Introducing Myself

 

Kia Ora, my name is Naomi Toland and I am originally from Derry in Ireland but haven't lived on the Emerald Isle for nearly 10 years. One of my passions is traveling as I believe it challenges my perspectives on life and has opened eyes to how I and others see the world. Growing up in Ireland, I spent every Summer traveling and exploring my beautiful homeland with my family and believe these experiences ignited my love of going on adventures off the beaten path to see what the world has to offer.

My Journey as a Teacher

I am one of those teachers who used to play school with my teddies and (politely) force my siblings to look at the blackboard and get them to practice their spellings. So, I would say teaching has always been in my bones.

When I left school I went straight to university to train in Early Primary Education, and I have loved teaching across the Primary sector from ages 1-13 years old in a variety of places.

Initially, I spent my first 3 years teaching in Hackney, London where I loved working with a multicultural community in an inner-city London school. I feel very grateful to have had this experience in my foundational years as a teacher, as it exposed me to the need for empathy, understanding, and connection. During this time, I took on the role of Arts Coordinator and feel this has had a huge impact on developing my interest in the importance of arts in the classroom. I was responsible for creating opportunities to support teachers and parents, helping them weave the arts curriculum into their lessons and home. This shifted my own mindset of what was and is possible to help to learning come to life.

Before moving to my next destination, I spent 3 months traveling and teaching in South America, at one point volunteering at a nature reserve in Costa Rica (Reserva Tortuga) where my partner and I would go on daily missions to look after a variety of animals. This included nightly patrols to preserve turtle eggs from poachers, teaching children about sustainability and safety, crocodile tagging, and snake walks. This was my first time in a country where I did not speak the language and loved learning from the people I met along the way!

I spent the next 3 years teaching in Auckland, New Zealand. New Zealand for me is a home away from home because of the fabulous people and beautiful nature I get to surround myself with. I loved working at Stonefields School and with the Manaiakalani Community which again pushed my idea of what learning environments and systems could look like. Stonefields is an Innovative Learning Environment (ILE) where I developed my awareness of co-teaching, working with 2 or 3 teachers in the one space with 60 – 80 learners all learning with and from each other. I believe my own practice has grown significantly over the years by remaining open to the possibility of how each experience and person can have an impact on me. And sometimes the lesson doesn’t come until much later. When I initially heard about these ILEs my brain didn’t know what to think but through experiencing it I was able to get takeaways I didn’t even know existed.

In recent years, I moved countries again, spending much of 2020 teaching the IB curriculum in Tokyo, Japan. My partner was a big driving force behind this move because of his love for Japanese history and culture. Due to COVID my partner’s visa was delayed for 3 months so I had to move alone to a country where I couldn’t speak the language and didn’t know anyone. I remember in the days leading up to the move I didn’t know if I should go because I was apprehensive and so aware of the possible negative outcomes.

What happens if he can’t come? What happens if I can’t get back to New Zealand? How will I make friends? How am I going to communicate with people when I don’t speak the language? These were all thoughts that were racing through my head telling me not to make the move. But I am so glad I did because it opened my eyes to new perspectives and different ways of living, as well as meeting lifelong friends along the way. Again, reinforcing the significance of remaining curious and taking the leap.

And that brings us to the time of writing this post where I have just returned back to Auckland, NZ where my partner and I plan on being for our next chapter. As I said before, we consider this our home away from home and feel so excited about our next adventure. I feel very grateful to have been able to tick big bucket list goals off in my personal life and now my next big bucket list tick is to look at ways of sharing those experiences in my professional life. When I came back I took on the role as a Head Teacher in a beautiful Reggio Emilia inspired preschool in Auckland where I loved researching, experiencing, and learning all about the importance of the foundational years, play based learning as I believe there is so much we can learn from the way children see the world, especially in their Early Years.

And now I am so excited to continue my learning journey as I return to Manaiakalani team as a PLD Facilitator, supporting teachers, learners and leaders across the community.

I can’t wait to continue sharing the adventure with you……

What have I learned in my time away from home?

During my first year of teaching, I got a big awakening as to what it means to be a teacher and all the hats we might wear and this had a big impact on my mental health. I couldn’t help thinking — I am supposed to have been trained for this… why was I feeling like a failure?

This set me on a journey personally and professionally where I have come to reflect on four areas in particular; process, perseverance, patience, and possibilities. I have been on an inquiry into how we can better understand how our bodies work as I believe the more we can understand how and why we do things, the more we can help ourselves and others take control of our/their own lives.

As I said, my first year of teaching had a significant impact on my mental health. I went from a person who had teaching in my bones to a person who didn’t know if I could come back the next year to continue in the teaching profession. A big part of this was the internal and external expectations I was putting on myself and others around me.

This is when I was introduced to the term ‘Empath.’ I was wearing mine and everyone else’s worries on my shoulders. Feeling their feels and just getting overwhelmed as a result. I talked about this in my interview with George Couros. Where I mention I am now at a stage where I ‘show empathy but not at the expense of myself.’ As teachers, many of us put our heart and soul into the development of our kids but I believe it is important to set boundaries so that we can fill our own cup as well as leadership teams setting up systems that create solid foundations for the community to flourish too.

So now instead of saying ‘why am I feeling like a failure?’ I actively seek out opportunities that allow me to fail and in turn, grow. Still having high expectations for myself and those in my reach but accepting my current starting position, and moving from there while setting up boundaries instead of being in a constant state of worry and fear that I am going to take the wrong step.

Being away from home has taught me that challenges are always going to come my way, be they small or big. But in my experience, many of these challenges (even though I might not have been grateful for them at the time) are the exact things that have helped me grow my toolkit to go on and face the challenges in the future with more understanding and stability.

Since understanding that challenges help me grow, I have given myself a big challenge to overcome every year for the past 5 years. One challenge I am particularly proud of was in 2019, I gave myself the mental and physical challenge of training for 20 weeks with Wimp 2 Warrior to have an MMA fight. I got a concussion and lost the fight but this experience truly changed the way I see myself and has enhanced my mindset towards what is possible.

Why do I think empathy is our superpower?

Since starting my teaching career I have loved continuing to research ways to improve my teaching practice and beyond. As I said before, in my first year of teaching, my whole body and personality began to take a decline, including getting migraines weekly, at one point on a daily basis, when I had never had them before. So I started to focus my research on understanding what was going on in my brain and this helped me start to think about what was going on in the brains of my learners. This in turn helped me to empathize with myself and others as I could understand more about why I was acting certain ways and why the learners were too.

It got me asking the question – why as teachers are we not taught more about the exact part of the body we are trying to work with? – the brain. So, in 2017, I started my podcast, Empathetic Educators to document my process. I have interviewed people from all different walks of life with all different backgrounds including Educational Neuroscientist - Nathan Wallis, Beginning Teachers, Educational Researcher - John Hattie, Google Innovators and beyond as I believe conversations with people we agree with as well as people who might think differently to us can help us navigate the next steps for the education system.

Throughout each of the sessions we discuss different N.E.R.D.Y topics:

(Neuroscience, Empathy, Relationships, Design, psYchology)

And I believe our power is within our G.R.A.C.S.P:

Growth. Relationships. Accountability. Challenges. Systems. Perspectives

So as you can see in the visuals above, as part of Empathetic Educators we are looking at ways to weave empathy through our education systems and beyond. Exploring ways we can connect these 6 main themes to our Teachers, Learners, Leaders, and our Communities.

And we will explore these themes in a fun way that you can see above on T.O.L.A.N.D where we will have exciting missions and adventures to go on together. You can find out more about these here.

‘Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times,

if one only remembers to turn on the light’

~ Dumbledore

This is one of my favourite quotes of all time, from one of my favourite series, Harry Potter, and it very much ties in with my WHY:

‘To grow human connection globally through empathy and awareness by igniting the light in people to hold themselves accountable for their choices and understand their actions have an impact on the world.’

In my darkest times, when I was questioning the profession I had chosen, my actions sometimes were not very kind to myself or to those around me because I was acting out of fear and uncertainty. When our brain feels safe and we feel heard and seen, our self-confidence and self-worth get boosted and we can have a much brighter outlook on the world. So I am on a mission to grow awareness of ways we can grow the light within ourselves to enhance the confidence and creativity of myself and those my message hopefully reaches. I have gone from always wanting to be right and fearing failure to actively seeking out opportunities where I can fail, learn and grow. This process has allowed me to have patience for myself and others, to foster my own perseverance, and create possibilities I didn’t know existed.

I wonder how we can fail, learn or grow together? I can't wait to continue my learning with Manaiakalani and see what wonderful opportunities arise this year especially with all the challenges we are facing. You can also come and join our fabulous #Empathetic_Educators community, without them none of this would be possible!

I would love to connect and learn with you:

Twitter: @naomi_toland

Instagram: @naomi.m.t

LinkedIn: Naomi Toland 

Gmail: naomi.toland@manaiakalani.org