This one is for all of the educators (and learners) who have noticed pain showing up inside of them. I will predict everyone reading these words will be nodding their heads and perhaps even feeling a brief twang somewhere in their body. If we are moving in the direction of learning and literacy we will inevitably encounter pain. While the journey can be gratifying and fulfilling it also conjures up lots of unwanted stuff. To simplify I will just refer to it as pain. We want to help influence our learners further along, make a difference, inspire them, get past stumbling blocks. Most learners want the same thing. How do we get there?

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Most high schoolers feel very much like a work in progress . As they move through school and learning they encounter excitement, boredom, accomplishment and confusion. Upperclassmen and especially seniors become increasingly aware that school as they know it will be coming to an end. They will cross from the land of having things decided for them to the land where they have increasing choices and responsibility. Read more

This is my “eternally spinning” top (until the batteries run out). It is on my shelf in my office. Kids and adults who see it notice curiosity shows up inside of them as in, “Cool, look at that! How does it work?”. Curiosity is built into us. As we grow curiosity can become harder to get in touch with yet it never really leaves us . When we can approach who or what is important to us with curiosity we notice other feelings, thoughts, and sensations showing up inside of us. We  also are better able to come up with new moves or solutions to difficult issues we face. A little tougher move is to bring that curiosity to the sticky stuff inside of us that seems to be getting in the way.

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Here is a way to play the matrix with middle school students.

As kids develop they become increasingly interested in their peers. In matrix lingo we say,”relationships are really important to them”. Having a matrix “check in” meeting is a great way to bring learners together and promote flexible thinking and behavior.

Each learner takes a turn coming to the board (they love this!) and “goes around the matrix” noticing  (and writing) who or what is important to them and how it feels when they are making their toward or important moves. They also notice what shows up inside of them that gets in the way as well as how their away moves feel (moving away from the things that bother them). They then will write out their toward moves which can be what they have done or plan to do to keep moving in the direction of important people and things. Everybody gets lots of credit and kudos for coming up and sorting on the board. They can then go on with the rest of their day or week and notice how they are doing in terms of getting where they want to go. We keep it simple and use just a few words. Usually I will check in first but once you get it going the kids are more interested in each other.

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