Lockdown and Self-Care

During lockdown gloabally, there were some interesting lessons to be learnt and some things to take away. There was to a degree a forced back to basics, which I believe was a truly invaluable experience both personally and professionally. If anything, I’ve become more engrossed in my profession and truly grateful for it.

What will be your take away from all of this? What have you learnt from this experience? What changes would you like to see in your world after this?

Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com

We learnt the value of routine.
Routine became one of the most valuable things we took for granted and some even struggled with the lack of routine. Most people attempted to build their own routine or incorporate little daily rituals. For me, something I did every day while working was make a to-do list to keep me focused. I made a daily to-do list and a weekly check list to ensure I kept up with corrections and admin (admin is one in particular that was very valuable). These little to-do lists would take about 5 minutes but proved to keep me on track, I would check it off as the day went, which gives that overwhelming feeling of ‘getting shit done, boss mode’ and was great to get to the bottom of that list every day. On the days that I didn’t – it was simply added to the next day.

We had a revitalised sense of community.
Without delving into a rabbit hole, in a capitalist and neoliberal society, community has been truly lost. Individualism is promoted on every front, as a consumer, as a professional, in almost every aspect of our lives.

We learnt to value self-care.
Self-care is something that I am very inconsistent with, I am a sucker for a bath and a pamper, but other arguably more important aspects of self-care are often neglected. One really simple thing was dedicating time to read fiction and listening to podcasts. I’ve been considering this as an educator – when do I hit burn out and how can I control that better, how do I incorporate self-care into my routine (almost in a year long sense). What was something that got you through this difficult time?

Transparency became abundant.
There was a strong sense of seeing people, really seeing people. This meant seeing people live their values, something under normal circumstances we wouldn’t normally see on a day-to-day. As I mentioned this was a back-to-basics in a lot of ways, for me, this meant revisiting my values and revising how I live them, promote them and demonstrate them.

Educational Blogs – Top 3

I’ve stumbled across a number of really brilliant educational Blogs sharing ideas, experiences and resources. I’m sharing some of my favourite ones.

Shake Up Learning

Kasey runs Shake Up Learning which has pretty much everything an educator could want! Including a podcast, webinars, free resources and a lot focusing on using G-Suit in particular.

Counselor Chelsey

Chelsey focuses predominantly on counselling, however she has a lot of resources available which would be very useful in a classroom context. In particular I’ve found it really great for wellbeing and growth mindset activities.

The Daring English Teacher

Everything relating to English, from resources to lesson plans. A great space for inspiration around English in particular but also for ideas around more active methodologies, visual alternatives and resources.

Teaching With Slam Poetry

What is slam poetry?

Sarah Kay gives a much better description than I ever could ‘poetry that doesn’t wanna live on paper.’ It’s also worthwhile showing something along these lines to students when you start as many won’t have seen slam poetry before.

How To Use It

I won’t break this down into a unit as it depends on where you are located and how you do things. (There are some great websites that do this and I’ve included some in the resources – so you can pick and choose accordingly). However, I’ll offer some more generic advice on my experience using slam poetry.
You can use slam poetry for a variety of purposes including (but not limited to):

• Dramatic performances.
• Acting.
• Studied poetry.
• Creative writing.

Resources
Teacher Off Duty ‘Speak Your Truth’
Slam Nation – Unit PDF
Mud and Ink Teaching ‘Slam Poetry 101 An Introduction’
TED ED – Become a slam poet in five steps

Pros

• Accessible – for the most part, using slam poetry makes poetry much more accessible to students who find it challenging. Often as a teacher, poetry proves a difficult topic to teach and adding movement and actions can help break down those barriers of metaphors for some students.
  
• Engaging – slam poetry is arguably designed to captivate and engage an audience about a certain topic in a very brief time frame, whether this is achieved in the style or tone of the performance, often it has this exact desired result for students.
  
• Interesting – rather than just reading about themes of nature or death (which is often the case in poetry) read about much more complex and topics that students can relate to. Often the performance style is considered to be similar to that of rap or hip-hop which students can admire.
  
• Differentiated Learning – for students who find it difficult to learn off a page, listening and viewing a slam poem can be a great way to teach to all different learning styles.

Cons

• Audience – keep in mind the content and the audience. Picking the right poem is really crucial to encourage student engagement.
  
• Language – sometimes there can be some really difficult language used which can be difficult for any student but particularly EAL students. It is worth keeping this in mind and again, trying to pick one that is accessible.
  
• Hard copies – this proves to be the biggest challenge. It is definitely worthwhile providing students with a hard copy to use to follow and this can be incorporated with your planning. However, it can be hard to find a hard copy of the poem. It is worth using a poet who is published.