Headwork Ahead is a sign that Ms.
Smithers has standing in her classroom. It’s a visual reminder that monitoring
how we feel, behave and how we think about what’s happening around us is an
ongoing matter of mindful mind maintenance that can become an automatic,
intuitive practice. Nevertheless, we need to be vigilant because Brain Busting Brain
Bully is an opportunist and lurks around every corner!
Have a Go Spaghettio! is a
constructivist-based teaching and counselling pedagogy. It’s based on Rational
Emotive Behaviour Therapy and General Semantics theories. Each posit that how
we see ourselves, others and the world is a construction, a mind made virtual
reality that can either be far removed from how the world is or is pretty well
aligned with it.
General Semantics introduces the
notion that the‘map is not the territory’ meaning that our constructed ideas
about how things work are just that, a simulated internally fabricated model,
the map that we believe represents the world, the territory.
Angus, Ms Smithers student, and
Suzy’s classmate, had constructed a core belief that making a mistake, made him
a mistake. ‘I must not stuff up and If I do, I’m a stuff up!’ His map, his
constructed perspective on his ‘self’ did not even come close to approximating
the territory, a more rational assessment of a more reasonable ‘self.’
Angus was abstracting a particular perceived
failing or weakness of his personhood and deciding it represented his ‘self’ in
a global way, he gave himself a global negative self-rating which was in
essence irrational, Brain Bully Believing.
Ms. Smithers has been doing her
homework and is helping Angus with his challenges via the Have a Go Spaghettio!
pedagogy. She talks about Brain Friend Thinking and Brain Bully Thinking, the
habits of thinking we have constructed in our heads. She calls this headwork.
Classroom discourse centres around
Have a Go goal setting e.g., I’m going to practice ‘I can’ thinking, a Blue
Success Helper/Brain Friend focus (though it also relates to other Have A Go Spaghettio! habits
of thinking). Ms. Smithers provides feedback to the Have A Go Spaghettio! competencies e.g.; you
tried something new. That’s Red Success Helper thinking at work. Well done!
Ms Smithers consistently talks
about the thinking – feeling – doing connect and talks about habits of thinking
that we build/make in our minds and the need to be aware when Brain Bully is at
work causing us emotional and behavioural upset.
Our beliefs come from us. We make
habits of thinking that become belief rules. Like if we believe that we won’t
always get what we want we will handle disappointment in a healthy manner. We
will say to ourselves ‘I really wanted an ice-cream but I’m not getting one.
Not the end of the world.’ This is a Brain Friend rule at work. We don’t feel
angry about it, but we may feel a bit upset or disappointed.
If, however, we say to ourselves,
‘Not getting an ice-cream is just not fair and everyone’s mean.’ This is a
Brain Bully rule at work. We may feel angry, and we spit the dummy!
These habits of thinking are fed by
information received from our environment. If we regularly get what we demand
as a child, we may internalise a rule that says, ‘if I want something I get it.
If I don’t, I’ll protest until I do.’ Or if we have learned that not getting
something we’d like is not the end of the world, we accept it, and feel healthily
disappointed rather than unhealthily angry.
We make sense of information from
our environments, and we can make good sense or bad sense, which contributes to
the thinking rules we construct.
Ms. Smithers gathered her children
in a circle to talk about something that had happened. She wanted her students
to give their thoughts as to why she had responded as she did to an incident on
the way to school that morning.
Ms Smithers said she felt angry when a
driver didn’t let her in when she indicated she wanted to change lanes.
The children said:
-
She made you angry
-
She should have let you in
-
She is mean
-
It’s just not fair
Ms Smithers said, ‘let’s look at
‘It’s not fair’ thinking.’
Who is thinking it’s not fair?' ‘You
are Ms Smithers,’ they say.
'Why is it not fair?' ‘Because she
didn’t let you in.’ they say.
‘Should she absolutely have let me
in? Is there a rule that she must let me in?’ ‘No but it would have been better
if she did,’ they say.
‘So, is it fair that sometimes I
don’t get my way? Is it a big problem?’
They agreed in the scheme of things it wasn’t a catastrophe.
‘What’s the best thinking rule we
can come up with, so we don’t feel so angry and make bad choices?’ asked Ms
Smithers.
Together they wrote a Brain Friend
Thinking rule as follows:
‘We don’t always have to get our
way even if we’d like to. Sometimes people don’t treat us as fairly as we’d
like and we can accept that. It’s not the end of the world if they don’t.’
This Brain Freind rule was added to a list of
Brain Friend rules that had been talked about before. This was a Have a Go Spaghettio! exercise
looking at frustration tolerance, the Purple Success Helper way of thinking.
Ms. Smithers told her student’s
that she didn’t really feel angry because she had been practicing her
‘Sometimes things don’t go my way’ thinking rule. She felt disappointed but she
didn’t make herself angry by thinking ‘it’s not fair. They are mean!’ thinking.
She didn’t let Brain Bully in. Brain Friend thinking was a habit that Ms
Smithers had practiced and practiced, and she invited her students to do the
same.
Have a Go Spaghettio!
Headwork = Practice and Ms Smithers
says we work hard to get rid of Brain Bully thinking by practicing Brain Friend
thinking using the Have a Go Spaghettio! chart to guide us. Way to go
Spaghettio!
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