by resetting our eyes. It feels good physically, but somatically, what it also does is position us to see from a different perspective, to widen our lens, to embrace all that's in front of us. And the three observations that I shared with you all are sprint to socials, the trauma responses that are spilling out and projection rather than reflection. There's so much complexity baked into these things. There is real pressure to say something, to have it all together and figure out how to show up united and professional, to create opportunities for dialog with your team or clients. There's real pressure. You might even be wondering, what do I do if I see all of that happening at the same time inside of my workplace, multiple statements from individuals and the collective all of the trauma responses showing up at once, multiple leaders, speaking and projecting. It can feel like a lot when I think about control, influence and not in control, I'm reminded of the first thing I did after the election, the first place I went, was inside myself, to figure out what I thought, what I felt, what I needed, And what I believed my staff might benefit from what the outside world expected of the teaching Well, what we could actually control or influence about those expectations and which ones of them we needed to completely release. And the next place I went was to my staff, the very people who I needed to link up with, to align and to act in solidarity to carry out our mission. You see, when these major things happen, it's an invitation to show up and do exactly what you said you were about. You might even consider asking your values for guidance, not just going to your board or the superintendent or the regional team, but your values, the ones you spent so much time constructing. When I was an administrator in deep East Oakland, I worked at a school that now has an incredible behavioral health program, but when I got there, it was just the principal and I and one special education teammate. We didn't have a mental health clinician, we didn't have a whole behavioral response team. We didn't have all the one to one aids that were needed for very high needs students. And one of the saving graces for that first year. Oh, did I mention to say I was pregnant in my first year as an administrator with my first child. Lovely. Ask me more about it later. But one of the most essential parts of the team that I had to forge out of necessity, but also being the scrappy young leader that I was was leaning on an outside agency of trauma psychologists. Shout out to Mel, who was responsible for so much of my personal development, but we really dialed down to the three core tenets of trauma sensitive work. And you can Google things, and there are other ones, and maybe you spar with this, but for me, so much of creating trauma sensitive containers consist of these three elements, consistency, predictability and caring relationships. You might be saying to yourself, well, what's the difference between consistency and predictability? You. Consistency, to me, is what is planned and designed by the space holder. Predictability is what's experienced by the person in your charge, or care. And caring relationships are the bedrock. They weave through everything. When I think about major macro events or crises that are happening, whether in our org, in our community or in the world. I come back to these three tenets at the teaching Well, a bit of what we did to show up consistently, especially in the face of this election, when we could anticipate there would be harder days, like the day when everybody was waiting to find out the results, the anticipatory energy was palpable. We actually held a staff professional development meeting the Tuesday before. What we did was we created open space, acknowledged that there would be multiple truths and reactions engaged in numerous somatic practices and multimodal expression, meaning, art and play, joy and humor, Music, multiple ways of working through tension and stress. I We also provided agency and choice. We called it choose your own adventure. Some of the rooms focused on how we could prepare and pivot for client work. Others allowed for witnessing and connection with a teammate. Still others were able to engage in movement. One of our directors provided chair yoga and intentional stretching, while others had affirmations or art projects that they could work on. We didn't over prescribe. We just said, whatever you're navigating, wherever you stand, however you feel, it's normal. That doesn't mean it's pleasant or you're enjoying your experience, but it's normal. The to be in your entirety, to be with all that humanity holds is a lot you can come here. There's a consistent container. The agenda is socialized in advance. There's agency and choice. There are multiple caring relationships you can access. And we want to invite you to process here before you're in front of clients, we want you to process now at baseline before the big news drops. And not every major event gives us that runway, but for these more predictable events that occur every set number of years, what we're inviting is both an individual, pro social pause and collective pro social pauses. What is the pro social pause? It's from our curriculum at the teaching well, and it teaches a couple of steps for folks to navigate, to discern whether or not they're prepared to communicate in connected ways, and to take action where necessary. Within a pro social pause. You're instructed to notice and honor your somatic experience, what's happening in your mind, your body, your heart, to get inside of your body using a strategy, any of the somatics we've offered, going on a walk, talking to a trusted friend, journaling, going to therapy, whatever it is that you need to re ground and re resource and then prepare right? It's the pause and the preparation you might prepare for the event or the meeting by reviewing the invitation, the questions, gathering data, scripting your questions. How do you show up? Feeling more clear, more contained, more informed and empowered. So it's one step, right? We did a proactive, preventative, collective intervention. What happened before that was a director sync, where leadership got to process together. And what happened before that was what we call a self sync, a structure I've shared with you all before, but it was the meeting with myself that's by design. In other words, we expected teammates to have that self sync, leadership, to have a collective sync, and then the team to come together, all before we turned to the world. It was me. We world, just to drop a couple of pieces of what I said to the team in writing the next morning. It's not a perfect statement, it's just what came through my heart again, acknowledging all that's possible, whether you're waking up shocked at the results or you felt like you. Knew who America has always been. Today may feel heavy while there's a lot of uncertainty, here's what I know right as your leader, with 100% clarity. PS, I arrived at that clarity because I had met with myself. We can do hard things so long as we choose each other, we hold each other down. Period, leadership team is staying flexible and fierce about our money and expansion to prioritize safety impact and long term financial solvency, our values mission and unapologetic stance for supporting those on the margins will not shift,