and it does not necessarily have to be from the environment itself, but from the situation. Just giving yourself time and knowing and creating a culture that knows it's okay to ask for help. Yes, and also definitely establishing those professional boundaries is really now important.

Elvia Downs

And I think in the context of educators in the space as well, when you're working with lots of challenging behaviours all this is just a challenging context within your room have definitely having those opportunities to tap in and out is really important. Also building those really strong connections and relationships with your staff members so you can have those conversations really openly with each other. So communication is really key. Having a collaborative approach to strategies that you’re using with children and families. And I also think when you are struggling in those spaces, having those supportive leadership people that you can go to, to say, this is where I'm having a struggle. This is the support I think we need to have in place. Because if you can if you feel like you're having that support from the leadership perspective that also helps to support your mental wellbeing and your feelings in that space when you're working with children. But I also found doing all the mindfulness and yoga and meditation with the children is also really good for us as well, because that helped me out because you're teaching, you’re role modelling to the children how this benefits them, but it also benefits you.

Shona Doyle

It’s shown when you do mindfulness and you do some of these, some yoga and things like that it actually expands your Window of Tolerance so you're not becoming that hyper-aroused person that has lost hope and doesn't want to do anything. Or you're not that hyper-aroused running about being that person that wants to do everything, and it has to be done now, has to be done right.

So it's just yeah. We have another question: I can just imagine an educator devoted to supporting children and now I've lost it - the message disappeared!

Elvia Downs

Can I just say something in terms of supporting your own wellbeing? I think also it's really important to take each day as it comes and to be able to - if it's one of those really challenging difficult days, making sure that you leave it in that day and start afresh the next day. And really keep your purpose in mind or what you're doing and how you're working with the children and try and keep that real positive growth mindset is really important. Because once you start to becomes quite negative, it's very hard when you're in that, you know, that situation where you're feeling really stressed and burnt out and I understand that but you really having that positive mind frame is really super, super important.

Shona Doyle

 

And that definitely answers Hi’s question. Taking one day at a time and recognising that you go in as a whole person. You don't leave a pile of stuff that's happened at home at the door and pick up on the way out, it does actually follow you into work.

Elvia Downs

But also going on that question as well and it just says, but I'm wondering how did you support the team, the staff going through the process. Everyone in our space have come from very different points of view and very different experience levels, training levels, resilience levels, backgrounds the way that they work with children. So having that team is really, really important but it's also and once you build those connections with staff it's understanding where they're going to struggle or where their challenges are. So where something like the triggering for a staff member, and you know that if that child’s going to go into one of those scenarios where they might become really violent or whatever and that's going to become triggering for the staff member. That's the time to tap in and out and it's building that relationship and rapport with them to go: this is really hard for me or I need to step out of this, can you check-in or I will step in. So, so you really it is about you really going to start with a staff approach first because today you might say we're working this child today and we did this and this didn’t work at all. What are we going to do about it tomorrow?

Shona Doyle

Thank you so much! We’ve run out of time. Please join us for the follow-up session. You will find there is a placeholder for the upcoming webinar too if you’re in the chat and there is a beautiful Be You Connected Community that you can join. On behalf of Alisha, Elvia and myself, thank you for attending. I hope that you will join us in future sessions, thank you. Thank you, everyone.

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