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teacher. Waterboarding the Horse The ravings of a high school science teacher. Home Pensieve Where’s That From? About ← Older posts Trauma-Sensitive Christmas Message Posted on December 24, 2023 by Mr. Bigler While the seasons of Yule and Christmas are upon us, I thought I would share this week’s message to my students. First, for context, I need to back up to my Thanksgiving message. If you haven’t been following me for several years and you haven’t heard it, the crux is that holidays are a time when people are under a lot of stress and family dysfunction can result in more than the usual amount of trauma. Families are trying to create the perfect Hallmark holiday, and when things begin to come off the rails, a lot of anger, lashing out and hurt feelings often result. Then put everyone around the same dinner table, including the judgmental aunt and racist uncle (just about everyone has those, right?) and the whole event becomes awkward and ugly, and children often bear the brunt. I tell my students that I’ll be thinking of them, and that I wish for them to be able to stay out of the blast radius as much as possible. In past years, my Christmas message was pretty much a repeat of my Thanksgiving message. I adjusted it a bit this year. I told my students: You remember my Thanksgiving message, right? Thanksgiving was a sprint; Christmas vacation is a marathon. There is a lot more stress, because Hallmark Christmas is much more intense than Hallmark Thanksgiving, but the dysfunction is spread over an entire week. Steeling yourselves against whatever comes your way can work for several hours, but when it turns into several days, sometimes all you can do is hide in your blanket fort at the first signs of each battle, and wait for a cease fire. My holiday wish for you is to find strength, endurance and endless patience whenever you need it. Some, perhaps many of you are often criticized for not being good enough, and this can get worse at holidays when families are under more stress. Remember that you do the best you can every day. By that, I don’t mean the best that you could possibly do under ideal circumstances, but the best you’ve got that day, even if all you can manage is to get out of bed. I have days like that. Everyone does. And on those days, if that’s not enough for someone else, then they don’t understand the meaning of best”. You do your best every day, and I’m proud of you for it. Sometimes, many of you put yourself down. This is a smart thing to do—if you say something before someone else has a chance to do it, you’ve taken the power to hurt you away from them. If someone is trying to hurt you, don’t ever stop taking away their power. When you say those things, some part of your brain knows they’re not true even before you say them. You protect yourself by saying what you expect those other people to say, but hearing those things in your own voice makes it hard to not believe them. My assignment to you over vacation is to notice whenever you say negative things about yourself, and inside your head remind yourself that you know those things are not true and you’re just saying them to protect yourself. If you do this regularly, over time your internal monologue will shift to one that builds you up rather than tears you down. I want you to build yourselves up, because you deserve nothing less. Finally, you need to be the one to do this. Not me, and not anyone else. You are the only person who should be allowed to program your own brain! That said, if you find that your cup is nearly empty and you want a reminder that you are seen, heard, and believed, and that you are lovable even if the only person saying it out loud is your physics teacher, send me a message and I’ll respond with a fresh cup of self-esteem. +2 0 Posted in Trauma | Tagged Trauma | Leave a comment Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn: Leveling Students by Trauma Response Posted on October 21, 2023 by Mr. Bigler My students are working on solving physics word problems systematically. This is one of the most frustrating (for the students) assignments I give them, but a valuable one because it’s essentially end game for every assignment they will see for the rest of the year. I give my students class time to work on the assignment so I can circulate and help them. A handful of my students, mostly in my on-level classes, give up and stop trying but don’t ask for help. (This is one of the reasons I circulate and check in with all of them.) When I talk with them, it turns out that many of them have been chastised for asking questions (often by parents/family members), and are afraid to ask for help. Continue reading → 0 0 Posted in Challenges & Frustrations , Philosophy , Science | Tagged philosophy , Trauma | Leave a comment How Did Teaching Get So Hard? Posted on June 18, 2022 by Mr. Bigler Every teacher has opinions about why the past two years have been much harder for teachers than previous years. Recent studies, including a February 2022 Gallup poll , show that teachers have the highest rates of burnout of any profession. Continue reading → +2 0 Posted in Challenges & Frustrations | Tagged challenges & frustrations | 3 Comments Failing With Low Stakes Posted on June 4, 2022 by Mr. Bigler I’ve learned quite a few things in 20 years of teaching, and one of them is the motivational value of failure with low stakes. One of the best-known examples for most of us is video and arcade games. We lose pretty much every game we play; the goal is simply to keep going for as long as we can. When we lose a game, we remember what happened and we make a different choice when we get to the point where we lost previously. Continue reading → +1 -1 Posted in Philosophy | Tagged philosophy | Leave a comment Trauma Bingo Posted on December 24, 2021 by Mr. Bigler One of my close friends has a lot of trauma associated with her family, and I often help her manage that trauma whenever she finds herself facing an unavoidable family visit. About a year ago, we came up with something that proved quite helpful—a variant on the Buzzword Bingo” game. Continue reading → +3 0 Posted in Trauma | Tagged Trauma | Leave a comment Wise Fools Posted on October 11, 2021 by Mr. Bigler As you may or may not know, the etymology of the word sophomore” is wise fool”. The term is usually used for second-year students in high school or college because they often know enough to understand how the system works on a basic level, but are not aware of how much they don’t really understand. The term fool” is appropriate, because fools tend to be inexperienced and naïve, but not stupid. Continue reading → 0 0 Posted in Challenges & Frustrations , Philosophy | Tagged challenges & frustrations , philosophy | 1 Comment Quotes from Students Posted on May 24, 2021 by Mr. Bigler It’s almost the end of the toughest school year in the career of every teacher I know, including myself. As a present to myself, I made this slide show out of appreciative quotes from my students throughout the year. +1 0 Posted in Challenges & Frustrations , Miscellaneous , Philosophy | Tagged challenges & frustrations , miscellaneous , philosophy | Leave a comment PEMDAS is Not a Conspiracy Posted on May 12, 2021 by Mr. Bigler Today in one of my physics classes, I was explaining how to determine the voltage across and the current through resistors in a mixed series & parallel circuit: Continue reading → +1 0 Posted in Anecdotes , Challenges & Frustrations | Tagged anecdotes , challenges & frustrations | 3 Comments Holiday Wishes Posted on December 25, 2020 by Mr. Bigler It’s December 25, a time when much of the world, whether for religious or personal reasons, wishes each other well and thinks about making the world a better place. Here are some of my wishes for you, my students: Continue reading → +9 0 Posted in Philosophy | Tagged philosophy | Leave a comment Follow-Up to Resiliency & Pandemic Fatigue Posted on December 2, 2020 by Mr. Bigler Two weeks ago,...