Atlas of the Heart in the classroom

I recently read Brene Brown's newest book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of the Human Experience. Brown's work is always a powerful tool for reflection for me but I generally think about it more for my own friendships and family relationships. While I had plenty of those moments while reading Atlas, more so I kept coming back to the classroom and implications of this work for educators and schools. Rather than one long post with all my thoughts, I’m going to generate several shorter posts covering the most salient connections to teachers, students, and school.

Restaurants and classrooms. 

In the first chapter of Atlas, Brown talks about the maybe not so coincidental fact that many of the people who work on her team have all had extensive experience working in restaurants. She characterizes servers as people with "hustle" who understand the importance of teamwork and collaboration. When she described someone seeing a sugar packet on the ground and walking over it because it's not their job, his, she says this is a sign that they are not a good fit for her team. I chuckled at this scenario, thinking about how often I pick up stray papers, water bottles and other scraps as  I walk down the hallways in school. Given that I worked in restaurants, I'm probably a bit biased to agree with Brown's view of servers as hardworking and committed to doing whatever is need to make the whole operation run smoothly.

Brown draws on two restaurant expressions to describe the difference between the emotions of stress and overwhelm. Stress, Brown says, is like when you are "in the weeds" as a server. Being in the weeds is when you are falling behind in your tasks and you feel temporarily like you can’t catch up. Overwhelm, or being “blown” is when you have such high levels of stress that you almost can’t perform at all. You are so overwhelmed that you are almost frozen and hardly know where to even begin accomplishing your tasks,

This comparison caused me to reflect on how teachers ask for help and how helpful I can be as a coach.  In the restaurant atmosphere, if someone says they're in the weeds, as a fellow server I'd ask what they need and step in and start pouring drinks, bringing food or whatever they needed to a table for them. Basically I'd start doing a few of the very simple tasks, none of which are hard or require tons of thinking but add up to what feels like an insurmountable job. In the classroom this might be something as simple as making a few extra copies, passing out some papers, helping a student or couple students get caught up on what they're missing or helping them find the work in the computer. 

If someone was blown, in a restaurant another server likely couldn't take over because they  have their own tables which is why the kitchen manager generally steps in that situation. Similarly, if a teacher has reached a day of being blown, or even a single class period, a coach could step in. They could go to the bathroom or take a walk and it's just understood that I will remain in their classroom and take over. Because this is a predictable situation, I probably even have a few back pocket activities at the ready for each grade that I can have kids do if I know what the activities they had been planning to do. As Brown says in this chapter, if someone has reached the point of being blown, they are not in the head space to step in and explain all the details of their lesson plan. Just as a the kitchen manager sends the blown server away for a break instead of asking them all the things that need to be done, a teacher might need this same relief from the environment altogether. They need a brief period of "non doing,” which Brown described as time when they can calm down and return to a state where they are not totally cognitively overloaded.

When I was in the classroom I created quick ways for my student groups to let me know they needed my help or did they did not. Modeled after the ping pong paddles I had seen in the Bubba Gump restaurant, each group had a paddle with a green side that read “Go Ms. Gray, go” (we’re good, no help needed) and a red side which read, “Stop, Ms Gray, stop,” (we’d like your help). The fact that my 6th graders actually used this silly method is one of the messy reasons I adore 6th graders!  The paddles came to mind in this section because I realized they were an explicit way for my students to identify when they needed me to intervene and when they wanted to be independent.

Reflecting on my own coaching, I am always most hesitant to step in start helping  in newer teachers’ classrooms, mostly because I never want to appear as if I’m taking over because they are incapable. I have the easiest time recognizing if a teacher is in the weeds or blown when I know them really well and we’ve already developed a relationship. Although I offer support to all the teachers I work with, we’ve definitely never established a formal way to ask for support. Paddles would certainly be over the top, but I have been wondering if there is some sort of signal to establish if the teacher wants me to step in during class. I even thought about giving each teacher a small laminated picture of some weeds on one side and heavy wind on the other side for them to discretely display if I’m in the room and then I can just jump in. Probably that’s overthinking it and it’s as simple as having individual conversations with newer teachers at the start of the year to directly ask them how comfortable they feel with me jumping in mid-class. Either way, Brown’s restaurant comparison of stress and overwhelm helped me think about the levels of support teachers need in different situations.  

Every teacher has a class/day where they find themselves stressed and in the weeds and asking for and accepting small bursts of help should be a reliable source of support. Being blown, or totally overwhelmed, though, feels like it could have larger consequences when teachers aren’t provided the “non-doing” time away to recollect themselves. Maybe teachers use a sick day to give themselves the time away they need or perhaps they show up late for a common plan session and aren’t in the right frame of mind to plan productively. Teaching is mentally and emotionally taxing work, so a coach’s support couldn’t eliminate these scenarios altogether, but this excerpt from Atlas has had me thinking more about what I can do to support teachers more actively to make sure each “shift” runs as smoothly as possible.