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Melanee’s work includes one-on-one counseling and groups with youth and adults. She says that even though she spends less time teaching adults, they appreciate and quickly learn to apply key Wise Ways to their problems.
Her expertise as a curriculum developer gives her insight into the different curricula available and she knows staff can be overwhelmed by the choices. She offers guidance and tells them that “adding BrainWise will help make their programs better without creating more work.” She shares outcome examples that show how the program’s tools have helped others address problems similar to those they face.
Teaching Tips. Melanee makes sure instructors know that everything they need is in the curriculum and can be easily integrated into their teaching. She offers these tips for successful outcomes:
- Show respect.
- Use the brain as a teaching tool to explain behaviors and help students recognize how concepts taught in other programs they have learned (suicide prevention, bullying, and anger management) fit under the 10 Wise Ways.
- Help students apply the Wise Ways to cultural situations and problems specific to them.
- Reinforce. Reinforce. Reinforce.
Teaching Examples. Billy is one of her favorite examples. She used Wise Ways working together to show him how to manage his anger. “When he was calm, I would take him through the Red Flags, his emotions and where they were on the Emotions Elevator, how to manage his emotions before they zoomed to the top and help him think about what he could do. This helped him stop and think about what he could do the next time, and he learned how to lower his rising emotions before they got out of control.
Melanee smiled when she shared an experience she had with another former student who was an adult participant at a meeting they both attended. She had responded in anger to a comment and was surprised when a voice in the audience asked her, “Are you using your Lizard Brain or Wizard Brain?” She was taken aback but pleased that he had remembered Wise Way #1 and “threw it back at me!”
A teaching tool she uses is to ask students to open a hand and spread their fingers. She asks them, “Who are your FIVE that you can count on?” and helps them identify people and resources who can be double lines in their Constellation of Support. She includes call or text Help Lines as a resource. She shares the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline where they can press #4 for Native American and the Crisis Text Line where they can text NATIVE to 741741. These lines link them to a trained Native counselor.
Relationship violence is high among indigenous girls and women and teaching them about Red Flag warnings is a way to help them be aware of dangerous relationships. Examples of red flags include a partner who isolates them from family and friends, controls how they look and dress, and supplies/administers drugs and alcohol.
Emotions Fireworks Example. Canadian BrainWise instructor Dr. Gary Brayton shared how his teen client, a car mechanic, replaced the Emotions Elevator with an Emotions Engine (See issue 88 on Dr. Brayton.) His example inspired Melanee to suggest that fireworks could be used as a culturally appropriate metaphor for some indigenous groups. She said the use of fireworks is unrestricted on the reservation, so they are popular and widely used. She said Emotion Fireworks could involve setting up the firework, lighting it, and having the fuse range from a slow fizzle to a fast explosion.
Fact vs. Opinion Examples. Native cultures have a history of broken treaties and examples of disrespect and deceit. Melanee recommends the book, Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (more detailed than the award-winning movie), as a source for indigenous problem situations that cover all the Wise Ways.
Once instructors introduce cultural examples early in BrainWise, they have access to problems they can use to teach the remaining five Wise Ways --
Ask Questions, Identify Choices, Consider Consequences, Set Goals, and Communicate Effectively.
Oral and written indigenous stories provide teaching tools and reinforcement activities. Tribes have their own traditions and stories, and their history records their courage, bravery, dignity, and sadness.
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