Matthew R. Stover
Dec 16, 20222 min
If kids and teachers don’t care for their bodies, they are not in top condition to learn. Physical health strategies are just as important as educational strategies in the New Year. To get our bodies in top shape, it’s important that we realize three important tools that we can use with faculties and students to prime everyone for optimum learning.
Here are the easiest, quickest, and most inexpensive ways to quickly serve your body:
Water - Keeping your body hydrated is one of the top ways to keep your brain functioning at optimum levels and to keep your body in top condition. Many daily health issues - headaches, fatigue, stress - can be traced back to dehydration. And it only costs you pennies to take a water break or refill that thermos.
Deep Breathing - It isn’t just for yoga! Fight, flight, or freeze is an automatic response to stress in every human being, but we can calm ourselves by just pausing and taking some deep breaths. Consider this - when we’re scared or stressed or fighting, our breathing becomes shallow, signaling to the brain it must work harder and pump more blood to save itself. When we pause and take slow, deep belly breaths, our brain gets the signal - Hey! We’ve paused to calm and breathe! Danger must be gone! Even if we’re in the midst of stress, a breathing break at the top of every hour for 1 minute can do wonders.
Reframing - Often, we jump to the most negative conclusions and have a self-centered way of viewing the world. Take a pause and step back or into someone else’s shoes to see your latest rant from a different perspective. See if you can find the positives, and if you can’t, text a friend. If we can see it differently, then we can live it differently. Teaching students to reframe when conflict arises is a great way to teach higher-order thinking skills while shining the light on emotional awareness.
Consider classrooms and schools where all students can stay hydrated, pause for deep breathing breaks, and are encouraged to reframe negativity. And it won’t hurt your budget at all! How will this transform the potential to learn in your educational community this New Year?