Dear Difference Maker,

In our society we do a lot of “coming at” each other verbally, physically and energetically with our attitudes, vibes and tone about what we think each other has done wrong.  We don’t hear ourselves most of the time.

In the middle of every single conversation is what we believe to be the truth about another person whether we’ve investigated or not.

We may not know it, but where there’s smoke there is fire when it comes to unconscious bias.  It’s real.  It’s happening. It’s felt.  It’s in the middle of every single conversation we are trying to have with another person.

Think of “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum as a primer to my soon to be released program, Teaching Energetics, in which we will be doing a deep dive into the Quantum Physics of Interconnectedness and how your students do in fact, pick up what you are putting down about what you believe they are capable of doing and being.

We will explore how, without learning as much as we can about ENERGETICS we are inadvertently participating in the results we’re getting from students, we are just spinning our wheels.

You can be using every effective teaching technique in the book, but if you have an unconscious bias; an attitude, vibe and tone you will have a difficult time of it.

When attitudinal energy is not addressed skillfully, things can get intense. This is not about telling someone that they’ve got a bad attitude or they just need to be more positive!  Never. Do. That.

Remember Behavioral Modifications #1 Rule:  Before you can change anyone else you must first change yourself.  And that means addressing your own vibes first by considering what unconscious biases may be getting in the way of building a solution generating, collaborative relationship.

With everything that’s been going on in the world, there truly is no better time than the present to experience the healing power of inclusion through community building.

The last 9-Weeks of any school year are pivotal in creating the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” program.

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

PS … For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order. School-Wide licensing is available.

PPS … After March 31, the curriculum price jumps to $119, so don’t miss out
on this special deal!

DON’T WAIT!!  Save $82 by ENROLLING TODAY! 

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

Community Requires 2-Way Communication
Excerpt from 9 Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum

Just how well do we communicate?

I have loved doing Week 9’s activity with students and in my administrative team building trainings across the country because I find that people gain their own personal insights into just how well they are coming across without someone taking it upon themselves to point it out.

There’s visual proof at the end of the activity which illustrates just how well they did.  I encourage teachers to have their students do this exercise as many times as time allows.  Team them up with more than one partner to see what happens.  The more we practice, the better we become.

There’s a lot of team building activities for classrooms available on the Internet.

What makes my curriculum so much more than a set of simple team building exercises is that 1) every activity has been field-tested with 20,000 people in a 2-year period to help participants gain insights into themselves and others, 2) feel a part of something greater than themselves and 3) the movies have specific heart opening messages that unify and align students with each other.

Week 9 of my 9 Weeks teaches that the success of the Community depends upon good two-way Communication—a skill that benefits students in learning how to think about what they are saying and how they are saying it.

My husband loves it when I tell our Dairy Queen story.  It’s not as funny in writing as it  is when I tell it in front of a live audience, but I think you’ll get the point I’m making about communication and how we’re wired neurologically within our personality styles.

Dairy Queen Scenario 1

We’re traveling down the freeway and I notice a Dairy Queen just off the very next exit!  My husband is driving and I turn to him and exclaim, “Oh look, there’s Dairy Queen!”

He keeps driving right past the freeway exit for Dairy Queen.

Hurt and hangry, I asked, “Why didn’t you take the freeway exit?”

He replied, “You didn’t say you wanted me to!”

Dairy Queen Scenario 2

I am driving down the freeway with my best girlfriend in the Whole Wide World and she says to me, “Oh look, there’s Dairy Queen!”

Screeeeettttccccccccccch!

I speed up to get off the freeway as fast as I can and I drive straight into Dairy Queen! Not one more word was spoken.

It’s UNDERSTOOD!

Even though I’ve spent my adult life teaching empowering communication techniques, it baffles me that this still happens between us. The big difference between early in our marriage and now is that we laugh about it.  When I haven’t been as direct as I know how to be, my husband has learned to check-in with me saying, “Is this a Dairy Queen request?”

So much of our communication is coming “at” each other after someone does something that we don’t like.  This guarantees upset.  Whereas, learning how to check-in, investigate and ask “what” questions instead of “why” we get to the heart of the problem rather than more excuses.

There’s no time like the present!

The last 9 Weeks of any school year – and particularly this chaotic school year – are pivotal in creating comradery, so they can end the year with the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum.

Here’s your road map:

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!

For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order. School-Wide licensing is available.

Dear Difference Maker,

It’s really happening! Our students are coming back to school full time throughout the country.

Here are just a few of the many additional worries to add to your already excessively full plate with students returning to school:

•       being able to communicate clearly through masks.
•       enough tech support on-site for students with electronic devices.
•       in addition to disinfecting time there’s still prep time and grading time.
•       kids agitated emotional states from intensified home experiences.
•       so many students in over their heads with catch-up to do.

You may be wondering how spending a total of 9 class periods focused on building a safe, inclusive, self-regulating community will answer any of the pressures listed above as well as help get students caught back up.

Small changes in classroom interactions can
make a big difference for traumatized students.

The science is in: (Aupperle et al., 2012) Neurobiologically, students can’t learn if they don’t feel safe, seen, known and cared for within their schools. When teachers are vigilant, proactive and responsive to the hurtful stuff going on between students, and make small changes in addressing differences in compassionate ways that foster a feeling of safety, it makes a huge difference in their ability to learn.

Here’s How 9 Weeks Will Make A Difference in Your Classroom Culture

9 Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum focuses on inviting every single student to engage in constructive conversations about each of our learning and thinking differences in fun, light-hearted, yet adequately serious ways.

In order to embrace differences and communities of all kinds we must all learn how to talk about our thoughts and feelings in the ways that vent but also repair what’s gone before.

As teachers we are not necessarily trained to be psychologists, however, we are human beings and simply following the activities and follow up questions will help us all discover better ways of speaking to troubled hearts and minds.

If we truly want future generations to grow up in a world that encourages inclusion and diversity, then we must learn 1) how to become aware of our own unconscious biases and 2) constructively talk about them to bring about change.

9 Weeks Curriculum will help you encourage the conversation that’s been long overdue.

Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go.

Talking with our students about racism and discrimination is never easy, but it’s necessary—if we are ever to turn the corner and have our classroom be a safe place where everyone’s minds can relax enough to heal and learn vast quantities of information each year.

Here’s your road map:

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

You’ll walk away from this “done for you” curriculum with an energetic conclusion to this year that fills your cup.

Not only that, but you will receive my signature No Labels No Limits: RELABELING Technique with a full 1-hour training waiting for you in Week 8.  Plus my LIVE 90-minute performance at Portland Community College campus-wide faculty, staff, facility and custodial services on Re-Labeling Ourselves and Others.

This technique is worth the price of admission alone!

Just click to “Enroll Now” to receive your 70% March Madness Savings.

COUNT ME IN!

Reaching out …

PS … For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order.  School-Wide licensing is available.

PPS … After March 31, the curriculum price jumps to $119, so don’t miss out
on this special deal!

DON’T WAIT!!  Save $82 by ENROLLING TODAY! 

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing

Dear Difference Maker,

Grab a cup of coffee because I have a lot to say today.  Not so much because I think you need it as much as I’ve made it my business to say it.  I think that deep down you already know how we, as a society, are inadvertently creating a debilitating Catch-22 for far too many children over the past three decades.

As you are also aware, there’s been an alarming uptick in failing grades as early as the first Quarter because of isolation. Now more than ever before we must be mindful of the mental health impact of this pandemic on students grades.

Even our highest performing students say the toll of this pandemic on their mental health is skyrocketing depression and anxiety.  I think we can all agree that now is not the time to put additional stressors on students that are just barely making it.

This is not a time to try to cram large quantities of content into their brains. This is a time to build what needed to have always been done:   Create safe, inclusive classroom community first to open the doors for learning readiness.

Trust the newest neuroscience along with the science of epigenetics:  students can in fact catch up academically in the right mental, emotional environment.  One of the ways we can bring much needed relief to troubled minds is with my Relabeling Technique.

Relabeling is not only one of my signature techniques, it’s my WHY behind 40 years of helping children and adults get to the heart of what’s really going on with the words we use to describe each other and how powerful they are to either limit learning or accelerate it.

Having been labeled my parent’s “problem” child I am eternally grateful that the current diagnoses being used today were not in existence for my parents to use to explain me to others.  I’m pretty sure I would have been their Alphabet Soup kid, i.e., a kid who is given multiple diagnoses.  I had more than enough to unpack and come up over as it was.

There are currently 28 diagnoses being used to explain unproductive and unskillful behaviors along with learning style discrepancies today:  ND/NT, ADD, ADHD, CDD, ASD, Aspie, OCD, ODD, SPD/HSP/HSC, ED/SED, DS, SN, LD/SLD, LPD, RAD, RSD, HFA/H-FAD, DMDD, DLD, MPS-VI, PDA, GATS

Is anyone seeing a problematic pattern here?

Here’s the irony:  the most effective communication techniques and tools for working with diagnosed students are the same exact techniques and tools that work with students whose social-emotional behavior and learning abilities we consider normal!

Here’s a field-tested fact:  you can be doing everything the right way, using the most effective tools and techniques currently being taught, but if you have even an infinitesimal unconscious bias coming through energetically as an attitude, vibe or tone then chances are, the students you are currently struggling with are not going to get the kind of results they could be getting without the limiting labels.

Take this to heart:  Anything after “I AM” chases you.

I have no idea at what age I became a “problem” child, all I remember from a very early age was that I  couldn’t make even one mistake without getting a significant dose of my mother’s VIBE of disdain, disapproval, judgment, skepticism and disappointment.

To distance themselves from anything they feared I might say or do when out in public, my parents more times than not introduced me as their “adopted” daughter, Mary.  After all, their gene’s weren’t responsible for how talkative, independent and active I was.

At the start of every school year, my mother made it a point to go in and introduce herself to my teachers to make a deal with them that if they believed about half I what I came to school talking about from home, she’d believe about half of what I came home from school telling her about.

When I became a teacher I learned that I was pretty much a normal kid after all.   In fact, it was very healing for me to know that there had never actually been anything wrong with me or the fact that I had preferences about how I learned best.

Because I was my parent’s “problem” child I was determined to never do to any child what my parents had done to me attitudinally, verbally and physically.

So in my third year of teaching when I greeted my classroom full of students with thick file folders, the first thing I did was get selective amnesia about every diminishing thing their previous teachers thought they should tell me about them.

The second thing I did was relabel them in my mind so that I would always talk to them (energetically) as if they could do everything I was asking them to do or learn.  Simply put: I treated them the way I wished I would have been treated day in and day out no matter what.

After the year we’ve all had, now is the time to experience the healing power of relabeling through community building.  The last 9-Weeks of any school year are pivotal in creating the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” program.

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

PS … For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order. School-Wide licensing is available.

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

Let’s Remove Life-Limiting Labels 
Excerpt from No Labels, No Limits eBook

How to fix what ain’t broken!

The problem is that our children are not broken. We just see them and treat them as if they are. This becomes the seeds that we plant, water and feed their minds. An adult’s belief, attitude, vibe and tone sets the stage for the story-line. It’s the cornerstone to everything that comes after.

Children are unskillful at problem solving, communicating and meeting expectations at an adult level.  So if they are unskillful, then that simply means teach the skill that’s helps them thrive.

How do you intervene? 

By learning to see the cues each individual’s neurological wiring is signaling with new eyes of understanding.

While diagnoses and labels are what gets children with differing learning levels, problematic behaviors and unskillful communication additional academic assistance and emotional support,
it remains a double-edge sword that, without relabeling,
will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
-Mary Robinson Reynolds, M.S.
Behavioral TurnAround Specialist 

This has been documented in mountains of research from Stanford to Harvard.  Check it out: Google the Pygmalion Effect or the Rosenthal Effect.

My students will tell you that I treated them like they could and so they did.  This student from my first year of teaching, was diagnosed as dyslexic.  I myself had been sent to remedial reading class in 6th grade for a month, so I knew how reading with others would help.  It wasn’t until the following summer that I got my Remedial Reading Endorsement K-12 to learn more.  However, what I learned was that what I intuitively decided to do with Rita was spot on.  I just removed the label and set her up for success.

What I’ve learned from my own upbringing and from working with 1000’s of other people’s children and raising three of my own, is that appearances are deceiving.

It may look like they are being oppositional, disrespectful, hyperactive, learning challenged but if you’ll just take 30 seconds to look behind the curtain, you’ll see what story is trying to be told.  Let’s find out what seeds have been planted in each of our psyches.

What you and your students are going to undertake in Week 8 will quickly shift energy, and without you trying so hard to get them to “get” what’s wrong with them, a new label can problem solve unproductive behaviors and excel academic productively.

Week 8 of my 9 Week program focuses on the transformational power of relabeling ourselves and others.

This is such an life-changing activity that if you have not seen any improvement with how your students are treating each other by Week 8 then I highly recommend you not do the relabeling activity until you have observed them being consistently kind to everyone in their classroom community.  It’s too important to not wait until you are certain that no one will make fun of anyone else.

If you still have students minimizing other students, go back to the beginning of this curriculum and begin again.  Put your investigator hat on and be even more vigilant about figuring out what’s going on for them that they are still not as caring and kind toward each other as you are deciding they can be.

If however, your students have been engaging with each other with care, then you are ready to do Week 8.  It is a life-changing activity and must be taken seriously.

There are literally hundreds of positive, life-affirming, mind-reprogramming adjectives to describe children and their behaviors and/or learning styles that we are not using.  Google “positive adjectives to describe children” then 1) get selective amnesia, and 2) begin again …

Whether you are a teacher or an administrator, I invite you to do your own labels first so you can take your own power back.  We all have stuff to unpack about what we’ve been told about ourselves that maybe we have not yet relabeled.

There was a time period in my professional journey where I felt I was speaking too much truth to power.  I felt that in doing so, I was not being responsible about filtering myself and it was risking my employment.   So I went to a therapist to find out what was going on for me that I was unable to filter myself anymore.  I selected an older wiser woman that I felt safe with.

After I summarized what had been happening, she simply said,

“Mary, let’s take a look at this picture. You are a single mother of a three-year-old, caring for him all by yourself 95% of the time. You are carving out a new career for yourself as an author, trainer and speaker, and you do this after a full day of work.

“Your workload requires that you be responsible for the counseling of 500 children in an elementary school where there happens to be abuse toward the children and parents who don’t exactly fit the system.

“You meet all of your financial obligations on time, and you maintain a house and a yard for you and your child. You house a college student to help care for your child in the evenings when you are speaking, after putting in a full day of work. You prepare meals and keep house.

“Where in this picture do you think you are not responsible enough?”

I was shocked. The fact that I was that responsible was news to me. She then asked me where I got this idea that I wasn’t responsible enough. And I knew right away.
It was my mother. My mother and I had argued and fought endlessly throughout my adolescent years. She had begun telling me I wasn’t responsible when I was very little, and it built from there to become very explosive by the time I was in high school. It was hell, to say the least.

The day I relabeled myself my life changed before my very eyes.  I’d been relabeling my students for years but it never occurred to me to relabel myself.  I have never again felt I wasn’t responsible enough.

I wept deeply as I felt the freedom from this life-long burden evaporate into thin air.

I want you to imagine, what freedom awaits you
and more importantly your students. 

I’ve done relabeling with children and adults of all ages for forty years now, and it never ceases to amaze me how people change when they take control of their lives in this way.

Relabeling is one of my signature techniques.  Use it safely.  Use it well.  When you invest in this curriculum you will receive my signature No Labels No Limits: RELABELING Technique with a full 1-hour training waiting for you in Week 8 online dashboard.  Plus my LIVE 90-minute performance at Portland Community College campus-wide faculty, staff, facility and custodial services on Re-Labeling Ourselves and Others.

Make the time to listen to it before you do this with your students.  You will be so glad you did.

KISS: Keep It Simple & Straightforward

Your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a community building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds.

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!

For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order. School-Wide licensing is available.

Dear Difference Maker,

I think we’d all agree, there are just some people who are born leaders while other people must learn to lead.   

Regardless of how we are neurologically wired, learning to be the leaders of our own lives can help any community we live and work in be better for having us in it.  This is what we want our students to come to know and experience.

I’ll never forget the conversation I had once with my second husband when he shared that he didn’t believe there could be two leaders in one family.  This was news to me.  I had been an independent provider for myself and my son for many years before meeting and marrying him.  I had thought it was understood that we were both leaders of our own lives and that by coming together it was a shared leadership.

After much discussion about this one topic, we decided that the healthiest thing we could do for our marriage is to collaborate and be a team.  Now, twenty-eight years later, it’s still working well for us!

There’s no better time than the present to experience the healing power of interpersonal leadership through community building.  The last 9-Weeks of any school year are pivotal in creating the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” program.

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

PS … For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order. School-Wide licensing is available.

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

The Importance of Community and Leadership 
Excerpt from 9 Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum

How many leaders can one classroom community have?

You’ve heard the statement, “Be careful what you wish for.”  Well, if what you wish for is a classroom that is self-regulating, self-advocating, self-governing, safe, all-inclusive and a high-performing group then you will need to be able to do your part to reach, teach and guide them in the ways of Interpersonal Leadership, and then let go of micromanaging.

You will need to encourage them all to be the leaders of their own lives and also how to come together as a community which understands that there is no “i” in team.  Diversity makes us stronger when we lean into each other’s strengths to find the best pathway forward.

Our unity is our strength and diversity is our power.
-Kamala Harris

In order to nurture and grow each student’s “inner leader” you will need to be able to hear their “truth” as they are finding their voices.  As a counselor, I found that as I worked with students on getting in touch with their thoughts and feelings, that when they went back to their classrooms more empowered than when they left, not all teachers welcomed individual leadership in every student.

All this means is that as students are learning how to lead their own lives, they must also learn that they are not an island. Once you’ve taught your students how to speak to things that are important to them, in ways that others will listen, you are well on your way to a truly amazing teaching experience.

So realize, if you really want your students to become self-leading, self-advocating and self-regulating but if by chance you have an unconscious bias toward certain students and those students start calling you out on your bias, it’s going to stretch you.  Just sayin’!

The best way forward is 1) own it if there’s even a seed of truth to what they are feeling coming from you, 2) apologize for not realizing it and doing something about it before now, and 3) invite everyone to go forward with you into a better way of doing things.

Week 7 of my 9 Week program emphasizes trust as an essential ingredient for empowering community and leadership.  This week’s activity explores, “Do you trust yourself to lead?  Do you trust your fellow classmates’ leading capabilities?  If not, let’s explore what’s going on for you that you don’t.”

In addition to the leadership activity, this week’s movie observes one teen’s willingness to do the right thing, just because it was the right thing and a life was not only restored, it was saved.

This week’s objective is to demonstrate how trust makes a way for support, leadership, collaboration and cooperation to take place.  To build a safe community, we must be willing to communicate and care for each other’s personal and emotional well being.

When leaders see something going on that is hurtful and harmful, they will stand up for their peers.  What if you developed 30 leaders in your classroom who will make a stand in and out of the classroom when needed?

But here’s the thing:  Doing this for others creates a caring, safe place for ourselves.

Finding Each Student’s Inner Leader is Key

Peer pressure can be a very good thing when it’s encouraging and calling out the best in our fellow classmates.  There’s nothing so empowering than a group of your peers cheering you on to take the lead of your life.  It’s confidence building.

Leading your own life requires doing the right thing even when it’s the hardest thing.  Doing so builds confidence in yourself and your ability to navigate the emotional ups and downs of life.

One of the unexpected gifts that came out of 9 weeks of daily vigilance came when I’d see my students leading the way by standing up for our most vulnerable students on the playground, in the lunchroom and hallways.  They were following what they’d seen me model with WIW by talking “with” not “at” the offending students. That’s when you know, as an educator, that you are making a lasting, positive difference.

There’s no better time than the present.

The last 9 Weeks of any school year – and particularly this chaotic school year – are pivotal in creating comradery, so they can end the year with the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum.

Your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a community building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds. When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!

For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order. School-Wide licensing is available.

Dear Difference Maker,

When you think of community, what comes to mind?

Back when I first started building community in my classrooms, I wanted to bring in the good stuff and leave out the hurtful stuff from my childhood.  Being raised in a farming community in Nebraska, I had experienced the upside of being part of something greater than myself when people came together during a crisis or a celebration.  The wonderful enveloping arms of those that you shared a common bond with and where many hands would make light work.

I had also experienced the downside of community where everybody knows your name and makes it their business to be up in your business without knowing what was really going on behind closed doors.

I abhorred the gossip, judgment and jealousy when anyone dared to shine their light or do things innovatively.  Then there was the fearful, competitive mindset that if you could just cut someone off at the knees, you would somehow be taller that sometimes goes on in mean-spirited cliques.  This of course, creates the great DISCONNECT within communities.

So, when I set out to build a safe, inclusive culture each year in my classroom, I was determined to be vigilant about the later.  As idealistic as it sounds, I envisioned that we would become one; one for all and all for one.  And we did.

Having a firm, clear vision is the first step.  The second step is to simply be vigilant and repeatedly use my 30 second WIW Technique to change things up, as many times as it takes to align students, rather than divide.

It wasn’t about forcing everybody to be best buddies. But it was about learning how to care enough for each person in our classroom to not deliberately aggravate, egg-on, make-fun-of, name-call, harass, irritate, agitate and/or exclude for any reason.

Sending the message that everyone matters in your classroom is arguably one of the most important things you can do as a teacher.  The important thing to understand here is that being vigilant does not mean coming “at” kids for their unskillful, hurtful behavior, it means sitting down with kids to get to the heart of the matter. Let no stone go unturned.

Yes! It takes a hot second to shake out all the judgments, opinions, biases and mean-spirited cliques by coaching them on how to be a part of something greater than themselves.  In fact, it takes approximately 9 weeks of one infraction after another to get it done.

The coolest thing about taking 30 seconds to get to the heart of an unskillful behavior is that not only does it save you time down the road, but students seeing you model compassionate investigation will start using their own voices to do the same.

Dig while the piles are small!

Not letting one single solitary infraction get by you for 9 weeks is the task at hand.  You must be willing to WIW – What If When – Every. Single. Infraction.

My 9 Week Curriculum helps you learn more about each student’s triggers, defense mechanisms and broken hearts through the group discussions.  Ask the done-for-you questions, then listen and learn.

Truthfully, I wrote this program for the teacher who really rather eat nails than have to deal with emotional stuff, let alone deal with blow ups and the aftermath!

This is also for the teacher who grew up with the “it’s my way or the highway” model, only to discover that while it might have produced short term results, back in the day, it did not instill long term self-regulation.

What an expulsion model did do was traumatize students even more so than they were in the first place.  Having been my parent’s “problem” child I was a recipient of this model, and I’ve spent my adult life doing it differently and having the Portland State University Case Studies to prove my inclusion model is unequivocally the better way.

Look at it this way: you can spend the time now or you can spend it later when a student disrupts class because they’ve had enough of what’s going on when you are not looking or when you deliberately look away because you don’t know what to do.

There’s no better time than the present to experience the healing power of inclusion through community building.  The last 9-Weeks of any school year are pivotal in creating the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” program.

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

PS … For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

When Community is Connection 
Excerpt from 9 Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum

We are about to find the power of our inner voice.

You may be wondering, “So just how do you get a self-regulating, self-advocating, self-governing, safe, all-inclusive, high-performing group of students in one classroom?”

Answer:  Doing fun activities that help students develop an awareness of the importance of self-trust that allows us to then be safe in any group we may be in.

This week’s activity teaches us all how to take better care of ourselves so that we can be more sensitive to others who may be more vulnerable than us. This also teaches us how to pay close attention to our senses to know if a situation is safe or not. If it’s not, get out of there. Move in another direction.

Week 6 of my 9 Week program brings Connection into the mix of necessities for a high functioning synergistic Community.  The activities are fun and designed to teach students how to rely more on their Inside Voice vs. the Outside Voice of Others.

Energetic connection is an essential ingredient for the building of a community.  In this week’s activities, students get to experience how to build community trust while relying on their own senses.

As a teacher, you already know how to talk, and that’s a good thing when you are teaching academics.  However, if you’d love for your students to become self-regulating, self-advocating, self-governing, safe, all-inclusive, high-performing group then you must stop talking “at” them and start talking “with” them.  My WIW – What If When Technique will help you do this.

Your students are really smart even though their behaviors may currently be unskillful.  School is all about developing skills and this is, in my opinion, equally important learning as is academics.

One of the unexpected gifts that came out of 9 weeks of daily vigilance came when I’d see my students standing up for our most vulnerable students on the playground, in the lunchroom and hallways. They were following my lead by talking “with” not “at” the offending students. That’s when you know, as an educator, that you are making a lasting, positive difference.

There’s no better time than the present.

The last 9 Weeks of any school year – and particularly this chaotic school year – are pivotal in creating comradery, so they can end the year with the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum.

Your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a community building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds.

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!

For purchases over $100 Pre-Apply to Buy with a Purchase Order

Dear Difference Maker,

My second year as a high school guidance counselor, there was a suicide epidemic happening in a neighboring school district.

I was asked to join the Suicide Task Force to develop and implement suicide prevention, intervention, education and postvention strategies. As it turned out, I needed to use the suicide protocol we created far too many times while I worked there.

Depression and the lack of social interaction has been soul crushing for our youth this past year, and as you already know, suicides have been on the rise.

You also know that getting students back in school is certainly going to help, but students who have been experiencing COVID related trauma in their lives, pressing on with a deep dive into academics, may not boost them up.

It may seem unorthodox to you to put social emotional engagement as a necessary first step before diving into academics when you have so very much you are required to cover to prepare your students for their annual standardized tests.

For 9 weeks I was vigilant about calling out (privately with my WIW Technique) every single hurtful interaction happening between students in my classroom, every school year. For whatever reason, after 9 weeks, things had leveled out and learning took off.

The results? My students standardized tests results came in with a class average of 2.5-3 years of academic growth every single year. Why? How can that be so? Because every single student got to be 100% safe in my classroom no matter what.  Their minds were relaxed enough for accelerated learning to occur. Period.

By now, you have most likely learned about the brain science that explains how this can happen.  If not, I recommend Eric Jensen’s, The Poverty Mind.

My 9 Week Curriculum focuses on specific unifying social topics for group conversations which will help students know that they aren’t the only ones thinking and feeling the way that they do.

While learning how to take turns, i.e., passing the talking stick, everyone gets to fill their cup by being listened to, and with time and repetition, they will begin to feel heard.

Feeling safe with their fellow classmates does miraculous things for their minds, body and spirits.  It has been my experience, and the experiences of the educators taking my courses and applying my strategies, that it does in fact, accelerate learning in all students, including students who are always behind.

There’s no better time than the present to experience the healing power of inclusion through team building.  The last 9-Weeks of any school year are pivotal in creating the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” program.

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

Who I Am Makes A Difference 
Excerpt from 9 Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum

Have you ever wondered why we don’t acknowledge each other more?

Here are the Top 7 Reasons (students have shared) as to why they don’t acknowledge one another:

1. Jealousy and envy; fear of being seen as insincere flattery, fake.
2. Speechless; as in “ah, don’t know what to say,” can’t find the words.
3. I’ll do it tomorrow; tomorrow never comes.
4. That person is so great they don’t need it or it’ll give them a big (or bigger)
head.
5. If you do it too much it will lose its impact/importance.
6. Fear of being rejected; blown off.  Ghosted.
7. Don’t belong, so why bother.

Scarcity mentality is the fear-based, negative belief that “more for you” means “less for me.”  The term, “zero-sum” means that “there’s not enough pie for everyone.” And so, we think that by withholding acknowledgment we are somehow preserving something for ourselves!

Interestingly enough, science has measured an increase in a person’s endorphins just after offering acknowledgment or appreciation to another.  When we express acknowledgment our brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the two crucial neurotransmitters responsible for our emotions, and they make us feel good.  They enhance our mood immediately, making us feel happy from the inside.

People who feel better, do better!

This week, students will experience how to reach out to acknowledge others because we just don’t know whose life we may be saving or making a difference in.  The life we may be saving may be someone we are very close to, someone we hardly know, a stranger, or even our own!

Week 4 of my 9 Week program focuses on the Acknowledgment Story, a true story of a class that learned to make a difference in the lives of others—which ended up saving the life of a teen.

You may already know that there are 7 Hardwired Emotions that we are born with:  sadness, joy, disgust, anger, fear, surprise and contempt.  Emotions like compassion, empathy, optimism, kindness, appreciation, etc. must be taught.

Because learning how to acknowledge one another is not something we are born knowing how to do, we are going to devote three weeks to this.

What I’ve seen happen with the Acknowledgment Ceremony is that students, faculty and staff experience an emotional high, which is a wonderful thing.  And, as with any uplifting experience, if we don’t make the new experience that comes with reaching out to acknowledge others a new practice, it will fade away.

It’s as simple as making a deal with yourself that if you are thinking good thoughts about someone, when you realize that you are, you simply say it out loud to them in the moment.

Don’t over think it.  Just say it!  Don’t be put off by their response to your acknowledgment of them.  What I’ve also found is that most people don’t know how to receive appreciation, acknowledgement or high praise.  It may seem like what you said to them just didn’t matter.

Trust me on this, it mattered.  It matters more deeply for most people than we can ever realize.  That look in their eyes, like they are a deer caught in the headlights is really their minds trying to compute what has just happened.  I can’t tell you the number of people who have said to me, “No one has ever acknowledged me before.” So, just say it and feel good about yourself because you did it.

The main purpose of these nine weeks is to cultivate a new way of being in the world by getting out of our heads and into our hearts via heart touching movies, fun, unifying activities and group discussions between students and teachers.

There’s no better time than the present.

Here’s your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a team building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds.

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!

Dear Difference Maker,

Like most teachers, one year my teaching contract was dependent upon my agreeing to do an extra curricular activity that I had no interest in, or so I thought.  For me it was coaching girls volleyball and basketball.

I loved sports and had been very athletic in high school but I never thought about coaching until getting a teaching job was contingent on it. I was married to a football coach and I was raised in a farming community in Nebraska so football was my life growing up.

Its a funny thing about how teaching can take you down roads you had no intention of traveling.  After I started coaching my own team, I discovered not only how fulfilling it was, I found out just how competitive I was!

I had been using my version of Team Learning (Cooperative Learning) for seven years up to that point in my classroom.  Now because of coaching two sports, I was taking team building to the next level.  By the second year of coaching, my girls had won district championships in both volleyball and basketball.

Teamwork really does make the dream work. 

There’s no better time than the present to experience the healing power of inclusion through team building.  The last 9-Weeks of any school year are pivotal in creating the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” program.

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

Team Work and Playing Catch Up 
Excerpt from 9 Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum

We are about to embark on Catch-up Learning.

There are some proven methods for identifying students who fall behind academically and intervening to help them catch up on learning, and there are some essential tools that teachers need to have in place for students to develop a community mindset.

The Brain-Based Research suggests that superior learning takes place when classroom experiences are safe, inclusive, enjoyable and relevant to students’ lives, interests and experiences.

A great way to give students meaningful opportunities in becoming skillful in social engagement and lower their affective filter is to team up and make coming together to learn, fun!

Having fun while learning also helps students retain information better because the process is enjoyable and memorable.

Week 3 of my 9 Week program is about students getting to experience a couple of fun, team building activities that will generate a lot of conversation and insight into themselves and each other in light and fun ways.

Kids already talk a lot, so why would you want to get them to talk more?

There’s talking to be talking, and then there’s talking to learn more about each other.  There’s nothing like new insights and understanding about each other’s thoughts, feelings and stories, to unify us and to help us not feel so alone.

When students can see common ground, their brains relax and breathe again.  Brain science observes that a relaxed mind lights up the frontal lobe of the brain.  Simply put, a lit brain becomes a “can do” mind!

Objective of this week is to build upon the idea that community takes teamwork. This week’s activities provide an opportunity to work as a team to explore the dimensions of a compassionate community and inclusion.

By allowing students the opportunity to distinguish between “Me” and “We” they can feel what benefits they receive when they are a part of something greater than themselves.

There’s no better time than the present.

The last 9 Weeks of any school year – and particularly this chaotic school year – are pivotal in creating comradery, so they can end the year with the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum.

Your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a team building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds.

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!

Dear Difference Maker,

It’s happening!  Educators around the country are gradually getting back to their classrooms and with it may come heightened energy and pent-up emotion.

The classroom management problems that existed before COVID may in fact now be even more magnified.

What a great time to take steps to gently and easily capitalize on your student’s current emotional states and harness the built up energy of this past year.

You have the power and influence to take this shared experience and make this last quarter the safest, most inclusive classroom community they’ve ever known, one week at a time.

Chinese word for crisis can be translated
as both danger and opportunity.
May we open our eyes to both. 

While we often hear, “I just want things to return back to normal,” this may just be the most dangerous lamenting we can let ourselves do.  Things have changed and many of those things are laying the foundation for necessary paradigm shifts.  This is not the time to go backwards to the way things were.  Let’s keep going forward to ease into a greater humanity.

Virtual learning for example:  never before have teachers been inside of student’s homes in this way.  Everyone has been stretched.  Never before have teachers and parents worked so closely together to keep their kids in front of the screen for their daily classes!

To quote Mathew Portell, Principal of Fall-Hamilton Elementary, an internationally recognized innovative model school for trauma-informed practices in Metro Nashville Public Schools …

“We required our teachers to call every student every day
and virtual learning shot up. Why?  Connection.”

He goes on to say, “We’re not asking our teachers to be therapists.  Studies are confirming that it is the consistent, little interactions that add up and are far more impactful than even therapy can be.”

I will also add that it is every infinitesimal attitude, vibe and tone you offer in every single interaction which is accumulative and will, over time, either calm or agitate (regulate or deregulate) any child you are working with.

Virtual learning required teachers to reach out emotionally to their students via the Internet or through phone calls, drive-bys, food delivery, etc.  New levels of energetic encouragement and connection happened.

What’s the best that can happen the next 9 weeks?

One of the best things that can happen is that we don’t let the energetic connection that has happened slip away just because students are back in the classroom.  That we keep doing what we did virtually to engage, energetically connect and be interesting.

Social engagement is happening whether you are managing it effectively or not.  Take the last quarter of this school year and direct what’s happening socially and emotionally in your classroom with “done for you” conversation starters, so your students begin learning more about each other, and then how to care and be protective of each other going forward.

By simply directing the conversation one class period a week over a period of nine weeks you can Make A Difference this year that transcends anything that’s ever happened for them and for you.

Mental Health has been on the forefront, but now it’s a MUST DO for educators.  Like it or not.  No one is coming to fix this.  Waiting for professionally trained outside reinforcements most likely is not happening.  Waiting for state funding is going to be a long wait.  Your students need a safe, inclusive community in our classrooms now!

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

The Teddy Stallard Story
Excerpt from Make A Difference with the Power of Connection

While this story was obviously perfect for teachers, parents and grandparents I had failed to realize that the most amazing value of this story is the emotion it stirs up in us all; it makes us want to be better people and treat each other, not just children, more affirmatively and compassionately.

And that’s why the answer for us all lies in the transforming Power of Compassion!

“No problem can be solved from the same
level of consciousness that created it.”
– Albert Einstein

Once, when I showed the Teddy Stallard story to an audience of 500 Junior High and High School students, the groans, coos, ooos and ahhs going on during the movie touched my heart big time.

After the movie was over, I looked out at them and there was a palpable silence. When I asked them for their insights, over fifty percent of the room raised their hands wanting to be heard.  To summarize what they said about Teddy’s story:

1) it made them realize that while we know everybody in our classes, no one can ever really know what goes on in someone’s home, and 2) in the words of student after student: “I realized that I really can make a difference by stepping in to help.”

I choked back my own tears. I had no idea how deeply and profoundly students of this age would experience this story.  I’m also happy to report that while grade school students are not as articulate, their realization that they too can make a difference in someone’s life, may just choke you up too.

Here’s a message I received from a PTA mom after she watched the movie:

“Mary, I just dropped my son at school after a very difficult morning … one of many. Patrick and I have one of those ‘clashing’ relationships where we are constantly bickering with one another. Your email arrived just in time and I watched the Teddy Stallard story. A box of tissues later I realize that ‘I Am’ the problem. I hear myself talking and that’s all I hear sometimes. Thanks for reminding me that if I want change, I need to create an environment of gratitude, laughter and encouragement. I know that, but today I needed the reminder and recharge. This time I won’t forget. Rather than respond to ‘my Teddy’s’ sarcastic tone, I’ll stop jumping in with an answer. We fight for independence. The mirror is a powerful tool and a very scary realization. Patrick is a wonderfully kind, sensitive, creative young man who has much to offer the people around him, including me. I just need to give him a chance to share that. I see more laughter in our household. That’s a good thing. Just need to keep it going. I learned something the other day …. the word ‘listen’ when you change the letters spells ‘silent’. Thank you.” – Terri Stanganelli

Also provided in 9 Week Curriculum …

This story is about so much more than a child being lost in the school system; it is truly about the Power of One to change a life forever, through the power of compassion.

What I began to see happening as schools used this movie in their PD meetings was that while educators were genuinely touched for several days, as it is with most things, the compassion this story brings would fade away.  It is a story that must be savored and utilized for days and weeks to come.

Week 2 is centered on the Teddy Stallard Story and the compassionate connection it evokes.  It is designed to help your students with how well they do with their day-to-day social engagement opportunities by simply putting themselves in someone else’s shoes.

It shows them how to care for each other because we just never know what someone is going through unless we take it upon ourselves to investigate.  Students young and older all love investigating.  It’s not about caring for a day.  It’s about continuing to care for each other day after day.

While you are provided with conversation starter “done for you” questions, you are not limited to them.  Keep going.  The more you can get students to open up about their thoughts and feelings, the more you know about how to reach them and teach them.

There’s no better time than the present.

The last 9 Weeks of any school year – and particularly this chaotic school year – are pivotal in creating comradery, so they can end the year with the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum.

Your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a team building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds.

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and then be the one to set the tone!

I’ve been waiting so long to tell you this …

Since the last time I’ve written, my husband and I made a 3000 mile move across the country, back to Oregon to be near our budding family.  As we’ve settled in, I have been excitedly creating new material and up-leveling all my programs.

You, dear difference maker, have constantly been on my mind this year of so much chaos and disruption.  Being an educator as you are, I know that the last thing any of us want, with our already fully packed plates, is something more to do.  That’s why I think you are going to love what I have for you that can make your life easier in the last 9 weeks of this school year.

Before things shut down, you already knew about the crises in today’s classrooms: far too many room clears, students being put in padded safe rooms, statistics like 60% of our students having already experienced trauma in their lives, an increase in our suicide rates due to exclusion and hurtful social engagement. The list goes on. But now, students are coming back.  The question is, “What’s going to be different?”

I have been writing about the missing puzzle piece of energetics, and I’m excited to reveal the first of five resources that will bring back the energy, joy and feeling of fulfillment that only making a difference can bring to our lives.

Today, I’m so pleased to bring you the foundation builder to my new Energetics Series: 9-Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum.  It is a primer to my brand new Teaching Energetics Online Program, coming soon. You can join the wait list here.

9-Weeks to a Make A Difference Year Curriculum is for any one who may be feeling compassion fatigue, even though there remains an unrelenting “pull” to reach and teach very single student in your care.

While most would think this is a program that would be for the first 9 weeks of a school year, I have taught this curriculum at Portland State University for CEUs during every quarter of the school year. The teachers in my classes applied it in their classrooms concurrent with the CEU classes – in any quarter of their school years – with consistent results.

For today, let’s focus on the best that can happen in the last 9 weeks of this upside-down school year.  I think you will be glad you did!

Reaching out …

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

The Biggest, Baddest, 6th Grade Class
Excerpt from Teaching Energetics: Change Your Vibe See Your Students Thrive!

Early in my career, I had earned recommendations for being a teacher who could reel in students and classroom situations which had previously been unmanageable.

In my third year of teaching, I was hired into a different school to take over a class that had been labeled the Biggest, Baddest Class that school had ever seen.  These kids were now sixth graders, and not one teacher before me had been able to gain any semblance of control with this group. Because of my young reputation for classroom order, ironically, those hiring me just assumed I used authoritarian disciplinary tactics, which I never did.

There’s nothing like the power of the made up mind.  

I knew that, if I had any chance with this group, I needed to make a firm decision to hold an unshakable vision of what it would mean for them to become the best class that school had ever seen.  I intuitively knew, I had to decide that it was possible and then dive in and sell them on it.

On the first day of school, they came into classroom like they owned it.  They knew what their reputation was, and they acted like they were proud of it.  They expected me to do what each of their previous teachers had done: lecture, threaten, humiliate, yell and send them to the Principal’s office.  But I didn’t.

As I gave my opening welcome, telling them how much I was looking forward to our year together, I could see them squirming.  They couldn’t stand it.  The apparent class leader urgently waved his hand at me. I called on him, and he asked “Haven’t you heard? We’re the biggest, baddest class this school has ever seen!” I simply responded, “Well, I don’t believe that.”

There was a big collective gasp as they all looked at each other with stunned expressions.  Many of them began waving their hands for me to call on them so they could tell me how bad they were.

Rather than minimizing what they had learned to believe about themselves, I gave them time to vent (to let the air out of that big red balloon of pent up hurt and anger in the middle of the room.) Then I said, “Well, I don’t see you that way at all.  As I watched you arrive, I thought the exact opposite.  I thought about just how excited I was to meet each of you and what a great school year we are going to have together.”

Silence.  They couldn’t read me.  No one had ever been excited to have them in their classroom.  They thought I couldn’t possibly hold a high vision for them.  I could see their mental wheels turning and their eyes were like deer in the headlights.  What I was telling them did not compute!

I held firm.  They felt my energy, my focus, my vision and my expectancy, that they were officially on their way to being the biggest, best class the school had ever seen. I listened and I acknowledged them without flinching.  I spoke my truth.  I was happy and excited to meet each of them.

When they had collected themselves from the shock of it all, one of them said, “Well, just you wait and see. We’ll show you just how bad we are.”

I smiled and said, “Yes, we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I’m really happy that you are all in my classroom this year.  Now let’s do our first activity … ”

Of course, I knew they were going to test their old identity at every turn in the road for a while (9 weeks to be exact).  That’s why our very first activity was to talk about what kind of class rules they wanted, to build the kind of community they wanted.

Any group of students this out of control has been talked “at,” not talked “with.”

They had never taken personal ownership for creating a classroom community that they could be proud of.

You can imagine the looks on their faces when I told them that the very first thing they (not me) were going to do together, as a group, was to make a list of new rules for the year.  The sky was the limit, with only one stipulation:  I would overrule anything hurtful or harmful.

I asked them who they wanted to have come up and write their new rules on the board.  They picked the most disruptive student in the class. He jigged, jagged and bounced his way to the chalkboard, getting lots of jeers and laughs along the way.

And so, it began.  I asked them to start calling out what rules they thought we needed, in order to have our best year ever.

At first, they were stunned and cautious.  Then they eagerly went to extremes.  But, after the nervous energy died down, the rules they called out were far more harsh than I would have ever come up with, and I told them so.

I let them call out as many rules as they could think of, and then we dissected each one as to whether or not it was even a good rule.  They didn’t miss one rule that I would have included.  In fact, I was the one who coached them to not have so many rigid rules.

You Can Always Begin Again: 9-Week Curriculum

No matter what quarter of the school year you are in, if you want to build a safe community, you must make a safe space for students to find their voice and take ownership.  Beginning with creating their own list of New Rules is unifying. It gets them all on the same side.  They are the ones that will hold each other accountable, and let me tell you, that really lightens a teacher’s load. If anything, you’ll have to tell them to not be so hard on themselves and each other.

If you want to be able to reach and teach students it all begins with a safe, inclusive classroom. Then community begins, with students coming together to talk about what’s important to them.  Even though there will be differing opinions, talk it out until you find alignment.  If you can’t find alignment, give it a day and come back to it the next day.  Don’t stop working on it until you find the sweet spot.

The only way to teach safe social engagement is to DO social engagement deliberately, intentionally; and this 9-Week Curriculum will help you through the maze of what’s really going on just below the surface.

There’s no better time than the present.

The last 9 Weeks of any school year – and particularly this chaotic school year – are pivotal in creating comradery, so they can end the year with the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum.

Your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a team building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds.

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning-in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!

Dear Difference Maker,

Like most teachers, my teaching contract was dependent upon my agreeing to do an 

Click the link for more information and be the one to set the tone!

Reaching out …

Founder of Heart Productions & Publishing, the Pacific Northwest

Week 3 of my 9 Week

There’s no better time than the present.

The first 9 Weeks of any school year are pivotal in creating comradery, so they can end the year with the excitement and expectancy of getting on with the next school year.

Learn more about how to make your classroom safe, all-inclusive and hum with academic productivity with my “9 Weeks to A Make A Difference Year” Curriculum.

Your Road Map:  1) one class period a week for nine weeks: play a heart connecting movie and/or engage students in a team-building activity which you will then use to, 2) direct the conversation using my “done for you” questions to, 3) explore what is really on in your students’ hearts and minds.

When you follow my 9-Week Make A Difference Year Curriculum you will …

• slow everything down and breathe a collective breath.
• ease your students into constructive and productive social-emotional engagement with “done for you” activities and discussion questions.
• learn deeper levels about each student by listening to them discuss “what came up” for them about the movie or activity.
• start tuning in to your students’ “hidden stressors” that each of them is struggling with daily, not just academically, but socially and emotionally to build a common bond.
• experience the transformational power of my WIW – “What, If, When” – technique, to shift the energy of the room in 30 seconds or less as intense situations come up (and they will come up)!
• see unskillful behaviors with new eyes of understanding, hear with healing ears.
• be thrilled at how a safe, inclusive and caring community will yield calm minds and accelerate learning.
• marvel at how quickly students – particularly those who are normally behind – are able to catch up and even pull ahead.

Click the link for more information and get started now!