I love drinking soda water; it is how I manage to increase my water intake throughout the day. I have my own soda water maker at home and find it is a great way to reduce the number of plastic bottles I use. I will purchase those big 1.5L bottles when I am not at home. They are, at first glance, simple bottles of bubbly water, refreshing, healthy and easy to drink.
But, user, beware, have you ever just reached out and opened that seemingly innocent bottle of water without much care? If you have, you will know that wonderfully refreshing feeling of soda water all over you, anyone within a one metre distance from you, the floor and down your arms.
Hopefully, if you have experienced this exciting and refreshing exploding shower, you will learn a valuable lesson and take your time with any unopened bottle of soda water. The experienced will open it gently, allowing small gusts of gas out at a time, so you, and those around you, don’t get soaked.
This is no different when working with students – if we don’t get into the habit of letting out small gusts of emotions through simple and effective check-in circles, then we may unexpectedly be confronted with an explosion, one that comes out of the blue… and creates a big mess.
When I work with schools and introduce check-in circles, I find they start off really well and schedule a check-in circle at the start of the week or whenever they first see their students, but when the term gets busy often, the practice drops off. This is like having a fully gassed soda water bottle ready to explode.
Check-in circles are a preventative action and a fast way to connect with your students and for students to hear how everyone is feeling, enabling the development of empathy. They prioritise emotions and enable you or other students to check – in if something seems out of the ordinary.
Have you forgotten to do those important check-in circles? If so, schedule them back into your timetable for next term, re-connect with your students and reduce unexpected emotional explosions.
Check out other articles Sheila has written here.