PSA (Professional Specialist Association) day was an opportunity for me to engage in professional development with other teachers/teacher candidates across BC. There were multiple different options for workshops and sessions to attend from many different associations, with different focuses and lengths. I chose two hour-long sessions to attend, one before lunch and one after. The first was part of the core sessions for the day, “What is Trauma Informed Practice (TIP) and how can it help me in the era of COVID-19” with Dr. Linda Uyeda. The second was through the BCSTA (British Columbia Science Teachers’ Association) and was titled “BC’s Agriculture through Science” presented by Sabrina Bhojani.
Trauma Informed Practice
I really enjoyed this presentation. Dr. Uyeda started off by explaining her story, and why she got involved with mindfulness and TIP. Essentially after having kids she was having physical issues that didn’t make any sense, so she started attending more conferences on brain development and parenting, which led her to mindfulness techniques that helped her physically. After this she became determined to learn more as well as educate people on the links between neuroscience and physical/mental health.
She introduced some basics from a biology standpoint about prefrontal cortex functions, and how those affect our daily life. One key thing stressed was that people who undergo trauma, especially at a young age, will respond differently. People who are used to maltreatment, or who have had to fight for the basics more than the average person, are more likely to have higher stress responses and negative reactions. This reminded me of a talk by Rutger Bregman about basic income where he explains that the decisions that people in poverty make tend to be worse because the context they live in makes it much harder to look to the future, as they are so focused on surviving the present.
With this, a lot was said about how we can approach working with students who are dealing with these levels of trauma and heightened emotional states. It was stressed that we need to employ self-care as well, because if we’re mentally done and highly stressed, our ability to communicate with students who need us most will be severely hampered. Personally (and this relates back to Bregman’s talk) I hope that along with training in things like TIP, we as a society will invest more in alleviating the stressors that make the lives of our students (and all people) that much harder. Education is a good start to help people, but as they say, “it takes a village to raise a child”.
BC’s Agriculture through Science
I’m not going to go too in depth about this presentation because honestly it was a little bit disappointing. I signed up for it because I was hoping it would talk about agriculture as it pertains to the ecosystem, climate change, and biology. In reality, it felt more like an advertisement for agriculture in BC (there was even a weird corporate-feeling video about canola oil during the presentation).
I was surprised to find out that the people giving the presentation, BC Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation, are the ones responsible for the school fruit and vegetable nutritional program, which is something I remember fondly from when I was in school. To speak to that for a moment, it was an interesting change as we were always allowed to eat the fruits/veggies in class (usually food in class was frowned upon). I personally remember being much more ready to learn after eating an apple, mini cucumber, kiwi, etc., and coming from a privileged background with no food issues, I can’t imagine how useful it was for those less lucky than I.
Agriculture is obviously important, but as someone who cares deeply for the environment and the future, I was really hoping that that would be the main focus of the talk, rather than just an ad for all their programs. That being said, I don’t think it was a waste of time. It did give me a lot to think about, especially when it comes to reflecting on what resources I use in a classroom and why, as well as what expectations students will have from my classes and how I will meet (and hopefully exceed) those.
All in all I was satisfied with this day. It gave me some time to direct my learning towards things I am interested in, and while I wasn’t totally satisfied with all the sessions, I still was able to draw some useful ideas. It’s important to remember that we never stop learning, and professional development days are a great resource we have as educators to both learn new things, and refine knowledge we already have.