Today I’m bringing back to the show one of my favorite guests, Zach Morris. Zach is the executive director and development of curriculum and instruction at LEARN Inc. a non-for-profit school in Missoula, Montana, and has been on the show twice before—once to talk about nonviolent communication and whole person learning, and another time to talk about what it takes to help our children transform their world-views. These were both powerful episodes, so if you’re newer to the podcast, you’ll definitely want to go back and listen to those as well.
Today, we are having an equally powerful conversation, and one I know is relevant to what’s happening for many of our families this time of year as the shine for school is wearing off (or maybe it’s long since worn off) and our kids are struggling in some way. We want to support them, but we may not know how to best do that. In our conversation, Zach provides a powerful and tangible model for attuning to our children’s experiences so we can be solid sources of emotional support and respond in ways that will fuel their own social emotional development, while also respecting and honoring our own boundaries and experiences, especially when things are difficult.
About Zach: Zach Morris is the executive director and development of curriculum and instruction at LEARN Inc. a non-for-profit school in Missoula, Montana in the United States which is approaching education in a thoughtful and alternative way, and with powerful results, especially for their neurodiverse students, which make up to 75% of the student body. Zach is committed to the cultivation of a thriving student-centered learning community built on compassion.
THINGS YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
- What co-regulating with our child looks like and why it’s critical for helping them process trauma and their “danger response”
- How we as parents and educators can decode their communication and honor their emotional expressions (verbal or nonverbal)
- The power and importance of being in genuine relationship with our children in order to attune
- Strategies for helping our child feel heard and seen while not “feeding” their unhelpful thinking patterns or stories
- How to use the Regulate, Relate, and Reason approach
- The power of modeling to support our child in processing challenging situations and emotions
- Ways to provide opportunities for our children to express their experiences
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- The Center for Nonviolent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg’s Global Organization)
THANKS SO MUCH FOR LISTENING!
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