As Treaty people, we take this moment to honor the lands of Treaties 4 and 6, and all they have provided to us and our families across many generations. These lands have long served as traditional meeting grounds, gathering places, and traveling routes for the Cree, Dene, Nakota, Dakota, Saulteaux, and Ojibway peoples since time immemorial. We also recognize these lands as the homeland of Métis Nation Eastern Region II.
We honor the ancestors whose footsteps have shaped these lands. We acknowledge that our use of these lands has come at a profound cost, including the impacts of colonialism and the residential school system. With this recognition, we commit to working together toward reconciliation and forging a path forward that honors the past and builds a better future for all.
Fight, Flight, or Freeze
We hear the word stress a lot, we experience stress a lot. This is also true of our students. We know that stress impacts our daily lives and more importantly, how we live our lives. This is also true of our students. We know that stress, and more importantly, how students react to stress can have a massive impact on their ability to learn. As part of our work with self-regulation we will be helping students recognize stressors in their lives, and perhaps even ore importantly, how to recognize their own stress responses and how to get back to a state of regulation rather than going into survival brain, which is fight, flight or freeze.
I once had some training from a brilliant child psychologist who said, "Curiosity helped us invent the wheel, anxiety helped us not get eaten by saber tooth tigers, we need both, but neither should consume our actions."
The following video will help explain fight, flight, or freeze.
It's really about brain science. the front of our brain, called the prefrontal cortex, controls our higher level thinking and reasoning. Deep within our brain is our limbic brain which controls our base emotions and our fight, flight, or freeze response. Typically our prefrontal cortex controls our actions, but when we are highly stressed we can "flip our lid" meaning that we stop using the prefrontal cortex and switch to the limbic brain. This makes it almost impossible to learn and usually results in the fight, flight, or freeze response. It is our brain responding to stress in the way it was designed to, unfortunately it is not conducive to learning. We will work with staff and students to recognize, stressors, reframe behaviors based on those stressors, reducing stressors, when we can, and then restoring the student to "thinking brain" or having the prefrontal cortex in charge.
Think about a time that your child may have "thrown a fit", "shut down", or "took off" when there was a highly tense situation. These situations will vary with age and the student. What we have historically viewed as poor behavior, may actually be a stress response, and possibly not in the control of the student. Many times these "blow ups" can be avoided by helping the students recognize the stressors ( and recognizing them ourselves), staying calm, and helping the student get back into "thinking brain". Staying calm is actually the best strategy we can use to help them get back into a situation in which the prefrontal cortex is in charge. The saying we use is, "Calm begets calm". The next time things get heated, try it out, you may be surprised at the results.
We know that stress is inevitable, and actually essential to survival, the key is to recognize and manage it so that we are in the best possible position to learn and enjoy our time at PPCS.
Girls Volleyball
Practices
Monday and Thursday
Jr. Girls 3:30-5:30 (Practice)
Sr. Girls 6:30-8:30 (Practice)
Tournaments
The senior girls hosted their home tournament this weekend. Thank you to everyone who came out to cheer on our girls. Both teams fought hard, but lost out in the semis. Congrats to Tisdale for taking the gold. Extra huge thanks to everyone who helped out in the canteen. We raised almost $1500 toward team expenses.
The Junior Girls (8s and 9s) are off to Naicam for a tournament on Saturday.
The Senior Girls are in action at the Tisdale Tournament.
