Hey Warrior

We have been reading the story 'Hey Warrior' by Karen Young.  Hey Warrior is a book about anxiety. It explains how strong and healthy brains work to keep us safe. 

We learned that the amygdala takes over when we are feeling stressed. The amygdala floods our bodies with oxygen, hormones and adrenaline so that we can stay safe when faced with danger. The amygdala is like a smoke alarm, though. It senses danger and acts. A smoke alarm can't tell the difference between burnt toast and a classroom fire, it just acts when it senses smoke. Our amygdala can get confused between real danger (like an angry tiger) and something like a tricky maths problem and it just acts. 

When the amydala takes over we are in fight-flight-freeze. What does fight-flight- freeze look like in the classroom?  

Fight = throwing pencils, slamming our books closed, shoving chairs out of our way, growling at our friends for no real reason.

Flight = going to the toilet every five minutes, wandering around the classroom, following Mrs T and asking a million unrelated questions, sharpening every pencil in the classroom

Freeze = hiding away in a corner, sitting quietly and hoping no one notices we haven't done anything, leaning over our work so no one can see it.

When the amygdala takes over we stop thinking clearly. We need to take charge of our bodies again. Sometimes we might need to go for a run to burn off the extra fuel the amygdala gave us. Deep, slow breathing is always a great idea. Positive thoughts work really well, too.  

Lots of us said we get anxious when we are trying to come up with ideas in writing. So, we are learning to use storyboards to plan and organise our ideas in writing - just like the teams at Pixar and Nickelodeon. It makes things a little bit easier and less stressful (or they will when we get used to them). We are trying to simplify the Hey Warrior story so that younger kids can learn about their amazing brains, too. Look at us all hard at work.

Room 14 you are awesome!

 Hey Whanau. Here is a little clip about Hey Warrior. You might like to use this as a jumping-off point when you talk to your child about their worries or about their learning today.