Educational Fire Drills for Flourishing
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mental and emotional health close to 1
billion people
with depression and anxiety worldwide
prior to covet
and the numbers massively rising
interpersonal conflicts in our families
and communities
and students in school at home
these are three of the top challenges
currently reported around the world
and yet this year has been an
extraordinary gift
it has clearly identified needs
demonstrating how current
traditional forms of education have been
missing some vitally important things
things that not just children but all
humans need
not just to survive but to flourish
regardless of what situations occur
online searches and coping in crisis are
in constant demand
and leading health and education
institutions share many recommendations
in common
many go beyond coping to flourishing
in positive psychology this refers to
the ultimate human desire to be happy
to have a life worth living the greek
word eudaimonia describes it
as a sense of wellness of feeling
blessed and what it looks like
is having loving relationships
being able to cultivate positive
emotions like
hope appreciation for beauty and nature
engaging in pleasurable but challenging
activities it’s called being in a state
of flow
and finding a sense of meaning and
purpose
through serving something bigger than
ourselves
now every time a crisis hits people
scramble looking for
ways to cope not having practiced what
we need to deal with uncertainty
but i hope to show that through practice
so much more is
possible even in the face of crisis
because life will inevitably continue to
present unpredictable challenges again
and again
so we want to be ready to flourish over
and over
think about how much more agile we could
be with the skills we need
emotional and social intelligence
movement
and creative thinking just look what we
instinctively went for the top purchases
during the pandemic included
social connection platforms like zoom
that went from 10 million to hundreds of
millions
in months meditation app uploads rose
10 million a month exercise sales
equipment 600
and this went then to creative arts
performance art supplies and
games we organically intuitively knew
how creativity helps just look at this
dancer
performing for his neighbors and being
filmed and we went from filming
balcony concerts like this to online
global
dance parties and museums holding
challenges for people to recreate
famous works of art all this shows
is that we know what helps so why does
it take a global pandemic to get us
thinking and behaving differently
well how much time do students spend in
school
practicing social emotional learning
movement and creative arts for that
matter how much time did we as adults
spend doing that prior to the pandemic
not much the truth is anything we don’t
value in the adult world
doesn’t make it into schools if the
professional world valued it it would be
in schools tomorrow
just like subjects considered related to
success in business
and we practice business skills so we
can use those without thinking
just like we practice fire drills so
that we can use those in an emergency
and respond in
so whether it’s multiplication tables or
scales of a musical instrument or the
skills we need to manage anxiety
with something as simple as practice and
repetition we can more easily adapt
because
when we’re stressed or in doubt we’re
going to go to the thing we practice
not something new and these are skills
we can use
every day with or without a crisis
emotional and social intelligence what
this comes down to
is understanding and managing our
emotions and our responses
communicating with compassion and
empathy the ability to handle
conflicts constructively which helps us
make better decisions and this is known
to help
reduce stress and increase well-being in
schools it’s referred to as social
emotional learning
and it’s most often considered extra
enrichment nice but not essential
not necessary to be college or career
ready
and this is not surprising given that in
the professional world
even though we say we value it it’s
referred to as soft skills
nice but not essential
according to the world economic forum
the leading barrier
to programming in schools and in
business
is a supposed lack of evidence on the
benefits
buy-in for that because of the lack of
evidence
but think about the economic toll alone
of a world suffering from a pandemic of
depression and anxiety
according to the u n prior to the
current health crisis
the estimated cost to the global economy
was a trillion dollars a year
and just think about the benefits of a
society with more
emotional flexibility and empathy and
hope and optimism
and these can be practiced just like a
dancer practices plies or a basketball
pla
player shoots hoops we start with the
most basic
thing getting still and asking ourselves
how do i feel right now this builds
physical and psychological awareness of
our feelings
stop take a breath
and notice i feel like my head is going
to explode or my stomach is tied in
knots
maybe i’m just worried about next week i
think i’m going to go take a walk around
the block
and then after we deal with us we can
deal with others
listening skills and not just how to
listen to others but how to be listened
to
we start by allowing others to share
their thoughts without interrupting and
asking questions for clarification or
paraphrasing if we need
and since the majority of communication
happens on a non-verbal level
paying attention to tone and body
language and actions is pretty valuable
especially right now with virtual
communication or not being able to see
all of someone’s face i i think i heard
you say this
is that what you meant that’s the first
step in handling conflict
do you want to explain first and then
i’ll explain after
so wherever education takes place right
now the earlier and more often we have
opportunities to practice the greater
our potential is to reap the benefits
and we can all learn together just like
we did in the school where we taught
fourth graders
how to have conversations about conflict
and they asked if we could teach it to
their families on conference night
so as a mother an educator a
business owner and a futurist
i believe we can build in opportunities
every day in schools
and out for children and adults that
would increase our chances to have a
much better world
movement it’s no news flash
physical exercise is known to be a major
contributor to mental well-being
it’s known to help reduce and regulate
strong emotions like depression and
anxiety
and increase and boost executive
functions we need for learning like
attention and memory
the recommendation is for an hour a day
yet the average amount of physical
education in u.s schools is an hour and
a half a week
now this is not just a us problem or a
kid problem
according to the world health
organization insufficient physical
exercise is one of the leading risk
factors
for illness and death worldwide
and think about how much time how much
more time
we’ve all spent sitting over the past
several months
but there is good news new data shows
that an hour of even moderate physical
activity can help counter the effects of
too much sitting
and we can start small and do it
anywhere schools home work
get up every hour and move around three
yoga poses a walk around the block or
down the hall
dance to one song step outside and
stretch your arms to the sky
or maybe just walk over to the window
and water the plants
and finally creative thinking
in this past year we have seen every
sector of life
go through a tsunami of change schools
families communities around the world
forced to adapt overnight
who hasn’t had to be creative recently i
mean we’ve seen
kids come up with innovative ways just
to hug their grandparents through a
shower curtain
i have worked with thousands of
educators in hundreds of schools
who say they want more creative arts
education but feel tied to focusing on
academics
even in kindergarten five-year-olds
trading in imaginative arts and play
for skill and drill math and reading
exercises and nightly homework
again attributed to a supposed lack of
evidence
this time on the benefits of arts
education which is very often viewed as
a form of play
but there is lots of evidence for
example
in one 12-year study of 25 000
students it was reported that adults who
participated in arts had better outcomes
on academics
college attendance employment
relationships
civic and religious participation and
volunteerism
in other words flourishing
it doesn’t make any sense to cut out
play that doesn’t make anyone more
career ready
just look at how many top high
performance experts teach play to
executives to increase
joy and productivity and innovation
not to mention how it fosters our
humanity
every human being is creative
and we don’t have to be artists but
artists do know that taking advantage
of opportunities to not know is one of
the keys to creativity
it helps us learn how to think versus
what to think
it encourages us to explore it makes us
ready more ready to be uncertain
to make mistakes discover by accident
it is the essence of learning and at the
core of innovation
and it can even help with that search
for purpose and meaning
we can start by drawing writing making
something anything without an intended
outcome
and asking questions what if what don’t
i know about this
that’s what every major inventor in
history has done
what could be a more impossible or fun
or useful way to do this and by
cultivating our creativity we’re better
able to design
intelligent machines for the future
equipping them to handle challenges with
greater consideration for what helps
humans flourish
now this past year has been tough
and yet dealing with challenges
adapting and facing crisis is not new to
me
decades ago moving to new york city to
go to college
i was faced with many unknowns
including watching many of my young
friends die tragically to aids
then a mysterious disease not unlike
today adapting meant dressing in full
ppe
to take care of the people that we loved
years later the experience of living
near the world trade towers meant
dealing with
tidal waves of emotions that came with
the destruction
chaos loss and shock
and at the beginning of this pandemic in
the beginning
listening to non-stop ambulance sirens
and walking on the street
past morgue refrigeration trucks housing
thousands of corpses
all the while like so many people around
the world
living in isolation facing a steady
stream of unknowns and in the
continuing heartbreak of social
injustices
each crisis has required emotional
social physical and creative skills to
cope
and then to flourish and this choice to
flourish
is how i hope to model living as a
parent
and as an adult parent or not what we
model
affects and guides everyone around us
now i’d like to note no one
gets a certificate of completion in
flourishing
as life shifts
so do our responses and no one is immune
from falling down
or falling apart i’m quite familiar with
it
as my daughter would tell you i have a
lot of practicing to do
but that’s part of life and the learning
and the practicing is a lifelong
thing education never stops
and every location can become a place
of education we just have to think of it
like fire drills
just like we practice stop drop and roll
or the alphabet song
stop and breathe
stop and feel
stop and listen
move imagine play
we can all transform education today
practicing the skills we need for an
uncertain world
lives worth living no matter what the
future brings
stop and breathe stop and feel
stop and listen move imagine play
stop and breathe stop and feel
stop and listen move imagine play
thank you