Your Room as a SAFE Place

If you know me, you know that I am a firm believer in Conscious Discipline.  Dr. Becky Bailey has created a discipline plan that is based on brain research and on Loving Guidance (the name of her business).

One element of her classroom management plan is a SAFE PLACE.  A place in the room where a student or an adult can go to regroup, rest, be alone, etc.  I believe it is a key piece for allowing your room to be a safe place.  In schools where I've taught, where CD was used school wide, there were safe places in the principals office and other locations around the school not just in classrooms.  Just think for yourself how important it is for you to have somewhere you feel safe?  I believe with all my heart that a child needs this feeling to grow and learn.  How much better does it feel when you feel safe in more than one place?  I believe that all children need this feeling to develop just as much as they need to breathe, eat, and drink.

I'd like to encourage you all to read the Conscious Discipline book by Dr. Becky Bailey.  You can find it at Consciousdiscipline.com or on Amazon.  Clip of Becky:  https://consciousdiscipline.com/store-category/conscious-discipline-core/   Through this school year, I will be talking about CD on the blog often.  We could even start our own Google Group or Facebook Group to walk through the CD book a chapter at a time.  IF you're interested comment and we'll make a plan.

Back to the "safe place" or "star corner".  I was attending a early childhood conference where the focus was on childhood trauma.  One speaker suggested that some children from trauma may question their safety at school, if the safe place is the only place referred to as a safe area so think of how you refer to school, your classroom and your quiet spot.  I give the idea of star corner/place/spot as an alternative for you, if you think this might be the case for your students.  Above all it is the process, in our classroom and homes, that creates the safe place.

A safe place is not time out.  It is a space to find calm, to have rituals in place that help young brains shift up from the lower parts of the brain.  This allows a brain to move from a survival thought process to a how can I solve this process.  How does it work, you might wonder.

Check out this clip from Becky ---https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUMc3fWgLEk

Now I want to share that if you have the budget to buy the safe place items, great Loving Guidance has created kits and they are ready to go.  I however, started my safe place early on in the life of CD and had to build my own.  On the website Consciousdiscipline.com they have a free resource section that you can print out some of the visual cues children need.  You can create your own tools to use, if the budget is tight.

So your going to have the breathing choices, some lovey kind of stuffed animals for younger children, some Kooshball kind of things for older children, a big pillow or two and I like a bean bag.  I also had a traveling bean bag or large pillow as a second mobile safe place.  One day a child was in the safe place and it was time to move to the playground.  When I cued the class that we would be cleaning up and getting ready to go outdoors, I heard, "I'm not ready to leave the safe place."  What a good expression of knowing one's own emotional state was that?  We had to stay in ratio so my response was, "What do you need to take it with you?"  In a quick response, the child let me know that the beanbag would help.  So when we headed out the door, that child brought the beanbag that he dragged out, placed it under a tree and spent about  five more minutes in it and then was ready to go.  That day a student taught me about mobile safe places.  If you listen to your children they will tell you what they need.

Teaching the breathing to calm offered on the free printable posters is a first step.  As Becky states in her video clip, you must teach the tools that you want them to use.  Some things I teach preschoolers one at a time.  I teach STAR breathing first and place that icon in the safe place.  Next, I take small groups (2-4), during choice time, and teach the process.  It allows me to build relationship with them and that is also key piece to building a School Family.  I model the skill and then invite them to join in on being a star.  I often give them a pair of star sun glasses, an Oriental Trader purchase, to celebrate that they know how to be a STAR.  They sit in the safe place one at a time and I take a picture of them.  The pictures turn into a class book.  I Know How to be a STAR.  The page reads---Who knows how to be a star?  Monica knows how to be a star!  The picture is under a flap, that when lifted, allows you to see the picture of the student and has the second line of text hidden under it also.

I want you all to remember that a child never wakes up on a day and thinks, today I'll make me teacher pop his or her cork.  Our job is to download our calm to our children not join their emotional stress. Our job is to be prepared to teach them how to work through big emotions in a way that strengthens the child's social emotional skills.

Your challenge this week is to learn about the safe place.  Watch Youtube videos, find a place to set up your safe place, and decide how to introduce the safe place.  IF you are a pro at safe place please comment and share some of your wisdom