Help Us Begin: HUB Strategies and Mindsets for Meaningful Conversations with kids, especially when you are challenged by the topic

By Jen Cort

Our students are confronted with many challenging topics as they negotiate the ups and downs of the world. How can we best support them, build their capacity to navigate challenging topics, and craft strong relationships and lines of communication? Through a series of HUBs, or Help Us Begin mindsets and strategies, Jen Cort provides practical advice any educator or parent can employ toward this aim. HUBs are illustrated throughout the book with stories, tips, application methods, and activities parents and educators can do independently or together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781737444398

Book preview

Building Bicycles

Gathering your relationship-building resources

We know, dad. You had to walk uphill both ways to school, I remember kids on a sitcom teasing their dad about exaggerating the ease of their childhood compared to his. I am among those who can genuinely say, I walked miles to school, uphill both ways, in mud, rain, and snow. As kids, we learned to be creative in transportation around our 1,700-acre property with hills, trails, and the occasional dirt road. Distributed among our community of 1,000 people, we only had a few vehicles, and they were primarily assigned to more significant tasks, such as tilling fields or hauling and selling produce.

It was not a traditional childhood. I grew up on The Farm, now an intentional community in Summertown, Tennessee. The Farm, at the time, was a well-known and large commune. At its peak in 1979 its population grew to 1,500 members and has dwindled to about 200 today.

So, we walked to school. Both ways. No matter the weather. We also rescued horses from local dog food companies and took ponies from families who could no longer feed them. The animals were our friends, our school buses, our tractors, and more. But we had only enough horses for four or five kids to share, making them unpredictable transportation to school.

When I was around eight years old, the local bicycle factory donated (or maybe we bartered for) a truckload of bicycle parts. My friends, siblings, and I were so excited. But we couldn’t just go for a ride. Farm kids learned how to do things, so we first had to build our bikes. We gathered the necessary tools and made sure we had all the correct elements in place. Under our teacher’s guidance, we learned to put together gears and frames, repair tires, center the handlebars, adjust seats, and care for their upkeep. And then we rode to our heart’s content, speeding around unexpected potholes or rocks in the road and experiencing the joy of flying downhill with our feet off the pedals so we could build momentum.

We even rode three kids on one little bike down a dirt road (not an activity I recommend, as I got a concussion from doing this on my ninth birthday). As with many skills learned on The Farm, bike maintenance is ingrained in me, and to this day, I know how to replace the bike chain, fix a tire, replace the brake pads, and much more.

Piece by piece, we learned to build our bikes. Help us Begin mindsets and strategies, or HUBs, are those pieces. Imagine a bicycle wheel: the center of movement comes from the wheel’s hub. It holds the gears in place and creates force, allowing the wheel to turn. Imagine each wheel spoke connected to both the hub and the rim are strategies specific to that discussion. For example, a spoke might be strategies for talking about gender. Now imagine the wheel’s rim is the adult and student/child relationship. Finally, the tire is the child’s sense of self. As you read this book, you will gather practical tools and parts to your metaphorical bike to go on a ride with your child/student.

HUBs are simple yet nutrient-dense, incorporating key change model components including:

1. Recognizing a new approach may be necessary.

2. Acknowledging your roles as one who can effect change and be open to being changed.

3. Knowing your resources for support, clarification, information, and partnership.

4. Remembering we don’t have to have all of the answers; we need relationships with the capacity to allow for uncertainty. Often the first and most impactful response is meaningfully asking "How are you?"

5. Understanding we are fallible, ever-growing people. What worked yesterday or with one kid may not the next.

6. Asking questions of yourself and others.

7. Sharing your insights, missteps, and successes.

8. Applying your new knowledge and adjusting as needed.

Part One

Proactive HUB Strategies and Mindsets

Many HUB strategies and mindsets are effective before, during, and after a challenging conversation. In this section we explore those most applicable when incorporated in advance.

1

Small Moves, Significant Impacts

Taking one step at a time to create significant changes

Do you know what happens when you skip a stone on a pond?

It skips.

And then what?

It ripples.

And then what?

It sinks.

And then what?

You pick up another stone and start again.

And then what?

I don’t know. What happens?

"The bottom of the pond is forever changed because the stone is now at the bottom.

And if you keep skipping stones to that same spot, the water will move differently."

I learned a lesson about creating sustainable and systemic change as I sat on the pond’s edge with my then six-year-old, Logan. We’ll never change the pond all at once. Yet with even one subtle movement—adding small stones to the bottom— the pond changes. We want to have dynamic and challenging conversations with our kids. But diving in too fast, like throwing a large rock in the water, can create a mess. Instead, we have to build our access points, subtly altering the foundation to prepare for, or prevent, a massive splash.

HUBs are small but impactful ideas that provide sustainable and systemic capacity-building skills that can be easily accessed and utilized. They let us form our foundation, starting small so we can build toward big. As the bottom of the pond changes with one stone, my hope is every reader will leave with one thing they will do differently.

Changing interactions and deepening relationships occur in the moments when we can think ahead and also reflect on an experience. Many HUB strategies and mindsets are effective before, during, and after a challenging conversation. In this section, we focus on proactive HUB strategies and mindsets for looking ahead. We explore those most applicable when used proactively, as part of building a strong, trusting relationship, so that a solid foundation exists when the need for difficult dialogue arises.

2

Gathering Parts and Tools

Putting you first

As schools moved from in-person to remote learning during COVID-19, social media posts reminding teachers and parents to take care of themselves flooded my feed. Soon after, I began seeing responses along the lines of Anyone else realize the words ‘self’ and ‘care’ are four letters? and Do the people reminding us to take care of ourselves have any idea what we are dealing with?

Self-care is complicated, I am so much better at supporting the self-care of others than of myself. It took quarantine during a global pandemic to realize how much sleep, water, time with loved ones, and laughter (and oxygen) I needed.  I continue to work on it as I begin new routines that I hope will become habits. Too often, though, our well-intended self-care practices disappear, and the new, healthier habits remain unformed. Before COVID-19, I spent a lot of time on airplanes, so I have heard the airplane rule many times. The airplane reminds caretakers to put on your oxygen mask before assisting others, otherwise you might lose consciousness and help no one.

As you read the following section, meet the Physical Location of Feelings (PLOF), and develop a care plan, I ask you to read it twice. The first time focus only on yourself, and the second, center on the kiddos in your life.

In the video Is Bias Useful? author and Harvard University Psychology Professor Mahzarin Banaji observes that human survival depended partly on the idea that the people on the other side of the mountain were dangerous. And we must get away from them. Even as humans have developed, we have kept this brain function. We experience anything other than safety, and our brains respond with fight or flight: Should I take a stand? Or should I run away?

The fight-or-flight response is entrenched in our brains, but these reactionary instincts are often negative in a modern, noncombat-oriented society. However, we can still benefit from these instincts, rerouting the process, working for rather than against growth. We can grow our response options by identifying and attending to the part of our body triggered by our brain. I call this part of our body the Physical Location of Feelings (PLOF).

Where PLOF resides in our bodies differs from person to person, but its functions (to protect us and remove potential harm) are consistent. Some of us know immediately what part of our body awakens when we feel stressed or vulnerable. And for many of us, identifying PLOF will take practice because we have reduced the decibels of PLOF to a nearly undetectable level.

Whether we are aware of its location or not, uninterrupted PLOF has immense power in deciding if we stay in a situation, how we treat others, and even whether we like someone. We can claim PLOF’s power by acknowledging and addressing our emotions when they first begin to emerge. PLOF is like a small danger beacon in our bodies, signaling subtly at first, and then becoming increasingly loud and bright until it’s screaming at us. And for many of us, PLOF is too often the decision maker.

Through a series of delicate discussions, Kay, the school nurse, connected Jeremiah’s stomachaches to his anxiety over friendships. Jeremiah’s visits to the nurse became less frequent as Kay and his teachers began to address the social dynamics in his class. And in so doing, they were able to help Jeremiah better his friendships and identify that his stomach was his PLOF. Through central nervous calming strategies and social empowerment activities, Jeremiah could listen to his PLOF sooner, consciously identify the environmental stressors setting him off, and take intentional actions to manage the situation. These strategies offered him self-determination, putting his brain in control and not his stomach.

We can then take care of, attend to, and soothe these PLOF reactions by identifying and listening to them at their smallest and quietest moments. The next time you feel anxious, uncomfortable, or vulnerable, ask yourself: Where do you experience it in your body? It may take a few attempts to tune into the message from the PLOF, but it gets easier with time and practice.

Like Jeremiah’s (and countless other children’s) stomachache, anxiety and emotional distress take up physical residences in us. Like snowflakes, our PLOF location and representation are each unique. For example, when I co-developed a mental health program with a group of seventh graders, I saw many manifestations. During one lesson, I explained the concept of PLOF and segued it into an activity to calm the central nervous system (in this case, we used mindful breathing). Afterward, students began sharing their insights, identifying how and where they experienced their emotions. Thirteen-year-old Stan listened to the lesson before declaring with frustration, I don’t know where that place is! His foot tapped loudly on the ground and occasionally against a chair leg with increasing speed as he spoke. I asked, If your foot could talk, what would it tell me? His response told me everything. It would say, I want to kick someone, but I won’t because I don’t want to get in trouble.

Stan unknowingly identified his foot as his PLOF, creating space to list the things he could do with his feet when they signaled discomfort. It was no surprise that he was a passionate soccer player, giving even more meaning to the value of soccer practice.

PLOF is powerful, the earlier we listen to it, the quicker we can utilize HUBs to care for our needs, disempower the reaction, and reclaim the privilege of making decisions for ourselves.

PLOF Activity One:

Identify your PLOF by recalling a stressful experience, remembering as many aspects of the experience as possible. Search your memory for your physical responses at that moment, such as stomachaches or sweaty palms. If you cannot identify it by looking back, as is the case for many of us. The next time you experience a stressor, search for your physical response. If it’s difficult at the moment, then do so as soon as you. You might also ask someone you trust to observe your reactions. A friend of mine asked others to observe from their observations he learned he visibly and repeatedly clenched his teeth when he felt vulnerable.

PLOF Activity Two:

My students at Oneness-Family High School inspired this exercise for families, advisories, homerooms, and other groups. A means to write or type your responses will be helpful. Ask yourself the following questions (leaving space between sections for Step 2):

Step 1:

Think about what evokes calm, grounding, or warm fuzzy feelings. List those that you:

•See, such as a picture of a loved one, a stuffed animal, the night sky.