Blog
Check out our blog feed for the latest news in Self-Reg, or read articles by a specific author.
Authors
Stuart Shanker
Susan Hopkins
Aviva Dunsiger
John Hoffman
Self-Reg Community
Articles
Flipping Tires & Discussing Accessories: Seeing School Life Through A Self-Reg Lens
I love a quiet, early morning start to my time at school. While our school building doesn't open until 7:00, I'm usually there at 6:35 to set-up our outdoor space. The timing works so that I'm done the set-up by the time that my pass card unlocks the front doors. This...
The Gift of Virtual Teaching
By Heather Bredin I have always wanted to create a classroom environment that communicates safety and promotes self-expression and respect. But when the COVID-19 virus hit the world, our goals shifted to a different kind of safety: physical safety from the...
Self-Reg Snails: Finding Love In Unexpected Places
Last year, my teaching partner, Paula, and I moved to a new school. Little did we know that our school would be situated in a very dense snail population. We thought that the rainy weather would bring with it lots of worms, but in fact, it brought along with it many...
And the Parenting Advice Just Keeps on Coming
Advice for parents is seldom in short supply. But this September, as kids return to school amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve noticed an uptick in parenting advice, and mental health advice in general. In 10 minutes on social media this morning I saw posts about: •...
Reframing The Coronavirus: A Tale Of Empathy
As everyone in education knows right now, schools in the midst of a pandemic look a whole lot different than they did before. My teaching partner, Paula, and I continue to play around with our classroom set-up to help "scale that condo wall" and find possibilities in...
Relationships and Connecting: The Early Years Last Forever
When child psychiatrist Dr. Jean Clinton starts talking you always know that before long you’ll hear words like relationships and connecting. And you’ll hear them again and again. Witness the following lovely and memorable little quotes from Jean’s keynote address at...
Alone. Together. Moving To Alone AND Together.
I just finished my first summer as one of two site leads for a Virtual Summer Learning Camp. While both of us have been site leads at in-person summer camps, COVID-19 changed our plans for this year. As we started planning...
A Self Reg Lens on Returning to School during the COVID-19 Pandemic
In this video, Susan Hopkins shows us how the Energy-Centred Teaching Model (ProtECT, DetECT CollECT and ConnECT) can help educators reflect on and manage the challenges of returning to school in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://youtu.be/dJNJwVGGCh8 For...
A COVID Scare: 10 Self-Reg Reframes to Bring Safety and Calm to the Kids in Your Care
In this 2-part vlog, Susan Hopkins shares how a COVID-19 scare close to home, compelled her to share a series of 10 Self-Reg reframes for approaching COVID-19 with the children in your care. https://youtu.be/IUeRGy1nVxg A COVID Scare: Part 1 1. Our kids are not...
Buying A Kindle: My COVID-19 Self-Reg Story
At the beginning of May, I bought a Kindle. This might not seem like a really big deal. I've been reading e-Books for a while now. When Kindle and Kobo e-Readers became popular, I was skeptical. I love to read, and do a huge amount of reading especially in the...
A Self-Reg View on Picky Eating
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time sitting at the table after dinner, after everyone else had been excused, staring at a glass of milk I didn’t want to drink. That’s probably when my interest in picky eating started. I now realize that I wasn’t that picky as a...
Distance Hugs: My Self-Reg Stumbling Block
School’s over. And with distance learning for the past three months, and “school” operating through a computer or tablet screen since the end of March, these words seem to take on a very different meaning. My teaching partner, Paula, and I only entered the school...
Coronavirus Conversations: Unpacking Step 4
This seems to be happening to me quite a lot these days. Susan asked me a question during a filming session that seemed innocuous enough, but in fact, pushed me to think hard about a core Self-Reg concept. The short version of her question was: “What is the difference...
Coronavirus Conversations: Buridan’s Ass Redux
In Reframed, I write about “Buridan’s Ass,” the famous allegory attributed to the 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan. (It was he who the King of France reportedly had thrown in a sack into the Seine because of an affair with the Queen). A donkey is...
Coronavirus Conversations: “The Revolution is Coming”
It was one of my more enjoyable interviews. The interviewer had clearly done her homework. Each question that she asked – and more important, her follow-ups – revealed how deeply she had read in Self-Reg. But it was her last question that really stands out in my mind:...
Coronavirus Conversations: From “This” to “We” to “Me” and Back Again
Susan mentioned to me the other day that many people find it interesting to learn about the influences on my thinking about Self-Reg. Not just the biographical details, but the theoretical underpinnings of Self-Reg. The more I thought about this remark, the more I...
My List Of 10 Self-Reg Things That I’ve Learned
At the beginning of April, I read a wonderful blog post by Doug Peterson, where he shared ten things that he learned as a result of COVID-19. Doug’s post inspired me to write one of my own. As our Coronavirus reality continues to exist, and as I seem to spend even...
Coronavirus Conversations: Now is Not the Time to be Going Red Brain
I’ve recently been engaged in a very interesting exercise. I decided to read together, so that I could compare and contrast, Michael Tomasello’s A Natural History of Human Morality (2016) and Jonathan Sacks’ Morality: Restoring the Common Good in...