Meet Our Nurtured Heart Trainers: Michal Mader

We first learned about the Nurtured Heart Approach in 2002 in a flyer for a workshop in South San Francisco. “The timing was perfect,” says former Principal Ellen Evans. “We were desperate. The ‘old ways’ of discipline were not working with Meher Schools students. They were not compatible with our loving, respectful approach to working with children.”

Ellen and six of our teachers attended the workshop. “We found the Nurtured Heart Approach to be entirely consistent with our own,” she recalls. Though the program was marketed at the time as a way of working with “difficult” children, “we found that it serves as a wonderful way to help all children become confident and resilient individuals.”

Over the years, our staff has participated in nearly a dozen Nurtured Heart workshops and trainings, including some on campus with the program’s founder, Howard Glasser. Teachers who use the approach have found that it transforms not only their students’ behavior but their own approach to working with children.

Three of our staff – Michal Mader, Caryl Marks, and Susie Kohl – have become Certified Nurtured Heart Approach Trainers. This week and for the next two weeks, we’ll introduce you to our in-house trainers. First up is Room 4 preschool teacher Michal Mader.

A Creative Process

“I’ve been using the Nurtured Heart Approach since the first workshop,” Michal says, “but it took time and practice for the children and me to feel the success of our new learning. Not ‘leaking’ – expressing – negative energy in response to certain situations was also challenging.”

Michal describes Nurtured Heart as “a creative process with space to attend to each child’s needs, level of development, and what unfolds in their relationship with their teachers.”

She continues, “As children recognize and internalize the positive qualities they hear the teacher expressing about them, they’re encouraged and they feel self-esteem, confidence, and happiness. The teacher gives them support as they take little steps toward increased self-regulation, mastery of new skills, and awareness of and accommodating the needs of others through their play together.

“At the right time, the teacher diminishes or changes the kind of support, allowing the child more responsibility and independence as an active participant in their new learning.”

Joyful dancer

Some behaviors, Michal notes, can be especially challenging for children to manage. She remembers one child in particular. “She was a joyful child, and her exuberance was hard for her to channel appropriately. For instance, during circle time, instead of taking turns or attending to presentations that didn’t involve movement, she would spontaneously get up and dance.

“After a few days of this and the usual direction to ‘please sit down’ not working, I invited the girl to dance for the class, and we enthusiastically acknowledged and shared appreciation for her effort and ability. We repeated this process for several days.”

To address the girl’s pattern of inappropriate behavior during circle time, Michal gave a new rule for the whole class: No distracting behavior. “Once I knew the girl understood what distracting behavior was and how it affected the other children and the lesson, the consequence for breaking the rule was always the same: ‘pause’ or ‘reset.’ No explanation was needed. The girl would return to her designated spot, and after a while it was no longer an issue – the rule had been acted out and she had internalized it.”

After that, “During free play time, we’d express to everyone dancing how we appreciated their movement, grace, and rhythm, and how it brought more sunshine into our classroom. Along with the understanding of the appropriate time and place to dance, this girl and the other dancers experienced appreciation and positive attention for giving form to their spontaneous feelings of joy.”

Telling the Truth

The Nurtured Heart Approach helps us deal with many complicated issues in a straightforward, transformative way. One example is the subject of truth-telling and lying.

Do you remember as a child feeling unsafe admitting you did something? Perhaps you were asked “Are you being honest?” in a punitive way. Maybe you were lectured about the consequences of saying something untrue. If that traditional approach, warning children that lying is wrong, was effective, the world would be full of people who work hard not to tell a lie.

On the other hand, if you ever interacted with an adult who gently supported you in telling the truth, even when you had done something wrong, you were very lucky. A child who receives positive recognition for being transparent under challenging circumstances will want to have that experience again.

Instead of catching children when they are lying, the Nurtured Heart way is to catch them telling the truth, even in small ways. At lunch time one day, I found a chocolate cookie on the floor next to a five-year-old’s chair. “Is this your cookie?” I asked. “Yes,” she said eagerly. Then, after a moment, she amended her statement: “Just kidding.” I exclaimed at her honesty. The girl beamed in response to this recognition, and asked if I could tell her mom at the end of the day. I did, and the next day the child reminded me how happy her mom was to hear about her truth-telling.

Children may stretch the truth in a variety of ways, but if we remember our goal is to convince them that they are basically honest, we can respond in helpful ways. Four-year-olds love to make up fantastical tales about things that happen to them. When a child says she rode horseback at school, a parent might respond, “You’re using imagination,” thus teaching the distinction between fact and fiction.

When children claim they didn’t hurt someone, and we saw them do it, we can calmly assert that we observed their actions and wonder how they are going to make amends. By not drawing attention to their fabrication but focusing on how to move forward, we help prevent the empowerment of children feeling they can outwit adults by lying.

We can also share ways that even as adults, we struggle with trying to be honest and how much we value telling the truth in everyday situations. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to grow up in a world where people applaud the kind of self-reflection that being honest requires?

Helping Children Identify Their Feelings

Children who can identify their feelings are less likely to express them in aggressive ways. Feelings charts help children identify their feelings and improve their behavior. We recently created a feelings chart and shared it with our preschool and kindergarten teachers to use in their rooms. You may find it helpful to save the image above, print, and post it in your home, as well.