Keep Calm and Learn!

Isn’t it crazy how the catch phrase, “Keep calm, and …” is everywhere you look? In just one week, I saw it at my sister’s library, the college campus, and the local coffee shop.

 What’s even more amazing is how it originated.

 Keep Calm and Carry On was a "motivational" poster produced by the British government in 1939 several months before the beginning of WWII, intended to raise the morale of the British public in the aftermath of widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities

 

 Keep calm and learn!

I started teaching in 1983. Yikes – that certainly dates me!  I do not remember my students being quite as anxious and worried back then. Anxiety is rampant for little ones nowadays. It just breaks my heart.  

 

Here’s a teaching idea that allows students to keep those worries from taking them over. It is adorable, easy, and effective. In fact, I use it myself!

TEACHING IDEA

 

Put a Fence Around It!

1. Identify the worry and/or distracting thought.

2. Write it down on a little slip of paper or for little ones, they can draw it.

3. Put a fence around it [brackets]

4. Place the paper in your pocket and give yourself permission to worry about it later. Get back to work. (I put the worry in a little compartment in my pocketbook for later - I’m a much better mother, wife, and friend that way because I can be more present)

5. Model what it looks like. Think aloud through the process. Show students that most of the time; when you take your worry out later, it really is no big deal anymore. In fact, most of what we worry about never even happens or perhaps it’s still there, but, hey, what will worrying about it do?

6. Teach your students that you don’t always have to write it down. You can create “mental fences” in your mind by using your hands to form quotations (show students physically with your hands how to do this).