Episode 014 - Learning Support's Union With Minimalism with Alys Baines

In this episode, we speak with Alys about the union between minimalism and supporting our neurodiverse students. We discuss how to create a calm and supportive physical environment for students in order to leverage engagement. Her pare down pointer is about the importance of making time, especially at the beginning of the year.

Alys Baines is a passionate educational needs educator looking to use children's talents to guide them in their educational journey.  She has a B.A. in Child Development and 2 Masters degrees in learning and behavioral challenges. She's absolutely crazy about horses with the aim to eventually merge both passions together to support children, teens and adults through equine assisted therapy.

Professional Learning Partnerships empower educators to transform learning, leadership and culture in school districts by leveraging key ideas from brain science, so that all students can thrive. Find out more at learningpartnerships.org

Transcript

Today we speak with Alya about the union between minimalism and supporting our neurodiverse students. We discussed how to create a calm and supportive physical environment for students in order to leverage engagement. Her pare down pointer is about the importance of making time, especially at the beginning of the year.

Alys Bains is a passionate educational needs educator, looking to use children's talents to guide them in their educational journey. She has a BA in child development and two masters in learning and behavioral challenges. She's absolutely crazy about horses with the aim to eventually merge both passions together to support children, teens and adults through equine assistance therapy. Hello and welcome back everyone.

Welcome to today's episode where we're going to be speaking with Alys Bains. Thank you for joining us, Alys.

No problem. Great to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in special educational needs or learning support? Yeah, so I was, I'm from the UK. We moved to the Netherlands when I was really young, when I was like 15 months old, I think. I went to a military primary school until I was 11 and then went to an international secondary school. And from the time that I was quite small, I found school quite difficult. It's say probably concentration was a big issue with me, but I didn't always grasp some of like the mathematical concept and it took me a while to process things and I really struggled to the point that they thought I wouldn't pass my diploma. I didn't really have anyone to help me at school at that point. There wasn't like a SENCo (Special Education Needs Coordinator) in the school or anything like that. So I got reflecting after I found my own little methods and strategies to support myself. I've got reflecting and thinking, okay, what do I want to do?

I initially started occupational therapy because I thought I could help people with occupational therapy. And then I realized I didn't like it. So then I went on to learning about child development and then it just kind of like took off from there. My mom's also a SENCo. She's been a special educational needs trained. She's an autism specialist, dyslexia specialist.  I kind of took a little bit after her. I'd say she's like my role model in a way. So yeah. That's very cool, especially knowing now down the track that you have bachelor's and two master's degrees. That someone who struggled through school was able to get that far. It was pretty cool. Yeah. It's quite cool. I'm quite proud of it. I think it's, that's pretty relatable too. Because as an adult, I think back often on my school age years and how I often felt like I didn't, I needed the time to process and growing up in the 80s. Like, you know, there was like really nothing. You just kind of were, I remember, you know, a couple of kids who were just labeled as like hyper because they couldn't pay attention, but there wasn't really any supports for someone that I remember anyway, for someone like me who found school like you, Alys, kind of a challenge. Like I couldn't, I felt like I didn't have the skills to help me cope or manage or retain information. And so I think hearing you with your success is like it's very relatable for me.  I know other adults who are very similar where, you know, you realize as an adult that there weren't these things in place for us in classrooms growing up.  I wonder how that might have, you know, changed paths or anything like that. But I also think about the environments, not just the teaching, but the environments that I was in and where they conducive to learning, right? I think that one of your specialties is like creating a good environment for learning. Can you talk a little bit about that?

I really believe that for children to be able to learn, they need to be in an environment that they feel safe and comfortable in.  I think sometimes we as adults have like this amazing idea of all we want, all of this stuff hung around and we wanna display all of this stuff. And it can be really quite distracting.  I do believe that you can make it very comfortable and safe feeling for children without it being too overwhelming. I think it's great as an adult seeing all of this amazing stuff hung up on the walls, you know, but it can get a bit too much, especially if you get overstimulated.  I like to keep it, I mean, I have my office space. I've basically, I've taken all my tables out, my desks, and the kids can really try and find a way that they find comfortable so they can sit in a desk space. But that's not the norm for me. They can sit on a beanbag with like a tray or they can sit, you know, on a very comfortable cushion and use, I don't know, those IKEA Calyx little bookshelves. They can use that and majority of them actually choose not to sit on the desk. They get a lot more done because I don't sit down and say, you've got to sit at a desk, you need to sit like this to do your work. In my, in the office space that I use, I don't have a lot on the wall because they do get distracted. I have some little displays that can help them. For example, if I've got kids who I'm working on like phonics with, they can use it a little bit as like a cheat, but I don't have an awful lot on my walls. It's just, I would say the furniture and things like that that I use for it to make it comfortable. Sometimes we don't always have a choice in the furniture that we have in our rooms.

Do you have any tips besides the keeping things on the wall to a minimum? What do you, what tips do you have for people who don't have a huge amount of choice in the furniture that they have in their room? I think most schools still are very much like table and desk based. So I think it's great to have a look at your group, see where kind of individuals you have there and what they respond to best. I would say, you know, sitting in the little, the little rows that they had years ago isn't the most efficient way to be teaching them and maybe make little corners or groupings that would be, you know, useful for each individual child. Some children work really well in groups. Other children need to be away from distractions, so you might want to, you know, provide a table that their head is away from those distractions, but still on the teacher. Some classrooms are really small. I go into classrooms that are quite tiny when I see other schools and a lot more children than perhaps we are actually used to having. And you still see kind of like that traditional in the row. And I just think, oh, it could be so cool if you could maybe the little groups, the little corners or almost like themes spots in the classroom. I know when you have, especially a lot in like the early years, if there's children who get overstimulated, they have like a time out corner or a calm corner. I think we're very open minded or quick to make those types of spaces, but you can do a lot more with that furniture as well for the actual academic learning as well. Just be creative, I guess, with this space and see what works for your classroom and play around with a little bit.

That was kind of what I was going to ask to you, because I know there's sometimes parameters on things that you have to have in classrooms or things that need to be hung up. And I was thinking too about the wall space and how that's, you know, you need it for as a learning resource, but the intentionality behind what's put up is super important. In your work with your students, do you have them help you decide what's useful or is that something that, because that's a hard thing for teachers too, to like make the decisions about what's getting put up and what's useful and what's not? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm lucky because I have like individual slash small groups, so it's easier for me to kind of... find my way around that. I usually ask them, you know, do you feel proud of this? You want this hung up and we'll display it for a few weeks. If they're not, it'll just go on their little workbook and they can look back on it. I think it's important for them to have a voice in that, but I'm also very aware that it's a little bit more difficult in a big classroom when you've got, you know, 20 to 30 kids. It's not as easy to do it that way.  I know most schools will have things displayed from their curriculum or the, you know, the theme or the topic that they're working on at that particular moment. But I do think it's important to be intentional about what you are hanging up and how long you're hanging it up for. I think it's really cool to have a timeline, but you can't keep that all up in the whole year because it just gets, it gets too much.  I think it's really important to, yes, give the kids a voice in it, but also be mindful of the fact that you're not going to keep everything up on that wall the whole year. Yeah. And just thinking about, like, I'm envisioning your space, right, and how I would feel comfortable in it because there isn't too much distraction and it's intentional. And I think about when I used to teach in New York City and there was just so much stuff in there and it would stress me out.

Being in your space, how does that make you feel as a teacher then when you can set up your classroom that way?

I love it. I mean, I have, I'm really lucky. I have an office space and I have my little classroom space. And I have to be honest, my classroom space, I usually clean up twice and twice a week because we use so much stuff for like little projects and stuff. So it can get a little bit messy, but that's fine because we continue to use it. I feel quite relaxed in my space. It makes me feel really proud when kids come in and say, oh, I really like being in your office or I really like this classroom, I feel comfortable in it. I don't know, I think I thrive off of children feeling good and feeling happy in the space they're learning in. So, and I have to say a classroom space with not too much around me relaxes me more and it helps me to create a little bit more thinking space almost than a space where there is a lot of furniture and there's a lot of space. I had to share a classroom with somebody just because I have my way of doing things and everybody's different in that. And some people do really like to have the desks in the very protective of that little space, whereas I'm just kind of like, get rid of this, get rid of them all. You don't need them. So yeah. Just thinking about the different spaces has got me thinking about colors. Do you, like, I know a lot of people like to have a lot of color, you know, especially if they're trying to remind the kids of certain things, like, oh, I'll make these charts really bright to grab their attention. But then other people want a very, you know, that sort of Scandinavian minimalist style of like very white. Or would you go more like a natural color? And do you think that sort of has any impact on the ability to engage the kids and keep them focused? Yeah, I mean, I'm not a person who likes white all around me. It drives me a little nuts. There is research also in this sounds, this is a very strange comparison. But in a lot of prison cells, they use like a specific color of green because it's soothing and it's calming. And I find that that does have the same effects on me. And I'm not sure if that's a positive or very soothing. And I think if you have that possibility to use those types of colors, so you're using a color, but they're not too bright, they're not too distracting. I think that's really nice because children do like to look at nice things. It's not that they want to see black and white, they do like to look at pretty things and things that are attractive. You just want to don't want to get them overly distracted by bright colors. And I think I can relate to that because I do get very easily distracted by very, very colorful things.  I find natural, more earthy tones. I'm attracted to them, but I don't get overly obsessed with what's going on there because there's like a bright yellow, beautiful sun, let's say. Yeah, I do like that comparison though to the colors in the prison because the environment matters, right?

 I was thinking too, when you're outside in nature and you see a lot of green, that's calming for people too. So that green makes sense for sure. A color that we would always use was blue, like a darker blue, and that seemed to just keep the energy yet of the right place and have still some color, but it's not just that stark minimalism that people think of when it's just so like a blank slate. So Alice has been one of the people that I've been lucky enough to work with in the book club looking at a minimalist teacher. So you're an expert now as far as I'm concerned. Alice, do you think? Don't ask me to tell you what's in the book though, because I forget. It was good though. Now I was just going to say, like, as you were reading through the book, did you have any other thoughts about minimalism and kids who require additional needs, kids that are neurodiverse, how can minimalism help them in other ways besides just the creation of the environment? Yeah, I mean, I think from what you have, you know, your book has explained, I think in a way kind of starts with us as teachers. I think we think often that everything's important and everything should be the priority and we get stressed out with it. I think it's a really great way to model to children. There are a lot of things to be doing, but what's important for us? What do we need to get done right now? And you do find like children who do have, you know, even if they don't have a diagnosis, they find it really difficult to like plan things and really kind of getting down to what's really important to get done right now at this moment is a fantastic start and we as teachers can model that. I think if we kind of work on that ourselves, I think we've already, we can already make a really big improvement and a huge impact on the kids. So that was one thing I found really, really interesting.

There was a part in your book, correct me if I'm wrong, where you had like different stressors in things that can stress you out a little bit. I found that really interesting. It got me really thinking about, okay, what impacts me most as a person? And that's the same for kids as well. They might have different things that impact them, but it's not just school, it's family life, it's friends, it's maybe their pet that's not feeling great, you know? And I think sometimes we forget the whole picture. We see the academics and we see maybe like the behavior in school, but we forget often about the behavior. Where is that coming from? Is there stuff happening at home? Or are they feeling overly anxious about something? And again, that comes down to us as professionals learning how to identify that a little bit better and having those conversations with them in order to support the kids better. Yeah, thank you. It's some of that waste too, right? Yes. What's taking up the space? Because we sometimes just think of waste as like the physical things, like we've been talking about in the physical environment, but really like what's eating up your time? What's taking up your mental space? And you're right, when we can recognize that within ourselves, we can serve our students better. So when we recognize like, I really need to prioritize this over that, and then that's gonna help me focus on teaching better, then that's what we need to do. But sometimes we just don't, I hate to say we use time as an excuse, but time, we can leverage time in a better way if we are strategic about how we use it, right? But it's easy to get sucked into the vortex of all the things.

We're gonna wrap up our episode. At the end of our episodes, we always ask our guests for a pair down pointer. So if you were gonna offer a quick tip to share with our listeners, what would that be? I get, it goes down to time again, take time to observe, take time to get to know your kids in your classroom if you're working in classroom, because I think, yeah, again, we kind of wanna get going. We have these goals, we wanna get all of this stuff done. And then I think we forget about the really fundamental parts of building those relationships and really just getting to know your class better. And I think if you have that... kind of like down to a T almost with your classroom, I think it's very helpful throughout the rest of the year. So I would say, don't try not to stress yourself out too much about getting all of your curriculum stuff done in the first three weeks and take time to get to know and really observe and, you know, learn maybe what the triggers for some children are. I think it's really important that we become more aware of that. Yeah, I think that's a really a good reminder. I know that the start of every year, I'm always really impatient to get the routines established and like get all the groups organized according to the pre -assessments and all the rest of it. So that's a good reminder, especially as we're going into a new year that, yeah, the relationships first and take that time to know who they are and go from there. So thank you for that, Alys. And thank you very much for joining us today.

Thank you so much.

Today's episode was brought to you by Professional Learning Partnerships. Professional Learning Partnerships empower educators to transform learning, leadership, and culture in school districts by leveraging key ideas from brain science so that all students can thrive. Find out more at www.learningpartnerships.org. 

Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at planzpls on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaya Moretti.